FIVE
Monarch wasn’t the biggest studio Casey had seen in his brief time in Hollywood. But he’d never been closer to any of the others than the street in front of them; as the studio truck pulled up to Monarch’s gate the collection of buildings loomed larger than any place Casey could think of since his first glimpse of the university back home in Toronto. Even if the gate itself was just a simple arch, with none of the grandeur he’d seen, for example, at the entrance to Paramount’s lot. As he passed under the gate, Casey saw paint peeling away from the word “Monarch”, the letters of which were revealed to be nothing more than crudely carved wood.
A two-story frame building, suggesting something temporary that had been forced to serve longer than it had been designed to, passed to his left as the guard waved the truck through the gate; “Offices,” a sign facing the gate said. On his right, huddling just inside the gate and in the shadow of a gigantic concrete box of a building, was a strange, low building with a multitude of doors opening onto the parking lot-cum courtyard. Casey had no idea what the building might be—this building bore no sign—and the driver offered no illumination. The driver hadn’t uttered a syllable, in fact, since Casey had sat down beside him.
Casey couldn’t blame the man for being unpleasant. Nobody liked to work on Sunday, and judging by the suit he was wearing, the poor man had probably had to drive out to the airfield straight from church. For himself, Casey was glad to have had the chance to sleep late. He’d taken a chance on the weather holding and unrolled his blankets on the grass of the field, and had had a most pleasant night as a result; not even the pain from his damaged ribs had been enough to keep him awake. He’d actually awakened thinking he was back in France during the tumult of the final advance in 1918, when it wasn’t uncommon to spend a night in a field, sleeping under your machine’s wing because the squadron’s tents hadn’t arrived at a new airfield yet. Adding to the verisimilitude of Casey’s waking moment was his recollection that he’d heard Hal Telford landing on one side or another of dawn; it surprised him somewhat to realize just how much he had missed the sound of aero-engines during his exile from flight.
The driver stopped the truck at the giant concrete box, clearly the newest building at the studio. It was also much larger than any of the other buildings; even the glass-roofed stages were dwarfed by this huge, windowless cube. The driver, still saying nothing, put the truck back into low gear. The transmission growled and clanked in protest, and Casey imagined that it was the driver’s voice, finally giving vent to his complaints about the maltreatment he’d been put through just so that one completely unqualified pilot could waste everybody’s time pretending to be an actor.
“Thanks for the lift,” Casey said as he wrestled open the flimsy door and stepped down. “I’ll write if I get work.”
The driver surprised him then. “Good luck,” the man said, and sounded as if he meant it. Casey stared after him for a moment as the truck growled back to the gate. I would have been happier, Casey decided, if he’d stayed contemptuous. Now Casey was forced to think seriously about what he was here to do.
For a moment or two Casey stayed at the bottom of the steps, just staring at the immense building that from his vantage point pretty much blocked out the sky. The door to the big white box was surrounded by hastily lettered signs imploring the casual visitor to stay out and everyone else to for God’s sake please be quiet. This insistence on silence, Casey decided, must be why everyone called the building a sound stage.
The interior of the building was every aircraft hangar Casey had ever been in, combined into one echoing, empty space. He couldn’t see the ceiling at all; it was hidden in gloom dozens of feet up, beyond a web of cat-walks. Most of the building was shrouded in darkness, in fact, save for an oasis of light toward which Casey walked, drawn by a need to be someplace on a human scale.
The circle of light encompassed a collection of flimsy wood-and-canvas flats that had been painted to suggest the interior walls of what Casey guessed to be an office, judging by the desks and chairs set up within the enclosure. An office with only three walls and no ceiling. What in the world do they want me to do here?
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