The Girl From Amityville - Chapter Sixteen - Finished With Engines - 1978 - 1985
"See... no matter which way you turn the cup... the marshmallows stay in formation..."
City Center had one trick up its sleeve, as Jenny demonstrated to John and Caroline with her cup of hot chocolate. For the comfort of tenants and at their own expense, City National had installed a 'tuned mass damper' - a four hundred ton block of concrete floated on a raft of oil and connected to the building with shock absorbers - under the pointy top. We'd seen the thing in action and it was rather unnerving to see the thing slide around because in point of fact it was really the building moving under our feet.
"Y'know... in the Mob... there are guys... if you were to offer 'em a million dollars... free and clear... with no strings... and no taxes... they'd tell ya to keep your damned money. And all the while they're talkin' to ya... they're tryin' to figure out a way to steal that million dollars of yours."
Such was Jenny's roundabout way of explaining to a concerned in-law why she couldn't just call a press conference and lay out her concerns.
"If I blow the whistle now... well first off nobody wants to listen to a whistle blower... they'll say I have some ax to grind. If they can't hit me with that anymore... they'll simply drag out my medical records and say I'm nuts... and then they'll really go after me..."
"Reporters like to think they're puttin' one over on you... they don't want to have stories handed to 'em... Right now, people think I'm doing research for Mis'ess Kennedy's Grand Central campaign and that gives me a lot of wiggle room... and a useful cover story against the day I have to go public with any findings... Oh... I'll probably just publish a paper in some obscure trade journal... and let the chips fall where they may."
In the meantime, she had an architectural firm with ongoing projects to manage. The exterior and common areas of Platinum West and a majority of the occupied apartments were getting close to completion as was the structural work for Platinum East. It would only be a matter of watching the weather while the modules were delivered. At Lawson Cove the hotel, singles condominiums, clinic and staff housing had been delivered and assembled and were in the process of being prepared for the agency preview Bitsey and Brenda were setting up for the week after Christmas.
If things couldn't get any more hectic, Jenny was getting the office ready with a proposal for a job on Forty-ninth, between Fifth and Madison, where a syndicate was trying to assemble a clutch of a dozen or so mid-block properties against the day the real estate market warmed up. Even though this syndicate was being headed by her grandfather Philip, it was by no means a given that her firm would be getting the job.
"I wonder if you could tell me... who designed that hideous looking building on the left?"
Old man Walter nearly choked on his chicken marinara when Evelyn asked him that.
"That's one of my buildings... but that daughter of yours probably told you that already."
"Oh, she never tells me anything... Now... that is just awful... it's like one building right behind the other... You would have to spoil my view of the park with such a monstrosity, wouldn't you?"
We couldn't help turning around to have a squint at the building in question. It had been built on a vaguely Z-shaped lot with the Fifty-seventh Street side taking maybe a half dozen brownstone lots and the Fifty-sixth Street taking only four lots. Only three of the lots lined up through the block.
"It was a very challenging design program... and I rather like the results." Turning around to our table, he added, "I suppose you two are getting quite a laugh..."
We'd known that Evelyn was maybe going to talk to Mister Drake about putting in a bid for the Forty-ninth Street job but since Claus and Søren were in town, we thought it'd be a hoot to pair them off with the Heinz sisters for the day. Our paths just happened to cross.
"We were going to ask if you'd take a picture of our table... so, uh... we could get in the shot... but we'll just ask the waiter when he gets back."
Faced with the glare of a half dozen irritated twins, Walter turned his attention back to his plate and Evelyn. He was starting to get the idea he was just being strung along. After all, didn't they have an architect in the family?
"Oh, she's never designed a skyscraper... at least she's never had one built. Anyway, this isn't a family project... and everyone just loves your new building..."
Now it was our turn to snarf one, as Samantha's shrimp cocktail - but not Samantha - discovered.
"Excuse me... Just what exactly is an 'as-of-right' building?"
On an upper floor of the Ivy Hill Lithography Building Jenny made her company's presentation to a motley collection of investors as they munched on finger sandwiches and occasionally poked a curious nose out the window to look down on the proposed building site. These were professional types - doctors, lawyers and would you believe, an Indian chief from western New York, where they're still pumping a few barrels of 'Seneca Oil'. He was asking the architectural questions.
"That's what we'd be allowed to build on the property right now... If we add certain amenities... like a plaza... or a mid block walkway... we can build bigger, but we'd have to get approvals..."
Because there was a bulky ten storey building on the parcel whose tenants still had a few years left on their leases, Jenny presented two as-of-right designs. 'Design Block A' called for an 'elliptic lenticular' floor plan with elevators, stairs bathrooms and utility ducts hung from 'rack mounts' at each of the pointy ends. Those points, she noted, meant they wouldn't have to use expensive curved glass panels. 'Design Block B' left the old building structurally intact while cantilevering a portion of the new building over it with a dramatic arc of reflective glass. The old building's façade would be redone to match the new tower's bronzed metal and glass base.
"The other architect was saying we should make the as-of-right building real ugly so we'd get the building we really wanted..."
"City Hall's funny like that... I just don't think it's a good idea to play games with people who can rewrite the rules whenever they feel like it. With our luck, we get someone on the board who likes 'em that way... I see they sent a model over."
She hadn't meant to sound catty but the thing Drake and Van De Lay looked like a cheap knockoff of City Center with a few superficial changes - rounded corners and a vertical strip of glass running up the middle of the avenue sides - and a little more structural daring - it had a rectangular floor plan but the stilts were arranged for a square building with cantilevers on three sides. As with Jenny's Block B, that ten storey building would be left standing under a shiny new façade.
All three designs either side-stepped the irregular lot issue by elevating the tower above a multi-storey base or, in the case of Block A, ignored it completely. We should note that the syndicate was still in the process of assembling the property. This initial consultation was to see what could be done with what they had before proceeding further. Before presenting Design Block C, Jenny noted that she'd done a canvas of the rest of the block and found space available for everyone in that ten storey building. She also gave them a quick lesson in the value of air rights.
"First off, you won't have to spend quite so much money in clearing the site. Also... it's a tad easier and safer to shore up a six storey loft than those fifteen storey high-rises on Madison. Not to mention that we can build to the property line and use full height windows instead the nasty wire-covered ones we'd have to use otherwise."
Block C was a forty-five storey shaft of green reflective glass. To address the irregular lot she'd cut an octagonal floor plan into halves and attached them to a square core to form a crooked letter H.
"It's a simple matter of adjusting the wings if you opt to acquire more land."
