Free Fall in Crimson

by John D. MacDonald

  Maybe what I was saying to myself by sidestepping a quantum bang was that I wanted but one lady at a time. Regardless of what Annie’s reaction would have been, it would not have been anything I would have wanted to tell her. That did not improve my image. I wanted the free ride and I wanted to be paid in my own coin—meaningfulness or sacrament, or some kind of spiritual dedication—something that would give Hefner the hiccups. What gave me pause was the thought that for a fellow of my hesitations, I had sure cut myself a wide swath through a wall of female flesh, dragging my canoe behind me. Cheap apologist is the phrase that comes to mind.

  I put on a fresh shirt and went down the stairs and found rooms 25 and 26. I could hear murmurous voices in there, which stopped when I knocked. A tall, strong, dark-haired young girl with a glassy look in her wide eyes opened the door and said, “Yeh?” She was wearing a very faded purple T-shirt with a drawing of Miss Piggy on the front of it and, as near as I could judge, nothing else.

  “Peter Kesner in, please?”

  “Whaddaya want with him?”

  “I’ve got a letter here for him.”

  She whipped it out of my hand, said, “Stick aroun’,” and closed the door smartly. I waited at least five minutes until she opened the door and beckoned me in with a motion of her head, a lift of her shoulder.

  Peter Kesner was sitting on an unmade bed, folding the letter into a paper airplane. “How is that old bag, Lee Dean, holding up?” he asked.

  I didn’t answer because my attention was riveted on Purple Piggy. She was putting one foot carefully in front of the other as though walking an invisible tightrope. She made a right-angle corner and went six feet, made a right angle in the other direction, and walked until she came to a low solid oak table against the wall that apparently was intended for use as a luggage rack. She swiveled onto it and assumed the lotus position. She rested her head back against the wall and closed her eyes, her hands, palm upward, resting on her thighs, which looked uncommonly meaty and heavy for the rest of her.

  “Don’t mind Freaky Jean,” Kesner said. “She’s having one of her ninety-degree square-corner days.” He glided the airplane toward her, and it hit the wall beside her and fell to the bench.

  “What’s she on?”

  “She is into Qs. Like they were popcorn. How’s Lee? I haven’t seen her in a year. She’s a money head. Pieces of this and pieces of that, and she puts them together nice. She’s going to own as much of California as Bob Hope.”

  “She looks fine. She looks great.”

  He yawned and picked up a bound mimeographed script and riffled the pages. “I shouldn’t tell you this because maybe you can come up with some pesos which we sure God need, but I think this thing is becoming a turkey. I should never have farmed out the script. Should have done it all myself. When you start with a piece of shit, no matter which way you turn it, form it, shape it, revise it, you end up with the same piece of shit. But the pictorials are great, when they happen. Jesus Christ, we are either getting rain or we are getting winds over nine miles an hour. And over nine, those balloon-club freaks won’t fire them up. Can you imagine? And if the weatherman says a front is fifty miles away and moving in on us at fifteen miles an hour, they won’t even take the gondolas out of the trucks. And if we get an absolutely beautiful day, say five-mile-an-hour wind, bright sun, warm and pretty, they will fly in the early morning or the late afternoon. And that is all, period, fini. Everything by FAA regulations, and they have saddled us with a resident FAA spook to make sure about getting every i dotted and t crossed. What we are doing here, McGee, is running too fast through the money and too slow through the film. And pretty soon I am going to have to take Free Fall back to LA, do the studio shots, and try to fake the rest from what we’ve gotten so far.”

  I swiveled a straight chair and sat there astride, arms crossed on the back of it, staring at him with an attentive questioning look, waiting for more. He wore jogging shorts and ragged blue canvas shoes. I guessed his age at fifty. Once upon a time he had been in shape. He had long ropy muscles, blurred by fat. He had dead-white skin and a lot of curly black hair on his body, even on the tops of his shoulders and down the backs of the shoulder blades. His face and forearms and the top of his bald head were deep tan. His trimmed beard was speckled with white hairs. He wore two heavy gold chains around his neck, one with some kind of a tooth hanging from it, and a thick gold chain around his wrist. His eyes were deep-set, and he wore Ben Franklin half glasses with little gold rims.

