“I’m going to need to find a dancing teacher,” Alis was saying. “You don’t know of one, do you?”
In Hollywood? She was as likely to find one as she was to run into Fred Astaire. Less likely.
And what if she was smart enough to know how good she was? What if she’d studied the movies and criticized them? None of it was going to bring back musicals. None of it was going to make ILMGM start shooting liveactions again.
I looked up at the arrays. On the bottom row Fred was trying to find the real Ginger in among the masks. On the third screen, top row, he was trying to talk her into a pop—she twirled away from him, he advanced, she returned, he bent toward her, she leaned languorously away.
All of which I’d better get on with or I was going to flash with Alis still sitting there on the edge of the bed, clothes on and knees together.
I asked for sound on screen three and sat down next to Alis on the bed. “I think you’re good enough,” I said.
She glanced at me, confused, and then realized I was picking up on her “I’m not good enough” line. “You haven’t seen me dance,” she said.
“I wasn’t talking about dancing,” I said, and bent forward to kiss her.
The center screen flashed white. “Message,” it said. “From Heada Hopper.” She’d spelled Hedda with an “a.” I wondered if Hedda’d had another revelatory flash and was interrupting to tell it to me.
“Message override,” I said, and stood up to clear the screen, but it was too late. The message was already on the screen.
“Mayer’s here,” it read. “Shall I send him up? Heada.”
The last thing I wanted was Mayer up here. I’d have to make a copy of the paste-up and take it down to him. “River Phoenix file,” I said to the computer, and shoved in a blank opdisk. “Where the Boys Are. Record remake.”
The dancing screens went blank, and Alis stood up. “Should I go?” she said.
“No!” I said, rummaging for a remote. The comp spit out the disk, and I snatched it up. “Stay here. I’ll be right back. I’ve just got to give this to a guy.”
I handed her the remote. “Here. Hit M for Menu, and ask for whatever you want. If the movie you want isn’t on ILMGM, you can call up the other libraries by hitting File. I’ll be back before the Continental’s over. Promise.”
I started out the door. I wanted to shut the door to keep her there, but it looked more like I’d be right back if I left it open. “Don’t leave,” I said, and tore downstairs.
Heada was waiting for me at the foot of the stairs. “Sorry,” she said. “Were you popping her?”
“Thanks to you, no,” I said, scanning the room for Mayer. The room had gotten even more crowded since Alis and I left. So had the screen—a dozen Fred and Gingers were running split-screen circles around each other.
“I wouldn’t have interrupted you,” Heada said, “but you asked before if Mayer was here.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “Where is he?”
“Over there.” She pointed in the direction of the Freds and Gingers. Mayer was under them, listening to Vincent explain his edit program and twitching from too much chooch. “He said he wanted to talk to you about a job.”
“Great,” I said. “That means his boss has got a new girlfriend, and I’ve got to paste on a new face.”
She shook her head. “Viamount’s taking over ILMGM and Arthurton’s going to head Project Development, which means Mayer’s boss is out, and Mayer’s scrambling. He’s got to distance himself from his boss and convince Arthur-ton he should keep him instead of bringing in his own team. So this job is probably a bid to impress Arthurton, which could mean a remake, or even a new project. In which case…”
I’d stopped listening. Mayer’s boss was out, which meant the disk in my hand was worth exactly nothing, and the job he wanted to see me about was pasting Arthurton’s girlfriend into something. Or maybe the girlfriends of the whole Viamount board of directors. Either way I wasn’t going to get paid.
“… in which case,” Heada was saying, “his coming to you is a good sign.”
“Golly,” I said, clasping my hands together. “‘This could be my big break.’”
“Well, it could,” she said defensively. “Even a remake would be better than these pimping jobs you’ve been doing.”
“They’re all pimping jobs.” I started through the crush toward Mayer.
Heada squeezed through after me. “If it is an official project,” she said, “tell him you want a credit.”
