by Brad Smith
“Chasing Martha around the corncrib, if I remember correctly. And he catches her too. Or rather she lets him catch her. I think the author wanted to show us that women back then weren’t averse to some good old-fashioned screwing, just for the joy of it.”
“You can’t just put a historical figure like that in a book,” Virgil said. He got to his feet and walked to the sink, stretching the phone cord, and poured himself a glass of water.
“Says who?”
“Shit, I don’t know.” Virgil had a drink of water and stood looking out the window above the sink.
“So what did these guys say?” Claire asked.
“They want to use Bob and Nelly in their movie.”
“What’d you tell them?”
“Once they decided I was the hired hand, and a dullard to boot, they really didn’t want to deal with me. I’m supposed to have my boss call them.”
“That’s funny.”
“What is?”
“The concept of you having a boss,” Claire said. “So you going to do it?”
“I don’t know if I want to get involved,” Virgil said. “They seemed like a couple of posers. The guy who called himself the director was basically a half-wit.”
“But they have money,” Claire said. “And I know your taxes are due, and your soybean crop failed last fall, and you’re not exactly flush. What are they offering?”
“Five hundred a day.”
“Nothing to sneeze at,” Claire said. “And how do you know this isn’t the big break Bob and Nelly have been waiting for? This could open some doors for them. Maybe Broadway. Maybe they could get on Donald Trump’s show. Bob’s mane looks a little like Trump’s. And you could ride their coattails. Well, horse tails.”
“And you called me a wiseass?”
“Hey, it might be interesting to boot. You love movies, Virgil. This way you could watch them make one, and get paid to do it.”
“I don’t know.” Virgil heard someone say something to Claire in the background. Another officer maybe.
“I have to go and uphold law and order,” she said then. “Take the money, Virgil.”
Hanging up the phone, Virgil went outside and sat down in a wooden chair on the side porch. The herd of orphans was standing around the water trough, Bob and Nelly towering over the others.
Claire was right about one thing. Virgil did like movies. In fact, if it weren’t for old movies, he would never bother to turn on the forty-year-old Philco television in the corner of the farmhouse living room. Virgil didn’t have cable on the farm, or a satellite either, but there was an ancient antenna bolted to the roof of the front porch and with it he could pick up stations from different places, depending on the weather and the time of day. There was a channel called Old Gold Movies out of New York City that ran films twenty-four hours a day, all of a certain vintage, nothing more recent than the 1970s. Often at night Virgil would tune in to see what the station was running. Sometimes he would turn the set off as quickly as he turned it on. Other times he would stay up too late, thinking he would just watch a half hour of something and then hanging in until the end.
As a kid in rural Quebec, Virgil had access to the CBC and a couple of small market stations from across the US border that ran a lot of old movies and defunct TV series. He remembered Saturday mornings, watching Johnny Weissmuller’s stone-faced and athletic Tarzan, before moving on in the afternoons to the Gene Autry and Roy Rogers shorts. He watched Laurel & Hardy, the Marx Brothers, the great W. C. Fields. He liked Bogart and Cagney as good guys and bad, and he loved Peter Lorre in everything. He was drawn to westerns, and always had been. Claire Marchand once told him he was a cowboy, and she hadn’t meant it in a particularly flattering way. But she’d bought him a book about western cinema, over a thousand pages with details of every western ever made, the great and not-so-great, with background stories from the directors, the cameramen, the actors, and the crew.
Virgil liked certain directors more than others—Hathaway, Ford, Boetticher. Howard Hawks was a favorite. Like John Ford, he used secondary characters to great and often comedic effect. Virgil liked Victor McLaglen’s swagger, John Carradine’s sonorous voice, Walter Brennan’s irascibility. He loved how Noah Beery Jr. rode his horse in Red River, hat pushed way up on his forehead, elbows flying as if he were about to take flight.
He wasn’t interested in musicals, or fluff comedies where Rock Hudson pretended to be interested in Doris Day. He liked drama, but drama with style, films like Kubrick’s The Killing, The Hustler with Newman, The Men with Brando.
