Connie Willis - Remake

I popped the capsules in my mouth and reached for the bourbon.

Heada snatched it out of my hand. “You take them with water.” She went in the bathroom, and I could hear the gurgle of the bourbon being poured down the drain.

She came out of the bathroom and handed me a glass of water. “Drink as much as you can. It’ll help flush your system faster. No alcohol.” She opened the closet, felt around inside, pulled out a bottle of vodka.

“No alcohol,” she said, unscrewing the cap, and went back in the bathroom to pour it out. “Any other bottles?”

“Why?” I said, sitting down on the bed. “You decide to switch over from chooch?”

“I told you, I quit,” she said. “Stand up.”

I did, and she knelt down and started fishing under the bed.

“Which is how I know how the ridigaine’s going to make you feel,” she said, pulling out a bottle of champagne. “You’ll want a drink, but don’t. You’ll just toss it. And I mean toss it.” She fumbled with the cork on the bottle. “So don’t drink. And don’t try to do anything. Lie down as soon as you start feeling anything, headache, shakes. And stay there. You might have halluces. Snakes, monsters…”

“Six-foot-tall rabbits named Harvey,” I said.

“I’m not kidding,” she said. “I felt like I was going to die when I took it. And chooch is a lot easier to quit than alcohol.”

“So why’d you quit?” I said.

She gave me a wry look and went back to messing with the cork. “I thought it would make somebody notice me.”

“And did they?”

“No,” she said, and went back to messing with the cork. “Why did you call and ask me to bring you some ridigaine?”

“I told you,” I said. “Mayer—”

She popped the cork. “Mayer’s in New York, pimping support for his new boss, who, the word has it, is on the way out. The rumor is the ILMGM execs don’t like his high-handed moralizing. At least when it applies to them.” She poured out the champagne and came back in the room. “Any other champagne?”

“Lots,” I said, and went over to the comp. “Next frame,” I said, and a tubful of champagne bottles came up on the screen. “You want to pour these out, too?” I turned, grinning.

She was looking at me seriously. “What’s really up?”

“Next frame,” I said. The screen shifted to Ingrid, looking anxious, her hair like a halo. I took the champagne glass out of her hand.

“You saw her again, didn’t you?” she said.

Everything.

“Who?” I said, even though it was hopeless. “Yeah,” I said. “I saw her.” I shut off Notorious. “Come here,” I said, “I want you to look at something.”

“Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,” I said to the comp. “Frame 25-118.”

The screen lit Jane Powell, sitting in the wagon, holding a basket.

“Forward realtime,” I said, and Jane Powell handed the basket to Julie Newmar.

“I thought this was going into litigation,” Heada said over my shoulder.

“Over who?” I said. “Jane Powell or Howard Keel?”

“Russ Tamblyn,” she said, pointing at him. He’d climbed on the wagon and was gazing soulfully at the little blonde, Alice. “Virtusonic’s been using him in snuffporn movies, and ILMGM doesn’t like it. They’re claiming copyright abuse.”

Russ Tamblyn, looking young and innocent, which was probably the point, went off with Alice, and Howard Keel lifted Jane Powell down off the buckboard.

“Stop,” I said to the computer. “I want you to look at this next scene,” I said to Heada. “At the faces. Forward realtime,” I said, and the dancers formed two lines and bowed and curtsied to each other.

I don’t know what I’d expected Heada to do — gasp and clutch her heart like Lillian Gish maybe. Or turn to me halfway through and ask, “What exactly is it I’m supposed to be looking for?”

She didn’t do either. She watched the entire scene, still and silent, her face almost as focused on the screen as Alis’s had been, and then said quietly, “I didn’t think she’d do it.”

For a moment I couldn’t register what she said for the roaring in my head, the roaring that was saying, “It is her. It’s not a flash. It is her.”

“All that talk about finding a dance teacher,” Heada was saying. “All that stuff about Fred Astaire. I never thought she’d—”

“Never thought she’d do what?” I said blankly.

“This,” she said, waving her hand vaguely at the screen, where the sides of the barn were going up. “That she’d end up as somebody’s popsy,” she said. “That she’d sign on. Give up. Sell out.” She gestured at the screen again. “Did Mayer say which of the studio execs you were doing it for?”

“I didn’t do it,” I said.

“Well, somebody did it,” she said. “Mayer must’ve asked Vincent or somebody. I thought you said she didn’t want her face pasted on somebody else’s.”

“She didn’t. She doesn’t,” I said. “This isn’t a paste-up. It’s her, dancing.”

She looked at the screen. A cowboy brought his hammer down hard on Russ Tamblyn’s thumb.

“She wouldn’t sell out,” I said.

“To quote a friend of mine,” she said, “everybody sells out.”

“No,” I said. “People sell out to get what they want. Getting her face pasted onto somebody else’s body isn’t what she wanted. She wanted to dance in the movies.”

“Maybe she needed the money,” Heada said, looking at the screen. Someone whacked Howard Keel with a board, and Russ Tamblyn took a poke at him.

“Maybe she figured out she couldn’t have what she wanted.”

“No,” I said, thinking about her standing there on Hollywood Boulevard, her face set. “You don’t understand. No.”

“Okay,” she said placatingly. “She didn’t sell out. It isn’t a paste-up.” She waved at the screen. “So what is it? How’d she get on there if somebody didn’t paste her in?”

Howard Keel shoved a pair of brawlers into the corner, and the barn fell apart, collapsing into a clatter of boards and chagrin. “I don’t know,” I said.

We both stood there a minute, looking at the wreckage.

“Can I see the scene again?” Heada said.

“Frame 25-200, forward realtime,” I said, and Howard Keel reached up again to lift Jane Powell down. The dancers formed their lines. And there was Alis, dancing in the movies.

“Maybe it isn’t her,” Heada said. “That’s why you asked me to bring over the ridigaine, wasn’t it, because you thought it might be the alcohol?”

“You see her, too.”

“I know,” she said, frowning, “but I’m not really sure I know what she looks like. I mean, the times I saw her I was pretty splatted, and so were you. And it wasn’t all that many times, was it?”

That party, and the time Heada sent her to ask me for the access, and the episode of the skids. Memorable occasions, all.

“No,” I said.

“So it could be it’s just somebody else who looks like her. Her hair’s darker than that, isn’t it?”

“A wig,” I said. “Wigs and makeup can make you look really different.”

“Yeah,” Heada said, as if that proved something. “Or really alike. Maybe this person’s wearing a wig and makeup that makes her look like Alis. Who is it anyway? In the movie?”

“Virginia Gibson,” I said.

“Maybe this Virginia Gibson and Alis just look alike. Was she in any other movies? Virginia Gibson, I mean? If she was, we could look at them and see what she looks like, and if this is her or not.” She looked concernedly at me. “You’d better let the ridigaine work first, though. Are you having any symptoms yet? Headache?”