Connie Willis - Remake

“That’s right, Howard. Don’t tell her,” I said. “She won’t listen to you anyway. She’s got to find out for herself.”

They arrived at the cabin. I’d expected at least one of the brothers to have a corncob pipe, but they didn’t. There was some roughhousing, another song, and then a long stretch of pure wholesomeness till the barnraising.

I poured myself another bourbon and leaned forward, watching for homespun dissipation. Jane Powell handed pies and cakes out of the wagon, and a straw-covered jug I’d have to turn into a pot of beans or something, and they went into the barnraising number Alis had asked for the night I met her. “Ff to end of music,” I said, and then, “Wait,” which wasn’t a command, and they continued galloping through the dance, finished, and started in on raising the barn in record time.

“Stop,” I said. “Back at 96,” I said, and rew’d to the beginning of the dance. “Forward realtime,” I said, and there she was. Alis. In a pink gingham dress and white stockings, with her backlit hair pulled back into a bun.

“Freeze,” I said.

It’s the booze, I thought. Ray Milland in Lost Weekend, seeing pink elephants. Or some effect of the klieg, a delayed flash or something, superimposing Alis’s face over the dancers like it had been over the figures of Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell dancing on the polished floor.

And how often was this going to happen? Every time somebody went into a dance routine? Every time a face or a hair ribbon or a flaring skirt reminded me of that first flash? Deboozing Mayer’s movies was bad enough. I didn’t think I could take it if I had to look at Alis, too.

I turned the screen off and then on again, like I was trying to debug a program, but she was still there.

I watched the dance again, looking at her face carefully, and then triple-timed to the scene where the brides get kidnapped. The dancer, her light brown hair covered by a bonnet, looked like Alis but not like her. I triple-timed to the next dance number, the girls doing ballet steps in their pantaloons and white stockings this time, no bonnets, but whatever it was, her hair or the music or the flare of her skirt, had passed, and she was just a girl who looked like Alis. A girl, who, unlike Alis, had gotten to dance in the movies.

I ff’d through the rest of the movie, but there weren’t any more dance numbers and no sign of Alis, and this was all Another Lesson, Andrew, in not mixing bourbon with Rio Bravo tequila.

“Beginning credits,” I said, and went back and wiped the bottle in the boardinghouse scene and then triple-timed to the barnraising again to turn the jug into a pan of corn bread, and then thought I’d better watch the rest of the scene to make sure the jug wasn’t visible in any of the other shots.

“Print and send,” I said, “and forward realtime.”

And there she was again. Dancing in the movies.

MOVIE CLICHE #15: The Hangover. (Usually follows #14: The Party.) Headache, jumping at loud noises, flinching at daylight.

SEE: The Thin Man, The Tender Trap, After the Thin Man, McLintock!, Another Thin Man, The Philadelphia Story, Song of the Thin Man.

I accessed Heada, no visual. “Do you know of anything that can sober me up?”

“Fast or painless?”

“Fast.”

“Ridigaine,” she said promptly. “What’s up?”

“Nothing’s up,” I said. “Mayer’s bugging me to work harder on his movies, and I decided the AS’s are slowing me down. Do you have any?”

“I’ll have to ask around,” she said. “I’ll get some and bring it over.”

That’s not necessary, I wanted to say, which would only make her more suspicious. “Thanks,” I said.

While I was waiting for her I called up the credits. They weren’t much help. There were seven brides, after all, and the only ones I knew were Jane Powell and Ruta Lee, who’d been in every B-picture made in the seventies. Dorcas was Julie Newmeyer, who’d later changed her name to Julie Newmar. When I went back and looked at the barnraising scene again, it was obvious which one she was.

I watched it, listening for the other characters’ names. The little blonde Russ Tamblyn was in love with was named Alice, and Dorcas was the tall brunette. I ff’d to the kidnapping scene and matched the other girls to their characters’ names. The one in the pink dress was Virginia Gibson.

Virginia Gibson. “Screen Actors’ Guild directory,” I said, and gave it the name.

Virginia Gibson had been in an assortment of movies, including Athena and something called I Killed Wild Bill Hickok.

“Musicals,” I said, and the list shrank to five. No, four. Funny Face had Fred Astaire in it, which meant it was in litigation.

There was a knock on the door. I blanked the screen, then decided that would be a dead giveaway. “ Notorious,” I said, and then chickened out. What if Ingrid Bergman had Alis’s face, too? “Cancel,” I said, and tried to think of another movie, any movie. Except Athena.

“Tom, are you okay?” Heada called through the door.

“Coming,” I said, staring at the blank screen. Saratoga Trunk? No, that had Ingrid in it, too, and anyway, if this was going to happen all the time, I’d better know it before I took anything else.

“Notorious,” I said softly, “Frame 54-119,” and waited for Ingrid’s face to come up.

“Tom!” Heada shouted. “Is something wrong?”

Cary Grant went out of the ballroom, and Ingrid gazed after him, looking anxious and like she was about to cry. And looking like Ingrid, which was a relief.

“Tom!” Heada said, and I opened the door.

Heada came in and handed me some blue capsules. “Take two. With water. Why didn’t you answer the door?”

“I was getting rid of the evidence,” I said, pointing at the screen. “Thirty-four champagne bottles.”

“I watched that movie,” she said, going over to the screen. “It’s set in Brazil. It’s got stock shots of Rio de Janeiro and Sugar Loaf.”

“Right as always,” I said, and then, casually, “Speaking of which, you know everything, Heada. Do you know if Fred Astaire’s been copyrighted yet?”

“No,” she said. “ILMGM’s appealing.”

“How long before these ridigaine take effect?” I said before she could ask why I wanted to know about Fred Astaire.

“Depends on how much you’ve got in your system,” she said. “The way you’ve been popping it, six weeks.”

“Six weeks?”

“I’m kidding,” she said. “Four hours, maybe less. Are you sure you want to do this? What if you start flashing again?”

I didn’t ask her how she knew I’d been flashing. This was, after all, Heada.

She handed me the glass. “Drink lots of water. And pee as much as you can,” she said. “What’s really up?”

“Slashing and burning,” I said, turning back to the frozen screen. I cut out another champagne bottle.

She leaned over my shoulder. “Is this the scene where they run out of champagne, and Claude Rains goes down to the wine cellar and catches Cary Grant?”

“Not when I get through with it,” I said. “The champagne’s going to be ice cream. What do you think, should the uranium be hidden in the ice-cream freezer or the bag of rock salt?”

She looked at me seriously. “I think there’s something wrong. What is it?”

“I’m four weeks behind on Mayer’s list, and he’s twitching down my neck, that’s what’s wrong. Are you sure these are ridigaine?” I said, peering at the capsules. “They aren’t marked.”

“I’m sure,” she said, still looking suspiciously at me.