"Not only that," the chief observed, "it don't look like it'll cost that much to build... and you get twice as many corner offices... Oughta make us some money, eh?"
"Best of all," Jenny added, "thanks to depreciation, you get a write off of about four percent a year... even if real estate prices go through the roof... and eventually they will."
Drifting around the room, we got a strange vibe from people. They'd look at us and then back at the Block C model as if to make some sort of connection. There wasn't. She'd based the design as an abstraction of the dumbbell tenement plan. Another thing we noticed is how people recognized Jenny from different aspects of her life. Lady Desdemona's name came up a few times. The last couple years of press coverage got some mention as well. One fellow seemed to be patting himself on the back in recalling that nekkid shower scene she'd done for 'Air Force Two'.
"I really don't have a problem with the idea of people having fantasies about me... I just don't need to hear about them."
Another keen-eyed observer noted, "The Pepper cover... between Stu Sutcliffe and Bobby Peal... I'd recognize that chin anywhere!"
So that's what that super-secret thing she couldn't tell us about was.
One of the lawyers in the syndicate was interested in her relationship with Mis'ess Kennedy - did she really hire Jenny to find the second gunman for her?
"I'm no Perry Mason... but obviously that'd be what you call privileged information... Was working the science desk for Panorama 'round the time they were doing their review of the Warren Report if you wanna ask me about that..."
Okay...
"If there was a second gunman... nobody got a picture you could show to a jury... and it's not like there were a lot of places to look... Zapruder would've been right on top of him... Only person anyone... at the time... was willing to say they witnessed doing anything... was Oswald... so I guess we're stuck with him."
But what about all the - methodically enumerated - evidence that's come out lately?
"Take away the Kennedy name... and then see if a jury'll swallow your 'evidence'. You'd have better luck with a ham sandwich... Hey, as long as we're talking shop... I've got a legal question for ya... if you don't mind working off the clock a little... Say years ago... while working for another firm... I designed this building... It was a private project... but they take it... as a 'work for hire'..."
"Is this a hypothetical situation or is this real world?"
"Real world... Now they went and built this thing... and..."
"And you want to know if you can sue for..."
"Don't get ahead of me. They built this and... I have reason to believe it's structurally deficient. I need to know what my liability would be... because at some point... well, I'll have to go public..."
Silence for a beat before asking, "What exactly do you mean by 'structurally deficient'?"
"I'm trying to pin that down... but it looks like a line thunderstorm could take it down if it hits on the southwest corner..." Jenny turned to look out the window before adding, "though... there might be some protection from the buildings along Park Avenue... I'm still trying to pin that down..."
"This building... Is it in immediate danger?"
"For the time being... no... Wouldn't have to start worrying... till the next hurricane season at the minimum."
"Okay... so there's some time... You have some sort of fix for in mind for this?"
"Oh just, just hafta weld some uh... we call 'em gusset plates... onto the joints. You'd have to rip out a few walls... but it's all indoor work and if you did it after office hours, no-one'd be the wiser."
"You wouldn't have to close the... which building is it?"
"City Center."
"City Center... You worked for Drake and Van DeLay?"
"From late 'Sixty-three to 'Sixty-four. Special project..."
"I don't suppose you still have any sort of... employment contract..."
"Oh no... I still have it," she trilled, drawing a yellowed legal envelope from her portfolio. "It was my first real job after college..."
Fifteen minutes of flipping through three and a half single-sided typewritten pages and...
"I'm not seeing anything here that gives them the rights to your... uh... what kind of proof do you have that they used your design?"
"She showed the plans to us... Yeah, it was gonna be in the Worlds Fair!"
"I still have the structural model... but I'd thrown everything else down the incinerator just before leaving. Apparently they'd recovered it, because somebody at City National had it on their desk a couple years back. I was there to consolidate a finance package... for a project that got thrown in my lap... Guess it was their way of saying we can do anything we want to you."
Shaking her head at Drake's proposal, Jenny half mused, half fumed, "Y'know... the one thing that made that design even worth using... that's the one thing they decided not to use... If you do end up going with this... thing... you will want to have it tested... especially on the quarters..."
No commitments were made but amazingly Jenny thought her firm was likely out of the running on account of her owning up to having designed a structurally flawed skyscraper. We tried to assure her that attorney-client privilege still counted for something in this modern age. She suggested to Cheryl that it might be a good idea to see if she could get her family's architectural firm to come in on the project. After all, they had skyscraper building experience.
By no means was she conceding defeat and on Thanksgiving Day she invited members of the syndicate to help her hand out the traditional loaves of bread and cans of salt to the residents of Platinum West as part of the official handing over of the complex. Jenny was especially pleased that the African tchotchke shop opted not only to rebuild but to reopen with a sale on Nimbutan craft products. The way the store was cleaned out - their colorful ceramic plates were an absolute 'must have' - you would've thought there'd been another blackout.
The arrival of the Platinum East modules brought an unexpected reunion with Jenny's in-laws. It happened that the Johannson Line was able to bag another cargo when the company operating the 'saltie' being leased for the Lawson Cove development had other commitments. Since this was Captain Siggy's first ocean voyage, the rest of the family had driven down to welcome him. At least the Heinz sisters would have dates for the week while we took pictures of the 'installation'. Our favorite was a 'before and after' taken with this Puerto Rican kid. It had been nearly a year between sessions yet he managed to find the exact spot in the new building to recreate his pose.
The week and a half between Hanukkah and Christmas was a glorious whirl for just about everyone in Jenny's orbit of friends and associates as Lawson Cove was made ready for it's debut. Even International Pictures had a hand, shuttling company set designers and carpenters to outfit all the restaurants, bars and nightclubs of the project. Naturally, they were given the mandate to replicate settings from old-time movies - the 'Casino Regale' and 'Nick's Café American' being the more notable examples.
"Live young... Stay beautiful..."
We'd been tasked with coordinating publicity for this enterprise when it became clear that the ad agency the Lawsons hired couldn't come up with a catchy slogan to sell a family resort and singles retreat attached to a retirement community. All we did was strip the cute saying 'die young and leave a beautiful corpse' to its essence and invert the verbiage.
We also came up with the 'tarty Doris' series of print and TV ads, photographing her relaxed, chest deep in the grotto pool, the water barely obscuring her nudity as a voice-over invited people to come and play with her as daughter Lori wades by. For the travel agency poster we had her flick up a side of her sunglasses as she turned to the camera for that extra minky look.
