Death of a Blue Movie Star

the owner or the producer of porn films.
Sleazy
came to mind. One thing Rune knew was that the audience has to care about your main character. And some scumbag in the Mafia or whoever made those movies wasn’t going to get much sympathy from the audience.
    About the bombing but not
…
    As the subway sped underground the more she thought about doing the document the more excited she became. Oh, a film like this wouldn’t catapult her to fame but it would—what was the word?—
validate
her. The list of her abortive careers was long: clerking, waitressing, selling, cleaning, window dressing…. Business was not her strength. The one time Rune had come into some money, Richard, her ex-boyfriend, had thought up dozens of safe investment ideas. Businesses to start, stocks to buy. She’d accidentally left his portfolio files on the merry-go-round in Central Park. Not that it mattered anyway because she spent most of the money on a new place to live.
    I’m not good with the practical stuff, she’d told him.
    What she was good with was what she’d
always
been good with: stories—like fairy tales and movies. And despite her mother’s repeated warning when she was younger (“No girl can make a living at movies except you-know-what-kind-of-girl”), the odds of making a career in film seemed a lot better than in fairy tales.
    She was, she’d decided, born to make films and this one—a real, grown-up film (a
documentary:
the ground-zero of serious films)—had in the last hour or two became vitally important to her, as encompassing as the air pressure that hit her when the subway pounded into the tunnel. One way or another, this documentary was going to get made.
    She looked out the window. Whatever subterranean colonies lived in the subways, they’d have to wait a few more years for their story to be told.
    The train crashed past them or past rats and trash or past nothing at all while Rune thought about nothing but her film.
    … but not about the bombing
.

     
    In the offices of Belvedere Post-Production the air-conditioning was off.
    “Give me a break,” she muttered.
    Stu, not looking up from
Gourmet
, waved.
    “I do not believe this place,” Rune said. “Aren’t you dying?”
    She walked to the window and tried to open the greasy, chicken-wire-impregnated glass. It was frozen with age and paint and wormy strips of insulating putty. She focused on the green slate of the Hudson River as she struggled. Her muscles quivered. She groaned loudly. Stu sensed his cue and examined the window from his chair, then pushed himself into a standing slump. He was young and big but had developed muscles mostly from kneading bread and whisking egg whites in copper bowls. After three minutes he breathlessly conceded defeat.
    “Hot air outside’s all we’d get anyway.” He sat down again. He jotted notes for a recipe, then frowned. “Are you here for a pickup? I don’t think we’re doing anything for L&R.”
    “Naw, I wanted to ask you something. It’s personal.”
    “Like?”
    “Like who are your clients?”
    “That’s
personal?
Well, mostly ad agencies and independent film makers. Networks and big studios occasionally but—”
    “Who are the independents?”
    “You know, small companies doing documentaries or low-budget features. Like L&R … You’re grinning and you’re coy and there’s an old expression about butter melting in the mouth that I could never figure out but I think fits here. What’s up?”
    “You ever do adult films?”
    He shrugged. “Oh, porn? Sure. We do a lot of it. I thought you were asking me something inscrutable.”
    “Can you give me the name of somebody at one of the companies?”
    “I don’t know. Isn’t this some kind of business-ethics question, client confidentiality—”
    “Stu, we’re talking about a company making films that’re probably illegal in most of the world and you’re worried about business ethics?”
    Stu shrugged. “If you don’t tell them I sent you, you might try Lame Duck Productions. They’re a big one. And just a couple blocks from you guys.”
    “From L&R?”
    “Yeah. On Nineteenth near Fifth.”
    The man’s huge Rolodex spun and gave off an afternoon library smell. He wrote down the address.
    “Do they have an actress who’s famous in the business?”
    “What business?”
    “Adult films.”
    “You’re asking me? I have no idea.”
    “When you super the credits in the postproduction work, don’t you see the names? Whose name