King Kong

by Christopher Golden

  Denham’s eyebrows went up. “Oh, really?”

  The character Denham described was so much like her at this very moment in her life, and she wondered if he knew it, had concocted the whole thing for that very reason. Or if it was just kismet. And if that was the case, then Ann knew a little something about doubting love.

  “If she loves someone,” she told him, “it’s doomed.”

  “I see,” Denham replied. “Why is that?”

  Ann studied his face. “Good things never last, Mr. Denham.”

  He stared at Ann, as though waiting for her to elaborate, but she was done with that line of conversation.

  “Go on,” Ann urged. “You were saying?”

  “Oh, well, let’s see. They’re on the boat, they’re in the middle of the ocean, when all of a sudden out of the blue, they see an extraordinary sight. Something amazing.”

  “What?”

  Denham hesitated, then gave the tiniest of shrugs. “I don’t know, yet. It’s still being written. What do you think?”

  “Well, I—”

  “So you’re interested? Good. I don’t want to rush you but we’re under some time pressure here.”

  “This person you’ve described. She’s complicated. I don’t pretend to understand her, but I do know I’m not the person you’re looking for.”

  Denham pulled a face. “What are you talking about? You’re perfect! Look at you, you’re the saddest girl I’ve ever met. You’ll make ’em weep, Ann, you’ll break their hearts.”

  She shook her head. “No, see, I make people laugh, Mr. Denham. That’s what I do.”

  And she did it well, of that much she was confident. Love might not last, people might take off when the going got tough, but dammit, you could always count on a laugh.

  She stood again.

  “Good luck with your pictures.”

  Ann walked toward the door and Denham followed her, an air of desperation around him now.

  “Ann! Miss Darrow, please! I’m offering you money, adventure, fame…the thrill of a lifetime and a long sea voyage. You want to read a script? Jack Driscoll’s turning in a draft as we speak.”

  She froze a moment, breath held. It just wasn’t possible.

  Could the world really be that ironic?

  “Jack Driscoll?” she asked, as she turned toward Denham again.

  “Sure, why…Wait! You know him?”

  Okay, fine. She was impressed. “Well, no, not personally. I’ve seen his plays.”

  Denham was nodding with enthusiasm. “What a writer, huh? And let me tell you, Ann, Jack Driscoll doesn’t want just anyone starring in this picture. He said to me, ‘Carl, somewhere out there is a woman born to play this role…’ ”

  He hesitated just a second. At first Ann thought he had sensed her interest, realized that Driscoll’s involvement had hooked her and was trying to reel her in, but now Denham looked almost wistful.

  “And as soon as I saw you,” he said, “I knew.”

  Ann didn’t like where this was headed. She’d been hungry and a little directionless, sure, but this was too much, too fast.

  “Knew what?” she asked, uneasy.

  “You’re the one, Ann,” Denham said, as though it was some epiphany, as though he really believed it. “It was always going to be you.”

  And for just that single moment, she could believe it, too.

  One moment was enough.

  The docks of New York harbor were extraordinary, like a city unto themselves, a veritable anthill of constant activity as ships of every shape and size arrived to be loaded and unloaded, sailors of every race coming and going. The loading cranes towered high above the water, the small waves lapped against the pilings, and the cargo and fishing vessels rolled in their moorings with a stately grandeur.

  Then there was the Venture.

  From the look of the wharf where she was docked, a casual passerby might think the ship abandoned, perhaps even be surprised to learn it was seaworthy. The Venture was a rusty old tramp steamer whose captain and crew came recommended to Denham as men with certain expertise and little inclination to ask questions.

  When Denham escorted Ann Darrow along the wharf and they came in sight of the steamer he saw her visibly stiffen when she realized it was their destination.

  “Don’t let appearances deceive you,” he offered. “It’s much more spacious on board.”

  He didn’t think the size of the ship was really what had given her pause, but he also did not intend to let her hesitate. Hesitation meant indecision, and indecision meant see you later, Carl, and thanks again for dinner.

