enthusiastically.
“Do you two, like, perform together?” Rune blushed fiery red.
The actresses shared a glance, then laughed.
“I mean …,” Rune began.
“Do we work together?” Nicole filled in.
“Sometimes,” Shelly said.
“We’re roommates too,” Nicole said.
Rune glanced at the iron pillars and tin ceiling. “This is an interesting place. This studio.”
“It used to be a shirtwaist factory.”
“Yeah? What’s that?” Nicole asked.
“A woman’s blouse,” Shelly said, not looking down from the ceiling.
Shelly is tall and she isn’t a stunning beauty. Her presence comes from her figure (and eyes!). Her cheekbones are low. She has skin the consistency and the pale shade of a summer overcast. “How did I get into the business? I was raped when I was twelve. My uncle molested me. I’m a heroin addict—don’t I cover it up well? I was kidnaped by migrant workers in Michigan
….”
Nicole lit a cigarette. She kept working on the gum too.
Shelly looked down from the tin panels at Rune. “So this would be a documentary?”
Rune said, “Like on PBS.”
Nicole said, “Somebody wanted me to do one once, this guy. A documentary. But you know what he really wanted.”
Shelly asked, “Still hot out?”
“Boiling.”
Nicole gave a faint laugh, though Rune had no idea what she was thinking of.
Shelly walked to a spot where cold air cascaded on the floor. She turned and examined Rune. “You seem enthusiastic. More enthusiastic than talented. Excuse me. That’s just my opinion. Well, about your film—I want to think about it. Let me know where I can get in touch with you.”
“See, it’ll be great. I can—”
“Let me think about it,” Shelly said calmly.
Rune hesitated, looked at the woman’s aloof face for a long moment. Then dug into her leopard-skin bag, but before she found her Road Runner pen Shelly produced a heavy, lacquered Mont Blanc. She took it; felt the warmth of the barrel. She wrote slowly but Shelly’s gaze made her uneasy and the lines were lumpy and uneven. She gave Shelly the paper and said, “That’s where I live. Christopher Street. All the way to the end. At the river. You’ll see me.” She paused. “Will I see you?”
“Maybe,” Shelly said.
“Yo, film me, momma, come on, film me.”
“Hey, you wanna shoot my dick? You got yourself a wide-angle lens, you can shoot my dick.”
“Shit, be a microscope what she need for that.”
“Yo, fuck you, man.”
Walking out of the Times Square subway, Rune ignored her admirers, hefted the camera to her shoulder and walked along the platform. She passed a half-dozen beggars, shaking her head at their pleas for coins, but she dropped a couple of quarters into a box in front of a young South American couple giving a tango demonstration to the rattling music of a boom box.
It was eight p.m., a week after she’d first met with Shelly and Nicole. Rune had called Shelly twice. At first the actress had been pretty evasive about doing the filmbut the second time she’d called, Shelly had said, “If I
were
to do it would you give me a chance to review the final cut?”
From her work at L&R, and her love of movies in general, Rune knew that the final cut—the last version of the film, what was shown in the theaters—was the Holy Grail of the film business. Only producers and a few elite directors controlled the final cut. No actor in the history of Hollywood ever had final cut approval.
But she now said, “Yes.”
Instinctively feeling that it was the only way she could get Shelly Lowe to do the film.
“I’ll let you know in a day or two for sure.”
Rune was now out looking for atmosphere footage and for establishing shots—the long-angle scenes in films that orient the audience and tell them what city or neighborhood they’re in.
And there was plenty of atmosphere here. Life in the Tenderloin, Times Square. The heart of the porno district in New York. She was excited at the thought of actually