Passing Through the Flame (14 page)

The short elevator ride down seemed like the gut-wrenching drop of a roller coaster down the big hill. Taub’s stomach never seemed to catch up to him. Everything was going the way it was supposed to, but somehow that was all wrong. With Jango in the deal, nothing could be simply what it seemed.

“Let’s rest here for a few minutes,” Velva Leecock said, dropping down onto a cushion on the floor of the weird Oriental room. A dozen or so people were sitting there eating off plates balanced on their laps, and more were constantly drifting through with fresh drinks from the bar. If there was one place at this awful party where a girl figured to at least be
seen
by the most people, this was it.

Paul sat down beside her, took a sip of his bourbon. Velva took a gulp of her second martini of the night. The stuff tasted awful, but it looked sophisticated, and it got you high on two or three drinks, so that you didn’t have to make endless trips to some smelly, obnoxious powder room full of old bags who couldn’t hold their liquor.

“Boy, this party has been a bust,” she said. “I couldn’t get near John Horst, the only men who’ve tried to pick me up have been greasy creeps or drunken hippies, and even Harry Marvin wouldn’t pay any attention to me. What’s
wrong
with me tonight, Paul?” Paul forgot about mooning over his phony hippie rock star long enough to touch her lightly on the hand, give her a boyish smile. “Nothing’s wrong with you, Velva,” he said. “You’re beautiful as ever. You just expect too much. With a few exceptions like Beck and Horst, who are
being
hustled, everyone here is trying to hustle everyone else. So you’ve just got supertough competition, and luck becomes everything. I haven’t met a millionairess with warts on her tits either. Relax, and go with what happens.”

Velva swigged down some more martini. Paul really
is
nice, she thought. Sure, he was taken in by that hippie bitch, but men are like that. And after all, he knows I’m here to try and meet someone important, and he’s not being jealous, so I have no right to be jealous if he gets hung up on someone. If only he’d spend his time looking for someone
important
instead of following his prick around....

“Here comes something happening now,” Paul said, nodding toward the archway leading to the main room. Velva turned and saw Jango Beck walk into the room, carrying a goblet of white wine and a plate of bacon-wrapped chicken livers. He paused in the archway, looking casually around the room with those strange sexy dark eyes of his. It was obvious that everyone in the room wanted to call him over, but just as obvious that no one here really knew him, that no one dared.

A surge of adrenalin went through Velva. This is my big chance! She called up the memory of Beck’s body making love to her on a movie screen in her mind, her loins throbbing toward climax as his serpentine tongue flicked in and out of her ear. She felt her nipples harden, her crotch moisten, as sexual energy coursed through her. She rode the lust she had called up, channeled it outward through an arching of her back, a widening of her eyes, the subliminal odor of her musk. Oh, yes, she was radiating star quality now; she could feel it in the tension of her nipples, the warmth between her legs, the heady perfume of her breath in her mouth.

Jango Beck’s eyes finally met hers; Velva stared straight down into them, pouring every ounce of sexual energy and star quality she could muster into that tenuous connection between herself and Beck.

And it worked! Beck’s eyes seemed to sparkle; then he broke into a tiny grin, nodded almost imperceptibly, and finally walked across the room toward them.

“I believe I’ve met you before,” Beck said, folding his long legs under him into a squat while still holding his goblet and platter, a difficult feat which he performed with careless grace. “Yes, we’ve made love. Valhalla. That boor Roger Adrian.... You’re an actress. Velva? Velva?” Beck shrugged, and gave her a brilliant smile that set her heart pounding. “I’m afraid my memory isn’t perfect.”

“Velva Leecock,” she said. “And this is Paul Conrad. He’s a film-maker.”

“How interesting,” Beck said. Paul grimaced and tried to fade into the background, bless his heart. This is it! Velva thought. I’m talking to the most important man at the whole party,
and I’ve already balled him.
I’ve got to make this count!

“Paul and I are business associates,” she said, thus declaring her immediate availability and getting down to business at the same time. “We’re going to make a film together. I’m going to star in it, and Paul’s going to write, direct and edit.”

Paul cringed and looked very uncomfortable. The poor thing just doesn’t know how to approach people, Velva thought. He’d never get anywhere by himself.

