Indigo: The Cat's Meow

Excerpt

Those first two weeks, Fred spent much of his time with other accountants in an interesting set of tutorials about studio practices. The local bookkeeping used techniques about which his fellow accounting students had talked in hushed and lively tones after a few drinks at Beta Alpha Psi get-togethers. Such methods were supposedly distinctive to bookmakers and bootleggers.

"The results are impeccable within the company and truly inventive when presenting totals to the outside world," was Fred's reported opinion to his new boss.

"So I'm told. Your job will include checking that invention hasn't landed on my desk when I need impeccable to do my job. That shouldn't overstrain your professional conscience."

Fred considered and then nodded.

"Later, I'll turn you loose on individual shoots, so you can get a good sense of who's doing what and for how much. After a few months, you'll work for a while assisting a couple of my better line producers with their projects. You should be able to more or less do their jobs if you're going to report on them, but right now you don't know enough about what we're doing here to try."

"Mmmhmm," Fred agreed. He didn't like talking with his mouth full. After swallowing his bite of egg salad sandwich, he said, "To sub as assistant producer, I'll need to know a lot more about making movies. Hell, about movies altogether. I didn't spend nearly as much time at the picture palaces downtown as I would've wanted. Too busy. Are you going to eat that?"

Carl looked at the roast beef sandwich in front of him with an absent frown. He was wearing what Fred now had enough proximity to tell was a pricy double-breasted suit. While the change from waist overalls helped Fred keep his mind on business, skilled tailoring revealed that Carl had been losing weight. There didn't seem to be enough problems at Metropolitan Pictures to account for the shrinkage; Carl's first full slate of talkies was out in the theaters and, as far as Fred could tell through the mists of studio bookkeeping, doing very well.

Fred couldn't consider another possibility, that his boss was ill, without a pang. He had moved past his first carnal interest into the immature fascination stage, which more time and familiarity should wear down to a pleasant working relationship with a little extra vim to it. That was Fred's opinion, at least, and he was clutching it tight. But any of those three states of mind would've disinclined him to accept whatever was going on here without some prodding.

"Sandwich?" Fred tried asking. "Yummy?"

He would have predicted a scorching look, but instead he got a level stare, followed by a deliberate, enormous bite. The, "mmm, mmm, mmm," was interspaced with chewing.

"Thank Christ. I didn't want to try making airplane noises to get that hanger open."

This time, Carl followed up a meaningful gaze at the roast beef with one at Fred's head.