Death of a Blue Movie Star

Rune glanced at his head, balding on top but hair pulled back from the sides and tied into a long ponytail. In the rearview mirror she noticed he had a demonic goatee.

"Diffused?" he tried.

Click.

"… It's weak and diffused… Great expanses of land stretch between the pockets of…"

"How about extend?" the driver said. "You usedstretch earlier."

"I did?" The train of her poetic thought vanished. Rune dropped the tape recorder in her bag.

"What are you, a writer?" he asked.

"I'm a film maker," she said. Which she wasn't exactly, she figured, if being something had to do with making regular money while you did it. On the other hand, filmmaker had a lot more class thanoccasional waitress at abagel restaurant on Sixth Avenue, a job she'd just accepted.

Anyway, who was going to check?

The driver-actually part-time student, part-time driver-loved movies and concluded by the time the cab cruised past Lawrence Avenue that Rune should do a film on Chicago.

He shut off the meter and for the next half hour took her on a tour of the city.

" Chicago means 'Wild Onion,'" he said. "That'd be a good way to open the film."

He told her about Captain Streeter, the Haymarket Riots, Colonel McCormick, William Wrigley, Carl Sandburg, Sullivan and Adler, the Sox and the Cubs, the East-land boat disaster, the Water Tower, Steve Goodman, Big Bill Thompson, Mayor Daley, the ugly Picasso monkey woman, snow and wind and humidity, Saul Bellow and Polish, German and Swedish food.

"Kielbasa," he said with admiration in his voice.

He talked a lot about the Great Fire and showed her where it began, west, near the river, and where it ended, up north.

"Hey, that'd be great." He looked back at her. "A film about city disasters. San Francisco, Dresden, Nagasaki…"

They arrived at her hotel. Rune thanked him and decided that, while she appreciated his thoughts, it was a film she'd never make. She'd had enough cataclysm.

They exchanged names and phone numbers. He wouldn't take a tip but she promised to get some footage of him to use for atmosphere if she ever needed to.

Rune checked into the small hotel just off Lincoln Park. The room overlooked the lake and she sat looking at it for a while.

The bathroom was fantastic-enough towels so she could dry every limb with a different one. Enough mirrors so that she found she had a birthmark in the small of her back that she'd never known she had. Rune used the tiny scented cake of soap to wash her face, then the little bottles of shampoo and conditioner. That was a real treat; at home she used an old bar of Ivory for everything, including dishes. She stole the complimentary shower cap. After the shower Rune put on her one dress-a blue silk number her mother had sent her four years ago (but since she'd only worn it three times she figured it still qualified as new).

She looked at herself in the full-length mirror.

Me, in a dress, staying in a hotel that overlooks a beautiful lake with rocking, blue-green waves, in a city that burned down and has come back from the ashes…

Rune then turned on the desk lamp and took out her makeup kit. She began to do something she hadn't done for almost a year-put on nail polish. A dark red. She wasn't quite sure why she'd picked this shade, but it seemed sophisticated, cultured-the color you'd want to wear if you were going to the theater.

"That's where John Dillinger bought the big one," a square-jawed, sandy-haired young man told her. She was eating a hamburger in a half-deserted folk music club. He'd leaned along the bar and pointed to the old Biograph movie house across the street.

"He was betrayed by a woman in a red dress," the man said, adding some flirt to his voice.

But Rune scared the guy off when she asked with gleaming eyes if you could still see the bloodstains.

*****

The Haymarket Theater was in a small two-story Victorian building, on Lincoln Avenue, just north of Fullerton, up the street from the Biograph. She picked up her ticket at the box office and wandered into the small auditorium. She found her seat and thumbed through the program. At one minute after eight the lights went down and the curtain rose.

Rune wasn't sure what to think about the play. As much as she loved movies, she generally didn't like plays very much. Just when you started to believe the painted sets and the funny way everyone talked and walked, the two hours were up, and you had to go back to reality. It could be very jarring.

But this wasn't bad at all. At least, unlike a lot of modern plays, it had a story you could follow. It was about a young woman-played by a pretty brunette actress named Rebecca Hanson-who kept postponing her romantic life because of her family. The major incident in the play was her decision to leave home at the age of thirty-two.