Heartland (33 page)

“I let slip that the lady's got a voice. She's gonna sing for the camera tomorrow night.”

“She's an actress, and she's got a voice. Where's the problem? No, never mind. Son, I've been in the pastoring business for almost twenty years. And one thing I learned early on is this. When it comes to folks having problems with love, you can get yourself so tangled up you'll never see daylight again. So let's forget about Kelly's voice and focus on the real issue here. And it ain't Kelly's mother either. All she did was poke a raw nerve.”

“More like sawed it in half.”

“The first time you and I spoke, you went on about how you don't have a past to speak of. How everything in your early life was a lie.”

“That's not exactly it. I don't—”

“Now just hold on. You been churched enough to know you don't choke a pastor off in midstride. They turn puce and can't breathe proper. What I just said is close enough to the truth for us right now, JayJay. Now I want to tell you about another no-'count ranch hand. His daddy lost some mules one day and sent his son, whose name was Saul, by the way, he sent Saul off hunting. After he and a servant had been looking a while, Saul came upon this prophet by the name of Samuel. And Samuel told him, I hope you're listening good now, because this is important. Samuel told him, ‘Then the Spirit of the Lord will come upon you, and you will prophesy with them and be turned into another man.'”

“I believe I heard that story before,” JayJay countered. “About this feller who becomes king and gets himself doomed in the process.”

“On account of how he doesn't listen to God once he gets there. Like a certain feller who won't let the preacher finish.”

“Go on, then.”

“All right, I will. Samuel then says, pay attention now, ‘And let it be, when these signs come to you, that you do as the occasion demands; for God is with you.' Long as Saul followed those orders, he stayed in good shape. His downfall came when he got too big for his britches. Pride and wrongheaded arrogance was Saul's weakness. What is yours?”

When JayJay did not respond, the pastor went on, “It ain't pride, son, it's self-doubt. You don't want to believe God can use you. I don't know what you got in your background. And this morning's not the time for us to work through all that. What you need to remember, whether it's affairs of the heart or affairs of the saddle, it's all the same. God has decided to use you. Don't let your weakness be an excuse to turn away.”

JayJay complained, but his heart wasn't really in it any longer. “I thought we were talking about Kelly and me.”

“We are, if you'd have half a mind to hear what I'm saying. Now the reason I told you about Saul was because of what happened next, and when I finish this time I'm done. The next day Saul met up with some other prophets. Just like Samuel said, the Spirit came into him, and he joined up with them. Folks who saw him asked, ‘Who's that guy there? He ain't no prophet, he's just the son of that no-'count rancher.' And another man answered this way. He pointed at the prophets dancing alongside Saul and said, ‘But who is
their
father? What makes
them
so special?' You see where I'm going with this? Almost everyone's past holds shadows, son. Everybody carries a stain. Kelly's mother is right about you only if you
let
her. Okay, yes, Hollywood's got more than its share of liars and cheats. But the same could be said of a lot of places and a lot of trades. What we're concerned with is
you
.”

Chapter 35

M
artin Allerby sat in the screening room. One lamp glowed on the table next to his podium. Otherwise the room was dark. Martin had broken one of his own rules and brought along his cigarillos. He hated smoke in a screening. The first inspection of a film crew's work deserved conditions untainted by shades filtering the colors. But today he needed the crutch.

The phone by his elbow lit up, and the projectionist said over the speaker, “You wanted to be notified when Mr. Keplar's car arrived at the gates, Mr. Allerby.”

“Have him sent straight down. Ask Gloria to bring another thermos of coffee, a cup for Milo, and a fresh one for me.”

Martin was tired. Keeping his calm mask in place was proving an almost impossible burden. Every morning he drove his Volkswagen Touareg through the company gates. He attended to the business of running a studio. He had lunch. He negotiated deals. He drove to whatever dinner or cocktail hour he had penciled in for that evening. He felt eyes upon him all the time. Whether the attention was real or just paranoia at work did not matter. He could not afford to be seen as doing anything other than what was totally normal for the CEO of a studio in the business of making quality television. He was not supposed to know anything about a deal brewing. The deal that just might catapult him into the stratosphere of Hollywood stardom.

Milo arrived with Gloria. He settled into the sofa next to Martin and let Gloria pour him a cup. Milo said nothing until the door sighed shut behind her. “I had to cancel a meeting with the exec VP of Paramount.”

“This could be important.”

“It better be.”

“Britt Turner ordered our best digital film editor to drop everything, load all her gear in her SUV, and drive to Salton City.”

“You approved this?”

“He made his call on Saturday morning. Got the lady out of bed. Told her she could write her own ticket. But she had to move immediately.”

Milo masked his whispered words with a noisy slurp. “Think he suspects?”

Martin continued his conversational monotone. As though to release any worry, any steam at all, would have resulted in an eruption that might well level the office building. “I called him Monday morning, as soon as I learned about it. I explained that the studio had a policy of all editing taking place in-house. Britt made a good case for his move. They are six days ahead of schedule.”

“That's impossible. They haven't been up there—”

“Six days,” Martin calmly repeated. “They are shooting at almost double the intended rate. They are moving so fast they are outstripping the set designer's ability to get things ready. Using digital means he can check takes on the monitor soon as they are shot. According to Britt, they have not needed more than five takes for any shot all last week. So Britt wanted to take a day with Derek and the film editor and run through what had been done so far.”

“Derek? Oh. Right. The new camera guy.”

“According to my source on the shoot, Derek Steen is proving to be remarkably adept at bringing the most out of digital filmwork. This has been confirmed in the one report I have received from our editor.”

“What else did she say?”

In reply, Martin hit the speaker button connecting him to the projection room. “You have four segments, is that right?”

