Black Evening

Dead Image

"You know who he looks like, don't you?"

Watching the scene, I just shrugged.

"Really, the resemblance is amazing," Jill said.

"Mmm."

We were in the studio's screening room, watching yesterday's dailies. The director – and I use the term loosely – had been having troubles with the leading actor, if acting's what you could say that good-looking bozo does. Hell, he used to be a male model. He doesn't act. He poses. It wasn't enough that he wanted eight million bucks and fifteen upfront points to do the picture. It wasn't enough that he changed my scene so the dialogue sounded as if a moron had written it. No, he had to keep dashing to his trailer, snorting more coke (for "creative inspiration," he said), then sniffling after every sentence in the big speech of the picture. If this scene didn't work, the audience wouldn't understand his motivation for leaving his girlfriend after she became a famous singer, and believe me, nothing's more unforgiving than an audience when it gets confused. The word-of-mouth would kill us.

"Come on, you big dumb sonofabitch," I muttered. "You make me want to blow my nose just listening to you."

The director had wasted three days doing retakes, and the dailies from yesterday were worse than the ones from the two days before. Sliding down in my seat, I groaned. The director's idea of fixing the scene was to have a team of editors work all night patching in reaction shots from the girl and the guys in the country-western band she sang with. Every time Mr. Wonderful sniffled… cut, we saw somebody staring at him as if he was Jesus.

"Jesus," I moaned to Jill. "Those cuts distract from the speech. It's supposed to be one continuous shot."

"Of course, this is rough, you understand," the director told everyone from where he sat in the back row of seats. Near the door. To make a quick getaway, if he had any sense. "We haven't worked on the dubbing yet. That sniffling won't be on the release print."

"I hope to God not," I muttered.

"Really. Just like him," Jill said next to me.

"Huh? Who?" I turned to her. "What are you talking about?"

"The guitar player. The kid behind the girl. Haven't you been listening?" She kept her voice low enough that no one else could have heard her.

That's why I blinked when the studio VP asked from somewhere in the dark to my left, "Who's the kid behind the girl?"

Jill whispered, "Watch the way he holds that beer can."

"There. The one with the beer can," the VP said.

Except for the lummox sniffling on the screen, the room was silent.

The VP spoke louder. "I said who's the – "

"I don't know." Behind us, the director cleared his throat.

"He must have told you his name."

"I never met him."

"How the hell, if you…"

"All the concert scenes were shot by the second-unit director."

"What about these reaction shots?"

"Same thing. The kid had only a few lines. He did his bit and went home. Hey, I had my hands full making Mr. Nose Candy feel like the genius he thinks he is."

"There's the kid again," Jill said.

I was beginning to see what she meant now. The kid looked a lot like -

"James Deacon," the VP said. "Yeah, that's who he reminds me of."

Mr. Muscle Bound had managed to struggle through the speech. I'd recognized only half of it – partly because the lines he'd added made no sense, mostly because he mumbled. At the end, we had a closeup of his girlfriend, the singer, crying. She'd been so heartless clawing her way to the top that she'd lost the one thing that mattered – the man who'd loved her. In theory, the audience was supposed to feel so sorry for her that they were crying along with her. If you ask me, they'd be in tears all right, from rolling around in the aisles with laughter. On the screen, Mr. Beefcake turned and trudged from the rehearsal hall, as if his underwear was too tight. He had his eyes narrowed manfully, ready to pick up his Oscar.

The screen went dark. The director cleared his throat again. He sounded nervous. "Well?"

The room was silent.

The director sounded more nervous. "Uh… So what do you think?"

The lights came on, but they weren't the reason I suddenly had a headache.

Everybody turned toward the VP, waiting for the word of God.

"What I think," the VP said. He nodded wisely. "Is we need a rewrite."

"This fucking town." I gobbled Dy-Gel as Jill drove us home. The Santa Monica freeway was jammed as usual. We had the top down on the Porsche so we got a really good dose of car exhaust.

"They won't blame the star. After all, he charged eight million bucks, and next time he'll charge more if the studio pisses him off." I winced from heartburn. "They'd never think to blame the director. He's a God-damned artist as he keeps telling everybody. So who does that leave? The underpaid schmuck who wrote what everybody changed."

"Take it easy. You'll raise your blood pressure." Jill turned off the freeway.

"Raise my blood pressure? Raise my – it's already raised! Any higher, I'll have a stroke!"

"I don't know what you're so surprised about. This happens on every picture. We've been out here fifteen years. You ought to be used to how they treat writers."

"Whipping boys. That's the only reason they keep us around. Every director, producer, and actor in town is a better writer. Just ask them, they'll tell you. The only problem is they can't read, let alone write, and they just don't seem to have the time to sit down and put all their wonderful thoughts on paper."

"But that's how the system works, hon. There's no way to win, so either you love this business or leave it."

I scowled. "About the only way to make a decent picture is to direct as well as write it. Hell, I'd star in it too if I wasn't losing my hair from pulling it out."

"And twenty million bucks," Jill said.

"Yeah, that would help too – so I wouldn't have to grovel in front of those studio heads. But hell, if I had twenty million bucks to finance a picture, what would I need to be a writer for?"

"You know you'd keep writing, even if you had a hundred million."

"You're right. I must be nuts."

"Wes Crane," Jill said.

I sat at the word processor, grumbling as I did the rewrite. The studio VP had decided that Mr. Biceps wasn't going to leave his girlfriend. Instead his girlfriend was going to realize how much she'd been ignoring him and give up her career for love. "There's an audience out there dying for a movie against women's lib," he said. It was all I could do not to throw up.

"Wes who?" I kept typing on the keyboard.

"Crane. The kid in the dailies."

I turned to where she stood at the open door to my study. I must have blinked stupidly because she got that patient look on her face.

"The one who looks like James Deacon. I got curious. So for the hell of it, I phoned the casting office at the studio."

"All right, so you found out his name. So what's the point?"

"Just a hunch."

"I still don't get it."

"Your script about mercenary soldiers."

I shrugged. "It still needs a polish. Anyway, it's strictly on spec. When the studio decides we've ruined this picture sufficiently, I have to do that Napoleon mini-series for ABC."

"You wrote that script on spec because you believed in the story, right? It's something you really wanted to do."

"The subject's important. Soldiers of fortune employed by the CIA. Unofficially, America 's involved in a lot of foreign wars."