  Denham’s pulse was racing as he hurried with Ann toward the ship. He knew he had been lucky so far. Now he felt like he was holding his breath and wouldn’t be able to exhale until they were at sea. Fortunately, Ann didn’t mention having any business to wrap up before they left. In so many ways, she was the perfect find. He had set out against all odds to find a girl who’d run off on this mad adventure of filmmaking spectacle with him, with only the vaguest hope that he would be able to get an actress. She’d yet to prove herself in that area, but what the hell. Denham had a feeling about Ann Darrow.

  Another girl, one with less gumption, would have turned tail right then and run, but Ann was a tough kid. He’d seen that right off.

  Now the two of them hurried past rough looking sailors working hard to get the boat under way. Activity was everywhere, crates being loaded, along with traveling trunks and all kinds of supplies. Smoke began to pour from the Venture’s stacks.

  As they approached, Denham saw his assistant, Preston, hurrying down the gangway toward him. He’d expected urgency—had commanded it, in fact—but this was something else. Preston was worried, and that in turn made Denham worried.

  They met at the bottom of the gangway. Preston glanced at Ann but didn’t take the time for an introduction—a real breach of etiquette from such a well-bred fellow, Denham mused—and pulled his boss to one side.

  “They’re on their way,” Preston urgently whispered. “I’ve just had word.”

  “Who?” Denham asked.

  “Men in uniform. The studio called the cops.”

  A flash of fear rippled through Denham. Exactly what he’d been afraid of. And if Preston had a call, that meant they’d already figured out what dock the ship would be sailing from. Denham couldn’t risk scaring Ann off, but they were out of time.

  A short distance away, Captain Englehorn was supervising the loading of the ship, barking orders at a couple of dockworkers manning a crane. Englehorn was a sturdy-looking, blue-eyed, humorless German. But despite his reputation as someone not to be trifled with, he was a man who got things done. It wasn’t only his hat that identified him as the captain, but a definitive air of command.

  “Englehorn!” Denham called, rushing over to him. “Hoist up the mainsail! Raise the anchor! Cast off! We’ve gotta leave!”

  “I cannot do that. We are waiting on the manifest.”

  “What? In English, please!”

  “Paperwork, Mr. Denham,” the captain said dryly.

  A thin smile came to Denham’s lips. He leaned toward Englehorn, conspiratorially close. “I’ll give you another thousand to leave right now.”

  “You haven’t given me the first thousand yet.”

  Again, Denham glanced at Ann, who was observing the proceedings with a dubious expression.

  “Can we talk about this later?” Denham remarked. “Can’t you see we’re in the company of a VIP guest?”

  Preston and Ann had been sort of hovering, but now Englehorn turned to greet her.

  “Ma’am,” the captain said, as gallantly as Denham figured he was able.

  “Ann Darrow,” she said.

  Englehorn regarded her. “So you are ready for this voyage, Miss Darrow? You are not at all nervous?”

  Ann offered a small smile. “Nervous? No. Why? Should I be?”

  “I imagine you would be terrified,” Englehorn said.

  Denha
m felt his pulse hammering at his temples. What was Englehorn trying to do, scuttle the whole trip before they even left the dock? Ann looked both startled and disturbed by the captain’s words.

  “It isn’t every woman who would take such a risk,” Englehorn added.

  Before the captain could scare her off completely, Denham needed to get her on board. He shot Preston an urgent look.

  “Why don’t I show Miss Darrow to her cabin?” Preston suggested.

  Ann went, though reluctantly. Denham waited a few seconds until she and Preston had started up the gangway, and then turned to Englehorn with a scowl, reaching into his jacket pocket for his checkbook.

  “Will you take a check?”

  Englehorn’s expression was stone. “Do I have a choice?”

  Ann felt like Alice through the looking glass. It was as though she had somehow been disconnected from her body, like she was seeing it all as an observer, not a participant. But she was a participant, and at her core it thrilled her. Just hours ago, she’d been cast adrift, directionless. Truly alone, with nowhere to go, and with no one who cared what became of her.

