Laugh Lines

by Ben Bova

  “But . . . .”

  Again Brenda was quicker. “They’ll put up the money for one new series? We’ve got that much?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then we’ll have to make it a Top Ten series. We’ll have to get the best writers and producers and . . . .”

  Finger shook his head wearily. “They’re not putting up that much money.”

  Oxnard was struck by the contrast in their two expressions. Finger looked utterly tired, on the verge of defeat and surrender. Brenda was bright, alive, thinking furiously.

  “What we need first is an idea,” she said.

  “For the series?” Oxnard asked, almost under his breath.

  “And I know just who to go to!” Brenda’s eyes flashed with excitement. “Ron Gabriel!”

  Finger’s eyes flashed back. “No! I will not work with that punk! Never! I told you before, nobody calls me a lying sonofabitch and gets away with it. And he did it to my face! To my goddamned face! He’ll never work for Titanic or anybody else in this town again. I swore it!”

  “B.F.,” Brenda cooed into the phone screen, “do you remember the first lesson you taught me about how to get along in this business?”

  “No,” he snapped.

  “Well I do,” she said. “It’s an old Hollywood motto: ‘Never let that sonofabitch back into this studio . . . unless we need him.’”

  “I will not . . . .”

  “B.F., we need him.”

  “No!”

  “He’s a great idea man.”

  “Never!”

  “He works cheap.”

  “I’d sooner see Titanic sink! And the whole holographic project go down with it! Not Gabriel! Never!”

  The image clicked off the screen.

  Brenda looked up at Oxnard. “Better cancel the wine,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Because we’re driving out to Ron Gabriel’s place. Come on, it’s not far.”

  2: The Writer

  Oxnard and Brenda ran through cold, heavy sheets of rain to her car. Although it was only a few yards from the restaurant door, they were both gasping and drenched as they slid onto the plastic seats and slammed the car doors.

  Brenda rubbed at her eyes. “At least it’ll clear away the smog for a while.”

  Sucking in air through his mouth, Oxnard realized that for the first time in weeks there was no perfume smell pervading the environs. And he could breathe without noseplugs.

  “Every cloud has a platinum catalytic filter for a lining,” he said.

  Brenda laughed as she gunned the car to life. In the dim light from the dashboard, Oxnard could see that her long red hair was glistening and plastered down around her face. It somehow looked incredibly sexy that way.

  They roared off through the rain and soon were threading the torturous curves of Mulholland Drive, heading up into Sherman Oaks. The rain and sudden cold made the car’s windshield steam up and it was impossible to see more than a few yards ahead. The headlights were drowned in gusting walls of rain.

  Twice they found themselves on the shoulder of the road, with nothing between them and a sheer drop except a few inches of gravel. Once, on a hairpin curve, Brenda nearly steered into an oncoming set of headlights. Which car had drifted onto the wrong side of the road, it was impossible to tell.

  Oxnard was just as drenched when the car finally glided to a stop as when he had first climbed in. But now he was soaked with clammy nervous sweat. Brenda seemed perfectly at ease, though.

  “Here we are,” she said cheerfully.

  “Here” was a low-slung modernistic house perched on the shoulder of a hill, in the middle of a long winding street lined by similar houses. Brenda had pulled the car up on the driveway, so that by sliding out on the driver’s side they could splash across one small puddle and dive directly under the protective overhang at the front door.

  The door was more ornately carved than Queequeeg’s sarcophagus, a really handsome piece of work. Hanging squarely in the middle of it, under the knocker, was a tiny hand-lettered sign that said:

  TRY THE BELL

  with a drawing of a hand pointing one finger toward an all-but-invisible button, hidden behind a flowering shrub.

  Brenda touched the doorbell button and a speaker grill set above the door grated:

  “Yeah?”

  “Ron, it’s Brenda.”

  “Brenda?”

  “Brenda Impanema . . . from Bernard Finger’s office.”

  “Oh, Brenda!”

  “Can we come in?”

  Oxnard was beginning to feel foolish, standing out there with the wind cutting through him, wet and chilled, all the rain in Southern California sluicing down around them, watching a girl he had just met talking to a door.

  “Who’s we?” the door asked.