They continued their mother-daughter act as they made the promotional rounds of Philadelphia morning TV. Lori did all the talking while Doris sat behind her sunglasses in stone silence. As lead architect for the project, Jenny did a similar tour on the local evening news shows. Funny enough, nobody we asked seems to have heard of Lady Desdemona despite her having done a halftime show in town the year before. It had been a memorable one on account of this 'snail-soaker' coming down meant she'd have to sing up in the broadcast booth. Not wanting to cheat the fans out of a proper show, she improvised a number with some of the players and belted one out on the field.
As a grand thank-you to everyone who'd helped over the last two weeks and because we needed publicity pictures of families at play, the resort was thrown open for the Christmas weekend. With only a few staff members to tend to us it was like having our very own ghost town and with the number of Europeans and motion picture people about, clothing was largely a suggestion. At least it was down at the beach and up in the grotto area. Oh, the grotto area.
With children about and these being holy days the bacchanal atmosphere was kept to a minimum which made for a delightfully subversive game. Let's just say the conversations were quite stimulating. Most of our time was spent catching up on old times with Sabrina Martinelli, whose belly had filled and emptied four children over the years. She still had movie star looks but her current role was a product demonstrator for a restaurant supplier. It was fun work that allowed her to travel and with all the cooking schools on her route, she never missed a meal.
The travel agents and writers preview day brought an unexpected reunion with Manny and Lucinda. They were on assignment for a Brazilian TV magazine show so they rode with Jenny as Bitsey and Brenda led the parade of battery-operated Mini-Mokes on the official tour. A sample residence was shown on one of the more developed streets, after which the agents were transferred to a boat for the ride over to the singles village. Jenny had the Electric Valve plant electrify an Amphicar for her, so she got the never-gets-old fun of surprising her passengers by following after the boat. At the casino, the tour paused for an informal 'meet and greet' luncheon with Ricardo Montalbán. He was supposed to play 'The Snail' in a promotional film for the resort but Jenny had been too distracted by City Center to come up with a workable script.
The tour was heading for the grotto and golf course but since Jenny was going to show us all the new clinic, we lingered at the casino bar for an elixir or two.
"I should say Miss Jennifer that I was a little disappointed not to be playing Renaldo Di Caracol... but after looking around this magnificent facility... I suppose it would be like asking Leonardo DaVinci if he wouldn't mind painting a few of those shells they sell by the sea..."
No mystery where Jenny gets some of her happier dreams, is there?
"Yeah... I had a lot of things on my plate this year... Ah well, you'll pretty much be playing him anyway if that show of yours gets picked up... Sounds like a sweet gig... a few minutes standup and the guest stars do all the heavy lifting... Mind you... I absolutely loved it when you told that old Brahmin off when he tried pulling the old seniority gag on you but that's just me."
Even Ricardo knew that her saying that you were getting the maximum results from minimal effort was the highest of praise from 'Miss Jennifer'.
It worked out that his afternoon in the casino meant that the next month's travel magazine articles would invariably describe Lawson Cove as a 'real-life Fantasy Island'. The more imaginative ones would add, 'with the exception that you don't necessarily have to leave'. We were there for the week so we got to watch as the first wave of holiday makers turned The Cove into a living entity. A package tour from Memphis got to watch as Lady Desdemona cut the ribbon at the gate. She then handed out maps of the grounds and later, when someone at the casino bagged fifteen hundred at the slots, posed with the lucky winner as she handed him the Giant Check.
"This is an ongoing study we've been doing on the merits of welded joints versus bolted ones. As you can see... the bolted joints are failing at significantly lower wind loads..."
Along with the usual exposing of the land swindlers and grilling of thieving weasel politicians, the 60 Minutes show often set aside time to profile interesting companies - you know, the cool ones with great pay and loads of benefits everybody wishes they could work for. Jenny still had a desk at the J P & C so a camera crew sat with her as she reviewed wind tunnel footage of City Center. Such was their interest in her work with Mis'ess Kennedy that by the time this went to air, one almost got the impression that this was the building proposed for the Grand Central project. Almost.
"A blizzard? You know Mister Keach. I never really considered that... But yeah... That might be a problem..."
Mike Wallace's stopwatch was still ticking when the call from Mister Keach came in. How soon could she be at the City National offices? Tomorrow morning? Good.
"I just want to go on record by saying that we did try to contact you about this matter when the subject of changing to bolted joints was brought up..."
Stanford and his mouthpieces were gathered with The Book around the far end of a long-tabled conference room. She'd need a running start to get at it this day.
"Well, let that be a lesson to you about 'borrowing' an untested graduate student's design. Only found out about this some time last summer and that was by chance... but for the record... would likely have told you to get stuffed... if I could've said anything at all... 'Twas a bad year for me..."
"Yes... if I recall, we took quite a beating on account... So... how much is this going to cost us?"
The guess-timate we'd seen was a little over twenty-seven grand per joint.
"I don't know... I'd have to cost it out... maybe ballpark it at... fifteen hundred a foot... per side... We are talking about fixing this... right?"
A half-beat later, Stanford coughed out a 'Right' and everyone broke ranks to meet at the middle of the conference table. Jenny's presentation was essentially the same data she'd given to that lawyer but with professional-looking charts, graphs and diagrams. The Book wasn't even looked at. There was an attempt to pin her down on an exact windspeed.
"Too many variables," she countered while making shapes with her hands, "An mass of air this big... at three to four hundred feet for twenty minutes wouldn't have the same effect as something this big pushing on the top two-fifty for an hour... We'd have till the end of summer to worry about any of the really big storms."
That's when one of his underlings asked if City Center could've survived that big storm from the week before. Along with snowfall measured in feet, hurricane force winds had been reported and there were hints that another blow was in the offing for this coming weekend. Even if Jenny had taken the possibility of a strong winter storm into consideration, there simply wasn't enough time to prepare for it. Save for installing backup generators to keep the tuned mass damper powered, all they could do for now was to wire the building with sensors and hope for the best. At least, she offered, there'd be a lesson for the rest of the architectural community.
"You really think it's as bad as all that?"
"I just spent a week in Hartford picking through the remains of their civic arena... and it's not the first time I've had to poke a nose around a Drake and Van De Lay masterpiece. You really think I'd show my face up here if I didn't think something was going down?"
"I don't know," Stanford mused "I seem to recall this young governess at the old Manorhaven club from a few years back... She had quite a few uncomplimentary things to say about what she called 'the ruling class' in this country."
"Oh, she's still around... and she hasn't changed her position on the subject all that much. Mind you... Schadenfreude was never an affectation we Platts felt worth cultivating."
"For someone who doesn't care much for 'our kind', you sure don't seem to mind palling around with the Kennedys.."
