1946: Betty Nerenhauser works with the famous screenwriter Jackson Holden Carter in hopes of learning enough from him to earn her big break. But her break comes when she least expects it—the day strange little men show up at Jackson’s office asking for his help. Soon, Betty finds out just why Jackson mentored her—and how high the cost if it turns out he was wrong. “Hollywood Ending” showcases Kristine Kathryn Rusch at her finest, weaving a powerful surprise twist into a cleverly crafted tale.
“Hollywood Ending” by World Fantasy Award winner Kristine Kathryn Rusch is free on this website for one week only. The story’s also available as a standalone from Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and other ebookstores.
Hollywood Ending
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
HERE, IN HOLLYWOOD, they test everything. They test wannabe actors to see how they’ll look on the silver screen. They test sets, props, lighting, and sound for the best possible effect.
And they test endings. They test and retest and test again. They want the perfect ending.
But no one knows what the perfect ending is. Everyone thinks it’s a happy couple, walking arm and arm into the sunset. But sometimes, that happy couple walking off into the sunset violates the sense of the movie.
Sometimes, the Hollywood ending feels tacked on.
And sometimes, the Hollywood ending is just plain wrong.
***
In my memory, the sunlight is too bright. And it’s cold. 1946, the coldest winter on record. That was what the radio told us, and back then, we thought the radio was always right.
Or maybe I did.
I was nineteen, young, and stupid. I got my job because I had great legs and even better breasts, but I thought I got it because I could type 140 words per minute without a miss and hoped I’d keep the job because I could write.
Not that I got much of a chance to write. I was apprenticed to Jackson Holden Carter, the greatest screenwriter who ever lived, and he was the only person who took me seriously, even though he didn’t have to.
Jackson had an office on the studio back lot in one of those little bungalows. You already know what the studio back lot looks like; you’ve seen it in hundreds of films, maybe more. You’ve certainly seen it in the films of the 1940s because location shoots didn’t become common until the 1950s, unless the location was the desert (cue in the Mojave for the Sahara); the mountains (cue in the San Gabriels for the Alps); or the ocean (cue in the Pacific for the Mediterranean).
His office was one of those bungalows better suited to the tropics, with the wide open windows, ceiling fan, and rattan furniture that looked appropriate but was truly uncomfortable. Jackson’s office had two desks, one for him, and one for his flunky—which was, for that brief year, me.
Every morning, I came in with our coffees and donuts from the commissary, put everything on my desk, alongside the only working typewriter in the place, and prepared myself for Jackson’s onslaught.
He always got to work before me. By the time I arrived, he had taken off his suit jacket and slung it on the back of his chair, rolled up his sleeves, and had his straw hat resting haphazardly on the papers piled across his desk. He had a list of that day’s chores—sometimes a scenario (a few-page sketch of a screenplay he hoped to write), sometimes entire scenes for a screenplay, and once the entire screenplay itself.
I spent my days typing and fetching food. He spent his talking out the stories, weaving them like a storyteller of old.
Not quite perfect for me—I would’ve preferred to be the weaver. But it was close.
And it changed, one afternoon in January, when the little old men came to find us. Little old men weren’t common on the studio lots unless they were management. Even in those days, everyone worshipped at the fountain of youth, only they weren’t quite as blatant about it.
I was in my chair typing away on a scenario for a weepy that Jackson really didn’t want to write. It was our fourth version of the scenario in two days, none of which had gone to the director who had requested it. Jackson was self-editing, something I’d rarely seen him do, partly because he hated weepies.
Then Jackson stopped talking, which wasn’t all that unusual, particularly when he was spitballing something off the top of his head. I had learned not to look up, because the silence would be followed by a literal gush of words.
Only the gush never came.
And the light had changed.
So I finally did look up to see the little old men crowding our door.
They looked like they’d walked out of a fairy tale. They were astonishingly little and unbelievably old, the kind of old you rarely see any more, the wizened wrinkled shrunken old that made them all look like peeled apples left too long in the sun.
The little men wore perfectly tailored black suits with white shirts so starched that they hadn’t wrinkled at all even though it was mid-afternoon. They all wore hats, not quite bowlers, not quite fedoras. They had big noses and long chins and old-fashioned wire-rim glasses that either hid or magnified their eyes, depending on the angle.
“Why don’t you take a break, Betty?” Jackson said. My name is Elizabeth. He was the first to call me Betty.
I glanced at him. He’d never told me to take a break before. If anything, I had to plead for them—interrupting all that free-flowing creativity to make sure I had time to go to the ladies or get lunch or sneak a cigarette.
He looked back at me, then nodded, just once, reinforcing his words. A break, Betty. He didn’t say it, but I heard it, and knew it for the command that it was.
I would’ve gladly taken a break if I could’ve gotten past those little men, which was a mighty big if. Still, I stood and moved away from the typewriter, which might’ve been all he meant. I had vacated a much-needed chair and retreated to the corner, as far out of the light as possible.
Jackson stood too, rolled down his sleeves and put on his jacket, the first time I’d ever seen him do that in the office. Usually he walked out of the office with his jacket slung over his arm. The jacket would drape over his shoulders as he got into the car the studio provided and by the time he got to whatever restaurant he was eating at that night, the jacket would be on properly. But he never wore the jacket on the studio grounds, not even the few times that the head of the studio had shown up to give him what for.
“Gentlemen,” Jackson said as he shrugged to adjust the jacket sleeves into place.
I expected him to follow that with his usual sly To what do I owe this honor, but he didn’t. He just looked at them like a boy who expected to be chastised for a sin he didn’t know he had committed.
The shortest of the little men came inside the room. The others followed. There were four of them, which surprised me. I would have guessed that there were at least a dozen the way they crowded that door.
“There’s been a kidnapping,” the shortest little man said. He spoke with a thick Middle European accent, the kind that told me he’d learned English as a fourth or fifth language, probably as recently as ten years before.
It took a moment for his words to penetrate, but when they did, I looked at Jackson, expecting I don’t know what. Panic, maybe.
“When?” Jackson asked, his voice flat, his accent completely gone.