  Brenda seemed to be enjoying the fencing match; well, maybe not enjoying it, but at least neither surprised nor dismayed by it.

  “Someone you’ll enjoy meeting,” she said. “He invented the . . . .”

  “He?” The voice sounded disappointed.

  For the first time, Brenda frowned. “Come on, Ron. It’s cold and wet out here.”

  “Okay. Okay. Come on in.”

  The door clicked. Brenda pushed on it and it swung open. They stepped inside.

  Oxnard blinked. It was like the first time he had tried sky-diving. One minute you’re safely strapped into the plane and the next you’re out in the empty air, falling, disoriented, watching the blur of Earth spinning up to hit you.

  The door slammed behind him. The entryway of the house was ablaze with lights. Oxnard and Brenda stood there dripping and disheveled, gaping at the cameras, people, props, chairs, lights.

  “Smile!” a voice shouted. “You’re on candid camera.”

  ”What?”

  Ron Gabriel pushed past a tripod-mounted camera directly in front of them, a huge grin on his face.

  “Only kidding, buhbula. Don’t panic.”

  He was wearing nothing but a bath towel draped around his middle. He was a smallish, compactly built man in his thirties, Oxnard guessed: dark straight hair cut in the latest neo-Victorian mode, blazing dark eyes, hairy chest, the beginnings of a pot belly.

  He grabbed Brenda and kissed her mightily. Then turning casually to Oxnard, he asked, “You her husband or something?”

  “Or something,” Oxnard replied, feeling testy.

  “Hey come on, I’m paying overtime already!”

  A large, lumpy, bearded man stepped out from behind the cameras. He was swathed in a green and purple dashiki. Some sort of optical viewer hung from a silver cord around his neck.

  Gabriel grabbed Brenda and Oxnard by the arms and walked them back behind the cameras.

  “What’s going on?” Brenda asked.

  “I’m renting my foyer to Roscoe for filming his latest epic.”

  “Roscoe?” Oxnard was impressed. “The guy who did the underground film festival at Radio City Music Hall?”

  “Who else?” Gabriel answered.

  Now it all made sense to Oxnard. Two dozen girls of starlet dimensions stood around languidly, in various styles of undress. A couple of muscular, hairy guys were doing pushups over in a far corner of the foyer. Electricians, lighting women, camera persons of indeterminate gender, and a few other handymen were busily moving cameras and lights around the long, narrow foyer.

  “All right already!” Roscoe bellowed in a voice four times too large for Grand Central Station. “Everybody take their places for the grope scene!”

  Brenda said, “I’m awfully chilled. Could I borrow a hot shower?”

  “Sure,” Gabriel said. “Throw your clothes in the dryer and grab a couple of robes out of my closet. Brenda, you know where everything is. Show him around.”

  Oxnard stammered, “Uh . . . we’re not . . . not together. I mean, not like that” Dammit! he raged to himself. Why should I feel embarrassed?

  With a grin, Gabriel led him to the guest room and took a terrypla
stic robe from a drawer.

  “Gotta get back to work now,” he said.

  “You’re in the movie?”

  Gabriel’s grin broadened. “I’m an assistant groper.”

  Brenda looked good with a rich brown robe pulled snugly around her, Oxnard decided. One glance in a mirror after his steamshower had convinced him that wearing a robe two sizes too small was better than prancing around nude. But not much. His hairy legs showed to midcalf. He had to be careful how he sat.

  Brenda, Gabriel and Ornard were sitting in the living room. It was furnished in old-fashioned Nineteen Sixties style, with authentic green berets and protest posters artfully arranged here and there. The walls were covered with paintings, drawings, sketches—all from stories that Gabriel had written.

  The camera crew was in the process of stowing gear into the truck they had parked outside. Roscoe himself had borrowed Brenda’s keys to move her car out of the driveway. Now, as the three of them sat in the comfortable living room, they could hear the wind-whipped rain and the sounds of grunting people moving heavy pieces of equipment out into the wet.

  Oxnard and Brenda had brandy snifters in their hands. Gabriel, still clad in only his bath towel, had graciously poured them the drinks while making dates with three of Roscoe’s starlets. He refrained from drinking, himself.