"Then fuck the mini-series. I think the kid would be wonderful as the young mercenary who gets so disgusted that he finally shoots the dictator who hired him."

I stared. "You know, that's not a bad idea."

"When we were driving home, didn't you tell me the only way to film something decent was to direct the thing yourself?"

"And star in it." I raised my eyebrows. "Yeah, that's me. But I was just making a joke."

"Well, lover, I know you couldn't direct any worse than that asshole who ruined your stuff this morning. I've got the hots for you, but you're not good looking enough for even a character part. That kid is, though. And the man who discovers him…"

"… can write his own ticket. If he puts the package together properly."

"You've had fifteen years of learning the politics."

"But if I back out on ABC…"

"Half the writers in town wanted that assignment. They'll sign someone else in an hour."

"But they offered a lot of dough."

"You just made four-hundred-thousand on a story the studio ruined. Take a flyer, why don't you? This one's for your self-respect."

"I think I love you," I said.

"When you're sure, come down to the bedroom."

She turned and left. I watched the doorway for a while, then swung my chair to face the picture window and thought about mercenaries. We live on a bluff in Pacific Palisades. You can see the ocean forever. But what I saw in my head was the kid in the dailies. How he held that beer can.

Just like James Deacon.

Deacon. If you're a film buff, you know who I'm talking about. The farm boy from Oklahoma. Back in the middle fifties. At the start a juvenile delinquent, almost went to reform school for stealing cars. But a teacher managed to get him interested in high-school plays. Deacon never graduated. Instead he borrowed a hundred bucks and hitchhiked to New York where he camped on Lee Strasberg's doorstep till Strasberg agreed to give him a chance in the Actor's Studio.

A lot of brilliant actors came out of that school. Brando, Newman, Clift, Gazzara, McQueen. But some say Deacon was the best of the lot. A bit part on Broadway. A talent scout in the audience. A screen test. The rest as they say is history. The part of the younger brother in The Prodigal Son. The juvenile delinquent in Revolt on Thirty-Second Street. Then the wildcat oil driller in Birthright where he upstaged half a dozen major stars. There was something about him. Intensity, sure. You could sense the pressure building in him, swelling inside his skin, wanting out. And authenticity. God knows, you could tell how much he believed the parts he was playing. He actually was those characters.

But mostly the camera simply loved him. That's the way they explain a star out here. Some good looking guys come across as plain on the screen. And some plain ones look gorgeous. It's a question of taking a three-dimensional face and making it one-dimensional for the screen. What's distinctive in real life gets muted, and vice versa. There's no way to figure if the camera will like you. It either does or doesn't. And it sure liked Deacon.

What's fascinating is that he also looked as gorgeous in real life. A walking movie. Or so they say. I never met him, of course. He's before my time. But the word in the industry was that he couldn't do anything wrong. That's even before his three movies were released. A guaranteed superstar.

And then?

Cars. If you think of his life as a tragedy, cars were the flaw. He loved to race them. I'm told his body had practically disintegrated when he hit a pickup truck at a hundred miles an hour on his way to drive his modified Corvette at a race track in northern California. Maybe you heard the legend. That he didn't die but was so disfigured that he's in a rest home somewhere to spare his fans the disgust of how he looks. But don't believe it. Oh, he died, all right. Just like a shooting star, he exploded. And the irony is that, since his three pictures hadn't been released by then, he never knew how famous he became.

But what I was thinking, if a star could shine once, maybe it could shine again.

"I'm looking for Wes. Is he around?"

I'd phoned the Screen Actor's Guild to get his address. For the sake of privacy, sometimes all the Guild gives out is the name and phone number of an actor's agent, and what I had in mind was so tentative that I didn't want the hassle of dealing with an agent right then.

But I got lucky. The Guild gave me an address.

The place was in a canyon north of the Valley. A dusty winding road led up to an unpainted house with a sundeck supported on stilts and a half-dozen junky cars in front along with a dune buggy and a motorcycle. Seeing those clunkers, I felt self-conscious in the Porsche.

Two guys and a girl were sitting on the steps. The girl had a butch cut. The guys had hair to their shoulders. They wore sandals, shorts, and that's all. The girl's breasts were as brown as nutmeg.

The three of them stared right through me. Their eyes looked big and strange.

I opened my mouth to repeat the question.

But the girl beat me to it. "Wes?" She sounded groggy. "I think… out back."

"Hey, thanks." But I made sure I had the Porsche's keys in my pocket before I plodded through sand past sagebrush around the house.

The back had a sundeck too, and as I turned the corner, I saw him up there, leaning against the rail, squinting toward the foothills.

I tried not to show surprise. In person, Wes looked even more like Deacon. Lean, intense, hypnotic. Around twenty-one, the same age Deacon had been when he made his first movie. Sensitive, brooding, as if he suffered secret tortures. But tough-looking too, projecting the image of someone who'd been emotionally savaged once and wouldn't allow it to happen again. He wasn't tall, and he sure was thin, but he radiated such energy that he made you think he was big and powerful. Even his clothes reminded me of Deacon. Boots, faded jeans, a denim shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a pack of cigarettes tucked in the fold. And a battered stetson with the rim curved up to meet the sides.

Actors love to pose, of course. I'm convinced that they don't even go to the bathroom without giving an imaginary camera their best profile. And the way this kid leaned against the rail, staring moodily toward the foothills, was certainly photogenic.

But I had the feeling it wasn't a pose. His clothes didn't seem a deliberate imitation of Deacon. He wore them too comfortably. And his brooding silhouette didn't seem calculated, either. I've been in the business long enough to know. He dressed and leaned that way naturally. That's the word they use for a winner in this business. He was a natural.

"Wes Crane?" I asked.

He turned and looked down at me. At last, he grinned. "Why not?" He had a vague country-boy accent. Like Deacon.

"I'm David Sloane."

He nodded.

"Then you recognize the name?"

He shrugged. "Sounds awful familiar."

"I'm a screenwriter. I did Broken Promises, the picture you just finished working on."

"I remember the name now. On the script."

"I'd like to talk to you."

"About?"

"Another script." I held it up. "There's a part in it that I think might interest you."

"So you're a producer, too?"

I shook my head no.

"Then why come to me? Even if I like the part, it won't do us any good."

I thought about how to explain. "I'll be honest. It's a big mistake as far as negotiating goes, but I'm tired of bullshit."