“Three longer ones and two together that total less than a minute, Mr. Allerby.”

“Roll the longest tape.”

The lamp beside his chair dimmed. There was none of the flickering start to digital film. For raw footage, the cameraman held the clapper in place longer than normal with film, just to give the viewer something to focus on before the scene actually played.

In this case, however, they were seeing work that had been edited, and thus the clapper was removed. Which meant the light came onto the screen and revealed fifteen seconds of a handwritten scene number. Then the screen came to life.

Both men instantly moved to the edge of their seats as though drawn by the same cord.

The light was far too rich for a midbudget film. The crowd was far too large. The first three seconds declared this to be an epic. Fifty, a hundred million dollars. A
Titanic
-size budget. It had to be. But it couldn't.

There must have been two thousand extras filling the hall. The place itself looked drawn from the twenties, as did many of the faces. Hard, leathery people. The sort of crowd you might expect in a Russian film of the Stalinist era, back when the director could walk through streets and have the commissars pull out every face he liked. The sight hit Martin like a fist to his gut.

And that was just the first image.

The camera swooped down from its perch in one long arc, drawing in absolute professional perfection from the balcony, lingering over a few of the faces, each and every one of them perfectly lit. Then it came to rest upon the man on the stage. A pastor. He spoke a few words. Martin could only assume they came from the Bible. Spoken in simple clarity. The words gave an impossible authority to the man who took his place at the microphone.

Impossible that a completely untested actor could carry himself with this much power.

JayJay Parsons spoke words that Martin could not completely take in. JayJay set his hat upon the table. He talked some more. He drank water. The tremble in his hand caused the water to reflect the light in tight shimmers. But his voice was steady. Firm. He turned and spoke briefly to the people behind him. Martin felt his breath catch. The man looked good from every conceivable angle.

When JayJay turned back, a voice broke in from the audience. JayJay's own surprise was reflected by the camera, which jerked sharply as it shifted and searched. Almost as though the man who spoke had caught them both unawares.

Milo asked, “How did they
do
that?”

Martin lifted his hand for silence. Too caught up in what he was seeing to respond any further. The camera settled upon a member of the audience. No, that was wrong. The camera
gripped
him. The image was so sharp Allerby could smell the man's sweat, feel his nerves. The camera was
relentless
.

Then a woman spoke. Again there was the slight jerk, though Allerby suspected the camera had half anticipated this, because there was no searching for the second speaker. That new actress came into view. Kelly Channing stood in the aisle. She was angry in the way of a truly beautiful woman. Her rage magnified her allure, turning her into some kind of unapproachable magnet, the charisma of a primitive chieftess. A warrior queen. Again Martin was not able to fully capture what she said. Because in truth it did not matter.

The camera returned to JayJay. He finished speaking and just stood there, a terrible mistake in the film's rule book.
Never
release mounting emotion into a vacuum.

But here, this one time, it
worked
.

The camera gripped JayJay as the weariness came and went in a flash of ruthless insight. Here stood a man worn down to the secret essence, the core of truth that few people ever truly saw in themselves, and never in another. Yet here it was. The man wanted nothing more than to live his life on the ranch. Yet he had been drawn into a fight not of his making. A fight that had so drained him he was stripped down to the
bone
. Revealing his true nature.

A hero.

In the instant where the revelation would have become corny overplay, a voice shouted from the balcony, “And all the people said . . .”

The roar came from one voice emitted by a thousand throats.

“Amen!”

And it still did not end.

The camera action was Academy Award smooth. Martin knew they had spliced it. The working portion of his brain, the analytical segment that never stopped, told him there was no way they could have done what they did without a cut-and-switch between camera units. Only he could not find one.

The view drew back from two thousand people rising and shouting and clapping and calling back to the man on the stage. Their hero was now surrounded by other men and women who had come forward from their chairs to shake his hand and speak words JayJay probably could not take in. The camera never lost JayJay as its focus moved farther still, until it finally drew back through an open rear window, and turned.

And revealed a crowd even larger than the one inside.

The camera swooped down and connected with a single face. A woman in a waitress uniform shouted and clapped in total abandon. Then the camera drew back. On and on and upward, higher now than the building from which it had just exited. So high it looked down upon the entire crowd filling Main Street from the hall down to a church. The steeple rose into the sunset. The cross cut a brilliant shadow from the setting sun. The same sun that burnished the crowd and the assembly hall and the town with an ethereal glow.

The screen went blank.

Milo slumped back in his seat. He needed both hands to steady the thermos and refill his cup.

Martin shook a cigarillo from the pack. Gripped the lighter with two hands to light it. Took a steadying drag.

The speakerphone light came on. “Should I run the next clip, Mr. Allerby?”

“What do you think, Milo?”

His sales director leaned over and asked the speakerphone, “Is the rest as good as this?”

“I've only seen two more segments, Mr. Keplar. I thought they were hot.”

Milo took two tries to get his cup back in the saucer. He said carefully, “We need to discuss how we're going to handle this hit.”

“Let's take a walk.” Martin rose and said to the projectionist, “I'll be back in ten minutes. Hold the room for me, please.”

“You got it.”

They said nothing more until they were walking through the stretch of green between the outer wall and the office building. The same Japanese gardeners who handled Martin's home kept this tiny patch looking like a green tuxedo.

Milo saw nothing but what lay ahead. “It's true what you told me in there? They're ahead of schedule?”

“And under budget, if Britt's cost sheets are to be believed, and I think they are.”

“You won't ever keep a lid on this. One word from that scrawny projectionist to his pal at the
Hollywood Reporter
, and tomorrow you'll be reading about this over your mangoes and coffee.”

Martin flipped his cigarette over the studio wall. “I agree.”