  “I admire your early work, Mr. Kesner.”

  “Make it Peter, please. What have you seen, Travis?”

  “Chopper Heaven, of course. And Bike Park Ramble. Very significant contributions to popular culture, Peter. I was very impressed with the quality of the performance you got out of those amateur actors, Grizzel and Hanner particularly.”

  He beamed at me. “It was long years ago, Travis. When I was young and hungry. They were existentialist films, both of them, tied into the significance of the immediate moment. Desmin Grizzel is still with me, by the way. He’s working on this picture. Not in front of the camera. He’s sort of a personal gofer. The Senator, Curley Hanner, is dead, of course.”

  “Dead? I didn’t know that.”

  “It was covered in the trades and on the wire services. Accidental death. A year ago. He was coming down the coast road, working out a new machine, a Moto Guzzi Le Mans One Thousand. They were just north of Point Sur, really winding it up, very early in the morning. Desmin estimates a hundred and twenty-five to thirty miles an hour. The Senator was out front by fifty or sixty yards when without warning he ran into a cloud of sea gulls, just as he was starting to lean into a curve to the left. Dirty Bob thinks one of them took him right in the face shield. He straightened and went out over the edge. Low tide and it was three hundred feet down to a shale beach. That was his fourth crackup and his last. Over two thousand bikers came to the funeral, some of them all the way from across the country. There was TV news coverage. Where were you?”

  “I have to travel outside the country often.”

  “Consultant. That’s the way to go. What do you want to see? What do you want to know?”

  “Is everybody staying here in this hotel?”

  “God, no! We’d be out of money already. We leased some pasture five miles north of town when we first got here. Nearly everybody else is out there, with the mobile units, vans, house trailers, campers, pickup trucks, and so on, sitting out the rain, bitching, gambling, freaking out. Oh, we were real big when we came to town. We were going to put Rosedale Station on the map. They were all smiles. But, you know, the crew likes a little fun, and there are some townie girls who’ve learned how fun-loving they are, and there are some townie dudes who got broken up in little arguments about this and that. Now things are very cool, and they talk about us from the pulpits. And overcharge us.”

  “I’ve got an eighteen-dollar room upstairs for fifty dollars.”

  “And the old bat behind the desk was happy to see you?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Okay, for Lee’s bad idea for a program, what are you looking for?”

  “Behind the scenes, how problems are solved. What goes wrong with the balloon scenes until you get it right.”

  “We are up to here in what goes wrong. We can show you lots of that, McGee. One trouble, we’re down to eight balloon teams now. The rest of them got sick of waiting around and took off. We had thirty teams here at one time. Freaky Jean here, she dropped out of one of the teams that took off. Right, Jeanie? Hey, you! Jeanie!”

  She opened her eyes slowly and took long seconds to focus. “Wha?”

  “Where’d the buddies on your team go?”

  “Wha?”

  “Forget it. Look, I got some more script work here. Afterwards, I can take you out and introduce you to the kids. About noon or a little after. So kill some time and I’ll get back to you. If you want, pal, you can take Jeanie here along with you. She’s a real workout.”r />
  “Not right now, thanks.”

  “Feel free, any time. Courtesy of the house.”

  “Thanks. What’s the theme of the picture?”

  His face changed, and he looked demented. “The free flight in the hot-air balloon is the symbol of the yearning for freedom, like any dream of flying. We see the life-worn female, trying to reenter the freedom of her youth, seeking it in blue skies, searching and yearning, but the dream of flying contains implicit within it the dream of falling. Age is a falling away, a manner of dying.”

  “Oh.”

  “Gallantry in the face of disaster will underline the symbols of her life, the young lover deserting her, her child dying, the man who wants to take her on this last splendid voyage.”

  “Lysa Dean said that Josephine Laurant is starring in the picture.”

