The Starcrossed

9: THE STAR

The studio was alive at last. It rang with the sounds of busy workmen: carpenters hammering; electricians yelling to each other from atop giddy-tall ladders; painters and lighting men and gofers carrying the tools of their trades across the vast floor of the hangar-sized room.

Four different sets were being erected in the four comers of the studio, fleshing over its bare metal walls and reaching upward to the girders that supported row after row of lights which seemed to stare down at the beehive below in silent disbelief.

Ron Gabriel was standing in the middle of the big, clangorous whirl. He wore what had come to be known over the past few months as his “official working costume:” a pair of cutoff Levis and a tee shirt with Starcrossed lettered on front and back. Somewhere in the offices and workshops adjoining the studio, the art director was dreaming up a special symbol for the show. Gabriel would get Badger or Titanic to make tee shirts for the entire cast and crew with the symbol on them, no matter who protested about the cost.

Standing beside him, in a conservative one-piece business suit, was Sam Lipid. He was only slightly taller than Gabriel, roundish, with a prematurely balding pate. His face was soft and young looking. Lipid was Production Manager for the show and Gabriel’s major point of contact with Badger Films. Gregory Earnest had given Gabriel a wide berth ever since bouncing off the bed in his hotel room, months earlier. There had been same talk of a lawsuit, but Brenda got Titanic to pay for a nose job and Earnest wound up looking better than he ever had before Gabriel socked him.

“…and here on the turntable,” Lipid was saying, “will be the ‘planet’ set. Well redress it every week to make it look like a different world.”

Gabriel nodded. “Why the turntable?”

Lipid’s babyface actually pinked sightly with enthusiasm, “Oh, we used to use this studio for filming a musical show, the Lawrence Welk Simulacrum, you know? It was very popular. They had audience seats along all four walls of the studio and the orchestra rotated at a different speed for each song, in time with the music.”

“You’re kidding,” Gabriel said.

“No, they really did it.” His face went pinker. “That is, until the speed mechanism broke down and flung all those animated dummies into the audience. It was a terrible scene. That’s when they cancelled the show.”

Gabriel chuckled to himself as he and Lipid slowly walked across the noisy studio to inspect the “bridge” set. This would be used as the bridge of both starships, with slight redressings to change it from one ship to the other.

“What do you think of it?” Lipid asked, over the shouting and hammering.

Gabriel took it in. The two walls of the corner were now lined by desk-type consoles studded with elaborate keyboard buttons and viewing screens. About them were big observation screens, taller than a man and many times wider. They were blank, of course, nothing but sheets of painted plastic covering the studio’s bare walls. But with electronic picture matting, they would appear to look out on the vast universe and reveal stars, strange new worlds, other spaceships of the series. The floor had been turned into a metalized deck, thanks to judicious spray painting, and there were very modernistic chairs and crew stations arranged in a semicircle facing the corner.

Nodding, Gabriel admitted, “It looks good. Real substantial. Needs some personalized touches, though.”

Lipid quickly agreed. “Oh sure. Right. We’ve been talking with one of our Ontario vineyards… they might come in as a sponsor for part of the show. One of the captains can have a flask of wine set up at his command console.”

Gabriel said, “Just make sure it’s a futuristic flask. We’re seven hundred years in the future, remember:”

“Oh, sure.”

Gabriel stood there and tried to visualize how the actors would look on the set. Not bad, he thought. It’s finally starting to shape up.

“You like it?” Lipid asked. His voice went a little squeaky, like a kid who’s desperately anxious for a word of approval.

“It’ll do, I guess. At least we got rid of that damned steering wheel.”

Lipid blushed. “Oh. That. I didn’t understand what you needed. Dr. Oxnard straightened me out on that.”

“He’s been a help,” Gabriel said.

Lipid stared down at his sneakers. “You don’t like it, do you? What’d we do wrong?”

“I like it,” Gabriel said. “It’s okay. Nothing’s wrong.”

Looking up at him, the Production Manager said, “But you’re… well, you’re not excited by it. It doesn’t really raise your metabolism.”

With a weary smile, Gabriel said, “Listen kid. I’ve been going flat out for more than three months now. I’ve been trying to get the scripts in shape, working with high school kids and every amateur playwright north of Saskatoon. I haven’t seen a single script or story treatment that I didn’t have to rewrite from start to finish. I’m hoarse from talking to these bean-brains and going blind from reading and typing twenty-eight hours a day. My ass hurts from sitting and my feet hurt from running and my gut hurts from fighting. So don’t expect me to flip handstands and start swinging from the rafters. Okay?”

