Passing Through the Flame (69 page)

“You stupid son of a bitch, you’ve interrupted Mountain High’s performance! You’ve screwed up a whole cut with your damned helicopter! And you’ve got the animals howling for blood!”

“They’re flippin’ freaked!” the fat man shouted, pointing up at the stage, where the musicians were stomping about, howling and giving the world the finger, goading the crowd to greater excesses of rage.

“Jesus Christ!”

Paul flushed to his depths with chagrin and self-loathing. He had been getting such terrific footage that the thought had never entered his mind that he was interfering with a spontaneous event, not shooting action on a set that had been arranged for his benefit. He could well understand how the clatter of the helicopter had made it impossible for the band to finish its song and how that had infuriated the crowd. And his pointing the camera at them afterward had been the final slap in the face.

Fruit soared over the fence, bottles, rocks, an open pocketknife or two, and then the crowd was pressing against the fence, screaming, snarling, brandishing its thousands of fists. Security police in brown uniforms rushed to the perimeter of the fencing with long billy clubs and began smashing at any hands touching it. Six more rentacops appeared with packs on their backs connected to nozzles in their hands by flexible hoses.
Flamethrowers?

Suddenly, there was a series of distant dull thuds—rap-rap-rap—and rockets soared into the sky from the southwest. They ascended into the piercing blue atop white contrails, then burst into brilliant fireworks displays—star shells, streamers, flares and fountains; red, green, violet-blue, chrome-yellow, actinic white. The world-filling sound of the crowd segued from rage into an oceanic moaning of “Oooohs” and “Ahhhs.”

Then a helicopter appeared over the southern lip of the natural amphitheater, continuing to send rockets into the sky, painting fantasies across the clear blue canvas that flared, faded, and were replaced by more fireworks displays before the old had died. Brilliant blue, red, and yellow strobes flickered from the helicopter at uneven intervals, enveloping it in a spastic rainbow aura that seemed to syncopate the motion of the rotors into a mad bat’s flutter. A figure inside the canopy was tossing handfuls of something down into an apparently eager section of the crowd. Paul took up his camera and began shooting the scene, and no one seemed to care or notice.

The helicopter began spiraling in toward the stage, mimicking the path Paul’s camera-copter had taken, perhaps deliberately. Fireworks erupted at somewhat longer intervals than before. The entire saucer of humanity was jumping up and shouting, apparently for joy. What the hell was going on?

Finally, the copter was close enough to the stage for Paul to get a close-up on the man in the passenger seat: Jango Beck. Beck reached into a big bag and threw a large handful of cigarettes into the crowd, then another and another.

Then Beck’s helicopter was no more than fifty yards away, and Paul could dimly hear his electronically amplified voice speaking from the whirlwind. “Manna from the heavens! Free samples of the finest available plantation-grown grass! Free dope, courtesy of Dark Star Records!”

Beck tossed a final handful of joints into the crowd, circled once more around the stage area, then came to a hover just beyond the perimeter of the fence. A great fat rocket wobbled up into the air from the helicopter trailing thick red smoke, then burst into an enormous red and green fountain as Beck upended the joint bag above the crowd, tossing the bag itself after the cascade of pot. The section of crowd under the helicopter cheered itself hoarse.

Then the helicopter drifted over the stage and began slowly to lower Beck on a cable toward it while the entire festival PA system shook the hills with the opening bars of
Thus Spake Zarathustra.
Beck was resplendent in a red sleeveless vest and black pants that seemed to be woven through and through with threads of metallic silver, and his timing was perfect, touching down right on the climactic note. So perfect that the crowd gave him a good-natured sarcastic cheer.

He picked up a mike, and his amplified voice boomed out from speakers all over the area, at once overwhelming and intimate. “Free dope will fall from the sky from time to time courtesy of Dark Star and other friendly people who prefer to remain nameless. Try it, you’ll like it. And if you really like it, I have it on the best possible authority that the very same stuff is being sold by righteous dudes among you for five dollars an honest lid, the best deal in the history of the United States! Enjoy yourselves! Welcome to Sunset City!”