Mayer had moved to the other side of the freescreen, probably trying to get away from Vincent, who was right behind him, still talking. Above them, the crowd on the screen was still revolving, but slower and slower, and the edges of the room were starting to soft-focus. Mayer turned and saw me, and waved, all in slow motion.
I stopped, and Heada crashed into me. “Do you have any slalom?” I said, and she started fumbling in her hand again. “Or ice? Anything to hold off a klieg flash?”
She held out the same assortment of capsules and cubes as before, only not as many. “I don’t think so,” she said, peering at them.
“Find me something, okay?” I said, and squeezed my eyes shut, hard, and then opened them again. The soft-focus receded.
“I’ll see if I can find you some lude,” she said. “Remember, if it’s the real thing, you want a credit.” She slipped off toward a pair of James Deans, and I went up to Mayer.
“Here you go,” I said to Mayer, and tried to hand him the disk. I wasn’t going to get paid, but it was at least worth a try.
“Tom!” Mayer said. He didn’t take the disk.
Heada was right. His boss was out.
“Just the guy I’ve been looking for,” he said. “What have you been up to?”
“Working for you,” I said, and tried again to hand him the disk. “It’s all done. Just what you ordered. River Phoenix, close-up, kiss. She’s even got four lines.”
“Great,” he said, and pocketed the disk. He pulled out a palmtop and punched in numbers. “You want this in your on-line account, right?”
“Right,” I said, wondering if this was some kind of bizarre pre-flashing symptom: actually getting what you wanted. I looked around for Heada. She wasn’t talking to the James Deans anymore.
“I can always count on you for the tough jobs,” Mayer said. “I’ve got a new project you might be interested in.” He put a friendly arm around my shoulder and led me away from Vincent. “Nobody knows this,” he said, “but there’s a possibility of a merger between ILMGM and Viamount, and if it goes through, my boss and his girlfriends’ll be a dead issue.”
How does Heada do it? I thought wonderingly.
“It’s still just in the talking stages, of course, but we’re all very excited about the prospect of working with a great company like Viamount.”
Translation: It’s a done deal, and scrambling isn’t even the word. I looked down at Mayer’s hands, half expecting to see blood under his fingernails.
“Viamount’s as committed as ILMGM is to the making of quality movies, but you know how the American public is about mergers. So our first job, if this thing goes through, is to send them the message: ‘We care.’ Do you know Austin Arthurton?”
Sorry, Heada, I thought, it’s another pimping job.
“What’s the job?” I said. “Didging in Arthurton’s girlfriend? Boyfriend? German shepherd?”
“Jesus, no!” he said, and looked around to make sure nobody’d heard that. “Arthurton’s totally straight, vegetarian, clean, a real Gary Cooper type. He’s completely committed to convincing the public the studio’s in responsible hands. Which is where you come in. We’ll supply you with a memory upgrade and automatic print-and-send, and I’ll have you paid on receipt through the feed.” He waved the disk of his old boss’s girlfriend at me. “No more having to track me down at parties.” He smiled.
“What’s the job?”
He didn’t answer. He looked around the room, twitching. “I s
ee a lot of new faces,” he said, smiling at a Marilyn in yellow feathers. There’s No Business Like Show Business. “Anything interesting?”
Yes, up in my room, and I want to flash on her, not you, Mayer, so get to the point.
“ILMGM’s taken some flack lately. You know the rap: violence, AS’s, negative influence. Nothing serious, but Arthurton wants to project a positive image—”
And he’s a real Gary Cooper type. I was wrong about its being a pimping job, Heada. It’s a slash-and-burn.
“What does he want out?” I said.
He started to twitch again. “It’s not a censorship job, just a few adjustments here and there. The average revision won’t be more than ten frames. Each one’ll take you maybe fifteen minutes, and most of them are simple deletes. The comp can do those automatically.”
“And I take out what? Sex? Chooch?”
