chauffeur. "I do believe the girl is hungry."
I nodded. "Bouffe, merci, mademoiselle!"
Then I saw the pix on the wall behind her.
There were perhaps a hundred of them, all depicting the same woman, close-ups and stills from old films and others of her accepting awards – small, golden figures with bald heads – framed and displayed in a monomaniacal exhibition of vanity. I thought I recognised the woman in those shots, though the face was subtly different, the planes of her cheeks altered by cosmetics to conform to some bygone ideal of beauty. Also – but this was ridiculous – the woman on the wall seemed older than the woman who stood before me.
She saw the scars on my neck that the collar failed to hide. She reached out, and I pulled my head away. Her lips described a moue , as if to calm a frightened animal, and she unfastened the top three buttons of my cheongsam .
She stared at me. I felt the weight of pity in her eyes that I came to understand only later – at the time I hated her for it. The usual reaction to my deformity was horror or derision, and I could handle that. But pity was rare, and I could not take pity from someone so beautiful.
She said in a whisper, "Take her away." And, before I could dive at her, the chauffeur dragged me from the silent room and frog-marched me through the mansion. I was holding back my tears as we hurried outside and through the grounds. He opened a pair of wrought iron gates, pushed me to the sidewalk and kicked me in the midriff. I gasped for breath and closed my eyes as his footsteps receded and the gate squeaked shut. Then, painfully, I pulled myself to my feet, fumbled with the buttons at my chest and limped back to the main drag.
I knew the woman. I'd seen her many, many times before.
That same face...
Her poise, the way she had of making her every movement a unique performance.
Stephanie Etteridge.
But that was impossible, of course.
~
Dan was out when I got back. I left the lights off, swung the Batan II terminal from the ceiling and dialled the catalogue of classic Etteridge movies. I sent out for a meal, sat back in the flickering luminescence of the screen and tried not to feel sorry for myself.
For the next hour I ate dim sum and noodles and stared at a soporific succession of dated entertainments. Even in the better films the acting was stylised, the form limited. At the end of every scene I found myself reaching for the participation-bar on the keyboard, only to be flashed the message that I was watching a pre-modern film and that viewer participation was impossible. So I sat back and fumed and watched the story-line go its unalterable way, like a familiar nightmare.
There was no doubting that, despite the limitations of the form, Stephanie Etteridge had something special. If I could suspend comparison between her movies and the holographic, computerised participation dramas of today, I had to admit that Etteridge had a certain star quality, a charismatic presence.
When I'd seen enough, I returned to the main menu and called up the Life of Stephanie Etteridge, a eulogistic documentary made only two years ago.
It was the usual life of a movie star; there was the regular quota of marriages and affairs, drug addictions and suicide attempts; low points when her performances were below standard and the fickle public switched allegiance for a time to some parvenu starlet with good looks and better publicity – and high points when she fought back from cocaine addiction, the death of a husband and universal unpopularity to carry off three successive Oscars in films the critics came to hail as classics.
And then the final tragedy.
The film industry died a death, overnight – a Paris 'night', that is. In one month the studios in Hollywood, Bombay, Rio and Sydney shut up shop, and the stars found themselves redundant. In Geneva, a cartel of computer-wizards developed Inter-Active computer-simulated holographics, and actors, directors, script-writers were a
I nodded. "Bouffe, merci, mademoiselle!"
Then I saw the pix on the wall behind her.
There were perhaps a hundred of them, all depicting the same woman, close-ups and stills from old films and others of her accepting awards – small, golden figures with bald heads – framed and displayed in a monomaniacal exhibition of vanity. I thought I recognised the woman in those shots, though the face was subtly different, the planes of her cheeks altered by cosmetics to conform to some bygone ideal of beauty. Also – but this was ridiculous – the woman on the wall seemed older than the woman who stood before me.
She saw the scars on my neck that the collar failed to hide. She reached out, and I pulled my head away. Her lips described a moue , as if to calm a frightened animal, and she unfastened the top three buttons of my cheongsam .
She stared at me. I felt the weight of pity in her eyes that I came to understand only later – at the time I hated her for it. The usual reaction to my deformity was horror or derision, and I could handle that. But pity was rare, and I could not take pity from someone so beautiful.
She said in a whisper, "Take her away." And, before I could dive at her, the chauffeur dragged me from the silent room and frog-marched me through the mansion. I was holding back my tears as we hurried outside and through the grounds. He opened a pair of wrought iron gates, pushed me to the sidewalk and kicked me in the midriff. I gasped for breath and closed my eyes as his footsteps receded and the gate squeaked shut. Then, painfully, I pulled myself to my feet, fumbled with the buttons at my chest and limped back to the main drag.
I knew the woman. I'd seen her many, many times before.
That same face...
Her poise, the way she had of making her every movement a unique performance.
Stephanie Etteridge.
But that was impossible, of course.
~
Dan was out when I got back. I left the lights off, swung the Batan II terminal from the ceiling and dialled the catalogue of classic Etteridge movies. I sent out for a meal, sat back in the flickering luminescence of the screen and tried not to feel sorry for myself.
For the next hour I ate dim sum and noodles and stared at a soporific succession of dated entertainments. Even in the better films the acting was stylised, the form limited. At the end of every scene I found myself reaching for the participation-bar on the keyboard, only to be flashed the message that I was watching a pre-modern film and that viewer participation was impossible. So I sat back and fumed and watched the story-line go its unalterable way, like a familiar nightmare.
There was no doubting that, despite the limitations of the form, Stephanie Etteridge had something special. If I could suspend comparison between her movies and the holographic, computerised participation dramas of today, I had to admit that Etteridge had a certain star quality, a charismatic presence.
When I'd seen enough, I returned to the main menu and called up the Life of Stephanie Etteridge, a eulogistic documentary made only two years ago.
It was the usual life of a movie star; there was the regular quota of marriages and affairs, drug addictions and suicide attempts; low points when her performances were below standard and the fickle public switched allegiance for a time to some parvenu starlet with good looks and better publicity – and high points when she fought back from cocaine addiction, the death of a husband and universal unpopularity to carry off three successive Oscars in films the critics came to hail as classics.
And then the final tragedy.
The film industry died a death, overnight – a Paris 'night', that is. In one month the studios in Hollywood, Bombay, Rio and Sydney shut up shop, and the stars found themselves redundant. In Geneva, a cartel of computer-wizards developed Inter-Active computer-simulated holographics, and actors, directors, script-writers were a
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