Crusaders in Hell

CRUSADERS IN LOVE Bill Kerby

Hey, wait a minute, who the hell is this Lefty Armbruster anyway? Am I suppose to know him?

My answering service is about to go ape; he just keeps calling.

This is not exactly the choicest time to be bugging me for favors, either. I'm not the kind of guy who doesn't remember who he's been, believe me. But all of a sudden Robin and I are flooded with attention - we are on the "A-list," everybody's new best friend. We go down to City Cafe and every head turns.

They want us to be celebrity judges on Dance Fever. We stand in a movie line and the guy comes out and takes us right in. Free popcorn, too. My lawyer finally returns my calls. Suddenly, it doesn't seem to be my turn in the rain barrel anymore, as the old saying goes.

When I came to this weird beard town, I hadn't exactly fallen on" the turnip truck. I'd been in the Marine Corps standing tall (I will walk my post in a military manner, keeping always on the alert, and observing everything that takes place within sight or hearing, sir!), struggled in New York as a starving actor (my hottest moment was. when Morty himself, drunker than a skunk, tried to pick me up in F.A.O. Schwartz), plus I got involved in some semi-shady stuff which I'll tell you about later, okay?

But how the hell can you prepare yourself for L.A.?

It's sixty-two miles wide at one point, every living soul in it is on the make if we're going to be honest about it, - and there are - by actual count - more Mercedeses than there are Plymouths! Go figure. The weather's always nice, and half the people give you that empty grin and tell you to have a nice day, while the other half are cutting your heart out with a rusty hacksaw. They got championship sports, championship business, and championship pussy. If it's Wednesday where you are, I don't care, it's already Saturday out here! At the top, you can go anywhere, do anything, be anybody. And at the very bottom, you know in your soul that you've come as far as you can go in continental limits before you've run out of plans. This is IT, babeee.

Last chance saloon.

So you get a car, you start hanging out, and you do the breast stroke through the panic and dead dreams of the jerks at the bar. Everywhere you look" mirrors. You can see yourself. Or you can be yourself.

Bo, it's sad.

Time: 3:30 A.M. Monday, April 10. Los Angeles Police Department, Officers Fishbeck and McConnell, North Hollywood Division. Automobile A was traveling south on Laurel Canyon Boulevard at a high rate of speed. It was a 1958

Triumph convertible, red in color with a tan leather interior. It was not equipped with safety belts. Skid marks indicated that automobile A had crossed the double yellow lines just south of Croft Street, which intersects Laurel

Canyon Boulevard to the east. The weather was clear, the pavement was dry.

Automobile B was a 1984 Jaguar X-6 sedan, green in color, with a green leather interior. Safety harnesses were employed, Vehicle B was traveling north at a normal rate of speed when it was impacted by vehicle A. There were two witnesses, whose names and statements are listed below.

After the emergency paramedics were summoned by Officer Fishbeck, and the fire was extinguished, a cursory search was conducted of what was left of vehicle A. A bottle of Herra Dura tequila was found, still intact, along with cocaine paraphernalia. Also in the glove compartment was what appeared to be a large electric dildo with the inscribed words, "Look, Ma, top of the world!"

Robin and I had just bought a sensational old mock-Norman Tudor castle-type house-small, but pasta perfecto - way up on Laurel Canyon in the Hollywood Hills. Three bedrooms, a steel spiked portcullis, a cathedral ceiling in the living room^

hardwood floors, a ten horsepower disposal, a view to everywhere, and a pink and black marble master bath with a Speakman shower head* It's only heaven, pal.

But it wasn't easy finding it. I mean, you got Iranians in track shoes trying to get the good ones.

Or developers laundering drug money, or (he worst: the trust fund casualties. They buy them up, maybe redecorate, and just sit on them until the price is right. Robin and I must have looked at two hundred houses, from the Valley to Olympic, from the ocean to Pasadena. We'd get the Times, make a big pot of double French roast coffee, and let our fingers do the walking through the real estate section. That was back when we had dreams.

Before all this meshuga.

When I got to L.A. I had trouble, just like everyone else. But with some hard work (so to speak; more about that later) and some good luck, I found myself taking care of some kids who belonged to this old-time producer in Beverly Hills.

He was a sweet guy-looked like a leprechaun, stole like a bandit, and drank like the Commies were rolling into Santa Monica. The guy'd won an Oscar for some movie that I never saw, but my buddy, who did, told me it was short and boring with no tits and no gunfights - Just two fat-ass losers from Brooklyn sitting in a kitchen talking. Different strokes I guess.

Anyway, this producer guy didn't know how to deal with his own kids. He loved them true but, like most power brokers out here, he was scared of them. So I took over the education of three of the meanest, best looking, smartest little ferrets you ever saw. They had names, but I called them "Moe," "Larry," and

"Curly."

I taught them how to climb trees. I taught them how to play tennis. I taught them how to roll joints. I taught them how to make crib sheets. I taught them how to swim, how to ride, and how to lie so even your own mother couldn't tell. Hey, these were good little cookies, and they deserved my best shot.

Besides, accidentally, I was getting pretty tight with their mom, a wild Norwegian broad who taught me not to carry a wallet because it ruined the bun fines on my tight whites. She should've been a pro, not a mom. Definitely.

One day I came over and the house was locked up. My boss was sitting on the front porch, drinking out of a bottle of aquavit, grinning into a bright, chirpy morning. He said his wife and a small hit squad of lawyers had gotten there at sunup. They had served him the divorce papers, then seized the house and contents. He showed me his Oscar, proud they hadn't got that, too.

That afternoon, we went to work at Warner Brothers. He had two tiny offices in the Writers Building, where he made phone calls, drank, coasted on his dimming reputation, and tried to put together projects for which Warners got "first look."

I started out as a reader for him. I read novels, magazines, plays-anything with print, it seemed-to see if there was a movie idea in it Hollywood is the only economic system I ever heard of that is this suicidal: They have the basis for their life's blood-screenplays--read and analyzed by unqualified, jealous, illiterate jerkoffs like me. Then, the studio's current high-rolling bigshots scan the one-page "coverage" which, by the time they get it, has been Xeroxed so many times it's dark gray. After they see whether it's a project they might shoehorn one of their play-or-pay stars into, they then commit somewhere between ten and thirty million dollars and two hundred lives to it.

All because some pear-shaped wimp in a windowless room who, basically, gets paid by the cord, says yes or no. Smart, huh? And get this-the bigshots, who may be buttholes but are not stupid, know exactly how kamikaze their system.

They chuckle about it to each other over sixty dollar hot lobster salads at lunch. It's a great business. If you're a moron.

Anyway, after a while, I got bored reading; they never made one of MY movies.

I recommended this one to them-I did everything but go in and tap dance it-and they passed. It went back to its producer on turn-around, he took it to Universal who made it, and it grossed over a hundred million. By law, I can't tell you which one it was, they could sue me. They would, too. Movie executives can be real snakes, especially the piranhas in legal and business affairs.

My office was nice and all. I made my own hours, I liked my boss, and the work wasn't that hard.

But it sucked in the rewarding department and the bottom line is that you have to dig what you do, if you're going to do it well.

So when Bart Lopat, the famous old stunt gaffer-turned-director came in for a meeting with my boss, I struck up a friendship. Time passes. One day, I get a call from Lopat, who is shooting this flick in Portland.

I liked being a stuntman lots better than being in the story department. For one thing, it was mostly outdoors. They started me off stow-fight scenes, simple one-story falls, like that. I doubled Burt Reynolds up there in Oregon and later, Jim Gamer down in Mexico. It was great.

