Scruples (67 page)

“I get the general drift,” said Fifi.

“So,” finished Dolly, “it’s not a lovers’ quarrel because they aren’t lovers anymore. They really hate each other. I mean, they went too far. The thing is, he really does have a tiny cock; she’d mentioned it a lot before, but not like that, more like, she’d say, ‘it’s small but it’s in the right place,’ that sort of thing.”

“Yeah, they definitely went too far, Dolly. Thanks. It’s a help to know what’s going on. Now, beat it, honey, we need to talk.”

“We’ve had it, Vito,” said Fifi. “A man can’t forget that sort of thing even if he wants to, and this kid doesn’t want to.”

There was a long silence. The ornate Victorian hotel lobby filled up slowly with thirsty tourists, who were served by pretty female bartenders.

“We’ll use photo-doubles,” announced Vito. “It’s doable Fifi.”

“In a nude scene? You’re mad!”

“I didn’t say it was sane. I just said we’d do it. There are enough kids in this town so we can find one who can be made up to look like Sandra from the back and the same for Hugh. Wigs, Fifi, wigs. We’ll find them this afternoon. Then we’ll shoot the scenes twice, once with a photo-double of Sandra with Hugh and then the other way around. Well never see the photo-doubles’ faces, just the backs of their head and their bodies. And we’ll intercut.”

“You can’t get away with that!”

“Do we have a choice?”

Svenberg was enchanted with the idea. To him flesh was flesh, light was light, and the challenge was the real game. While Sandra played her scenes with Hugh’s photo-double, Vito read her the lines Hugh would have been saying, and she responded to them. While Hugh played his scene with Sandra’s photo-double, Dolly read Sandra’s lines. Later, this would all be incorporated into a single scene with corrected sound. Vito insisted that Hugh be present on the set while Sandra worked and that Sandra be there while Hugh worked. The two former lovers engaged, as he had hoped, in an Olympics of acting, competing with each other to see which one could put more fervor and pathos and sensuality into the scene, abandoning their totally naked bodies to equally naked strangers with flaunting erotic wildness he had never seen on any set. They were on fire, dangerous in their desire to act each other into the ground. He and Fifi didn’t need the dailies to know they had made film history, if only in that one scene.

When the two draining days were over, Fifi reminded Vito that they still had those two days of film, shot before the nude scene, which had to be redone. All the rest of the script involved scenes in which Sandra and Hugh were not alone together, so he didn’t anticipate trouble there, but What about those two missing days?

“I’ve been rewriting the script at night,” said Vito. “Here—it’s a new way around but we come out at the same place. I’ve just given Dolly more to do—it’ll work with the changes I’ve made.”

Quickly Fifi read the new pages. “It works, it works. But where do we get the time?” Vito handed him another batch of pages.

“These scenes we don’t shoot, we don’t absolutely need them. I’ve provided for the gaps, the transitions. It all makes sense. So now we’re only one day behind schedule, Fifi, and if you can’t make that up, they’ll kick you out of the Directors Guild.”

“Feeling good, you old bastard?”

“Just the normal joys of being in show business.”

H
aving been a victim of poison oak, Billy discovered, when she finally returned to Mendocino for the last week of the shoot, was the magic leveler. Many of the grips, lighting crew, set dressers, and camera crew had had nasty touches of the vile disease themselves. From being The Producer’s Wife, she was transformed into the wounded comrade who had returned from the field hospital to the front to carry on the war side by side with the troops. Everyone from Svenberg, wrapped in his dreamy isolation, to the drivers of the honey wagons, as the indispensable portable toilets are called, hailed her and wanted to know how she felt. Many of them could hardly wait to compare symptoms, and often Billy found herself the center of a brotherly knot of assorted crew members discussing the virtues of cortisone shots, verus plain calamine lotion.

Dolly and Billy managed to have lunch together every day. Billy, who still counted, and always would, every calorie she put into her mouth, couldn’t help but notice that Dolly, whose Rabelaisian bosom and bottom were flourishing superbly, was eating a sandwich that combined slices of avocado with Russian dressing, piled on a layer of brie, a layer of pastrami, and a layer of chopped liver, between two thick halves of a buttered, seeded roll, and on the side, potato salad with an order of extra mayonnaise.