"My mother's side of the family was friends with the Bouviers... Mis'ess Kennedy needed advice from an architect for some of the work she's doing... and I needed a face-saving way to get a message to you guys. I really don't have any dealings with the in-laws."
"Face-saving?"
"Well, what else was I gonna do... call the front desk?" With an old-time 'candlestick' telephone, she pantomimed, "Oh, hi... I need to talk to somebody upstairs about your new building... I'm an architect and I have reason to believe it might fall over in a storm... Hello? Hello?"
"I see your point... but just so you know... there are some of us who deeply concerned about this city and try to do what they think is best... Wouldn't have insisted on your design otherwise... Only wish we could've brought you on board when..."
"Oh that's alright... only got into architecture because my dad's company thought they might need one... and we're in the concrete business. Not much call for steel frame engineering in our line. Any chance I could get a squint at one of these joints before we call it a day?"
Jenny was most worried about the places where a diagonal beam met a floor beam without a column to keep it from moving about should it break loose. Fortunately it was a simple matter of popping up a drop ceiling board to inspect one. Someone from Maintenance had to come and rip the drywall off to look at one of the more complex centerline joints.
"Yikes... I hope there's no finger under that!"
Attached to one of the bolts was the empty pinky of a workman's glove. After making sure it was empty, Jenny ran her finger around the bolt in question. To insure a proper fit, she explained, bolts have a tip that breaks away when the prescribed tightness is reached by the nut driver.
"Even an eighth-inch bit of cloth can... Ouch!"
Drawing back a bleeding fingertip is never a good sign. Even worse is having half a bolt come off in your hand when rapping the nut end with a hammer to 'play a hunch'. The break was a long diagonal, invisible to any inspector's eye and with traces of rust inside the wound - the implication being that it's been that way for some time now.
"I do believe you're going to want to replace that one Mister Keach. On the bright side... you can tell the board that you have to open all these joints for inspection anyway... and as long as you're in there... well, it wouldn't hurt to tack on a little more steel, would it now?"
"Only question I have now... is how are we going to break this to the public... I know we have to but... after the razzing I gave those John Hancock boys got over their building... I'll never hear the end of this."
"You might not have to say a thing... if we can fix one of these in under eight hours. At any rate you better let me come up with the press release. Got a shelf full of awards that say I know a thing or two about writing. Hand me a piece of that drywall, sweetie... I need to make a template."
She lined the board up against the exposed frame and marked the cuts she wanted - the thing looked like the chimney side of old One-Twelve Ocean. As their maintenance man cut the board to her specifications, she reassured Mister Keach that if City Center hadn't fallen over by now, it ought to last the rest of the day.
"You might want to tighten up that damper thingie upstairs... I gotta make a few phone calls."
Her first call was to the Del Porto marina to line up some steel. They were holding some for Stacey so that was her second call.
"Stace... I'm sending someone over with a rush job for ya... 'two inch' plate... I need this ASAP and hey... when you're done... send back the template so I can make a shop drawing."
Her next call was to the Montellis. As she explained it, the Platt name on any project involving City Center would be an open admission that something was amiss.
"Wouldya believe I've been on an FBI 'watch list' since the mid-Sixties?"
"Yes, we know. Your dossier is quite a read... You really friends with the Polsinelli crime family?"
"Dunno... which Polsinelli? There were two families by that name growing up in Amityville..."
One of his lawyers leafed through a folder and offered up the name Maria.
"Again... which one? One was southern Italian and the other one's family was from the north and they couldn't be any more different looking... One I hung out with ended up bleaching her hair and changing her name. She said it was because she was going into show business but..."
Nothing like the sounds of a blustery day to break up your train of thought. The only thing with the room's undivided attention was that half a bolt. Shouldn't they evacuate the building?
"This is a tension joint... so an empty building would actually be more dangerous... I wonder how much snow'll stick to that roof. Gotta be two or three tons of ballast right there..."
Jenny spent the hour and a half it took for the Montellis to show up writing a 'honeydew' list for City National to take care of. They'd need to work up a list of all the property owners within a fifteen hundred foot radius of the building - she already had a company in mind. Stacey was only going to be good for the prototype gusset plate and the firm that handled the City Center job had recently left the construction business. They'll have to line up another supplier.
"You're really going to want to install emergency generators for the mass damper... With that thing running... that's about forty years extra to the life of the building right there."
The Montellis showed up in packs of three, with Poppa, Douglas and Leela in the lead and a trio of worker-bee cousins and their equipment cart bringing up the rear. Jenny tossed the bolt half to Doug with a 'looks like you got a bad one'.
Waggling the glove finger like minnow by the tail, she deadpanned, "Only in America can a humble two dollar glove from the wrong side of the tracks hope that with a little luck... some day... he'll grow up to bring down a multi-million dollar office building..."
While the rest of the bolt was cut away, the senior Montellis were brought up to speed on the whole building's-going-to-fall-over situation. Sure they could handle the job but...
"Who are you guys looking to sue? Cuz we just did the welding..."
"Oh... I don't think a liability free-for-all would be in anyone's best interest right now."
At least Mister Keach knew a tenuous legal leg when one wobbled under him.
"The thinking is," Jenny elaborated, "If we can fix these after hours... and that's with the time needed to break down a room and for the cleanup afterwards..."
"Like the other job we did?"
"Like the other job."
It takes quite a spell of time to slice through two-inch steel plate and schlep it to The City so Paul and Stacey had to salmon-swim their way through the stream of homebound secretaries to complete their delivery. It took an hour for an ironworker to replace that bolt so the install ended up being a 'real-time' test. Even with another half-hour lost on account of the rest of that troublesome glove revealing its hidey-hole in a waft of acetylene-ignited smoke, the job was finished with time aplenty for Maintenance to throw up some drywall, slap on a coat of paint and flip back the carpet. Potted plants should keep the more inquisitive hands off the wet paint.
"Anyone else... I'd say maybe their numbers were off... if that's what you want to hear."
Obviously, one doesn't get a major corporation to commit to major structural repairs even in what was looking to be a major emergency on their hands without getting a second opinion from an engineer of their own choosing. At least they were quick about it - he did his survey of the finished job while we were looking for a place to develop the pictures we'd been taking all night. Jenny used the time for a cat-nap in the Chairman's suite. Even the best of us have to get some shut-eye.
"We're big boys around here," replied Duke Morley, City National's top man on the totem pole, "If we have to eat our spinach, so be it. We just want to be sure that's the only thing left on our plate."
