Passing Through the Flame (53 page)

But you do it anyway because the first thing you have to do is survive till the next round.

“All right, let’s do a run-through first,” Paul Conrad said, clapping his hands together. “Hold the shooting lights. Velva, Rick, positions, please.”

Velva Leecock, costumed in a demurely cut blue dress-suit which made her look like a college cheerleader in insurance-company-secretary drag, quickly took her place to the right of the airliner interior set. Rick Gentry moved with exasperating slowness, carefully closing his script and placing it on the arm of his chair, getting up, taking a sip out of his china coffeecup, finally almost mincing up onto the set. He slowly eased himself into the window seat and ceremoniously placed the prop copy of
Time
across his knees.

“I am ready,” he announced grandly.

Paul resisted the impulse to ask, ready for what? But then, he thought, I’ve had to resist a lot of impulses lately. Murder’s still illegal in this state, even if cruel and inhuman punishment seems to be the order of the day.

The camera was set up for a simple tight two-shot on Gentry and the empty seat next to him where Velva would sit down. There were no extras on the set this morning, since Paul had decided to shoot the dialogue sequence before the establishing shot of Velva walking down the aisle. With luck, this would keep Velva’s limited attention span and Gentry’s contempt for her from killing this scene dead before the shooting even began.

Paul positioned himself to the left of the camera. “Quiet on the set, please.... Okay.... action.... Velva....”

Velva walked onto the set, then into the camera frame in front of the aisle seat beside Gentry. “Is this seat taken?”

Gentry turned to face her, with the ironic welcoming smile the script called for. “Make yourself comfortable,” he said. Though Paul knew all too well that that gleam in his eye was smug supercilious contempt, he could see that it would photograph as jaded lust as long as Gentry spoke the dialogue with some degree of professionalism. And in this turkey, that’s the best I can expect.

“Thank you,” Velva said icily, inching herself into the seat ass-first, while Gentry made a point of staring at her backside. Again, it
would
play, if for all the wrong reasons.

“Are you going to Los Angeles?” Gentry asked conversationally, while rubbing his copy of
Time
with a circular motion of his thumb and forefinger.

“I’m going to the Sunset City rock festival,” Velva said primly, pronouncing it as if it were “Girl Scout Jamboree.”

“Really
?” Gentry said in a leering tone of voice. “So am I.”

“Are you?” Velva said, wrinkling up her nose as if her companion were a barrel of rotten fish.

“No! No!” Paul shouted. “Cut! Cut!” This is just too much! They were terrible apart, but in the same scene together they were pure impossible!

Gentry looked across the set at Paul, rolled his eyes in Velva’s direction, and shrugged sympathetically. Velva looked distressed, but not at her own incompetence. Her expression hadn’t changed from the last line of the scene, any more than her on-camera attitude toward Gentry was different from her off-camera loathing for him. What a pair!

“Look,” Paul said softly, fighting his anger, fighting his despair, determined not to lose control of himself and what was left of this damned film. “You two are sort of going to pick each other up. Velva, when Rick tells you he’s going to Sunset City, you’re not disgusted, you’re relieved, because you’re scared to death of going to this huge orgy all by yourself without knowing anyone there. So say ‘Are you?’
that
way, as if you’ve found yourself a protector, not a rapist.”

Velva cringed slightly, “I’m sorry, Paul,” she said. Gentry became even smugger.

“And Rick, for chrissakes, don’t come on like Wolfman Jack with that
‘really.’
” Paul got a secret surge of pleasure watching Gentry’s smugness become pique. “Leave us have some subtlety. You’re a man of the world trying to get it on with an innocent young kid, not a high school senior picking up a B-girl.” Gentry flushed with anger, but before he could vent it, Paul cut him off with “Let’s run through those lines again! Velva, from ‘I’m going to the Sunset City rock festival.’”

“I’m going to the Sunset City rock festival,” Velva said neutrally, looking at Gentry with a blank expression.

“Really?” Gentry
said, this time like a fatherly type trying to sound eighteen years old. “So ami.” Again, it really wasn’t what Paul wanted, but it would play.

“Are you?” Velva said, with a pure earnestness devoid of any emotional color. Apparently, suppressing her revulsion for Gentry was about the most he was going to get out of her.

