Remake (15 page)

“Let me off!” she shouted. “This is my stop!”

“The way off’s this way,” I said, trying to turn her, but she must have been doing rave. Her arm was like iron.

“I have to get off here,” she said, pounding with the flat of her hands. “Where’s the door?”

“The door’s that way,” I said, wondering if this was how I had been the night Alis brought me home from Burbank. “You can’t get off this way.”

“She did,” she said.

I looked at the back wall and then back at her. “Who did?”

“She
did,” she said. “She went right through the door. I saw her,” and puked all over my feet.

MOVIE CLICHE #12: The Moral. A character states the obvious, and everybody gets the point.

SEE:
The Wizard of Oz, Field of Dreams, Love Story, What’s New, Pussycat?

I got the Marilyn off at Wilshire and took her to rehab, by which time she’d pretty much pumped her own stomach, and waited to make sure she checked in.

“Are you sure you’ve got time to do this?” she said, looking less like Marilyn and more like Jodie Foster in
Taxi Driver
.

“I’m sure.” There was plenty of time, now that I knew where Alis was.

While she was filling out paperwork, I accessed Vincent. “I have a question,” I said without preamble. “What if you took a frame and substituted an identical frame? Could that get past the fibe-op ID-locks?”

“An identical frame? What would be the point of that?”

“Could it?”

“I guess,” he said. “Is this for Mayer?”

“Yeah,” I said. “What if you substituted a new image that matched the original? Could the ID-locks tell the difference?”

“Matched?”

“A different image that’s the same.”

“You’re splatted,” he said, and signed off.

It didn’t matter. I already knew the ID-locks couldn’t tell the difference. It would take too much memory. And, as Vincent had said, what would be the point of changing an image to one exactly like it?

I waited till the Marilyn was in a bed and getting a ridigaine IV and then got back on the skids. After LaBrea there was nobody on them, but it took me till three-thirty to find the service door to the shut-off section and past five to get it open.

I was worried for a while that Alis had braced it shut, which she had, but not intentionally. One of the fibe-op feed cables was up against it, and when I finally got the door open a crack, all I had to do was push.

She was facing the far wall, looking at the screen that should have been blank in this shut-off section. It wasn’t. In the middle of it, Peter Lawford and June Allyson were demonstrating the Varsity Drag to a gymnasium full of college students in party dresses and tuxes. June was wearing a pink dress and pink heels with pompoms, and so was Alis, and their hair was curled under in identical blonde pageboys.

Alis had set the Digimatte on top of its case, with the compositor and pixar beside it on the floor, and snaked the fibe-op cable along the yellow warning strip and around in front of the door to the skids feed. I pushed the cable out from the door, gently, so it wouldn’t break the connection, and opened the door far enough so I could see, and then stood, half-hidden by it, and watched her.

“Down on your heels,” Peter Lawford instructed, “up on your toes,” and went into a triple step. Alis, holding a remote, ff’d past the song and stopped where the dance started, and watched it, her face intent, counting the steps. She rew’d to the end of the song. She punched a button and everyone froze in midstep.

She walked rapidly in the silly high-heeled shoes to the rear of the skids, out of reach of the frame, and pressed a button. Peter Lawford sang, “—that’s how it goes.”

Alis set the remote down on the floor, her full-skirted dress rustling as she knelt, and then hurried back to her
mark and stood, obscuring June Allyson except for one hand and a tail of the pink skirt, waiting for her cue.

It came, Alis went down on her heels, up on her toes, and into a Charleston, with June behind her from this angle like a twin, a shadow. I moved over to where I could see her from the same angle as the Digimatte’s processor. June Allyson disappeared, and there was only Alis.

I had expected June Allyson to be wiped from the screen the way Princess Leia had been for the tourates’ scene at A Star Is Born, but Alis wasn’t making vids for the folks back home, or even trying to project her image on the screen. She was simply rehearsing, and she had only hooked the Digimatte up to feed the fibe-op loop through the processor because that was the way she’d been taught to use it at work. I could see, even from here, that the “record” light wasn’t on.

