Black Is the Fashion for Dying

by Jonathan Latimer

  “He was a genius,” she said.

  “A poet with nothing ever published?”

  She smiled at him mysteriously. “One day you’ll see. When I show you his legacy.”

  “Legacy?”

  “My magic ledgers.” His puzzled face made her laugh. “Don’t try to understand.”

  “But even genius,” he persisted. “Taking him into your house.”

  “All right, damn it!” she said, still smiling. “I suppose in some cockeyed way I loved him.”

  “You must have, nursing him all those months.”

  Again there was that strange surge of tenderness and pity. Poor Ashton. Coming home in forty-three with those awful stumps still bleeding, and she never once going near him.

  “I was a dreadful vixen with you.”

  “Yes. That hurt, when you didn’t come.”

  “And I’m too late now, darling?”

  His eyes dropped from hers, and he shook his head uncertainly. “You know, you’ve almost got me going, old girl. If you just hadn’t knifed me so damn many times.”

  She waited in silence.

  “I think there’s a special cruelty in you for me,” he said. “When you’re bored, or out of sorts, or just for the plain hell of it, you bob up with a kiss and a knife. I suppose it’s because I’m vulnerable. Yes, I admit that. Even now, after all these years.” He smiled ruefully. “An elderly fly on an invisible pin.”

  She still did not speak.

  “I wish I could believe you,” he said. “Could take the kiss without wondering where the cut will come.”

  She leaned across the bar, found his lips. “There’s the kiss,” she said softly. “And if anybody’s cut, I am.” She drew back, lifted the handkerchief from her knuckles. “Look. Still bleeding.”

  “Ah, Caresse,” he said, his voice warm.

  “Ah, Ashton.” She smiled mockingly. “Who writes your dialogue?”

  “My legs?” he said. “They don’t bother you?”

  She reached for his hand, pressed it tightly.

  “Fifteen years,” he said. “And I still hate the idea.”

  But he was returning the pressure, and she felt a glow of triumph. No, not triumph. Of affection and companionship. It was going to be all right. Just don’t push it, Lady Caresse, she warned herself.

  “Darling,” she said, “I almost forgot. Our guests are waiting.”

  “That other surprise?”

  “I’ll tell you now.” She came around the bar, waited while he lowered himself from the stool. “Remember the first picture we made together, when I was nobody and you were England’s romantic answer to Doug Fairbanks?”

  “Not The King’s Swordsman!”

  “Yes, darling. I found a print of it.”

  “How I do remember! Eight years apprenticeship at Old Vic and all the blokes wanted was dueling and leaping over moats.”

  “And love-making.”

  They were in the hall now, walking slowly toward the projection room. She would have liked to put an arm around him, to be held in return, but she wasn’t sure he could manage that and his legs at the same time.

  He chuckled. “I don’t think the love-making was their idea.”

  “No. I thought that up myself.”

  “Those were the days.”

  “And the nights.”

  She pushed open the soundproof door, held it while he went ahead into the projection room. She saw Leon had done as he was told. The heavy beige curtains were drawn over the patio windows, the sliding walnut panels had been pulled back from the screen, and on the control stand, flanked by two empty leather chairs, the stand-by light glowed. On either side of Ashton’s bobbing back, above other chairs, she saw the heads of the costumed dummies; even under the bright lights so lifelike they seemed to be real guests decorously waiting for host and hostess.

  By the control stand Ashton turned to wait for her, and as he turned the smile left his face, to be inexplicably replaced by a look so terrible she would remember it all her life. It was as though he had died, every bit of color drained from his face, teeth bared in a frozen snarl. She halted abruptly a few feet from him.

  “Ashton!” she cried.

  “You bitch,” he said in an agonized voice. “You sadistic bitch.” He pushed past her, knocking her aside with his shoulder. “I could kill you for this!”

  She swung to watch him leave, legs clacking on their hinges, as close to running as he could manage, a berserk robot mumbling “kill … kill … kill” And then, seeing the dummies, she understood. Leon had done as he was told, but she had forgotten one thing.