“This morning,” said the shortest little man.
“And you’re just coming to me now?”
“It took a while to find you,” the shortest little man said.
That surprised me. Jackson was visible, one of the most visible of all the writers on the lot. He was a celebrity in the Hollywood community, the man who could write anything on command, the man who knew every historical period, the man who made more quips—quips repeated by the entire town (bon mots, I can almost hear him chastising me even now; the right word, Bets. The story’s always better when you have the right word).
“You ever think I didn’t want to be found?” Jackson asked. Then he looked at me.
They all looked at me, like I had walked into some private club that I didn’t belong to, the kind that would never allow me to qualify for membership.
“Thought I told you to scram,” he said, sounding more like the Jackson I knew.
I started to stammer something about not being able to get to the door, then realized no one cared. So I grabbed my purse and wound my way around the little men.
They smelled of cigars and unwashed wool. Those suits weren’t made for Los Angeles, not even in the winter.
No one watched me go. But when I reached the door, Jackson said, “Hey, Bets, do that scenario for me, wouldja?”
It wasn’t a request. It was another command, and I knew it. Much as I wanted to know what was going on there, I couldn’t ask. Much as I wanted to write in our cozy little bungalow, I couldn’t do that either.
So I stepped into the winter chill (had to’ve been all of 70 degrees), and walked rather angrily to the nearest empty typewriter. I found one in the secretarial pool, which didn’t please me at all, and I set to work, figuring this was my chance to prove to Jackson that 1) I couldn’t be dismissed so easily and 2) he was squandering my writing talent by letting me type instead of write alongside him.
I had a bit of trouble starting up. I wanted to know about the kidnapping. Why would someone come to Jackson about a kidnapping? And how come he didn’t ask who was kidnapped?
I ran my hand over the cover to the typewriter, tempted to give it all up, and head back to the bungalow. But I’d only seen Jackson angry once, the time I forgot to tell him that Mae Wren had come to see him.
In my defense, famous actresses came to see him all the time, wanting him to expand their parts. Famous actors did too. It wasn’t that I was blasé—particularly about Mae Wren, who’d been my idol since I was a girl—it was just that I had to finish some of Jackson’s pages, ones he’d dictated, before I forgot them.
I have a prodigious memory, but it works best when I recall things in order, and that day, I hadn’t gotten to the Mae Wren part before Jackson heard that she’d arrived.
And I couldn’t explain that to him either.
He’d already commented on my memory, saying I remembered better than anyone he’d ever met, saying it was a skill that had a touch of magic to it. He told anyone who’d listen how much he treasured that skill, and how he’d never let me out of his sight.
I’ll need her someday, he’d say, as if he hadn’t already been keeping me busy, and then he’d grin at me, like we shared a secret.
It was the memory of that grin that made me sit down. Jackson would tell me when the time was right. But at the moment, he needed this scenario, and whatever I wrote would give him a jumping-off point.
I’d written down some ideas before, but never as a screen story, five pages long, as if we were going to turn my pages into Morley Stanhope, who wanted this particular weepy. As I wrote I had vague hopes that my words would become the basis of the screenplay, so I put my heart and soul into the whole thing.
I’d like to say my scenario was a cross between Dark Victory and Lost Weekend, but it wasn’t. It would’ve been a modern version of Little Women if Marmee had been a drunk. Or an American version of the Little Matchgirl, with a gutsy girl who wanted to be a writer only to be derailed when her little sister died of neglect.
Not too original, but original wasn’t the point, not in Hollywood then, not in Hollywood now.
I worked harder than I’d ever worked in my life, but half the time, my mind was on Jackson Holden Carter. Jackson Holden Carter and the little men, which sounded a lot more like a screen story than the dreck I was writing.
I wondered how I’d find him when I got back—weeping at the loss of a friend? Conferring with a private detective? Pacing the floor, worrying about a loved one?
I didn’t see any of that when I got back to the bungalow, clutching my precious little scenario.
Instead, I walked in to find Jackson bent over his desk, clutching his head in his hands, his hair mussed. His jacket was slung carelessly over my chair, and his trousers were riding up, showing socks that had crumpled into his shoes.
I’d never seen him look so sloppy—or so upset.
“Jackson?” I asked softly.
He looked up, and for a moment, I didn’t think he recognized me. Then he took a deep breath, gathered himself, and extended a hand.
“You got it?”
I handed him the scenario and he scanned it. It took him only a moment, then he said, “It ain’t art, kid, but it’ll do. Go hand it in.”
He gave it back to me.
I moved his jacket, pulled out my chair, and sat down. Then I grabbed some paper and rolled it into the typewriter.
“What’re you doing?” he asked.
“Putting your byline on it,” I said.
“Betty, this’s your work. You don’t let anybody put their name on your work, you got that?”
My cheeks heated. Back then, I thought he was ashamed of what I’d done. I didn’t realize he gave me the best advice a screenwriter could ever have—don’t let anyone steal your work, and for godssake, don’t give it away for nothing.
I swallowed, then typed the first page over again, this time with my name—Betty Nerenhauser—under the title. It only took a minute, and he watched me the whole time.
When I finished, he pulled the paper from the platen, and looked to see if I’d followed instructions. When he saw that I had, he gathered the rest of the scenario, handed it to me, and told me to deliver it. I thought he was gonna pat me on the head too, but he didn’t.
Instead, he escorted me to the door, like an old-fashioned country gentlemen.
I almost let him usher me out. Almost. I stopped at the door.
“Those men,” I said. “They said someone was kidnapped.”
He nodded, his expression guarded.
“Someone you know?” I asked.
The look that crossed his face was odd, as if he finally understood my concern and wondered at it.
“Yeah,” he said.
I nodded. “The cops on the case?”
He shrugged, an unexpected movement, given how upset he’d been. “They can’t do anything.”
“How do you know?” I asked. “A kidnapping—”
“Is all about getting there in time,” Jackson said. “Time’s up.”
“Oh,” I said. His friend was dead, and he was sitting here.
I put a hand on his arm. The scenario could wait.
“Lemme buy you a drink,” I said.