Lipid’s face glowed with awe. “Oh sure, Mr. Gabriel. I understand. There’s been a lot of talk around the studio about how hard you’ve been working on the scripts.”

“Okay,” Gabriel said. Then, looking at Lipid’s trembling lower lip, he added, “And call me Ron. I don’t like this Mr. Gabriel shit.”

“Oh… okay, Mr. Ga… uh, Ron.”

Gabriel forced a smile and they started for the next set, in the next corner of the studio.

Lipid asked as they walked, “Uh, Ron… can I ask you a question?”

“Sure.” They had to detour around a burly guy carrying a long plank on his shoulder. Laurel and Hardy would have a field day in here, Gabriel thought.

“Why do you do it?” the Production Manager asked, his voice filled with admiration and wonder.

“Do what?”

“Why do you put up with us? I mean, you could be working with the bigtime outfits down in Hollywood. Or writing books. I’ve been reading your sci-fi books since I was a kid…”

Gabriel winced. Twice.

But Lipid didn’t notice it. “You’re a famous writer. You’ve won a lot of awards. Why are you putting up with this cheap outfit? I mean, this is the best job I can get right now. But you… you can do a lot better.”

Gabriel looked at him. The kid means it. He’s not putting me on.

Without breaking stride, he said gruffly, “This is my show. Comprend? Mine. I created this idea; it came out of my brain. I may have to deal with shitheads at Titanic and beaver-brains at Badger, but that doesn’t matter. I want this show to be good, man. Not pretty good. Not good enough to get some sponsors. Not good enough to get renewed after the first thirteen weeks.”

His voice was rising and the heat was building up inside him. Months of anger and frustration were bubbling close to the surface.

“I want it to be good! Good enough to satisfy me. Good enough for any one of us to point at with pride. I want you and me and every carpenter and electrician in this crazy cave to be proud to have worked on ‘The Starcrossed.’ I want even assholes like Earnest—and Finger back in his padded room in California—to feel proud of this show. They won’t, because they haven’t got the capacity. But we do, you and me. That’s what I want. Pride of accomplishment”

“Wow,” gasped Lipid. “What commitment.”

And the money helps, Gabriel added silently. And the fact that nobody else in town would touch my work hecause Mongoloid idiots like Finger convinced everybody I’m too tough to get along with. And I’m broke. And this is the only decent idea I’ve had in the past year. And if I don’t make some money out of this I’ll have to give up my house.

As they stopped and looked over the next set, Gabriel realized that even those eminently practical reasons that didn’t sound so good when you voiced them, even they didn’t go deep enough.

I’m staying because she’s here, he admitted to himself. Rita’s close enough to touch and so beautiful that she’s driving me crazy. She smiles and says all the right words to me, but she never gets within arm’s reach.

He laughed silently, sardonically, at himself. They do articles in magazines about me, one of the ten most available bachelors in Hollywood. I have all the women I want. I spend half my Blue Cross getting cleaned up from them. And this one goddamned girl just smiles at me and I’m all putty inside.

His mind completely detached from his physical surroundings, Gabriel wondered where Rita Yearling was at that precise moment. Getting her costumes fitted? Taking color tests with the new camera system? Talking on the three-dee phone Finger gave her? Talking to him? Planning to go back to L.A. for the weekend to be with him?

Gabriel grimaced inwardly. I haven’t been writing fiction, he realized. I know exactly how Romeo felt.

Rita Yearling did not go to Los Angeles that weekend. Bernard Finger came to Toronto.

Gabriel was standing on the balcony of his hotel room, looking out disconsolately at the park-like front grounds of the hotel and beyond to the towers of the city that blocked what had once been a decent view of Lake Ontario. There wasn’t much smog in Toronto, since the Canadians used nuclear energy to a large extent. But the lake was still a fetid cesspool of industrial wastes.

Rita had smilingly accepted Gabriel’s dinner invitation the night before; he had treated her to a quick jet flight to New York for authentic delicatessen fare. All through the evening she was warm, friendly, outgoing, obviously happy to be with Gabriel. And that’s as far as it went. She eluded his grasp. Even in the plush passenger compartment of the rented jet (five thousand bucks, Canadian, for the night) she somehow managed to stay at arm’s length.

Gabriel couldn’t figure it out. Women didn’t act that way. Or at least, he’d never had any patience with those who did. “You either do or you don’t,” he had told hundreds of girls. But Rita’s different. Shy yet friendly. Innocent yet knowing. Desirable but distant. She’s driving me nuts, Gabriel told himself for the thousandth time.

He burped pastrami. The morning air wasn’t helping to settle his stomach. Just as he decided to go back inside and take some antacid, a long stream of cars came purring off the superhighway and onto the hotel’s approach road.