Real guys (none of your Volvo-driving Alan Alda types) doing real-guy stuff like jumping off trains - or falling off cliffs into icy rivers. Drink all night and sit around all day.

That's pretty much what studio moviemaking is all about. But it was good money and that's where I met the Fatman.

He was a legend, even among the stuntmen. He had been one of the great ones, way back when.

But he'd fused half his spine on a high fall gag in How The West Was Won and had to retire. That's when he discovered food and began getting fat. He didn't begin to get rich until he discovered his housekeeper, who had a real good set on her and the morals of a Moroccan goat. He changed her name to Sheenya Deep and turned her into a porno star.

Now, the Fatman was (outside of the Mafia) the biggest producer of adult films in town. He did Citizen Kum and The Maltese Phallus, among others. The guy's famous.

One afternoon (he'd come down on location just to hang out with the old gang), we were taking a whizz together in the honeywagon porta-potty, and - what can I tell you - the next day, I was in pornos.

When I started out, it was only on weekends. The bucks were good and I hate Sundays, anyway. Everything is closed and TV is mostly golf (barfo-matic) and political shit. The big surprise to me was that the folks who did dirty movies are nice. They are kind (if not real - bright), and considering they screw for a living, they are decent, honest people.

I had a few fairly rare attributes, which I don't think is really necessary to go into here, but suffice it to say, pretty soon they wanted me full-time. So, what the hell. First I did five days. Then, seven. It's easy work and all, but when push comes to flog, it's demeaning.

So when that- rag, The L.A. Express, published my daily diary in weekly installments, my shone didn't stop ringing. They called me the new Nathanael

West, whoever he is. All I did was tell the truth, pretty much. I was tired of being a sex object!

Plus which, my real sex life was beginning to drag. And I was getting bored with in-and-out, in-and-out-an endless routine only broken up by pompously dramatic blow jobs from girls with the mentality of an after-dinner mint.

So I took an early retirement and went to work for this guy, a real Hollywood operator, who I met at the Farmers market. He wore a pinky ring and had a hotcomb plugged into the lighter of his midnight-blue Eldo. He bragged that he'd been on every Writer's Guild strike-list since 1967.

He'd read in the trade papers about some movie about to be made that sounded good. Like one about an earthquake or soldier ants that take over Dayton.

Then, he'd go to one of the typing services, the ones that specialize in scripts, and he'd bribe some 100 word-per-minute dork typist and he'd come home, with a copy. Here's where I came in.

I rewrote them, scene for scene, changing all the names and places and dialogue. Where it would say "thousands of people are killed," I'd change it to "five people are killed." And where some poofter writer would be describing the hero as Clint Eastwood, I'd change it to Brad Dilhnan or George Maharis.

Then, my boss would take and sell it under the table to some TV company for ten grand and they'd try to make it. We averaged three of these a week. Slick, huh?

But it got grueling, even though I learned to type fast. So, as my sex life got back to normal, I began to look around again for something new. That was when I got into network television.

I had some things on The Mod Squad, Starsky and Hutch, and a few movies-of-the-week. I did the pilot for "Manimal," even though I lost the credit in a screwjob arbitration. They fucked the show up. My script was incredible.

Anyway, these days, I sell a little coke, although the business is not exactly growth anymore. Not like it used to be. Before Jane Fonda's belly muscles and that workout tape, before torn and Perrier got hip. But it still keeps me in enough bucks so I don't have to steal scripts or do wet loops anymore. Those days were the pits, I mean it. You look at those hunkie guys hunched over and covered with baby oil, blowing weir rocks all over the place, you probably think they re just country . boys with a double-digit I.Q. and no dream. But hey, one of them was me. So now you know you were wrong.

My life turned a comer into daylight the night I met Robin Lamoureaux.

I'd seen her, sure. Who hadn't? Three Emmys for Nighttime, she was so great, it gives me goose bumps to think about it. Remember her on the Donahue show when she got him to sing "Danny Boy" and he cried? Robin had been a semi-well-known character actress for years. She'd show up in the middle of the second act and get all the reviews by critics, who always forgot her name.

They called her Cloris Leachman or Katherine Helmond or Kim Stanley. But until Nighttime, her series, she was just another sagging pair of tits with a haunting look and crows feet.

Robin is older than I am. It's no secret - lots older. But, bubba, I am here to tell you, when we are on our new deck in the late afternoon, looking across the brown stink to where Catalina used to be, when I have my arms around, her, whatever years may have separated her and my birth don't mean squat because

this woman is my mother, my lover, my pal, my advisor, my slave, my master, and I don't see any wrinkles or scars or bridgework or anything on this beautiful creature who basically saved the life of one ex-stuntman porno star who was about to get ate by the coyotes and shit over a cliff: me.

Did I get double parked in that last sentence?

Shawn, our real estate guy, told us our house was originally the guesthouse or gatehouse or something for Errol Flynn. I had to change pants. I've seen Captain Blood maybe fifty times. Know every line, say 'em right along with Flynn, Folks love it at parties when we all get ripped. I even starred in a take off on it in the old days, called Captain Wad. 1'fl let you figure out why.

Robin and I needed some help decorating the place when we moved in. We'd just come from a tiny studio apartment on Sycamore that looked like a hamster warren that tunneled through cardboard boxes. If we hadn't been so much in love, we'd have axe-murdered each other. In the old place, if you put the key in the door too hard, you broke a window. I'm serious.

So anyway, when Robin's lawyers finally called and told her the network had settled out at just under a million five (she had to sue for her points when they syndicated her show, those goniffs), we decided to go for the gusto.

Everybody else we knew had a house. So, this fookie loo became a buyie loo.

Our real estate agent was primarily dealing hot antiques; the poor guy didn't even know how to fill out the papers. And, I mean, you won't believe this luck-he was just getting evicted from his place, so we told him that he could live in the little mother-in-law apartment in the back. Shawa was so grateful, he kind of stuck ft to his client by blurting out that it was some guy who was about to get dragged through a greasy divorce and wanted to unload the house for bupkes just to piss his ex-wife off. What a break for us. You hear about these things but it always happens to somebody named Ed you don't even know.

Me and Shawn probably screwed his old lady out o£ a hundred grand! But I didn't see any reason to tell Robin. She's such a softie. It's one of the reasons I love her so much.

The only thing wrong with the place were the telephones. It was crazy, Marx Brothers. Lines would cross. You'd be talking and you'd hear some guy in German, or it'd just go dead. The phones would ring and there wouldn't be anybody there. Your friends would tell you they'd called and it rang and rang.

One night, somehow I got patched into a call between these two chicks; one sounded like Candy Bergen with those fanny 'r's she has. Jesus, they were slagging some guy who had fucked their sister or something. They were dishing, I tell you! I'm gonna put it in a script. Just grist for the mill. It's the price you pay when you're a writer. Nothing seems real.

Especially anymore.

Robin and I had been coming pretty fast up the valley side of Laurel Canyon.

It was about three in the morning. Maybe I was a little drunk, so before we started out, I sharpened up with a tootsky or two. I don't generally drive when I'm blitzed. In this city you got to be careful of the wackos who turn in front of you or cut you off or just jam on their brakes for drill.

We were in Robin s cherry '58 Triumph, a red four-banger with leather seats, and I was singing along to Don Henley like always, Robin was smiling, happy as a clam. Everything was jake; I was on top of the world. Only we never even got to the top of Mulholland.

