Wake Up and Dream (39 page)

But this was bigger. This wasn’t just the movies or even the feelies, this was
politics
as well—assuming there was still any difference left. People talked with loud, breathless voices as they headed toward the Biltmore’s famous Bowl, pausing only briefly to take a flute of Champagne and glance smilingly at the seating plan as if it didn’t matter at all.

“Dan, Daniel…”

He was slow to react to Timmy Townsend’s voice.

“Dan, where have you been? Well, thank God you’re here—but what the
fuck
are you wearing? What happened… ?”

“My car broke down.”

“Take my advice, ol’ Danny-o, and never have shit to do with anything that’s mechanical and French. Your average Pierre might know about putting something tasty on a plate, but anything else… ?” Beaming as ever, his eyes and cheeks aglow, the tip of his nose a drippy red, Timmy Townsend shook his head. “Just not in their blood. Like asking a coon to play chess. At least, that is, until the Germans get them good and sorted.
Then
things’ll be different. Then, the frogs’ll be like a whore who’ll fuck oyou all night and clean the sheets up in the morning. Neat
and
funky at the same time if you get my meaning. Speaking of which, I think we need to get you sorted…”

The Biltmore accommodated for most things. In a long basement room, there were enough evening dresses, suits, shirts, ties and every other kind of apparel to kit out a largish department store. Timmy Townsend stayed around as Clark stripped and wiped himself down with steamed towels and then began to get changed. He was still talking about all the marvels the European nations would accomplish once the Germans had knocked the bastards into proper shape. Just like Barbara Eshel, although for different reasons, the sight of Clark’s bare ass didn’t even cause him to blink. It was strange to think how accustomed powerful men were to seeing each other naked: at the Turkish bath, in the shower after playing polo, or sharing a few broads for an afternoon in a hotel suite. It was like they always had an extra layer of gloss which nakedness alone couldn’t remove.

“I sometimes wonder why Herbert even bothers with America,” he was saying as he offered Clark a red-lined silk dinner jacket, “when California’s more than powerful enough to be a country on its own. I mean, who needs fucking Iowa, or hillbilly dumps like Arkansas? We could fucking
invade
Mexico any time we wanted, just on our own…”

Clark finished dressing in his hundred dollar penguin suit, put back on his Daniel Lamotte glasses for what he was sure would be the last ever time, then followed Timmy into the Biltmore’s main halls. He remembered that story in the Bible Jenny had once told him as they walked through long suites of differently-themed rooms. The one about the guy—Samson, wasn’t it?—who’d had his hair cut and had been tied up to some pillars in a gilded palace much like this one, and had dragged the whole fucking thing down, low divans, leather Chesterfields and all. “The way it’s going to work is this, Dan baby. There’s the first half of the show which is just good old entertainment, then comes the break, when you’ll get to be live-interviewed by Wallis Beekins, and then after the re-start Herbert comes up on stage, and he’ll get the spotlight to point at wherever it is that Lars Bechmeir’s sitting. The crowd’ll go apeshit, of course, and after that he’ll announce—”

“What are you expecting me to say?”

“
Expecting
?” Timmy Townsend looked puzzled. “You just say whatever you want to say, Dan. About
Wake Up and Dream
. Why you wanted to write it, and what a journey of fucking discovery the whole thing’s been. All that usual crap. You’re okay with that, aren’t you?”

“I guess.”

“Hey.” Timmy clapped an arm around Clark’s shoulder. “There’s no need to
worry
. Whatever you say, the listeners’ll gobble it up. I mean, what the hell do they know that the likes of us don’t know already?”

They’d reached the edge of the Biltmore Bowl’s murmuring sea of glass, table linen and faces, and Timmy Townsend’s attention was starting to drift. A quick check like everyone else at the seating plan, and they were working their way toward their separate tables just as the Fred Waring Orchestra struck up with
Devil Got My Woman
and the lights began to dim.

Things settled. Food was served. Clark noticed that his hands were shaking as he raised his first forkful of salmon mousse. Rope bruises were starting to show on his wrists. He shot his cuffs to cover them and smiled at the other people on his table. He wasn’t with the big names here, and his announcement that he was merely a screenwriter had got disappointed looks. Here were guys who manufactured grape candy, room deodorizers and rods for shower curtains, who’d all come here tonight with their second wives to soak up a bit of vicarious glamour. After all the money they’d donated to the Liberty League, they’d obviously been hoping for someone who was proper Hollywood—a star, or at the very least a character player, instead of some friggin’ guy who
wrote
the stuff—to share their table. Still, they brightened up once the entertainment started, and were happy to chat between turns about how the average working man wasn’t worth jackshit, how it had now been scientifically proven that niggers didn’t have proper souls (
I’ve seen the photos—believe, me your average Jimmy Crack Corn’s got less aura than a bar of soap
), and how they were thinking of setting up a new factory in TJ because costs over the border were so much cheaper.

