Who in hell are you? She hardly ever saw you. Cleve Morris, a desk sergeant spending two hours a day at the front desk buzzing people through locked doors and six hours strolling around dim soundstages, checking things. She hardly knew you. It was always, “Hello, Diana,” and “Hi, Sarge!” and “Good night, Diana,” when her long evening gown rustled from the stages, and over her smooth shoulder one eye winking. “Night, Sarge; be a good boy!”
Three years ago. Cleve slid down in his projection room loge. The watch on his wrist ticked eight o’clock. The studio was dead, lights fading one by one. Tomorrow, action lots of it. But now, tonight, he was alone in this room, looking over the old films of Diana Coyle. In the projection booth behind him, checking the compact spools of film, Jamie Winters, the studio’s A-1 cameraman, did the honors of projection.
So here you are, the two of you, late at night. The film flickers, marring her lovely face. It flickers again, and you’re irritated. It flickers twice more, a long time, then smooths out. Bad print. Cleve sinks lower in his seat, thinking back three years ago, along about this same hour of night, just about the same day of the month…three years ago…same hour…rain in the dark sky…three years ago.…
* * *
Cleve was at his desk that night. People strode through doors, rain-spangled, never seeing him. He felt like a mummy in a museum where the attendants had long ago tired of noticing him. Just a fixture to buzz doors open for them.
“Good evening, Mr. Guilding.”
R. J. Guilding thought it over and vetoed the suggestion with a jerk of one gray-gloved hand. His white head jerked too. “Is it?” he wanted to know. You get that way being a producer.
Buzz. Door open. Slam.
“Good evening, Diana!”
“What?” She walked from the rainy night with it shining in little clear gems on her white oval face. He’d like to have kissed them away. She looked lost and alone. “Oh, hello, Cleve. Working late. The darn picture’s almost finished. Gosh, I’m tired.”
Buzz. Door open. Slam.
He looked after her and kept her perfume as long as he could.
“Ah, flatfoot,” somebody said. Leaning over the desk, smiling ironically, was a pretty man named Robert Denim. “Open the door for me, country boy. They never should’ve put you on this job. You’re glamor-struck. Poor kid.”
Cleve looked at him strangely. “She doesn’t belong to you anymore, does she?”
Denim’s face was suddenly not pretty. He didn’t say anything for a moment, but by the look in his eyes Cleve’s doubts were removed. Denim grabbed the door and jerked it viciously.
Cleve purposely left the buzzer untouched. Denim swore and turned around, one gloved hand balled into a fist. Cleve buzzed the buzzer, smiling. It was the kind of smile that drained Denim’s hesitation, made him decide to pull the knob again and stride off down away into the halls, into the studio.
A few minutes later Jamie Winters entered, shaking off rain, but holding onto a man-sized peeve. “That Diana Coyle woman; I tell you, Cleve. She stays up late at night and expects me to photograph her like a twelve-year-old kid! What a job I got! Fooey.”
Behind Jamie Winters came Georgie Kroll, and Tally Durham hanging onto him so that Diana couldn’t get him. But it was too late. By Georgie’s face he was already got; and by Tally’s she knew it but couldn’t believe it.
Slam.
Cleve checked his name chart, found that everybody who was working tonight was already in. He relaxed. This was a dark hive, and Diana was the queen bee with all the other bees humming around her. The studio worked late tonight, just for her, all the lights, sound, color, activity. Cleve smoked a cigarette quietly, leaning back, smiling over his thoughts. Diana, let’s just you and me buy a little home in San Fernando where the flood washes you out every year, and the wild flowers spring up when the flood is gone. Nice paddling in a canoe with you, Diana, even in a flood. We got flowers, hay, sunlight, and peace in the valley, Diana.
The only sound to Cleve was the rain beating at the windows, an occasional flare of th
under, and his watch ticking like a termite boring a hole in the structure of silence.
Tictictictictictic…
The scream pulled him out of his chair and half across the reception room, echoed through the building. A script girl burst into view, shambling with dead kind of feet, babbling. Cleve grabbed her and held her still.
“She’s dead! She’s dead!”
The watch went tic, tic, tic all over again.
Lightning blew up around the place, and a cold wind hit Cleve’s neck. His stomach turned over and he was afraid to ask the simple question he would eventually have to ask. Instead he stalled the inevitable, locking the bronze front doors and making secure any windows that were open. When he turned, the script girl was leaning against his desk, a tremble in her like something shattered in a finely integrated machine, shaking it to pieces.
“On stage twelve. Just now,” she gasped. “Diana Coyle.”
Cleve ran through the dim alleys of the studio, the sound of his running lonely in the big empty spaces. Ahead of him brilliant lights poured from opened stage doors; people stood framed in the vast square, shocked, not moving.
He ran onto the set and stopped, his heart pounding, to look down.