"Well you better tuck in good and hearty while I figure out the check... Way I figure it... Actually... Y'know... it looks like you'll still come out ahead."
"Come out ahead? How do you figure?"
"If you don't account for inflation... This might be the one time the cost of correcting comes out cheaper than the cost of erecting."
"Hey now... let's not give these people any funny ideas about the price of their erections."
When you drift into a meeting wearing little more than the chairman's bathrobe and slippers, it's nice to have a cute opening line. Still toweling her hair, Jenny planted herself into the seat that most approximated her place at the Platt family table. Funny the things we notice.
"Oh, don't mind me... I'm just the little kitten in the corner..."
Funny enough, nobody gave her much notice until their engineer inquired...
"So, uh... have you talked to the... to whoever's responsible for... this?"
Stanford cleared his throat before replying that he was looking at her. After getting over his surprise - and mouthing 'Lady Desdemona?' - he asked why she signed off on such a weak redesign.
"I never signed off on the original design. Drake and Van De Lay took care of that. 'Twas only meant to be a Worlds Fair exhibit. 'Design for the Twenty-first Century' and all that..."
"Well... as I was about to say... any other person... I'd say maybe the numbers were off... but I know this lady's work. You're sunk. Pay the two dollars... if you want City Center to be around for the twenty-first century."
"Don't look so glum boys... Just think... If we put this over... why, it'll be the biggest caper since... well... since the other time I took care of a Drake and Van De Lay boo-boo... and you'll be one of the few people in the know."
"The other time?"
"Yeah..." Long pause before Jenny added, "uhm... Riverbay. Man... they really stuck it to me on account of that one... I know you'll have to recover the cost of this somehow but..."
"Oh... why don't we save our powder for a rainy day?"
The next half-hour was spent debating whether or not City Center could survive a blizzard like the one that just blown through the upper midwest and what if anything should be told to City Hall. It was a discussion whose gravity was lightened considerably when Jenny got her clothes back from the cleaners and not wanting to lose her train of thought, put them on right there. Having grown up in a beach town, she'd long mastered the art of dressing oneself under a the flimsiest of cover.
"I figure we could call it 'Project SLEEP'... Service Life Extension Enhancement Program... With computers getting smaller, you'll be putting 'em on every desktop soon if my in-laws have anything to say about it... That's going to be a lot of weight you didn't plan on... Could also say the mass damper's been working so well that you want stiffen up the building to save wear and tear on something that'd be difficult to replace. Speaking of... you better have the company that built yours send their best men down here to wet-nurse that thing till we can get this fixed."
The rest of the morning was spent on strategic details like coordinating people's days off with their schedule and making sure the window washing machine was parked in front of the office being worked on. That was so people looking up from the street wouldn't notice the inevitable flicker of sparks.
"Last thing we need is some fool out-of-towner calling the fire department on us..."
Because New Yorkers would never drop a dime on a burning building.
"What would I have done if you'd given me the brush? Well... I wouldn'tve pulled a 'Howard Rourke'... if that's what you're wondering."
Even the best laid planning has to break for lunch. We had intended to part ways with Jenny and the Duke - our friend Deidre was in town and wanted to try the Four Seasons - but it so happened that's where we all ended up after a fashion... and a change of clothes.
Despite a fresh set of duds, we still got the dirtiest of looks from the maitre d'. Admittedly, we'd been lingering by his table waiting for Deidre, but his enmity seemed personal, like we were a bunch of stupid Midwestern tourists stinking up his joint with our atmosphere. They planted us in a booth next to a couple Park Avenue fossils - who couldn't have been more thrilled.
"Seriously... we couldn't just eat at The Cattleman?"
"I should come halfway across the country for what I can get plenty of at home?"
"Can't argue with that... not the Rainbow Room doesn't mind our presence..."
"You know I don't much care for... Wait... is this one of them places that don't like Jews?"
We started to say something, but we were interrupted by what would be the first of a long series of minor thunks, bumps and brushes to the head from the trays of passing waitresses. Figuring we'd been sitting in traffic, we scooched over to the corner of our banquette.
"Hey kids... check out the old man and his... 'secretary' over at table three."
"Uh... that's Jenny... and one of her clients."
"Looks like he's trying to make her to me... That reminds me... Somebody in this town ordered a couple hundred reprints of that article I wrote about her..."
"Really? You got the... Ow! ...canceled check?"
"They sent a bank check... but I got their address..." She handed us a slip of paper with the address they'd given her, "...said they wanted 'em for something called the Doctors Investment Group?"
Sure enough... "This a box at the Eight Avenue Post Office... the one behind Penn Station. Looks like the Drakes are playing for keeps."
We gave her the low-down about Drake and Van De Lay being one of the other firms in the running for that project Jenny's firm was trying to get. That seemed to give her the idea that she was 'playing for keeps' as well. For obvious reasons, we were obliged to keep quiet on the matter.
"So whaddya want... the beef strokenoff? Get the strokenoff. We're having this New England brisket thingie... Ow! Hey, you just drew blood! Happy now?"
Deidre went with the stroganoff but she asked for it without mushrooms, claiming allergies. She just didn't like them. Her dish came with raw mushrooms shoved into a corner of the plate. We took turns whipping them into the shrubbery. Not like we're ever coming back here. Nothing obvious was done to ours - maybe they were saving that torment for after we've eaten it.
In the meantime we amused Deidre with a summary of the conversation Jenny was having with the Duke - he apparently wanted to hear about her days as Lady Desdemona. She recounted an incident from the time after she'd left the Aquanetters. Her agent wanted to her to make a personal appearance at this big shot's kid's birthday somewhere in Connecticut. She was still involved with the search for Scott and had forgotten about the gig when she turned up at some roadside inn on her way back from Boston. Of course, it was where that party was being held but they had no idea who she was and asked her to leave. Not knowing who they were and not being the 'Don't you know who I am?' type, she did.
The punchline? Duke's daughter Abigail was there, recognized her as Lady Desdemona and went off to call her back, but it was too late, Jenny had already pulled into traffic.
They eventually returned to their luncheon so we gave a wary look down at ours. A half hour of turning over each morsel later and nobody wanted to take a bite. Deidre couldn't raise her fork either so there was nothing to do but ask for the check. For kids raised on ration points, it's a tough thing to walk away from a full plate.
Our charge card had to cross between us before it could be handed over to the waitress and even though it was a joint account, that was excuse enough for them to refuse it. Having declined one, they weren't inclined to take any other and needless to say they weren't going to take a check - certainly not an an 'out-of-town' one from the Bank of Oklahoma. Since we pay for almost everything with charge cards, we keep our money back home.