He shook his head. “There’s someone I gotta see,” he said, and walked me to the door. I hovered there for a moment.
Finally, he gave me a slight push forward. “I’ll be all right.”
And I stepped outside only because he wanted me to, even though we both knew that he was lying.
***
The next morning, I was summoned to the director’s office the moment I came onto the lot. Morley Stanhope was a bald-headed weasely man known for his groping hands and his casting couch. He sat behind his desk, a stogie in his mouth, tie loosened, and demanded to know why I had turned in a scenario when he’d specifically requested Jackson.
I clutched my purse in front of me. I hadn’t had time to go to Jackson’s office to drop off my stuff, and a good thing too, since that purse had become a shield. It would become a cudgel if Stanhope tried any casting-couch garbage with me.
“Mr. Carter was having trouble writing a weepy,” I said.
Stanhope glared at me. That was when I realized he thought I had put one over on Jackson.
As if anyone could do that.
“He asked me to try it,” I said.
Stanhope’s glare got worse. “And he liked what you wrote?”
“He told me to give it to you,” I said, which was true.
“You got any idea why he wanted you to write this?”
Somehow I felt that answering honestly wasn’t in my best interest, maybe wasn’t even in Jackson’s best interest. Stanhope seemed too suspicious, as if he was checking up on Jackson as well as me.
So I decided to lie. “Well, honestly,” I said, “he said that weepies were women’s pictures, and a woman would understand them better than any man ever could. So why not have a woman write one?”
I lowered my voice as if I was confiding in Stanhope. “I figure he was testing me, sir. I’m sure that your judgment will be the final deciding factor.”
I was implying that I would lose my job if the director didn’t like the work, which wasn’t entirely fair to Jackson. And I wasn’t sure Mr. Casting Couch would actually care.
Stanhope sat up, slapping my five-page manuscript against his palm. “Well, Ms. Nerenhausen, this is one brilliant scenario. Almost made me cry just reading it.”
My cheeks heated. I was pleased, even though I knew I shouldn’t be. I had just graduated from flunkie to flunkie who had allowed an evil ghoulish director to take some kind of corporate revenge on Jackson.
“So,” Stanhope said, “you should write me the entire screenplay. Think you can do that?”
My golden opportunity and I wanted to turn it down out of loyalty to Jackson. But he had warned me this would happen one day. He had said, Kid, they’re going to use you to get to me. If you don’t play along, you’ll lose every chance you’ve ever had. So play along. Someday I won’t be here. Someday, you’ll need the skills.
I forced myself to answer. “I-um-I…when do you want it, sir?”
“You got ten days.” Stanhope steepled his fingers as if he was trying to look serious. “I need quality, brilliance. The best anyone’s ever done. If Jackson’s right and women write the best weepies, then you’ll give me a blockbuster picture that’ll bring me every kudo in the book.”
No expectations there. The heat in my cheeks turned into a flame.
“Sir,” I said, “in the spirit of full disclosure, this will be my first screenplay.”
“Even better,” Stanhope said. “Anita Loos’s first screenplay was The Women. And it was damn brilliant.”
Claire Booth Luce wrote The Women. It was a successful stage play. Anita Loos just added some tidbits for the screen. And The Women wasn’t her first screenplay. She wrote title cards for the silents long before she wrote The Women. But I didn’t correct him. If he wanted to inject me with false confidence, he could try.
I’d write the best screenplay I could, then let Jackson look it over. I had to trust that he wouldn’t let me embarrass myself.
“Thank you, sir,” I said, bobbing my head like an idiot. “I’ll have something for you in ten days.”
“Not something, honey,” he said. “Our next film. Something that’ll make the women of America sit up and notice.”
I didn’t want to remind him that women would sit up and notice a stinker as easily as they’d notice a quality picture. I backed out of the office, my heart racing, my mouth dry, and every single writerly thought gone from my head. I’d just gotten my biggest wish, and hadn’t even had to climb on a casting couch to do it.
Now that wish was mine to screw up.
If I hadn’t screwed it up already.
I ran across the studio, dodging the little golf carts that everyone used to get around, passing women in harem costumes, men dressed like cowboys, and at least one gigantic matte painting destined for god knew where.
When I got to Jackson’s office, I yanked the door open, startled to find Jackson inside. He was rifling his own desk like a thief in the night. He looked as surprised to see me as I was to see him.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It wasn’t my fault.”
He stood up, his desk drawers still open. His suit was wrinkled too. It looked like the same suit he wore the day before, but that couldn’t be possible, because Jackson Holden Carter had more suits than the studio wardrobe, and he never wore the same color two days in a row, let alone the same suit.
“What wasn’t?” He was suddenly giving me his full attention.
“He gave me the script, Jackson. I’m supposed to write it in ten days.”
Jackson frowned. “What script?”
“The weepy. You know. You had me write the scenario for it.”
“Oh,” he said and sank into a nearby chair. “I expected that.”
“You did?”
“You did the work, Bets. You get the credit.”
“You’ll help me, won’t you? I’ve never written a full script.”
“Yes, you have,” he said. “I’ve seen a few. More than one has fallen out of your purse. I put them back, just like you expected me to. And I read them too, just like you expected me to.”
That heat flooded back into my cheeks. “You never said anything.”
“You never asked.” He gave me a lazy grin. “If you had, I’d’ve said yes. You’re good, doll. You got more talent in your little finger than half the palookas in this place.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Then his grin faded. “But you gotta remember that talent ain’t everything. Talent ain’t nothing without good hard work. Talent is probably the most confusing thing on God’s green earth, truth be told. And when your latent talent flares up, you gotta learn to control it.”
I frowned, not sure I’d ever heard this speech from him before, not sure I entirely understood it.
He studied my face, clearly seeing my confusion. “I’ll teach you everything I know about control, which isn’t as much as I used to think, and we’ll get you through this.”
Then he glanced at his watch.
“But not today. Today, I’ve got other things to do.”
“Your friend?” I asked.
He looked at me, as if he were startled that I remembered. “Yeah,” he said. “That.”
“Is there anything I can do?” I asked.
“Not yet,” he said.