I retreated to the half-open door. She was taller than June Allyson, and her dress was a brighter pink than June’s, but the image the Digimatte was feeding back into the fibe-op loop was the corrected version, adjusted for color and focus and lighting. And on some of these routines, practiced for hours and hours in these shut-off sections of the skids, done and redone and done again, that corrected image had been so close to the original that the ID-locks didn’t catch it, so close Alis’s image had gotten past the guards and onto the fibe-op source. And Alis had managed the impossible.

She flubbed a turn, stopped, clattered over to the remote in her pompomed heels, rew’d to the middle section just before the flub, and froze it. She glanced at the Digimatte’s clock and then punched a button and hurried back to her mark.

She only had another half hour, if that, and then she would have to dismantle this equipment and take it back to Hollywood Boulevard, set it up, open up shop. I should let her. I could show her the opdisk another time, and I had found out what I wanted to know. I should shut the door and leave her to rehearse. But I didn’t. I leaned against the door, and stood there, watching her dance.

She went through the middle section three more times, working the clumsiness out of the turn, and then rew’d to the end of the song and went through the whole thing. Her face was intent, alert, the way it had been that night watching the Continental, but it lacked the delight, the rapt, abandoned quality of the Beguine.

I wondered if it was because she was still learning the routine, or if she would ever have it. The smile June Allyson turned on Peter Lawford was pleased, not joyful, and the “Varsity Drag” number itself was only so-so. Hardly Cole Porter.

It came to me then, watching her patiently go over the same steps again and again, as Fred must have done, all alone in a rehearsal hall before the movie had even begun filming, that I had been wrong about her.

I had thought that she believed, like Ruby Keeler and ILMGM, that anything was possible. I had tried to tell her it wasn’t, that just because you want something doesn’t mean you can have it. But she had already known that, long before I met her, long before she came to Hollywood. Fred Astaire had died the year she was born, and she could never, never, never, in spite of VR and computer graphics and copyrights, dance the Beguine with him.

And all this, the costumes and the classes and the rehearsing, were simply a substitute, something to do instead. Like fighting in the Resistance. Compared to the impossibility of what Alis was unfortunate enough to want, breaking into a Hollywood populated by puppets and pimps must have seemed a snap.

Peter Lawford took June Allyson’s hand, and Alis misjudged the turn and crashed into empty air. She picked up the remote to rew, glanced toward the station sign, and saw me. She stood looking at me for a long moment, and then walked over and shut off the Digimatte.

“Don’t—” I said.

“Don’t what?” she said, unhooking connections. She shrugged a white lab coat on over the pink dress. “Don’t waste your time trying to find a dancing teacher because
there aren’t any?” She buttoned up the coat and went over to the input and disconnected the feed. “As you can see, I’ve already figured that out. Nobody in Hollywood knows how to dance. Or if they do, they’re splatted on chooch, trying to forget.” She began looping the feed into a coil. “Are you?”

She glanced up at the station sign and then laid the coiled feed on top of the Digimatte and knelt next to the compositor, skirt rustling. “Because if you are, I don’t have time to take you home and keep you from falling off the skids and fend off your advances. I have to get this stuff back.” She slid the pixar into its case and snapped it shut.

“I’m not splatted,” I said. “And I’m not drunk. I’ve been looking for you for six weeks.”

She lifted the Digimatte down and into its case and began stowing wires. “Why? So you can convince me I’m not Ruby Keeler? That the musical’s dead and anything I can do, comps can do better? Fine. I’m convinced.”

She sat down on the case and unbuckled the pompomed heels. “You win,” she said. “I can’t dance in the movies.” She looked over at the mirrored wall, shoe in hand. “It’s impossible.”

“No,” I said. “I didn’t come to tell you that.”

She stuck the heels in one of the pockets of the lab coat. “Then what did you come to tell me? That you want your list of accesses back? Fine.” She slid her feet into a pair of slip-ons and stood up. “I’ve learned just about all the chorus numbers and solos anyway, and this isn’t going to work for partnered dancing. I’m going to have to find something else.”

“I don’t want the accesses back,” I said.

She pulled off the blond pageboy and shook out her beautiful backlit hair. “Then what do you want?”

You, I thought. I want you.