“Cut,” Paul said. “Okay, that’ll do fine.” It’ll have to, because it’s all I can get. “Let’s do one more complete run-through and then try for a take.”

“Roll it.”

“Sunset City
, Scene Eight-A, take three.”

“Speed.”

Paul hesitated for a moment, and it seemed to Velva as if he had passed through a moment of unconsciousness, a flicker of exhausted standing sleep. He sure looks gray; he looks as tired as I feel.

“Action,” Paul finally said, crouching down to the left of the camera.

Velva turned to face Rick Gentry, smiling his awful faggot imitation of masculine lust from the airliner seat beside her. “You won a contest?” he said. “How interesting. I lost one. We have something in common.”

The only thing I have in common with you, you creep, is that we both like to ball men. But she forced herself to touch his arm in a friendly manner even while her flesh crawled and got out the line. “Are you going to be there the whole time?”

“Every last awful minute of it,” Gentry said, giving her a two-edged ironic little grin—sweetness toward her character, poison toward herself. Oooh, am I on to you, you slimy creature!

“Well... maybe I’ll see you around,” Velva said, forcing herself to smile like a high school girl at the captain of the football team.

“Maybe we can protect each other.”

“What can I protect
you
from?” Velva mouthed in a wide-eyed voice. Being raped by a hairdresser?

Gentry turned his full snake smile on her, inclined his head at an angle he thought was cute, and stared past her at the camera, at Paul, with sickening cow eyes. “Boredom, my dear, boredom,” he said.

Velva forced herself to smile shyly at Gentry until Paul called, “Cut!”

“All right,” Paul said, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, “we’ll call that a take and go on to the close-ups. Harv, set up for the close-ups on Rick. Velva, you can take a break.”

Velva walked past Paul and sat down in her set side chair while he instructed the key lighting grip. While the crew was changing the lights around, Paul slumped down in a chair beside her, suddenly looking absolutely exhausted. For a moment, her own tiredness was forgotten as she saw how utterly beat he looked.

“Maybe we’re working a little too hard, Paul,” she said. “Maybe we’d all feel better if we slowed down.”

“Maybe you
enjoy
working with Rick Gentry,” he snapped. “Maybe
you’d
like to prolong the agony.” Almost immediately his face softened, then hardened into a more controlled and distant mode. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have said that.” But he had said it, and Velva felt it as strongly as he did. The longer either of them was around Rick Gentry, the worse things would get.

“But it’s true, isn’t it?” she said. “Things are going pretty badly, aren’t they?”

“We’re shooting a lot of usable footage every day.”

“What does that mean, Paul?”

“It means that we’re going to be able to finish on time, and it means that we’re going to have something that can probably be released to television.”

“That’s all?” she said forlornly. “Our-big chance, and all we get out of it is a TV credit?”

“You asked me, I told you.”

“It’s really that bad?” she said, knowing that it was, knowing that it was impossible for any woman to play her part opposite Rick Gentry, knowing that Gentry was a complete no-talent who couldn’t play any part. Knowing that her one and only chance to be a star was sliding down the drain.

“Maybe it’ll get better when we start shooting at the festival,” Paul said. “Trust me, Velva, I still think I can pull something off somehow.” He smiled at her, and it was a flash of the old Paul, sharing their dreams together in the middle of the night.

And bringing with it the sudden revelation of what was
really
wrong. It was the kind of thing that happened on a fuck-film set when the sex vibes were set up all wrong, when the script called for two people to ball who turned each other off. But this was even worse, because the director was involved.

What’s wrong is that Paul and I aren’t balling each other. If we were, everything would be all right. That’s how this whole film started, Paul wrote it around me while we were sleeping together, he wrote it to make me a star. That’s what it’s all about. If we were sleeping together, he’d be directing it the way he was supposed to, as a star vehicle for me, and everything would be all right. It wouldn’t matter how bad Gentry is or how silly the movie is, because it’s real star quality that makes a movie, not a lot of artsy-fartsy dialogue and motivations.

And if Paul was balling me, it would sure put that faggot permanently in his place!

