'Cut it out.'
'Shut up!' The words were jarring, pitched high, frantic. Everyone on the set must've heard. But they all looked away-at scheduling sheets or invoices or scripts. Or they stared at the coffee and tea they stirred compulsively.
Johnny pulled away. He sat on the bed, looking absently for his clothes.
Nicole walked to the fallen coke shaker, picked it up and offered it tentatively to Johnny. Traub stepped forward and pulled it from her hand.
'You dumb bitch. Didn't you hear what I just said?'
'I was just-'
Traub had turned back to Johnny. 'I paid you up front for this week. I want half back.'
Nicole said, 'Danny, leave him alone, come on.'
Traub turned on her. Said viciously, 'A real actress'd know how to get him up. You're fucking useless.'
Nicole was obviously frightened of him. She swallowed and looked away from his tiny piercing eyes. 'Don't fire him, Danny. Come on. He's, you know, had trouble getting jobs.'
Traub's face broke into a dark, simian grin. 'An impotent porn star, having trouble getting work? You're shitting me.'
'He's having a rough time is all.'
Traub said to Johnny, 'Fuck the money. Just get outa here.'
Johnny turned abruptly and walked off the set.
'Asshole,' Nicole whispered.
Traub spun around and grabbed her teased hair. He pulled her head close to his. 'Don't… you… ever.'
Nicole whimpered. 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry…'
Anger swept through Traub. He drew his hand back in a fist. But he looked around. A beefy, T-shirted assistant stirred. The cameraman took a step toward them. Traub waited a moment and released her hair.
Nicole's hand rose to her head and massaged her scalp. Traub gave her a fake smile again and patted her cheek. She flinched, waiting for a slap. He laughed and slipped the vial of coke between her breasts. 'There's my-'
She tossed her hair and walked away.
Traub called after her, '-good girl.'
'Shoes,' Nicole said to Rune. 'A lot of times I think about shoes.'
'Shoes? Like on your feet?'
'Yeah. You know. Just shoes.'
Rune and Nicole were sitting in one of the dressing rooms at Lame Duck, which wasn't a room at all but just an area set off from the rest of the studio with cracked and mouse-gnawed Sheetrock.
They were on the fourth floor, the floor above the bombing. Nicole had said the company had decided not to move, which she thought was real tacky, what with Shelly being killed just below them. 'Danny says we're got a sweetheart deal with the landlord. Whatever that means.'
Rune had snuck up to the dressing rooms after the incident with Traub. There she'd set up the camera and zoomed in for a close-up of Nicole's face. She'd lowered her voice to sound like Faye Dunaway's inNetwork and asked, 'When you're on the set with the cameras rolling and you're with a man, doing it, what do you think about?'
'Just one man?'
'I mean, with anyone.'
'Danny likes to shoot with two men a lot.'
Rune said, 'Okay, say you're on the set with two men.'
Nicole nodded to show she understood the question and started talking about shoes.
'I think about Ferragamos a lot. Today, before that thing with Johnny I was picturing this great pair. It has a nifty bow on the side, real small and cute.' Nicole was dressed in a shiny silver jumpsuit with a wide, white belt. She wore cowboy boots with metal rivets on the side. Her hair was teased up high. Rune noticed that her scalp was slightly red from where Traub had grabbed her.
'I love shoes. I have about sixty pairs. I don't know. They calm me down. For some reason.'
'Sixty?' Rune whispered in astonishment.
'That was one difference between Shelly and me. I spend everything I make. She put it all in mutual funds and stocks, things like that. But, hey, I like clothes. What can I say?'
'I saw a couple of your films. You looked like you were really turned on, really into it. And you were just faking?'
Nicole shrugged. 'I'm a woman; I've had lots of practice faking.'
'You must think about something other than shoes.'
'Well, there's technical stuff to worry about. Am I at the right angle, am I looking at the camera, did I shave my underarms, am I repeating the same words all the time?'
'Who writes the dialogue?'
Nicole glanced nervously at the camera. She cleared her throat. 'We make up most of it. Only the thing is, you'd think it'd be easy. You just look at the camera and talk. But it isn't like that. You kind of freeze up. You know what to say, the words and all, but the how to soy it part, that's what's so hard for me.'
Rune said, 'You sounded okay to me. And I've seen a couple of your films.'
'Yeah?' Nicole turned her face, glowing with purple and beige makeup, toward Rune. 'Which ones?'
'Bottoms Up. AndSex Wars. Oh, and Lusty Cousins.'
'That was an old one, Lusty Cousins. Kind of a classic. I got mentioned in Hustler. I have to say I was kinda happy with the way it worked out. I rehearsed that one for a week. Shelly made us.'
Rune glanced outside into the empty corridor.
'Did Shelly ever write plays?'
'Plays? Yeah. That was another one of her hobbies. She'd send them out and they'd come back with a rejection letter.'
'Did she ever have anything produced?'
'Naw, I don't think so. But one she wrote a few months ago was supposed to be real good. Some theater was interested in it.'
The Haymarket Theater, Chicago, Rune bet, recalling the note on the copy of the play in Tucker's office.
'DeliveredFlowers?'
'Yeah. I think so. That might have been it.'
'You know what it was about?'
'Naw.'
Rune said, 'I interviewed Danny Traub. I was talking to him about Shelly.'
'Uh-huh.'
'And he said that he really loved her. That they were this like team.'
'Danny said that?'
'Yep.'
'He's lying,' Nicole said.
'That's sort of what I thought too.'
'He didn't give a shit for Shelly. Or for anybody' else except himself. Did he, like, tell you about the times he propositioned her-which was every other day?'
'No. Why don'tyou!'
Nicole looked at the camera. 'Maybe if you could shut that off.'
Rune clicked the switch.
'He was always…'
'Harassing her?'
Nicole shrugged as if there was a fine line between coming on to some woman and harassing her. 'It wasn't