Finger! Gabriel knew instantly. No one else would demand such commotion. The carefully landscaped grounds of the old hotel had never seen such a flurry of sychophants. Bellmen and doormen seemed to spring out of the front entrance. Yesmen by the dozens poured out of the cars and yeswomen, too. Finger was no sexist.

As Gabriel leaned over his balcony railing to watch, it seemed as if the hotel was disgorging whole phalanxes of flunkies. It was easy to tell the Californians from the Canadians. The L.A. contingent wore the latest mode: furtrimmed robes and boots and hats that made them look like extras from an old Ivan the Terrible flick. Or the minions of Ming the Merciless. The locals wore conservatively zippered business suits, while the hotel staff was decked out in bluish uniforms faintly reminiscent of the old RAF.

The whole conglomeration swirled and eddied around the car for nearly fifteen minutes. Then everyone seemed to fall into a prearranged pattern, and the rear door of the longest, blackest, shiniest limousine was opened by one of the RAF uniforms. Despite himself, Gabriel grinned. He ought to have a line of trumpeters announcing his arrival.

Bernard Finger’s expensively booted foot appeared in the limousine’s doorway, followed by the rest of his Cary Grant body. He looked gorgeous, resplendent in royal purple and ermine. And he bumped his head on the car’s low doorway.

Gabriel hooted. “You’re still a klutz, you klutz!” he hollered. But his balcony was too far above street level for anyone to hear him. Briefly he wondered if he’d have time enough to make a water bomb and drop it on Finger’s ermine-trimmed hat. But he couldn’t tear himself away from the barbaric splendor of the scene below, even for an instant.

Finger straightened his hat and sneaked a small rub on the bump he’d just received, then stood tall and beaming at the sea of servility surrounding him.

Rita’s not there to greet him, Gabriel noticed, and felt good about it.

Then with an expansive gesture, Finger said something to the people nearest him. Several of them were holding rcorders and minicameras, Gabriel noticed. Media flaks.

Finger turned back toward his limousine and ducked slightly, beckoning to someone inside. New girlfriend? Gabriel wondered.

It was a man who got out. A guy who wasn’t terribly tall, but looked wide across the shoulders and narrow at the hips. Muscleman. He wasn’t wearing Hollywood finery, either. He wore a simple turtleneck sweater and a very tight pair of pants. Athlete’s striped sneakers. Dirty blond hair, cropped short and curly. Rugged looking face; nose must’ve been broken more than once. Good smile, dazzling teeth. Must be caps.

The newcomer grinned almost boyishly at the cameras, then turned and, grabbing Finger by the shoulders so strongly that he lifted the mogul off his feet, he kissed B.F. soundly on both cheeks.

As he let Finger’s boots smack down on the pavement again, Gabriel howled to himself, He’s got a new girlfriend, all right! Wait’ll Rita sees this!

But Gabriel was completely wrong.

Les Montpelier phoned almost as soon as Gabriel stepped back inside his room, inviting him to a “command performance” dinner.

“The whole team’s going to be here tonight,” Les said gravely, “to meet the show’s male lead.”

Gabriel blinked at Montpelier’s image on the tiny phone screen. “You mean that guy is going to be our big star?”

“That’s right.” Montpelier cut the connection before Gabriel could ask who the man was.

Briefly, Gabriel considered throwing himself off the balcony. But he decided to attend B.F.’s dinner instead.

Finger bought out the hotel’s main restaurant for the evening and filled it with media people and the top-level crew of “The Starcrossed.” No working types allowed, Gabriel grumbled to himself. No painters or electricians or carpenters. Just us white-collar folks. Not even Bill Oxnard had been invited, although Gabriel knew he was in Toronto for the weekend.

Finger sat at the head table, flanked by Rita Yearling on one side and the rugged-looking, erstwhile star of the show on the other. Gabriel had been placed halfway across the big dining room, as far removed from Gregory Earnest as possible, and seated at a table of what passed for writers. They were a grubby lot. The high schoolers weren’t allowed to stay up late or drink alcoholic beverages (and marijuana was still illegal in Canada), so they hadn’t been invited. Gabriel sat amid a motley crew of semiretired engineers who had always wanted to write sci-fi, copyboys and reporters from the area news media who saw their futures in dramaturgy, and one transplanted Yank who had exiled himself to Canada milennia ago and could outwrite the entire staff, when he wasn’t outdrinking them.