  “When did you become a movie actor?” Brenda asked, a quizzical smile on her lips.

  “Always been an actor, sweetie,” he replied. “You think sitting through a story conference with some of those assholes you call executives doesn’t take thespic talents?”

  “I’ve seen histrionics from you . . . .”

  One of the starlets walked barefoot into the living room as far as Gabriel’s slingback chair. She was wearing a knit sweater that barely reached her thighs. Her cascading blonde hair was slightly longer. Her eyes didn’t seem to focus well.

  “Hey Ron, honey, can I use your shower?”

  “Sure, sure,” he said.

  “Thanks.” She bent over and kissed him on the cheek. The sweater rode up and Oxnard found himself tugging at the hem of his borrowed robe, trying to make certain that he was covered adequately. The blonde plodded sleepily out of the room without rearranging her sweater.

  “But I don’t understand why you’re performing in Roscoe’s movie,” Brenda resumed.

  Gabriel made a sour face. “Money, kid. Why else? You have any idea how much it takes to keep this house going? My gardener makes more than that cutesy-poo does.” He jerked a thumb in the general direction of the partially sweatered starlet.

  “But you’ve got so many books and filmscripts . . . you must make plenty on royalties.”

  With a wave of his hand that took in all the illustrations on the walls, Gabriel said, “What books? You know what you get from books? Nickels and dimes. Unless you write a book about a veterinarian’s carnal lust for his customers. Nobody reads about people anymore. I write about people.”

  Oxnard felt puzzled. “Aren’t you the Ron Gabriel who writes science fiction? I’ve read some of your stuff.”

  Gabriel’s eyebrows went up a centimeter. “Yeah? like what?”

  “Let’s see now . . . .” Oxnard concentrated. “It was . . . oh yes, ‘The Beast That Had No Mouth’ and ‘Repent . . . ‘ something about a watchmaker.”

  Nodding furiously, Gabriel said, “Yeah. And you know how much money I made from those two books? Peanuts! The goddam publishers give you peanuts for an advance, then they sell a zillion copies and claim that they haven’t made enough money to start paying royalties yet!”

  “I didn’t know . . . .”

  Gabriel leaped out of his chair. “Those humpers! You don’t know the half of it!”

  He stomped out of the room. Confused, Oxnard got up and watched Gabriel duck down the house’s central atrium and into a doorway. He slammed the door behind him.

  “That’s his office,” Brenda said.

  “What’s he . . . .”

  The muffled sound of Gabriel’s voice floated back to them. “Sue the bastards . . . I don’t care what it costs . . . get them for every nickel they owe me . . . .”

  Brenda stood up beside Oxnard “He must be calling his lawyer.”

  “At this hour?” Oxnard glanced at his watch. It was after midnight.

  “Ron’s friends and associates are accustomed to his late hours. He starts working when the sun goes down.”

  “Must be part vampire.”

  “It’s been suggested.”

  Abruptly, the office door opened and Gabriel came stamping back into the living room. “We’ll get those mothers,” he was muttering.

  As they all sat down again, Brenda asked, “What about the TV series you were doing? I thought . . . .”

  “Don’t mention it!” Gabriel snapped. “The less said about that, the better.”

  For an instant the room was silent, except for the rain drumming on the roof.

  Then Gabriel said, “We had the whole goddam series set up. Worked my tail off for six months; fights with the producers, fights with the network, the director, the actors. Finally they began to see the light It’s all starting to go right. I could feel it! We had it all in the groove . . . .”

  “What was the show about?” Oxnard asked.

  “Huh? Oh, it was going to be a series based on a short story of mine, about a giant pterodactyl that attacks New York City.”

  “I heard about it,” Brenda said. “And then it was cancelled, just before shooting began. What happened?”

  “What happened?” Gabriel’s voice went up several notches. “Those lumpheaded brain-damage cases that run the network decided they couldn’t do the show because it wasn’t in three-dee!”

  “No!”

  “Oh no? Those maggotheads are turning everything into three-dee shows. Everything! I thought, great. The series will be even more spectacular in three-dee. But we’d need a bigger budget and a couple weeks to work out some of the technical problems. Wham! Nothing doing. They cut us off. Done. Finished.”