Some buttface in a Jag crossed the line--one of us did, anyway - and when we woke up, we were out of surgery, out of danger, and out of our minds on

Percodan. Wheee-owl They had me and Robin in the same hospital room, me closer to the door, which was a good thing because everybody and his brother had to come get a look at the Emmy-winning star of Nighttime and I finally had to get tough. When Robin was asleep (which was much of the time), I collected five bucks a crack. People are ghouls, in case you hadn't noticed.

Both of us recovered unusually fast. Three broken legs between us, assorted cuts and bruises, and my scalp was lacerated, but in back where it didn't show. Robin's face was Untouched.

Which was a good thing. Suddenly, her agent

began to call every day; when it rains it pours.

Seems the wreck had made the papers. Her little Triumph was so mooshed they were actually thinking of taking it on tour, a Be Careful Or This Is What Happens kind of thing. When the reporters found it was The Robin Lamoureaux, the star-making machinery went into overdrive. We drew the line, though, at Life Styles of the Rich and Famous.

Suddenly, with all this new-found pub, the network wanted her. Bad. One of their over-educated young salvors, fresh from Stanford or Harvard, with history's mysteries still in his mind, had come up with an idea for a new show. The network had a big, big hole on Thursday night at ten.

Faced with Hell Street and Dallasty, they had taken nothing but gas for two years. The trades began calling the slot Suicide Alley. Until this kid and his idea.

Later I saw a Xerox of his treatment. This was it:

"RICHARD & BLONDIE

The Crusades! ..... Insanity! ..... Mayhem! ..... Family against family - BANG - children slaughtered wholesale in color - BANG - they love, they kiss, they betray - BANG - Richard The Lion Hearted rescued from his dungeon by Blondie de Nesle, the wandering torch singer from France - BANG - they ran, they searched, they kilted, they made love on the fly - BANG - as the crusaders hacked and slashed their way to hell's very gate in the name of Goodness and Mercy - BANG - exteriors to be filmed on location with a cast of thousands and interiors shot in studio, three camera, live audience! A love story for all time. Especially ten o'clock, Thursdays."

I hated to admit it, but the guy was a great writer. And it was a killer idea.

It was the one area that series TV had never used-probably because of the mammoth costs involved. But they hadn't had the idea to use the long-shot battle scenes in the old Crusader movies they owned from the fifties, like Black Shield of Fattsworth, Ivanhoe, and Them. Then, with a technical trick they call roto-scoping, they "blend" the star into the action. He's half a mile away, slashing through Arabs and shit, who sees details?

Why hadn't I thought of this? Sometimes I'm really kind of a tight-ass; I should have taken more acid in '70, loosened up the brain cells. I mean, you can't think of these quantum jump jobbies just eating your basic food groups.

When the network guys looked into the Crusades, they began to get horny in spite of the costs.

Richard the Lion-Hearted was a historical cross between Dirty Harry and that Shakespeare guy who ended up carving up his whole family.

I don't have to tell you; TV majors in this kind of stuff.

They wanted Robin for the part of Blondie de Nesle. It didn't matter to them that they would have to make a sex change, switching it from a "he" to a "she" - that in actual fact, Blondel de Nesle had been a male balladeer. They figured, probably correctly, that America was not quite ready for a costumed action-romance show costing three million an episode that was about a couple of historical turd burglars.

Which was lucky for us, huh? In a few days, the network started sending flowers, and before the casts were changed, our hospital room began to look like Forest Lawn or Graceland, maybe. It was weird. Robin had pretty much made up her mind not to do Richard and Blondie. She wanted to stay home, help me out on my porno expose novel, be my baby, my inspiration, and like that. It all sounded tits to me until I got an idea one afternoon between This Was Your Life and As the World Burns.

Maybe we could have our apple pie and eat it, too. We wanted to be together, creating. It was our destiny, what can I tell you. I figured if the network wanted Robin bad enough, hey, they could hire yours truly for the first-draft teleplay! I had credits, I had network visibility (having sold blow to most of the execs at one time or another),and I had their Blondie!

Needless to say, Robin thought it was a sensational idea. I mean, if you can't blackmail a television network, who can you blackmail? Those quaking, suntanned, excitable smurfs wouldn't know writing talent if it jumped up and bit them on their collective blue-suited ass. They don't want it good, they want it Tuesday.

I was going to be the kid who saw that they got both. Little did I know...

Witnesses to the accident were David Holman and his wife Judith Mabry, both from Hollywood. Holman and Mabry were in their non-operative Porsche coupe, which had been pulled off on the west side of Laurel Canyon Boulevard, just north of Croft, where they waited for the auto club tow truck they had summoned. At approximately three A.M., they heard a loud engine noise and turned to observe the accident.

Holman: "We were just sitting there, talking about the vicissitudes of show business in general and the disastrous party from which we had just come in particular. When we heard the howl of an engine and the squealing of tires behind us, of course we both looked around. We were terrified. I mean, we were sitting on the side of the road where the whole section of streetlights had been taken out by that mudslide last month. We were in darkness, and my Porsche is so old it barely has headlights, much less safety flashers. I thought we were going to be annihilated when I heard that car!"

Mabry: Where David usually tends to over-dramatize, like most writers, this time, he is being completely accurate. That party had been rotten. And we were chilled by the sound of the car. I think I screamed, I don't really know..."

Holman: "When the little Triumph crossed over the double yellow lines and headed toward that poor schlamozzle in the Jag ... it was like slow motion ...

I knew this was real life and not some special effect. For a moment, I thought I could see the faces in the Triumph; they seemed so happy, so bright - they were laughing..."

The witnesses both identified vehicle A and vehicle B on the hastily drawn map that Officer McConnell had prepared as a standard amendment for this report and they were signed and witnessed by Officer McConnell and myself. The attached standard Polaroids were taken as soon as the paramedics had removed all parties and before either of the two vehicles in question could be moved.

Vehicle A was subsequently pilfered and stripped clean by party or parties unknown as that vehicle contained a person classified as a class B celebrity, one Roberta Wankowsld, a-k-a. Robin Lamoureaux. The driver at the time of this report is still unidentified.

Me and Robin's meeting at the network was for lunch, there, at 2 P.M. We parked the rent-a-wreck down in the bowels of the underground parking garage, level H. I always remember what level we're on, even though they're all identical; Robin always bets that I won't remember and always loses. It's easy. A stands for asshole. B stands for bastard, C for crap, D for damn, E for euphemism, F for fuck, G for goddamn, H for hell, and so on. That day we were in hell.

The network reception area is open up to the fourth floor-glass from the parquet floor to the vaulted oak ceiling, and so many plants and trees and stuff that it looks like a John Wayne World War II movie. That day, the light in there was stranger than usual, too - sort of thick, it hurt our eyes. It didn't seem to bother anybody else, but Robin and I had to keep our Vuarnets on.

Through the big double maple doors, the network's inner offices are sort of like if Hugh Hefner was going to rebuild the Palace of Versailles - opulent space vistas with little doll groupings of modern oak desks and chrome and black leather couches. Famous French artists like Picasso, and I mean original, too. Not prints. My theory is that it's all designed to get you to feel like shit, like you're not worth being there in all that money and class and taste. Once they see your eyes fall and your head dip, they jump on you and ream you out. You're dead meat before you hit the floor.

So, here's how a meeting with the honchos of What You See on Television goes.

Ready? First, everybody mills around out in front of the office, bumping into each other, shaking hands (a few air-kisses, maybe), while the secretary finds out who wants what in the way of coffee. Then, when the one-line jokes and light ribbing about the new sport coat or the new poundage stop, everyone

flies into the office and quickly looks for a Power Seat. One near a phone if possible, not too low-you don't want to be peering up at them through your knees-alone, not on a couch but next to a table where you can take notes and set your coffee and, finally, someplace where you can eyeball, the door so that if anyone is about to come in, you know who and when.

