Death of a Blue Movie Star (Rune 2)

Rune tried to peek inside. What the hell was a leisure product?

She kept walking, listing against the weight of the camera, sweat running down her face and neck and sides.

The smells were of garlic and oil and urine and rotting food and car exhaust. And, brother, the crowds ... Where did all these people come from? Thousands of them. Where was home? The city? The burbs? Why were they here?

Rune dodged out of the way of two teenage boys in T-shirts and Guess? jeans, walking fast, in an arm-swinging, loping roll, their voices harsh. "Man, mothafuckah be mah boss but he don' own me, man. You hear what I'm sayin', man?"

"Fuck no, he don' own neither of us."

"He try that again, man, an' I'll deck him. I mothahfuckin' deck him, man...."

They passed her by, Rune and her camera, as she taped a visual history of Times Square.

A place like no other in New York.

Times Square ...

But every Magic Kingdom needs its Mordor or Hades and tonight as Rune walked through the place she didn't feel too uneasy. She was on her quest, making her movie. About the bombing but not about the bombing. She didn't have to justify the creepy place to anyone or worry about anybody's shoes but her own and she was careful where she put her feet.

Behind her, a huge snort.

Fantastic! Knights!

Rune turned the camera on two mounted policemen, who sat rod-straight in their saddles, their horses lolling their heads and stomping solid hooves into the piles of granular manure under them.

"Hey, Sir Gawain!" Rune called. They glanced at her, then decided she wasn't worth flirting with and continued to scan the street with stony gazes that streamed from under the visors of their robin's-egg-blue helmets.

It was when she looked down from the tall, chestnut horse that she saw the red jacket again. It vanished even more quickly than earlier.

A chill ran through her, despite the heat.

Who was it? she wondered.

No one. Just one of the ten million people in the Magic Kingdom. And she forgot about it as she turned the corner and walked up Eighth Avenue toward the site of the former Velvet Venus Theater.

Along this stretch she counted six porn theaters and adult bookstores. Some had live dancers, some had peep shows where for a quarter or a token you could watch films in little booths. She stuck the camera through the door and shot a sign (ONLY ONE PERSON PER BOOTH. IT'S THE LAW AND OUR POLICY. HAVE A NICE DAY) until a big guy selling tokens shooed her away.

She got some good footage of commuters on their way to the Port Authority and their homes in suburban Jersey. Some glanced in the windows; most wore glazed faces. A few businessmen turned quickly into the theaters, not pausing at all, as though a gust of wind had blown them through the door.

It was then that a humid wind carried a sour stink of burn to her. From the theater, she knew. Rune shut off the camera and strolled up the street.

Still spooked. The paranoia again. But she still could hear, in her memory, the terrible bang of the explosion. The ground moving under her. Recalling the bodies, the parts of bodies. The terrible aftermath of the bomb and the fire. She glanced back, saw no one watching her.

She continued along the street, thinking: The press coverage of the event had been good. News at Eleven had devoted ten minutes to the incident and the story had been a hook for a Time magazine article on the trends in adult films ("Hard Times for Hard-Core?") and one in the Village Voice on the conflict the bombing presented to the First Amendment ("Disrespecting Religion and Abridging the Press"). But, as Larry had predicted, those were all spot news stories, hard news. Nobody was doing a human-interest piece on the bombing.

Come on, Shelly, she thought. You're the key. I need you....

As she approached the ruins of the theater Rune paused, resting her hand on the yellow police tape. The odor was stronger than the day of the bombing. She almost gagged on the air, thick with the smell of wet, scorched upholstery. And something else--a sickening cardboardy scent. It would have to be the scorched bodies, Rune figured, and tried to force the image out of her thoughts.

Across the street was another theater. The neon said: THE FINEST IN ADULT ENTERTAINMENT. COOL, COMFORTABLE AND SAFE. Rune assumed that patrons were not much soothed by the illuminated reassurance and that business was slow.

She turned back to the destroyed theater and was startled by motion. Her first thought: Shit, he's back. Whoever was following her through Times Square.

A man's face ...

Panic took her. Just as she was about to turn and run she squinted into the shadows and got a better look at her pursuer. He wore jeans and a navy-blue windbreaker that said NYPD in white letters on the chest. It was Cowboy. The guy from the Bomb Squad.

She closed her eyes and exhaled slowly. Tried to steady her shaking hands. He sitting on a folding chair, looking at a white sheet of paper, which he folded and put into his pocket. She saw a thin brown holster on his right hip. Rune lifted the camera and shot a minute or so of tape, opening the aperture wide to get some definition in the gloom.