Remake (10 page)

I ff’d through the rest of the movie, but there weren’t any more dance numbers and no sign of Alis, and this was all Another Lesson, Andrew, in not mixing bourbon with
Rio Bravo
tequila.

“Beginning credits,” I said, and went back and wiped the bottle in the boardinghouse scene and then triple-timed to
the barnraising again to turn the jug into a pan of corn bread, and then thought I’d better watch the rest of the scene to make sure the jug wasn’t visible in any of the other shots.

“Print and send,” I said, “and forward realtime.”

And there she was again. Dancing in the movies.

MOVIE CLICHE #15: The Hangover. (Usually follows #14: The Party.) Headache, jumping at loud noises, flinching at daylight.

SEE::
The Thin Man, The Tender Trap, After the Thin Man, McLintock!, Another Thin Man, The Philadelphia Story, Song of the Thin Man
.

I accessed Heada, no visual. “Do you know of anything that can sober me up?”

“Fast or painless?”

“Fast.”

“Ridigaine,” she said promptly. “What’s up?”

“Nothing’s up,” I said. “Mayer’s bugging me to work harder on his movies, and I decided the AS’s are slowing me down. Do you have any?”

“I’ll have to ask around,” she said. “I’ll get some and bring it over.”

That’s not necessary, I wanted to say, which would only make her more suspicious. “Thanks,” I said.

While I was waiting for her I called up the credits. They weren’t much help. There were seven brides, after all, and the only ones I knew were Jane Powell and Ruta Lee, who’d been in every B-picture made in the seventies. Dorcas was Julie Newmeyer, who’d later changed her name to Julie Newmar. When I went back and looked at the barnraising scene again, it was obvious which one she was.

I watched it, listening for the other characters’ names. The little blonde Russ Tamblyn was in love with was named
Alice, and Dorcas was the tall brunette. I ff’d to the kidnapping scene and matched the other girls to their characters’ names. The one in the pink dress was Virginia Gibson.

Virginia Gibson. “Screen Actors’ Guild directory,” I said, and gave it the name.

Virginia Gibson had been in an assortment of movies, including
Athena
and something called
I Killed Wild Bill Hickok
.

“Musicals,” I said, and the list shrank to five. No, four.
Funny Face
had Fred Astaire in it, which meant it was in litigation.

There was a knock on the door. I blanked the screen, then decided that would be a dead giveaway.
“Notorious,”
I said, and then chickened out. What if Ingrid Bergman had Alis’s face, too? “Cancel,” I said, and tried to think of another movie, any movie. Except
Athena
.

“Tom, are you okay?” Heada called through the door.

“Coming,” I said, staring at the blank screen.
Saratoga Trunk?
No, that had Ingrid in it, too, and anyway, if this was going to happen all the time, I’d better know it before I took anything else.

“Notorious”
I said softly, “Frame 54-119,” and waited for Ingrid’s face to come up.

“Tom!” Heada shouted. “Is something wrong?”

Cary Grant went out of the ballroom, and Ingrid gazed after him, looking anxious and like she was about to cry. And looking like Ingrid, which was a relief.

“Tom!” Heada said, and I opened the door.

Heada came in and handed me some blue capsules. “Take two. With water. Why didn’t you answer the door?”

“I was getting rid of the evidence,” I said, pointing at the screen. “Thirty-four champagne bottles.”

“I watched that movie,” she said, going over to the screen. “It’s set in Brazil. It’s got stock shots of Rio de Janeiro and Sugar Loaf.”

“Right as always,” I said, and then, casually, “Speaking of which, you know everything, Heada. Do you know if Fred Astaire’s been copyrighted yet?”

“No,” she said. “ILMGM’s appealing.”

“How long before these ridigaine take effect?” I said before she could ask why I wanted to know about Fred Astaire.

“Depends on how much you’ve got in your system,” she said. “The way you’ve been popping it, six weeks.”

“Six
weeks?”

“I’m kidding,” she said. “Four hours, maybe less. Are you sure you want to do this? What if you start flashing again?”

I didn’t ask her how she knew I’d been flashing. This was, after all, Heada.

She handed me the glass. “Drink lots of water. And pee as much as you can,” she said. “What’s really up?”

“Slashing and burning,” I said, turning back to the frozen screen. I cut out another champagne bottle.

She leaned over my shoulder. “Is this the scene where they run out of champagne, and Claude Rains goes down to the wine cellar and catches Cary Grant?”

