Yep. Roy laughed again.
But I met Ralph in the street and it spoiled your joke? Sure. Roy shook his head at his own pranks.
Well, then. No wonder I think maybe you put the damn body up on the wall and sent me the letter.
Only one thing wrong with that, said Roy. Youve rarely mentioned Arbuthnot to me. If I made the body, how would I figure youd recognize the poor s.o.b. ? It would have to be someone who really knew that you had seen Arbuthnot years ago, right?
Well
Doesnt make sense, a body in the rain, if you dont know what in hell youre looking at. Youve told me about a lot of other people you met when you were a kid, hanging around the studios. If Id made a body, it would be Rudolph Valentino or Lon Chaney, to be sure youd recognize em. Correct?
Correct, I said lamely. I studied Roys face and looked quickly away. Sorry. But, hell, it was Arbuthnot. I saw him two dozen times over the years,
back in the thirties. At previews. Out front at the studio, here. Him and his sports cars, a dozen different ones, and limousines, three of those. And women, a few dozen, always laughing, and when he signed autographs, slipping a quarter in the autograph book before he handed it back to you. A quarter! In 1934! A quarter bought you a malted milk, a candy bar, and a ticket to a movie.
Thats the kind of guy he was, was he? No wonder you remember him. How muchd he give you?
He gave me a buck twenty-five, one month. I was rich. And now hes buried over that wall where I was last night, isnt he? Why would someone try to scare me into thinking hed been dug up and propped on a ladder? Why all the bother? The body landed like an iron safe. Take at least two men, maybe, to handle that. Why?
Roy took a bite out of another doughnut. Yeah, why? Unless someone is using you to tell the world. You were going to tell someone else, yes?
I might
Dont. You look scared right now.
But why should I be? Except I got this feeling its more than a joke, it has some other meaning.
Roy stared at the wall, chewing quietly. Hell, Roy said at last. You been back over to the graveyard this morning to see if the body is still on the ground? Why not go see?
No!
Its broad daylight. You chicken? No, but
Hey! cried an indignant voice. What you two saps doing up there!? Roy and I looked down off the porch.
Manny Leiber stood there in the middle of the lawn. His Rolls-Royce
was pulled up, its motor running silent and deep, and not a tremble in the frame.
Well? shouted Manny.
Were having a conference! Roy said easily. We want to move in here! You what? Manny eyed the old Victorian house.
Great place to work, Roy said, quickly. Office for us up front, the sunporch, put in a card table, typewriter.
You got an office!
Offices dont inspire. This I nodded around, taking the ball from Royinspires. You should move all the writers out of the Writers Building! Put Steve Longstreet over in that New Orleans mansion to write his Civil War film. And that French bakery just beyond? Great place for Marcel Dementhon to finish his revolution, yes? Down the way, Piccadilly, heck, put all those new English writers there!
Manny came slowly up on the porch, his face a confused red. He looked around at the studio, his Rolls, and then at the two of us, as if he had caught us naked and smoking behind the barn. Christ, not enough everythings gone to hell at breakfast. I got two fruitcakes who want to turn Lydia Pinkhams shack into a writers cathedral!
Right! said Roy. On this very porch I conceived the scariest miniature film set in history!
Cut the hyperbole. Manny backed off. Show me the stuff! May we use your Rolls? said Roy.
We used the Rolls.
On the way to Stage 13, Manny Leiber stared straight ahead and said, Im trying to run a madhouse and you guys sit around on porches shooting wind. Where in hell is my Beast!? Three weeks Ive waited Hell, I said reasonably, it takes time, waiting for something really new to step out of the night.
Give us breathing space, time for the old secret self to coax itself out. Dont worry. Roy here will be working in clay. Things will rise out of that. For now, we keep the Monster in the shadows, see Excuses! said Manny, glaring ahead. I dont see. Ill give you three more days! I want to see the Monster!
What if, I blurted suddenly, the Monster sees you! My God! What if we do it all from the Monsters viewpoint, looking out!? The camera moves and is the Monster, and people get scared of the Camera and Manny blinked at me, shut one eye, and muttered: Not bad. The Camera, huh?
