Ghost Dance: A Play of Voices: A Novel

II: Director

DIRECTOR Energy: it seemed to make the air crackle around the man, charge the atmosphere of the room, the inner source unceasing and resistless—leg swinging, fingers drumming as the words came tumbling out. He could not sit still; his standing seemed a prelude for flight. He was on the run through ideas, people, things—life. Snatching, grabbing, shouting, then pulling himself up into a single knot of concentration, a glowing center. Small wonder his crew complained. He worked them till they dropped, himself along with them. Yetthey workedbeyond exhaustion, because, they said, it was a real experience to work with Bill Brodkey. They wouldn't have missed it for anything . They loved him, tall shaggy tyrant that he was. And there'd be this lousy piece of shit the studio had assigned him, the plot as predictable as a see-through blouse, but he'd take special pains with a scene, get an effect nobody'd banked on. And there in the midst of that dog of a film you'd come across the same craftsmanship you'd find in a significant movie. They loved him all right. He'd slacked off some since his youth, when he could work all day, carouse all night, come back to the set the next morning shaking off sleep and booze, ready to throw himself into the next punishing day. Now parties bored him, had for a long time, though they still got him wound up enough that he couldn't sleep. After this one, he'd probably lie awake for hours, his mind racing. At home he would go to the refrigerator, sit at the kitchen table writing and eating cheese, ham, cold chicken, drinking beer, never gaining an ounce. During their early years together, 46 II his wife, Helen, used to struggle up sleepily out of bed and demand what he was doing there at three in the morning. After a time, she left him alone. He'd come back to bed at dawn, find her curled up like a small child, her chestnut hair tangled on the pillow. And with a rush of tenderness he felt the pull of guilt. Then he sank into sleep like a stone, without waking her. When he allowed himself the luxury of such reflections, he wondered if his self-absorption hadn't put a wedge into their marriage from the beginning. But he couldn't help himself. He might as well have quit breathing. Then it had been ideas that kept his brain going round all night. Now he had fewer of them, but he still couldn't sleep after an evening filled with people. Bits of conversation, mostly inanities, kept him awake, maddeningly so, the old mill taking any grist. He'd have been grateful for a night's sleep, but he knew it was impossible. After Roselle had left and the crowd thinned, he went over to Walter McKay, supposedly making every promising ray into the glare of publicity but looking bored out of his mind, and suggested a nightcap. 'Thank God," Walter said. "Anything to get out of here. Make it my room. I've got some Chivas Regal I can't wait to drink up—alone. Sally," he said, beckoning Roselle's secretary, "come have a wee drop.An exquisite drop that will fill you with love for all men—even me." She laughed. "First let me see how Roselle's doing." "Christ, you don't have to tuck her in, do you? She's a big girl." "She said she had a headache. I just got hold of some aspirin. I'll be along in a jiff." "Do you want ice?" Walter said. "I hate to let anything get between the nectar and me. Agreed then," he went on as Bill dismissed the ice. "I always heard about the ends of the earth," he said, as the two men walked upstairs. "Now I know what they mean. No wonder they're so friendly here: otherwise they'd be killing each other." "This is only Friday,"Bill said. "They save that for Saturday. In the bars." "A comfort to know," Walter said. "Makes me long for a good 47 traffic jam on the freeway/7 He'd grown up in Los Angeles. It was his city and there wasn't any other, not even San Francisco. Let him complain about the noise, traffic, dope, crime, and the...