I waited for him to tell me all about it. I waited—and he just stared at me, sadly, as if he had lost more than a friend.
As if he had lost everything.
Then he took a deep breath. “You get to work on that screenplay.”
I grinned. I couldn’t help it.
“I got ten days,” I said. “I got time.”
He froze, then nodded, as if he had to force himself to move. His mouth moved like he planned to smile ruefully but forgot how.
“Time,” he repeated. “We always think we got time.”
I thought he was referring to his friend, losing his life in that strange way. Kidnapping. Death. Early death made everyone reflect on time.
At least, that was what I thought.
But Jackson was talking about something else.
Even though I wouldn’t know it until much later.
***
I was working on the weepy when they sent for me. I was sitting alone in Jackson’s office, pounding on the typewriter, three pencils stuck in my hair and another between my teeth. Every few paragraphs, I’d stop, make a correction, and keep going.
At that rate, I’d have my preliminary draft done in three days.
Of course, I didn’t have anyone to tell. Jackson hadn’t even shown up at all that morning, which wasn’t like him. And I’d brought him a coffee and some crullers from the commissary. I had my own coffee—long gone now—and my own crullers, also gone, and I was ready to break into Jackson’s stash when someone knocked on the door.
I glanced over. One of the studio security guards leaned in the door. I’d seen him before—young guy, barely older than me, with such a square jaw and bright blue eyes that he could’ve come from central casting (serve up one security guard, pronto. And make him easy on the eyes.).
“Miss Nerenhausen?” he said. “You’re to come with me.”
I sighed and set down the soggy pencil I’d been using. No one summoned me. Hardly anyone knew I was here.
Except Stanhope. He probably wanted to tell me the weepy was now a male adventure flick, and I was out of the picture—no pun intended.
The guard waved a hand around his hat and it took me a minute to realize he was trying to help me. I pulled the pencils out of my hair, then grabbed my purse, opened my compact and checked the mirror. I looked like an insane writer, hair sticking up in tufts, pencil lead all around my mouth, even some sugar frosting from those crullers earlier.
What a lovely introduction to a security guard from central casting. He probably thought I was a ditz.
I used a tissue to wipe off my face, smoothed my hair with my hand, and reapplied my lipstick. Then I slung my purse over my shoulder and nodded at him.
The last thing I wanted to do was defend myself to some idiot director, especially when I didn’t have a leg to stand on. Jackson could give the occasional director what for. In fact, Jackson would remind the idiot why he’d wanted a woman writing a weepy in the first place. But me? I’d just have to nod and watch my opportunity slip away.
It mattered to me more than I wanted it to, especially now that Jackson wasn’t here. That peeved me too. Jackson usually let me know his whereabouts. I thought we’d become buddies, but now that I had real work, I had to assume we weren’t buddies at all.
The security guard led me outside, past the bungalows, and stopped at a limo. He opened the back door for me.
I looked at him sideways.
“This’s all they had on such short notice, miss.”
I sighed and got in, pretending a nonchalance I didn’t have. I’d never sat in the back of a limo before. I’d helped Jackson into more than his fair share, and I’d even peeked around the interior once or twice, but I’d never actually crawled in.
Nor had I had someone to close the door for me or to get into the driver’s seat like I was someone important.
Remember, Bets, Jackson’s voice echoed in my memory. They treat you nice when they need something from you, and forget you exist when you’ve completed your mission.
I tried not to let it go to my head. But there was water on ice in the back, and some real pastries—not just crullers—and coffee in one of those expensive steel thermoses. No champagne, but I didn’t expect it, not this early in the day.
I carefully poured myself some coffee—the cup provided was real bone china—and watched the scenery go by. We twisted up to Bel Air just like I would have expected: See The Famous Director At Home!
The driveway was nearly two miles long, twisting up a well-manicured lawn that actually had winter flowers growing in oblong beds. Those flowers looked like transplants, not like they were happy there, and I would have wagered my entire salary that some poor gardener took plants in and out of those beds each and every month, to answer Stanhope’s whim.
The driveway circled around a fountain in front of a Los Angeles colonial, bigger than my entire apartment building. A few other cars were parked here—Studebakers, Olds, nothing I would’ve thought of as classy enough for this neighborhood.
The studio guard—limo driver?—got out of the front and opened my door. I half expected him to say, “Mr. Stanhope will see you now,” but he didn’t.
He didn’t say anything.
Instead, he looked grim.
He took my arm and led me along a brick-lined path around the house. I could smell the pool before I saw it; chlorine bathing the air like raindrops.
I thought of Stanhope’s arrogance—summoning writers poolside even in the depths of winter, just because he could.
I was so focused on the upcoming slight that I wasn’t prepared for the scene before me.
The four little men stood around the pool, bent over it as if they’d never seen water before. The poolside furniture had been moved off the patio and was pushed up against the house, covered in a tarp. A woman hovered just inside the glass doors, her hands clasped together—and she wasn’t what I expected either.
Mae Wren, star of stage and screen (as the gossip rags called her), deserved her made-up name. Up close, she was tiny and birdlike, her classic Lillian-Gish-for-a-new-generation features making her seem almost surreal.
The little men weren’t looking at the beautiful famous woman only a few feet from them. They acted like she didn’t even exist. But the guard kept glancing her way, a bit too awestruck for someone who spent his working days around faces as or more famous than hers.
“What’s this all about?” I asked the guard.
He glanced at me, his fingers tightening on my elbow as if he expected me to bolt.
“They want you to identify someone,” he said.
“Who?” I asked.
He nodded toward the little men.
My stomach clenched. “I don’t take orders from them.” Or you, I thought, but didn’t add.
“Before we call anyone else,” he said, “they wanted you here. They asked me to bring you.”
I yanked my arm out of his grasp. “I thought you worked for the studio.”
“Sometimes,” he said, and took a step back.
The little men were watching us. I had lumped them together when they were in Jackson’s office, but they had very distinctive features. The shortest man, the one who had been the spokesman back there, looked older than the rest, the lines on his face so deep that they seemed almost carved.