More of the Fred Waring Orchestra, then that woman who was famous for being able to sing and swim at the same time, and some beloved old comedian Clark had been certain was dead, and whole squadrons of dancers in not much more than sequins and smiles. Nothing that spectacular, really, although he knew it was an old enough trick.
If you want to make an impact in the second act, bore your audience ’til their asses ache in the first
… And now the lights were coming up, and the Biltmore Bowl was erupting into yet more applause, and an averagely drop-dead beautiful blonde in a lowcut black evening dress was tapping his shoulder and saying something about
Star Talk
in a fragrant murmur, and asking him if he’d mind coming this way…?

S
O MUCH MUSCLE AROUND.
Guys so big inside their padded jackets that they looked like upmarket Michelin Men. Private security types with that gaze which went right through you even when they weren’t wearing sunglasses. More obvious sorts in buzzcuts and khaki Liberty League uniforms. Career cops who’d never seen a sidewalk. Less obvious varieties he probably wasn’t even spotting.

This, he thought, as he followed the hipswaying, averagely drop-dead beautiful woman along the fluorescent-lit corridor, is what the future is going to be like. Hotels like the Biltmore will spread, and they and all the shopping malls will link up, and these new Americans will spend their whole lives indoors and underground, lulled by hidden music and Bechmeir fields. It’ll be like the Metropolitan Hospital already is, but with wall to wall carpets, endless opportunities for shopping and plastic palms. No enforced lobotomies, either; they wouldn’t be necessary.

NBC were broadcasting from a suite of several rooms with their dividers concertinaed back. There were more beautiful women and guys, and more muscle, and geekier types fiddling with lots of expensive electrical equipment. All in all, the scene wasn’t untypical of what Clark had gotten used to seeing lately. A set of big PA speakers were relaying the latest slew of adverts for Perquat Sheets. In the furthest of the rooms, which still had dividers drawn across to keep it separate from the rest, Wallis Beekins was spitting out orders and nursing a large whisky. He paid Clark no attention when he first came in. Beekins was wearing a tux like everyone else, although it barely covered the belly-bulge of a foodstained plaid waistcoat. He had on disastrous twotone wingtips as well, but Beekins was one of those rare creatures in showbiz whose looks didn’t matter. It was that voice, which it was so odd to hear coming in real life from this plump little man with his greasy coxcomb of hair and his agitated pacing. Especially as he was swearing like a longshoreman.

Standing there, moments away from his chance to change history, Clark felt as focused as he had back in the old days just before he stepped onstage. There would be no need for the messy scene he’d imagined. He wouldn’t have to blurt things out. He’d be clear. He’d be calm. He’d be fucking collected. Another beautiful woman—this one a brunette—was quietly explaining to him the questions that he would be asked, but Clark felt as if he knew them all, and his answers, already. Of course, and just like this broad was telling him over a Johnnie the Bellhop jingle for Philip Morris cigarettes, he’d be asked why he’d decided now was a good time to write a Lars Bechmeir biopic, and about the guy’s lowly beginnings, and how the whole world—and not just entertainment—had been changed by his so-called discovery, and maybe even he could say something about the recent tragic death of April, his own wife? Yeah, he could do all that. Just give straight answers to the actual questions. The only trick he’d need to pull was to stay in character for just a few minutes longer as Daniel Lamotte.

“Okay, Mr Lamotte?” The beautiful woman was smiling. “You’re ready?”

Wallis Beekins had put aside his whisky glass and was shaking hands with him now, weighing him up in that way all broadcasters did for ticks, nerves, signs of impending trouble. “So you’re Daniel Lamotte.” The voice had slowed; it was honey over warm chocolate. “And hey, I reckon I’m probably Wallis Beekins. Must be, ’cos every times I try to catch the guy’s show on the radio, I’m always busy.”

Everybody laughed. The guy was a real professional. Then shouts and signals were exchanged, onlookers and hangers-on were shooed out, and the door to the broadcasting room was closed. Just Wallis Beekins now, and Clark, and a guy with headphones sat down before a monitoring desk. The rest of the space was taken up by sound-deadening screens and a table, in the middle of which was set the fluted metal fist of a Shure microphone.