“Not when I get through with it,” I said. “The champagne’s going to be ice cream. What do you think, should the uranium be hidden in the ice-cream freezer or the bag of rock salt?”

She looked at me seriously. “I
think
there’s something wrong. What is it?”

“I’m four weeks behind on Mayer’s list, and he’s twitching down my neck, that’s what’s wrong. Are you sure these are ridigaine?” I said, peering at the capsules. “They aren’t marked.”

“I’m sure,” she said, still looking suspiciously at me.

I popped the capsules in my mouth and reached for the bourbon.

Heada snatched it out of my hand. “You take them with
water.”
She went in the bathroom, and I could hear the gurgle of the bourbon being poured down the drain.

She came out of the bathroom and handed me a glass of water. “Drink as much as you can. It’ll help flush your system
faster. No alcohol.” She opened the closet, felt around inside, pulled out a bottle of vodka.

“No
alcohol,” she said, unscrewing the cap, and went back in the bathroom to pour it out. “Any other bottles?”

“Why?” I said, sitting down on the bed. “You decide to switch over from chooch?”

“I told you, I quit,” she said. “Stand up.”

I did, and she knelt down and started fishing under the bed.

“Which is how I know how the ridigaine’s going to make you feel,” she said, pulling out a bottle of champagne. “You’ll want a drink, but don’t. You’ll just toss it. And I mean toss it.” She fumbled with the cork on the bottle. “So don’t drink. And don’t try to do anything. Lie down as soon as you start feeling anything, headache, shakes. And stay there. You might have halluces. Snakes, monsters …”

“Six-foot-tall rabbits named Harvey,” I said.

“I’m not kidding,” she said. “I felt like I was going to die when I took it. And chooch is a lot easier to quit than alcohol.”

“So why’d you quit?” I said.

She gave me a wry look and went back to messing with the cork. “I thought it would make somebody notice me.”

“And did they?”

“No,” she said, and went back to messing with the cork. “Why did you call and ask me to bring you some ridigaine?”

“I told you,” I said. “Mayer—”

She popped the cork. “Mayer’s in New York, pimping support for his new boss, who, the word has it, is on the way out. The rumor is the ILMGM execs don’t like his highhanded moralizing. At least when it applies to them.” She poured out the champagne and came back in the room. “Any other champagne?”

“Lots,” I said, and went over to the comp. “Next frame,” I said, and a tubful of champagne bottles came up on the screen. “You want to pour these out, too?” I turned, grinning.

She was looking at me seriously. “What’s really up?”

“Next frame,” I said. The screen shifted to Ingrid, looking anxious, her hair like a halo. I took the champagne glass out of her hand.

“You saw her again, didn’t you?” she said.

Everything.

“Who?” I said, even though it was hopeless. “Yeah,” I said. “I saw her.” I shut off
Notorious
. “Come here,” I said, “I want you to look at something.”

“Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,”
I said to the comp. “Frame 25-118.”

The screen lit Jane Powell, sitting in the wagon, holding a basket.

“Forward realtime,” I said, and Jane Powell handed the basket to Julie Newmar.

“I thought this was going into litigation,” Heada said over my shoulder.

“Over who?” I said. “Jane Powell or Howard Keel?”

“Russ Tamblyn,” she said, pointing at him. He’d climbed on the wagon and was gazing soulfully at the little blonde, Alice. “Virtusonic’s been using him in snuffporn movies, and ILMGM doesn’t like it. They’re claiming copyright abuse.”

Russ Tamblyn, looking young and innocent, which was probably the point, went off with Alice, and Howard Keel lifted Jane Powell down off the buckboard.

“Stop,” I said to the computer. “I want you to look at this next scene,” I said to Heada. “At the faces. Forward realtime,” I said, and the dancers formed two lines and bowed and curtsied to each other.

I don’t know what I’d expected Heada to do—gasp and clutch her heart like Lillian Gish maybe. Or turn to me halfway through and ask, “What exactly is it I’m supposed to be looking for?”

She didn’t do either. She watched the entire scene, still and silent, her face almost as focused on the screen as Alis’s had been, and then said quietly, “I didn’t think she’d do it.”

For a moment I couldn’t register what she said for the roaring in my head, the roaring that was saying, “It
is
her. It’s not a flash. It
is
her.”