I walked toward them, my mouth inexplicably dry. As I got closer, I could finally see the pool. The water was bright blue. Steam rose off of it. Ms. Wren was one of the new Hollywood—the kind that spent oodles of dollars just to keep her pool heated through L.A.’s “cold” winters.
The little men moved aside as I neared, as if they didn’t want to touch me. Two of them looked meaningfully at the pool.
I followed their gaze.
And saw that suit. Day three of that suit. Jackson never wore a suit that long, not that he’d ever wear this one again.
It was turning green from the chemicals in the pool. Air was trapped in the jacket, making it look bloated. It took me a moment to realize that someone was inside that suit.
“No,” I whispered.
“We must retrieve him from the pool,” the shortest little man said.
“Then do it,” I snapped.
“We cannot touch him,” the shortest little man said.
I looked at the guard. He stayed back as well.
“You brought me here to drag someone out of a swimming pool?” I said. “You can call the cops for that.”
The shortest little man shook his head. “You must do it, Ms. Nerenhauser.”
“I’m not in the body retrieval business,” I said. “You can get someone else.”
“We cannot,” the shortest little man said.
“Then I’ll call the police. What’re you people, incompetent?” I started to turn but the nearest little man grabbed my sleeve. He missed my flesh entirely.
“Please,” he said, his voice more accented than that of the spokesman. “He chose you.”
That knot in my stomach got tighter. We were all dancing around the identity of that corpse. It was Jackson’s suit, and someone was wearing it, and the guard said they needed me to identify it. But they seemed to know who it was, just like I might’ve known who it was, if I let myself think about it.
“No one chooses the person who pulls his body out of a swimming pool,” I said.
“Ah,” said the shortest little man, “but he does if he knows he is going to die.”
I looked at the hand still clasping my sleeve. The fingers were callused and tobacco-stained.
“If he knew he was going to die,” I said, my voice shaking, “he would’ve told me.”
“Would you have believed him?” the shortest little man asked.
No. Of course not. I’m not a fool. No one knows when they’re going to die. No one can predict that, especially when they’re as vibrant as Jackson.
The little man who had ahold of my sleeve tugged me backwards, toward the pool. The guard got one of those skimmer-things that people used to clean leaves out of the water, and handed it to me.
The metal was cool against my palm. I looked at the suit, floating there. This was a joke. It had to be. It was one of those prove-yourself-you-chump practical jokes that so many on the lot liked to play on each other.
I’d finally become a victim of it because I had taken over Jackson’s weepy. He wanted me to prove myself.
I swallowed, crouched, and used the skimmer-thing to pull the suit toward me. Definitely something inside. Definitely something body-shaped, with dark hair floating around the skull, bloated ringless fingers pointing toward the bottom.
Studios could make anything. Studios could make wax dummies of the most famous people or the humblest of extras. Studios had pretend corpses lying around just for an occasion like this. Maybe someone was filming this. I’d heard about those kinds of films, the kind that made everything seem real but it wasn’t, the kind that got raw emotion on screen because—some believed—it was better than anything an actor could produce.
The body bumped against the side of the pool. I looked up. The little men had gathered around me. The guard stood behind me. Across the steaming water, I saw Mae Wren, her hands still clasped together, her features shiny from the clear glass she looked through.
“Someone’s going to help me now, right?” I asked.
They shook their heads. I closed my eyes for a moment—it was a prank, it had to be—and reached into the water.
I expected it to be cold, even though I knew it was heated. I wanted to feel the shock against my fingertips, the chill running up through my skin. Instead, the water was as warm as a sun-kissed lake in the summer.
My fingers closed on a sleeved wrist, cufflinks biting into my flesh, the feel of wet linen familiar and strange at the same time.
Wet linen, with the starch gone. Wrinkled and sodden, exactly how Jackson would not want to look.
I pulled, but it didn’t work, and I almost fell in. My fingers slipped, hit flesh and—
he was standing right there, just for a moment, and in that moment, we were in the office, and he was in front of his desk, and I realized it was yesterday, when I last saw him, yesterday, and there was more of the conversation that I remembered, or maybe my brain had just taken me to that location because he was there, and he looked at me with a sadness I’d never seen on his face before, and he said, “Bets, I didn’t mean for this. I’m so sorry.” And then he vanished, leaving me alone in that room, in the dark, a stack of paper beside my typewriter, and his suit jacket over the back of his chair. I wanted to call out to him, but I couldn’t, instead I—
squealed and let go. I would’ve toppled into the pool if the guard hadn’t caught my shoulders.
“Okay,” he said to the little men. “That’s enough.”
He wrapped a towel around my hand, which tingled, and looked across the pool.
“I called the cops,” he said to no one in particular. I had no idea when he could’ve done it. When I was reaching into the water? Was there a phone out here?
I looked at the folded up furniture and saw the phone hanging from the exterior wall, the cord swinging as if there were a breeze.
Then I glanced at the double glass doors. Mae Wren was gone.
Then he bundled me back to the limo. The little men followed. They got into their various cars—the ones I’d seen parked around the circle, and we left, turning out of that long driveway just as two police cars turned onto the leafy private street. They didn’t seem to notice our small parade, driving right by as if we had done nothing wrong.
My hand ached as if the water had been as icy as I feared. The ache went all the way up my arm, into my shoulder, along my jaw and into my skull. My eyes burned. Every time I closed them, I saw Jackson, standing there, looking apologetic.
I’d never seen Jackson apologetic.
We stopped at the bottom of a hill, at a small house on the corner. The limo was almost as big as the driveway. Curtains twitched in the house across the street. Apparently people here weren’t used to seeing a limo parked at this address.
The guard got out and opened the curbside door for me.
“What’s this place?” I asked. My head ached. I wanted quiet. I wanted to go back to the office.
I wanted Jackson there, so I can tell him about the strangeness of the morning.
“Just go inside,” the guard said.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“My name is Mike,” he said, and I thought, Of course it is. Guys like him—security guards out of central casting—they were either Mike or Joe. And they were always there to fill a slot, to give a few lines of dialogue, to move something forward.
Apparently, he had to move me forward. He put his arm around me, pulling me toward the house. I thought of dragging my feet, but it seemed like too much effort.
