Free Skin Deep by Timothy Hallinan

the cameras stared after him. One at a time, the lights went off. The actress stood there, looking lost.
    "That's enough of that," Toby said as he joined us. "You'd think it was something worth watching. Stunt double's next, right, sweetheart?" he said to Janie.
    Janie glanced at her clipboard, but by the time she looked up again, Toby was already gone. "Right," she said anyway. "You asshole." She looked up at me almost guiltily. "A girl's got to express herself," she said.
    Toby reached the forlorn little band gathered in front of the roll of blue paper. He put his arm around Dixie's neck, clowning for the still camera. Dixie tried to pull away and then submitted in a resigned fashion. He even smiled. It was the complicated smile of a confirmed pessimist who's just been proven right by being sentenced to death. The big stand-in, John, had ambled over. He stood there, loose-jointed, watching.
    "Hey, champ," Toby called to me. "Come over here and meet some people."
    "His master's voice," Janie mumbled.
    "Ease up, okay?" I said. "I'd like it if we could stay friends."
    "Champ," Toby said. "We're being a little rude here."
    "Go to it, champ," Janie said. Feeling like the Incredible Shrinking Man, I went over to Toby, who had slipped an arm around the youngish woman's waist.
    "My man," Toby said, daring me to contradict him, "this is the extraordinary Betsi, with an i. Betsi with an i is the photo editor of one of America's favorite magazines, a magazine you probably read every day of your life. And this is, um, this is Betsi's photographer."
    "Bert," said the lanky man behind the camera.
    "Who said that?" Toby asked. "Do I need to be told the photographer's name? Bert here is my favorite photographer, champ. I asked for old Bert, didn't I, Betsi?"
    "Sure, Toby," Betsi said mechanically. "You always ask for Bert."
    "Always," Toby said, "unless I ask for someone else." He pinched the skin beneath Betsi's blouse. "Simeon here is supposed to keep me out of trouble. What the hell? Somebody has to do it."
    "And good luck to both of us," I said.
    "So what do we want here, Bets?" Toby turned his attention to her. "The usual head-and-hunk shots, or something special? And where's the mirror?"
    "In the car," Betsi said. "Bert—"
    "Not going to do anyone much good in the car, is it?" Toby said. "Are you busy or something, Bert?"
    Bert scurried off to the station wagon and came back lugging a full-length mirror, which he set up behind the camera.
    "There I am," Toby said, passing a hand over his hair. "Let's go. Forty minutes, no more. These clothes okay?"
    "Fabulous," Betsi said a little nervously. "Couldn't be better."
    "Does the film have to age or something?" Toby impatiently asked Bert. Bert ducked his head under the cloth draped over the back of the camera and went to work.
    For the next fifteen minutes or so I got a crash course in star making. Toby worked the camera as though it were a long-distance telephone line over which he was talking to a wife he'd been deceiving for months. He teased it, flirted with it, arched his brows at it, gave it the smile of the century. Before every shot he checked the mirror. Bert's head never emerged from the black cloth. The people across the street edged closer, and Betsi lit one cigarette off another, stubbing out the old ones against her shoe with ravaged-cuticle fingers. Dixie stood uselessly on the side- lines, now and then asking Toby to check his hair in the mirror. Big John just watched silently, his mouth hanging open and his hands opening and closing on air.
    Bert emerged from the black cloth like a Muslim woman renouncing the veil. He looked up at the sky, checking the light, and said, "That's enough heads." He pulled the camera back three or four feet.
    "Toby," Betsi said, "we're going three-quarters now. Can you give us some profiles?"
    "Which side?" Toby took a quick look at the mirror, giving a quick tug at the skin on either side of his eyes.
    "Up to you," Betsi said.
    Janie spoke