Swimming to Catalina Read Online Free PDF Page A

cart pulled up, and a tall, slender woman got out and came toward him. She seemed to be in her late thirties and was comfortably but elegantly dressed n a pale Italian suit; her hair was a deep auburn and fell around her shoulders. “Mr. Barrington?” she asked. “I’m Betty Southard.”
    “I’m Stone,” he replied, shaking her hand.
    “Welcome to Centurion Studios; hop in and we’ll get going.”
    Stone got into the golf cart and Betty pulled out of the lot and soon turned left. Stone was suddenly submerged in a wave of déjà vu; the street was over-whelminglyfamiliar, as if out of some long-recurring dream. “It’s…I mean, it’s…”
    Betty laughed. “A lot of people have that reaction,” she said. “I suppose a couple of hundred movies have featured this street in one or another of its guises. Have you spent much time in L.A.?”
    “No, I was out here a few years ago for a couple of days, but the company was not nearly so nice.”
    “Why, thank you,” she said, smiling.
    “I wasn’t flattering you all that much; I was a cop at the time, and my partner and I came out here to extradite a small-time Mafia hitman. He weighed about three hundred and fifty pounds, and the three of us sat in adjacent seats, in steerage, all the way back to New York.”
    She laughed aloud, a pleasing, unexpected reaction. “I’m glad there’s more room on my cart seat,” she said.
    He smiled. “I’m not.”
    She laughed again and turned down a street with a large office building on one side and a row of nondescript smaller buildings on the other. “This is executive row, more or less,” she said. “Mr. Regenstein’s office and those of most of the studio executives are in the big building; the smaller ones are occupied by producers with production deals, small businesses who work with the studio, and, of course, writers and actors.”
    “Actors have offices?”
    She nodded. “Wait until you see Vance’s. We’re on the way to Stage Ten right now, though. Vance is shooting a big scene, and he thought you might find it interesting.”
    “I’m sure I will.”

    She turned down a side street and drove between a series of immense hangarlike buildings, each with a huge number painted on the front. They stopped in front of number 10, Betty parked the cart, and they entered through a small door, past a guard. As soon as they were inside, a loud bell rang, several people shouted, “QUIET!!!,” and Betty held a finger to her lips. She pulled him around a pile of equipment, and Stone was astonished to find an entire New England farmhouse sitting in the middle of the soundstage, surrounded by about a foot of fresh snow. As he watched, a series of commands was shouted by someone somewhere, ending in “ACTION!” a car drove up to the front of the house, and Vance Calder got out, carrying half a dozen brightly wrapped packages, walked up the front walk, opened the door, and walked inside the house, closing the door behind him.
    “CUT!” somebody yelled. “Print that! Next setup, Scene Eleven, back yard!”
    “I’ve seen that house somewhere,” Stone said.
    “Probably; it’s a pretty close copy of one in Litchfield County, Connecticut.”
    “Why don’t they just shoot it there? Wouldn’t it be cheaper than building it here?”
    “Absolutely not. Here, the director has total control of everything—weather, light, snow. He doesn’t have to wait for all the variables to be just right, and when he’s ready for interiors, the walls come off, exposing the living room, kitchen, et cetera, and the camera can roll right in. They’re getting their money’s worth out of that house, believe me.”
    “I’ll take your word for it.”
    “They’re setting up in the back yard; would you like to go inside?”

    “Sure.”
    She led the way up the front path and through the front door. They walked into an entrance hall, then into a large, comfortably furnished living room. There were books and pictures, magazines on the