somewhere a bell began to toll. She glanced toward the sound. The tower clock on the Georgetown campus. The melancholy resonance echoed on the river; shivered; seeped through her tired heart. She walked toward her work; toward ghastly charade; toward the straw-stuffed, antic imitation of dust.
She entered the main front gates of the campus and her depression diminished; then grew even less as she looked at the row of trailer dressing rooms aligned along the driveway close to the southern perimeter wall; and by 8 A. M. and the day's first shot, she was almost herself: She started an argument over the script.
'Hey, Burke? Take a look at this damned thing, will ya?'
'Oh, you do have a script, I see! How nice!' Director Burke Dennings, taut and, elfin, left eye twitching yet gleaming with mischief, surgically shaved a narrow strip from a page of her script with quivering fingers 'I believe I'll munch,' he cackled.
They were standing on the esplanade that fronted the administration building and were knotted in the center of actors; lights; technicians; extras; grips. Here and there a few spectators dotted the lawn, mostly Jesuit faculty. Numbers of children. The cameraman, bored, picked up Daily Variety as Dennings put the paper in his mouth and giggled, his breath reeking faintly of the morning's first gin.
'Yes, I'm terribly glad you've been given a script.'
A sly, frail man in his fifties, he spoke with a charmingly broad British accent so clipped and precise that it lofted even crudest obscenities to elegance, and when he drank, he seemed always on the verge of guffaw; seemed constantly struggling to retain his composure.
'Now then, tell me, my baby. What is it? What's wrong?'
The scene in question called for the dean of the mythical college in the script to address a gathering of students in an effort to squelch a threatened 'sit-in.' Chris would then run up the steps to the esplanade, tear the bullhorn away from the dean and then point to the main administration building and shout, 'Let's tear it down!'
'It just doesn't make sense,' said Chris.
'Well, it's perfectly plain,' lied Dennings.
'Why the heck should they tear down the building, Burke? What for?'
'Are you sending me up?'
'No, I'm asking 'what for?' '
'Because it's there, loves!'
'In the script?'
'No, on the grounds!'
'Well, it doesn't make sense, Burke. She just wouldn't do that.'
'She would.'
'No, she wouldn't.'
'Shall we summon the writer? I believe he's in Paris!'
'Hiding?'
'Fucking!'
He'd clipped it off with impeccable diction, fox eyes glinting in a face like dough as the word rose crisp to Gothic spires. Chris fell weak to his shoulders, laughing. 'Oh, Burke, you're impossible, dammit!'
'Yes.' He said it like Caesar modestly confirming reports of his triple rejection of the crown. 'Now then, shall we get on with it?'
Chris didn't hear. She'd darted a furtive, embarrassed glance to a nearby Jesuit, checking to see if he'd heard the obscenity. Dark, rugged face. Like a boxer's. Chipped. In his forties. Something sad about the eyes; something pained; and yet warm and reassuring as they fastened on hers. He'd heard. He was smiling. He glanced at his watch and moved away.
'I say, shall we get on with it!'
She turned, disconnected. 'Yeah, sure, Burke, let's do it.'
'Thank heaven.'
'No, wait!'
'Oh, good Christ!'
She complained about the tag of the scene.. She felt that the high point was reached with her line as opposed to her running through the door of the building immediately afterward.
'It adds nothing,' said Chris. 'It's dumb.'
'Yes, it is, love, it is,' agreed Burke sincerely. 'However, the cutter insists that we do it,' he continued, 'so there we are. You see?'
'No, I don't.'
'No, of course not. It's stupid. You see, since the following scene'---he giggled---'begins with Jed coming at us through a door, the cutter feels certain of a nomination if the scene preceding ends with you moving off through a door.'
'That's dumb.'
'Well, of course it is! It's vomit! It's simply cunting puking mad! Now then, why don't we shoot it and trust me to snip it from the final cut. It should make -a rather tasty munch.'