“All that talk about finding a dance teacher,” Heada was saying. “All that stuff about Fred Astaire. I never thought she’d—”

“Never thought she’d do what?” I said blankly.

“This,” she said, waving her hand vaguely at the screen, where the sides of the barn were going up. “That she’d end up as somebody’s popsy,” she said. “That she’d sign on. Give up. Sell out.” She gestured at the screen again. “Did Mayer say which of the studio execs you were doing it for?”

“I didn’t do it,” I said.

“Well,
somebody
did it,” she said. “Mayer must’ve asked Vincent or somebody. I thought you said she didn’t want her face pasted on somebody else’s.”

“She didn’t. She doesn’t,” I said. “This isn’t a paste-up. It’s her, dancing.”

She looked at the screen. A cowboy brought his hammer down hard on Russ Tamblyn’s thumb.

“She wouldn’t sell out,” I said.

“To quote a friend of mine,” she said, “everybody sells out.”

“No,” I said. “People sell out to get what they want. Getting her face pasted onto somebody else’s body isn’t what she wanted. She wanted to dance in the movies.”

“Maybe she needed the money,” Heada said, looking at the screen. Someone whacked Howard Keel with a board, and Russ Tamblyn took a poke at him.

“Maybe she figured out she couldn’t have what she wanted.”

“No,” I said, thinking about her standing there on Hollywood Boulevard, her face set. “You don’t understand. No.”

“Okay,”
she said placatingly. “She didn’t sell out. It isn’t a paste-up.” She waved at the screen. “So what is it? How’d she get on there if somebody didn’t paste her in?”

Howard Keel shoved a pair of brawlers into the corner, and the barn fell apart, collapsing into a clatter of boards and chagrin. “I don’t know,” I said.

We both stood there a minute, looking at the wreckage.

“Can I see the scene again?” Heada said.

“Frame 25-200, forward realtime,” I said, and Howard Keel reached up again to lift Jane Powell down. The dancers formed their lines. And there was Alis, dancing in the movies.

“Maybe it isn’t her,” Heada said. “That’s why you asked me to bring over the ridigaine, wasn’t it, because you thought it might be the alcohol?”

“You see her, too.”

“I know,” she said, frowning, “but I’m not really sure I know what she looks like. I mean, the times I saw her I was pretty splatted, and so were you. And it wasn’t all that many times, was it?”

That party, and the time Heada sent her to ask me for the access, and the episode of the skids. Memorable occasions, all.

“No,” I said.

“So it could be it’s just somebody else who looks like her. Her hair’s darker than that, isn’t it?”

“A wig,” I said. “Wigs and makeup can make you look really different.”

“Yeah,” Heada said, as if that proved something. “Or really alike. Maybe this person’s wearing a wig and makeup that makes her look like Alis. Who is it anyway? In the movie?”

“Virginia Gibson,” I said.

“Maybe this Virginia Gibson and Alis just look alike. Was she in any other movies? Virginia Gibson, I mean? If she was, we could look at them and see what she looks like, and if this is her or not.” She looked concernedly at me. “You’d better let the ridigaine work first, though. Are you having any symptoms yet? Headache?”

“No,” I said, looking at the screen.

“Well, you will in a few minutes.” She pulled the blankets off the bed. “Lie down, and I’ll get you some water. Ridigaine’s fast, but it’s rough. The best thing is if you can—”

“Sleep it off,” I said.

She brought a glass of water in and set it by the bed. “Access me if you get the shakes and start seeing things.”

“According to you, I already am.”

“I didn’t
say
that. I just said you should check out this Virginia Gibson before you jump to any conclusions.
After
the ridigaine does its stuff.”

“Meaning that when I’m sober, it won’t look like her.”

“Meaning that when you’re sober, you’ll at least be able to see her.” She looked steadily at me. “Do you want it to be her?”

“I think I will lie down,” I said to get her to leave. “My head aches.” I sat down on the bed.

“It’s starting to work,” she said triumphantly.
“Access
me if you need anything.”

“I will,” I said, and lay back.

She looked around the room. “You don’t have any more liquor in here, do you?”

“Gallons,” I said, gesturing toward the screen. “Bottles, flasks, kegs, decanters. You name it, it’s in there.”

“It’ll just make it worse if you drink anything.”

“I know,” I said, putting my hand over my eyes. “Shakes, pink elephants, six-foot-tall rabbits, ‘and how are you, Mr. Wilson?’”