A final fusillade of rockets burst into the sky, the biggest yet by far, turning the bright day sky to a negative of night with its brilliance, and Jango disappeared through the stage access hatch in a puff of red and green smoke, scuttling down the steel stairs to the ground.

It was pure Beck—showmanship combined with greed. Paul had a pretty good idea of whose grass those free samples would be selling. But for whatever reason, it had been an incredible scene, an insane series of images, the sort of thing no one would believe if they were merely told.

But they would believe it when they saw it in
Sunset City;
they would believe it and live it again, because he had kept his cool, and he hadn’t run out. He had the whole lovely sequence on film.

A tremor of unreality rippled through Velva Leecock’s body as the helicopter touched down in front of the Coca-Cola pavilion. This whole place is absolutely nuts, she thought. Thousands of people running around half-undressed and fucking in the grass. And all these buildings that look like some kid made them out of papier-mache. The Coca-Cola pavilion itself consisted of three gigantic round red-and-white Coca-Cola signs leaning precariously against each other like three two-hundred-foot coins shading a central fountain which bubbled brown Coke into the air. Everything here is a great big silly joke—but it’s real, and I’m a part of it.

It was insane, but she had to remember that this helicopter entrance was a take, an expensive one, and that outside the helicopter, Paul’s cameras were running and extras were in position. She had to stay in character.

The helicopter door was opened by Tom Sedges, a tall, reedy bit player whom Paul had apparently cast for his subtle resemblance to Bert Parks. He was bent low to pass under the vanes, and she stepped out into a crouch as he offered his hand. He mouthed the cue line, but Velva couldn’t hear it over the noise of the dying engine and the slowly rotating helicopter vanes.

“I’m absolutely staggered to be here,” she mouthed back, barely hearing her own words. Sedges led her under the blades and across the beaten earth in front of the Coke pavilion to cluster of five extras done up as four reporters and a photographer. Microphones were stuck in her face, a flashbulb popped, and Sedges delivered the opening line of his welcoming speech. “Freak Out Productions is pleased to introduce the lucky winner of our—”

“Okay, cut, that’s a take,” Paul called out from behind the camera dolly. “Velva, Tom, everybody hold your places, and we’ll go right into the dialogue. Get the booms in place. Save the shooting lights.”

The shooting lights went out, and grips began positioning boom mikes above Velva and Sedges. A circle of weird-looking hippie freaks had formed around the shooting area: young girls in tight embroidered jeans or grimy baggy ones, some of them carrying babies in slings on their backs; pale spaced-out chicks done up like drag queen versions of themselves; girls with bare breasts, girls without shoes; scroungy, unhealthy-Iooking young guys in old jeans, leather vests, moldy army-surplus clothing; a few tanned, golden young studs with fancy beards and mustaches, canes and cloaks. And all of them looking at
her
as if
she
were the freak.

Or the star.

This must be what it’s really like to have people look at you as if you’re a star, she realized. I look like a star. I
am
a star. Because
that’s
what a star is.

She smiled at her fans from deep down inside. She beamed at them. She shed her radiance; she let them know how pleased she was to see them looking at her like that.

And the hippies smiled back. They laughed. They giggled. They waved at her. Impulsively, she waved back at her circle of admirers, and they shouted and laughed with her. It felt so
wonderful to
be a star!

Paul walked over, ordered a few minor changes in the positioning of the lights and reflectors, then went back behind the camera. “Okay, we’re ready,” he said. “Velva, Tom, do you think you need a runthrough?”

Sedges shook his head, and Velva, not to be outdone in front of all her new fans, said, “No, Paul, I’d rather go for the take.”

Paul smiled back what seemed to be a private smile. Tonight, she thought, maybe I can corner him somewhere tonight. “Great,” Paul said, “this is just a little simple dialogue. The welcoming speech, flash a few photos, the reactions, then everybody fades away. Okay, lights... roll ‘em....”

“Sunset City
, Scene thirty-five-B, take one.”

“Speed.”

“And... action!”

“Freak Out Productions is pleased to introduce the lucky winner of our Sunset City Magic Carpet Ride Contest, Miss Peggy Greene, of Junction, Kansas,” Sedges said, looking even more like Bert Parks with a false grin plastered across his face. The extras shoved their microphones forward. The photographer’s camera flashed. Velva affected what she hoped was a shy smile and wriggled her body in girlish excitement, an excitement she genuinely felt as she watched till her smiling fans beyond the shooting lights eating her up with their eyes.