"Guess we'll just have to leave then," we declared matter-of-factly, "unless you want us to wait for the police. Go ahead, call 'em. We've got nothing else planned today... Of course... with a reporter for a large metropolitan newspaper... and a couple executive producers for a nationally syndicated news program between us... we would have quite a sizable forum for our side of the story... oh... and did we mention... we can get on the Tonight Show any time we want?"
"Now... would you care to tell us what hideous thing we're supposed to have done that would rate the violation of trust we put in the people who serve us? Or do you wish to save your powder for a proper shooting war?"
It was the table captain who imperiously laid out the case against us - he'd been chewing on that incident on that flight to Los Angeles for the last nine years or so. It was bad enough, he opined that we 'of all people' would insult a man in uniform but to let someone else get hauled up to the cockpit on account.
We asked if he'd been on that flight. He had. We asked if he'd heard the whole conversation. He'd heard enough.
"Really... and for that you put a known food allergy on someone's plate? And heaven knows what else on ours? That's attempted murder... Ever occur to you... ever occur to you to wonder how a buck private could afford to be sitting in a First Class seat?"
"I suppose you're going to say you did."
"In a roundabout fashion... We'd booked tickets to L.A. for a friend here in The City... family emergency. We were supposed to join up with her mid-flight but she'd switched seats on us."
He sat with a brooding silence for a spell while we let him have the punchline.
"If she hadn't done so, we might not be sitting here... There was something wrong in the back of the plane that she caught onto in time for the pilots to work around it. You should see the FAA incident report... they had to write the plane off. And for that... some waitress gets stiffed..."
He got the last laugh on us when we went to check that FAA report ourselves - we had it and the passenger manifest up in our office. Nothing even close to the name on his desk had been on that flight. Might not have been his desk but we'd already stopped caring.
The idea of a misplaced grudge and its unintended consequences intrigued us enough to dig out an old story of an actor whose career had been cut short by a savage police beating. He'd been pulled over for a minor traffic stop but he supposedly 'fit the description' of a someone who'd assaulted a fellow officer. Naturally, his profession of innocence was all the excuse they needed to go to town on him. We figured on grafting it to the old chain gang fugitive story with the twist that our hero would get busted out by his home state's National Guard. Our better half wanted to make this a Western. We both hoped to bounce this off Jenny and Eddie once we got started in Memphis.
"Yeah, I know how everyone in town feels... but like they say in the Mafia, business is business."
Poor Janice must've really gotten her hopes up once the word hit town. Not only had Trans-International picked up the Lutzes little ghost story but Eddie had been pulled from our project to head the location management of said production. If that wasn't enough to get Jan out of the town doghouse after all these years - she still gets the testy looks and conversations cut short whenever she walks into local establishments - a rumor was going around that Jenny's firm was designing the 'slipcover' for the house in Jersey they were going to do over to look like old One-twelve.
In truth, Skidmore Ryerson-Platt was only signing off on the set designer's blueprints and Eddie was actually in charge of all New York location units - including one for a vampire flick that was to star an actor known mainly for his perfect tan. Yes, it was a comedy. Not that Jenny was one to spend a lot of time on explanations or apologies. She'd long wanted to be able to bring Hollywood home with her and kept an eye out for screenplays with crowd scenes that could filmed in a day or two. The vampire movie had a good one, but the script called for the outside of a typical Manhattan apartment building. An inquiry had been made about using locations in the Village, but two seasons on the beaten track had wearied everyone in town. Jodi the pig'll be hoofing it in Jersey.
As it turned out, people were back on speaking terms with Janice - if only to praise the 'courage' of her sister. It seems the idea was going around that she must be involved in something really big to go against the feelings of her fellow villagers.
"Domino effect? Oh, it'd go straight down... Well, we could only test for joint strength, not overall structural integrity. Four... maybe five degrees out of true... it'll drop right in its footprint. We are putting together an evacuation plan for a fifteen hundred foot radius just to be on the safe side."
The rest of the week had been a frenetic 'hamster-run through the Catherine wheel of the New York power structure' for Jenny. Thursday was spent at City Hall getting an emergency building permit as well as an expedited electrical permit for those sensors she wanted to rig. An out-of-town firm had started work on those the evening before, such was the haste to get things done. At least the city was in a cooperative mood for once. It was a late Friday afternoon when the location of a 'command center' was settled on and The Phone Company initially offered to send an installer sometime between the hours of ten to four-thirty on the Ides of the month. Duke was able to talk them down to that coming weekend but even he was going to have a wait of 'sometime between the hours of ten to four-thirty'.
The press release was more propitiously timed to Friday after four-thirty. Well aware of the old publicist's trick of burying bad news on the weekend, Jenny crafted a speech with all the facts but none of the alarm for what had to be the grayest suit City National could find to intone before the handful of reporters.
"Nice try Jen... Now... why don't you come down to the office and tell me how bad it really is?"
You'd think that announcing a major retrofit to a year-old skyscraper would raise all sorts of red flags in what was called the 'post-Watergate' era, but only the most cursory of reportage could be found in the weekend editions. Jenny hadn't been at the conference neither she nor the JP&C were mentioned in the release but such trifling details couldn't fool ol' N'eddie. She had her number once mention was made of a 'service life extension enhancement program' and mind you, nobody had even brought up that kicky SLEEP acronym.
"Hard to say... with a good snow any wind'll have some 'meat' on it... Of course... then you'll have all that weight on the roof... Oh... why not do a smart thing and call a snow day."
With the 'command center' a couple rooms next to the Burgundy Room it should have been a simple matter of a elevator ride for the two of them to get together. As it happened, the Edelsons spent that weekend on the far side of Long Island clearing personal items from their beach house in advance of the coming Nor'easter. At least they could be thankful for having heeded Jenny's advice about furnishing the bottom floors with 'lawn and garden' furniture. The last weather report that Sunday night called for 'hurricane force' winds and an especially high tidal surge on account of it being a full moon out. The beast had an eye.
It also had a devilish sense of timing - the snowing didn't start till well after workday crowd began streaming into the city. By noon, if you hadn't started home already, you were pretty much where you were going to be for the duration. Everything shut down. Not all at once mind you, but rather in agonizing increments before a relentless advance that first took out the airports, then side streets, then cross-streets, then avenues, boulevards and expressways, finally cutting off bridges, tunnels, and commuter lines. Even the subways had to shut down once they could no longer get trains in or out of Manhattan. New Yorkers being New Yorkers, simply drew skis and poles from storage and continued on their merry ways.