Virgil didn’t consider himself a film buff. He would never consider himself an anything buff. And he’d never been particularly interested in how movies were made. He had a feeling that finding out might disillusion him.
After a while he reached into his pocket and retrieved the card the longhair had given him. He looked at it for a moment before putting it on the arm of the chair. He got up and headed for the barn. He had one more load of hay to mow away before dark.
FOUR
Sam and Robb had a room at the Hampton Inn in Kingston. The crew had been trickling in for the past few days and some of them were there as well. Adam Canfield, the cinematographer, was due in tomorrow. Some of the others—hair and makeup, grips and electrics—would be at the Econo Lodge across town. The production company wasn’t paying for them to crash at the Hampton.
When Sam got back from the city, Robb was asleep on the bed, fully dressed, his left arm across his eyes. The smell of burnt hash was hanging in the air, along with something else, something heavy and pungent and acidic, an odor Sam didn’t recognize.
She removed her boots and lay down beside him on the bed. She closed her eyes, thinking she’d love to have a nap before dinner, but her mind was working overtime and she knew she wasn’t going to fall off.
She lay there silently for a half hour, mentally checking off the places she could go for money. The problem was that she’d already exhausted all the possibilities in getting the financing to begin with. The budget was around thirty million, and even before USN pulled their commitment of six million, she’d been almost five short. She hadn’t told anybody that—certainly not the other investors, not even Robb. Everybody involved assumed that the package was complete. Losing Peter Dunmore had helped the bottom line; she’d promised him five hundred thousand and she would pay Robb half that. Unless, of course, she got all the money she needed, then she could bump him up to half a million. After all, it would be as much hers as his in the end. But getting all the money was going to be a stretch. First she needed to find the six million she’d lost in the boardroom that afternoon.
She’d been counting on raising the other five over the next six weeks, during the course of the shoot. There were still some smaller foreign markets she hadn’t approached, and she had hoped to spur some interest by sending dailies with Olivia Burns looking quite fetching and heroine-like in the wilderness. She’d arranged the schedule so they would shoot the sex scenes in the first two weeks. Olivia didn’t know it yet, but Sam and Robb intended on making the scenes a little more graphic than outlined in the script, catering specifically to the European networks and cable outlets. There was definitely a difference in the sensibilities of the two continents. Americans who bought movie tickets liked violence and bad rom-coms and sophomoric, scatological humor. Europeans liked period pieces and sex.
However, those financing potentials wouldn’t help Sam today. She’d just lost six million dollars and was five days out from shooting.
Robb stirred beside her, turned, and opened his eyes.
“Sleepyhead,” she said.
“Yeah.” He stretched and rubbed his eyes like a toddler waking.
“This place smells like a Turkish armpit,” she said. “What were you doing—hot knives?”
“Levi and I smoked a couple pipes when we got back from scouting.”
“Where is Levi anyway?”
“He drove into Manhattan,” Robb said. “Said
he had to meet a guy, some business deal.”
“He’s a man of mystery,” Sam said sarcastically. She got up from the bed and went to the minibar for a bottle of water. “You want anything?”
“What kind of beer is there?”
“Budweiser, Heineken, Stella—”
“Give me a Stella.”
Sam opened the beer and poured it into a glass for him. Robb sat up in bed to drink and she arranged his pillow behind him.
“So how did it go?” she asked.
“Great,” he said. “The frontier village is perfect. Plus, the guy who runs the place told us about another log cabin up in the mountains, near Haleyville. This couple owns it, and they’re loaded, made a bunch of money in the market. The guy’s got a hard-on for the pioneer days and he restored the place for a getaway. The wife is all excited to have it in a movie. We might get the place for nothing. What else? Oh, we found some of those great big workhorses, you know? Like they used back then. We haven’t talked to the owner yet. And there’s an old barn on the property too.”