"Cheers." He raised a beer can to his lips.

"I saw you in the dailies this morning. I liked what I saw. A lot. What I want you to do is read this script and tell me if you want the part. With your commitment and me as director, I'd like to approach a studio for financing. But that's the package. You don't do it if I don't direct. And I don't do it unless you're the star."

"So what makes you think they'd accept me?"

"My wife's got a hunch."

He laughed. "Hey, I'm out of work. Anybody offers me a job, I take it. Why should I care who directs? Who are you to me?"

My heart sank.

He opened another beer can. "Guess what, though? I don't like bullshit, either." His eyes looked mischievous. "Sure, what have I got to lose? Leave the script."

My number was on the front of it. The next afternoon, he called.

"This script of yours? I'll tell you the same thing you said to me about my acting. I liked it. A lot."

"It still needs a polish."

"Only where the guy's best friend gets killed. The hero wouldn't talk so much about what he feels. The fact is, he wouldn't say anything. No tears. No outburst. This is a guy who holds himself in. All you need is a closeup on his eyes. That says it all. He stares down at his buddy. He picks up his M-16. He turns toward the palace. The audience'll start to cheer. They'll know he's set to kick ass."

Most times when an actor offers suggestions, my stomach cramps. They get so involved in their part they forget about the story's logic. They want more lines. They want to emphasize their role till everybody else in the picture looks weak. Now here was an actor who wanted his largest speech cut out. He was thinking story, not ego. And he was right. That speech had always bothered me. I'd written it ten different ways and still hadn't figured out what was wrong.

Till now.

"The speech is out," I said. "It won't take fifteen minutes to redo the scene."

"And then?"

"I'll go to the studio."

"You're really not kidding me? You think there's a chance I can get the part?"

"As much chance as I have to direct it. Remember the arrangement. We're a package. Both of us, or none."

"And you don't want me to sign some kind of promise?"

"It's called a binder. And you're right. You don't have to sign a thing."

"Let me get this straight. If they don't want you to direct but they offer me the part, I'm supposed to turn them down. Because I promised you?"

"Sounds crazy, doesn't it?" The truth was, even if I had his promise in writing, the studio's lawyers could have it nullified if Wes claimed he'd been misled. This town wouldn't function if people kept their word.

"Yeah, crazy," Wes said. "You've got a deal."

In the casting office at the studio, I asked a thirtyish thin-faced woman behind a counter, "Have you got any film on an actor named Crane? Wes Crane?"

She looked at me strangely. Frowning, she opened a filing cabinet and sorted through some folders. She nodded, relieved. "I knew that name was familiar. Sure, we've got a screen test on him."

"What? Who authorized it?"

She studied a page. "Doesn't say."

And I never found out, and that's one of many things that bother me. "Do you know who's seen the test?"

"Oh, sure, we have to keep a record." She studied another page. "But I'm the only one who looked at it."

"You?"

"He came in one day to fill out some forms. We got to kidding around. It's hard to describe. There's something about him. So I thought I'd take a look at his test."

"And?"

"What can I say? I recommended him for that bit part in Broken Promises."

"If I want to see that test, do you have to check with anybody?"

She thought about it. "You're still on the payroll for Broken Promises, aren't you?"

"Right."

"And Crane's in the movie. It seems a legitimate request." She checked a schedule. "Use screening room four. In thirty minutes. I'll send down a projectionist with the reel."

So I sat in the dark and watched the test and first felt the shiver that I'd soon know well. When the reel was over, I didn't move for quite a while.

The projectionist came out. "Are you all right, Mr. Sloane? I mean, you're not sick or anything?"

"No. Thanks. I'm…"

"What?"

"Just thinking."

I took a deep breath and went back to the casting office.

"There's been a mistake. That wasn't Crane's test."

The thin-faced woman shook her head. "There's no mistake."

"But that was a scene from The Prodigal Son. James Deacon's movie. There's been a switch."

"No, that was Wes Crane. It's the scene he wanted to do. The set department used something that looked like the hayloft in the original."

"Wes…"

"Crane," she said. "Not Deacon."

We stared.

"And you liked it?" I asked.

"Well, I thought he was ballsy to choose that scene – and pull it off. One wrong move, he'd have looked like an idiot. Yeah, I liked it."

"You want to help the kid along?"

"Depends. Will it get me in trouble?"

"Exactly the opposite. You'll earn brownie points."

"How?"

"Just phone the studio VP. Tell him I was down here asking to watch a screen test. Tell him you didn't let me because I didn't have authorization. But I acted upset, so now you've had second thoughts, and you're calling him to make sure you did the right thing. You don't want to lose your job."

"So what will that accomplish?"

"He'll get curious. He'll ask whose test it was. Just tell him the truth. But use these words. 'The kid who looks like James Deacon.'"

"I still don't see…"

"You will." I grinned.

I called my agent and told him to plant an item in Variety and Hollywood Reporter. "Oscar-winning scribe, David Sloane, currently prepping his first behind-the-lens chore on Mercenaries, toplining James Deacon lookalike, Wes Crane."

"What's going on? Is somebody else representing you? I don't know from chicken livers about Mercenaries."

"Lou, trust me."

"Who's the studio?"

"All in good time."

"You sonofabitch, if you expect me to work for you when somebody else is getting the commission – "

"Believe me, you'll get your ten percent. But if anybody calls, tell them they have to talk to me. You're not allowed to discuss the project."

"Discuss it? How the hell can I discuss it when I don't know a thing about it?"

"There. You see how easy it'll be?"

Then I drove to a video store and bought a tape of The Prodigal Son.

I hadn't seen the movie in years. That evening, Jill and I watched it fifteen times. Or at least a part of it that often. Every time the hayloft scene was over, I rewound the tape to the start of the scene.

"For God's sake, what are you doing? Don't you want to see the whole movie?"

"It's the same." I stared in astonishment.

"What do you mean the same? Have you been drinking?"

"The hayloft scene. It's the same as in Wes Crane's screen test."

"Well, of course. You told me the set department tried to imitate the original scene."

"I don't mean the hayloft." I tingled again. "See, here in The Prodigal Son, Deacon does most of the scene sprawled on the floor of the loft. He has the side of his face pressed against those bits of straw. I can almost smell the dust and the chaff. He's talking more to the floor than he is to his father behind him."

"I see it. So what are you getting at?"