  Oxnard felt vaguely guilty about it. He stirred uneasily in his chair, started to cross his legs, but remembered just in time and stopped himself.

  “Know what they put into our timeslot?” Gabriel was still fuming. “A cops-and-robbers show. Some idiot thing about a robot and a Polack cop. Ever see an animated fireplug doing Polish jokes? Arrgghhh.”

  Roscoe suddenly called from the front doorway. “Hey superstar! We’re leaving!”

  Without moving from his chair, Gabriel bellowed, “So leave already! Just make sure you send the check tomorrow morning!”

  “Will do,” Roscoe hollered back. “Oh, Rita and Dee-Dee said they’re too tired for the drive back to Glendale. They flaked out in your guest room. Okay by you?”

  “Yah, sure. I’ll unflake ‘em later on.”

  “Good luck, buddy.”

  “Break a leg, C.B.”

  The door slammed.

  Oxnard cleared his throat. “Do you mean that they really cancelled your show because it wasn’t going to be shown in holographic projection?”

  “That was their excuse,” Gabriel answered. “They wanted to castrate me. I’m too honest for those Byzantine bronze nosers.” He glowered at Brenda. “And I still say that Finger had something to do with it.”

  Brenda returned his gaze without flinching.

  “But still,” Gabriel grumbled, “I’d like to meet the jerk who started this three-dee crap and . . . .”

  “What about that other project you were talking about?” Brenda broke in. “The historical thing. Was it going to be a musical?”

  Gabriel scratched at his stubbly chin. “That thing! I got the shaft on that, too.”

  “What was it going to be?”

  “I was going to do ‘Romeo and Juliet’ in modern terms. You know, instead of Italy in the old times, make it L.A., here, today. Make the two feuding families a pair of TV networks that are fighting it out for the ratings.” He grew more animated, expressive. Getti
ng to his feet, gesticulating: “Then the star from one show on the first network falls in love with a girl from a show on the other network. Their shows are on the air at the same time . . . they love each other, but their networks are enemies. Then when the executive producers find out about them . . . .”

  It took nearly an hour before Gabriel calmed down enough to sit in his chair again. He ended his monologue with:

  “Then some jerk says that it’s just like some old opera called ‘West Side Story.’ I looked it up . . . wasn’t anything like that at all.”

  “So that’s fallen through, too?” Brenda asked.

  “That’s right,” Gabriel said, slumping back in his soft chair, looking exhausted. “Every goddam thing I’ve touched for the past year has turned to shit. Every goddam thing.” He sat bolt upright “It’s gotta be Finger! He swore I’d never work for anybody in this town again. He’s living up to his name, that no-good . . . .”

  “That’s not true, Ron,” Brenda said. “He wants you to work for him. He needs you. He’s desperate.”

  Gabriel stopped in midsentence and stared at her.

  “He needs me?”

  Brenda nodded gravely.

  “Good! Tell him to go engage reflexively in sexual intercourse.”

  It took Oxnard a moment to interpret that one, although Brenda giggled immediately.

  “No, Ron. I’m serious. B.F.‘s really in a bind and you’re the only one who can pull him out.”

  “Got any rocks? Heavy ones?”

  “Wait a minute,” Oxnard heard himself say. They both turned toward him. “Before we go any further, you ought to know . . . I invented the holographic projection system.”

  Half expecting Gabriel to leap for his throat, Oxnard sat tensed in his chair, ready to defend himself verbally or physically.

  “You invented it?” asked Gabriel incredulously.

  “I’m Bill Oxnard. The jerk who started this three-dee stuff.”

  They talked. They sat in the comfortably furnished living room, draped with towel and robes while the rain made background music for them, and talked for hours. One of the girls from further back in the house wandered sleepily into the room, naked, looking for the kitchen and murmuring about a midnight snack. The phone next to Gabriel’s chair rang a couple of times and he snarled into it briefly. Oxnard told him about the exciting days when he was perfecting the first holographic system, how the corporate executives had beamed at him and given him bonuses. And then how they tossed him out of the corporation when he asked for a share of the royalties they were reaping.