Then, right after the embarrassing pause that always follows the Big Sit Down, you (or someone on your team) should lean in and say, "All right, guys, here's what we want." And then, you run it down to them, quick and sweet. This direct approach lets everybody know that you are there to help and are willing to wait until a quick, simple deal is cut. Then comes the exit japes, with a few departing light social promises which no one intends to keep, while everybody lines up at the receptionist's desk to look at her tits and get a parking ticket validated.

Some guys at TRW or somewhere a few years back figured that this approach works 78 percent of the time. And it worked that day.

"We are willing to begin discussions about the Crusader project," said Stu Rosenberg, Robin's new agent, "but only if we have a verbal agreement for a quarter million dollars per episode."

Chip Russell, the WASP network exec, looked up from his Bass Weejuns. A smile crossed his face.

Stu went on. "There, is something else that will impact the project and you might as well know right now." Stu turned to me.

"I'm in ... and I'm gonna do my own deal," I said (my agent had disappeared; I think he went down in a -, coke bust), "which is real simple: as long as Robin is involved, I write every word."

Our side grinned, their side went bugfuck.

Apparently, they thought I was just along for ballast. One network guy. Buddy Wickwire, a squeem with a weight lifter's build and bad breath, had been a honcho on a movie-of-the-week of mine and we hated each other. Besides having his, uhhh, roommate rewrite me, Buddy had burned me in a gram deal. The guy was a sleaze; I even heard he had AIDS. He glared across the mohair carpet at me, wanting to get those bone-crushing hands on my throat, i could tell.

Definitely. But cooler heads prevailed - Chip Russell's to be exact, who simply pointed out, "We have Ac makings-right in this room, now-of television history. So let s make it work."

Ahhh, the magic words. Robin shot me a little smile; I was already beaming.

See, when they say "let's make it work," you've got them. Because what happened (only you're not supposed to know) is they already SOLD IT to their bosses-the whole package. They went in and laid their asses on the line-the concept, the ideal casting, the budget, everything. The head honcho had, apparently, creamed his Armanis. These two guys were in for a pound. And I was going to be at least five ounces of it

"I think you're right. Chip," I said, shooting Buddy Wickwire a look. "And I'm the man who can write the shit out of it. Can't I, honey?" I turned to Robin.

With that, Robin shot me a look of such love that, I swear to you, I almost got down on my knees right there in that office and thanked God for the day He delivered my tormented and cheesy soul into her magic.

"We're beginning to look like a hit," said Chip.

I thought I ought to sort of cap the whole thing off with a little brown-nose.

It never hurts. "Who is the Ewho thought the Crusader thing up? I'd like t'meet him!

Wickwire grinned a real power grin; my heart froze. For just a second, I saw actual danger in this guy's bonded teeth. "Devon thought it up. He works here, now."

I almost lost it. Devon Converse was Wickwire's, uhhh, roommate. The same guy who'd rewritten me on the TV movie. He was supposed to have AIDS, too. "Yeah,"

Chip said brightly, "Devon's heading the team now. He'll be in any minute with the director! I guess we could talk about writers-look, here they come!"

But in my power seat, I'd already seen Devon Converse and I had to admit it, the sonofabitch was cool. He looked to be in good health to me although he was leading a man who looked .old enough he probably should have been in an iron lung, maybe two.

When they came in, I led everybody in jumping to their feet. Yet, it seemed like I was the only one in the room who didn't know who the old dude was. Finally, Devon Converse turned to me and said, "Have you met Reed Savage?" I thought he was shitting me at, first. Wasn't Reed Savage dead? Or was that Walter Reed? Or Jessica Savage? Hell, I didn't know, but I covered it okay.

Even though he looked old and stooped over, his ice blue eyes had enough life for a small town.

The deal was set in stone by the close of business on Friday. The only smoke that had to disappear up anybody's ass was me as non-replaceable, non-rewritable, pay-or-play writer for the run of the show. They were thinking of some hack named Thornton Wilder. Puhleeze. Did you ever scope out that wimpola high school play he wrote called Our Town? I mean, get real, Thomie; all Emily needs is a good horse-fucking.

The weather had been hot and nasty; it never seemed to cool down and the smog hung pale red in the air, night, and day. But in Hollywood, stuff like that never matters.

The meetings started as Blondie and Richard, Crusaders in Love went into high development. The network put half a dozen researchers to work on the old time period, castles and armor and stuff. They hired a costume guy to do preliminary drawings, real wild and feathery, especially the dresses that

Robin was going to use. They looked good. The network also sprung for a couple of drug-crazed comic book artists to create a picture book to sell the affiliate stations. It was all part of a kit; tee shirts, bumper stickers, contest suggestions, the whole megillah, and all around the centerpiece, a three-minute video cassette teaser.

Misty smoke cleared and there was Robin, a close up, set against our living room wall, which was fake castle-type stone-like, and while this neat old-timey music played, she read a speech of Blondie's. Mamma-mia, that woman; can act! I know her, I know the wall, I know the words because I wrote 'em, and still, when I see that tape, damn if I don't go boo-hoo. It's semi-embarrassing.

Here's the setup: Blondie has just discovered Richard the Lion-Hearted in this French jail They've whipped the dog shit out of him. The guard lets her radar Richard out and then drags her away. He was just teasing her. They throw her out of the jailhouse and she goes over to her girlfriend's. Blondie s wiped and she takes a couple of drinks. Who wouldn't, right? Then, she leans back against the cool stone wall, looks into nothingness, and begins to talk.

"I saw him, and yet, I did not. I heard him, and yet, I did not. I love him, and yet, I do not. He is cruel-a murderer, a warrior king whose heart belongs to steel alone. He is a hawk at the well. And, dying of thirst, I would give my life just to lie by his side one night..."

I told her to go ahead and write her Emmy speech; she told me she couldn't have done it without the poetry. See how perfect we are for each other?

Well, needless to say, the Crusaders in Love kit was a hot ticket. Some stations around the country did their own paintbox graphics and ran the clip, plugging it for their upcoming season. The big thing became: Who Will Play Richard?

You probably saw it in People. We got them all except Foreign Affairs and Candlepin Bowers Journal. Who would be Richard? that's all anybody could talk about. We ate it up. You can't buy this kind of pub.

Robin and I talked about it plenty. Crusaders in Love had (for TV) some pretty hot love scenes (a tasteful scarf-job, two reamouts, a gang rape, and lots of nipple) that I had done, and I was of two minds about who I wanted to see play

Richard. Somebody who was a good actor, sure, but not too sexy. I didn't want to sit there in the dailies with them, seeing take after take of some hot, throbbing dick in armor home in on my squeeze. I will only go so far for Art, Bo. I wanted Anthony Hopkins. He'd played Richard in Lion In Winter (a little heavy on the lavender) and was the physical type that would have looked good with Robin. Also, I read somewhere that Hopkins was happily married and didn't fool around. Robin favored Richard Gere. I didn't.

When die network (who hadn't even told us) finally announced the actor they had cast as Richard the Lion-Hearted, the whole country caught its breath. We were utterly flabbergasted.

Because they had just signed James Dean.

For a while, I admit, I was a ways north of confused and only a little south of certifiable. I had thought Dean died in a car crash back in the fifties sometime. I'd seen a few of his movies on TV. They knocked me out of course, but I thought the guy had passed away, expired, gonzo, gravesville, dead and buried. You can laugh now, but didn't you think so, too?

As usual, it-was Robin who scraped me off the wall and explained it all to me.