  As Denham’s assistant, who’d introduced himself only as “Preston,” led her up the gangway and onto the deck of the Venture, sailors stared at them as they passed. Ann knew that she must be strange cargo for these men, unaccustomed as they would be to having a woman on board.

  She didn’t know if what she felt was fear or exhilaration, but Ann liked the feeling. This might be the best decision of her life, or it might prove the most foolish, but it would undoubtedly be an adventure. And if Denham wasn’t an utter charlatan, she would at last speak words written by Jack Driscoll himself.

  The fates were conspiring indeed.

  4

  IT WAS ONLY FRIENDSHIP that brought Jack Driscoll on board the Venture. If not for the fact that he loved Carl Denham like a brother, he would have ignored Preston when the kid came around pleading with him for the script. When he’d heard that Carl meant to sail this evening, Jack ought to have just rolled his eyes and washed his hands of the whole film.

  But it was Carl after all, and Jack had a hard time saying no to Carl Denham. Everyone did. There was such passion in the man that it was easy to get carried away with his crazy schemes. Carl had vision, that much was true, and he had courage. He would race around the world like Phileas Fogg, and damn the eighty days, he’d do it in half the time…or at least boast that he could, and then do his best to make the boast come true.

  Jack was the opposite. He was a writer, a thinker. Not that Jack didn’t have vision, but he was content to set it down on paper and then let someone else worry about how to bring it to life. Unlike some of the writers he’d known, both in film and theater, he didn’t have any interest in directing. To him it was all about telling the story.

  Film was intriguing, though. Once he had looked down his nose at the medium, but Carl had changed his way of thinking. Theatre, with its live audience, could not be beaten for intimacy, but with film, a writer could touch people all over the country in a matter of weeks, even days. The appeal was undeniable.

  He had first been introduced to Denham years before, when Jack was still a student at Columbia and Carl was just formulating his ambitions as an entertainer, preparing to embark on a trip to Africa as assistant to the director of several films purporting to be about cannibal tribes. Carl had despised the filmmaker for fabricating the cannibal angle just for sensationalism, and Jack had admired him for that. They’d been introduced by George S. Kaufman, a friend of the Driscoll family. A couple of years later Jack was in Berlin and ran into Carl again. As fellow Americans, they had become instant drinking companions for a few weeks, until Carl’s next job took him back to the States.

  When Jack had returned to New York, he and Denham had renewed their acquaintance. Once, Jack had taken Carl to the Algonquin for drinks with Dorothy Parker and her friends, but Denham had been too much for them, and it had been months before Jack himself was invited again.

  He had declined.

  There was only so much of the staid, intelligentsia that one man could take, even if he was one of them.

  Carl Denham was the antidote.

  But sometimes even Denham went too far. Which was how Jack found himself sitting this very evening in Carl’s cabin on board a dilapidated tramp steamer about to set out for God knew where.

  He’d been there nearly an hour when the door rattled and then flew open, and Carl entered, looking a bit flustered. The director started a bit when he noticed Jack, put a hand to his chest.

  “Jesus, Jack! You scared me!”

  Carl crossed to a cabinet against the wall and nervously poured himself a drink. He looked like a man who needed one.

  “If anyone comes to the door, don’t open it,” Carl warned. “You haven’t seen me. Say I got depressed and committed suicide. Say I stuck my head down a toilet!”

  Jack could only offer a thin smile. For a man with such passion, there were times when Carl didn’t inspire much confidence.

  The director held up a glass. “You want one?”

  “I can’t stay,” Jack told him. “I have a rehearsal for which I am now…” he checked his watch. “Three hours late.”

  Frustrated, he tossed the few pages of script he’d written onto the table.

  “What’s this?” Denham asked, picking it up and leafing through it.

  “The script.”

  “This is a script? Jack, there’s only fifteen pages here.”

  “I know. But they’re good. You’ve got fifteen good pages there, Carl.”

  Denham gave him a dark look. “I’m supposed to be making a feature-length picture.”