We were waiting out the storm up in the ESB and busied ourselves with the task of slapping together one of those bullshit stories on the coming Ice Age. This was at the urgent request of Panorama's affiliates. Funny, but ever since the economy went into the doldrums a half-dozen years ago, people have glommed onto all this end-of-the-world nonsense. Once things pick up, Jenny noted, the exact same data will be interpreted as evidence of runaway global warming. necessitating major restrictions on industry.
"Just remember kids... Once they started moving weather stations from downtown to the airports, world temperature readings dropped five, maybe ten degrees on account."
She had troubles of her own, between checks of City Center telemetry and futile attempts to get in touch with Duke, Stanford or any of the Montellis, she was tasked with banging out an article for the Panorama wire service on 'why City Center fell'. Just in case.
We had clued her in on the Drakes and what little we'd been able to find out about what they were up to. Never did find the time to stake out the post office boxes. Of course, she insisted on her usual even-handed approach to assigning levels of responsibility. The basic gist of the article was that everyone was doing their job but when a seemingly minor change to her original design was made, the potential consequences remained hidden through the rest of the process.
Happens all the time.
No, really.
From memory, she cited the case of the de Havilland Comet jetliner's metal fatigue problems and how the standard methods of testing at the time not only failed to give a realistic simulation, but had actually strengthened components for the duration of their run. She was even inclined to be generous to the steel company that initiated the fateful change from welds to bolts. It wasn't their fault The City's engineers hadn't taken an unorthodox design into account when putting their regulatory hand in.
This sordid tale was related between sips of Mai Tai cocktails and bites of Jamaican chicken that was grilling on a hibachi set up outside the Burgundy Room's kitchenette window while we ferried beach pails of nutritional sustenance downstairs to Heather and Alberto. They were taping a standup outside on the ESB 'platform' five storeys above the street. Even with klieg lights run on extension cords from the building, they were often barely visible though the driving snow and had to take frequent breaks to wait out the stronger downbursts. If we were fool enough to poke a nose out the window during said lulls, they'd let loose a fusillade of snowy vengeance in our general direction for being the Marlin Perkins to their Jim Fowler.
It was all in good fun but as soon as they finished up downstairs N'eddie had them schlepp up to the observation deck to train a camera on City Center. Despite assurances that the weather over Manhattan weren't nearly as bad as what Long Island was getting, not only did she want a 'death watch' but she insisted that Jenny sit for a talking heads piece. While taping B-roll of the event recorders, one went from a lethargic squiggle to a flatline at full-scale high - suggesting that it was no longer transmitting. It was on an upper floor and not one to fail first and looking out the window, everyone convinced themselves that they could pick out the lights from that slanty top.
Jenny was on the phone trying to rouse the crew tending the mass damper when another one went dead. Then a third one went down.
"...the hell? This is no 'boating accident'!"
She put down the phone to ask if we'd seen the company directory City National had given her.
"That thing with the plastic binder ring? You've been shading the TV set with it..."
Sure enough, it was on the TV cart brought up from Panorama to preview camera footage. Such was Jenny's thoroughness, the page ends bristled with little plastic tabs noting the closest office to each sensor. As another sensor went out she flipped to the next one along the line, got back on the horn to start dialing.
"Hadn't you oughta call the cops first?"
"They'd never get there in time... Anyway... I wanna have some fun first..."
She must've had some sort of timing in mind because as soon as she finished dialing another sensor went off line. She let it ring a couple times before hanging up and turning to the next number. That one also went through as another sensor was cut off. She let us do the next few while she tried to track down either Duke or Stanford on another line. Neither were unavailable so she left messages and called the emergency number given to her by The City.
"If you can get an officer over to City Center right now, there's somebody in the building. They've been cutting... Yeah... there goes another one... They've been cutting wires... to the stress sensors... seems like they're working from the top floor down... I think... I can get 'em down to the lobby..."
A few long silences and 'uh-huhs' later she put down the receiver with the Sigh of Disappointment.
"What's the next office on the list?"
Jenny let the phone ring long enough for our mystery saboteur to get there, do his business and let curiosity get enough of the better for him to pick up - which he did.
"Hi there! Busy night, huh? I suppose you have your reasons... Uh, huh... Well, I'm going to up here all night while you're cutting those... Why don't you do us both a favor and unplug the master transponder on the service floor so we can both go to bed? Big orange box... can't miss it."
As it turned out, he could.
"God-damned little goddamn!"
The mannarisms of Duke Morley's reaction when he and Jenny finally got together to total up the damages had the distinction of being recorded in the Heinz sisters' little beige book of character observations they were recording in the furtherance of their acting studies. With only the briefest meeting, they'd already noted a pattern of repeating words in 'the front and backs of sentences'.
"You hafta be a 'hafta-be' don'tcha..."
It didn't take a lot of detective work to figure out that someone from the electricians local had gotten wind of a job being done with the benefit of union labor. Nothing had been stolen nor was there any more damage than the slashed sensor wires. The big orange box was untouched. As the Duke fumed and the Twins made their notes, Jenny calmly flipped through a telephone book. She looked down to the street before handing the book over to Duke. He too looked down to the street.
"God damned little god-damn..."
Twenty storeys below us were the Manhattan offices of the attorney representing the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers for the tri-state region.
"Do me a favor and take a look out your window... M'kay...What do you see? Now, take a look at your hand... What do you see? Now, if you had a problem with us, would it have killed you to pick up the goddamned phone and give us a heads-up before pulling a sniveling little stunt like that?"
It was when Duke suggested the two should meet on a 'field of honor' that Jenny took the phone to explain, "We kinda had to get this up before that big blow came through. Didn't really have time to job this out. This was specialty work... company had its own engineers on this... Funny you should ask... We weren't all that sure this building was going to make it... and thanks to your man, we can't be sure something didn't go snap, crackle, pop..."
As she continued, he turned to consider the fifty-nine storey domino now looming over him. We should note that the winds over Manhattan had more or less peaked when N'eddie's ordered her death watch so Jenny already had enough usable data to work up a performance graph. City Center wasn't any worse for the experience. Of course, he had no way of knowing that and if he had to sweat the next few months on account... well, let that be a lesson.
"Vee vere talking... and vee haff decided vee vant to make sex vith you two..."