"That's identical in Wes Crane's test. One continuous shot with the camera at the floor. Crane has his cheek against the wood. He sounds the same as Deacon. Every movement, every pause, even that choking noise right here as if the character's about to start sobbing – they're identical."

"But what's the mystery about it? Crane must have studied this section before he decided to use it in his test."

I rewound the tape.

"No, not again," Jill said.

The next afternoon, the studio VP phoned. "I'm disappointed in you, David."

"Don't tell me you didn't like the rewrite on Broken Promises."

"The rewrite? The… Oh, yes, the rewrite. Great, David, great. They're shooting it now. Of course, you understand I had to make a few extra changes. Don't worry, though. I won't ask to share the writing credit with you." He chuckled.

I chuckled right back. "Well, that's a relief."

"What I'm calling about are the trades today. Since when have you become a director?"

"I was afraid of this. I'm not allowed to talk about it."

"I asked your agent. He says he didn't handle the deal."

"Well, yeah, it's something I set up on my own."

"Where?"

"Walt, really I can't talk about it. Those items in the trades surprised the hell out of me. They might screw up the deal. I haven't finished the negotiations yet."

"With this kid who looks like James Deacon."

"Honestly I've said as much as I can, Walt."

"I'll tell you flat out. I don't think it's right for you to try to sneak him away from us. I'm the one who discovered him, remember. I had a look at his screen test yesterday. He's got the makings of a star."

I knew when he'd screened that test. Right after the woman in the casting department phoned him to ask if I had a right to see the test. One thing you can count on in this business. Everybody's so paranoid they want to know what everybody else is doing. If they think a trend is developing, they'll stampede to follow it.

"Walt, I'm not exactly trying to sneak him away from you. You don't have him under contract, do you?"

He ignored the question. "And what's this project called Mercenaries? What's that all about?"

"It's a script I did on spec. I got the idea when I heard about the ads at the back of Soldier of Fortune magazine."

"Soldier of… David, I thought we had a good working relationship."

"Sure. That's what I thought too."

"Then why didn't you talk to me about this story? Hey, we're friends, after all. Chances are you wouldn't have had to write it on spec. I could have given you some development money."

And after you'd finished mucking with it, you'd have turned it into a musical, I thought. "Well, I guess I figured it wasn't for you. Since I wanted to direct and use an unknown in the lead."

Another thing you can count on in this business. Tell a producer that a project isn't for him, and he'll feel so left out he'll want to see it. That doesn't mean he'll buy it. But at least he'll have the satisfaction of knowing that he didn't miss out on a chance for a hit.

"Directing, David? You're a writer. What do you know about directing? I'd have to draw the line on that. But using the kid as a lead. I considered that yesterday after I saw his test."

Like hell you did, I thought. The test only made you curious. The items in the trades today are what gave you the idea.

"You see what I mean?" I asked. "I figured you wouldn't like the package. That's why I didn't take it to you."

"Well, the problem's hypothetical. I just sent the head of our legal department out to see him. We're offering the kid a long-term option."

"In other words, you want to fix it so no one else can use him, but you're not committing yourself to star him in a picture, and you're paying him a fraction of what you think he might be worth."

"Hey, ten thousand bucks isn't pickled herring. Not from his point of view. So maybe we'll go to fifteen."

"Against?"

"A hundred-and-fifty-thousand if we use him in a picture."

"His agent won't go for it."

"He doesn't have one."

That explained why the Screen Actor's Guild had given me Wes's home address and phone number instead of an agent's.

"I get it now," I said. "You're doing all this just to spite me."

"There's nothing personal in this, David. It's business. I tell you what. Show me the script. Maybe we can put a deal together."

"But you won't accept me as a director."

"Hey, with budgets as high as they are, the only way I can justify our risk with an unknown actor is by paying him next to nothing. If the picture's a hit, he'll screw us next time anyhow. But I won't risk the money I'm saving by using an inexperienced director who'd probably run the budget into the stratosphere. I see this picture coming in at fifteen million tops."

"But you haven't even read the script. It's got several big action scenes. Explosions. Helicopters. Expensive special effects. Twenty-five million minimum."

"That's just my point. You're so close to the concept that you wouldn't want to compromise on the special effects. You're not directing."

"Well, as you said before, it's hypothetical. I've taken the package to somebody else."

"Not if we put him under option. David, don't fight me on this. Remember, we're friends."

Paramount phoned an hour later. Trade gossip travels fast. They'd heard I was having troubles with my studio and wondered if we could take a meeting to discuss the project they'd been reading about.

I said I'd get back to them. But now I had what I wanted – I could truthfully say that Paramount had been in touch with me. I could play the studios off against each other.

Walt phoned back that evening. "What did you do with the kid? Hide him in your closet?"

"Couldn't find him, huh?"

"The head of our legal department says the kid lives with a bunch of freaks way the hell out in the middle of nowhere. The freaks don't communicate too well. The kid isn't there, and they don't know where he went."

"I'm meeting him tomorrow."

"Where?"

"Can't say, Walt. Paramount 's been in touch."

Wes met me at a taco stand he liked in Burbank. He'd been racing his motorcycle in a meet, and when he pulled up in his boots and jeans, his T-shirt and leather jacket, I shivered from déjà vu. He looked exactly as Deacon had looked in Revolt on Thirty-Second Street.

"Did you win?"

He grinned and raised his thumb. "Yourself?"

"Some interesting developments."

He barely had time to park his bike before two men in suits came over. I wondered if they were cops, but their suits were too expensive. Then I realized. The studio. I'd been followed from my house.

"Mr. Hepner would like you to look at this," the blue suit told Wes. He set a document on the roadside table.

"What is it?"

"An option for your services. Mr. Hepner feels that the figure will interest you."

Wes shoved it over to me. "What's it mean?"

I read it quickly. The studio had raised the fee. They were offering fifty thousand now against a quarter million.

I told him the truth. "In your position, it's a lot of cash. I think that at this point you need an agent."

"You know a good one?"

"My own. But that might be too chummy."

"So what do you think I should do?"

"The truth? How much did you make last year? Fifty grand's a serious offer."

"Is there a catch?"

I nodded. "Chances are you'll be put in Mercs."

"And?"

"I don't direct."

Wes squinted at me. This would be the moment I'd always cherish. "You're willing to let me do it?" he asked.

"I told you I can't hold you to our bargain. In your place, I'd be tempted. It's a good career move."

