Cowboy For Hire (19 page)

She tried to
console herself with the thought of all the money she was making,
but sweat kept dripping down her arms and legs and trickling down
her back and between her breasts and annoying her.

“Fiddle,” she
grumbled.

“Beg pardon?”
Karen turned from wiping her forehead with a handkerchief and
lifted her eyebrows.

“Nothing,”
mumbled Amy. “Just talking to myself.”

“Better watch
out,” cautioned Karen. “If Huxtable catches you talking to
yourself, he’ll never let you live it down.”

She was right.
Amy shut her mouth and intended to keep it shut until she had to
say a line. Or pretend to say a line. Making a motion picture could
be awfully silly sometimes.

“Ready to be
tied to the log, Miss Wilkes?”

Charlie’s
friendly, humorous voice did something to banish Amy’s hot, black
thoughts. When she turned, she beheld him walking toward her, lean
and lanky, clean and handsome, and cool as a cucumber. How did he
do that?

“You don’t look
nearly as hot as you ought to, given the weather, Mr. Fox,” she
said, only partly teasing.

He grinned.
“Don’t tell anybody, but I just dumped a bucket of water on my
head.”

She and Karen
laughed. “What a splendid idea,” Amy said. “I wish I could do
that.”

“No such luck,”
Karen said. “In fact, we’d better get you made up.”

Amy sighed and
capitulated. Charlie walked with them over to the makeup table,
where several tall, short-backed stools stood with people behind
them under some shady umbrellas that didn’t do anything to reduce
the heat but would probably prevent sunburn. Amy presumed the
people were the Peerless Studio’s makeup artists.

Horace Huxtable
sat on one stool, and was in the process of having his handsome
face plastered with dead-white grease-paint by a young woman who
didn’t appear to be enjoying the job. Forgetting for a moment that
she knew better than to say or do anything that might stir Huxtable
to sarcasm, Amy stared at him, aghast.

He eyed her
malevolently. “What’s the matter, my dear Miss Wilkes? You’ll look
every bit as charming as I when you’re made up.”

Amy
swallowed, wishing she’d guarded her reaction to the hideous white
makeup more closely. But it was truly awful. Ghostly. Eerie. She
hated it. “I beg your pardon,” she said in a smothered
voice.

“Don’t beg,
sweetheart. It’s demeaning.”

Karen tapped
Amy on the arm and shook her head, as if to warn her not to answer
the fiendish Huxtable. Amy didn’t need the warning; she already
knew that Huxtable could twist anything anybody said into something
vile. So she smiled at Charlie, tried to stifle her distaste for
the icky makeup, and went to the tall stool that was farthest away
from Huxtable. She knew he followed her with his eyes, and wished
he’d just go away.

Fat chance.

Fortunately,
Charlie walked with her and helped her climb onto the stool. He, of
course, was tall enough so that he had no trouble sitting on the
high stool. Amy’s legs dangled several inches from the ground,
making her feel unsophisticated and more like a child playing
dress-up than an actress in a major motion picture.

The
makeup artist assigned to Amy tucked a towel into the neck of her
shirtwaist—which made her even hotter than she already was - and
brushed her hair back from her face. Amy almost protested before
she recalled that she knew nothing—
nothing
—about the process and she’d do well to keep her mouth
shut.

She was glad
she’d caught herself before she could rile Horace Huxtable. He was
still watching her, his gaze sharp, hoping to catch her doing
something he could malign, impugn, or otherwise belittle.

She had a mad
impulse to stick her tongue out at him. And then introduce him to
Vernon Catesby.

Which was
silly. “Mph.”

“Sorry,” the
makeup artist said, handing Amy a handkerchief. “Here, you can wipe
it with this.”

“Ew. Thank
you.” Pfew, makeup tasted vile. She wiped her lips and shuddered,
wondering if one could be poisoned by theatrical makeup. Probably
not. One never read about actors and actresses dying of imbibing
makeup.

Although
she couldn’t imagine how the greasepaint could stick to her sweaty
skin, the artist seemed to be having no problem in making her up.
As the woman worked, Amy observed the set. The cabin itself was
nondescript, but one wall had been removed so that the cameras
could manoeuvre more easily. Indoors, the place had been
transformed.

