A low-rider, a fifteen-year-old beige sedan, churned past her. The horn sang and from the shadows of the front seat came a cryptic solicitation, lost in the ship's diesel bubbling of the engine. The car accelerated away.
God, it was hot. Halfway to the subway stop, she bought a paper cone of shaved ice from a Latino street vendor. Rune shook her head when he pointed to the squirt bottles of syrup, smiled at his perplexed expression, and rubbed the ice over her forehead, then dropped a handful down the front of her T-shirts. He got a kick out of it and she left him with a thoughtful look on his face, maybe considering a new market for his goods.
Painful hot.
Mean hot.
The ice melted before she got to the subway stop and the moisture had evaporated before the train arrived.
The A train swept along under the streets back up to Midtown. Somewhere above her was the smoking ruin of the Velvet Venus Theater. Rune stared out the window intently. Did anyone live down here in the subway system? She wondered. Maybe there were whole tribes of homeless people, families, who'd made a home in the abandoned tunnels. They'd be a great subject for a documentary too. LifeBelow the Streets.
This started her thinking about the hook for her film.
About the bombing but not about the bombing.
And then it occurred to her. The film should be about a single person. Someone the bombing had affected. She thought about movies she liked-they were never about issues or about ideas in the abstract. They were about people. What happened to them. But who should she pick? A patron in the theater who'd been injured? No, no one would volunteer to help her out. Who'd want to admit he'd been hurt in a porn theater. How 'bout 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.
Aboutthe 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?-validateher. 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'dalways 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 (adocumentary: 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 fromGourmet, 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'spersonal! 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 do you see the most?"
He thought for a minute. "Well, I don't know whether she's famous but there's one actress for Lame Duck that I see all the time. Her name's Shelly Lowe."
There was a familiarity about the name.
"Does she have a narrow face, blonde?"
"Yeah, I guess. I didn't look at her face very much."
Rune frowned. "You're a dirty old man."
"You know her?" he asked.
"There was a bombing in Times Square, this porn theater… Did you hear about it?"
"No."
"Just today, a couple hours ago. I think she was in one of the movies that was playing there when it happened."
Perfect.
Rune put the address in her plastic leopard-skin shoulder bag.
Stu rocked back in his chair.
"Well?" Rune asked.
"Well what?"
"Aren't you curious why I asked?"
Stu held up a hand. "That's okay. Some things are best kept secret." He opened his magazine and said, "You ever made atarte aux marrons?"
CHAPTER TWO
Contrasts.
Rune sat in the huge loft that was the lobby of Lame Duck Productions and watched the two young women stroll to a desk across the room. Overhead, fans rotated slowly and forced air-conditioned breezes throughout the place.
The woman in the lead walked as if she had adegree, in it. Her feet were pointed forward, her back straight, hips not swaying. She had honey-blonde hair tied back with a braided rope of rainbow-colored strings. She wore a white jumpsuit but saved it from tackiness by wearing sandals, not boots, and a thin, brown leather belt.
Rune examined her closely but wasn't sure if this was the same woman she'd seen in the poster. In that photo, the one on the front of the porno theater, her makeup had been good; today, this woman had a dull complexion. She seemed very tired.
The other woman was younger. She was short, face glossy, a figure bursting out of the seams of her outfit. She had a huge, jutting-and undoubtedly fake-bust and broad shoulders. The black tank top showed a concise waist; the miniskirt crowned thin legs. There was no saving this cookie from tack; she had spiky high heels, feathery and teased hair sprayed with glitter and purple-brown makeup, which did a fair job minimizing the effect of a wide, Slavic nose.