"Listen to him," the gray suit said.

"But do you want to direct?"

I nodded. Until now, all the moves had been predictable. But Wes himself was not. Most unknown actors would grab at the chance for stardom. They wouldn't care what private agreements they ignored. Everything depended on whether Wes had a character similar to Deacon.

"And no hard feelings if I go with the studio?" he asked.

I shrugged. "What we talked about was fantasy. This is real."

He kept squinting at me. All at once, he turned to the suits and slid the option toward them. "Tell Mr. Hepner my friend here has to direct."

"You're making a big mistake," the blue suit said.

"Yeah, well, here today, gone tomorrow. Tell Mr. Hepner I trust my friend to make me look good."

I exhaled slowly. The suits looked grim.

I'll skip the month of negotiations. There were times when I sensed that Wes and I had both thrown away our careers. The key was that Walt had taken a stand, and pride wouldn't let him budge. But when I offered to direct for union scale (and let the studio have the screenplay for the minimum the Writers' Guild would allow, and Wes agreed to the Actors' Guild minimum), Walt had a deal that he couldn't refuse. Greed budged him in our favor. He bragged about how he'd outmaneuvered us.

We didn't care. I was making a picture I believed in, and Wes was on the verge of being a star.

I did my homework. I brought the picture in for twelve million. These days, that's a bargain. The rule of thumb says that you multiply the picture's cost by three (to account for studio overhead, bank interest, promotion, this and that), and you've got the break-even point.

So we were aiming for thirty-six million in ticket sales. Worldwide, we did a hundred-and-twenty-million. Now a lot of that went to the distributors, the folks that sell you popcorn. And a lot of that went into some mysterious black hole of theater owners who don't report all the tickets they sold and foreign chains that suddenly go bankrupt. But after the sale to HBO and CBS, after the income from tapes and discs and showings on airlines, the studio had a solid forty million profit in the bank. And that, believe me, qualifies as a hit.

We were golden. The studio wanted another Wes Crane picture yesterday. The reviews were glowing. Both Wes and I were nominated for – but didn't receive – an Oscar. "Next time," I told Wes.

And now that we were hot, we demanded fees that were large enough to compensate for the pennies we'd been paid on the first one.

Then the trouble started.

You remember that Deacon never knew he was a star. He died with three pictures in the can and a legacy that he never knew would make him immortal. But what you probably don't know is that Deacon became more difficult as he went from picture to picture. The theory is that he sensed the power he was going to have, and he couldn't handle it. Because he was making up for his troubled youth. He was showing people that he wasn't the fuckup his foster parents and his teachers (with one exception) said he was. But Deacon was so intense – and so insecure – that he started reverting. Secretly he felt that he didn't deserve his predicted success. So he did become a fuckup as predicted.

On his next-to-last picture, he started showing up three hours late for the scenes he was supposed to be in. He played expensive pranks on the set, the worst of which was lacing the crew's lunch with a laxative that shut down production for the rest of the day. His insistence on racing cars forced the studio to pay exorbitant premiums to the insurance company that covered him during shooting. On his last picture, he was drunk more often than not, swilling beer and tequila on the set. Just before he died in the car crash, he looked twenty-two going on sixty. Most of his visuals had been completed, just a few closeups remaining, but since a good deal of Birthright was shot on location in the Texas oilfields, his dialogue needed re-recording to eliminate background noises on the soundtrack. A friend of his who'd learned to imitate Deacon's voice was hired to dub several key speeches. The audience loved the finished print, but they didn't realize how much of the film depended on careful editing, emphasizing other characters in scenes where Deacon looked so wasted that his footage couldn't be used.

So naturally I wondered – if Wes Crane looked like Deacon and sounded like Deacon, dressed like Deacon and had Deacon's style, would he start to behave like Deacon? What would happen when I came to Wes with a second project?

I wasn't the only one offering stories to him. The scripts came pouring in.

I learned this from the trades. I hadn't seen him since Oscar night in March. Whenever I called his place, either I didn't get an answer or a spaced-out woman's voice told me Wes wasn't home. In truth, I'd expected him to have moved from that dingy house near the desert. The gang that lived there reminded me of the Manson clan. But then I remembered that he hadn't come into big money yet. The second project would be the gold mine. And I wondered if he was going to stake the claim only for himself.

His motorcycle was parked outside our house when Jill and I came back from a Writers' Guild screening of a new Clint Eastwood movie. This was at sunset with sailboats silhouetted against a crimson ocean. Wes was sitting on the steps that wound up through a rose garden to our house. He held a beer can. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt again, and the white of that T-shirt contrasted beautifully with his tan. But his cheeks looked gaunter than when I'd last seen him.

Our exchange had become a ritual.

"Did you win?"

He grinned and raised a thumb. "Yourself?"

I grinned right back. "I've been trying to get in touch with you."

He shrugged. "Well, yeah, I've been racing. I needed some downtime. All that publicity, and… Jill, how are you?"

"Fine, Wes. You?"

"The second go-around's the hardest."

I thought I understood. Trying for another hit. But now I wonder.

"Stay for supper?" Jill asked.

"I'd like to, but…"

"Please, do. It won't be any trouble."

"Are you sure?"

"The chili's been cooking in the crackpot all day. Tortillas and salad."

Wes nodded. "Yeah, my mom used to like making chili. That's before my dad went away and she got to drinking."

Jill's eyebrows narrowed. Wes didn't notice, staring at his beer can.

"Then she didn't do much cooking at all," he said. "When she went to the hospital… This was back in Oklahoma. Well, the cancer ate her up. And the city put me in a foster home. I guess that's when I started running wild." Brooding, he drained his beer can and blinked at us as if remembering we were there. "A home-cooked meal would go good."

"It's coming up," Jill said.

But she still looked bothered, and I almost asked her what was wrong. She went inside.

Wes reached in a paper sack beneath a rose bush. "Anyway, buddy." He handed me a beer can. "You want to make another movie?"

"The trades say you're much in demand." I sat beside him, stared at the ocean, and popped the tab on the beer can…

"Yeah, but aren't we supposed to be a team? You direct and write. I act. Both of us, or none." He nudged my knee. "Isn't that the bargain?"

"It is if you say so. Right now, you've got the clout to do anything you want."

"Well, what I want is a friend. Someone I trust to tell me when I'm fucking up. Those other guys, they'll let you do anything if they think they can make a buck, even if you ruin yourself. I've learned my lesson. Believe me, this time I'm doing things right."