“You don’t work for the studio, do you?” I asked.
“I do,” he said, sounding a bit defensive. “But I moonlight for Jackson.”
His voice broke just a little. He could’ve done the ID same as me. Only he didn’t.
They wanted me to touch Jackson.
The thought made me shiver.
Mike looked down at me, that square jaw making him seem as unreal, as much like a character from a fairy tale as the little men. I was going to ask him why he hadn’t identified the body, when he opened the door to the house and pushed me inside.
The interior was dark and smelled faintly of roasted meat and freshly baked bread. Mike directed me to a chair. My eyes slowly adjusted. The furniture in the living room was too heavy for the hot Los Angeles summers. Matching upholstered couch and chairs with claw feet. I rubbed my hands over the fabric, guessing it was rolled wool. An expensive Turkish carpet covered the polished hardwood floor, and a Seth Thomas clock ticked on the mantel above a useless fireplace.
The door opened and the little men came in. They looked at home here, among the heavy furniture and thick area rugs. The little men took off their hats and hung them on a coat rack I hadn’t even seen. Mike stood behind me, as if he was going to hold me in place.
The little men sat around me, leaning forward.
“What do you know?” asked the shortest little man.
“Not a hell of a lot,” I said, which proved just how upset I was. I never swore around my elders. I never swore period. “For instance, I have no idea who you are.”
They all looked at each other, then back at me.
“You do not know what Jackson knew?” the shortest little man asked.
“How could I know what he knew?” I asked. “He dictated screenplays to me. That’s all.”
Again, they looked at each other. Mike behind me moved slightly as if he were uncomfortable.
“He told us that his knowledge would transfer to you,” the shortest little man said. “He said we were to call you in the event of his death.”
I leaned into the chair, going farther than I expected. The springs in the back were gone.
“That was him,” I said, more to myself than to them.
“Yes, child,” said the shortest little man. “Death finally caught up with him.”
“He drowned?” I asked. “Fully clothed?”
Again, they looked at each other.
“No, child,” the shortest little man said. “He was shot.”
“By whom?” I asked.
“How should we know?” said one of the other little men. “It happened so long ago.”
“It happened this morning,” I said. “That’s not long ago.”
“No, child,” the shortest little man said. “He was shot long ago. Death caught up with him last night.”
I shook my head. “What?”
“Oh, dear,” one of the other little men said. “He was wrong.”
“He said her talent was latent,” Mike said. “It’s not fully developed. Maybe it takes time.”
I glanced up at him. The guard’s cap was gone, revealing a shock of auburn hair. Unlike most redheaded men, his hair accented his blue eyes and his golden skin. He was much more handsome without the cap than he had been with it.
“Okay,” I said, my heart pounding. “Here’s what I know. I know I’m supposed to be writing a screenplay. Jackson expected me to do it. I have nine days to finish—eight and a half if you count the time you guys have just wasted for me.”
The shortest little man started to speak.
I held up my hand to silence him. Part of me watched, appalled at myself. I never treated other people like this. I was too young, too shy, too female to behave as if I were the one in charge.
“I know that you all came to the studio yesterday and told Jackson a friend of his had been kidnapped. Why didn’t you just say dead? A friend of his was dead.”
They looked startled.
“And now Jackson is. What’re you playing at? How come you didn’t stay for the police? What’s Mae Wren got to do with it all?”
“You should know,” one of the little men said.
“I don’t know,” I said.
The shortest little man popped out of his seat. He walked toward me, then past me, and stopped beside Mike.
“He lied to us. He said she had power.”
Mike sighed. “He thought she did.”
“Isn’t anyone going to tell me what’s going on?” I asked, sounding a lot more like my out-of-control, useless self.
“Your friend, Jackson Holden Carter, is dead,” the shortest little man said. “He will not return. He will not write your script. He is gone. And we are sorry.”
My lower lip trembled. I stood up.
No one stopped me.
“Do I have to drive myself back to the studio?” I asked Mike. “Or are you taking me?”
He pulled the keys from his pocket, grabbed his cap off a nearby end table, and walked to the door. As he pulled it open, dust motes floated on the rays of sunshine that came in from outdoors.
I stepped into that sunshine. The air was still Los Angeles cool, but it felt better than the inside of that stuffy house.
“What was that all about?” I asked as he let me into the limo.
“It was a mistake,” he said.
“But Jackson’s dead,” I said.
He nodded and blinked, as if he were repressing tears. “Looks like we all are.”
***
He let me off at the gate. I’d like to say I never saw him again, but that wouldn’t be true.
Or maybe it would.
It’s hard to explain.
I gave my name to the guard, who let me through the side door. Then I walked back to the bungalow. The sunshine had focused down to a point, and the normal studio sounds—conversations, laughter, the occasional music rising from a closed set—seemed like background noise.
Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw Jackson, dressed in a pirate’s costume, looking like Errol Flynn in Captain Blood. But as I turned, I saw only an extra in a blousy shirt and black pants, with a red sash across his waist. He smiled and tipped an imaginary hat at me.
I couldn’t smile back.
I kept walking, the sunlight fierce. The afternoon had gotten warm—in the seventies warm—and I normally would have welcomed it. But I felt too hot, sweat trickling down my back.
As I rounded a corner, I saw Jackson again, wearing a toga, his face unlined and terrified. I closed my eyes, but the image grew, so I opened my eyes, turned, and saw an old half-torn poster for Ben Hur, one I had never seen before, with Ramon Novarro looking sad and majestic all at the same time.
I tripped, caught myself, and continued, finally stopping outside the bungalow. Inside, the ceiling fan would be slowly turning, moving the air, maybe moving some papers around.
I pushed the door open, half expecting to see him, disappointed that I didn’t. I stared at his chair, pushed back, turned. All it needed was a suit jacket. A hat on a nearby desk. The crullers I brought in that morning still waited for him. Like the now-cold coffee.
I sank into my chair. I looked at the words on the platen of my typewriter, and remembered where I wanted to go, but not how to get there.
Jackson was dead. A friend of his had been kidnapped.