“Miss Greene has
never
been to California before, isn’t that
right?”

“I’ve never been much of anywhere before,” Velva said. She could hear the onlooking fans murmur.

“Isn’t that
marvelous
, folks?”

“Far out!”

“Too much!”

“Weird!”

Her circle of fans answered Sedges’ line as if on cue, and they were perfect. Paul wasn’t mad; he kept the take going and seemed to look pleased. Velva felt close to the people beyond the shooting lights; her star quality had really reached them, had made them put themselves in
her
movie. I’m doing it, I’m really doing it!

“I know you’re going to have a fantastic time here at Sunset City, Miss Greene, and please feel free to call on me for help at any time,” Sedges said. His toothy grin became a plastic leer.
“Day or night.”

“Thank you, Mr. Burton, thank you very much,” Velva said innocently.

“Isn’t she lovely? Isn’t she going to have a wonderful time courtesy of Freak Out Productions? Let’s give the little lady
a great big hand!”

Spontaneously, the crowd broke into cheers and loud applause.

“Cut!” Paul shouted. “Great, wonderful, I love it!” He looked so sexy when the shooting went well, so relaxed, so boyish, so pleased with himself. He looked just the way he did when he had just come. It was almost like balling him.

“All right, Velva,” Paul Conrad said rapidly, “Burton has just done his quick exit number, and you just sort of wander off confused and alone into this strange crowd of freaks, got that?”

Velva nodded earnestly. She’s really doing well today, Paul thought. We’re getting this stuff on the first take, where we have to, she’s coming through in the clutch. And this crowd is doing real well too, it’s playing itself like the real thing.

“Okay, Velva, take your position,” he said, patting her affectionately on the ass in an offhand manner. She smiled warmly—you might call it hotly—at him and started walking slowly away from Friedman’s camera toward the crescent of people half surrounding the area.

“Harv, you just track with her,” Paul said. “Irv, you and Fritz just get what looks like newsreel footage from as many angles as you can.” The two newsreel cameramen with their hand-held 16’s faded off into the crowd to the left and right of the frame of vision of the number one camera on the dolly.

“Ready, Rex?” Rex Gordon, the actor doing the stoned hippie bit, nodded and waved from his position inside the crowd. “Okay, lights... Roll ‘em....”

“Sunset City
, Scene thirty-six, take one.”

“Speed.”

“Action.”

Velva walked slowly toward the crowd, looking a little flustered, as she was supposed to as Peggy Greene, but also radiating a happiness, a sexiness, a certainty of her own inner well-being in this questionable outside world. It was better than anything he could’ve planned—she really
did
look like the belle of Junction, Kansas among the wild hippies; the innocent certainty of her ability to tame the wild beasts was an overtone of the Peggy Greene character, not a violation of it.

Velva walked into the crowd, and they parted for her as Friedman dollied in after her, with Paul at the camera dolly’s side. The crowd parted, but did not draw away. These kids were smiling slightly falsely at Velva, laughing behind their smiles, exactly as they would if she were really a contest winner from the Midwest, a square freak in their eyes. My God, maybe they think that the press number was real, that she really
is a
wide-eyed kid from Kansas!

Velva wandered through the crowd of stoned freaks in her plain, clashing red-and-white dress, looking just like square Alice in stoned Wonderland, down to her happy open eyes. The chemistry of the moment was causing the character to come alive.

Gordon floated through the crowd and intercepted her trajectory, took her hands in a gesture of exaggerated gentleness, letting his eyes glow at her through an LSD fog. “You are beautiful,” he said oh-so-softly. “Thank you for being here on my trip.”

Velva managed to look as if she were blushing while continuing to exude that innocent sexiness. The real people in the crowd loved it, they ate it up, laughing and giggling gently.

“Can I kiss you?” Gordon said. “It’d make me feel good.”

“Kiss me?” Velva said, sounding shocked, as she was supposed to, but mugging it a little, making it also a little tease, playing to the crowd.

“I’m flying high. Don’t bring me down.”