Maggie hesitated, pulled it out, shoved the film into the Moviola, and cranked the machine.
We were looking at the front entrance of Maximus Films on an October afternoon in 1934. The doors were shut, but you could see shadows inside the glass. And then the doors opened and two or three people stepped out. In the middle was a tall, burly man, laughing, eyes shut, head back to the sky, shoulders quivering with his merriment. His eyes were slits, he was so happy. He was taking a deep breath, almost his last, of life.
You know him? asked Maggie.
I peered down into this small half-dark, half-lit cave in the earth. Arbuthnot.
I touched the glass as one touches a crystal ball, reading no future, only pasts with the color leached out.
Arbuthnot. Dead, the same month you shot this film.
Maggie cranked backward and started over. The three men came out laughing again and Arbuthnot wound up grimacing into her camera on that long-forgotten and incredibly happy noon.
Maggie saw something in my face. Well? Spit it out. I saw him this week, I said.
Bosh. You been smoking those funny cigars?
Maggie moved three more frames through. Arbuthnot raised his head higher into an almost raining sky.
And now Arbuthnot was calling and waving to someone out of sight.
I took a chance. In the graveyard, on Halloween night, there was a wire-frame papier-mache scarecrow with his face.
Now Arbuthnots Duesenberg was at the curb. He shook hands with Manny and Groc, promising them happy years. Maggie did not look at me, but only at the dark-light dark-light pictures jumping rope below.
Dont believe anything on Halloween night.
Some other people saw. Some ran scared. Manny and others have been walking on land mines for days.
Bosh, again, Maggie snorted. What else is new? You may have noticed I stay in the projection room or up here where the airs so thin they get nosebleeds climbing up. Thats why I like loony Fritz. He shoots until midnight, I edit until dawn. Then we hibernate. When the long winter ends each day at five, we rise, timing ourselves to the sunset. One or two days a week, you will also have noticed, we make our pilgrimage to the commissary lunch to prove to Manny Leiber were alive.
Does he really run the studio? Who else?
I dunno. I just get a funny feeling in Mannys office. The furniture looks unused. The desk is always clean. Theres a big white telephone in the middle of the desk, and a chair behind the desk thats twice the size of Manny Leibers bottom. Hed look like Charlie McCarthy in it.
He does act like hired help, doesnt he? Its the telephone, I suppose. Everyone thinks films are made in Hollywood. No, no. That telephone is a direct line to New York City and the spiders. Their web crosses the country to trap flies here. The spiders never come west. Theyre afraid wed see theyre all pygmies, Adolph Zukor size.
Trouble is, I said. I was at the bottom of a ladder, in the graveyard, with that mannequin, dummy, whatever, in the rain.
Maggie Botwins hand jerked on the crank. Arbuthnot waved much too swiftly across the street. The camera panned to see: the creatures from another world, the uncombed crowd of autograph collectors. The camera prowled their faces.
Wait a minute! I cried. There!
Maggie cranked two more frames to bring up close the image of a
thirteen-year-old boy on roller skates.
I touched the image, a strange loving touch. That cant be you, said Maggie Botwin.
Just plain old homely, dumpy me.
Maggie Botwin let her eyes shift over to me for a moment and then back down through twenty years of time to some October afternoon with a threat of rain.
There was the goof of all goofs, the nut of all nuts, the crazy of all crazies, forever off balance on his roller skates, doomed to fall in any traffic, including pedestrian women who passed.
She cranked backward. Again Arbuthnot was waving to me, unseen, on some autumn afternoon.
Arbuthnot, she said quietly, and you almost together? The man on the ladder in the rain? Oh, yes.
Maggie sighed and cranked the Moviola. Arbuthnot got in his car and drove away to a car crash just a few short weeks ahead.
I watched the car go, even as my younger self across the street, in that year, must have watched.
Repeat after me, said Maggie Botwin, quietly. There was no one up some ladder, no rain, and you were never there.
never there, I murmured.
Maggies eyes narrowed. Whos that funny-looking geek next to you, with the big camels-hair overcoat and the wild hair and the huge photo album in his arms?
Clarence, I said, and added, I wonder, right now, tonight, if hes still alive?
