Graham Masterton - Mirror

'Pip Young' was June Lassiter's inspired new name for Lejeune, the Fox board having decided that Lejeune was too foreign-sounding, especially for a boy with such a clipped foreign-sounding accent. Actually, Boofuls' accent wasn't foreign at all, it was simply fifty years out of date.

Martin kept in touch with Sweet Chariot's progress through Morris; and through Kathy Lupanek, with whom he had made a special effort to be friends. He had even taken her out for lunch at Stratton's and brought her flowers. Kathy Lupanek had spent two hours telling Martin about her abused childhood. Martin had sympathized.

Back at Franklin Avenue, week after week, Martin and the Capellis lived a life of empty restlessness, waiting for Sweet Chariot to be shot and edited and scored and premiered. As far as Martin was concerned, time inside the house seemed to stand still, while the days rushed silently past outside his window, a speeded-up movie of clouds, sunsets, thunderstorms, smog.

He tried not to watch the mirror. He took his typewriter into the kitchen and kept up his income by pecking out rewrites for Search for Tomorrow and The Guiding Light. But every now and then he would find that he had dried up; and that he had been staring at his keyboard for almost a half hour without writing a word. Then he would walk into the sitting room and stare at his reflection in the mirror and whisper 'Emilio? Where the hell are you, Emilio? Are you alive? Are you dead?'

But there was nothing. No answers, no apparitions, nothing but a cold and clear reflection of the world as it was.

Sometimes Ramone came by, and they would sit on the sofa and look at themselves in the mirror and drink a couple of bottles of wine. To begin with - when Martin had told him all about Father Quinlan and his threats about the Revelation — Ramone had been all for smashing the mirror to pieces. 'Just break the bastard to bits, why don't we?' But the days went by, and he became calmer and more philosophical, and maybe Father Quinlan had been nothing but an oddball, after all.

One morning soon after Boofuls and Miss Redd had left the house they saw police next door. Maria Bocanegra had disappeared; nobody knew where. At first her landlady had assumed that she had gone home to her parents in San Diego, but then a month later her parents had arrived to visit her. Her clothes were still strewn around her room, her bed unmade, her lipstick still open and melted across her dressing table. Her father declared, 'It's a total mystery, like that ship with breakfass on it and no people, the whassname, the Marry Sir Less:

They saw nothing at all of Boofuls and Miss Redd. Nobody was allowed anywhere near them, except at specially selected press calls, to which Martin was conspicuously not invited. Martin tried to call Boofuls on the telephone three or four times, but each time he was told that 'Mr Young is not accepting any calls, I'm sorry'. One Thursday afternoon, drunk on California Chablis, he had driven around to Boofuls' bungalow and yelled out, 'Boofuls! You bastard! You listen to me, you bastard! I want Emilio back!' He had been escorted off the Fox lot by two tetchy security guards, and June Lassiter had called Morris Nathan and told him to keep Martin Williams at least a mile away from Century City at all times; in fact, he wasn't even allowed to turn into Avenue of the Stars, on pain of never writing for 20th Century-Fox Television ever again, ever.

Martin bitterly wondered which was worse: Armageddon or never writing for 20th Century-Fox Television again.

Meanwhile, taking Father Quinlan's advice, he read and reread Through the Looking-Glass, and he studied the letter which Father Quinlan had been trying to deliver to him on the day he was killed.

'Only the child can destroy the child, and only the child can destroy the parent: What the hell did that mean?

Ramone remarked, 'My old man, he was always saying that I was going to be the death of him. Maybe that's what it means.'

In the first week of November, Mr Capelli came stamping up the stairs and walked into Martin's kitchen without knocking. He was holding up a folded-back copy of Variety. He slapped it with the back of his hand and dropped it on the kitchen table. Martin had been typing out some new dialogue for As the World Turns, and he froze for a moment, trying to remember the end of the sentence he had been writing.

'It's there!' Mr Capelli declared. 'Premiere date! There it is! November 12! That's when I get my Emilio back!'

Martin picked up the paper. Another full-page advertisement. 20th Century-Fox announces the world premiere of Sweet Chariot, an angelic musical starring Pip Young, Gerald-ine Glosset, Lester Kroll . .. unprecedented simultaneous premieres at Mann's Chinese Theater, Hollywood Boulevard, as well as Lux Theaters, Union City Theaters, Hyatt Theaters ... altogether four hundred movie theaters throughout the United States . . . plus special international openings in London, Paris, Madrid, Rome . . . Absolutely no previews.'

Martin slowly shook his head. 'Did you ever hear of anything like this? Simultaneous openings throughout the world? They're really going to send out four hundred prints before they have any idea whether anybody's going to like it or not?'

Mr Capelli didn't answer, but tapped the paper with his finger. 'That's the date, November twelfth. That's when I get my Emilio back.'

Martin pushed back his chair and went across to the telephone on the kitchen wall. He punched out Morris Nathan's number. 'Morris . . .?' he said at last. 'Yes, it's Martin. Listen, did you see how Fox is going to launch Sweet Chariot?'

'I saw it,' said Morris. 'And if you want my candid opinion, I think they're out of their tree. They've kept this whole picture secret. Nobody's seen any rushes; nobody knows whether it's good, or half good, or terrible. Still, they want to burn their fingers, who am I to tell them what to do? They're taking a hell of a chance. June told me the final production cost was $32.4 million. So I said, what's this, Heaven's Gate with music?'

'And what did she say?'

'She said, wait and see, that's what she said. And I said, just remember, I didn't have anything to do with this. If you lose $32.4 million because of some untrained juvey, don't come whining to me.'

'Do you know whose idea this was? This simultaneous premiere?'

'The kid's, or that nanny of his, who do you think?'

'And they gave in to him? June Lassiter gave in to an eight-year-old kid?'

'They had to. That's the way I heard it, anyway. They were three quarters of the way through shooting the picture and the kid appears in ninety percent of the scenes and sings every single song, and then he turns around and says they have to open worldwide in four hundred theaters and that's it, otherwise he walks. They could have sued him, but what for?'

'Okay, Morris, thanks,' said Martin.

'Did you finish that rewrite yet?' Morris demanded.

'Oh, sure, I'll run it up to you later this afternoon.'

Morris cleared his throat. 'You're a good writer, Martin. One of these days you're going to be a better than average writer.'

'Morris, you're an angel.'

'Don't talk to me about angels.'

The night before the premiere, Martin stood by his open window, looking out over the lights of the Hollywood Hills. Ramone turned the corner of the street and came walking toward the house, brandishing a large bottle of red wine. 'Hey, muchacho, fancy a little nerve suppressant?'

Ramone came upstairs and they stood side by side, drinking wine and feeling the cool night air blowing on their faces. Ramone lit a cheroot and blew smoke, and the smoke fled around the corner of the house as if it were trying to escape from something frightening.