"In that case," I said, vaguely puzzled.

"Let's hear it."

"I've been working on something. We start with several givens. The audience likes you in an action role. But you've got to be rebellious, anti-establishment. And the issue has to be controversial. What about a bodyguard – he's young, he's tough – who's supposed to protect a famous movie actress? Someone who reminds us of Marilyn Monroe. Secretly he's in love with her, but he can't bring himself to tell her. And she dies from an overdose of sleeping pills. The cops say it's suicide. The newspapers go along. But the bodyguard can't believe she killed herself. He discovers evidence that it was murder. He gets pissed at the coverup. From grief, he investigates further. A hit team nearly kills him. Now he's twice as pissed. And what he learns is that the man who ordered the murder – it's an election year, the actress was writing a tell-it-all about her famous lovers – is the President of the United States."

"I think" – he sipped his beer – "it would play in Oklahoma."

"And Chicago and New York. It's a backlash about big government. With a sympathetic hero."

He chuckled. "When do we start?"

And that's how we made the deal on Grievance.

I felt excited all evening, but later – after we'd had a pleasant supper and Wes had driven off on his motorcycle – Jill stuck a pin in my swollen optimism.

"What he said about Oklahoma, about his father running away, his mother becoming a drunk and dying from cancer, about his going to a foster home…"

"I noticed it bothered you."

"You bet. You're so busy staring at your keyboard you don't keep up on the handouts about your star."

I put a bowl in the dishwasher. "So?"

"Wes comes from Indiana. He's a foundling, raised in an orphanage. The background he gave you isn't his."

"Then whose…"

Jill stared at me.

"My God, not Deacon's."

So there it was, like a hideous face popping out of a box to leer at me. Wes's physical resemblance to Deacon was accidental, an act of fate that turned out to be a godsend for him. But the rest – the mannerisms, the clothes, the voice – were truly deliberate. I know what you're thinking – I'm contradicting myself. When I first met him, I thought his style was too natural to be a conscious imitation. And when I realized that his screen test was identical in every respect to Deacon's hayloft scene in The Prodigal Son, I didn't believe that Wes had callously reproduced the scene. The screen test felt too natural to be an imitation. It was a homage.

But now I knew better. Wes was imitating, all right. But chillingly, what Wes had done went beyond conventional imitation. He'd accomplished the ultimate goal of every method actor. He wasn't playing a part. He wasn't pretending to be Deacon. He actually was his model. He'd so immersed himself in a role which at the start was no doubt consciously performed that now he was the role. Wes Crane existed only in name. His background, his thoughts, his very identity, weren't his own anymore. They belonged to a dead man. "What the hell is this?" I asked. "The Three Faces of Eve? Sybil?" Jill looked at me nervously. "As long as it isn't Psycho."

What was I to do? Tell Wes he needed help? Have a heart-to-heart and try to talk him out of his delusion? All we had was the one conversation to back up our theory, and anyway he wasn't dangerous. The opposite. His manners were impeccable. He always spoke softly, with humor. Besides, actors use all kinds of ways to psych themselves up. By nature, they're eccentric. The best thing to do, I thought, was wait and see. With another picture about to start, there wasn't any sense in making trouble. If his delusion became destructive…

But he certainly wasn't difficult on the set. He showed up a half hour early for his scenes. He knew his lines. He spent several evenings and weekends – no charge – rehearsing with the other actors. Even the studio VP admitted that the dailies looked wonderful.

About the only sign of trouble was his mania for racing cars and motorcycles. The VP had a fit about the insurance premiums.

"Hey, he needs to let off steam," I said. "There's a lot of pressure on him."

And on me, I'll admit. I had a budget of twenty-five million this time, and I wasn't going to ruin things by making my star self-conscious.

Halfway through the shooting schedule, Wes came over. "See, no pranks. I'm being good this time."

"Hey, I appreciate it." What on earth did he mean by "this time?"

You're probably thinking that I could have stopped what happened if I'd cared more about him than I did for the picture. But I did care – as you'll see. And it didn't matter. What happened was as inevitable as tragedy.

Grievance became a bigger success than Mercenaries. A worldwide two-hundred-million gross. Variety predicted an even bigger gross for the next one. Sure, the next one – number three. But at the back of my head, a nasty voice was telling me that for Deacon three had been the unlucky number.

I left a conference at the studio, walking toward my new Ferrari in the executive parking lot, when someone shouted my name. Turning, I peered through the Burbank smog at a long-haired bearded man wearing beads, a serape, and sandals, running over to me. I wondered what he wore, if anything, beneath the dangling serape.

I recognized him – Donald Porter, the friend of Deacon who'd played a bit part in Birthright and imitated Deacon's voice on some of the soundtrack after Deacon had died. Porter had to be in his forties now, but he dressed as if the sixties had never ended and hippies still existed. He'd starred and directed in a hit youth film twenty years ago – a lot of drugs and rock and sex. For a while, he'd tried to start his own studio in Santa Fe, but the second picture he directed was a flop, and after fading from the business for a while, he'd made a comeback as a character actor. The way he was dressed, I didn't understand how he'd passed the security guard at the gate. And because we knew each other – I'd once done a rewrite on a television show he was featured in – I had the terrible feeling he was going to ask me for a job.

"I heard you were on the lot. I've been waiting for you," Porter said.

I stared at his skinny bare legs beneath his serape.

"This, man?" He gestured comically at himself. "I'm in the new TV movie they're shooting here. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test."

I nodded. "Tom Wolfe's book. Ken Kesey. Don't tell me you're playing – "

"No. Too old for Kesey. I'm Neal Cassidy. After he split from Kerouac, he joined up with Kesey, driving the bus for the Merry Pranksters. You know, it's all a load of crap, man. Cassidy never dressed like this. He dressed like Deacon. Or Deacon dressed like him."

"Well, good. Hey, great. I'm glad things are going well for you." I turned toward my car.

"Just a second, man. That's not what I wanted to talk to you about. Wes Crane. You know?"

"No, I…"

"Deacon, man. Come on. Don't tell me you haven't noticed. Shit, man. I dubbed Deacon's voice. I knew him. I was his friend. Nobody else knew him better. Crane sounds more like Deacon than I did."

"So?"

"It isn't possible."

"Because he's better?"

