The Spiral Path

by Mary Jo Putney

  Rainey thought of the climactic scenes that would be shot the next day. They would grind away whatever reserves she had left. Only then could she could fly home to her little house in the canyon. "You've called the charter company about my flight back to L.A.?"

  "Your private jet shall await your pleasure after Charles Winfield's memorial service."

  "Want to fly back with me? It's no problem to drop you off in Baltimore."

  "Thanks, but I want to take advantage of being in the British Isles. This morning Laurie and I decided to go to Ireland for a week's vacation."

  "She's fun. You'll have a good time." Rainey glanced at her friend. "I've really enjoyed having you on this job, Val. I ... I don't know if I could have made it through without you."

  "You've helped me pick up the pieces of my fractured love life half a dozen times. I'm glad I was able to help you for once."

  Outside the studio door their car waited patiently. Rainey climbed inside and sank into the seat as they began the trip back to central London. "If I offered you a permanent job, would you take it?"

  "No." Val gazed out the window, her brow furrowed. "This has been a great experience, and it's motivated me to go home and make some changes. But not California, and not the entertainment business."

  "You're wise. Sometimes I think that moviemaking is an incurable disease." Rainey smiled self-mockingly. "The business makes me crazy, but I wouldn't want to do anything else. Especially if I can make movies on my terms, not Hollywood's."

  "The Centurion will make that possible," Val said confidently. "But success and wild acclaim are months away. Tonight I have a better solution to the world's ills."

  Rainey grinned. "Ice cream?"

  "Right." Val fished out her cell phone. "I'll call room service so they can get started on our dinners right away. After you've showered and eaten, we'll find out if these Brits can made a decent hot fudge sundae."

  Feeling less drained, Rainey settled back in her seat. Old friends and ice cream were cures for a good number of the world's ills.

  As Kenzie opened the classic Victorian straight razor, light glittered menacingly off the hollow ground blade. He'd borrowed the razor from the set, where it had rested innocently among Randall's other toiletries.

  In recent years, the strange form of self-mutilation that drove people to cut themselves had come out of the closet and onto the airwaves. He'd watched a talk show on the subject once, where young girls rather proudly explained how the physical pain of cutting themselves had mysteriously relieved their unbearable inner pain. He understood, having cut himself sometimes when he was young.

  He rested the blade against his arm. Not the inside wrist, where a cut could cause bleeding to death, but higher up, on his forearm. He imagined the razor slicing through skin and muscle. First there would be shock at seeing the severed flesh and knowing it should hurt. Then the pain would explode, throbbing, so overpowering that for a time it would obliterate everything else in the world.

  He increased pressure on the razor, wondering how hard he'd have to press to break the skin. Then, exhaling roughly, he snapped the razor shut and tossed it onto a chair. He wasn't that hard up.

  Not yet.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 28

  Dinner, shower, and a very respectable hot fudge sundae restored Rainey to the point where she could watch the dailies and note the best scenes. Great stuff. If everything came together as she could see it in her mind, they'd have a fine movie. Not a blockbuster, but a moving, well-crafted film that should find an appreciative audience.

  But her long nap left her awake and twitchy after Val had gone yawning to bed. Restless and wanting to stretch her muscles, she quietly left the hotel for a walk. The killing production schedule had meant less exercise than usual, and the sessions she'd managed had been early and abbreviated.

  As she stepped out onto Park Lane, she drew the cool English air into her lungs. It was good to be alone and anonymous. Brooding was more difficult when there were other people around, and she was in a broody mood for sure.

  Tomorrow they'd finish shooting the movie. The wrap party would be that night, and the next morning, a small, private memorial service for Charles Winfield. Then she and Kenzie would go their separate ways once and for all.

  Of course they'd see each other occasionally in the future. There would be a premiere for The Centurion, probably joint publicity appearances. Since they traveled in similar circles, there would be casual meetings now and then. She'd pretend that seeing him didn't make her feel kicked in the stomach, even if he had some gorgeous female on his arm. They'd chat. Terribly civilized. Then she'd probably go to the nearest ladies' room and throw up. Her stomach felt queasy just thinking about it. Eventually, the pain would fade to a dull ache, but she didn't expect that to be soon.

  Loss was still a day and a half away, though. Tomorrow she must endure her most challenging scene yet, with Sarah and Randall resolving their problems in the bed where they'd finally consummated their marriage. Having affirmed their love and commitment, they would decide that their best hope for a new life was to leave England and its suffocating restrictions and expectations. Australia was an easy choice. Randall's uncle had settled there many years earlier, and his letters to the family described a raw, energetic land where a man could be free in ways impossible in the Old World.

  Traveling halfway around the world appealed to the adventurer in Sarah, and her intuition told her that their marriage would prosper there. Nonetheless, the thought of leaving home and family was wrenching. When he realized that, Randall would say there was no reason to emigrate. They could manage very well in England.

  Sarah, at her most noble and self-sacrificing, would quote Ruth's Biblical speech to Naomi in perfect King James prose.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  "Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge.

  Thy people shall be my people, and thy God, my God.

