“DO YOU FIND THAT you enjoy taking risks, Mr. Hazard?”
The psychiatrist, a sunny-minded man who wore sandals and was named Dr. Isadore Mindlin Shriek, was on the staff of a holistic medical center on Madonna Drive in Venice Beach. Hazard had been seeing him for double and triple sessions each night for the past three weeks.
“Why?”
“Well, your name,” explained Shriek.
“I was born with my name.”
“But you didn’t choose to change it, now, did you? Just something to think about, that’s all. In the meantime, I’ve now read the Satanist script, and of course I find it’s written on a number of levels, though the central theme, to my mind, is quite clear: it’s all about illusion versus reality. Is that anywhere close to how you see it?”
“On the button.”
“Incidentally, what’s your profit participation?”
“Six percent of the gross,” answered Hazard.
“And is that rolling gross or pure?”
“It starts at two-and-a-half-times negative cost.”
“Ah, I doubt you’re going to see very much out of that. The mass audience won’t get it.”
“No, probably not.”
“Now then, any more projections? Hallucinations?”
“No.”
“No more voices? No problems with the cat?”
“None at all.”
“You understand what was happening to you, don’t you? Under stress you projected into your environment the thing that was utterly consuming you, your vision of the meaning of the film. And what was that?”
“Illusion versus reality.”
“I expect you’ll be fine from now on.”
This sanguine prediction held true for two days. On day three, while Hazard was lunching in his office, a short, grinning man in flamenco attire clomped in, stomped his boots and cried out, “Olé!” with a quick, curling flourish of his hands above his head.
Hazard stared.
The man’s grin fell apart. “Too much?”
“Who are you?”
“I’m Dwayne Mateen, the choreographer. That sequence you’re adding is smashing, by the way. Quelle concept! Dancing exorcists and demons! Love it!”
In an instant, eighty hours of psychiatry were dust.
By the end of a stupefying, desperate day, the director’s manic look had returned to full Harpo. In addition to the blast of the musical sequence, a problem of temperament had sprouted. Asked to make the actors’ breaths come frosty during the exorcism of the mule, Franz Detritus had designed, and caused to be built, a refrigerated duplicate bedroom set which Guy, for some reason, refused to enter, so that much of the day had been spent in attempting to feed him sedation-injected carrots—Guy also had a morbid fear of shots—and then attempting to lure him into the set with oat croissants and lumps of sugar; but nothing had been able to calm Guy’s terrors, with the consequence of bridling, bucking and braying, plus copious effluxions all over the stage, although, to Guy’s credit, no one heard him place blame. At five a shaken Hazard called a wrap on his day and left the effects crew to sort out the problem. En route home, he’d been detoured around to the Valley because of a slide on the Pacific Coast Highway and he made the long drive to Malibu Canyon and thence to the beach in a state of somnambulism, his eyes fixed numbly ahead while his lips kept mouthing in a soundless litany of horror, again and again, “Dwayne Mateen!”
The director walked into the house to find darkness. Sprightly wasn’t scheduled to work that day and she’d driven to the Springs with Ralph to get away and to pick up some dates “in remembrance of Floyd.” Hazard reached around to the living room wall, groped, found a switch and turned on the lights. From the beachside blackness of a moonless night, he heard the draggy, crackling ebbing of a rock-crammed surf. As he looked around and took off his Satanist cap—he’d started wearing it again around four o’clock—the living room and entry hall lights dimmed down, flickered eerily, and plunged into spooky darkness.
The director stood frozen by the staircase. Thank God for my nightlights, he fatuously thought as he saw that, mysteriously, they still glowed.
Then he heard something.
Singing. Barbra Streisand. Upstairs.
He looked up and called, “Sweetheart? You there?”
No response. He thought Sprightly might have turned on her bathroom radio, or was playing a recorded tape; then he realized with a prickling down the back of his neck that the singing was totally unaccompanied. He frowned in consternation. He knew that Barbra Streisand owned a home down the beach, and for an instant the deranged thought flashed through his head that Streisand had broken into the house. He lowered his face into a hand and shook his head. Bananas. I am losing it altogether.
He looked up again, cocking an ear, amazed. Shit, that is Streisand! It’s her! She’s in the house! Was she visiting Sprightly? he wondered in astonishment. Had she given her a home demo tape? They might have met at the exercise parlor down the road. Mesmerized, he walked up the creaking stairs, following the singing to the second-floor landing and then into his bedroom where he turned on a light. Moments later he was bolting from the room in a panic. He rushed down the steps and almost ran into Sprightly and Ralph as they were entering through the front door weighed down with bags of fruit from the Springs.
“Holy shit, am I glad that you’re here!” Hazard panted.