“You suddenly look better,” Paul said. “You have some kind of revelation?”

“You could say that,” Velva said. “I just thought of a simple solution to all our problems.”

“How marvelous. Care to let me in on it?”

“That would spoil it,” she said. “But don’t worry, you’ll find out.”

“I want to say I admire your fortitude,” Rick Gentry said, looking at Paul with an intense sincerity that made his flesh crawl. “You’ve really been producing a lot of footage under the most
appalling
conditions.” He nodded at Velva, whose makeup was being touched up for the next shot.

“I’ve worked under worse conditions than these,” Paul said, trying not to react at all, knowing that the hostile undercurrent between them was poisoning everything, that to acknowledge it to Gentry would kick the whole shitpile apart and make it impossible to continue shooting this wretched piece of schlock.

He concentrated on blocking the next shot in his mind. Velva would walk down the airliner aisle, the extras would have to react as they would to a pretty girl, but not to the point where it became ludicrous, and that would raise Gentry’s attention, he’d look up and notice her before she noticed him, they deliver their lines, she sits down, and that’s all I’ll—

“I want you to know I realize the difficult position you’re in,” Gentry continued. The son of a bitch wouldn’t let it go! “I want you to know you can call on me for any help that might ease your burden. Anything.”

Gentry’s intensity compelled attention; there was no way to ignore it. He’s sincere, Paul realized, he’s actually sincere. He knows how bad Velva is, but he has absolutely no concept of how rotten he is himself He’s really offering to help me, and he really thinks he can. I don’t understand him at all. I don’t even think I want to.

“Thank you, Rick,” he said. “I’ll remember that the next time you complain that the shooting day’s too long.”

“So will I,” Gentry said, with a warmth and sincerity that had Paul reeling mentally. What’s going on around here?

“Emmett, you want to get the extras on the set,” he called out, walking toward Emmett Francis as he spoke, using it as an exit line with Gentry. I’m afraid I’m beginning to know what’s going on around here, and I’m beginning to wish I didn’t.

Velva Leecock stood at the edge of the set, waiting to walk out into those glaring lights, into that universe of unnatural concentration, where the sound of the camera whirring was the sound of money being gobbled up, and every mistake you made could be measured in hundreds of dollars. Where Paul was demanding more than anyone had to give. If only he’d just let me be myself, she thought. If only I could project myself in this stupid film, everything would be fine.

“Roll ‘em.”

“Sunset City
, Scene Eight-D, take one.”

“Speed.”

“All right, Velva, action!”

Why don’t I just show him? she decided as she walked into the solid glare of the lights. Why don’t I show him what he can have for himself, too?

As she began her walk down the airplane aisle, she pressed her inner thighs together, moving her legs mostly from the knees down, concentrating on the feel of flesh rubbing flesh in the vicinity of her crotch, the movement of material over the skin of her ass and breasts. She walked down the aisle looking straight ahead, glancing at the extras while looking for a seat, but she was fantasizing that the only eyes watching her were Paul’s.

She called up images of Paul and her balling, and she masturbated to them, thigh on thigh, as she walked slowly down the aisle like a lost little girl. She could see the male extras staring at her, sense the hard-ons in their pants. This was more like it! This was her star quality finally showing itself, and she could feel the set come alive for the first time.

Male heat followed her up the aisle and focused on her as she stopped in front of Gentry’s row; she just
knew
she was dominating this shot.

“Is this seat taken?” she said, imagining Paul’s face looking up at her instead of Gentry’s and making it an invitation to a seduction.

Gentry leered up at her poisonously. “Make yourself comfortable,” he said with a vile, obscene slurp of his tongue.

“Cut! Jesus Christ, cut!” Paul screamed as the crew broke into uneasy laughter.

“I really don’t appreciate your sense of humor,” Paul snapped at Gentry. “Not when it costs me a take.”

“Don’t tell me
that take
was going to be usable,” Gentry said. “This is supposed to be an airliner, not a burlesque house runway. I can’t imagine why you kept the camera running. Unless of course you enjoyed it.”

“We enjoyed it all right!” a grip called out, and the set echoed with rough male laughter. Gentry flushed, and Velva smiled at the crew, pressing her thighs together.