Mike the security guard from central casting had called the police.
The little men thought I knew all about it.
The little men with strange accents, who looked like they had emerged from a fairy tale.
I looked at my script and wondered what the hell had just happened. I touched the paper, my hand shaking.
There was a pile of paper beside my desk, just like there had been in that vision I’d had beside the pool.
I didn’t remember leaving the paper there.
You’re not going to remember everything, Bets. But you’ll remember most of it.
Jackson’s voice.
I turned, but he wasn’t behind me. Then I glanced at his desk. His jacket hung over the back of the chair.
The same jacket I had seen in the pool.
The jacket was green from chlorine. Water had formed a puddle on the floor.
“J-Jackson?” I asked, trying to swallow the hitch in my throat.
He faded in, just like he would have done in a movie. I knew the screen trick. First you film the empty chair. Then you put the actor in that chair and film again. Then, in the editing room, you merge the images, beginning with the empty chair, then slowly adding the actor, and finally you ended with the actor in the chair, looking solid.
Looking real.
“Sorry, kiddo,” he said. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”
But he was scaring me. His shirt was plastered to his too-thin chest. His wet hair fell across his forehead like paste. His skin was grayish white, and his lips were blue.
“What’s going on?” I asked, fervently wishing he would tell me this was a practical joke.
He shrugged a shoulder. “Ah, Bets, it’s a mess,” he said.
I looked at the water, puddling on the floor. The entire office smelled of chlorine.
“No kidding,” I said.
He wiped a hand over his face, then shook off the water. Still, water beaded on his cheeks. “I promised you I’d train you, and I’m not going to be able to.”
“You already said I could write scripts,” I said.
He smiled. “Different kind of magic, kid, and in you, that talent isn’t latent. You just need to get to Carnegie Hall.”
And by that he meant practice, practice, practice. He loved that joke. I’d tired of it the second time I’d heard it, back when I started.
“Then what?” I asked.
“You can see and remember,” he said. “I shoulda told you when I first met you, but I knew the seeing hadn’t arrived yet.”
“Seeing?”
He waved a hand. Water dripped from his wrist. “You’ve always had the remembering. Everything sticks in your brain. I knew that the first day, when you typed my dictation. You know how many pages I was into it before you even sat down at the typewriter?”
“Three,” I said, because I did remember that, at least.
“You know how many other people can perform that trick?”
It was my turn to shrug.
“None,” he said. “At least not living. We got one memory per generation, and our generations are long-lived.”
I frowned.
“You getting the picture? You’re not normal, kid,” he said.
I swallowed hard. I had a vision of Jackson appear before me to tell me I wasn’t normal? Seriously? Wouldn’t that be redundant, since just seeing him sitting there (and talking to him) made me automatically not-normal?
“Seeing, though, seeing comes with age.” He leaned back in his chair. The chair squealed, just like it always did. Or was I “remembering” that too?
He was watching me closely. But I hadn’t moved.
“I didn’t want to trigger the seeing,” he said. “but I guess I just did.”
I sank into my chair.
“I’m going to give you four pieces, kid,” he said, “and when I’m done, you have to act fast. Right now, they don’t know you’re here.”
“They?”
He waved that hand again. Water sprayed the desk.
“Four pieces,” he repeated. “You get to put them together. I’ll try to leave a few traces. But time is of the essence—and be forewarned. They seem to have a better grasp of time than we do, which is startling if you think about it.”
I didn’t find it startling. I didn’t know why I should. Right now, this vision of Jackson was just speaking gibberish, and I wasn’t sure how to make him stop.
“So here we go,” he said. “You ready?”
And before I could answer, he reached up and—
we were in a field, smoke-covered, filled with men, screaming, or was it the horses screaming? Lots of screaming, high-pitched, pain-filled, horrible—my skin crawled and I wanted out.
Jackson stood in the center, but not my Jackson, a different version of Jackson, face barely recognizable beneath his thick mustache, his hat hiding his forehead. Only his eyes were the same, dark and unfathomable, but they weren’t looking at me.
Instead, they were peering through the gloom as if he expected something. Then the noise faded, all except three gunshots, booming. The bullets cut through the air, through the smoke, as if they were in a separate reality.
They headed for Jackson, moving so slowly that he should’ve been able to step out of the way, but he didn’t. He stood there, watching them, and then they slammed into him, thudding with an awful meaty thwack, thwack, thwack.
He started to fall back from the impact, except he reached up and pushed the air around him, pushing and pushing and pushing until those bullets were yards away from him, hovering, blood-covered, as if they were watching him.
He dusted off his uniform—one I sort-of recognized—Prussian. From the last war. The Franco-Prussian war. Or maybe the Boer War. One of those wars. Not our war—and then stepped aside. He picked up a man beside him, carrying that man across the smoke-covered field, heading toward a tent way in the back, the bullets following at a respectable distance as if they were cameras spying on him, instead of hot pellets of metal trying to kill him.
Then the smoke covered everything, like a thick blanket of fog and—
Jackson peered at me, as if he wasn’t sure I understood. He looked less substantial in that chair, and the puddle of water had grown to a small trickle, flowing toward the door. He—
stood inside a Nickelodeon and watched herky-jerky images on the screen. A smoke-filled field, horses falling, men reaching bony hands toward him. An organist played in the back, the music sweeping and big. Beside the organ, three bullets poised, their tips pointing toward Jackson, following him at a safe distance as he walked toward the shining silent images in front of him.
A child, thin and gaunt, sat in the closest chair, and when he saw her, he picked her up. She looked over his shoulder, frightened, her eyes familiar, her face a glimmer of the future: Lillian Gish in miniature, starving, tearstreaked.
Only there could be no Lillian Gish yet. It was years before her dramatic poses, her coyly batting eyes. It was—
Jackson, watching me, growing thinner, as if the unseen editor had evened out the film of the man and the film of the empty chair. Evened it out, only somewhere, someone was making a mistake, because the smell of chlorine was overpowering, the water running from the drenched jacket all the way to the door.
