"04 - Mortal Remains in Maggody Txt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hess Joan)

As usual, Ruby Bee butted in. "They need a shack and a barn, and Miss Lowenstein happened to drive by Raz's place. I can't imagine he'd object, even if he has to relocate Marjorie to the backyard. They also need a big house with pillars and bushes." She wiggled her eyebrows at Estelle, who was having no trouble reading her mind. "I'm sure the mayor would be honored to have his house in a movie, aren't you?"

"The mayor?" Carlotta said doubtfully.

"Hizzoner Jim Bob Buchanon," Estelle cut in. "He owns that ugly supermarket across the street. Mrs. Jim Bob can be difficult to deal with, to put it mild-like, but I reckon she'll puff up like a soufflщ when she finds out her house is going to be on the big screen." She was proud of tossing out the lingo so casually, but this movie woman was frowning as if her pantyhose were affecting her circulation. "Do you happen to need a beauty parlor?" she added optimistically.

Carlotta just kept frowning. "Mrs. Jim Bob?"

Ruby Bee butted in once again. "It's one of those local traditions that's hard to explain. Her real name's Barbara Anne Buchanon Buchanon, she and Jim Bob being first or second cousins once or twice removed. In fact, you're going to run into a whole passel of Buchanons. There's Earl and Eilene, and their boy Kevin, who's betrothed to Dahlia O'Neill, whose granny is a Buchanon from the Emmet branch of the family. Raz Buchanon, as I mentioned earlier. Adele Wockerman was a Buchanon afore she married, and--"

"They marry each other?" Carlotta murmured. Her eyes were narrowed behind the lenses, and she wasn't sounding overly enchanted with the amount of inbreeding that everyone in Maggody took for granted. After all, it had been going on for a good hundred years, and no one was exactly clamoring for admission to the clan.

"Some of them," said Estelle. "You can recognize them by their chimpanzee foreheads and yellowish eyes. None of them's what you might call college material, but they have the right number of fingers and toes, and not one of them's been locked away in one of those hospitals for the insane."

Ruby Bee scooted the pretzel bowl in front of their guest and gave Estelle a thoughtful look. "What about Terdlow Buchanon? Didn't he end up in prison for whacking up his parents and trying to sell the body parts to the poultry plant in Starley City?"

"I reckon he did. And there's Maisie Louise Buchanon, who had nigh onto sixty cats locked in her house when they finally found her body at the end of the summer. Phewy!"

"We can't forget Robin Buchanon, neither. She was blown to smithereens at the edge of a marijuana patch up on Cotter's Ridge. Her bush colts were mean enough to pluck live chickens with their teeth."

"A beer," Carlotta said, fanning herself with a clipboard. "A beer sounds quite lovely."

Estelle settled down on the adjoining stool, propped her elbows on the bar, and said, "So what's this movie about, Miss Lowenstein?"

"Please, call me Carlotta. The screenplay's still in the rewrite stage, but basically it's a contemporary version of Romeo and Juliet. Young love thwarted, that sort of thing.Ф

УI see," Estelle said with a sage nod. She popped a pretzel in her mouth and tried to remember the plot. It'd been a good thirty-five years since she'd been in high school, and she hadn't paid all that much attention in class, having already decided on her career in the art of hair design. There was the balcony, and something about messages getting mixed up. She was almost sure the boy and the girl croaked in the end.

"What's it gonna be named?" Ruby Bee asked.

Carlotta was keenly aware of the potential danger, and once again paused to seek the safest path through the minefield. "At the moment, we're calling it Wild Cherry Wine. The director, Hal Desmond, wants to convey the essential timelessness of the plot by the utilization of the longнstanding traditions of the region. It's an exploration of the interdynamics of a family unit that must seek equilibrium in the universal conflict of personal fulfillment versus basic survival."

Ruby Bee blinked, but she didn't say, "Hub?" Hollywood people were supposed to talk like that, she figured. "Who're the stars?"

Carlotta rattled off five names so quickly that neither Ruby Bee nor Estelle caught any of them. "I must make my calls," she said, still talking faster than a truck barreling down the interstate, "and start lining up the production crew and clearing schedules. We'll be here at the end of next week, and we'll need all the available motel rooms in town and a catering service. I'll be back with you on the details as soon as I do a preliminary with the production people."

"How long will it take to make this movie?" Ruby Bee said, not bothering to mention that all the available motel rooms (five of them, to be exact) were out back and the only caterer in town was standing three feet away with a dishrag in her hand.

"No more than two weeks, if we can do the exteriors without any weather delays." Carlotta put the strap of her bulky purse over her shoulder and picked up her clipboard. "I look forward to seeing both of you shortly," she said as she slid off the stool. "I'll be in touch."

"Are you going to need any extras?" asked Estelle.

"A few." Carlotta saw no reason to explain that the vast majority of scenes took place in bedrooms or in intimate clearings in the woods. All three of the previous productions had tiptoed along the delicate line between an R rating and an X rating, not because Hal had moral reservations but because the distribution money was better if the films could be shown at drive-in theaters.

She went out to the rental car and stopped to assess the potential establishing shots for the opening credits of "Wild Cherry Wine." The sign at the edge of town proclaimed a population of seven hundred fifty-five, but the sign was pockmarked from years as a target and splattered with bird droppings. She'd driven past a peculiar metal structure called the Voice of the Almighty Lord Assembly Hall, a hardware store, a pool hall with a cross-eyed drunk in the doorway, a line of boarded-up stores, and an antiques store complete with a red-necked rube in a rocking chair. After a delay at the single stoplight, she'd passed a supermarket as tacky as anything back home; a launderette with the improbable name Suds of Fun; and a small, red-brick building with a police car parked nearby.

Glittertown Productions, Inc., had experienced problems with law enforcement agencies on every production, the law about prevailing community standards being so vague. Only three months ago, lynchings had been mentioned in Flagstaff. Hal had sweated like a marathon runner until the last scene was done and the entire company could flee across the state line.

Carlotta went back inside Ruby Bee's. The two women broke off their spirited conversation as she said, "Do I need to clear anything with the police department? We might require traffic control for one or two scenes, and we always prefer to cooperate with the local authorities." As in bribing them ahead of time to circumvent expensive delays.