“Damn,” said Dolly, scraping up the last of the bowl of potato salad, “we don’t have time for another sandwich, do we?”

“Are you still hungry?” Billy asked in awe mingled with reproof.

“Starving. See, after I throw up breakfast, it’s a long wait till lunch.”

“Throw up—?”

“Sure. But it won’t last. I’m just in the very beginning of the third month and everyone says that’s the worst time for morning sickness.”

“Oh, Dolly! Oh, good heavens—how did it happen?”

Dolly rolled her huge eyes heavenward. The sounds of her heavenly chortling mingled with Billy’s half-repressed yelps. Eventually, Billy quieted down enough to ask, “What are you going to do?”

“Gee, I guess I should do something, but somehow I just want to have the baby. It’s kinda crazy but it
feels
right, you know. I’ve been pregnant before and I didn’t even consider going through with it, but this time—”

It seemed to Billy that her friend was confused in a way she wasn’t trying to clarify. It was as if Dolly was as willing as she was slightly slaphappy.

“What about the father?” Billy aked, trying to get Dolly to focus.

“Sunrise? He’d marry me tomorrow, but I don’t see spending the rest of my life around rodeos. Why’d they have to play L.A. on the Fourth of July anyway? I’ll tell him afterward. Who would think that forgetting to take the pill for just two days could do the trick?”

“Any gynecologist. Dolly, what about money? It takes money to have a baby and pay for a nurse and buy maternity clothes—” Billy’s voice trailed off. She knew there were other expenses connected with having a baby, but she couldn’t itemize them offhand. Maternity had never been one of her interests.

“I can live for a year, year and a half, on what I’m making on
Mirrors
, and then I’ll worry about it. If I can’t get work, there’s always Sunrise. Gosh Billy, that’ll all sort of take care of itself, like things always do if you want them enough.” She seemed marvelously casual, almost disoriented, in a fuzzy, purring kind of way.

Billy eyed her friend, whose pleasure in her pregnancy could scarcely be contained. If ever she’d seen a cockeyed optimist, Dolly was it. “Could I be—do you think—the baby will need a godmother—?”

“Oh, yes!
Yes!” Dolly hugged Billy so enthusiastically that she engulfed her. “I wouldn’t want anybody but you.”

At least, Billy thought, this would give her a chance to make sure that things would be taken care of properly. Her godchild would not be born without certain amenities. Visions of Bostonian christenings popped into her head. Silver cups and old sherry, bishops and biscuits and tiny sets of sterling spoons and forks; perhaps a subscription to a diaper service would be more welcome. A crib, a layette, a baby carriage? All of them, to begin with. And then she’d see.

Work on
Mirrors
finished on schedule, on Tuesday, August 23rd, and the wrap party was scheduled for the next night. Vito and Fifi, both totally worn out and yet dancing with nervous exultation, explained to Billy that the close of any film production traditionally calls for a wrap party, which serves a dual function; it celebrates the completion of the weeks of work and gives everyone a chance to get drunk and bury the many hatchets that have been waving around during the course of any shoot, even the rare harmonious one.

The
Mirrors
production had taken over the private rooms of the Mendocino Hotel for the party and by ten o’clock it was in full swing. The elaborate buffet had been demolished, replenished, and demolished again. The bar would stay open until the last man or woman decided to go to sleep. With the picture finished, there was no need for anyone to turn in that night, but two people nevertheless, seemed to be leaving rather early, with an unmistakable intention in their attitudes.

“Vito,” said Fifi, almost stuttering with outrage “do you see what I see?”

“If what you see is Sandra Simon and Hugh Kennedy together making for bed, yes.”

“TONIGHT they made up?”

“Naturally—it’s too late to do us any good. Sometimes, if I didn’t control myself, I could get to really dislike members of the acting profession, but thank God I’m a tolerant man.”

“He should drop dead with a hard-on,” Fifi hissed.