Members
of the movie crew had made up a huge cardboard saw-like structure
that was operated by a crank. A bucket of sawdust had been placed
beneath the saw, where another crew member would be positioned. He
would toss up handfuls of sawdust when the saw was cranked, in
order to simulate the process of cutting logs. Amy was supposed to
be tied to a log by Charlie Fox’s character, and rescued by Horace
Huxtable’s before she could be sawn in half by the cardboard saw.
It seemed to Amy that the chances of her being tickled to death by
the serrated cardboard were more likely.

The whole setup
seemed comical to her earlier in the day. Now it all seemed like
work. Hot work. And she had no desire to be rescued by Horace
Huxtable. In fact, she wanted nothing whatever to do with Huxtable
for the rest of her life.

But she’d
agreed to do this picture, and she’d keep her word. She felt as if
she had a blanket plastered to her face by the time the artist was
finished with her. She was hot, cranky, and felt smothered. A
glance at Charlie Fox garnered her a grin, which perked her up a
little bit, but not much. It was too hot to be perky. He, too,
looked ghastly in the makeup, although not nearly as ghastly as she
did.

She did,
however, feel as though she was among friends when she walked back
to the pseudo-sawmill, what with Charlie on one side and Karen on
the other. Even Horace Huxtable and the heat couldn’t defeat her if
she had such nice people on her side.

That
thought carried her through Horace Huxtable’s first snide comments
when she walked onto the set. Martin’s friendly smile and
considerate manner helped her through Huxtable’s next several
vicious verbal thrusts, and by that time Martin was ready to start
the scene.

“I know you’ve
not acted in front of the camera before, Amy, but just think of it
as an extension of me, if you want to. Then you won’t be worried
about it.”

Oh, really?
Little did he know. She smiled. “Certainly. Thank you.”

Huxtable
huffed.

Charlie said,
“Shall I tie her up now, Martin?”

“My, my, the
cowboy is eager to tie the girl up, isn’t he?” muttered Huxtable,
buffing his nails on his plaid shirtfront. “One never knows what
odd fancies other folks enjoy, does one?”

Amy ignored
him. So did Charlie. Martin thought about Charlie’s question.
“Let’s rehearse the scene once first. Up to the tying-up part.”

They
rehearsed the scene. As they did so, Amy remembering Karen’s
comment about the prospect of rain, thought she heard the rumble of
distant thunder. So unfamiliar was she with thunder,
however
—Pasadena was too
proper to allow any but the very rarest of thunderstorms to invade
its precincts—that she wasn’t sure. Since she was lying on lumpy
log, staring into Charlie’s eyes, and doing her best to look
terrified, she didn’t comment on the possibility of a storm in the
distance.

“Good, Amy,
good. You should probably scream now,” Martin coached. “Remember,
this man is aiming to kill you.”

Scream
? Good
Lord, if she screamed in reality, she’d deafen the poor man. It was
annoying, too, that the heat was so intense. If it weren’t for the
insufferable stuffiness and sweltering heat inside this awful
building, she’d likely enjoy being tied up by Charlie Fox As it
was, her skin was so slick the rope kept slipping. She sighed
heavily, wondering again if Vernon was right and her morals were in
jeopardy of being compromised.

With an effort,
she opened her mouth and pretended to scream. She also struggled,
as Martin had requested. Both she and Charlie were so drippy that,
if he’d been trying to restrain her in earnest, she’d have
slithered from his grasp in an instant, but they tried to make it
look good for the picture’s sake.

“Good!” Martin
called. “That’s good! Let’s take our places and shoot the scene
now. Do it just that way! Let’s get it in one take.”

“Grph.” Amy
knew it was unladylike to grunt, but she couldn’t help it. The
stupid log was grotesquely uncomfortable to lie upon.

“Here, Miss
Wilkes, let me help you up.”

She took
Charlie’s hand and appreciated his tugging her to her feet. “Thank
you.”

Horace Huxtable
was standing a few feet off, glaring at her as she straightened her
skirt. Although she felt like making a face at him, she didn’t, and
was proud of her restraint.

“Here, Amy,
blot your face with this.”

She turned to
find Karen holding out a fresh towel. She’d rather have a drink of
water. Nevertheless, she blotted the sweat from her face, being
careful not to smear her paint. “Thanks, Karen.”

“Sure. We have
to take care of our stars.”