“That’s good,” Sam said. She walked to the window to pull back the drapes. There was nothing to see outside but the parking lot. Her BMW was parked along the fence at the back, a twelve-year-old sedan with over two hundred thousand miles on it.
“So?” Robb asked.
“What?”
“What happened with USN?”
Sam hesitated before turning away from the window. “We parted company,” she said. “I basically told them to fuck off.”
“Because of me?” Robb asked. “They didn’t want me?”
“No, that wasn’t it. I didn’t like the way they were talking to me. They seemed to think that this was their movie. Well, guess what? This is our movie and we can’t have anybody dictating shit to us. They put up a few bucks and suddenly they’re in the driver’s seat? I don’t think so.”
“But they were okay with me directing?” Robb repeated.
Sam approached and sat down on the edge of the bed. “They were fine with you. They, uh, they said they had some problems with the script all of a sudden. It’s just network bullshit.” She stopped. “What the fuck is that smell?” she asked. “That’s not hash.”
“Oh, I stepped in horse manure,” Robb said. “It’s still on my boots. I can’t get it off.”
“I’ll do it, baby,” Sam said. “Finish your beer. We have to meet Olivia and Levi for dinner in an hour. You want to watch some TV?”
“Okay.”
She found the remote and turned the set on. “Here, find something you like,” she said, handing him the clicker.
She took his Wellingtons into the bathroom and cleaned them using a face cloth and one of the little vials of shampoo. She pretty much ruined the cloth in the process but got rid of the horseshit. As she worked she heard him in the other room, clicking through the channels. He finally settled on an episode of The Three Stooges. It was the one where the boys find work on a movie set. Sam hoped it wasn’t a case of art imitating life.
• • •
They’d arranged to meet at a bar in Union City, a place called T-Mac’s situated on the ground floor of an old hotel. T-Mac’s was a beer-and-wings joint, with off-track betting in a separate room in the back. The rooms upstairs had been turned into apartments; the sign out front indicated they were available weekly or monthly. No lease required.
Levi sat at the bar and drank vodka tonics while he waited for Cox to arrive. The waitress was one of those fading beauties, maybe late forties, with short blonde hair and a number of tattoos on her arms. She could still pull off the tight jeans she wore, and her V-neck sweater showed enough cleavage to keep Levi interested. She was overly friendly, maybe because he was a stranger and she’d exhausted any patter with the locals. If he hadn’t been preoccupied, Levi would have considered asking her when she got off. She looked like she’d be fun for a night, and the fact that he had no reason to come back to Union City made the notion even more attractive.
Cox showed up nearly an hour late. Levi was supposed to meet the Indian farther upriver at seven, but with Cox running late, that wasn’t going to happen. At quarter to he called the man to say he’d get there when he could. By that time he was into his fourth vodka and had learned in the process that the waitress, whose name was Jenny, had once been in the X-rated film business. Levi had been about to ask if she had any special skills in that area when he saw Cox’s gleaming bald head in the entranceway.
Levi was relieved that Cox showed up alone this time. When they’d met two weeks earlier he’d had a Samoan with him who looked as if he could bench-press a school bus. The Samoan had stood by and not said a word but he never took his eyes off Levi for a moment.
Cox indicated a vacant table in the corner and Levi, vodka in hand, slid off the barstool and went to join him. Cox was wearing a long leather coat in the heat and shrugged out of it as he sat down. He ordered a Guinness and offered Levi a look of bemused contempt as he waited for it to arrive. After taking a long drink from the glass, he indicated Levi’s clothes, the formfitting T-shirt and jeans.
“I don’t see anything that suggests a large envelope on your person,” Cox said. His voice was soft and held just the slightest remains of an English accent. “Surely you don’t intend to offer me a check.”
Levi had a drink. “You might as well know, I don’t have the full amount.”
“I suspected that,” Cox said. He sighed as he took a cell phone from his pocket and opened it to send a text that appeared to Levi to consist of a single letter. “How very unfortunate for you,” Cox said, putting the phone away.
