The Dud Avocado - Elaine Dundy [94]
I rose. “Bax, I’m going. Will you take me home please?”
“I say, steady on,” murmured Plinn-Jones.
“Don’t desert me now,” commanded Angela, tugging at me hard. “I’ve absolutely exhausted my Spanish and I’m getting so cross I could scream. Why are they all being so piggy? Why are they making such a disgusting fuss over me with you right here under their noses with your lovely naturally blonde hair—” (it was greenish-orange that day) “—and petite figure——”
I, too, had come to the end of my tether. “Horses for courses,” I replied, and pulled away.
“Well, don’t bite my head off,” she sniffed. “I can’t do anything about it can I?”
I got into the Citroen, Larry and Bax following. Larry was driving.
“O.K., Keevil, suppose you tell me what the hell all that was about?”
He shrugged. “The Bullfighter liked you. They wanted someone to help him with his English. You wanted a part. It follows.”
“Oh sure, everything follows,” I said bitterly. I was filled with disgust. I saw us for what we really were: beggars and toadies and false pretenders. “That may be your way of doing things, but it sure as hell isn’t mine. Don’t mix me up in your schemes. Look Larry, just stop pimping for me, will you!”
There was a shocked silence. I looked at his face. It had turned green under the yellow arc lights. That meant he was dead white.
“Easy, Gorce, easy,” he warned me quietly.
Bax put his hand on my shoulder and said miserably, “Apologize to him, Sally Jay. I’m sure he was only trying to help you.”
I felt bad but I wouldn’t back down. I’d had too terrible a time that night. “Don’t help me,” I said over and over again. “Just don’t anyone help me.” And I curled up into a corner to lick my wounds.
THREE
June 14
Friday
WELL, WE’RE MOVIE extras now, Larry, Missy and I. That’s where all that sharp operating landed us.
Not Bax, of course. Bax is different. He’s the fair-haired boy, having passed his screen test (which consisted mostly of having him jump off the recaptured fishing vessel and swim around the ocean for a while—it’s an outdoor picture) with flying colors. They’ve given him the part of the best friend of the hero, who, in turn, is the best friend of the Bullfighter, which, you’d think, would make Bax a bit removed from the central action. But it doesn’t. He saves their lives on practically every other page of the script.
It is a period picture, after all. I’m not sure what period, though, and I still can’t figure out what a bullfighter is doing in it at all. I suppose he is a Period Bullfighter.
The reason Missy is an Extra is because she didn’t want to be left alone all day, and the reason Larry is, is because he still thinks he can pick up some pointers on how to make a film, and the reason I am is—God knows. Because this is really for the dogs, this is. We get 1,800 francs a day, rock bottom minimum, and have to be down on the Quai, ready in make-up and costumes, by seven o’clock every morning. And we can’t goof off; we’ve been signed on for three weeks. I’m afraid I shall be looking back on this whole episode as yet another example of what my total and abysmal ignorance always gets me into.
When we realized that all we were going to get were jobs as Extras, it seemed pointless to keep the film secret from McCarthy, so the day before we started working, we took him along to the warehouse to meet the Casting Director. Wheero happened to be there at the time and their eyes happened to fall upon one another, and they went into a Recognition Scene—Mac and the Wheer—that was worthy of Euripides. Apparently they’d known each other back in Mac’s Spanish Period when he was running around posing for the Englishman’s book. And so, Angela’s nerves having proved unequal to the strain (“… unfortunately that sexy little villa to which he’s retired to prepare himself for his taxing little role is jammed tightly between Route Nationale Dix and the French Railway, making