Passing Through the Flame (29 page)

This is going to take everything I’ve got, and then some, Paul realized, and when I’m finished, it’ll probably be less than what I could have made it be. But that’s major-league filmmaking, and that’s the only game worth playing.

Jango Beck stared at him unwaveringly. I’ll bet he knows everything I just thought. I’ll bet he knows I know he knows right now, and I’ll bet he planned it that way. Mr. Jango Beck, you are an A-number-one mindfucker. But if this is the hand you’re dealing, I’ve gotta play it. At least it’s a stake and a seat in the game.

“You’ve got a deal, Mr. Beck,” he said.

“See you around the zoo, Paul,” Sandra Bayne said with a tiny wave of her hand as the elevator door slid shut.

A nice kid, a real nice kid, she thought. Wouldn’t be surprised if I ended up having a thing with him. I’ll bet there’s more behind those eyes than just another fall guy for Jango.

“SGRAAUCK!! VRAAAK!! GREEEKKK!!” Two of the parrots got stuck in a screeching match with each other, screaming and creaking and reeling drunkenly about on their perches.

“HEY!” Hakim roared, and, amazingly, the parrots shut up. The intercom buzzer rang. “Hey, Jango, these birds of yours are
stupid
motherfuckers,” he said. “‘Fore long, I’m gonna barbecue ‘em. Yeah, right. Hey, Sandy, the great man wants you in his office.”

Mission accomplished. Hakim went back to reading his William Burroughs paperback. He only had two Burroughs paperbacks, and he kept reading them over and over again as if he were trying to engrave the patterns of the letters in his brain. Hakim had been there for a month, and that was about all that Sandra knew about him, and about all she cared to know. Around here, the less you know, the better, she thought. What a lunatic asylum. She walked past Hakim, through the glass doors, and down the long hallway to Jango’s office.

Inside the office, Jango was sprawled on his water couch, his arms spread-eagled across the big semicircular backboard as he sat on the black velvet surface of what he claimed was the world’s largest circular water bed bag. Whether it was really a record holder or not, it
was
a lovely thing to make love on the boundless undulating surface; like balling on the gentle waves of a shoreless sea. Jango could send her on voyages out there all alone in the pleasures of her body with the rest of the world turned off.

“Closed the deal,” Jango said, tapping the water bed beside him with the palm of his hand, setting up ripples of invitation.

Sandra seated herself on the far side of the bed; she wasn’t in the mood for one of those voyages right now. Jango shrugged with his eyes and pursued it no further. That’s one of the things that made working for Jango worthwhile, she thought, one of the things I like him for. How horrible it would be if he made love to me anytime I wanted it or if I balled him every time he wanted me to. It would be a
relationship.
Having a relationship with Jango would be a sure ticket to the funny farm, or worse, to the sleeping pill bottle. But hanging around someone with as much animal sexuality as Jango and never balling him at all would be too much of a strain on the nervous system.

Jango abruptly bounded off the water couch and behind the thing he called his desk, supported on six slim chromium pillars, it was a freeform slab of black marble that swirled around his chair like a frozen thundercloud. The chair itself was a chromium half-egg lined with plush sky-blue cushioning; it cradled Jango’s tall, slim body like an astronaut’s lift-off couch.

He threw some switches on the teak console that curved around the desk immediately in front of him. It was the ultimate telephone setup, installed by a mad phone freak. Six outside lines fed into the console. On the other end were six jacks for the six extension phones on the desk, a squawk box, and enough switches for a small railroad. Only Jango and the guy who had set it up really understood the board, and with it Jango could play all sorts of phone games. He could set up his own conference calls. He could switch people’s calls from one line to another, set up conversations between six people and change the partners around at will. Or hold conferences between people in the room and as many as six callers. Sandra was pretty sure that he could record conversations on any of the lines with the flick of a switch or play canned tapes into any incoming call he chose. He was like some cyborg in an airport control tower, sitting there in his blue and silver cocoon, plugged into his telephone complex.

“Get me Art Leroy, Bill Horvath, Jonas Green, Danny Sullivan, Chick Day,” Jango said into one of the phones. Sandra sat down on a blue-and-yellow zebra-striped couch near the desk and awaited his attention, regarding the spider in his web.