Something about Finger’s male “discovery” was bothering Gabriel. His face looked vaguely familiar. Gabriel spent the entire dinner—of rubber chicken and plastic peas—trying to figure out where he had seen the man before. A bit player in some TV series? An announcer? One of the gay blades who’re always hanging around the studios and offices? Maybe a dancer?

None of them seemed to click.

Then, as coffee and joints were passed around by the well-beyond-retirement-age waiters, Finger got to his feet.

“I suppose you’re wondering why I asked you here this evening.”

Everyone roared with laughter. Except Gabriel, who clutched his stomach and tried to keep from shrieking.

“Even though I’ve been staying in sunny Southern California…” More canned laughter from the throats of Finger’s lackeys. “…I’ve been keeping a close eye on your work up here. ‘The Starcrossed’ is an important property for Titanic and even though were working with an extremely tight budget…” Who’s paying for this bash tonight? Gabriel wondered. “…I can assure you that Titanic is doing everything possible to make this show a success.”

Loud applause. Even the media people clapped. Local flaks, Gabriel knew. They want the show to succeed, too.

Finger cocked his head in Gabriel’s direction, like Cary Grant sizing up Katharine Hepburn. “I know we’ve had some troubles in the script department, but I think that’s all been ironed out satisfactorily.” Maybe, Gabriel answered silently.

“And thanks to our foresight in hiring one of the world’s foremost scientists as our technical consultant—Dr. William Oxnard, that is, who unfortunately couldn’t be with us here tonight because he’s literally spending night and day at the studio… let’s heard it for Dr. Oxnard…”

They all dutifully applauded while Finger tried to figure out where he was in his speech. “Um, well, as I was saying, we’ve got terrific scientific advice. And we’re going to have the best show, from the technical standpoint, of anything in the industry.”

More applause.

“But when you get right down to it…” Finger went on, reaching for a napkin to dab at his brow. The lights were hot, especially under those fur-trimmed robes. “When you get right down to it, what the audience sees is mainly the performers. Sure, the scripts and the sets are important, but those millions of viewers out there, they react to people… the performers who perform for them, right there in their living rooms—or bedrooms, whichever the case may be.”

I’ll never make it all the way through this speech without throwing up, Gabriel told himself.

“It’s crucially important to have a pair of brilliant costars,” Finger said, gesturing with the white napkin, “especially for a show like ‘The Starcrossed,’ which is, after all, a show about two young people, lovers, who will captivate the millions of viewers out there.”

Someone broke into enthusiastic applause, found that he was alone, quickly stopped, looked around and slid down in his chair halfway under the table.

Finger glanced in his direction, then resumed. “We are extremely fortunate in having one of the most exciting young new talents in the world to play our feminine lead, our Juliet: Rita Yearling.”

Rita stood up amid a pleasant round of applause and took a cautious bow. Considering the gown she’d been poured into and her cleavage, caution was of utmost importance. She remained standing as Finger went on:

“Isn’t she beautiful? And she can act!” Some laughter; Rita herself smiled tolerantly, while Gabriel squirmed in his chair with indignation for her.

“But although Rita Yearling will be a superstar by the end of the coming season, she’s still relatively unknown to the TV audience. So what we needed, I knew, was a male costar who would be instantly recognizable to the whole world…”

Gabriel found his puzzlement deepening. The guy sitting at Finger’s right side looked vaguely familiar, but Gabriel knew he wasn’t a well-known actor.

“So I went out and got a guy who is known the whole world over,” Finger was at his self-congratulatory best, “and signed him up to play our Romeo, our male lead. And here he isl A superstar in his own right! Francois Dulaq!”

Everyone in the big dining room rose to their feet and roared approval. “Du-laq! Du-laq!” they began chanting. Even the crystal chandeliers started swaying in rhythm with their shouts.

And then it hit Gabriel. Francois Dulaq. The hockey star. The guy who broke Orr’s old scoring record and made the Canadian Maple Stars world champions. They even beat the Russo-Chinese All-Stars, Gabriel remembered from last season’s sportscasts.

A hockey player as the male lead? It’s Buster Crabbe all over again, Gabriel moaned to himself.

He had to climb up on his chair to see what was going on. The crowd was still on its feet, roaring. Dulaq had gone around Finger to where Rita was standing. They put their arms around each other and bared the most expensive sets of teeth in television history for the media cameramen. Finger beamed approvingly.

The expatriate American tugged at Gabriel’s sleeve and yelled over the crowd’s hubbub, “Whaddaya think?”

Gabriel shrugged. “He might be okay. Looks good enough. Probably can’t act worth shit, but he wouldn’t be the first big star who couldn’t act.”

Frowning and shaking his head, the expatriate said, “Yeah, but he can’t even speak English.”