“Nah, all his ejaculations should be premature,” Vito corrected.

“He should never be able to get it up at all.”

“No, Fifi, no, that’s not subtle—he should get it up—and no one notices,” rejoined Vito.

“Excuse me, Mr. Orsini,” said the manager of the hotel, “but there’s a man outside in the lobby who insists on seeing you. He said he was from the Arvey Film Studio.”

In the lobby Vito found a stranger, dressed in a suit and tie. He quickly introduced himself as being from the studio’s Legal Department and handed Vito a letter, which he opened with an instantaneous apprehension of trouble. No communications from the studio should be arriving in this fashion. He skimmed it rapidly. “Pursuant to paragraph … contract … relating to production of motion picture entitled
Mirrors
 … you are hereby notified that … Studio has exercised its right to take over production by virtue of producer’s failure to maintain the agreed- to budget …”

Vito looked at the lawyer, the calm of his manner effectively hiding his desire to batter, maim, murder. There was no point in arguing with this man. Vito was, according to his calculations, within the budget. However, it would be months before the business-affairs people and their creative Accounting Department would or could prove whether he was actually over budget. And by that time, it would be too late.

“So,” said Vito, “would you like a drink?”

“No thanks. I’ve come to collect all the processed film you have on hand, every foot. Sorry about that, but those are my instructions. And the negative, too, of course. I have a van and a couple of men outside to carry everything. We got lost driving here from San Francisco, that’s why I had to break in on your party like this.”

“Hey, that’s rough. I’m afraid your trip was wasted. But maybe they can get you a room here for the night.”

“Wasted?”

“I don’t have a foot of film. No negative. Nothing. They must be back at the studio.”

“You know they’re not.” The lawyer was getting angry.

Vito turned to Fifi Hill and Svenberg, who had followed him out to the lobby. “Fifi, did you do anything with the work print? Do you know where the negative is? Arvey’s taking over the production and this gentleman wants it.”

Fifi looked amazed. “What the hell would I do a thing like that for? Maybe Svenberg knows. Per?”

The gaunt Swede shook his head. “I just run the camera, I don’t keep film under my bed.”

“Sorry,” said Vito, “but it’s probably in transit somewhere—or other. It’ll turn up—films don’t just get lost, you know.”

The lawyer looked at the three men confronting him so blandly. Monday they’d get a writ and force Orsini to deliver the film, but until then there was nothing more he could do. Life in the studio Legal Department had taught him much basic wisdom.

“I’ll take that drink. And I missed dinner. Is there any food left?”

Billy was standing in the corner of a group of openly admiring men when Vito appeared at her elbow and whispered to her that they were leaving. First she thought it was too early to go, then she realized that, now that the picture was finished, Vito must be dying to make love to celebrate.

She bid her newfound pals a sentimental good-bye and hurried off. Vito found a side door so that they could slip away unnoticed from the crowd, and grasping her by the elbow, broke into a run, racing to the car. Billy’s jubilation was short-lived: Fifi was waiting there for them. They drove back to the house in a silence Billy had the good sense not to break.

As soon as they got inside the front door, Vito explained to her, as he had to Fifi and Svenberg weeks before, what Arvey’s intentions were. It took Billy a minute to fully understand that the Take-over Provision could be exercised whether Vito was over budget or not.

“I don’t have the time to show that they’re wrong,” said Vito grimly.

“But what can they
do
to it?” Billy asked in baffled, innocent anguish and ignorance. “It’s all on film, the work print’s finished, the whole movie is
made
—why do they want it now?”

“If they get their hands on it they’ll give the work print to any one of their regular editors to cut, any way it suits him, butchering it most likely, doing a hack rush job, never letting us see what sort of hash they make out of it. There’ll be nothing to stop them from using the cheapest possible background music. Then, knowing Arvey, and knowing his mood, I’d say that he’ll slap it together as quickly as possible, throw in a few sound effects, and release it, bleeding from every pore. They can take this film and turn it into a movie nobody would believe Fifi had directed or Svenberg had photographed. Post-production is where pictures can be made—or destroyed.”