  Clever, thrifty Caresse, she thought hopelessly, staring at Rudolph Valentino and Carole Lombard and Tom Mix and Greta Garbo. Smiling, oblivious figures, each decorously watching the blank screen, each carefully balanced on a chair, each no longer half concealed by the dining-room table, each, to save a few lousy dollars, constructed without legs.

  Josh Gordon

  Already, at nine o’clock, only one hour old, the day had taken on the dead halibut stink of disaster. Dead whale stink, Josh Gordon amended, leaning against the papier-mâché bole of a jungle tree and nursing the coffee mug Alf, the prop man, had brought him. The portents were there, for anyone to smell. It was going to be one of those days when it hailed frogs in Nebraska, when bats committed wholesale suicide against the Empire State Building, when a five-year-old in Peru gave birth to a three-headed baby.

  Basil Trabert sulking over the script, a child denied a lollipop. Lisa Carson still boiling. Blake babbling wildly of a fugitive blonde from a gold-plated nudist colony, a fantasy doubtlessly concocted to explain his inept handling of Caresse’s big speech. Speech! A short lyric poem! And Caresse, wound up like the mainspring on a four-hundred-day clock, telling anyone who’d listen about a weird joke she’d played on poor Ashton Graves. And old Ashton, drunk as a lord in his dressing room, reciting purple chunks of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus.

  He couldn’t help laughing. All that, enough to unhinge a John Ford even, and on top of it this three-ring television circus dreamed up by Fabro. Or, more likely, stolen from someone. Why hadn’t Fatso tried it on his own picture, that incredible Fox in the Vineyard, if it was such a hot idea? But no, he’d use a patsy. So he could slide out from under if it didn’t work.

  Abruptly, he said, “Get that God-damn tiger away from me!”

  “He won’t hurt you, Mr. Gordon,” the man said, grinning. “He’s a vegetarian.”

  The tiger certainly didn’t look very fierce, mooching along at the trainer’s heels, bored and half asleep, but he was glad when it disappeared into the underbrush. It was a day when vegetarian tigers ate directors.

  “Herbie?” he called tentatively.

  “Right here.”

  Accompanied by Jenkins, the man from CBS, Herbie came splashing across the shallow stream, dislodging a couple of lavender water lilies. His cheerful face, undaunted by portents, was expectant, as a good assistant director’s face should be.

  “How long before we roll?”

  “Ten minutes,” Herbie said promptly.

  Mike Bowles, one of the senior grips, came up. “Listen, Mr. Gordon,” he began aggressively, “the Union ain’t gonna like this speed-up—”

  “Stuff it!” Gordon said. “What have I got to do with your bloody Union, Mike? That’s front office business.” He waved him away, swung around on Jenkins. “It work out like we planned?”

  A tall, gaunt man, solemn with responsibility, Jenkins said slowly, “The hunt first, using three cameras. Barbara Phelps wounds the tiger deliberately and then falls, pretending to be badly hurt, and is carried off on the litter.”

  “You’ve been peeking at the script.”

  “Why, you gave me the script yourself, Mr. Gordon.”

  “So I did.”

  Jenkins stared at him, not getting it at all. This was serious business. “After Barbara is carried away by the natives,” he continued relentlessly, “Adrian Phelps and Masterson, the wh
ite hunter, kill the tiger, with Masterson unable to go through with the plot to kill Adrian.”

  “Look,” Gordon said. “I know the story. Next we go to the pool, where Barbara hears the shots. Still one camera there?”

  “Just one. A dolly shot.”

  “And three at the camp?”

  Jenkins nodded. “Just like we rehearsed it this morning.”

  “And you honestly think you can shift all three cameras from hunt to camp while we’re at the pool?”

  “Yes, sir. Give or take five minutes.”

  Give or take half a day under the old system, Gordon thought. Maybe there was something to the idea. Of course, the acid test would be how the film turned out. He wished they weren’t shooting in Technicolor; he’d have seen yesterday’s rushes by now. He turned back to Herbie.

  “I want a closed set while we’re shooting.”

  “I passed the word.”

  “I mean really closed. No Lorrance. No Fabro. Nobody.”

  “Hedda Hopper’s coming in to see Caresse.”

  “Throw her to hell out. And let’s get moving. Where’s Blake?”