"Cruel, man. Really. Beneath you. I have to tell you something. I don't want you thinking I'm on drugs again. I swear I'm clean. A little grass. That's it." His eyes looked as bright as a nova. "I'm into horoscopes. Astrology. The stars. That's a good thing for a movie actor, don't you think? The stars. There's a lot of truth in the stars."

"Whatever turns you on."

"You think so, man? Well, listen to this. I wanted to see for myself, so I found out where he lives, but I didn't go out there. Want to know why?" He didn't let me answer. "I didn't have to. 'Cause I recognized the address. I've been there a hundred times. When Deacon lived there."

I flinched. "You're changing the subject. What's that got to do with horoscopes and astrology?"

"Crane's birth date."

"Well?"

"It's the same as the day Deacon died."

I realized I'd stopped breathing. "So what?"

"More shit, man. Don't pretend it's coincidence. It's in the stars. You know what's coming. Crane's your bread and butter. But the gravy train'll end four months from now."

I didn't ask.

"Crane's birthday's coming up. The anniversary of Deacon's death."

And when I looked into it, there were other parallels. Wes would be twenty-three – Deacon's age when he died. And Wes would be close to the end of his third movie – about the same place in Deacon's third movie when he…

We were doing a script I'd written, Rampage, about a young man from a tough neighborhood who comes back to teach there. A local street gang harasses him and his wife until the only way he can survive is by reverting to the violent life (he once led his own gang) that he ran away from.

It was Wes's idea to have the character renew his fascination with motorcycles. I have to admit that the notion had commercial value, given Wes's well-known passion for motorcycle racing. But I also felt apprehensive, especially when he insisted on doing his own stunts.

I couldn't talk him out of it. As if his model behavior on the first two pictures had been too great a strain on him, he snapped to the opposite extreme – showing up late, drinking on the set, playing expensive pranks. One joke involving fire crackers started a blaze in the costume trailer.

It all had the makings of a death wish. His absolute identification with Deacon was leading him to the ultimate parallel.

And just like Deacon in his final picture, Wes began to look wasted. Hollow-cheeked, squinty, stooped from lack of food and sleep. His dailies were shameful.

"How the hell are we supposed to ask an audience to pay to see this shit?" the studio VP asked.

"I'll have to shoot around him. Cut to reaction shots from the characters he's talking to." My heart lurched.

"That sounds familiar," Jill said beside me.

I knew what she meant. I'd become the director I'd criticized on Broken Promises.

"Well, can't you control him?" the VP asked.

"It's hard. He's not quite himself these days."

"Dammit, if you can't, maybe another director can. This garbage is costing us forty million bucks."

The threat made me seeth. I almost told him to take his forty million bucks and…

Abruptly I understood the leverage he'd given me. I straightened. "Relax. Just let me have a week. If he hasn't improved by then, I'll back out gladly."

"Witnesses heard you say it. One week, pal, or else."

In the morning, I waited for Wes in his trailer when as usual he showed up late for his first shot.

At the open trailer door, he had trouble focusing on me. "If it isn't teach." He shook his head. "No, wrong. It's me who's supposed to play the teach in – what's the name of this garbage we're making?"

"Wes, I want to talk to you."

"Hey, funny thing. The same goes for me with you. Just give me a chance to grab a beer, okay?" Fumbling, he shut the trailer door behind him and lurched through shadows toward the miniature fridge.

"Try to keep your head clear. This is important," I said.

"Right. Sure." He popped the tab on a beer can and left the fridge door open while he drank. He wiped his mouth. "But first I want a favor."

"That depends."

"I don't have to ask, you know. I can just go ahead and do it. I'm trying to be polite."

"What is it?"

"Monday's my birthday. I want the day off. There's a motorcyle race near Sonora. I want to make a long weekend out of it." He drank more beer.

"We had an agreement once."

He scowled. Beer dribbled down his chin.

"I write and direct. You star. Both of us, or none."

"Yeah. So? I've kept the bargain."

"The studio's given me a week. To shape you up. If not, I'm out of the project."

He sneered. "I'll tell them I don't work if you don't."

"Not that simple, Wes. At the moment, they're not that eager to do what you want. You're losing your clout. Remember why you liked us as a team?"

He wavered blearily.

"Because you wanted a friend. To keep you from making what you called the same mistakes again. To keep you from fucking up. Well, Wes, that's what you're doing. Fucking up."

He finished his beer and crumbled the can. He curled his lips, angry. "Because I want a day off on my birthday?"

"No, because you're getting your roles confused. You're not James Deacon. But you've convinced yourself that you are, and Monday you'll die in a crash."

He blinked. Then he sneered. "So what are you, a fortune teller now?"

"A half-baked psychiatrist. Unconsciously you want to complete the legend. The way you've been acting, the parallel's too exact."

"I told you the first time we met – I don't like bullshit!"

"Then prove it. Monday, you don't go near a motorcycle, a car, hell even a go-cart. You come to the studio sober. You do your work as well as you know how. I drive you over to my place. We have a private party. You and me and Jill. She promises to make your favorite meal: T-bones, baked beans, steamed corn. Homemade birthday cake. Chocolate. Again, your favorite. The works. You stay the night. In the morning, we put James Deacon behind us and…"

"Yeah? What?"

"You achieve the career Deacon never had."

His eyes looked uncertain.

"Or you go to the race and destroy yourself and break the promise you made. You and me together. A team. Don't back out of our bargain."

He shuddered as if he was going to crack.

In a movie, that would have been the climax – how he didn't race on his birthday, how we had the private party and he hardly said a word and went to sleep in our guest room.

And survived.

But this is what happened. On the Tuesday after his birthday, he couldn't remember his lines. He couldn't play to the camera. He couldn't control his voice. Wednesday was worse.

But I'll say this. On his birthday, the anniversary of Deacon's death, when Wes showed up sober and treated our bargain with honor, he did the most brilliant acting of his career. A zenith of tradecraft. I often watch the video of those scenes with profound respect.

And the dailies were so truly brilliant that the studio VP let me finish the picture.

But the VP never knew how I faked the rest of it. Overnight, Wes had totally lost his technique. I had enough in the can to deliver a print – with a lot of fancy editing and some uncredited but very expensive help from Donald Porter. He dubbed most of Wes's final dialogue.

"I told you. Horoscopes. Astrology," Donald said.

I didn't believe him until I took four scenes to an audio expert I know. He specializes in putting voices through a computer and making visual graphs of them.