Jango Beck ate a morsel of food, took a sip of wine. “Really?” he said. “Have you been in any films I might have seen?”

Velva writhed in embarrassment. What do I say now? I can’t tell him I have no credits, but I can’t tell him I work in fuck films either. She felt the Big Break slipping through her sweaty fingers. Well, Jango Beck is pretty weird, she decided. Maybe it’ll turn him on.

“The fact is all I’ve been in so far is sex films,” she said. “Straight fucking and sucking only, nothing perverted.”

Jango Beck’s eyes sucked at her like whirlpools. He smiled, and something about the way he did it sent waves of relief through her, undid the knots in her insides. “You shouldn’t be ashamed of it,” Beck said. “If I told you how I started, you’d know enough to put me in jail for fifty years. Besides, if I were looking for a new female star, the first thing I would do is look at as much sex film footage as I could get my hands on.”

“Really?”

Beck chewed another piece of bacon-wrapped chicken liver. “One thing no one can fake is sexual charisma,” he said. “Without it, the most beautiful woman in the world with all the acting talent and training you could want will never be a movie star, and with it a woman who looks like mud in stills will be a sure winner. Look at footage of a woman balling, and you can tell whether she has it or not in a minute.”

Paul belted down the rest of his bourbon and stared pointedly out into the center of the room, away from Jango Beck. Velva leaned closer to Beck. She had a powerful urge to leap on him, lick his luscious body all over, go down on him right then and there. What a beautiful man! He understands
everything.
He’s a natural producer. With me starring, and Paul writing and directing, and Jango Beck producing... and he has the power and money to get backing for a major feature by snapping his fingers!

She placed her hand lightly on Beck’s thigh, smiled at him, ran her tongue over her lips once. Beck grinned like a cat being stroked, almost purred. He wanted to ball her again, she could tell. Everything was suddenly working beautifully.

“You really ought to get into making films, Jango,” she said.

“You obviously understand what it’s all about better than most of the lame jerks in the film business.”

Beck beamed; he suddenly seemed like a teen-age kid being told how good he was by his first lay. “Really?” he said. “You don’t know how pleased I am to hear you say that. I’ve been secretly thinking the same thing myself. I’m no writer or director, but I certainly have a talent for discovering talented people and putting them to work, for creating basic concepts, for putting deals together. Do you really think I’d make a good producer? Tell me the truth now, Velva, would you really trust me to produce a film you were going to star in? Even though I have no track record?” Velva could hardly believe her ears. It was beautiful, simply fantastic. A rich, powerful, together man like Jango Beck was asking her to trust him to produce a starring vehicle for her!

“Sure I’d trust you, Jango,” she said. “If we had someone like Paul to write and direct it.”

Beck took a long drink of wine. “This is marvelous!” he said. “I’m getting the sort of feeling I got the night I discovered the Velvet Cloud. I can feel the karmic forces building to a nexus. Do you know, I even have a basic concept for a film kicking around in my mind. Mr. Conrad, as a professional filmmaker, could I impose on you for an opinion?”

Jesus Christ, Paul thought disgustedly, now he wants
me
to play his crappy cruel game with him. Now I’m supposed to be a straight man for him, help him torture poor Velva for his cheap little kick. Well, two can play the put-on game, buster!

“Sure, Mr. Beck,” Paul said with grand superciliousness, “I don’t mind handing out a little free advice to amateurs.”

“Good, good,” Jango Beck said, locking his eyes onto Paul’s. Quite suddenly, Beck seemed in deadly earnest, and Paul felt a tremendous power radiating from the man, an almost exquisite seriousness. “As you know, I’m in the record business, and I control several top groups, including the Velvet Cloud. My basic idea is to put on a huge rock festival, employing the Velvet Cloud and a lot of other groups under contract to Dark Star or Eden, and then to film it. Like
Woodstock
, which was a tremendous commercial success.”

“Or like
Medicine Ball Caravan
, which was a tremendous bomb,” Paul said, taking considerable pleasure in puncturing Beck’s schlockmeister idea. “Woodstock was a spontaneous event, a historic moment, that happened to unfold before cameras. For that matter, you could say that
Gimme Shelter
was a luck-out too, although you really can’t go wrong filming the Rolling Stones, unless you’re Godard and you’re in such command of your own flaws that you can make ninety minutes of Mick Jagger boring. But after those two pictures, every money-hungry asshole in Hollywood thought he could set up that kind of situation artificially and make a cheap movie that was a sure box-office winner. They were all pieces of crap, and they all lost money.” He smiled sweetly at Jango Beck. “Pardon me for hitting you so hard, Mr. Beck, but you asked for it.”

