Their eyes were so steadily upon me that I hung back, fearful of taking credit for finding the Messiah, saving the Saviour, and trimming the budget for the night.
Manny?s eyes were full of doubt and distrust, the Doc?s with active venom, and Groc?s with good brandy spirits. Perhaps they had come to see Christ, and myself, roasted on a spit. In any event, as J. C. moved steadily to the rim of the fiery pit, Fritz, recovering from some recent fit, blinked at him myopically and cried, ?About time. We were about to call off the barbecue. Monocle!?
No one moved. Everyone looked around.
?Monocle!? Fritz said again.
And I realized he wished the loan of the lens he had so grandly handed me a few hours ago.
I darted forward, planted the lens in his outstretched palm, and jumped back as he jammed it into his eye as ammunition. He fired a gaze at J. C. and heaved out all the air in his lungs.
?Do you call that Christ! It?s more like Methuselah. Put on a ton of skin pancake color thirty-three and fish-hook his jawline. Holy jumping Jesus, it?s time for the dinner break. More failures, more delays. How dare you show up late! Who in hell do you think you are??
?Christ,? said J. C. with proper modesty. ?And don?t you forget it.?
?Get him out of here! Makeup! Dinner break! Back in an hour!? shouted Fritz, and all but hurled the lens, my medal, back into my hands, to stand bitterly regarding the burning coals as if he might leap to incineration.
And all the while the wolfpack across the pit, Manny counting the lost dollars as each moment fell like blizzards of paper money to be burned, and the good Doc itching his scalpel in his fisted pockets, and Lenin?s cosmetologist with his permanent Conrad Veidt smile carved in the pale thin melon flesh about his chin. But now their gaze had shifted from me to fix with a terrible and inescapable judgment and condemnation upon J. C.
It was like a death squad letting go an endless fusillade.
J. C. rocked and swayed as if struck.
Groc?s assistant makeup men were about to guide J. C. away when?
The thing happened.
There was a soft hiss as something like a single drop of rain struck the bed of burning coals.
We all looked down and then up?
At J. C., whose hands were thrust out over the charcoals. He was studying his own wrists with great curiosity.
They were bleeding.
?Ohmigod,? Constance said. ?Do something!?
?What?? cried Fritz.
J. C. said, calmly, ?Shoot the scene.?
?No, damnit!? cried Fritz. ?John the Baptist, with his head off, looked better than you!?
?Then,? J. C. nodded across the set to where Stanislau Groc and Doc Phillips stood, as merry Punch and dark Apocalypse, ?then,? said J. C. ?let them sew and bandage me until we?re ready.?
?How do you
?It comes with the text.?
?Go make yourself useful,? J. C. said to me.
?And take that woman with you,? ordered Fritz. ?I don?t know her!?
?Yes, you do,? said Constance. ?Laguna Beach, July 4th, 1926.?
?That was another country, another time.? Fritz slammed an invisible door.
?Yes.? Constance paused. The cake fell in the oven. ?Yes, it was.?
Doc Phillips arrived at J. C.?s left wrist. Groc arrived at his right.
J. C. would not look at them; he fixed his gaze on the high fog in the sky.
Then he turned his wrists over and held them out so they might see his life dripping from the fresh stigmata.
?Careful,? he said.
I walked out of the light. A small girl followed, becoming a woman along the way.
43
?Where are we going?? said Constance.
?Me? Back in time. And I know who runs the Moviola to make it happen. You? Right here, coffee and sinkers. Sit. I?ll be right back.?
?If I?m not here,? said Constance, seated at an outdoor extras? picnic table, and wielding a doughnut. ?Look for me at the men?s gym.?
I moved off alone, in the dark. I was running out of places to go, places to search. Now I headed toward one place on the lot I had never been. Other days were there. Arbuthnot?s film ghost hid there and perhaps myself, as a boy, wandering the studio territories at noon.