Sprightly frowned in alarm. “What’s wrong?”
“You won’t believe it! Feel my heart, it’s still pounding!”
“Ralph, turn on the lights!” Sprightly ordered.
“You can’t! They turned off on their own!” Hazard blurted.
Ralph’s finger hit a switch and the lights came on.
Sprightly eyed Hazard with a dawning hopelessness.
“Is this starting all over again? Fifty nightlights and your heart still goes boom-pitty-boom just because you couldn’t turn on the living room lights?”
Hazard’s stare became faraway and empty, like an alien pod’s in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers masquerading as a cop in some village. “You don’t know what I saw up there,” he uttered hollowly. He pointed back over his shoulder.
“Your cat! She was singing like Barbra Streisand!”
“What?”
“Swear to God! She was singing ‘My Man’!”
Sprightly sagged in despair to the arm of a sofa. “How much have we paid this psychiatrist?” she groaned.
“Sweetheart—Barbra is Barbra Streisand!”
After Hazard had been heavily cocoaed and bedded, Sprightly made an urgent call to Isadore Shriek but got only his answering machine, which held the message, “I will call you as soon as I’m back from Tahoe. Don’t panic: shit happens. Whatever it is, it won’t kill you.”
The next furious call that she made was to Zelig.
“Hello, Arthur, you weasel-faced, plastic-dicked fuck. This is me, your little pissed-off exxie, Sprightly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, never mind all the greetings, you shithead. I want you to fire my husband off this picture. Would you, please? Would you let the poor son of a bitch go?”
Far away, in his fog-enshrouded Bel Air mansion, Zelig, in his study, turned his head toward Miss Peltz, who was seated beside him on a couch. She’d been reading Variety to him aloud. He reached out and excitedly squeezed her thigh as his lips formed the words It’s her! It’s her!
“What an odd request,” he then purred into the telephone. “Are you serious about this, cupcake?”
“I am begging you, Arthur, you prick! Let him go!”
“Is it usual for beggars’ petitions to the king to commence, You prick,” Zelig asked urbanely, “or am I right in assuming that it’s rather poor form?”
“Alright, I’m sorry! I take it all back! Just let him go!”
“Well, there could be a mode of salvation for Hazard.”
“What is it? I’ll do anything, Arthur! Just tell me!”
“Come back to me, precious.”
“What?”
“Come back.”
“Are you crazy?” Sprightly shouted.
“There is no other way,” Zelig rasped into the phone. “If you loved him you’d come back to me so that I would free him. That would be true love, Sprightly: the truest.”
“You’ve done all of this deliberately, you miserable asshole?”
“Come back.”
“Fuck you and the spaceship you landed in!”
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that, gumdrop.”
“Do you want me to say it again?”
“Look, I’m flexible. I’m willing to negotiate. Perhaps even one tender night of love with you would serve to put an end to this curse upon my eyes, this awful blindness.”
“What?”
“It might even prove a cure for the plastic.”
She slammed down the phone with a shattering force.
Livid, she walked out to the deck and breathed deeply, then finally came back in, refreshed. She went up to the bedroom and stood by the bed. “Jason?” she cautiously whispered. When no answer came, she felt relieved. She turned around and walked into their wardrobe closet where Barbra lay asnooze in her favorite niche, a snug corner under Sprightly’s full-length mink coat.
“Barbra?”
The cat weakly mewled and looked up, then returned to her dream of disembodied grins.
“Babs, you’re getting too fat,” Sprightly murmured dispiritedly. “Tomorrow I put you on a diet.”
Barbra’s silence was not to be construed as consent.
Sprightly got undressed, slipped softly into bed and in an hour fell asleep with a desperate heart.
Shortly after dawn on the following morning, the actress sipped orange juice, deep in thought, while ignoring the yogurt and dates set before her. “Eat, Missy,” Ralph nagged her from a seat across the table. Suddenly a clattering was heard on the stairs as Hazard descended cheerily humming, his brown leather briefcase bobbing in his grip. He stopped by the table, ajangle. The feverish, manic grin and stare that had vanished in the doings of the night had returned. “Hi, gang! What a sleep I had! Super night! Say, is this a great life at the beach or what! Gentle surf; it’s like a lullaby at night, it’s Brahms. Ralph, get out of that position, old sport, you’ll cramp.” Sprightly eyed him from underneath hooded lids, then blenched as her doomed gaze fell to the briefcase and she wondered what horror it contained for this day.
“Can we talk about Barbra?” she asked him tonelessly.
“What about her?”
“Last night.”
“Last night?”
Her gaze flicked up to him.
“You don’t remember?”
“Not really. Say, remind me to stop in at Joey’s tonight and pick up a whole mess of those fabulous ribs.”