  The demented look vanished and the odd face scowled. “She will by God win awards with this role if she will for Christ’s sake keep saying the lines the way they are written, not the way she thinks they should have been written.”

  “She’s an investor?”

  He stared at me. “Why do you ask?”

  “Lysa said there was a rumor around.”

  “There are always rumors around. Yes, we are both investors, friend. We are both betting our asses and all we own in this world on a fine artistic venture which will, because of its message, be a commercial success. I know how to combine those two elements. I bombed out on two films because they wouldn’t let me go my own way. They controlled me. They turned those two films sour. Now it’s like the old days. Complete artistic control, casting control, direction, production, writing, everything. Because we staked everything, the two of us, the distributor and the banks came into the picture for nine mil, and wished upon me a godawful little ferret-faced money man to watch every cent spent, checking every scene against the story boards, setting limits on the number of takes, cutting down the camera angles on both units. So all my wonderful control doesn’t mean shit. And it keeps raining. Look, let me get to work here.”

  So I left, taking with me the memory of Freaky Jean’s placid young freckled face, of the dazed mind riding atop the ripe maturity of the animal body.

  At a little before one o’clock I rode out to the rented pasture in Kesner’s rented car. He was a ragged driver, accelerating too soon, braking too late, wandering over the center line, talking with his hands. The rain was dwindling. Sunshine was predicted for afternoon. Kesner was full of optimism.

  The thirty or so vehicles were parked in random order under a long roadside row of big maples. The pastureland had been trampled into mud paths that followed the traffic pattern. They had wangled a hookup to the power line, and the wires led down to a temporary meter on a pole. There were camera booms and camera trucks standing in the drizzle, their vital parts shrouded in plastic. There were lights shining through the windows of some of the trailers. People wandered around in rain gear. Kesner led me to the cook tent, to a large helping of excellent beef stew on a paper plate, served with a big tin spoon and a cup of india-ink coffee. He settled for just the coffee and a banana.

  He introduced me as “A television person who can maybe set us up for some exposure on a network show, so be nice to him.”

  I couldn’t retain the names. They came too fast. Chief cameraman, second unit director, script girl, lighting technician, some actors, some balloon people. Everybody seemed very cordial. And then Dirty Bob came in, in a shiny orange jump suit with water droplets on the shoulders and chest. Unmistakable bland moon face, the fringe of beard now flecked with gray, the small Mongolian eyes, slitted and slanted.

  “Hey, Desmin. Meet one of your fans. This is Travis McGee.”

  I stood up and shook hands with him. His hand was thick, dry, warm, and so slack it felt lifeless. As Kesner explained why I was there, Desmin Grizzel stared out at me through those little blueberry eyes set back behind the squinty lids. And I looked back at him. There was something going on behind those eyes. He was perhaps adding something up, something he had heard, measuring me in all the ways I didn’t fit the present role. Or maybe it was some primitive awareness of a special danger.

  I sat down, and he sat down with us.

  Kesner said, “I gave Kitty the changes for the pink sheets. Did they get that goddam duplicator fixed?”

  “Early this morning. She’s caught up on back stuff.”

  “What’s with Josie?”

  “She come in here for lunch today. Now she’s doing backgammon with Tiger in her trailer.”

  “What about the fellow from Joya’s balloon?”

  “It turned out it was pneumonia, and they run him on down to Des Moines in Jake’s wagon.”

  “Jesus Christ! It’s clearing and I want to do number eighty-one. Jesus Christ, is he in that one?”

  “No. I checked it out with Kitty. No scene, no lines, nothing. That’s why I didn’t call in.”

  “How did the special project go after I left last night?”

  “Mercer thinks it’s pretty much okay. He just doesn’t like the Mickey Mouse equipment and no chance to make cuts.”

  “Where’s the girl?”

  “Linda’s looking after her.”

  “Good thinking. McGee, if you’re through, I’ll go introduce you to Josie. Dez, what you do is get people going on makeup and have Kitty get the pages distributed for number eighty-one, and get those balloon crews ready to go out there to the takeoff area soon as the sun comes out.”

