Rune pulled herself from the hole and collapsed onto the floor, frozen. She pressed her eyes shut against the terrible pain. Her nose and throat burned violently. She rested her face against the wooden floor as her breathing calmed and she smelled grease, felt the coolness of fresh air returning.
"Oh, my God," one of the men said. They were dressed now. "Are you all right? Who was he?"
They helped her to her feet.
"Did you get a look at him?" she asked.
"No, just saw that jacket."
"It was red," his friend answered. "Like I said. Oh, and the hat."
"You have to call the police… What's that smell? It's terrible."
"Tear gas."
A pause. "Just whoare you?"
Rune rose to her feet slowly, thanked them. Then stumbled through the warehouse out into the daylight.
When she got to a pay phone she called the police. They showed up pretty quickly. But, as she'd expected, there wasn't much they could do. She didn't have a detailed description of the attacker. Probably white male, medium build. No hair color, no eye color, no facial characteristic. A red windbreaker, like inDon't Look Now – that scary movie based on the Daphne du Maurier story. Which Rune deduced neither of the responding cops had seen or read, judging by the blank look on their faces.
They said they'd check into it, though they weren't happy that she'd had a canister of CS-38, which was illegal in the city.
"You have any idea why he'd want to do it?"
She supposed it might have something to do with her movie and the porn theater and the Sword of Jesus. She told them this and the look on their faces told her that, as far as they were concerned, the case was already a dead end. They flipped their notebooks closed and said they'd have a patrol car cruise past occasionally.
She asked them again how many men they were going to put on the case but they just looked at her blankly and told her they were sorry for her troubles.
And then they confiscated the tear gas.
After cleaning up, putting hydrogen peroxide on the scrapes and digging a new tear gas canister out from under the sink, Rune went to L &R Productions.
" 'ey, what've we got 'ere?" Bob asked, examining her face.
She wasn't about to tell him that the injuries might have to do with her movie-since it was L &R's Betacam that would be at risk if she got machine-gunned down on the street.
"Guy hassled me. I beat the crap out of him."
"Uh-huh," Bob said skeptically.
"Listen, after work, I need to borrow the camera again. And some lights."
Bob, in a lecturing mood, said to her, "You know what this is, Rune?" Rubbing the large video camera as if it were a blonde's rump.
"Larry said it was okay. I've used it before."
"Humor an old man, luv. Tell me. What is it?"
"It's a Betacam video camera, Bob. It's made by Sony. It has an Ampex deck. I've used one about fifty times."
"Do you know how much they cost?"
"More than you'll ever pay me in my lifetime, I'll bet."
"Ha. It's worth forty-seven thousand dollars." He paused for dramatic effect.
"Larry told me that the first time he loaned it to me. I didn't think it'd gone down in value."
"You lose it, you break it, you burn out the tube, you pay for it."
"I'll be careful, Bob."
"Do you know what forty-seven thousand dollars will buy?" he asked philosophically. "A man could take forty-seven thousand dollars, move to Guatemala and live like a king for the rest of his life."
"I'll be careful." Rune began numbering storyboards for a TV commercial estimate that Larry and Bob were bidding on next week.
"Like a king for the rest of his days," Bob called out, retreating into the studio.
Rune set the Sony up on the deck of her houseboat, next to a single 400-watt Redhead lamp. She tore bits of silver gaffer tape from a large roll and with them mounted a pink gel on the black metal barn doors of the lamp. It put a soft glow on Shelly's face.
Tomaster cinematography, luv, you master light, Larry had told her.
She added a small fill lamp behind Shelly.
Rune also found she was picking up the lights of the city over the actress's head, without any flare or afterimage.
Looking through the eyepiece, she thought, Totally excellent.
Thinking too: It also looks like I know what I'm doing. She was very eager to impress her subject.
As she'd been stuffing the storyboards into an envelope Rune had been thinking up questions for Shelly. Jotting them on a yellow pad. But now, as she turned the light on and started the tape rolling, she hesitated. The questions reminded her of her journalism course in high school.
Uhm, when did you get started in the business?
Uhm, what're your favoritemovies, other than adult movies?
Did you go to college and what did you major in?
Shelly, though, didn't need any questions. Rune got the opening shot she'd been planning all along-an ECU, extreme close-up, of those reactor-blue eyes-then pulled back. Shelly smiled and began to talk. She had a low, pleasing voice and seemed wholly in control, confident, like those feisty women senators and stockbrokers you see on PBS talk shows.
The first hour or so Shelly discussed the pornography industry in a matter-of-fact, businesslike way. Adult films were experiencing a reluctant death. They were no longer chic and trendy, as some had proclaimed them to be in the seventies. The excitement of illicit thrills was gone. The religious right and conservatives were more active. But, Shelly explained, there were other factors that helped the business. Certainly AIDS was a consideration. "Watching sex is the safest sex." Also, people tended to be more faithful now; with fewer affairs, couples experimented more at home. You didn't have to go to some stinky theater in a tawdry part of town. You and your partner could watch sexual acrobatics in your own bedroom.
The mechanics for viewing porn had changed too. "VCRs're the biggest contributor to the new popularity," she explained. Porn, Shelly felt, was meant for the video medium. "Fifteen years ago, the heyday of big-production porn, the budgets for a film sometimes hit a million dollars." There were elaborate special effects and constructed sets and costumes and ninety-page screenplays that the actors memorized. They were shot on 35mm film in Technicolor. The producers of the classicBehind the Green Door actually campaigned for an Oscar.
Now, porn was virtually homemade, with dozens of small companies in the business. They shot on tape, never on film. A producer was somebody with five thousand bucks, a good source of coke and six willing friends. There were few superstars like John Holmes or Annette Haven or Seka or Georgina Spelvin. Shelly Lowe was as famous as anyone. (With a tough glance at the camera: "Hell, I've got five hundred films under my belt. So to speak.") But stars' fame was limited to New York and California mostly. In Middle America Shelly Lowe was just another face on the boxes of tapes offered for rental in curtained-off corners of family video stores. If she'd been in the business in the mid-seventies she would have done live appearances at theater openings across the country. Now, that didn't happen.
Making a film was easy: A three-person crew rented a loft or took over somebody's apartment for two days, set up the camcorders and lights and sound, shot six to ten fuck scenes and twenty minutes of transitions. The script was a ten-page story idea. Dialogue was improvised. In the postproduction house two versions were edited. Hardcore for sale to the adult theaters, mail order, peep shows and video stores; soft for sale to the cable stations and in-room hotel movie services. Movie theaters weren't the biggest outlet for adult films anymore; they went out of business or put in video projection units, then went out of business anyway. But people rented porn tapes and took them home and watched them. Four thousand X-rated videos were made every year. They had become a commodity.
"Mass production. It's the era of pornography as Volkswagen."