* * *
At approximately 9:48 that morning, the difficult lighting had been completed on a massive composite photo backing of a wooded area of Georgetown down by the C&O Canal. Zelig, with a history of “improvophobia,” had refused to permit location work “in the interest of filmic challenge,” although it had also been bruited about that the Georgetown Community Citizens’ Council had a member who not only had Egyptian parents but had even played bridge once with Omar Sharif. “We’ll build fucking Georgetown on the studio lot!” the mogul had ranted at the tank in his office. Jeff, who hadn’t dropped from a tree just yesterday, knew that the subject was potentially explosive and pretended to be lost in coiled sleep.
“Miss God? We’re all ready for you now on the set.”
The second assistant director was rapping on Sprightly’s dressing room door. The pages of the script had been handed out earlier and Emory Bunting was already on the set.
“Ready for rehearsal,” the assistant finished.
“I’m not coming,” said Sprightly in a quiet voice. It was difficult to gauge its texture and mood.
“You’re not coming to the set, Miss God?”
“No, I’m not.”
The assistant heard the sound of a drink being stirred. He leaned in closer, angling his head. The antenna of his walkie-talkie unit scraped the door. “Can you tell me when you think you’ll be coming, Miss God?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Are you coming at all?”
“Never ever.”
Jason Hazard had come up. “What’s the holdup?”
“She says she’s not going to come out, Mr. Hazard.”
“She’s not coming?”
“Never ever.”
“Lenny, when did you give her the pages?”
“First thing.”
Hazard gestured with a thumb. “Go on, Lenny, do some work with the extras. I’ll take care of this.”
The assistant mutely nodded and left.
Hazard tried the dressing room door. It was locked. He rapped lightly. “Sweetheart? It’s me. Open up.”
“I’ve been candid with you all of my life.”
“How many drinks have you had, my angel?”
“Not enough.”
Hazard heard the gug of liquor over ice. His manic stare and fixed grin remained frozen and vivid, but his eyes, in a possibly alarming development, had taken to rolling like a cartoon wolf’s.
“Let me in.”
“I’m not doing this scene today, Jason.”
“I knew you might say that, sweetheart.”
“You knew it?”
“Just trust me. The events in this script aren’t literal.”
“They aren’t?”
Hazard’s eyes became particularly shiny and desperate: Sprightly was sounding like Jonathan Drood.
“This is allegory, sweetheart, fantasy—truth that’s wrapped up in a big ball of myth. Don’t you see? The more wild the hyperbole we use, the more vividly the symbolism’s going to stand out!”
“I’ve been thinking,” said Sprightly in a sad, quiet voice.
“Thinking what?”
“I’m thinking maybe you’d be better off without me.”
“Honey, stop talking nonsense. We’ve already established you.”
Instantly the dressing room door flew open and Sprightly stood framed there, drawn up like Joan Crawford, haughty and livid with her nostrils narrowed and her eyes bulging totally out of her head. In costume, she was wearing a colorful babushka with multiple “Winterhaven, Florida” inscriptions tastefully dispersed in its checkered design.
“You are vile!” she said icily. “Absolute scum!”
She swept past him and then onto a parklike set where she slipped on her oversized pair of dark glasses and then turned and looked grimly at Bunting beside her. He leaned in his head, looking mildly puzzled and bemused, and asked quietly, “Are we really going to do this?”
She nodded.
“Okay, quiet on the set!” the assistant director called out. “Hold the hammering! Quiet for rehearsal!”
Just before Hazard was to call out “Action,” Sprightly turned to him and silently mouthed, “You disgust me!”
* * *
That night, Ann Warner grubbed at her notes:
SC. 57A:
EXT. C&O CANAL AREA—DAY. Desperé and Ellen Blessing walk slowly along the canal. From time to time Ellen drags nervously on a cigarette. Desperé is studying her intently. As she speaks she avoids his gaze.
ELLEN How do you go about getting an exorcism, Father?
DESPERÉ Are you kidding me?
ELLEN What if someone—very close to you turned out to be—possessed?
DESPERÉ (bemused) Well, I’d sit down and have a talk with him; show him some sense.
ELLEN No, I mean it!
DESPERÉ Sure, you mean it.
ELLEN (shrieking) For God’s sake, Father! It’s my ass!
TAKE 1: 50 mm, front tracking; n.g., incomplete; director cuts at “Are you kidding me?”: actor added word “precious” to end of line.
TAKE 2: Same. Incomplete. Actor giggled.
TAKE 3: Same. Incomplete. After “ass,” actress rushes at director, beats severely. Remainder of day spent testing FX.