  Blake, it appeared, was in Lisa Carson’s dressing room, a lanky figure stretched out on the green-and-white striped couch, watching a plump woman from Make-up braid Lisa’s hair. He smiled wanly as Gordon stuck his head in the door.

  “Domesticity, it’s wonderful,” he said. “Boy and girl reunited.”

  “Girl.” Lisa frowned at herself in the mirror. “And spineless skunk!”

  Blake emitted a hollow sound halfway between a groan and a laugh. Evidently peace was not yet restored. Gordon smirked at him, quoting in a mincing voice, “‘Black’s the fashion for dying …’”

  “Oh, God!” Blake sat up on the couch. “I knew you wouldn’t like that.”

  “It stinks.”

  “The whole ending stinks,” Lisa told Lisa-in-the-mirror.

  “Especially written in blank verse.” Gordon scowled at Blake. “That naked blonde must have really unsettled you.”

  “What naked blonde?” Lisa asked.

  Blake scrambled off the couch. “I’ll rewrite it,” he mumbled desperately. “Rewrite the whole damn speechl” lie vanished.

  Lisa said, “That Caresse!”

  Gordon eyed her over the hairdresser’s plump shoulder. “Am I going to have trouble with you again?”

  “No. But Caresse is. I spent the whole night planning how to kill her.”

  The hairdresser gasped, dropped her brush, said, “Parm me,” and bent to retrieve the brush.

  Gordon resisted an impulse to kick her fat buttocks. “That’s Hollywood’s favorite pastime,” he told Lisa. “Planning how to kill Caresse.”

  The hairdresser giggled. Lisa’s pretty face relaxed, a faint trace of a smile curved her soft lips, then vanished. “What naked blonde?” she asked.

  Gordon, starting towards the rank jungle at the far end of the stage, pretended not to hear. Blake had dreamed up the blonde; now let him undream her. He brushed aside somebody saying, “Mr. Remigen wonders—” and strode onto the set. He saw it was lighted now, with the exception of one junior spot being masked with gauze. He saw that Herbie had routed out Caresse and the two men, had equipped them with rifles and stationed them on the grassy mound near the blood-stained bullock the tiger was supposed to have just killed. He saw Basil Trabert was still pouting.

  He halted at the foot of the mound, accepting the master script that Ella had been tagging along behind him with, and pivoted slowly in a full circle to fix the camera locations in his mind. Camera A, as Jenkins called it, was on a high boom, extending over the thickest part of the undergrowth. It was to film the tiger’s movements, in particular the convulsive leap the big cat was supposed to make when Caresse’s bullet struck it. Camera B and Camera C, to the right and left of the mound, were to record the first part of the hunt simultaneously. Then Camera B was to film the hunters going into the deep jungle to dispatch the wounded tiger, and Camera C was to film Caresse being carried off on a litter, pretending to be unconscious after her fake fall.

  What a bloody, complicated mess, he thought, suddenly feeling old. Circus was right. Somebody had once said the only function of a director was to make sure the actors didn’t go home before six. Under this system, he reflected wryly, a director couldn’t even be sure of that, not unless he had three heads. Maybe that baby in Peru was the answer. He sighed. If he didn’t need the hundred grand, if it weren’t for that tax rap—

  Jenkins touched his arm. “Want to check the TV hookup, Mr. Gordon?”

  On a platform back of the grassy knoll were the three monitors, TV receivers attached to three TV cameras which in turn were attached to the three motion picture cameras. Already actuated, framing clearly defined black-and-white pictures of jungle, tiger and waiting actors, the monitors would show exactly what each of the big cameras filmed during the scene. And, in addition, they could be used for rehearsals, eliminating all guesswork. Very neat, Gordon had to admit, squinting at each monitor in turn. Closed circuit TV, Jenkins called it. Only possible complaint was they didn’t record color. But that would come.

  “What will they think of next,” he murmured.

  Jenkins, hovering behind him, said, “I’m sorry we didn’t have time to rig it up yesterday.”

  “If you had, I’d be out of work today.”

  “Now, Mr. Gordon. The director’s still—”

  “Balls!” Gordon said. “A couple of extra wires and these things’ll do everything a director can do.” He grinned suddenly. “Except, maybe, hump the leading lady!”

