Remake

She shook her head, still deep in her study of the pharmacy. “Any chooch in there?” I said.

“I think these are,” she said, handing me two purple-and-white capsules. “A face gave me this stuff, and he told me which was which, but I can’t remember. I’m pretty sure those are the chooch. I took some. I can let you know in a minute.”

“Great,” I said, wishing I could take them now. Mayer’s leaving with a freshie might mean he was pimping again, which meant another pasteup. “What’s the word on Mayer’s boss? His new girlfriend dump him yet?”

She looked instantly interested. “Not that I know of. Why? Did you hear something?”

“No.” And if Hedda hadn’t either, it hadn’t happened. So Mayer’d just taken the freshie up to her dorm room for a quick pop or a quicker line or two of flake, and he’d be back in a few minutes, and I might actually get paid.

I grabbed a paper cup from a Marilyn swaying past and downed the capsules.

“So, Hedda,” I said, since talking to her was better than to the baseball cap or the time-travel exec, “what other gossip you putting in your column this week?”

“Column?” she said, looking blank. “You always call me Hedda. Why? Is she a movie star?”

“Gossip columnist,” I said. “Knew everything that was going on in Hollywood. Like you. So what is? Going on?”

“Viamount’s got a new automatic foley program,” she said promptly. “ILMGM’s getting ready to file copyrights on Fred Astaire and Sean Connery, who finally died. And the word is Pinewood’s hiring warm-bodies for the new Batman sequel. And Warner’s—” She stopped in midword and frowned down at her hand.

“What’s the matter?”

“I don’t think it’s chooch. I’m getting a funny…” She peered at her hand. “Maybe the yellow ones were the chooch.” She fished through her hand. “This feels more like ice.”

“Who gave them to you?” I said. “The Disney guy?”

“No. This guy I know. A face.”

“What does he look like?” I asked. Stupid question. There are only two varieties: James Dean and River Phoenix. “Is he here?”

She shook her head. “He gave them to me because he was leaving. He said he wouldn’t need them anymore, and besides, he’d get arrested in China for having them.”

“China?”

“He said they’ve got a liveaction studio there, and they’re hiring stunt doubles and warmbodies for their propaganda films.”

And I thought doing paste-ups for Mayer was the worst job in the world.

“Maybe it’s redline,” she said, poking at the capsules. “I hope not. Redline always makes me look like shit the next day.”

“Instead of like Marilyn Monroe,” I said, looking around the room for Mayer. He still wasn’t back. The time-travel exec was edging toward the door with a Marilyn. The data-helmet geekates were laughing and snatching at air, obviously at a much better party than this one. Fred and Ginge were demonstrating another editing program. Rapid-fire cuts of Ginger, the ballroom curtains, Ginger’s mouth, the curtains. It must be the shower scene from Psycho.

The program ended and Fred reached for Ginger’s outstretched hand, her black-edged skirt flaring with momentum, and spun her into his arms. The edges of the freescreen started going to soft-focus. I looked over at the stairs. They were blurring, too.

“Shit, this isn’t redline,” I said. “It’s klieg.”

“It is?” she said, sniffing at it.

It is, I thought disgustedly, and what was I supposed to do now? Flashing on klieg wasn’t any way to do a meeting with a sleaze like Mayer, and the damned stuff isn’t good for anything else. No rush, no halluces, not even a buzz. Just blurred vision and then a flash of indelible reality. “Shit,” I said again.

“If it is klieg,” Hedda said, stirring it around with her gloved finger, “we can at least have some great sex.”

“I don’t need klieg for that,” I said, but I started looking around the room for somebody to pop. Hedda was right. Flashing during sex made for an unforgettable orgasm. Literally. I scanned the Marilyns. I could do the exec’s casting couch number on one of the freshies, but there was no way to tell how long that would take, and it felt like I only had a few minutes. The Marilyn I’d talked to before was over by the freescreen listening to the studio exec’s time-travel spiel.

I looked over at the door. A girl was standing in the doorway, gazing tentatively around at the party as if she were looking for somebody. She had curly light brown hair, pulled back at the sides. The doorway behind her was dark, but there had to be light coming from somewhere because her hair shone like it was backlit.

“Of all the gin joints in all the world…” I said.

“Joint?” Hedda said, deep in her pill assortment. “I thought you said it was klieg.” She sniffed it.

The girl had to be a face, she was too pretty not to be, but the hair was wrong, and so was the costume, which wasn’t a halter dress and wasn’t white. It was black, with a green fitted weskit, and she was wearing short green gloves. Deanna Durbin? No, the hair was the wrong color. And it was tied back with a green hair ribbon. Shirley Temple?

“Who’s that?” I muttered.