  Where thou diest, will I die, and will I be buried.

  The Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me."

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  From the creative point of view, Rainey knew that speech was exactly right. A product of her time and place, a young woman coming into her strength, Sarah would freely and gladly follow her husband anywhere.

  But as a modern woman, Rainey hated the way Sarah gave up everything for a man. When and if she produced and directed another movie--a horrific prospect at the moment--she'd use a modern setting, and a relationship where a man and a woman had to struggle to achieve a balance between them. Equality was more interesting, and more difficult, than a relationship with one party dominant. In fact, she'd read a novel a couple of years earlier that might serve as the foundation for a really good screenplay...

  Between horror and amusement, she realized that she was actually considering future projects. Moviemaking really was an incurable disease.

  Her path eastward took her past Buckingham Palace and St. James Park, then down to the Houses of Parliament, a dramatic sight at night. Turning north, she started along the Victoria Embankment, a handsome walkway that edged the Thames.

  As she walked, she wondered why Sarah's self-sacrificing nature irritated her so much. Rainey believed in a woman's right to choose her path in life, and a man's right to do the same. So why did Sarah's submissiveness make her crazy?

  With a jolt, she recognized that her reaction was really about Clementine. Even as a little girl called Rainbow, she'd known her mother was too anxious to please the men in her life. Clementine would become so involved with her current lover that she often neglected her career and her daughter. A classic "woman who loved too much."

  Some of those lovers treated her in ways that would drive any self-respecting woman out the door, and Rainbow had been furious on her mother's behalf. No wonder Rainey had grown up swearing she'd never, ever let a man take advantage of her. She'd kept that promise, too, which was why she disliked playing the obliging Sara
h.

  Beginning to tire, Rainey sat on a bench and gazed across the water. Next up the river was Waterloo Bridge. Whenever she saw it, she thought of the old movie with Vivien Leigh and Robert Taylor. She and her friends had watched it on television one night in high school. They'd all been outraged by the story of a gentle English ballerina who fell in love with a handsome, aristocratic soldier during wartime.

  The pair became engaged, but the dancer lost her job by cutting work to bid her beloved adieu at the train station. After hearing a false report of his death, she'd become a prostitute to support herself. Then her fiance returned from the dead and took her off to meet his family, not knowing what she'd done. Riddled by guilt, the dancer later killed herself by jumping in front of a bus on Waterloo Bridge. In 1940, it wasn't enough for a woman to repent of her sins--she'd had to die messily.

  The twit. If she feared the truth coming out, she should have confessed her fall from grace to her fiance, who might have loved her enough to marry her anyhow. And if not--well, the girl was young, she could have built a new life. The movie was supposed to be a great romantic classic, but there was nothing romantic about stupidity and guilt. Rainey much preferred stories of redemption and reconciliation.

  Of course, Sarah was not the dancer of Waterloo Bridge. Her head was screwed on much better. Better than Rainey's, probably.

  But she didn't envy Sarah's admirably level-headed personality. What she admired, and resented, was Sarah's ability to make an absolute commitment to a man.

  Raine Marlowe, twenty-first-century woman, had never made such a commitment in her life. She'd been so determined not to be the victim of a man that she'd approached love with her list of conditions raised like a shield. No man would hit her, or cheat on her, or take advantage of her, or take her for granted, or marry her for her money. If a man broke one of her rules, she'd take off.

  Given her doubts and suspicions, it was amazing she'd actually married Kenzie. Of course, she'd gone into the marriage knowing it was doomed to fail--and that had become a self-fulfilling prophecy, hadn't it?

  How much was a woman supposed to give? Clementine gave too much, Rainey surely not enough.

  She began to weep, feeling more alone than at any time since her mother's death. Despite all her defenses, she'd fallen heart over heels for Kenzie, but she hadn't made a true commitment. All the time they'd been together, she'd been waiting for him to betray her, so she was always ready to leave. She hadn't even sold her house.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Thought this battered heart of mine would never mend.

  Yet here I am, heart over heels again.

  Heart over heels, moth to the flame.

  Maybe this time, Lord, maybe this time...

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Her mother had picked the wrong men, and that had contributed to her death. But she'd had the courage to love with her whole heart, a courage Rainey lacked.

  Not long before her mother's death, Rainbow had asked why a moth flying into a flame was in a love song. Clementine drew her daughter onto her lap, saying, "The moth is consumed in the fire, but don't you have to envy it for wanting something so much?"

  Young and already pragmatic to the bone, Rainey hadn't understood, but tonight, finally, she did. She had never dared let herself want anything--or anyone--that much.

  Her reasons for seeking a divorce were clear cut and entirely justifiable. No one blamed her for leaving a man who'd been unfaithful. She was in firm possession of the moral high ground.

  Yet now she blamed herself for not trying to understand why it had happened. The more time that passed, the more she doubted that Kenzie had betrayed her from simple lust. Moviemaking was grueling, and playing intimate scenes with an attractive member of the opposite sex could create the illusion of a love, or at least lust. Kenzie probably succumbed to Angie Greene's silicone-enhanced charms from sheer, exhausted loneliness after months of work or a demanding movie with only brief visits to or from his wife.