Dean (like Judge Crater before him and President Kennedy after) had reached his personal vanishing point right after Giant, It usually happens when a celebrity reaches critical mass; everybody's pulling every which way, the ex-wife and the I. B. S. are at the door, the ink has turned from honey to piss, and one day, the stress of the responsibility and the lives and the history just shuts them down. Sometimes alcohol and dope plays a part, sometimes no. But whatever it is, they are looking square into the squinty red eyes of a personal melt-down.

So they fake their death, get a new identity, and, saving their life and what's left of their sanity, they glide into chapter three, It is the only real vacation you can ever get from fame. And if you work it right, it's forever. Like that what's-his-face for the Red Sox that pitched the three no-hitters back to back and the next season couldn't throw a strike. He was supposed to have blazed out in a car crash. They had witnesses, the wrecked Caddy, and dental records, right? Wrong! The guy has a Jeep dealership in Portland, Oregon! I met him on the picture I did up Acre with Burt Reynolds.

If you don't believe me, call Burt and ask him. He knew the dude, too. I call them Living Dead Legends. Hey, someday, I'm going to do a book about them. You think Jim Morrison is actually dead? How about Clark Gable? Or Hitler? Amelia Earhart? Hell, no! I know this chick who SEEN HER. Case closed.

Robin and I met James Dean in kind of an unusual dealie. Normally, it would have been in some network office or at his agent's house or like that. Only about two days after the announcement of his signing, Robin and I get this mysterious call up at the house (I thought it was just the weirdo phones acting up again) from a semi-familiar voice that tells us to get in a car and drive east on I-10 toward Palm Springs. Now, me and Robin hate that town. All they have is old people and bad, French restaurants where the air conditioning is turned so high you could hang meat But that's not where we were supposed to go.

Joshua Tree is a little north of Palm Springs on the map and light years from it in all other ways. It's this little town on the edge of one of the more odd-bod national monuments around. You probably heard of it: half the Sunset

Desperado rock and roll songs were written there by whichever dope burnout was still awake or alive. They all went up there and got naked, ate acid, howled at the moon, and then killed themselves. It's some kind of bent spiritual rule; at Joshua Tree, everything goes. And it had gotten weirder.

When Robin and I pulled the rebuilt little Triumph into the lot at Heartbreak Hotel, we knew we were near the Twilight Zone. For one thing, the light in the sky was different.

It was a deep blood sunset and the puny clouds were sailing across the sky fast, fast. There was only one other car, a seldom seen Von

Tripp Porsche (the one with the P-38 engine, too), with a few bullet holes and a light coat of road dust. The license plate said "REBEL." It didn't exactly take Einstein to figure out whose car it might be.

We checked in the hotel with this geezer who had an Adam's apple out to here.

He made a big fuss over Robin.

Our room was clean and spare. King-size bed, a dresser, two night tables, two chairs, and a picture of a cow with five legs. I thought I was seeing things, but we counted them. I told you this place was weird. There were plenty of fluffy towels in the bathroom, and one of those old shower heads that would be like Niagara Falls. Oddly, the tile floor wasn't cold. I liked that. I went back out into the room and gave my honey a great big old hug. I don't mind telling you, we were feeling pretty spiny back then. That was before we knew what was going on.

I pulled open the curtains. One wall was a glass sliding door which looked out on a small swimming pool which was empty. There were a few chairs around it in the deepening dusk. There was somebody in one of them. Smoking a cigarette. I looked at Robin, she looked at me. We took a big breath, pulled up our socks, and went out to our destiny.

Los Angeles County Paramedic unit #5837 took the two automobile accident victims from their disabled vehicle to the emergency department of Our Lady of Light Hospital in North Hollywood on Van Ness. The time was 3:34 A.M. One victim was identified as Robin Lamoureaux, 51, a Caucasian female who had a possible punctured spleen, broken clavicle and scapula, possible rib damage, compound fractures of the right femur. Her blood pressure was 80/50. She was secured to a gurney after first aid was completed, and placed in the mobile unit. The second victim was an unidentified male Caucasian, approximate age 35, who exhibited no vital signs upon our arrival at the scene of the accident Whereupon we performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation with no visible results.

Whereupon we performed cardiovascular electro-shock. The victim responded with a measurable heartbeat. The victim had apparent kidney damage, chest cavity damage with probable lung involvement, lacerations about the torso and left arm. Further, both his right and left femurs were fractured, along with the right tibia. He was secured to a gurney after first aid was completed and placed in the mobile unit, Time in transit from Laurel Canyon Boulevard and Croft to the emergency department of Our Lady of Light Hospital was 6 minutes and 39 seconds.

I should have suspected this was going to be different from anything I had ever done or imagined. But I was so stoked with the possibilities of it au, I never really got it. Dean turned out to be just about the most incredible human being I had ever met. Robin thought so, too.

When we walked out of our room, up by the empty pool that evening, it was damn near dark. Just a thread of crimson snaked along Joshua Tree's horizon. But it was enough to see Dean's face. He hadn't changed, yet he'd changed completely.

He had grown into the years in a way that research doctors should take a break from cancer and study this. It's more important. Because, somehow (and don't think I'm nuts until you see his movie Hells Gate, okay?) Jimmy Dean had finally conquered time. He'd turned the pain and sadness in his life to a kind of glory. He'd gone from a suffering kid and BANG, here he was with Bogart eyes, between 35 and 55, I guess-who could tell?-and a face that still held both sadness and joy in it, a punim that was still so hot it would give a corpse a railer.

He flipped his cigarette butt out into the desert darkness and got up, stiffly. "Hi," was all he said with that little grin that broke your heart. In my whole life, I never identified with a person so quick or was so shook about it. Robin was blown away, too, I could tell.

We sat out there under a billion trillion stars until dawn. It was like swimming in a river of light as we talked about being alive, about being kids, being rebels, being nowhere, being driven, being talented, being famous, about being dead. I think all three of us-I know I did-said things that night we had never said to a living soul before.

We talked until the three of us became one person. And that one person became a force. It didn't even look like the network could stop it. Because out there in the magic, three lost artists found an ammo dump, a hundred-ton tank named

Crusaders in Low, and they found each other. This is too rare and I can't really talk about all the things that happened that night. Mostly because I still don't understand them. Like the part where Jimmy said we hadn't been completely wrong when we thought he was "dead." Is this weird or what?

When we came back to earth, we drove to L.A. The network Was skinning it back into overdrive for us. Everything was geared around our show. Like if one of their half-hour pilots came in looking good, it was "where do we put this in relationship to Crusaders'?" We had calls from every agency in town; our clients want to help, they want to be involved, they'll do anything. It was like we had woke up one morning and become Steve Spielberg or something. In that way, Andy Warhol is right. Even though I wouldn't let him paint my garage.

There was only one little problem. The network over the last ten years had sort of flamed out. It was a combination of bad luck, mismanagement, and the generic stupidity that goes with a business that keeps on thinking its customers are mostly brain-damaged children. The network had developed some real shit. Nutty s Buddies, The Orgone Exchange, Hell on Mars, Camp Waminatanisna, and that bondage show, I forgot the name of it. Stuff like these plus that series on the insurance business, and then, the Roller-ball League collapses on them; Bo, they were sucking canal water.

So, last year-hell, you read about it-that Okie corporate raider, Lefty Armbruster, came in with the cavalry and took over the place. Heads rolled (how Buddy Wickwire ever survived is a major miracle), deals were amputated, and budgets were gone over with a fine-tooth chain saw. Overnight, everything got cheap.

