Passing Through the Flame (56 page)

Would I like to tell them a thing or two about my goddamn stars!

“Uh... Rick Gentry has done about a dozen features and two TV series, and Velva Leecock is... er... a new discovery.”

Ivan Blue looked straight into the eye of the camera. “What I am given to understand is that Rick Gentry got his part by performing various sexual acts on the flesh of Jango Beck and that Velva Leecock was discovered on her back in sexist exploitative porn films.”

“Ivan!”
Dana hissed, turning pale.

Blue smiled at Paul. “Would you care to deny any of that?” he said silkily.

Beads of sweat trickled down Paul’s forehead from his hairline. He’s really got me by the balls. If I deny it, he can prove I’m a liar with thousands of feet of Velva’s fuck-film footage, and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Gentry did blow Beck for the part. But if I don’t deny it, I’ll have pure hell on the set tomorrow.

“I don’t think I should comment on any of that,” he said lamely. “I think it’s in rotten taste.”

“While your film, of course, will be in perfect taste,” Blue said. “Come on, Paul, we both know that your movie is going to be an exploitative piece of garbage. What else can it be, starring a has-been who never was and a porny starlet? It’s going to be an insult to the quarter of a million brothers and sisters that are being tricked into appearing in it.”

“That really isn’t fair,” Dana whined. “You can’t put down a film that hasn’t even been made yet.”

Blue looked squarely at Paul; strangely enough, Paul felt vibrations of sympathy coming off him. “Okay, let’s be fair,” he said. “I’ll take back everything I’ve said if Paul will tell us that his film is going to be something beautiful, a work of art, a celebration of love. You look like an honest dude to me, Paul. Tell me how off base I am, and I’ll shut up.”

Paul stared back at Ivan Blue. What am I supposed to say? The guy is dead right; he knows the truth. Somehow he really
knows.
Oceans of sweat formed in Paul’s armpits. He knew that he just didn’t have what it took to lie forthrightly in front of the camera.

“I’m going to make every effort to make this the best possible film that can be made under the circumstances,” he said. “To say more than that would be ego tripping. That’s your department, not mine.”

Blue’s whole attitude seemed to soften. He reached out and briefly touched Paul’s knee, a comradely gesture. “Hey, I don’t want to put you down, man,” he said. “I know you’ll do your best. But you’re going to blow it. You’re going to blow it because Jango Beck wants you to blow it."

 “Ivan, this is really getting too gross,” Dana said. There was a look of pure terror on his face.

“Let the man talk,” Paul said sharply. “I want to hear this.” Something internal was compelling him, something that made him forget the cameras, and the lights, and the audience. This guy knows something that I don’t. He’s figured out what I can’t, or someone’s figured it out for him.

“Let’s say this thing is released as an ordinary first-run movie,” Blue said. “Maybe four or five million people will see it over the space of a year, right?”

“A fair figure,” Paul replied. Damned optimistic for this piece of shit.

“But if it’s so bad that EPI has to release it as an original TV movie, then at least twenty million people will see it all at once. That’s what Jan go Beck wants.”

“You don’t know as much about the film business as you seem to think,” Paul said. “If four or five million people pay three bucks each to see a film with a budget like this in theaters, it makes money. If twenty million see it free on TV, it’s a loser.”

“Oh, really?” Blue said. “What do you think ninety minutes of prime-time network commercials are worth? That’s what your movie will be if it’s a TV original—a ninety-minute prime-time commercial for all the albums recorded at Sunset City.”

A headache chime sounded in Paul’s brain. He felt as if he had been beaned with a mallet. He felt like a fourteen-carat schmuck. It explained everything! It explained why Beck had forced Velva and Gentry down his throat. If Beck
wanted
a flop that couldn’t be released theatrically, it all suddenly made ghastly sense.

Including why he hired an assistant director of pornies with no track record without looking at a foot of my film! To that slimy mother-fucker, I was just one more guarantee of a turkey film! That’s what he really thinks of me, that I’m a sure loser, a bum, a lox! That bastard! That slime! That filth!

“Cut, cut!” Dana yelled, leaping up off his stool. “Kill the cameras! Stop this thing!”

The shooting lights went off, revealing the wooden faces of the studio audience, and the balding director wringing his hands behind the number one camera.

