Death of a Blue Movie Star

"I don't think you're going to see any more bombings," Healy said. "The profile is they get tired after a while. Too risky to be a serial criminal nowadays. Forensics are too good. You'll get nailed."

Rune was silent. Healy said, "I've got watch in a couple of minutes. I was thinking, you want, maybe you could stop by the Bomb Squad. See what it's like."

"Really? Oh, yeah. But I've got to get to work now. Today's the last shot for this stupid commercial."

Healy nodded. "I'll be there all night." He gave her directions to the 6th Precinct.

*****

Dominoes. All she could see was dominoes.

"Come on, luv," Larry was cajoling, "you get to be the one to knock 'em over."

Rune was still setting them up. "I thought you were going to hire another couple of P.A.'s for the shoot."

"You're all the assistant we need for this one, luv. You can do it." Rune was working from a piece of paper on which he'd drawn the pattern. She reluctantly admitted to herself that it was probably going to be a hell of a shot.

" 'Ow many we have?"

"Four thousand, three hundred and twelve, Larry. I checked them all."

"Good for you."

Once, halfway through the assembly, two hours into the process, she set them off accidentally. The rows of rectangles clicked against one another with the sound of chips around a Las Vegas roulette wheel.

Double shit…

"I would've thought you'd've started from the other side," Mary Jane contributed. "That way you probably wouldn't've bumped into them as easily."

"Doing good," Larry said quickly.

"Is this art?" a fuming Rune asked him as she crawled over the twenty-foot sweep of gray seamless backdrop paper to set them up again.

"Don't start."

Finally, hours later, she got the little army of dominoes arranged and backed off the paper without breathing. She crawled to the first one and nodded to Larry.

Rune glanced at the camera operator, a nerdish, bearded guy who sat in the seat of the Luma crane boom. It looked like earthmoving equipment. "Make sure you got film," Rune said to him. "I'm not doing this again."

"Lights." Larry liked playing director. The lighting man turned the lamps on. The set was suddenly bathed in oven-hot white light. "Roll."

"We're rolling."

Then Larry nodded to Rune. She reached toward the first domino.

The dominoes fell and clicked as they spread over the paper, the camera swept over the set like a carnival ride and Larry murmured with the preoccupation of a man who was getting paid two hundred thousand dollars for five days' work.

Click. The last one fell.

The camera backed off for a longer angle shot of the entire logo: a cow wearing a top hat.

"Cut," Larry yelled sternly. "Save the lights."

The lights went out.

Rune closed her eyes, thinking that she'd still have to get all the little rectangles packed up and returned to the prop rental store before six; Larry and Bob wouldn't want to pay another day's fee.

Then the voice came from somewhere above them. "One thing…"

It was Mary Jane, who'd watched the whole event from a tall ladder on the edge of the set.

"What's that?" Mr. Wallet asked.

"I'm just wondering… Do you think the logo's a little lopsided?" She climbed down from the ladder.

Mr. Wallet climbed up, surveyed the set.

"It does look a little that way," he said.

Mary Jane said, "The cow's horns aren't even. The left one and the right one."

Mr. Wallet looked at the fallen dominoes. "We can't have a lopsided logo."

Mary Jane walked forward and adjusted the design. She stood back. "See, that's what it should be like. I would've thought you'd tried a test first."

As Rune took a breath to speak the words that would send her straight to Unemployment, Larry squeezed her arm. " 'Ey, Rune, could you come out here for a minute, please?"

In the hall she turned to him. "Lopsided? She's lopsided. What does she think it is, oil paint? It's not the Sistine Chapel, Larry. It's a cow with a fucking top hat. Sure it's going to be lopsided. She's on some kind of a power trip-"

"Rune-"

"We do it again the horns'll be fine but the hat'll be wrong. I want to knock her-"

"I've got a distributor for your film."

"-buck teeth out. I-"

Larry repeated patiently, "A distributor."

She paused for a minute. "You what?"

"I found somebody who said 'e might want to handle your film. Looking for gritty, noirish stuff. It's not a big outfit but they've placed at public TV stations and some of the bigger locals. We're not talking network. But sometimes good films, you know, they get picked up in syndication."

"Oh, Larry." She hugged him. "I don't believe it."

"Right. Now then, we're going to go back in there and make nice with the ice lady, okay?"

Rune said, "That woman is a totally airborne bitch."

"But they're our clients, Rune, and in this business the customer is always what?" He raised an eyebrow.

She walked toward the door. "Don't ask me questions you don't want to hear the answers to."

Rune's favorite part was the dogs.

*****