“AS’s. Twenty-five a movie, and you get paid whether you have to change anything or not. It’ll keep you in chooch for a year.”
“How many movies?”
“Not that many. I don’t know exactly.”
He reached in his suit pocket and handed me an opdisk like the one I’d given him. “The menu’s on here.”
“Everything? Cigarettes? Alcohol?”
“All addictive substances,” he said, “visuals, audios, and references. But the Anti-Smoking League’s already taken the nicotine out, and most of the movies on the list have only got a couple of scenes that need to be reworked. A lot of them are already clean. All you’ll have to do is watch them, do a print-and-send, and collect your money.”
Right. And then feed in access codes for two hours. A wipe was easy, five minutes tops, and a superimpose ten, even working from a vid. It was the accesses that were murder. Even my River Phoenix-watching marathon was nothing compared to the hours I’d spend reading in accesses, working my way past authorization guards and ID-locks so the fibe-op source wouldn’t automatically spit out the changes I’d made.
“No, thanks,” I said, and tried to hand him back the disk. “Not without full access.”
Mayer looked patient. “You know why the authorization codes are necessary.”
Sure. So nobody can change a pixel of all those copyrighted movies, or harm a hair on the head of all those bought-and-paid-for stars. Except the studios.
“Sorry, Mayer. Not interested,” I said, and started to walk away.
“Okay, okay,” he said, twitching. “Fifty per and full exec access. I can’t do anything about the fibe-op-feed ID-locks and the Film Preservation Society registration. But you can have complete freedom on the changes. No preapproval. You can be creative.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Creative.”
“Is it a deal?” he said.
Heada was sidling past the screen, looking up at Fred and Ginger. They were in close-up, gazing into each other’s eyes.
At least the job would pay enough for my tuition and my own AS’s, instead of having to have Heada mooch for me, instead of taking klieg by mistake and having to worry about flashing on Mayer and carrying an indelible image of him around in my head forever. And they’re all pimping jobs, in or out. Or official.
“Why not?” I said, and Heada came up. She took my hand and slipped a lude into it.
“Great,” Mayer said. “I’ll give you a list. You can do them in any order. A minimum of twelve a week.”
I nodded. “I’ll get right on it,” I said, and started for the stairs, popping the lude as I went.
Heada pursued me to the foot of the stairs. “Did you get the job?”
“Yeah.”
“Was it a remake?”
I didn’t have time to listen to what she’d say when she found out it was a slash-and-burn. “Yeah,” I said, and sprinted back up the stairs.
There really wasn’t any hurry. The lude would give me half an hour at least and Alis was already on the bed. If she was still there. If she hadn’t gotten her fill of Fred and Ginge and left.
The door was half-open the way I’d left it, which was either a good or a bad sign. I looked in. I could see the near bank. The array was blank. Thanks, Mayer. She’s gone, and all I’ve got to show for it is a Hays Office list. If I’m lucky I’ll get to flash on Walter Brennan taking a swig of rotgut whiskey.
I started to push the door open, and stopped. She was there, after all. I could see her reflection in the silvered screens. She was sitting on the bed, leaning forward, watching something. I pushed the door farther open so I could see what. The door scraped a little against the carpet, but she didn’t move. She was watching the center screen. It was the only one on. She must not have been able to figure out the other screens from my hurried instructions, or maybe one screen was all she was used to back in Bedford Falls.
She was watching with that focused look she had had downstairs, but it wasn’t the Continental. It wasn’t even Ginger dancing side by side with Fred. It was Eleanor Powell. She and Fred were tap-dancing on a dark polished floor. There were lights in the background, meant to look like stars, and the floor reflected them in long, shimmering trails of light.
Fred and Eleanor were in white—him in a suit, no tails, no top hat this time, her in a white dress with a knee-length skirt that swirled out when she swung into the turns. Her light brown hair was the same length as Alis’s and was pulled back with a white headband that glittered, catching the light from the reflections.