She stood up abruptly and jammed the wig in her other pocket. “Whatever it is, it’ll have to wait.” She slung the coil of feed over her shoulder. “I’ve got a job to go to.” She bent to pick up the cases.

“Let me help you,” I said, starting toward her.

“No, thanks,” she said, shouldering the pixar and hoisting the Digimatte. “I can do it myself.”

“Then I’ll hold the door for you,” I said, and opened it.

She pushed through.

Rush hour. Packed mirror to mirror with Ray Milland and Rosalind Russell on their way to work, none of whom turned to look at Alis. They were all looking at the walls, which were going full blast: ILMGM, More Copyrights Than There Are in Heaven. A promo for
Beverly Hills Cop 15
, a promo for a remake of
The Three Musketeers
.

I pulled the door shut behind me, and a River Phoenix, squatting on the yellow warning strip, looked up from a razor blade and a palmful of powder, but he was too splatted to register what he was seeing. His eyes didn’t even focus.

Alis was already halfway to the front of the skids, her eyes on the station sign. It blinked “Hollywood Boulevard,” and she pushed her way toward the exit, with me following in her wake, and out onto the Boulevard.

It was still as dark as it gets, but everything was open. And there were still (or maybe already) tourates around. Two old guys in Bermuda shorts and vidcams were at the Happily Ever After booth, watching Ryan O’Neal save Ali MacGraw’s life.

Alis stopped at the grille of A Star Is Born and fumbled with her key, trying to insert the card without putting any of her stuff down. The two tourates wandered over.

“Here,” I said, taking the key. I opened the gate and took the Digimatte from her.

“Do you have Charles Bronson?” one of the oldates said.

“We’re not open yet,” I said. “I have something I have to show you,” I said to Alis.

“What? The latest puppet show? An automatic rehearsal program?” She started setting up the Digimatte, plugging in the cables and fibe-op feed, shoving the Digimatte into position.

“I always wanted to be in
Death Wish”
the oldate said. “Do you have that?”

“We’re not
open”
I said.

“Here’s the menu,” Alis said, switching it on for the oldate. “We don’t have Charles Bronson, but we have got a scene from
The Magnificent Seven”
She pointed to it.

“You have to see this, Alis,” I said, and shoved in the opdisk, glad I’d preset it and didn’t have to call anything up.
On the Town
came up on the screen.

“I have customers to—” Alis said, and stopped.

I had set the disk to “Next, please” after fifteen seconds.
On the Town
disappeared, and
Singin’ in the Rain
came up.

Alis turned angrily to me. “Why did you—”

“I didn’t,” I said. “You did.” I pointed at the screen.
Tea for Two
came up, and Alis, in red curls, Charlestoned her way toward the front of the screen.

“It’s not a paste-up,” I said. “Look at them. They’re the movies you’ve been rehearsing, aren’t they? Aren’t they?”

On the screen Alis was high-stepping with her blue parasol.

“You talked about
Singin’ in the Rain
that night I met you. And I could have guessed some of the others. They’re all full-length shot and continuous take.” I pointed at her in her blue bustle. “But I didn’t even know what movie that was from.”

Hats Off
came up. “And I’d never seen some of these.”

“I didn’t—” she said, looking at the screen.

“The Digimatte does a superimpose on the fibe-op image coming in and puts it on disk,” I said, showing her. “That image goes back through the loop, too, and the fibe-op source randomly checks the pattern of pixels and automatically rejects any image that’s been changed. Only you weren’t trying to change the image. You were trying to duplicate it. And you succeeded. You matched the moves perfectly, so perfectly the Brownian check thought it was the same image, so perfectly it didn’t reject it, and the image made it onto the fibe-op source.” I waved my hand at the screen, where she was dancing to “42nd Street.”

Behind us, the oldate said, “Who’s in this
Magnificent Seven
scene?” but Alis didn’t answer him. She was watching the shifting routines, her face intent. I couldn’t read her expression.

“How many are there?” she said, still looking at the screen.

“I’ve found fourteen,” I said. “You rehearsed more than that, right? The ones that got past the ID-locks are almost all dancers with the same shape of face and features you have. Did you do any Ann Millers?”

“Kiss Me Kate,”
she said.