And our little problem was that the numbers dorks in Production had told us "no way." They'd done boards, projections, computer models, the whole nine yards. The bottom line was that evidently the United States Government hadn't printed enough money since the Second Continental Congress to pay for our show. Which was not only a problem for us. See, now, in the public's mind, the entire future of the network was tied into it. Everybody was calling Crusaders In Love the end of darkness or the saving stroke or the long-awaited dawn, or I don't know what-all.

Which put the numbers guys in kind of a bad place. Which only made us feel tougher. Which only made the situation harder.

Lefty Armbruster even looked like a corporate raider. He wore a two thousand-dollar English suit, shaved his head, and had an eyepatch of blue velvet. He wore snakeskin boots, and his little gold cufflinks had the name of his take-over company, "666," on them in diamonds. The guy was heat, no question. He drove to the meeting at Reed Savage's house on Tower Drive on his motorcycle, a black BMW 1000. Whew.

"Boys, I'll tell ya," he started. "We can do this one of two ways. The first is the smart way: we take and whittle this overblown battlewagon down to destroyer size, lean and mean, and then, the network will make your series."

We nodded. All of us in that room-Dean, Reed, Robin, Devon Converse, and me-were waiting to hear Option Two. Lefty chuggalugged his Tab.

"The other way is for y'all to just sandbag me and say, 'fuck you. Lefty!'

This way is more interesting, probably the way I'd personally go, but it'd be guaranteed to get you fired. Now, which way do you vote?"

"FIRST WAY!" four voices said at once. Lefty Armbruster smiled. Then, James Dean, who had said nothing, leaned forward with that little grin.

"How, about you, Reb?" the raider asked the star. "Which way do you vote?"

"I'll go with my friends," said Dean, very softly. Lefty smiled expansively in victory and got up, ready to leave. Dean stopped him with his voice. "But there is someone in this room who is acting unnecessarily like an asshole."

Suddenly, it got real quiet. "I don't want to name any names. But I've been at this too long,"

Jimmy continued, "so if that person doesn't knock it off, I'm gonna CLOSE HIS OTHER EYE."

James Dean was looking right at the blue velvet eye patch of Lefty Armbruster.

There were a few seconds, it could have gone either way. Neither man gave an inch. I was there, I saw it.

"I smell a hit, boys," Lefty said. "Get this thing down and we'll be champs."

When he went out, get this-he left the door open behind him. It was so cool, I've taken to doing it, although it doesn't look quite as bitchin'.

Robin and I got to Dean at the same time. The three of us hugged each other; he had just saved our life's project. Devon Converse was white. He had seen death and hadn't liked its face. But we were back on track.

We went back to the drawing board, determined to cut out the fat and save the fire. I had some experience with this from the old days, as I may have told you. But going Arough the script now, it was major agony time, because suddenly it wasn't some pompous, overpaid screenwriter I was carving up, it was me.

And when I had done the first draft, in love and happy in our new castle on the hill, I had given Blondie and Richard the Lion-Hearted everything I had. I was writing for the ages. I put all the poetry-the agony and the ecstasy of my whole and entire life-into the 700-page teleplay. It was incredible, even if I do say so myself. A real "read," a jaw dropper. I mean it I would show you some scenes ... but by law, I can't. It's too hard emotionally, anyway.

The director. Reed Savage, and I waded into the script with stump pullers and a buzz saw. We cut two major battle scenes, a masked ball for a thousand, the coronation of the Holy Roman Emperor, and a passion play made up of trained dogs. We cut Eleanor and Henry, John and Phillip, Saladin and Berengaria. We were right at having to cut the storming of Acre, when I finally had to take a stand. Flat out, I drew the line. Enough was enough. If they kept cutting, they would have just about the right amount for a small, series of medieval greeting cards. Reed agreed with me-, now it was time to pull the loose ends together and see what we had. It wasn't much. I guess if you'd never read the first draft or ever heard of history or ever used a word with

"R" in it, it looked okay. Kind of like an infidel-bashing romance novel as seen by a meteor just before it crashes into the plot of a seventh-grade geography movie. But I knew the network wouldn't care. Their "wisdom" was that nothing mattered except the pre-sale, the ink, some spectacle, and a few good scenes. The , trailer department would cut a flashy two-minute teaser using all the good stuff, and then the sales department could get to work and sell all the spots.

It's like a weenie factory; sorry to have to tell you. How anything good gets done is usually by certified excitable A-types whose insane vision accidentally explodes (usually taking a twenty-year marriage with it) into a show that is only one tenth as good as the one they saw in their mind and yet it's still better than anything else on. They are generally rewarded with Emmys, a nice office, and fraudulent profit reports where they discover they have been cross-collateralized with a network series on the heroes of Canadian golf. About this time, the visionary gets canned because he tried to resist having the show's characters all go on Wheel of Fortune or something.

When Reed and I put all the scenes on those little 3 x 5 cards, it was obvious that something was going to have to be done. So I did the old trusty narration track (the TNT, we call it) and, given the legendary skills of Jimmy Dean and my Robin, I went ahead and wrote them a few more limbo-set love and sacrifice scenes that made tears run down your leg and chills run up your back.

The network loved it. This guy told me that his sec heard from her boyfriend in development that he heard from Chip Russell, who had been in the office that day, that Lefty Armbruster cried when he read it!

And STILL they were looking for cuts. I didn't remember them being this cold, this hard. They got down to nickel-and-dime stuff and, no matter what we did, it didn't seem to be enough. We were still over. It was starting to be panic time. Then, I sort of saved the day.

They had budgeted the castle interiors (both French and English) at nine million. That was just to build and paint. The continued rental of the space and refurbishing was hidden in another column. All of a sudden, it came to me.

I told them they could shoot at our house!

Not bad, huh! And it worked! That nine mil was just under their worst-case budget and they tentatively approved us. I think Reed wanted to adopt me and Jimmy was glowing. The only one who didn't seem too thrilled was Robin.

She was right, as usual. I learned the lesson and this is it: never, ever let your house or anyone's house you remotely know or like be used in the movies or TV.

I'd had this big vision of us getting paid a grand a day for the rental, plus which, we would just roll out of bed and start to shoot while everybody else had been up since four going to the network to be driven out to the location.

I thought they would be careful when they shot. I assumed, if anything bad happened, we would be reimbursed. I figured that our castle looked just like crusader stuff. Robin had warned me.

Still, it pissed me off royally.

First, they held the rental money in escrow (all accrued interest to them, of course) for the run of the show, which could be years! Next, because of a mob- ridden union stranglehold on the entire business, it turned out we would have to get up early and drive to the network, so we could be driven back to our own fucking house! And when the camera department first came in and was doing color balance tests, they broke a mahogany mantle. Then, the bastards spadded and painted it over, claiming it had never been there. Shawn, down in the little apartment below, had to move out when his ceiling fell in, knocked over his stereo, and almost electrocuted him.

Also, some prick or pricks unknown kept stealing everything that wasn't nailed down. On top of everything else, even in pre-production, it was so noisy with the skill saws, the electric nail-drivers, and the yelling and screaming, we couldn't ever get to sleep. Or cook. Or watch TV.

Or even go to the bathroom. You'd go in, close the door, and in the toilet would be floating yesterdays Hollywood Reporter, a styrofoam coffee cup, cigar butts, and half a prune danish.

There was never any toilet paper.

They tore out walls, they built walls. They lifted the roof, they moved furniture, they rolled rugs, they emptied closets, they hauled stuff away, and

I still haven't found out where they took it.