Amy
wasn’t sure, but she thought Karen was making a joke. She didn’t
have energy enough to laugh, but drank greedily when another crew
member handed her a glass of water. It wasn’t cold, but it was wet.
Since Amy felt sort of like a squeezed sponge at the moment, it was
pleasant to fill up her empty spots.

“Places!”

Martin’s
cry drew the cast back to the sawmill. Amy found her mark chalked
on the floor where she was to begin the scene, struggling with
Charlie. Again she wished it weren’t so blasted hot. It got
hotter—and much noisier—when a crew member touched a match to the
gas jets, lights flared up on the set and the cameramen began
cranking.

The camera
seemed an ominous instrument. Amy tried to ignore it, but it was as
noisy as the very devil, and it kept spitting out sprockets as it
churned. She envisioned some kind of rodent inside the box, running
wildly on a wheel that kept the thing going. As the sprockets hit
the floor, they sounded like discarded rifle casings, and she hoped
the rodent wouldn’t get hurt. She knew she was being fanciful and
chalked it up to the heat.

“I’ve heard
people say they might make talking pictures someday,” Charlie
shouted as he pretended to rough her up. “It doesn’t seem likely to
me.”

“Impossible,”
Amy shouted back. “You’d never be able to hear the actors talking
over the noise of the camera.”

“Maybe they’ll
invent quieter cameras eventually.”

“
I hope
so, if only to protect the ears of the—Ack!”

“Whoops.
Sorry.”

“Don’t
apologize, Charlie!” Martin cried from the sidelines. “Somebody
might read your lips.”

“Right,” said
Charlie, remarkably unabashed. How nice that he didn’t get upset
when he made a mistake. Amy wished she were more like that.

Amy would like
to read his lips. By hand.

Good
heavens, if she got any more shocking notions in her head, she’d
have to retire from picture making and enter a nunnery. And she
wasn’t even Catholic.

“Make it look good!” hollered Martin.
“Struggle, Amy!”

Amy thought she had been struggling. However,
she increased her energy output until she thought for sure she’d
faint from heat prostration. “Anyway, I’ve heard some of the case
members talking about how they think adding talk to the movies will
destroy their artistic merit.” She shrieked, hoping she looked
scared for the camera. She felt thoroughly rotten, if that
counted.

“Do they have any artistic merit?” Charlie
asked. He sounded honestly intrigued by the thought, and not at all
as if he were making a joke.

“Well,” she hollered, “I don’t think so, but
I don’t know much about them.”

“That makes two of us.”

And wasn’t
that
a pleasant
thought?—the two of them. Oh, dear, she had to stop thinking such
things. Vernon would be shocked. Even she was a little shocked.

“Struggle!” shouted Martin.

With a sigh, Amy increased her struggle
output. Thank God Charlie was strong and able to subdue her in not
too many more moments. She was panting like a winded racehorse by
the time he got her back against the log—the bumpy, uncomfortable
log—and began lashing her limbs down.

“Good heavens, this thing tastes awful,” she
spluttered when the rope accidentally ended up in her mouth.

“Sorry. Whoops! I’m not supposed to
apologize.”
Amy did her best not to giggle. Fortunately, she was so miserably
uncomfortable that her impulse to laugh was short-lived.”

“Good! Good!” Martin hollered from the
sidelines. “Make it look good Charlie. Good! Perfect! Now throw the
lever on the sawmill. Do it from behind so the audience will see
what you’re doing! Look mean and evil. Good!”

With her mouth still open, and feigning cries
of terror and rage, Amy watched Charlie rush to the big metal lever
that was supposed to start the cardboard saw whirling. In truth, a
man beneath the raised set would begin cranking as soon as Charlie
threw the lever.

He was really quite good. He looked
positively wicked as, with a huge gesture, he flung the lever up
and grimaced horribly. The timing was perfect and the man with the
crank started the saw to spinning. The other man, the one with the
sawdust in a bucket, threw a handful of dust into the air.

“Wait on the sawdust until the log gets
closer!” Martin yelled.

Amy was glad of that, since she didn’t need
any more stuff falling onto her greasy makeup or into her mouth. As
it was, she had to spit out a mouthful of sawdust, and flakes of it
stuck to her sweaty body. “Pthht. Ew.”