“No, no,” Beck said. “You’re dead right. Only an idiot would make one more hype promo phony rock film like
Medicine Ball Caravan
or
Mad Dogs and Englishmen.
You hit the nail right on the head, I like the way you think. But what’s another big trend-setting winner—
Love Story!”

“I don’t think I follow you....”

“You know Haskel Wexler’s
Medium Cool
?”

“Sure. A feature film he happened to be shooting in Chicago when the riots broke out at the Democratic convention. The riot footage made the film.”

“Right! Wexler was just lucky, too. But why trust to luck? Create a historic event, a Woodstock-type situation, as background, then shoot a scripted, controlled love story against it. A collaboration between determinism and chance! Nobody’s ever done that. Imagine what you’d have if you had shot
Love Story
with
Woodstock
as background!”

“That’s your idea?” Paul said.

“That’s as far as I’ve developed it. I’m no writer or director, but believe me, I know how to create events. What I want to do is creatively produce the film. Set up the festival, handle the musical end, the finances, and so forth. Then have someone like you turn the basic idea into a script and direct the love story against the festival background. What do you think?”

Beck’s face was lit up like that of a new papa; he seemed to have really turned himself on. Paul considered the notion. It was basically a schlock idea, but what in Hollywood wasn’t?
If
the rock festival turned out interestingly enough, and
if
the love story wasn’t a piece of dreck, the thing could be a commercial success....

But it would be much too expensive to make. No one in Hollywood would come up with a couple of million for a film like that after so many rock films had bombed. It was another fairy castle in thin air. And Beck didn’t seem stupid enough not to know it....

Jesus Christ, the son of a bitch has been putting
me
on! Paul suddenly realized. The same mind-fuck game he played with Velva. And I was as easy a victim as she was!

“Not exactly great art,” Paul said snidely, “but it might make money if anyone were crazy enough to finance a film like that these days.”

Beck laughed. “Financing? Don’t sweat financing. Financing I can line up tonight before anyone goes home. Hmmm... look Paul, what are your credits?”

“A million feet of fuck films, a dozen prizewinning shorts, and one unreleasable feature,” Paul said without hesitation. He was thoroughly fed up with being the fall guy for this vicious, sadistic put-on.

“Well what the hell,” Beck said, “we’re all amateurs, right? Who am
I
to ask you for credits? I go with my instincts. Let me ask you one final question: Do you think you could write and direct a film like that? Do you feel you have it in you?”

“Sure. I’m a boy genius. I could edit it too, for that matter. When do we start?”

Beck finished the last of his wine, stood up like an Indian rubber man, propelled to his feet by his unjackknifing legs. “You’re getting a little ahead of things,” he said. “However, do stick around for a few hours. Lap up the booze, suck up the dope, whatever turns you on. The wheels of fate are beginning to turn.” He toasted them with his empty glass, popped a final piece of rumaki into his mouth, turned, and disappeared through the far archway.

Velva hugged Paul with near bone-breaking force. “Oh Paul, this is so exciting! We’re on our way to the top!”

“Velva, Velva, stop kidding yourself. It’s all a put-on. That guy has bullshit pouring out of his ears.”

But nothing, he saw, could take the edge off Velva’s glow. “You’ll see!” she said. “Jango Beck is the real thing. I can feel it. He’s the fat producer with a cigar and the old millionairess with warts on her tits, all rolled up into one sexy package.”

“Maybe, but would you buy a used car from this man?” The joke blew by her. But then, Paul thought, she already has bought it. And for a moment there, so did I.

Chris Sargent stepped through an archway into a greenly lit room, checked out the inhabitants. No Jango. A bunch of fruity-looking actor types, a few nice pieces of ass. Harmless. A black dude in a cream-colored suit—looks like a pimp, or maybe a dope dealer on some level. Could be a medium-high level, and who knows which side? Watch him for moves, don’t let him get behind you.