We did plenty of sweating on our own account once arrived in Memphis. It was hot - breasts-sloshing-around-in-their-own-gravy hot - and this was mid-April. With pre-production work still going on, the Heinz sisters weren't needed till early May so they killed the time by getting in a little more English practice. It seems Jenny had the bright idea of putting them to work on that census she wanted. That involved schlepping around to all the offices and apartments in the shadow of City Center, getting phone numbers and critical information like whether there was anyone that'd be difficult to evacuate - the handicapped, the bedridden, anybody on a ventilator. She figured that people would take their efforts for a class project and think nothing of it. They had been taking lessons from the Actors Studio.
We'd been offered rooms at the Schülberg estate but with so many locations around the city to run around to, we opted to take an efficiency in this Southern belle from the Roaring Twenties a half-block from a park that our production assistant found for the crew. This was one of those buildings for people at the beginning or ending of their lives and with the colleges out of session and a new senior citizen tower just opening up next door, we practically had the place to ourselves. To this day, we can lovingly rattle off an inventory...
Main room - closet to right of door, tall dresser to left of door. Daybed next to dresser, door to kitchen next to closet. Night stand beside daybed, chamber pot underneath, radio, clock and bankers lamp and telephone on top. Pens, paper and shooting scripts in drawer. Radiator in metal housing under the window with box fan - later air conditioner - in window. Potted fern in hanger. bookshelf with random collection of paperbacks and video cassettes of daily rushes, along wall between kitchen, Army-green footlocker storing bed linens with an orange Bradford television and a portable video cassette recorder on top of it next to kitchen entry.
Kitchen, dining and bathroom side - same size as main room, divided three ways with half being the dining area. That space contained an icebox - full-sized, two chairs, tubular steel table - linoleum top, chromed metal edges - with built-in fold-down ironing board next to entry. Other half of room was split between the bathroom on left - toilet, sink, medicine cabinet over sink, walk-in shower - and a cooking alcove on right - stove, sink, cabinets above. Alcove had its own window.
Not that we ever saw much daylight out of them - like back home on the range our workday usually ran from 'can see' to 'can't see'. In the mornings and afternoons we'd film all the getting in and out of cars and going in and out of buildings scenes. The fun part was keeping track of all the costume changes. Mid-days we'd do all our 'in-car' scenes. That involved dragging the talent behind a special camera rig so we'd try to get those in when traffic was lightest. No point in angering the natives any more than we had to.
Our time in Memphis included two holiday weekends so we arranged shooting for the lynching and sniper scenes around them so the locals could watch the proceedings on a day off. Blowing up a park full of extras proved remarkably trouble and injury free. Jenny has suggested a preliminary flashing of the strobe lights in the effects pots to get people to blink their eyes before the brown sugar 'dirt' and rubber 'nails' went flying. Avi figured out a way to synchronize that pre-flash to our camera rig so that the shutter was always closed when it went off. Nobody had an eye put out.
Speaking of eyes, Enzo, our production coordinator, was fond of polishing his glass one between takes. He was that actor whose face was practically torn off by the police. He'd been patched up reasonably enough - a mustache covered the worst of the physical scarring. As for the emotional damage, he seemed more bothered that someone else might have died for want of the blood used in saving his life - his was a rare type and had taken the supply for an entire Provincia.
He was intrigued enough to suggest a scenario for how the cop could have gotten killed without our protagonist knowing - rainy night, stop under a bridge to read a map, suspicious officer rolls up to check but is clipped by a passing truck rounding a blind corner, car drives off unaware with tire tracks on outstretched palm the only clue for investigators. He suggested a Jimmy Stewart prison movie - the one where he invents a special carabina - we might want to lift ideas from.
More of our off-time was spent indulging his interest in the 'paranormale'. He had a pack of those 'Zener' cards and two sets of twins to play with. The other twins - when they weren't flirting with him or practicing their Hochschule Italian - didn't do much better than guessing. He really brightened up when we got nearly every card and wasn't at all disappointed when we admitted to 'cheating'. While we only have a visible arm each we still have bits of ligature and some of the circuitry for the missing ones and thus are able to 'draw' the images on the card for the other. Of course, the Heinzes just had to try that for themselves in spare moments between takes.
"...little two-headed freak!"
We try to stay good-humored about ourselves - did we not introduce ourselves to David Byrne of the Talking Heads as his most ironic fans? We let pass the refreshingly honest comments and inquires from curious little kids in the checkout line at Piggly Wiggly. We did want to draw a line when, in trying to get change for the sodie machine down in our building's laundromat, the lady we'd buttonholed insisted on us keeping the dollar we'd proffered, but elderly Southern woman will not be denied an act of noblesse oblige.
To get everyone adjusted for night shooting and to give ourselves at least one day of rest, we'd thrown a sort of company picnic over in the park by our building. Nothing special, just your basic Craft Services fare with burgers, dogs, sheet pizzas and these pressed-meat rib-like thingies soaked in barbeque sauce thrown in because we got a bargain from the local restaurant supply house. The Heinz sister were having their own fun handing out Freezie-pops to little kids from the ice cream van we'd leased for the production. With only the most informal of security, we'd suggested the twins park their van well away from the picnic so that park-goers wouldn't get the idea they could sneak in on our chow line.
When everyone had settled down to games of boccie ball and horseshoes, we got down to business with the Lucius Nicholson, the latest addition to our repertory. An adventuresome sort, he'd tried to run away with the circus at the tender age of eight - they did send him back - and now that his age was in the double digits, was making a name for himself in France as 'Le Singe'. We had engaged his services to for a scene where a little kid climbs a tree to take a multitude of Polaroid pictures of the twins as they slept - at their behest. They would then be planted on a character they wanted to sandbag as a pervert. Unfortunately the local talent proved unable to climb a tree in an way that looked good on flim. We were hoping to do better.
"Ahhhh... I f-f-fart in your general di-rection!"
As we tried to work out blocking in the sandbox with our stunt boy, we were gradually being made aware of a pack of rowdy teenaged girls, shouting and cussing at the playground gate. Now, we're a soft-spoken pair - with an ear just inches from each others mouth we have to be - so when our better half let rip a line from that Holy Grail movie it was a low growl that Lucius had to ask to be repeated. He was also curious as to why Americans would be shouting 'Negre' towards his vicinity and given the girls were more or less of his color range, we were at a loss for an answer. No way we were going to tell him that wasn't French.
"Votre mère a un hamster et votre père l'éperlan de baie de sureau!"
In retrospect, it was probably not the best of times to riff on the French Knights but how often do you get a chance to have their insults to King Arthur translated to the Mother Tongue by an expert in the field? It was only when the seething mass started moving towards us that we had any inkling that we'd been in a shouting match with them and had crossed some line. Who knew 'silly English kin-i-gihts' was fightin' words in these parts?