The rest of the room seemed designed to make this spider’s nest seem less eerie. Behind it was a huge window looking south across lowland Los Angeles, a vast sea of pastel ticky-tacky bleached by the sun and obscured by a bank of smog that rose from a blue-gray mist at building-top level to a hideous brown smear above. The other three walls were cheery tints of blue, red, and yellow; colors repeated in muted tones in the complex geometric facets of the carpet. The big round water bed rather than the desk dominated the room, and low couches replaced the usual chairs. The lighting was also controlled by the desk console: little lamps all over the room with different colored bulbs. Jango could change the mood by twiddling his fingers.

Right now, everything was daylight white and businesslike. “I want to set up a little press conference on Friday,” Jango said. “The rock creeps, no heavy media stuff. You’ll handle it yourself, I won’t be there. I want you to announce that Dark Star in conjunction with Eden is going to put on the world’s greatest rock festival for the benefit of its loyal customers and that it will be completely free. We’re calling it the Carnival of Life.”

“That’s all? Nothing about the movie?”

“We don’t want to look too much like crass exploitative creeps. So first we announce that we’re going to put on the festival, and then we release juicy little details about this wonderful free Carnival of Life over the next few weeks, and then when everyone is zonked on the festival, Eden Pictures quietly announces that a movie will be shot. That’s one of the advantages of working with unknowns: the publicity will stay with the festival, where it belongs, instead of getting ripped off by the movie and creating bad vibes. Otherwise, it could look as if we’re putting on this wonderful free festival just to get some extras and color for an exploitation film.”

“Which is exactly what you’re doing.”

“Not
exactly
what I’m doing, but close enough so that we can’t afford to have it
look
like that’s what I’m doing.”

“You lost me there, swami.”

“That’s the nature of the game, Sandy. I don’t want anyone to figure things out linearly, and if I can confuse you, you should be able to confuse the pack of nerds that passes for the rock and Movement press.”

“Your wish is my command,” Sandra said. Even when I can’t figure it out. Even when I don’t like it. Do I love you in some strange Martian manner, Jango?

A light on the console signaled Jango. He picked up a phone. “Yeah. You know the arrangement, I don’t care how many losses you took, you started it. Maybe. Right, it’s all wrapped up. Friday, right.
Ciao
.”

He hung up the phone. “Our PR problem here is to make the film not look like a rip-off of the people at the festival. You know the kind of crap we can get into if Movement types decide to make trouble—hassles, bad publicity, attempts to squeeze bribes out of me.”

Jango picked up another phone. “Chickie baby! You’ll be delighted to know that I want to throw some more money into equipment. I know, but we’ve got a big opportunity coming up, and we’re gonna need more than we have. Round-the-clock full sixteen-track studio quality outdoors at three or four simultaneous locations. Right. How much? Wow. No, do it, talk to you Saturday.”

For the thousandth time, Sandra Bayne found herself studying Jango Beck as if he were some rare creature brought back alive from an exotic jungle. His curly black hair that you could lose your hands in, his slim, sensitive body that could make love with every muscle, those live black eyes. He was
some
male animal. But the inside of his head was
terra incognita.

I’ve seen him do incredibly vile things—blackmail people, destroy careers, blow minds, ball faggots and dykes and God knows what, and, if half the stories were true, he’s had people killed, hooked people on smack, signed talent to slavery contracts. Yet his house is full of beautiful things, he’s a great lay, he’ll support people he believes in. You can’t trust him even to fuck you up.

I’ve been working for him and balling him for three years now, and I still don’t understand him at all. Almost as if he’s not exactly human. But then, he’s not exactly anything.

Jango Beck put down the phone. “Okay, Sandy, you know the drill,” he said.

“Jango, would you do me a personal favor?”

“Anything, love, as long as it doesn’t cost me money.”

“Would you tell me what part Paul Conrad is supposed to play in this shabby deal?”

“Oooh-hoo-hoo, you’re interested in the boy wonder!” Jango said, his eyes laughing.

“He’s just a nice kid I don’t want to see cut up,” Sandra insisted with zero conviction, knowing she wasn’t convincing Jango, not really caring. “I hope you’re not setting him up for something bad.”