Gabriel almost fell off his chair. “What? What’s he speak, French?”

“Nope. Neanderthal.”

Not knowing whether it was a joke or not, Gabriel climbed off his perch and sat down. The crowd settled down, too, as Finger nudged Dulaq to the microphone.

“I wancha t’know,” Dulaq said, “dat I’ll t’row evert’ing I got into dis job… jus’ like I t’rew dem. body checks inta dem Chinks last May!”

They all roared again. Gabriel sank his head down onto his arms and tried to keep from crying.

At precisely two a.m. Gabriel’s phone buzzed.

He wasn’t sleeping. His trusty suitcase was open on the bed, half filled with his clothes. Since the end of the dinner, Gabriel had spent the night phoning Finger, Montpelier, Brenda, Sam Lipid and anyone else who would listen, telling them that if Dulaq was the male star of the show, they could get themselves another chief writer.

They all argued with him. They cited contracts and clauses. They spoke glowingly of Dulaq’s magnetic personality and star quality and sex appeal. They promised voice coaching and speech therapy and soundtrack dubbing. Still, Gabriel packed his suitcase as he fought with them.

Then his phone buzzed.

Gabriel leaned across the bed and flipped the switch that turned it on. Rita Yearling’s incredibly lovely face appeared on the phone’s screen.

“Hi,” she breathed.

Gabriel hung suspended, stretched across the bed with one foot in his suitcase, tangled in his dirty underwear.

“Hello yourself,” he managed.

Her eyes seemed to widen as she noticed the open suitcase. “You’re not leaving?”

Gabriel nodded. He couldn’t talk.

“Don’t you care about the show?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“Don’t you care about me?”

With an effort, Gabriel said, “I care a lot. Too much to watch you ruin your career before it really starts. That hockey puck of a leading man is going to destroy this show.”

She dimpled at him. “You’re jealous!”

“No,” he said. “Just fed up.”

“Oh, Ron…” Her face pulled together slightly in a small frown.

“I can’t take it anymore,” Gabriel said. “It’s just one battle after another… like fighting with a Hydra. Every time I chop off one head, seven more pop up.”

But she wasn’t listening. “Ron… you poor sweet boy. Come out onto your balcony. I’ve got a surprise for you.”

“On the balcony?”

“Go out and see,” Rita cooed.

Untangling himself from the suitcase, Gabriel padded barefoot to the balcony. He was wearing nothing but his knee-length dashiki and the chill night air cut into him the instant he opened the sliding glass door.

“Surprise!” he heard from over his head.

Looking up, he saw Rita smiling lusciously down at him. She was on the balcony one floor up and one room over from his own. She stood there smiling down at him, clothed in a luminous wisp of a gown that billowed softly in the breeze.

“I took this room for the weekend. I wanted to get away from the suite where B.F. is,” she said.

Ron’s knees went weak. “It is the east,” he murmured, “and Juliet is the sun.”

“This is a lot more fun than talking over the phone, isn’t it?” Rita gave a girlish wriggle. “Like, it’s more romantic, huh?”

Without even thinking about it, Gabriel leaped up on the railing of his own balcony. He stretched and his fingertips barely grazed the bottom of Rita’s balcony.

“Hey! Be careful!”

Gabriel glanced below. Ten floors down, the street lamps glowed softly in the cold night air. Wind whipped at his dashiki and his butt suddenly felt terribly exposed.

“What are you doing?” Rita called, delighted.

He jumped for her balcony. His fingers clutched at the cold cement, then he reached, straining, and grabbed a fistful of one of the metal posts supporting the railing.

His feet dangled in empty air and his dashiki billowed in the wind. Somewhere far back in his mind, Gabriel realized what a ridiculous picture this would present to anyone passing below. But that didn’t matter.

Beads of cold sweat popped out all over his body as he strained, muscles agonized by the unaccustomed effort, hand over hand to the edge of the balcony’s railing. His bare toes found a hold on the balcony’s cement floor at last and he heaved himself, puffing and trembling wtih exertion, over the railing to collapse at Rita’s feet.

She dropped to her knees beside him. “Ron, darling, are you all right?”

He smiled weakly up at her. “Hiya kid.” It wasn’t Shakespeare, he knew, but it was the best he could manage under the conditions.

They went arm in arm into her hotel room. Rita’s gown was a see-through and Gabriel was busily looking into it.

She sat him down on the edge of the bed. “Ron,” she said, very seriously, “you can’t leave the show.”

“There’s no reason for me to stay,” he said.

“Yes there is.”

“What?”

She lowered her eyelids demurely. “There’s me.”