“Ivan, you’ve just cost us a fortune!” Dana whined. “We can’t air that. Jango Beck would have my ass
and
yours in court! We’re going to have to drop in a rock group promo film.” He turned to Paul. “I’m sorry, man, we just don’t have the time to reshoot your segment.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Paul said. “You want to worry about something, you worry about what’s going to happen to that fucker Beck when I get my hands on the son of a bitch!”

“See you around, man,” Ivan Blue said, waltzing off the stage. “I hope.”

“Press the button with the balling figures on it,” said the aging boy in tight white ducks, and a moment later Paul Conrad found himself alone in the elevator, on his way up to Jango Beck’s bedroom, to the lair of the beast. As the elevator glided upward, and Paul’s mind and body had their first real moment of rest since he had left the
Groove Tube
studio, he found himself questioning the sanity of what he was doing. He had driven to the Eden Tower, found out that Beck was at home, driven here and demanded to see Beck in a fugue state, thinking only of what had happened on the show, of the contempt Beck had for him. But now the black velvet drapery and blood-colored carpeting made the elevator seem like a ceremonial vehicle for a human sacrifice. A human self-sacrifice.

What can I really do? What am I going to say to Jango Beck?

And what is he going to say to me?

The elevator eased to a stop, the door slid open, and without allowing himself a moment’s hesitation, Paul stepped out. And reeled. For a moment, it seemed as if he had stepped into a furnace of orange fire.

Then his eyes refocused and began to make sense out of what they were seeing. Beck’s bedroom was circular; the mirrored ceiling and continuous ring of floor-to-ceiling windows gave the illusion that he was suspended in space. The sun was just beginning to set over the city far below, and the still-bright orange light pouring in through the windows and reflected off the ceiling turned the whole room into a cylinder of sunset fire. Paul did not
see
the sunset; he was enveloped by it.

In the center of this blaze of glory was a large circular water bed much like the one in Beck’s office, except here the woodwork was rosewood and the upholstery deep red velvet. Jango Beck was lying on the water bed, his back propped up against the cushioned headboard, naked except for a leopardskin robe draped across his loins. He was sucking on the hose of a large brass hookah, and the air was redolent with the sweet musk of hashish.

On the bed with Beck were two beautiful adolescents, boy and girl, perhaps brother and sister, perhaps even twins. They were both naked, with long, flowing straw-colored hair, a patina of sweat on their smooth, fair skin, pink, pink nipples, golden tufts of pubic hair, and crazed-looking blue eyes like shattered marbles. “Hello, Paul,” Beck said. “Care to join us?”

“I want to talk to you alone, Beck,” Paul snapped. “Now.” His knees were vibrating, his stomach twanging, and the blood in his temples became a noticeable throb. Despite everything, the sight of that slick smooth flesh in the sunset glow, the very madness in those four blue eyes, had kindled a warmth in his loins, and he despised himself for it.

Beck smiled a glassy-eyed smile. “Well, maybe later,” he said. “They really are superb.” He clapped his hands sharply, once, twice, like an Oriental pasha. “Run along and play, kiddies,” he said. “We’ll pick up where we left off later.”

The two depraved children slid sinuously off the bed, running their hands lightly over Beck’s flesh, and walked slowly and sensuously past Paul, parading their bodies for him. The girl deliberately brushed her hard little nipples against his arm, and the boy touched his thigh
en passant.
Paul shuddered. Beck laughed. Then they disappeared into the elevator.

“Well?” Beck said. “What’s on your mind?”

Paul blinked, dazed by the brilliant orange light, by the sexual apparitions, by the hint of dark moilings they had invoked within him. With his glowing naked flesh, his great bush of black hair tangled and disarrayed, Jango Beck seemed a sinister and fathomless creature now, something only a madman would face in its own den. But having come this far, he could not turn back.

“I want to know why you played me for a patsy,” he said. “I want to know why you want
Sunset City
to be a piece of shit.” Beck sucked on his hookah. “Ivan Blue certainly put a bug in your ass, didn’t he?” he said.

Paul goggled for a moment, caught off-balance. “You think Sandy would just let you storm in here, without my knowing what was happening?” Beck said. “You think you could bull your way in here against my will?”