  I followed Kesner through the mud to Josie’s big dressing-room trailer, stepping with care. She let us in, and he kissed her on the cheek and said, “We’ll be able to roll this afternoon. Here’s what we’ll be doing, if we stay lucky.”

  When he introduced me, she gave a vacant nod and began skimming through the script pages. I found it hard to believe she was as old as she had to be. A small woman, dainty, dark, fragile, with a lot of energy and vitality in her expression, in the way she moved.

  She moved her lips as she turned the pages. Suddenly she threw her head back, dashing the dark hair away from her forehead. She threw the pages at Kesner’s face.

  “I told you! I will not do that. I will not!”

  “Not do what?”

  “I will not go up in that goddam wicker basket!”

  “And I told you fifty times, damn it, that you will go up to eight feet off the ground. The damn balloon will be anchored! I want you up there with Tyler for your scene, the big one. The lines that are going to break hearts.” He picked up the pages. “Look. Right here. Where it’s marked. That’s where we take you out of the basket and put Linda in. We back off for a low angle and get Linda when she jumps out of the basket into the net. Then it goes on up and we pick up the fall after they throw out the dummy, and all the rest is process. Eight feet in the air, for God’s sake.”

  “I don’t like the height. It could get away somehow. It would kill me. It would stop my heart. No.”

  “I’m telling you, there will be three ropes this big around tied to that basket and tied to three trucks on the ground.”

  “The propane will blow up.”

  “It is safe! Absolutely safe! I know what I am doing.”

  She switched emotions instantaneously, from indignation and fury to cool sardonic query. Posture, expression, voice quality—all changed.

  “Do you now, darling? Do you really know what you are doing? Do you really understand the extra risks you’re running?”

  “What would you rather have me do, mouse? Wind it all down or try to keep it going?” It seemed to me that he gave her some look of warning, some sign to be careful.

  After a moment of hesitation, she said, “It makes me nervous.”

  “You don’t have to know anything about it. Or even think about it. Okay? Maybe you don’t even have to think about being in the basket way up there in the air, eight feet. Maybe Linda would be better all the way through. Go back and do your scenes over with her. Her skin tones are better by daylight.”

/>   “You son of a bitch! She’s a stuntwoman. She’s no actress.”

  “Listen! You were run out of the industry because nobody could trust you not to fuck up and spoil scenes and cost big money. For God’s sake, it’s your money you’re wasting!”

  “So I’ll waste it if I want to!”

  “I’ll use Linda for the whole thing. I need a picture in the can more than I need your famous face, lady.”

  She hesitated. “Three real strong ropes?”

  “Big ropes. This big around.”

  “I better start to get ready.”

  I followed him back out into the mud and along the row of vehicles to a yellow four-wheel-drive Subaru parked next to a big cargo trailer and a small house trailer. A woman sat in the doorway of the house trailer, mending the toe of a red wool sock. She wore bib overalls over a beige turtleneck. She looked lean and husky, with big shoulders and a plain, intelligent face, red-brown hair combed back and tied.

  “Hey, Joya,” Kesner said. “This here is Travis McGee, who is a consultant, and he’ll get us some prime-time exposure for free, if we’re lucky. Joya is the boss lady of the balloons we got left.”

  She had a muscular handshake, a direct, crinkled smile, a pleasantly rusty voice.

  Kesner said, “I’d like to get them off the ground in maybe two hours. The weather looks okay.”

  “The forecast looks good,” she said.

  He drew in the dirt with a stick. “The wind is going to keep coming out of the southwest. Did I say wind? The breeze. Five knots and fairly steady, they tell me. So right here we do a tethered scene with Josie in the number-one balloon. Then we get her out, then Linda jumps into the net, then you balloon people take it up, and I want about five hundred feet on it when the dummy gets tossed out. We’ll cut from Linda jumping to the free fall at five hundred feet. Now when we take the low angle on the dummy coming out, I want to see balloons up there, not placed so they’ll get in the way of the cameras. I want enough of them in the scene so in the editing, we can go back to where we had them all going nice that day, remember?”