The telephone rang.
It was Fritz in the final stages of hysteria.
Get over here. J. C.s stigmata are still open. We got to finish before he bleeds to death!
We drove to the set.
J. C. was waiting on the edge of the long pit of charcoal. When he saw me he shut his beautiful eyes, smiled, and showed me his wrists.
That blood looks almost real! cried Maggie. You could almost say that, I said.
Groc had taken over the job of pancaking the Messiahs face. J. C. looked thirty years younger as Groc patted a final powder puff at his shut eyelids and stood back to smile in triumph at his masterwork.
I looked at J. C.s face, serene there by the embered fire, while a slow, dark syrup moved from his wrists into his palms. Madness! I thought. Hell die during the scene!
But to keep the film in budget? Why not? The mob was gathering again and Doc Phillips loped forward to check the holy spillage and nod yes to Manny. There was life yet in these holy limbs, some sap remained: Roll em!
Ready? cried Fritz.
Groc stepped back in the charcoal wind, between two vestal virgin extras. Doc stood like a wolf on his hind legs, his tongue in his teeth, his eyes swarming and teeming from side to side.
Doc? I thought. Or Groc? Are they the true heads of the studio? Do they sit in Mannys chair?
Manny stared at the bed of fire, longing to walk on it and prove himself King.
J. C. was alone in our midst, far off within himself, his face so lovely pale it tore a seam in my chest. His thin lips moved, memorizing the fine words John gave to me to give to him to preach that night.
And just before he spoke, J. C. raised his gaze across the cities of the
studio world and up along the facade of Notre Dame, to the very peak of the towers. I gazed with him, then glanced swiftly over to see:
Groc transfixed, his eyes on the cathedral. Doc Phillips the same. And Manny between them, shifting his attention from one to the other, then to J. C. and at last, where some few of us looked, up, among the gargoyles
Where nothing moved.
Or did J. C. see some secret motion, a signal given?
J. C. saw something. The others noticed. I saw only light and shadow on the false marble facade.
Was the Beast still there? Could he see the pit of burning coals? Would he hear the words of Christ and be moved to come and tell the weather of the last week and calm our hearts?
Silence! cried Fritz. Silence.
Action, whispered Fritz.
And finally, at five-thirty in the morning, in the few minutes just before dawn, we filmed the Last Supper after the Last Supper.
The charcoals were fanned, the fish freshly laid, and as the first light rose over Los Angeles from the east, J. C. slowly opened his eyes with a look of such compassion as would still his lovers and betrayers and give them sustenance as he hid his wounds and walked off along a shore that would be filmed, some days later, in some other part of California; and the sun rose, and the scene was finished with no flaw, and there was not a dry eye on the outdoor set, but only silence for a long moment in which J. C. at last turned, and with tears in his eyes, cried:
Wont someone yell cut!? Cut, said Fritz Wong, quietly.
Youve just made an enemy, said Maggie Botwin beside me.
I glanced across the set. Manny Leiber was there glaring at me. Then he spun about, stalked away.
Be careful, said Maggie. You made three mistakes in forty-eight hours. Rehired Judas. Solved the ending of the film. Found J. C., brought him back to the set. Unforgivable.
My God, I sighed.
J. C. walked off through the crowd of extras, not waiting for praise. I caught up with him.
Where going? I said, silently.
To rest awhile, he said just as silently.
I looked at his wrists. The bleeding had stopped.
When we reached a studio crossroads, J. C. took my hands and gazed off at the backlot somewhere.
Junior?
Yes?
That thing we talked about? The rain? And the man on the ladder? Yes!?
I saw him, said J. C.
My God, J. C.! Then what did he look like? What Shh! he added, forefinger to his serene lips.
And returned to Calvary.
Constance drove me back to my house just after dawn.
There didnt seem to be any strange cars with spies waiting in them on my street.
Constance made a big thing of wallowing all over me at my front door. Constance! The neighbors!
Neighbors, my patootie! She kissed me so hard my watch stopped. Bet your wife doesnt kiss like that!
Id have been dead six months ago!
Hold yourself where it matters, as I slam the door!
I grabbed and held. She