  Though Rainey had never been unfaithful to Kenzie, she understood how such a lapse could happen. She'd experienced that kind of desperate loneliness when working on location. Before her marriage, she'd also succumbed to that craving for warmth and physical comfort when the stress of work grew overpowering. Separation and strain were a major reason why so many Hollywood marriages didn't last long.

  She couldn't blame herself for turning around and flying back to California immediately--the shock and pain had been devastating. But looking back, she questioned her decision to immediately file for divorce. She hadn't made the least attempt to salvage her marriage. She'd never suggested counseling, or even asked her husband if he was sorry and wanted to try again. She'd just walked away, following her personal rules of disengagement.

  Kenzie hadn't contested the divorce, and had said repeatedly that she was better off without him. But like John Randall, he'd never said that he didn't want his wife. Making The Centurion had drawn them into intimacy over and over again. When he was at the breaking point, he'd come to her, and she'd offered comfort without question. He'd done the same for her.

  Wasn't providing shelter from the storm an important part of marriage? Despite the legal wheels grinding away in California, they were still deeply connected to each other. Maybe not enough for a real marriage, but enough to make her question her original belief that divorce was the only possible choice.

  Shaking, she buried her face in her hands. She thought of loyalty as one of her virtues. She'd been loyal to her friends, her principles, to people that had helped her when she needed it. But she hadn't shown much loyalty to Kenzie. She'd been determined to preserve her pride, and her fragile heart.

  Her jumbled thoughts calmed as a decision emerged. Maybe Kenzie was incapable of real intimacy. Maybe she was, too. But she would not be the one to break their marriage.

  As of this night, this moment, she was finally making a commitment.

  Footsteps passing by paused, and a deep voice asked, "Are you all right, miss?"

  She looked up into the concerned face of a policeman. Wiping her eyes, she said, "I've been better, but I'm okay. Really."

  He nodded and continued on his way. Rainey glanced at her watch. Nine hours time difference between London and Los Angeles, so it was still business hours there. She found her cell phone and pushed the autodial code for her lawyer. She was put through immediately. The lawyer greeted her warmly. "Good timing, Rainey. The paperwork is finally done, so the divorce can be finalized when you return to California."

  "That's why I'm calling, Ann. Pull the plug on it. I've changed my mind."

  The lawyer caught her breath. "You and Kenzie have reconciled? That's great! At least, I hope it is."

  "No, we haven't reconciled." Rainey sighed. "I don't think we will, either. But for various complicated reasons, I've decided to knock the ball into Kenzie's court. If he wants a divorce, he'll have to be the one to get it." She would be passively cooperative, exactly as he had been. Would he immediately file for divorce? Would he take her gesture as an olive branch, and try to resolve their differences? Or would he let matters drift, with them separate but still married?

  It would be interesting to find out, in a macabre sort of way.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 29

  Kenzie arrived at the wrap party a little late, as tired as if he'd hiked across Death Valley in high summer. Actually, that would have been less draining than spending a good part of the day in bed with his estranged but infinitely desirable wife. Wearing minimal clothing, emoting madly, and with a camera and crew watching every move.

  Crossing directly to the open bar, he ordered a double shot of single malt whisky. He hadn't been drunk in decades and wouldn't be tonight, but he figured he was entitled to one really good, stiff drink. Hell, he was entitled to have a bottle of champagne cracked across his head as if he were a bloody battleship. He'd actually made it through Rainey's wretched movie.

  After a deep, scorching swallow of whisky, he turned and leane
d back on the bar. The wrap party was being held in a function room attached to an old London pub. The spacious, high-ceilinged room was decorated like a gorgeous medieval banquet hall, complete with smiling waiters and waitresses in colorful period costume. It was a handsome place for a celebration, and the Americans in particular loved it. Rainey had used her tight budget for The Centurion well, not wasting a penny, but not stinting when it came to making her colleagues feel appreciated.

  He took a slower sip of whisky. Wrap parties were always bittersweet. For the duration of a production, cast and crew were like the crew of a ship, sometimes at each other's throats but bound together by their mutual mission. He'd been in the business long enough so that there were always familiar faces from the past, and people he'd see again in the future, but each production was unique. Never again would exactly the same group come together to make a movie.

  Still, by the end of shooting there was often a desire to have the blasted thing over with, especially if the production had been plagued with problems. Kenzie had worked on one film where the director had been changed twice, insanely expensive mechanical props had refused to work, the weather had been killingly hot and humid, and the leading lady was a screaming, coke-snorting hysteric. All that plus a scene-stealing dog eager to bite everyone but its handler. He'd certainly celebrated the end of that one.

  Given the strain of working with Rainey, this should have rated as a production he wouldn't miss, yet in most ways, it had been a good experience. First-rate people had done their best, with minimal interference from egos. Moviemaking at its best.

  The script supervisor approached, a wicked light in her eyes, and gave him a smacking kiss on the cheek. "I've been wanting to do that for weeks."

  He grinned and patted her ample rump. "I'm glad you finally let your inner tiger loose, Helen."