Ben Bova - The Starcrossed

He reached out and grasped her by the shoulders. Lightly. Without pulling her toward him. “Why are you staying?” he asked. “Why do you put up with all this bullshit?”

“Somebody’s got to. It’s my job.”

“Ever think of quitting?”

“Once every hour, at least.”

“Want to come to Aspen with me?”

She stepped closer to him and let her head rest against his chest. “Its a tempting thought. And you’re very sweet to ask me. But I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Reasons. My own reasons”

“And they’re none of my business, right?”

She smiled up at him. “You’ve got enough problems. You don’t need mine. Go on, go off to the mountains and breathe clean air and forget about this show. I’ll square it with B.F.”

Abruptly, he let go of her and reached for the car door. “Can I drop you off at the hotel?”

“I’ve got my own car.” She pointed to it, sitting alone and cold looking a few empty rows down the line.

“Okay,” he said. “Goodbye. And thanks.”

“Good luck, Mitch.”

She walked to her car and stood beside it as he gunned his engine and drove off.

It’ll look like Orson Welles , Gregory Earnest told himself as he strode purposefully onto the set. Script by Gregory Earnest. Produced by Gregory Earnest. Directed by Gregory Earnest.

He stood there for a magnificent moment, clad in the traditional dungarees and tee shirt of a big-time director, surrounded by the crew and actors who stood poised waiting for his orders.

“Very well,” he said to them. “Let’s do this one right.”

Four hours later he was drenched with perspiration and longing for the safety of his bed.

Dulaq had just delivered the longest speech in his script:

“Oh yeah? We’ll see about dat!”

He stood bathed in light, squinting at the cue cards that had his next line printed in huge red block letters, while the actor in the scene with him backed away and gave his line:

“Rom, we’re going to crashl The ship’s out of control!”

Dulaq didn’t answer. He peered at the cue card, then turned toward Earnest and bellowed, “What th’hell’s dat word?”

“Cut!” Earnest yelled. His throat was raw from saying it so often.

“Which one?” the script girl asked Dulaq.

“Dat one… wit’ de ‘S.’”

“ Stabilize ,” the girl read.

Dulaq shook his head and muttered to himself, “Stabilize. Stabilize. Stabilize.”

This is getting to be a regular routine , Brenda told herself. I feel like the Welcome Wagon Lady… in reverse .

She was at the airport again, sitting at the half-empty bar with Les Montpelier. His travelbags were resting on the floor between their stools.

“I don’t understand why you’re staying,” Montpelier said, toying with the plastic swizzle stick in his Tijuana Teaser.

“B.F. asked me to,” she said.

“So you’re going to stick it out until the bloody end?” he asked rhetorically. “The last soldier at Fort Zindemeuf.”

She took a sip of her vodka gimlet. “Bill Oxnard still comes up every weekend. I’m not completely surrounded by idiots.”

Montpelier shook his head, more in pity than in sorrow. “I could ask B.F. to send somebody else up here… hell, there’s no real reason to have anybody here. The seventh show is finished shooting. All they have to do now is the editing. No sense starting the next six until we get the first look at the ratings.”

“The editing can be tricky,” Brenda said. “These people that Earnest has hired don’t have much experience with three-dee editing.”

“They don’t have much experience with anything.”

“They work cheap, though.”

Montpelier lifted his glass. “There is that. I’ll bet this show cost less than any major network presentation since the Dollar Collapse of Eighty-Four.”

“Do you think that there’s any chance the show will last beyond the first seven weeks?” Brenda asked.

“Are you kidding?”

“Thank god,” she said. “Then I can go home as soon as the editing’s finished.”

The P.A. system blared something unintelligible about a flight to Los Angeles, Honolulu and Tahiti.

“That’s me,” Montpelier said. “I’d better dash.” He started fumbling in his pocket for cash.

“Go on, catch your plane,” Brenda said. “I’ll take care of the tab.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Give B.F. my love.”

“Will do.” He grabbed his travelbags and hurried out of the bar.

Brenda turned from watching him hurry out the doorway to the three-dee set behind the bar. The football game was on. Honolulu was meeting Pittsburgh and the Pineapples’ star quarterback, Gene Toho, was at that very minute throwing a long pass to a player who was racing down the sideline. He caught the ball and ran into the endzone. The referee raised both arms to signal a touchdown.

Brenda raised her glass. “Hail to thee, blithe spirit,” she said, and realized she was slightly drunk.

The gay on the stool at her left nudged her with a gentle elbow. “Hey, you a Pineapples fan?”

He wasn’t bad looking, if you ignored the teeth, Brenda decided. She smiled at him. “Perforce, friend. Perforce.”

Even though he knew better than anyone else exactly what to expect, the sight still exhilarated Bill Oxnard.

He was sitting in the darkened editing room—more a closet than a real room. He knew that what he was watching was a holographic image of a group of actors performing a teleplay. (A poor teleplay, but that didn’t matter much, really.)

Yet what he saw was Francois Dulaq, life-sized, threedimensional, full, real, solid, standing before him. He was squinting a little and seemed to be staring oft into space. Oxnard knew that he was actually trying to read his cue cards. He wore an Elizabethan costume of tights, tunic and cape. A sword dangled from his belt and got in his way whenever he tried to move. His boots clumped on the wooden deck of the set. But he was as solid as real flesh, to the eye.

“You!” Dulaq was saying, trying to sound surprised. “You’re here!”

“You” was Rita Yearling, who in her own overly heated way, was every bit as bad an actor as Dulaq. But who cared? All she had to do was try to stand up and breathe a little. Her gown was metallic and slinky; it clung in all the right places, which was everywhere on her body. She was wearing a long flowing golden wig and her childinnocent face gave the final touch of maddening desirability to her aphrodisiacal anatomy.

“I have waited for you,” she panted. “I have crossed time and space to be with you. I have renounced my family and my home because I love you.”

“Caught up with you at last!” announced a third performer, stepping out of the shadows where the holo image ended. This one was dressed very much like Dulaq, complete with sword, although his costume was blood red whereas Dulaq’s was (what else?) true blue.

“You’re coming back with me,” the actor recited to Rita Yearling. “Our father is lying ill and dying, and only the sight of you can cure him.”

“Oh!” gasped Rita, as she tried to stuff both her fists in her mouth.

“Take yer han’s off her!” Dulaq cried, even though the other actor had forgotten to grasp Rita’s arm.

“We can dub over that,” an engineer muttered in the darkness beside Oxnard.

“Don’t try to interfere, Montague dog,” said the actor. “Stand back or I’ll blast you.” But instead of pulling out the laser pistol that was in the.original script, he drew his sword. It flexed deeply, showing that it was made of rubber.