[Continuing chapter four]
“Casey! Good to see you, young fellow.” Jerry Straebo grabbed Casey by the shoulder and pulled him into the room. “I have been looking for you this evening, ever since I heard that Hart had brought you.”
Instantly on his guard, Casey asked, “What can I do for you, Mr. Straebo?” Someone else had evidently been talking with Straebo; Casey saw a black-jacketed man slip behind him and out the door. There was something familiar about the man’s face, but then again there was something familiar about at least half of the people he’d seen this evening.
“Call me Jerry, for starters.” Straebo waited a second, then plunged on. “I won’t waste time. I want you to come to the studio tomorrow, Casey. Do you know why?”
“I’m afraid I don’t, Mr.—Jerry.”
“I want to make a screen test, Casey. Of you.”
“A what?”
“I want to film you, talking with an actress from our company. I need to see how well your voice records, though I’m sure it will sound fine.”
Casey remembered this afternoon’s filming, and Straebo’s relentlessly minute criticisms of Richard Armstrong’s voice during some takes and his complete absence of comment following others. On the evidence, Straebo was no judge of how a voice was supposed to sound. “I’m afraid I still don’t understand,” he said.
“I was looking at the rushes this evening before coming up here,” Straebo said. Noting the look of confusion on Casey’s face he said, “Oh. That’s a word for the day’s filming. We also call them dailies. Well, one of the cameramen kept cranking after your crash—which was splendid, by the way. I hope you’re feeling better.”
Casey was by this point feeling no pain at all, so he waved off Straebo’s concern with a smile. “I’m glad,” Straebo said. “Now, at the very end of that footage is a close-up of you as you’re talking to Hogan. I think you look pretty good in that close-up, Casey. And it’s my job to judge this sort of thing well. So I think it might be worth putting you into the picture, in a small role, so that we can add some sense of the truth to the story we’re trying to tell. What do you say?”
“I’m not sure,” Casey began. “It’s flattering, I must say. But my real interest is flying, you know.”
“Of course,” Straebo said. “And you’d continue to do that. This wouldn’t take you away from your flying duties. I’ve already taken care of that with Hogan. Oh, and of course your salary would increase.”
Now Casey was interested. “By how much?”
“Enough, I should think.” Straebo stared into Casey’s eyes. “We normally sign newcomers for about a hundred dollars a week. Because you’d also be flying for us, I’ll give you a hundred and fifty dollars.” As Casey started to grin, Straebo hastily added, “All of this is dependent on your doing a good test, of course. Since tomorrow’s Sunday I won’t expect you at the studio too early. Let’s make it eleven o’clock, shall we? I’ll inform the guard at the gate; he’ll see that you get to where you’re supposed to go.”
By the time Casey got himself free of Jerry Straebo he was feeling more than a little disconnected from the small fragment of the real world he’d been able to hold onto since moving to Los Angeles. He supposed he ought to be excited about the possibility of becoming a movie actor. Since it was never something he’d even remotely entertained as a desire, he couldn’t make himself enthusiastic about anything beyond the fiscal promises held out by the salary Straebo had offered. At a hundred-fifty dollars a week, if he lived frugally he’d be able to buy his own plane within a year or two.
The room in which he found himself, when he returned to paying attention to his surroundings, was an astonishing hodge-podge of decorative styles: animal heads (or just their horns) were mounted around a huge stone fireplace; at one end of the room was a classic zinc bar of the type featured in Parisian brasseries; and the furniture was a mix of colonial and the latest European designs. The room, like most of the others he’d been in, was jammed full of people being witty at the tops of their lungs. Hearing the din, thinking back to the singing, Casey wondered again at the strange resistance so many Hollywoods had toward the new talking pictures.
There was a set of French doors at the far end of the room, opposite the bar: freedom beckoned. Casey made his way toward the doors, only to find his way suddenly blocked by a couple locked in a vicious pas de deux. Richard Armstrong’s eyes were glazed, but his body veered aggressively toward Lily Cross, who fended him off both with her hands and with a voice as shrill and violent as Armstrong’s. The overall din made it impossible to hear what they were saying to one another, but Casey was sure that the actual words were irrelevant given the obvious anger at work.
Before he could reach them, Armstrong made a grab for Lily. She broke his clumsy grip with ease and fled—a trifle unsteadily—through the French doors. Armstrong started after her, but took only a couple of steps before collapsing to the floor. Casey decided to let someone else look after the man, who had in a few seconds had managed to destroy any sympathy Casey might have felt toward him after the afternoon’s events; instead, Casey followed Lily through the open doors and onto a broad patio.
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