“Okay, fella. Been a bit of a delay. The newscast is taking up more time that scheduled ’cos of a fire at the lot of one of the old movie companies. All sorts of stuff going on down there, apparently. Still, that’s the way it is, and we’ll go live in one minute. I’ll start off with a few words, then ask you some nice and easy questions. Then we’re done. Simple as that. No need to lean forward or raise your voice. Just talk like you and me were having a chat at some bar round the corner over a beer. And if you fancy banging this table to make a point, don’t, ’cos it’ll sound like LA’s finally been hit by the big one. We okay for levels, Eddie?”

“If Mr Lamotte could just say something, we’ll be fine.”

“Happy to be here.”

Eddie gave a thumbs up.

Wallis Beekins smiled. “You’re a natural, Mr Lamotte. Done this sort of thing before?”

“Just a little.”

“That’s great.” Like all good pros, Wallis Beekins seemed to be growing more relaxed and at home as the moment of performance approached. In Clark’s experience, it was the rest of their lives that guys like this had problems with. “Count us in soon as you’re ready, Eddie…”

Eddie nodded, and everything went very quiet. Clark resisted the urge to clear his throat. He studied instead the map-like lines of broken capillaries on Wallis Beekins’ nose, and thought of all the millions of families clustered at home around their radiograms, and Glory listening in her cubby hole back in Venice, and cleaners pushing mops in empty offices, and truck drivers following the black highway, and kids hidden under blankets with their cat’s whisker radios, and forgotten old ladies in sixth floor apartments who never heard another living voice.

Then Eddie was holding up the spread fingers of both hands, closing them down from ten into a fist, and Wallis Beekins worked his face and smoothed his jaw, and Eddie was down to three when his hand went to his headphones and he shook his head and made a cutting motion across his throat.

Wallis Beekins sighed. He looked like he wanted to throw the microphone across the room, but he was too much of pro. “We’re not live
yet
? How long is this newscast going to run for?”

“It’s not that.” Eddie frowned. “It’s—”

The door burst open. Two of the muscles in dinner suits who’d been standing outside squeezed themselves in. Another three followed.

“Well…” Beekins sighed mildly as the guys hooked their hands under Clark’s arms and hoisted him. “… looks like there’s been a change of plan… Better go along with them, fella…” He was already turning to ask Eddie how they going to fill in the gap in the schedule as Clark was hauled out.

The muscles had big, well-manicured hands and they smelled like clean lockerrooms. They were dragging Clark out from the NBC recording rooms, and not one of the many drop-dead beautiful women or the other muscles or the technicians seemed to notice.

“If you’ll come this way, Mr Lamotte…” They were murmuring it like it was a mantra.

He tried kicking and pulling against them, but their hands and arms were like leather upholstery. “My name’s
not
Lamotte. Look—if you’ll just put me down. If you’ll just…” An expertly placed fist knocked out the rest of what he was going to say, then a doorframe slammed against his back. It was clear they weren’t about to just do anything.

“If you’ll come this way, Mr Lamotte…”

In one direction down this corridor, the Fred Waring Orchestra was playing
Don’t You Mess With My Mister
with Irene Bosener on vocals, but he was being dragged somewhere else. Double doors swung open, cracking hard into his face and slewing his glasses sideways. All he could see now were lights blurring along a ceiling, but then the muscles paused and one of them muttered something. Clark, as he was dumped down, glasses askew, then shoved aside and trod on like a sack of potatoes, got the impression that something was coming the other way.

Something was. His vision swam with the sight of two nurses, although they were showing less uniform than they were thigh and cleavage, and an old guy in a wheelchair they were pushing between them. It was as strange a passing as the Biltmore’s corridors had probably witnessed all evening, although Clark could see that Lars Bechmeir had been nicely spruced up. He had on a crisp new penguin suit, polished shoes, a starched wing-collar shirt and sleekly knotted tie, but the neck and the hands which emerged looked even more withered and reptilian than they had yesterday. But the eyes were bright within those owlish glasses. Even as the two nurses kept their gaze and pert breasts pointing resolutely forward, Lars Bechmeir looked down at the guy who was slumped against the wall as he was wheeled past until his big glasses bumped one of the nurses’ rumps and slid sideways off the ridge of his nose. The guy looked so different stripped of those lenses, and the odd brightness of his gaze seemed increased rather than diminished by their absence. He was still twisting his head around as the distance between them extended, and Clark was now looking back at him with something like the same intensity. Recognition passed between them.