In Bel Air, in a beamed and darkened study, wan firelight flickered on wormwood walls and on mounted stuffed game heads and bug-eyed fish so many in number they fairly teemed. Zelig, in a red and gold silken bathrobe and reeking of his favorite splash-on essence, an exotic cologne called Definition of Gross, was trilling in a loveseat close by the fire, excitedly awaiting the evening’s promise. Sprightly was coming. She had called. It was a deal. Smiling at a dying fire’s red-glowing embers, listening to the cracklings of a burnt-out log, he adjusted his mask—he’d selected the Phantom for this night—and savored psychiatric miracles to come. The champagne was on ice; perhaps tonight he would be able to check the label.
Anxious, he’d begun to softly sing, “C’mon ’a My House” when abruptly he hushed and cocked an ear. Footsteps! His heart began to lope. It was she! The brittle steps on an outside pebbled path crunched steadily closer to the study’s open doors that led out to the patio, garden and grounds.
“I’ve been waiting for you, darling,” rasped the mogul.
“Yeah yeah yeah.”
She was standing in the doorway leading in from the garden, dressed, in accordance with Zelig’s instructions, in only her mink, stiletto-heeled shoes, a pearl necklace and a bracelet around her ankle so that he could tell her left leg from her right.
“Don’t sing,” she gritted. “Don’t sing one note or I’m gone.”
She glanced around with distaste at the animals and fish shot and hooked by other people whom Zelig paid to do it. He had also hired people to ski for him in Aspen. He held out his arms to her.
“Come to me, sweetheart.”
“Not yet. You got the paper?”
“Must we really talk business now, heartbeat?”
“We must.”
He sighed. “Very well, then; have it your way.”
He slipped a typed document out of his pocket and rustled it loudly as he held it aloft.
“As you asked.”
“Is it notarized?” she said.
“Yes. And witnessed.”
For the total consideration of one U.S. dollar, the blue-bound, three-page document promised, Jason Hazard was guaranteed his three-picture deal irrespective of performance as director on The Satanist.
“Here it is,” the mogul teased her, waving it. “Come.”
Sprightly walked slowly, her heels clicking loudly on the old pine planks of the study floor. She stopped about a foot out of Zelig’s reach, leaned over and snatched the papers out of his hand.
Zelig groped in the air for her leg.
“Love, come closer,” he hissed.
“Bull-shit! You’re not laying a hand on me until I’ve read this!”
“Of course.”
“Yeah, you bet, of course.”
“Go right ahead. Though I must admit to a certain disappointment. I expected some tenderness.”
“Is that in this paper?”
“I forgot it.”
“Too bad. Go fire your lawyers.”
Frowning, Sprightly moved the papers closer to the fire. “I can’t read this,” she complained, leaning over, “it’s too dark. Put on some lights so I can see the fucking fine print, Arthur.”
“No, no lights. They’re so formal; so cold; so unromantic. Here, I’ll throw another log on the fire,” he said suavely.
He leaned over and groped with his hands, and, mistaking a stuffed blue marlin for a log, he detached it from the wall and smoothly tossed it at the fireplace. It missed the firepit opening completely and shattered a decorative mirror on the hearth.
He sat motionless. “Clumsy,” he quietly uttered.
“Jesus!”
Sprightly dropped the papers, turned around, shook her head and strode deliberately away towards the garden door.
“I can’t do it,” she murmured. “I just can’t fucking do it.”
Seconds later Zelig’s butler stiffed into the room.
“Can I help you, sir?”
“Scythrop, what broke?”
“It would appear to be a fireplace mirror.”
“Seven years bad luck,” the mogul said tonelessly.
“Shall I rescue the marlin?”
“What marlin?”
“The one in the fireplace, sir.”
“Not our problem.”
* * *
Hazard was late getting home; he’d been working with his editor, “Total” Transformation, on assemblies of scenes that had been shot and were complete. He was carrying a large thin pepperoni pizza and was wearing his usual demented grin. “Hey, anybody home, guys? Joey’s was closed but I picked up a pizza. Come and get it while it’s hot.”
It was after eleven.
“Sprightly? Ralph?”
There was no response. Hazard kicked the front door shut behind him, set down the pizza on the entry hall hutch and moved into the living room. The lights were all on, including those that bathed the ocean. He stared. The door to the deck was open. He moved to it and looked outside. The deck was empty. Where were Sprightly and Ralph?
Forty minutes later, the director was sunk in an overstuffed chair beside the living room fireplace. Rain had come spattering down on the roof, and he’d started a roaring pine log fire, manically devoured the entire pizza, then downed a double scotch, collapsed into the chair, put his feet up on a hassock and his mind on hold. After a time he fell into a sleep. It would prove to hold the answer to all of his cares.