Our bedroom became Richard the Lion-Hearted's dining hall. The kitchen served nicely as Blondie's bathroom after they ripped out the Chambers range along with the St. Charles cabinets we'd just had put in. They tore up the deck outside so they could set in trees and stuff. Our trees weren't right. They brought in jackhammers and stone cutters so they could dig cable trenches; the dolly space had to be tabletop smooth. They dismantled the sauna and capped the plumbing to put in the sound guy's booth. They cemented up the flue in the walk-in fireplace because they had converted it to craft-services area and the coffee urn was getting chilled. Forty tons of fill dirt were dumped on our lawn because you couldn't take a chance and see mowed grass out a Crusader's window. The plasterers clogged up all our drains washing their trowels and boards.

The electricians rewired the house for 220; I plugged in a lamp to read by, the cord caught fire, and then the whole dealie exploded! An hour later, it was still glowing red-hot. Does this give you some idea of what fun and glamor show business is? Crusaders in Love hadn't even started yet; first day of principal photography (the day I would get a hernia-making cash bonus) was still three weeks away! I wasn't sure my relationship with Robin would even last that long.

She had warned me and I hadn't listened. Her shrink pointed out that it sort of characterized our dynamic (whatever that means) and although I'd like to cut that sucker, he was right to the extent that I HAD been sort of headstrong. It got so bad one night when we were in the hotel room, I put Soldier of Fortune down, and I just started crying. I thought about the days when my only worry was what scheme to teach that producer's kids, or how I could get the head stunt-gaffer to give me a three-story fall, or how to keep it hard when the donkey was on camera. What the hell was a simple, low-life kid like me doing to a complicated, grown-up place like this?

Robin, saintess thal she was, took me in her arras and sang my favorite song soft in my ear.

"Hush little baby, don't you cry..."

To watch a major TV production start up, especially this one, is to know what God meant when He invented the word "wow."

Casting began to see hundreds of people; Crusaders in Love, even with the cuts, had 90 speaking parts, Assistant directors were hired, production gofers, costamers, sound crews, wranglers, construction guys, honeywagons, Winnebagos, gaffers, stuntmen, grips, historical technical advisors (who got a little bent out of shape when I had Richard cut down on Geoffrey with a Winchester), scenic and matte artists, prop guys-it was like watching your dream turn to water, running down a mountain made of glass. You could almost see it...

And the closer we got, the more nervous and difficult the network got.

Something was wrong. Real wrong. We didn't hear that Devon Converse "had decided, mutually, to leave his position at the network, to explore the opportunities of independent production" until a week after the fact. This means he had been sacked the guy whose idea the whole thing had been! This didn't look like a good omen to either me or Robin. Reed was too busy to mourn. Jimmy just shrugged his shoulders sadly. "It figures," he said, "they'd fire their savior." I had come to like Devon after all we'd been through with the rewrites and the cuts and all. Besides, it turned out that he thought

Buddy Wickwire was a buttface, too. I tried to call Chip Russell's office for four days about it, and he never returned my calls. This, by itself, was not a good omen, either. When I called Wickwire's old office extension, I got some frosty bitch who told me that Wickwire had been promoted to senior vice president. Instead of Chip Russell. Who had quit. Which is why he hadn't called me back. He was probably at the Brentwood market in tennis togs, having espresso; what did he care anymore?

As Lenny Bruce used to say, even though you may be paranoid, that doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

We had fifty million committed for a new series, we had a start date, we had good pull on us, and yet find some reason, we had a network that was acting in the manner of a crazed Doberman in a maternity ward. It looked like the brass was trying to sabotage us, like our own guys didn't want us to succeed. What was going on?

Chip Russell lived in a small, wonderful house in Rustic Canyon. We had taken several story meetings ever there when we first started the major cuts. Lots of wood and glass, and the outside seemed to come right in. From his place on a little cul-de-sac off Lattimer, you couldn't see any other houses.

Jimmy, Robin, and I got out of my beat-up old Rambler. Even though the birds were singing, it seemed unusually quiet. In fact, it was a boss weird moment; a dry, hot wind came from the oak trees, and yet, none of the brown leaves even twittered. It hadn't rained in I couldn't remember how long-since the wreck, maybe. We went to the front door. It was open a crack. We looked at each other. Chip had a dog, one of those awful schnauzers who always barks. It was silent which, to me, was the blow omen of the year.

"Sometimes I wish I was ten years old again, back in Barberton, Ohio, not knowing diddly," said Robin. I knew just what she meant. None of us had a good feeling.

We found him, sitting in his leather Eames chair, reading a book called A Hollywood Education, by some guy named Freeman. It was a prophetic-type dung: Chip Russell, dead as a doornail, had just got his Ph. D., it looked like. He was smiling in spite of the little black .22 hole in the middle of his forehead. Robin went outside to barf. Jimmy found the drugged dog shut in the projection TV drawer. I closed Chip's eyes.

To be honest with you. I'd never, ever seen a dead body before. I've lied a few times and said I had, but I hadn't It gave me the willies, and for a weird reason that I never would have suspected. Chip Russell did not look dead. I mean, it looked like he was just about to laugh at one of my jokes at a script meeting. I wanted to touch him, so I did. The skin was still soft. I pulled one of his arm hairs gently; it made a little hill of skin. I lifted one of his fingers. Up it came. I let it go; plop. I thought to myself, this is a body whose heart is not beating anymore, whose blood is just sitting there.

This is a dead guy. And that's when I almost lost it, Because I wondered what was in this thing that made it go-made it live-made it like Chip Russell that went the thirty years in his life with the friends and hot days and cold beer, and I got real scared because I was thinking that whatever it was, was the same dealie inside of me and Robin and Jimmy, and just as sure as it was there-immeasurable, unprovable - it could be gone forever. Just snuffed out, and I would end up to be like Chip, like this body which was starting to get cold.

"We're in deep shit," said Robin very softly.

"And we're outta here," said Jimmy. "Wipe off anything you might have touched." We booked it.

The last day of rehearsal there was flat-out the most powerful thunderstorm anyone had ever seen. The clouds were damn near purple with rage and lightning, and yet, not a drop of rain fell. Billion-amp blasts split the strange darkness, and all of us sort of creeped around, playing like we thought this was normal or something.

The last tech run-through was a real goon show, People were jumping around like it was the end of the world or something. And in the middle of all the technical madness, there were the director, the writer, and the actors-along with the camera and sound crew trying to block the hard, long dolly shot that would open the show, tomorrow morning at six. Little did any of us know.

Jimmy was mowing his trees, over and over, in the scene with his ministers, William of Longchamp and Hubert Walter. I had written the scene in Latin (more like Pig Latin, actually)-you know how high-toned those meetings go-but it was just a Peter Piper Picked a Peck of Pickled Peppers tiling. So I was making on-site changes on my little Epson lap computer, just racking it out, being semi-brilliant, even if I do say so.

Robin had had an uncharacteristic fight with Reed Savage and had gone downstairs to cool off in what used to be Shawn's little apartment. She told me later what'd happened.

She had slipped through the door, not making any noise, and had caught Buddy Wickwire, toying with his platinum Dunhill lighter, talking on the phone to Lefty Armbruster. Even though figuring out a conversation from only hearing one side is not always easy, she got enough. One of Buddy's lines had been, "Don't worry, Lefty, they'll never get the first shot in the can."

The two victims: a white female Caucasian, identified as Robin Lamoureaux, age 51, of Hollywood, and an unidentified white male Caucasian, approximate age 35, with tattoo over right nipple-"Milk"-and over the left nipple-"Tequila"-were admitted from paramedic mobile unit #5837 to the emergency room of our Lady of Light Hospital at 3:35 A.M. The two victims were pronounced dead at the time of arrival. See death certificates below.