Yeah! The Camera crawls out of the meteor. The Camera, as the Monster, blows across the desert, scaring Gila monsters, snakes, vultures, stirring the dust Ill be damned. Manny Leiber gazed off at the imaginary desert. Ill be damned, cried Roy, delighted.
We put an oiled lens on the Camera, I hurried on, add steam, spooky music, shadows, and the Hero staring into the Camera and
Then what?
If I talk it I wont write it. Write it, write it!
We stopped at Stage 13. I jumped out, babbling. Oh, yeah. I think I should do two versions of the script. One for you. One for me.
Two? yelled Manny. Why?
At the end of a week I hand in both. You get to choose which is right. Manny eyed me suspiciously, still half in, half out of the Rolls.
Crap! Youll do your best work on your idea!
No. Ill do my damnedest for you. But also my damnedest for me. Shake? Two Monsters for the price of one? Do it! Cmon!
Outside the door Roy stopped dramatically. You ready for this? Prepare your minds and souls. He held up both beautiful artists hands, like a priest.
Im prepared, dammit. Open!
Roy flung open the outside and then the inside door and we stepped into total darkness.
Lights, dammit! said Manny. Hold on whispered Roy.
We heard Roy move in the dark, stepping carefully over unseen objects. Manny twitched nervously.
Almost ready, intoned Roy across a night territory.
Now Roy turned on a wind machine, low. First there was a whisper like a giant storm, which brought with it weather from the Andes, snow murmuring off the shelves of the Himalayas, rain over Sumatra, a jungle wind headed for Kilimanjaro, the rustle of skirts of tide along the Azores, a cry of primitive birds, a flourish of bat wings, all blended to lift your gooseflesh and drop your mind down trapdoors toward
Light! cried Roy.
And now the light was rising on Roy Holdstroms landscapes, on vistas so alien and beautiful it broke your heart and mended your terror and then shook you again as shadows in great lemming mobs rushed over the microscopic dunes, tiny hills, and miniature mountains, fleeing a doom already promised but not yet arrived.
I looked around with delight. Roy had read my mind again. The bright and dark stuff I threw on the midnight screens inside my camera obscura head he had stolen and blueprinted and built even before I had let them free with my mouth. Now, turnabout, I would use his miniature realities to flesh out my most peculiar odd script. My hero could hardly wait to sprint through this tiny land.
Manny Leiber stared, flabbergasted.
Roys dinosaur land was a country of phantoms revealed in an ancient and artificial dawn.
Enclosing this lost world were huge glass plates on which Roy had painted primordial junglescapes, tar swamps in which his creatures sank beneath skies as fiery and bitter as Martian sunsets, burning with a thousand shades of red.
I felt the same thrill I had felt when, in high school, Roy had taken me home and I had gasped as he swung his garage doors wide on, not automobiles, but creatures driven by ancient needs to rise, claw, chew, fly, shriek, and die through all our childhood nights.
And here, now, on Stage 13, Roys face burned above a whole miniature continent that Manny and I were stranded on.
I tiptoed across it, fearful of destroying any tiny thing. I reached a single covered sculpture platform and waited.
Surely this must be his greatest beast, the thing he had set himself to rear when, in our twenties, we had visited the primal corridors of our local natural history museum. Surely somewhere in the world this Beast had hidden in dusts, treading char, lost in Gods coal mines under our very tread! Hear! oh hear that subway sound, his primitive heart, and volcanic lungs shrieking to be set free! And had Roy set him free?
Ill be goddamned. Manny Leiber leaned toward the hidden monster. Do we see it now?
Yes, Roy said, thats it. Manny touched the cover.
Wait, said Roy. I need one more day.
Liar! said Manny. I dont believe you got one goddamn bastard thing under that rag!
Manny took two steps. Roy jumped three.
At which instant, the Stage 13 set phone rang. Before I could move, Manny grabbed it. Well? he cried.
His face changed. Perhaps it got pale, perhaps not, but it changed.
I know that. He took a breath. I know that, too. Another breath; his face was getting red now. I knew that half an hour ago! Say, god damn it to hell, who is this!?
A wasp buzzed