  Jenkins’ shocked face vanished as he leaped to the mound, walked across it to the actors. “Okay, folks,” he said briskly. “We’ll run through it once more.”

  Caresse didn’t seem to hear him, looking at the jungle below with a strange, tense, preoccupied expression, as though she were really going down to hunt the tiger. But Phil Alton, playing Masterson, a man without a nerve in his body, a sweet mug with twenty million female fans, laughed and said, “Run is right, Josh.”

  Gordon said, “Caresse?”

  “Yes?”

  “Ready?”

  “Yes.”

  Wondering if she had been hitting the yellow-jackets again, he turned to Basil Trabert, snarled, “Wipe that pout off your face, Sonny, or I’ll wipe it off for you,” and went back to the platform. Tom Billings, the veteran cameraman, was staring at the monitors in disbelief.

  “Criminy!” he said in a discouraged voice. “I’m sure glad I bought that avocado ranch.”

  “I’m available,” Gordon said, “if you need an extra hand.”

  He shouldered Billings aside, bent over the monitors. Somebody said, “Mr. Remigen—” and he said, “Get out!” At least the first part of the scene was all right. Good composition, Caresse standing just ahead of the two men on the sunlit mound, all three looking down at the dead bullock and the half-naked guides and the shadowed tangle of undergrowth along the stream where the tiger was. “Sound?” he asked. “Sound’s okay,” somebody said. Lighting, too. Bright on the hill where Caresse would fire the first shot and then stumble and fall; subdued in the jungle, golden shafts broken and mottled by the fronds of twisted plants. Some of the action would be lost there, but it didn’t matter. Most of the hunt had been filmed on location in India. In Monitor A he saw the tiger, apparently asleep, but even in sleep looking sullen and dangerous. He felt along his spine the chill he always felt with a key scene, and turned to Herbie. “Rehearsal,” he said, and at once, mouth to the portable mike, Herbie began the familiar muezzin chant:

  “Quiet, please. This is a rehearsal. Everybody quiet. Quiet on the set, please.”

  Karl Fabro

  Struggling to conceal sugared bearclaw and coffee, hide the crossword puzzle she had been working on, remove lipstick, mirror and open compact from the green blotter, and simultaneously appear to be busily opening mail, Miss Earnshaw made a complete shambles of her desk in the few seconds it took
him to cross from the corridor door to his office. She also uttered a gasping “So early …!” but he didn’t bother to reply.

  He put the package on his desk, tossed the reversible raincoat and the black homburg on a chair, noted it was ten past nine, peered into the humidor and pressed a lever on the communication box.

  Miss Earnshaw was still unstrung. “Fes, Mister Yabro,” she mumbled, and tried again, “Mes, Fister Mabro.” She might have gone on forever if he hadn’t cut her off.

  “Get Lorrance. And the head carpenter. And Jenkins on Stage 17.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And bring in some coffee, if you haven’t spilled it all.”

  He had two Alka-Seltzer tablets bubbling in a glass of water when she came in with the coffee and the morning copies of the trade papers. “Have you seen Variety, Mr. Fabro?” she asked and when he grunted negatively she put the paper in front of him. “Wonderful news!”

  She would have fluttered around indefinitely if he hadn’t glared at her. He picked up the glass, watched the white tablets dissolve into nothingness. He saw his hand was shaking and grunted again. No wonder, after that damned scene with Caresse. He hadn’t slept a wink, pacing and tossing all night, cursing himself for being a fool, realizing as soon as his brain cleared that it was an act. He’d even figured out where she’d gotten the idea: from the time he had told her about being scared when he was seven. A picture of Mrs. Wicherly slashing at him and the other kids with the broken shears flashed into his mind. He shuddered, gulped down the Alka-Seltzer. That bitch Caresse!

  Turning to Variety, he saw Miss Earnshaw must have been talking about the lead story, the trade paper’s annual Academy Award predictions. Quickly he ran down the list, past Best Production, Best Actor, Best Director, Best Musical Score to Best Screenplay and saw in letters that seemed blacker than all the others: Karl Fabro for Fox in the Vineyard. It was no surprise, people had been telling him for weeks to get his speech ready, but he felt a sudden glow of satisfaction. Variety never missed.