  Jack stared at him. Was this what filmmaking was? Could it possibly be this entirely disorganized, this haphazard? How was he supposed to turn in good work when schedules were changed with such apparent caprice?

  “I thought I had more time,” Jack told him, resigned. “Look, I’m sorry. You’ve got my notes.”

  He started to rise.

  “Jack, no!” Denham said. “You can’t do this to me! I have a beginning, but I need a middle and an end. I gotta have something to shoot!”

  The whole ship rattled as her engines roared to life. Jack could physically feel the distance between himself and the theater where the rehearsal for one of his plays was taking place without him. If the engines were running, that was his cue to finally leave and salvage this evening. He stood up.

  “Carl, I’ve got to go.”

  Denham looked forlorn and hopeless.

  “I’ve gotta go,” Jack repeated.

  Denham looked dismayed. Jack just watched him, waiting for the argument that he was sure was coming. But what else did Carl expect? It wasn’t like he could dash off the rest of the script in the next few minutes. For a moment it seemed Carl was looking past him, toward the porthole window.

  Jack started to turn to see what had caught his attention—

  “All right, fine,” Carl said, his expression lightening. “We might as well settle up.”

  Jack was astonished to see Carl pulling out his checkbook. It wasn’t like Denham to part with money so easily.

  “You’re going to pay me?”

  “I’m not going to stiff a friend,” Carl replied, seeming offended.

  “I’ve never known you to volunteer cash before.”

  “How does two grand sound?” Carl asked, a magnanimous tone to his voice to mark his sudden largesse.

  “Sounds great!” Jack replied. Playwrights weren’t much better off than actors in the theater. Two thousand dollars would be a glorious windfall right now.

  Carl scribbled out the check and handed it over to Jack with a little flourish. “Voilà!”

  Jack glanced at it, and his forehead creased in a frown. “Carl, you’ve written ‘two grand.’ ”

  Denham took the check back from him and examined it, his expression apologetic. “So I did,” he said, scrunching it up in his hands. “Let me tear this
one up. I’ll write you another.”

  Once again Carl’s gaze shifted to that porthole window. Jack barely noticed, focused much more on the money. Carl even said it out loud as he wrote the check this time.

  “Two…thousand…dollars.”

  As he finished, he glanced toward the porthole again. There was a rumbling and Jack could smell the smoke from the stacks. The engines began to groan, and Jack realized that the ship wasn’t just preparing to depart—it was leaving the dock at any moment. He had to get out of here. Now.

  Carl looked up at him. “What’s today’s date? The twenty-ninth?”

  “Come on,” Jack urged. “It’s the twenty-fifth.”

  “Damn,” Denham sighed. “Let me just…it’ll just take a second.”

  He crushed the second check in his hands. The vibration of the engines increased, the whole ship shaking even harder. Jack shot Carl a withering look.

  “Never mind! Pay me when you get back!” he snapped, and he headed for the door.

  Carl raised his eyebrows, feigning innocence. “Okay, okay.”

  Preston knew Bruce Baxter’s career as a matinee idol had been fading, but it was only when Baxter actually showed up on the docks, ready to board the Venture, that he realized just how much trouble the actor was in. Certainly the man could have gotten work with a major studio picture, but if any of them had hired him to play the type of lead role he had grown accustomed to, he would surely have balked at the abrupt rescheduling of departure for this voyage. For that matter, he would have asked to see a script a long time ago.

  Bruce Baxter needed Carl Denham as much as Denham needed him. Preston thought this was a promising arrangement. Baxter was quick-witted, sophisticated, and charming, all of the things a good matinee idol had to be, but he was also used to being pampered. The picture business did that to actors.

  So it was up to Preston to at least put on a good show. “Your cabin’s down here, Mr. Baxter. May I say how excited we are to have you back with us, sir?”

  Jack Driscoll came sprinting along the corridor, a desperate look in his eyes. The ship’s horn blew as the Venture began to move out of the docks. Preston thought to introduce Driscoll and Baxter, but the writer seemed wild and unfocused. Jack collided with the actor, then stepped back a pace.