Notification pending.

It must have started sometime early in the morning. I got a call at the hotel from our neighbor, who thought she had heard a window break and then, when she went to eyeball it, saw a little flame or something in the upstairs bedroom.

Fortunately our hotel was only over the hill. I told Robin to stay there, I'd go check it out. She wasn't too thrilled with that, but I took off. When I got to our castle, I stood outside for a few seconds. It seemed okay. At least, sort of okay; a night that was not quite dark, a smell of rotted jasmine and garbage, a sky of stars that had smooshed into kind of a big river of light.

Across the molded gulch on Amor Drive, a coyote yipped. The castle was quiet Still, I thought I'd better go and scope it out. I let myself in with my key.

Holy Jesus. I looked upstairs and I could see the flames reflected in the Crusader armor statues. Wisps of smoke were crawling down the stone steps like snakes. I tried to call the fire department but the goddamn phones-I told you about them-didn't work. The only tiling left for me was to do it myself. I went running upstairs, terrified.

Our bedroom was wall-to-wall fire, I never saw anything like it The floor was a lake of flames.

Richard the Lion-Hearted's throne-the one with all the gold scroll and jewel work-had gone up like a torch. The noise of the licking flames was beyond belief. Above the throne (right where our bed had been) the lead in the St. Michael stained glass window was melting, running down the glass, popping the panes out like rifle shots.

And then I saw something which made my heart go cold. A medieval tapestry, one of the for-real museum jobbies, had been hung over a closet door. It was on fire, and from behind it came a man walking right through the flaming image of where this knight guy was! Holy shit, it was Jimmy!

"What the hell are you doin' here?" I yelled as I threw my coat over his smoldering tee shirt.

"I was rehearsing fate last night. I just went t'bed - I always try to sleep somewhere on the set, the first night. It's good luck for met" We both had to laugh at that one. He told me someone had cold-cocked him in his sleep and heaved him in the closet We ran into the bathroom. There was a faucet in the steam room and a short hose under the sink. Jimmy attached them, I turned the faucet on fall, and he began hosing down the flames. For a little while, it looked like we might beat it back. The red light dancing on his incredible face was eerie.

The neighbor had finally called the fire department and now they came in like an army. I looked out the hall window. Must've been a dozen spotlights hit the house at once. Red truck after red truck roared up, all crackling with their CB intercom talk which had been turned up fall volume. One guy yelled up to me, but 1 didn't hear him. Suddenly, I remembered the costume room.

I hauled ass down but somehow, the fire had got there first. Seemed like every costume I grabbed, them flames would take the tail of it, and by the time I would run to a window to toss it out, the whole thing would go up. I almost got caught a couple of times. Everywhere you'd took, there would be these harmless-looking little sparks, cutely winking, settling down like hot feathers, you know, only whatever they landed on would burst into flame.

Somebody had opened all the windows so the hot Santa Ana winds came roaring through, taking fire into every corner in every room.

Outside, I heard a woman screaming.

Inside, Jimmy and I were trying to save the Nagra sound equipment, the mikes and mixing board. We no sooner got them tossed out into the bushes when we were back trying to wheel the Chapman dolly with its big old Panaflex camera out.

That was when Robin came running in, her nightie flying out behind her in the firelight. We yelled and the three of us hugged real quickly. The dolly tracks headed out toward our huge two-story oak front door which was already starting to blister from the heat. The three of us really doubled our backs into that dolly as the flames walked up the walls. To complete the craziness, the superheat had managed to fry some wires and turn our stereo on, loud - the Eagles, "Take It to the Limit."

Can you believe it?

This looked like it wasn't even real, like I had written it for a scene or something. And it damn sure was taking it to the limit. We had turned out to be Richard and Blondie, for real, there with the dude who'd dreamed them up.

Crusaders in Love were trapped in Hell, Bo. The fireguys were bashing their way through the back with their axes and pike poles and hoses. But it was too late. The TV company, in the interest of over-art-directed "realism," had put so many false fronts, had done so much construction, used so many 1 x 3s and plywood and lathing, everything seemed to explode when the flames hit ft. You never want to see anything like this, believe me.

Suddenly, the ceiling in the back hall caved in, cutting us off from the fireguys. There were timbers and exploding water pipes and shorting electrical cables that were snapping around in the smoke so much you could barely see anymore. Still, we pushed that dolly toward^ the front door. Only now, it wasn't to save any movie camera. We were trying to build up speed and use it as a battering ram.

Just then, there was this ungodly howling laughter. The three of us turned, and across the huge smoky room, coming through the flaming portals of the porch, spotlights playing all over their backs, were Buddy Wickwire and Lefty Annbruster!

"I thought you'd be here," was all Dean said as he drew himself upright. I stood in front of my Robin when I saw Wickwire pull a i22 pistol.

"Boys," yelled Lefty, "it's done. Time to call in the dogs and get the insurance adjusters. I've saved the network fifty million with a match. All they'll find is your bridge-work and some belt buckles."

Lefty laughed the laugh of a big winner and nodded to his next in command, Buddy Wickwire, who lifted his .22 and pointed it dead at us. He cocked it as Jimmy, Robin, and I joined hands. I jumped from the shock Wickwire fired

The hammer snapped down as the ammo in his pistol exploded from the heat! I took his arm off at the elbow. He had just enough time to feel the first wave of blinding pain before a two-ton naming timber fell on him.

If Lefty Armbruster ever even noticed, you couldn't tell by his face. With that victorious smile still there, he seemed to come toward us, growing bigger and bigger and bigger, right through the fiery timber and his minion's melting body. I guess it was Jimmy who sort of led the way, pulling us forward. Or maybe it was Robin, I don't know.

But in the middle of that pyre, in the noise and heat and insanity, the three of us, joined at the heart, met something that had become so big not even this fire could hold him, too big even for the whole wide world! Just at the very moment when I thought we would be enveloped by the roaring size alone, the slowly lumbering dolly and Panaflex camera crashed through the flaming black cinders that had been our front door and this howling blast of icy air came through. It seemed to take the three of us, still holding tight to each other's hands, away on its wings of cold out into the night, where we could look down and see the castle below us, getting smaller and smaller, as the fire jumped to the hills around it. The wind fanned the flames that shot hundreds of feet into the night air, which showed this little guy with a blue velvet eyepatch come running out the door, stamping his feet and howling some shit that none of us would ever work again in that town, that we'd never work again in movies or TV. But that doesn't include writing books, does it? Fuck no, it doesn't. And now that me and Robin have this neat little place in Vermont and we hear every couple of months from Jimmy, who is happy as a clam living a new life (he has kids and everything), and now that you know just what happened to Crusaders in Love, if that asshole corporate raider Lefty Armbruster thinks he can stop me, I say let him try.

I am dead flat serious, let him try.

Anyway, our wonderful life goes on, and while I'm upstairs doing this, Robin is out in the garden watering the rose bushes, since we had/this sudden weird hot spell (she loves roses). And from downstairs I can smell the apple pie (the gooey kind with (he crumbly stuff on top) that I m baking in the oven. I hear Robin come in and yelled down to her to come up and see me write "The End," (a writer's two favorite words, unless they'd be 'time for dinner') but she doesn't answer. Hrnnun. Then, I hear her on the stairs OKAY! only the sound her step makes is too loud. "Robin," I call out, "honey..."

This is weird-I don't like this-hand on the door, knob turns, why am I so scared? Awww, it'll be her and Fit edit this and the door is opening and HEY, WAIT A MINUTE