“I brought some cash,” Levi said quickly.
“Some cash.” Cox took another drink.
The door opened and the Samoan from the previous meeting entered the bar, having presumably been summoned by the text. Wearing baggy black pants and a blood-red shirt, he filled the doorway. His small eyes squinted in the dim interior of the joint as he looked around, finally settling his gaze on the two of them at the table. With a quick nod of his head, Cox directed him to the bar, where the behemoth sat down on a stool that fairly disappeared beneath him.
“How much?” Cox asked, not looking at Levi now, as if he was no longer worthy of his attention.
“Five grand.”
“Five?” Cox repeated. “You’ve moved the decimal point, lad. Twice, in fact.”
“I’ll have the rest within the week,” Levi said.
“Such a familiar tune,” Cox said. “And it’s getting old. What am I to do with you?” Now he turned to Levi. “No, no . . . don’t attempt to reply. If ever there was a rhetorical question, that was it.”
Levi glanced reluctantly toward the bar where the Samoan was talking to Jenny the bartender; it looked like he was telling her he wasn’t there for a drink.
“Give me the five,” Cox said. “You have a week. I hope you know that you’ve been a great disappointment to me, lad. Therefore I don’t think I can allow you to run about unsupervised any longer. You keep telling me what a mover and a shaker you are in the motion picture industry and yet at the same time you can’t come up with even a fraction of the money you owe.” He had another drink of the black beer and got to his feet. “If I were to suggest a title for this little film that you and I seem to be making—it would be Last Chance. Do you follow, lad?”
“Yeah,” Levi said. “I follow.”
• • •
The Hampton Inn had a decent restaurant called Finnegan’s and that’s where they met Olivia for dinner. Levi Brown called the room as they were walking out and said he would be running late. Sam and Robb smoked a small chunk of hash before going downstairs. They shared the elevator with an older couple dressed to the nines, the woman actually wearing a fox stole. Sam stood behind her and mugged, bulging her eyes like that of the dead animal around the woman’s neck until Robb finally broke out laughing. The couple was not particularly amused.
The restaurant was dark, with raised oak paneling on the w
alls and deep-red carpet with swirls of gold leaf. A bar commanded the far wall of the place; a half-dozen men in suits sat drinking there, under a large-screen TV showing the Yankees and the Orioles.
Olivia was sitting at a table alone, a glass of Chardonnay in front of her. She wore a sleeveless dress of bone white. Her arms were toned and muscular, and Sam again felt the stab of jealousy she’d experienced in the restaurant that afternoon. She let it slide; she wasn’t about to compete with Olivia Burns on that level. Maybe she’d been working out to play Martha Jones. Pioneer women who spent their days hauling water and chopping firewood and birthing babies in fields were undoubtedly in pretty good shape.
They sat down and Sam ordered wine while Robb asked for a light beer.
“Meet your new director,” Sam said.
“Yes.” Olivia smiled.
“This is going to be great,” Robb told her. “I’m so happy you’re doing this.”
“We might not be doing it if you weren’t,” Sam told her. “We had exactly one actress on our wish list.”
Olivia just smiled again. It appeared she was okay with things, Sam thought. But that was the problem with actors, especially good actors. How could you ever be sure what they were showing you was genuine? Sam knew a writer once, a novelist, who used to say that Meryl Streep could commit cold-blooded murder in front of a dozen witnesses, and then go on trial and persuade any jury in the world that she was innocent. She was that good an actress. Sam had suggested that if she could be that convincing, why didn’t she get herself elected president? The novelist had asked why the greatest actor in the world would want a shitty job like that?
So maybe Olivia was okay with Robb directing the film, or maybe she was going along with it just because that’s the way things were. At the end of the day, it really didn’t matter one way or the other. She’d been hired to do a job. In that respect, she was no different than a grip or an electrician.
“Sam said you’ve been working with Stuart on the script,” Olivia said.
“Oh yeah,” Robb said. “We’ve been collaborating.”
