Bloody River Blues

movies . . . “Well, what did you have in mind?”
    “I don’t know. I see so many people in town from your company . . .”
    Thirty-seven cast members from Hollywood. Sixty-two local extras. Seventy-one L.A.-based crew members, sixty-seven from St. Louis, twelve stuntmen, eight drivers, two producers, two caterers, two animal wranglers, one stoolie from the Coast, one high-tech visionary director.
    One location scout.
    “Is there,” Pellam asked, “anything you can do?”
    Nina considered this for a minute. The blush was gone and so was her bashfulness. He suspected that beneath the wan Julia Roberts face was a ball-busterof a school counselor. “I can’t really do anything other than coach girls’ gymnastics and talk to students.”
    Pellam squeezed her arm again. “And,” he said, “you can make yourself beautiful.”
    She sniffed a laugh. “You’re flirting.”
    “No, I have something in mind,” Pellam said. Then he added, “In addition to flirting.”
    MISSOURI RIVER BLUES
    SCENE 180A—INTERIOR DAY, ROSS’S GETAWAY CAR, cont’d
    ROSS
    When I first saw you, you know, it was the night of the dance. It was—
    DEHLIA
    (Holding wounded arm) I remember.
    ROSS
    It was hot as a in-line block. You were across the room under that Japanese lantern.
    ANGLE ON Dehlia, hair flying in the breeze. She looks back with LOVE in her eyes.
    DEHLIA
    (Gasping) That lantern, it was the one that was busted.
    ROSS
    Sure it was busted and the bulb shone throughthat paper and covered you in light. That’s when I knowed you was the girl for me.
    “Ouch. That’s terrible. Don’t read any more, Pellam.” Stile and Pellam sat on a river bluff overlooking the Missouri.
    Pellam was looking down at the revised script. He recited emotionally, “ ‘You was the girl for me.’ ”
    “Pellam,” Stile said, wincing. “Please.”
    “That’s what they say just before they skid into the river. Don’t you think that’s purty? The hole in the lantern’s a metaphor for freedom.”
    “You know what’s a metaphor? To keep the cows in. In this case—” Stile nodded toward the script “—it’s where the bullshit is.”
    “I’ll bet in the final scene the cops find the car but not the bodies.” Pellam flipped to the end and read. “Damn damn damn, I’m right. Gimme five.”
    Stile and Pellam slapped palms and the stuntman limped over to the Yamaha. He had spent the afternoon getting shot with a .45 at close range and tumbling down a flight of stairs. Thirty gunshots and fifteen falls. Then Sloan had changed his mind and decided Stile should fall through a window after getting shot. But the stunt coordinator insisted they postpone the scene till tomorrow and gave Stile the rest of the day off. He had joined Pellam and together they spent the afternoon driving around on the cycle looking for Sloan’s big field. “Who was that squeeze I saw you with?”
    “Nina Sassower.” Pellam joined Stile at the cycle.
    “Well, that’s a name and a half. I haven’t seen her around.”
    “That’s because this is her first day on the set. I got her a job doing makeup. She’s pretty good at it.”
    “She’s also pretty good at kissing and throwing her arms around you.”
    It was true, she had been.
    “Casting couch is one thing, Pellam. If you get laid ’cause you got somebody a job as a makeup artist while I fall out of tall buildings and have to content myself with ring around the rosy at night there is no justice in this world.”
    Pellam was not, however, thinking of Nina Sassower and her embracing arms. He was obsessed with getting the field. The houses and buildings for the film had been easy, Maddox’s economic condition being what it was. The field was another story. It needed a border of dense trees, a road, a river, and a school in a stand of bushes. Also a small cliff for the dramatic crash.
    The best they had found was a small overhang beside a weedy pumpkin patch. To reach the bluff for its dramatic fall, Ross’s Packard would have to crash through deep thickets of forsythia and juniper and maple saplings.
    “Very vegetative place, this Missouri,” Pellam observed, “and oddly short on fields.”
    “I still don’t see why you’re working for Sloan. Even a whore’s got principles. Sort of oil and water is what I’m saying.”
    Pellam wiped beads of dew off the face of his Casio. Six P.M. He had to meet Marty Weller and Ahmed Telorian in two hours. “Let’s have a beer, call it quits.”