“Then there’s no point in wasting words,” Paul said uncertainly, moving along on forward momentum like a runner stumbling downhill, but no longer certain of where he was going or whether he could keep his footing. “Was Blue telling the truth or not?”

“Yes and no,” Beck said.

“What does that mean?”

“Yes, he wasn’t lying; no, he wasn’t grasping the truth.” Beck smiled at him, somehow making it an engaging gesture. He patted the water bed, generating ripple-patterns on the velvet cover. “Sit down. Relax.”

“Stop bullshitting me, Jango,” Paul said. “I’m tired of it.” But he sat down on the hard cushioned frame of the water bed, taking a certain perverse satisfaction at the uncomfortable feel of the edge of it digging into his buttocks.

“I’m exactly what I seem, Paul,” Beck said. “Why won’t people accept that?”

“Is it or isn’t it true that you’ve set it all up so that the film would be a turkey that EPI would have to release directly to television, a huge promo for your damned record albums?”

“Neither. Both.”

“Goddamnit!”

Beck took another drag on the hookah, offered the nozzle to Paul. “Have some hash.”

Paul stared at him in stony, angry silence.

“So
don’t have
some hash,” Beck said. “It’s a matter of indifference to me whether you smoke my hash or not. It’s a matter of indifference to me whether the film is a masterpiece or a piece of shit. I’ve set up the parameters so that I win either way. As long as the film doesn’t make back its costs. Promise me you
will
spend money lavishly.”

“What?
What the hell are you talking about?”

“Single-value logic is such a bore, don’t you think?” Beck said. “It’s so predictable. I loathe predictability, Paul.”

“Will you give me a simple answer to a simple question!”

“I’m trying to answer your question. I’m trying to explain that since the success or failure of the film has nothing to do with what I’m trying to achieve for myself, I didn’t hire you because you were a genius bound to succeed nor because you were a no-talent bound to fail. If you’ll remember, I didn’t know
what
you were.”

“Then why
did
you hire me?”

“Because you were a random factor, of course. Because it made the situation more ambiguous. Because it amused me.”

“Because it
amused
you!” Paul snarled. “Because you like to watch people squirm!”

“Watching people squirm is the amusement of boors,” Beck said. “Watching them react to complex challenges they don’t fully understand is much better sport. Putting myself in such situations is even better.”

Beck threw off the robe, bounded off the bed, turned his back on Paul to stare into the red ball of the setting sun. “If I had an interest in making the film fail,” he said, “I would’ve hired a known incompetent. Hardly a scarce commodity in this town.”

Paul stood up, feeling a growing rage, not merely at what Beck was saying, but at his very posture, at the way he stood there, showing his ass in an androgynous stance, his body bronzed by the setting sun: a statue of arrogant narcissism. “You hired two of them,” he said. “If you haven’t set the film up to fail, then why Velva and Gentry? You’re not that stupid; you know what they are.”

“I do, but do you?” Beck said, turning to face him. “Let’s just say that at a certain stage I want the film to look like a sure failure, and Rick and Velva admirably serve that purpose. I believe we’re in agreement on that.”

“You stinking megalomaniac! You think you can play with people as if they were ants!”

Beck walked slowly toward him, the setting sun at his back outlining his shadowed body with a rim of fire, like the moon at the moment of total solar eclipse.

“Not like ants,” he said softly. “Not like ants at all. Ants are invariant, utterly controlled by their environment. They react deterministically. I loathe determinism, Paul. I dread it. It’s the only thing I fear. Free will is unnatural in this universe. It must be created. I have to surround myself with free agents, creating them where necessary, in order to maintain my own free will. A man playing god to an anthill isn’t free; he’s a slave to determinism.”

“This is like talking to the Sphinx!”

Beck moved to within two feet of Paul, stared down at him with opaque insect eyes. Paul’s head whirled in a kaleidoscopic pin-wheel of conflicting tropisms. The rage he felt fought an unnatural feeling of comradeship that radiated from those dark eyes. Beck’s half-rigid cock began to slowly rise like a serpent rearing its mocking head, and the sight of this evoked some primal dread. Yet the trick of lighting conspired with Beck’s androgynous sensuality to imbue him with the sinister, yet fascinating omnisexual charisma of a Mick Jagger. And the ironic smile that parted Beck’s lips told Paul that Beck knew exactly what he was feeling and, more, had consciously created the effect.