He spread the charts in front of me. "Somebody played a joke on you. Or else you're playing one on me."

I felt so unsteady that I had to press my hands on his desk when I asked him, "How?"

"Using this first film, Deacon's scene from The Prodigal Son as the standard, this second film is close. But this third one doesn't have any resemblance."

"So where's the joke?"

"In the fourth. It matches perfectly. Who's kidding who?"

Deacon had been the voice on the first. Donald Porter had been the voice on the second. Close to Deacon's, dubbing for Wes in Rampage. Wes himself had been the voice on the third – the dialogue in Rampage that I couldn't use because Wes's technique had gone to hell.

And the fourth clip? The voice that was identical to Deacon's, authenticated, verifiable. Wes again. His screen test. The imitated scene from The Prodigal Son.

Wes dropped out of sight. For sure, his technique had collapsed so badly he would never again be a shining star. I kept phoning him, but I never got an answer. So, for what turned out to be the second-last time, I drove out to his dingy place near the desert. The Manson lookalikes were gone. Only one motorcycle stood outside. I climbed the steps to the sun porch, knocked, received no answer, and opened the door.

The blinds were closed. The place was in shadow. I went down a hall and heard strained breathing. Turned to the right. And entered a room.

The breathing was louder, more strident and forced.

"Wes?"

"Don't turn on the light."

"I've been worried about you, friend."

"Don't…"

But I did turn on the light. And what I saw made me swallow vomit.

He was slumped in a chair. Seeping into it would be more accurate. Rotting. Decomposing. His cheeks had holes that showed his teeth. A pool that stank of decaying vegetables spread on the floor around him.

"I should have gone racing on my birthday, huh?" His voice whistled through the gaping flesh in his throat.

"Oh, shit, friend." I started to cry. "Jesus Christ, I should have let you."

"Do me a favor, huh? Turn off the light now. Let me finish this in peace."

I had so much to say to him. But I couldn't. My heart broke. I turned off the light.

"And buddy," he said, "I think we'd better forget about our bargain. We won't be working together anymore."

"What can I do to help? There must be something I can – "

"Yeah, let me end this the way I need to."

"Listen, I – "

"Leave," Wes said. "It hurts me too much to have you here, to listen to the pity in your voice."

"But I care about you. I'm your friend. I – "

"That's why I know you'll do what I ask" – the hole in his throat made another whistling sound – "and leave."

I stood in the darkness, listening to other sounds he made: liquid rotting sounds. "A doctor. There must be something a doctor can – "

"Been there. Done that. What's wrong with me no doctor's going to cure. Now if you don't mind…"

"What?"

"You weren't invited. Get out."

I waited another long moment. "… Sure."

"Love you, man," he said.

"… love you."

Dazed, I stumbled outside. Down the steps. Across the sand. Blinded by the sun, unable to clear my nostrils of the stench in that room, I threw up beside the car.

The next day, I drove out again. The last time. Jill went with me. He'd moved. I never learned where.

And this is how it ended, the final dregs of his career. His talent was gone, but how his determination lingered.

Movies. Immortality.

See, special effects are expensive. Studios will grasp at any means to cut the cost.

He'd told me, "Forget about our bargain." I later discovered what he meant – he worked without me in one final feature. He wasn't listed in the credits, though. Zombies from Hell. Remember how awful Bela Lugosi looked in his last exploitation movie before they buried him in his Dracula cape?

Bela looked great compared to Wes. I saw the Zombie movie in an eight-plex out in the Valley. It did great business. Jill and I almost didn't get a seat.

Jill wept as I did.

This fucking town. Nobody cares how it's done, as long as it packs them in.

The audience cheered when Wes stalked toward the leading lady.

And his jaw fell off.

In 1986, a year after the previous story was published, I made a decision that surprised me as much as it did anyone else. Since 1970, I had been teaching American literature at the University of Iowa. I had risen through the ranks, gaining tenure and a full professorship. I thoroughly enjoyed teaching. It was a delight to be around young people eager to learn. The stimulation of the university environment and of my colleague friends had been a constant in my life for sixteen years.

Then I woke up one morning and recognized that I didn't have the energy to devote myself to two full-time professions any longer. I had been working seven days a week for as long as I could remember. Balancing my teaching responsibilities with my writing needs had often required me to get up before dawn and to stay awake after my family went to sleep. The idea of a day off or of a free weekend wasn't in my universe. But while teaching was my love, writing was my passion, and when the burden of fatigue finally overwhelmed me, there wasn't any doubt what "the mild-mannered professor with the bloody-minded visions," as one critic called me, would do. In the fall of 1986, I resigned from the university.

The adjustment was painful. After all, academia had been a crucial part of my life for even longer than my years at Iowa – all the way back to 1966 when I'd entered graduate school at Penn State. Although I now had the luxury to write full time, I continued to feel the tug of the classroom. Often I reconsidered my decision. But in a matter of months, neither writing nor teaching mattered any longer.

In January of 1987, my son was diagnosed with bone cancer. From then until his death in June, the nightmarish rollercoaster of emotions and pain through which Matt suffered made me fear for my sanity. This can't be happening, I told myself. It isn't real. But despairingly it was, and I found myself wanting to escape from reality. While sitting in Mart's intensive-care room, watching his septic-shock-ravaged, comatose body, I was surprised to discover that the novel I was holding was by Stephen King. Stephen is a friend. He knew Matt and kindly sent him letters along with rock tapes to try to distract him from his ordeal. Even so, it seemed odd to me that in the midst of real-life horror, I was reading made-up horror. Then it occurred to me that the made-up horror was paradoxically providing a barrier from real-life horror. I recalled how fans often wrote to me, describing disasters in their lives – deaths, marriage breakups, lost jobs, fires, floods, car accidents – telling me that a book of mine had helped them make it through the night. As the subject of my doctoral dissertation, John Barth, once said, "Reality is a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there."

While these thoughts went through my mind, another friend, Douglas Winter, a multiple talent fiction writer/critic/anthologist/attorney asked if I would contribute to an anthology he was putting together, Prime Evil. Writing was the last thing I wanted to do, and yet, with Doug's encouragement, when I wasn't visiting Matt in the hospital, I wrote the following novella which was suggested by my fascination with the paintings of Van Gogh. A tale about insanity, it helped to keep me sane. It received the Horror Writers Association award for the best novella of 1988.