“Right,” Jango said with a little laugh. “You’re not interested in him, you just want to protect the tender skin on his sweet little tush.”

“All right, so maybe he turns me on. A little. You’re avoiding the question.”

Jango propped his feet up on the marble slab before him. “I’m not avoiding the question, Sandy,” he said. “The question is nonapplicable. I don’t know what I’m setting him up for. This deal is so complicated that I don’t know what’s going to happen. Conrad can win, or Conrad can lose. He’s an unknown quantity, I’ve never seen a foot of his film. I don’t know whether he’s a genius or a no-talent nerd.”

“What?”

“He’s a random factor I threw in to make things more interesting for myself,” Jango said. “You know how I detest determinism.”

“But are you betting on him or against him?”

Jango Beck smiled. “Sandy, Sandy, won’t you ever learn? I don’t play that way. I can win by losing or I can win by winning. The thing is to put the system in motion and flow with the situation as it unfolds. The enemy is entropy, the trend toward simplicity. Chaos and complexity are what’s called for. I love surprises, and since few people are capable of surprising me, I’ve got to make some effort to surprise myself.”

“You are so full of bullshit!”

Jango arose, bowed, and said, “And you are my prophet.” Unbidden, a wave of affection for Jango Beck washed over Sandra, a reasonless, unfair, unmotivated desire to touch him, even though he was being a shit.

But he does it so well! There’s not a man like him in this whole town. I wish I could love him... I wish... I don’t know what I wish...

Masking her confused feelings, Sandra Bayne moved toward Beck, the unfathomable feeling she had felt for him transmitted into what she could understand, that part of her relationship with him that she could encompass and comprehend: lust.

“Oh, shut up and let’s fuck,” she said, with unconvincing coldness.

“I can and I can’t, you know what I mean, Bill?” Susan said, feeling a chill deep down inside, even in the hot midday sun, fearing a performance at this Carnival of Life thing more than she had feared anything in her life. And yet... and yet when Jango calls to Star, when he presses the buttons, when the music starts to play....

“Maybe I can do something about it, maybe you won’t have to,” Bill said, leaning back against the railing of the sun deck, nude from the waist up, long hair blowing in the breeze, his eyes going out to her, sucking on internal energies that were drained, almost depleted. God, I love you, babes, she thought. While we’re tearing each other apart, I love you.

“What can you do?” she said. “Go on without me, just you and the boys? Besides....”

“Write some new material. A whole new album that’ll get us off this Star trip and keep Jango satisfied. Shit, I don’t know!” He slammed his fist down on the wooden railing, winced in pain. “Fuck!”

Susan went across the sun deck toward him, put her arm around him, felt the tension in his body, the rage in his soul. What she felt in him kindled a calm in her, a strength called up by her love for him. We keep draining ourselves for each other, she thought. We keep bottoming out and then finding out we have more to give, more substance left to consume.

“You know what’s going to happen,” she said. “Like Jango said, it’s inevitable, it’s our destiny.”

“You just told me you can! do it....”

“I said I can and I can’t. I’m terrified, I don’t want to perform live, but Star can:
Star
has to, it’s Star’s whole life, and Star gets stronger and stronger every day, stronger and stronger, and stronger—”

“Cut that shit out!” Bill whirled around, grabbed both her arms by the biceps, and shook her, his lips curled away from his teeth, his fingers bruising her flesh. She looked at him looking at her looking at him, and the moment of psychic vertigo passed, and with it Bill’s rage. His hands relaxed, and she let herself collapse against the bare flesh of his chest, flow into his arms. She felt the hardness of his chest with the skin of her cheeks, the tenderness of his embrace with the muscles of her back. Susan. This is what it feels like to be Susan.
Susan.

“What are we going to do, babes?” For a moment it seemed as if she were saying the words to herself, so totally were they synced into each other.

“Maybe Jango’s right,” she said. “Maybe we should give in to the flow and relax, maybe there’s nothing we can do to change it anyway....”

Twenty minutes ago, standing out here in the sunlight under the blue sky, Jango Beck had seemed like something more than a producer and manager putting the screws on reluctant performers; she sensed something of the wise old friend in him, the guru who had been at their side all along, who in a curious way understood more than Bill ever could. His eyes like cool jungle pools under the canopy of the sky....