Ray Bradbury - Let's All Kill Constance

"Here we are at the dead end of the old trolley-tram line on Mount Lowe."

Fritz and Crumley nodded, seeing the mummy there, wrapped in headlines.

"Wait." Blind Henry squinted. "Okay, I'm there."

"Her first husband is there, her first big mistake. So she goes up to swipe the newspapers with all her old selves filed away. She grabs the papers, like I did, and gives a final yell. Whether she pushed the landslide of newsprint, or gave one last shriek, who knows? Regardless, the Mount Lowe trolley master drowned in a bad-news avalanche. Okay?"

I looked over at Crumley, whose mouth gaped with his "okay." He nodded, as did Fritz. Henry sensed this and gave the go-ahead.

"Chair number two. Bunker Hill. Queen Califia. Predictor of futures, insurer of fates."

I held on to the chair as if I pushed that massive elephant on roller skates.

"Constance shouted outside her door. Califia wasn't murdered any more than that Mount Lowe Egyptian relic was. Yelled at, sure, by Rattigan, telling Califia to take back all her lousy predictions that insured the future. Califia had unrolled a papyrus road map, Constance followed, blind as a bat-sorry, Henry-all enthusiasm. Would Califia lie? No! Was the future wondrous? You betcha! Now, late in the game, Constance wanted retractions. Califia would have retracted, told new lies, and gone on living, but alarmed, fell downstairs into her grave. Not murder, but panic."

"So much for Califia," said Crumley, trying to hide his approval.

"Scene three, take one," said Fritz.

"Scene three, take one, chair number three." I moved. "This here is the confessional booth, St. Vibiana's."

Fritz scooched his chair closer, his monocle a lighthouse flash, searching my small private stage. He chopped his head at me to continue.

"And here's Rattigan's bighearted brother, trying to lead her along the straight and narrow. When Califia said 'left,' he yelled 'right,' and maybe after years of storms of brutal sin, he threw up his hands, tossed her out of the church. But she came back, raving, demanding absolution, screaming her demands, purify me, forgive me, your own flesh, give way, give in, but he clapped his hands over his ears and yelled against her yell, and his yells, not hers, struck him dead."

"So you say," said Fritz, one eye shut, the fire from his monocle stabbing. "Prove it. If we're going to shoot this like a goddamn film, write me the moment of truth. Tell how you know the priest killed himself with his own rage, yes?"

"Who the hell's the detective here?" Crumley cut in.

"The boy wonder is," drawled Fritz, not looking at him, still shooting lightning bolts of optical glass at me. "He gets hired or fired by what he next claims."

"I'm not applying for a job," I said.

"You've already got it," said Fritz. "Or get thrown out on your ass. I'm the studio head and you're plea-bargaining. How do you know the priest was self-murdered?"

I exhaled.

"Because I heard him breathe, watched his face, saw him run. He couldn't stand Constance diving in the surf one way, to come out another. She was hot desert air, he was fog. Collision. Lightning. Bodies."

"All from one priest and one bad sister?"

"Saint. Sinner," I said.

Fritz Wong stiffened with a glow in his face and a most ungodly smile.

"You got the job. Crumley?"

Crumley reared back from Fritz but at last nodded. "As proof? It'll do. Next?"

I moved on to the next chair.

"Here we are at Grauman's Chinese, up high, late night, film running, figures on the screen, pictures on the wall. All of Rattigan's former selves nailed, ready to be nabbed. And the one man who really knows her, bum to belly button, her dad, keeper of the unholy flame, but he doesn't want her either, so she busts in and swipes the pictures that prove her past. She's got to burn those, too, because she doesn't like all her former selves. The final bust-in puts her pa in shock, like all the rest. Torn both ways-after all, it is his daughter-he lets the pictures go but runs the film on a continuous roundabout reel, Molly, Dolly, Sally, Holly, Gala, Willa, Sue… The reel's still running and the faces lit when we arrive too late to save him or the swiped photos. Unmurder number four…"

"So J. Wellington Bradford a.k.a. Tallulah Bankhead cum Crawford cum Colbert is still alive, and he's not a victim?" said Crumley. "The same goes for quick-change artist Quickly?"

"Alive but not for long. They're as flimsy as kites in a long storm. Constance ranted at them-"

"Because?" said Crumley.

"They taught her all the ways to not be herself," said Fritz, proud of his insight. "Don't do this, do that, don't do that, do this. Richard the Third tells you how to be Lear's daughter, Lady Macbeth, Medea. One size fits all. So she became Electra, Juliet, Lady Godiva, Ophelia, Cleopatra. Bradford said. Rattigan did. Same with Quickly. See Connie run! She had to show up on both their doorsteps to disrobe, junk her lines, burn her notices. Can teachers un teach? Constance demanded. 'Who is Constance, what is she?' was the essence of her declaration. Being only forward teachers, they didn't know how to teach backward. So, Constance was driven to-"

"The basement dressing rooms," I said. "Snatch the pictures from upstairs, sure, but then wipe out the evidence of her former selves on the mirrors. Scrape, erase, eliminate, name by name, year by year."

I finished and sipped my drink and shut up.

"Is the train in Murder on the Orient Express pulling into the station?" said Fritz, lying back full-length like Caesar in his bath.

"Yes."

"Furthermore," said Fritz Wong in his fine Germanic guttural, "are you free to accept work on a screenplay titled The Many Deaths of Rattigan, starting Monday, five hundred a week, ten weeks, twenty thousand bonus if we finally shoot the goddamn film?"

"Take the money and run," said Henry.

"Crumley, you want me to take his offer?" I said.

"It's dumb thinking but a great film," said Crumley.

"You don't believe me?" I cried.

"Nobody could be as nuts as you just said," said Crumley.

"Good God, why have I stood here upchucking my guts?" I sank in my chair.

"I don't want to live," I said.

"Yes, you do." Fritz leaned forward, scribbling on a pad.

Five hundred a week was there.

He threw a five-dollar bill on top.

"Your first ten minutes' salary!"

"Then you almost believe? No." I pushed the paper away. "Got to be one of you here gets my idea."

"Me," a voice said.

We all looked at Blind Henry.

"Sign the contract," he said, "but make him sign saying he really believes every word you say!"

I hesitated, then scribbled my own manifesto.

Rumbling, Fritz signed.

"That Constance," he growled. "Damn! She shows up at your door, flings herself on you like a goddamn snake. Hell! Who cares if she kills herself? Why should she run scared of her own phone books and look up all the stupid people who led her down the garden path? Would phone books scare you? Christ, no! There had to be a reason for her setting out to run, to seek. Motivation. Why, goddammit, why all that work, to get what? Hold on."

Fritz stopped, his face suddenly pale, then slowly suffusing with color. "No. Yes. No, couldn't be. No. Yes. Is!"

"Is what, Fritz?"

"I'm glad I talk to myself," said Fritz. "I'm glad I listen. Did anyone hear?"

"You haven't said, Fritz."

"I'll talk to myself, and you eavesdrop, ja?"

"Ja," I said.

Fritz shot me through the heart with one glare. He doused his irritation with a swallow of his martini and said, "A month ago, two months, she threw herself across my desk, with heavy breaths. Was it true, she cried, I was starting some new film? A movie yet nameless? 'Ja,' I said. 'Yes, maybe.' And is there a part for me?' she said, on my shoulder, in my lap. 'No, no,' I said. 'Yes, there must be. There has to be. Tell me, Fritz, what is it?' I should have never told her. But I did, God help me!"