Fred and Eleanor were dancing side by side, casually, their arms only a little out to the sides for balance, their hands not even close to touching, matching each other step for step.
Alis had the sound off, but I didn’t need to hear the taps, or the music, to know what this was. Broadway Melody of 1940, the second half of the “Begin the Beguine” number. The first half was a tango, formal jacket and long white dress, the kind of stuff Fred did with all his partners, except that he didn’t have to cover for Eleanor Powell or maneuver fancy steps around her. She could dance as well as he did.
And the second half was this—no fancy dress, no fuss, the two of them dancing side by side, full-length shot and one long, unbroken take. He tapped a combination, she echoed it, snapping the steps out in precision time, he did another, she answered, neither of them looking at the other, each of them intent on the music.
Not intent. Wrong word. There was no concentration in them at all, no effort, they might have made up the whole routine just now as they stepped onto the polished floor, improvising as they went.
I stood there in the door, watching Alis watch them as she sat there on the edge of the bed, looking like sex was the farthest thing from her mind. Heada was right—this had been a bad idea. I should go back down to the party and find some face who wasn’t locked at the knees, whose big ambition was to work as a warmbody for Columbia Tri-Star. The lude I’d just taken would hold off any flash long enough for me to talk one of the Marilyns into coming on cue.
And Ruby Keeler’d never miss me—she was oblivious to everything but Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell, doing a series of rapid-fire tap breaks. She probably wouldn’t even notice if I brought the Marilyn back up to the bed to pop. Which is what I should do, while I still had time.
But I didn’t. I leaned against the door, watching Fred and Eleanor and Alis, watching Alis’s reflection in the blank screens of the right-hand array. Fred and Eleanor were refleeted in the screens, too, their images superimposed on Alis’s intent face on the silver screens.
And intent wasn’t the right word for her either. She had lost that alert, focused look she’d had watching the Continental, counting the steps, trying to memorize the combinations. She had gone beyond that, watching Fred and Eleanor dance side by side, their hands not touching, and they weren’t counting either, they were lost in the effortless steps, in the easy turns, lost in the dancing, and so was Alis. Her face was absolutely still watching them, like a freeze frame, and Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell were somehow still, too, even as they danced.
They tapped, turning, and Ele
anor danced Fred back across the floor, facing him now but still not looking at him, her steps reflections of his, and then they were side by side again, swinging into a tap cadenza, their feet and the swirling skirt and the fake stars reflected in the polished floor, in the screens, in Alis’s still face.
Eleanor swung into a turn, not looking at Fred, not having to, the turn perfectly matched to his, and they were side by side again, tapping in counterpoint, their hands almost touching, Eleanor’s face as still as Alis’s, intent, oblivious. Fred tapped out a ripple, and Eleanor repeated it, and glanced sideways over her shoulder and smiled at him, a smile of awareness and complicity and utter joy.
I flashed.
The klieg usually gives you at least a few seconds warning, enough time to do something to hold it off or at least close your eyes, but not this time. No warning, no telltale soft-focus, nothing.
One minute I was leaning against the door, watching Alis watch Fred and Eleanor tippity-tapping away, and the next: freeze frame, Cut! Print and Send, like a flashbulb going off in your face, only the afterimage is as clear as the picture, and it doesn’t fade, it doesn’t go away.
I put my hand up in front of my eyes, like somebody trying to shield themselves from a nuclear blast, but it was too late. The image was already burned into my neocortex.
I must’ve staggered back against the door, too, and maybe even cried out, because when I opened my eyes, she was looking at me, alarmed, concerned.
“Is something wrong?” she said, scrambling off the bed and taking my arm. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said. Fine. She was holding the remote. I took it away from her and clicked the comp off. The screen went silver, blank except for the reflection of the two of us standing there in the door. And superimposed on the reflection another reflection—Alis’s face, rapt, absorbed, watching Fred and Eleanor in white, dancing on the starry floor.