My shoes were wet. My shoes and my feet—
and Jackson stood at the edge of the pool, the wind playing with his hair. Mae Wren stood beside the glass doors—on the outside—and she was gesturing. I could hear the wind, but not her voice.
Jackson was staring at her, staring as the bullets crept closer, moving an inch at a time. I wanted to shout to him, but I didn’t because I knew I wasn’t there, although it felt like I was there, in the morning coolness, the world smelling of chlorine.
The bullets were speeding up, faster, and faster, and faster, until they reached velocity and slammed into Jackson, just as they had done on that field, thwack, thwack, thwack, only this time, he couldn’t move his hand, this time blood sprayed around him, and he toppled into the pool, going under, coming up facedown, and Mae Wren did nothing. She didn’t even scream. She slid inside her house and vanished, like she had done when Mike said I called the police and they arrived and—
Jackson was almost gone. A ghostly image on his chair. He spoke, but I couldn’t hear him, but I sensed this last was important, something he truly needed to tell me, something I had to understand. He reached up—
and there were children. The skeletal girl with the Lillian Gish face, the handsome boy with big eyes, urchins they would be, urchins, crawling from their hiding place and flattening themselves on the screen, growing into familiar faces, famous faces, hiding in plain sight.
Jackson watched them disappear. Then he left the theater—the screening theater, not far from our bungalow—and walked back to the office, a screenplay in his hand. He came inside, sat down, and wrote another, and another, and another and—
—they rustled beside me, a stack of yellowing manuscripts beside my typewriter.
Jackson was gone. So was his jacket.
But the room still smelled of chlorine. A puddle remained beneath the chair, although the trickle to the door was drying.
“Jackson?” I said, but he didn’t answer.
I walked to the chair, careful not to step on the drying trickle or into the puddle. Water beaded on the wooden seat, and on the crullers, and on the coffee cup.
You can see and remember, he said.
I had seen and I did remember, but what did it mean, if anything. What did it all mean?
***
I don’t know how long I stood there, feeling out of time. The puddle was drying, the beads of water had soaked into the crullers, and the smell of chlorine was fading.
I turned, saw the yellowing papers, and took the top one.
A screenplay.
Not even a screenplay, really, not by modern standards. A photoplay—little more than a paragraph, describing an entire silent film—the way it was done back in the teens:
A boy—we’ll call him “John”—newly orphaned, sobs on the street, gets found by a modern-day Fagin, becomes our Oliver Twist. Steals food to save the life of a starving girl, but Fagin gets angry, wants John to steal money, goods. He spirits the girl away…
And the photoplay cuts off, midsentence.
They all cut off midsentence—photoplays, scenarios, screenplays, growing more and more modern, from silent era title cards to outlines of movies to actual screenplays for talkies. The early ones had “John” and urchins and a too-thin girl, but the later ones—
The later ones were all Mae Wren movies.
I’d seen all of her movies.
I remembered them.
And in each, she flirted with death.
And in each, she did not die.
But Jackson did.
Jackson, who went to see her.
Jackson, whose death finally caught up with him.
Last night.
***
I ran for Mike the guard, the handsome red-haired guard out of central casting. I scanned the lot for him, tried to ask about him, but no one remembered seeing him, not even the guard at the gate, who did remember me getting into a limo, but did not remember who drove it.
So I hoofed it to my car—a battered Ford that had seen better days, and I drove the way we’d come with the limo, from that small house that smelled of roasting meat and baking bread.
When I parked on the street, no curtains twitched. Apparently, battered cars belonged here when limos did not. I got out, walked to the door, and hesitated.
The nice me, the normal me, she would have knocked.
But I was afraid knocking would send the little men scurrying away.
So, with a trembling hand, I grabbed the knob, turned, and pushed the door open.
They had been sitting. They stood—all four of them. A chair scraped against the hardwood, sounding like a squeal. Like one of the injured horses.
I tried to block the image.
“Who was kidnapped?” I asked.
“We sent you away,” the shortest little man said.
“Who was kidnapped?” I asked again.
He glanced at the others. One of them shrugged. A third gave me a rueful look. The fourth walked to the mantel and grabbed a photograph that had been shoved behind the Seth Thomas clock.
The photograph was large and old, the details painted to add a bit of color, like they used to do fifty years before.
In the previous century.
A young man peered out at me, his jaw narrow, his nose a bit too large. He wore the same uniform as Jackson had in the smoke-filled field, and this young man looked proud.
I had seen him too.
Jackson had bent down, picked him up, and carried him toward a tent, only to vanish in a haze of smoke.
Thin, so young he could seem like an urchin.
We’ll call him “John.”
Only he was too old to be John. By the time John appeared in the first silents—the little ten-minute shorts—this young man would be in his thirties.
But he wasn’t.
He’d grown older slowly.
Like Mae Wren. The other urchin.
Mae Wren, who should be in her fifties now, but looked a perfect twenty-five.
“Who took him?” I asked.
The little men looked at me. Then at each other.
“You won’t believe us,” the shortest little man said.
“I think I will now,” I said, and sat on the arm of one of those heavy chairs.
***
Initially, there had been a dozen of them. A dozen little men with clockmaker’s magic. They could—for a few seconds—harness time.
“Time,” said the shortest little man, “has a power all its own.”
And they could capture it, hold it in an instant, but they could not reverse it.
But Jackson could. Only for a heartbeat, but sometimes a heartbeat was all it took.
A wave of the hand to send bullets backwards, and then a bit of clockmaker’s magic to make them keep their distance.
A touch of future vision so that he knew who to find, who to save, and who to protect.
A little girl who looked like the first movie star, before the first movie star became famous. A man on a battlefield. An urchin everyone called “John” because no one knew his name.
And others. Many others.
The children in the silents.
He couldn’t protect them all. The little men couldn’t protect them either. The clockmaker’s magic only lasted so long. Film preserved as long as someone saw it, but people stopped watching silents nearly two decades ago.
Only Mae Wren continued, growing a little older so that she could take advantage of that Lillian-Gish-for-the-modern-era face. And “John,” lurking in the background, the perfect extra, written into scenes by Jackson, who protected them all.
Or tried to.
It became harder to get a scenario produced, har