The Movie

by Patti Beckman

  “The story has everything,” Bill agreed, “international intrigue, suspense, fast pace, a great love story. I don’t know when I’ve been so excited about a story idea.”

  “And don’t forget all the special effects I’ll get to create,” Ginger said.

  “With Kirk directing, it can be the big motion picture of the year, as big as Star Wars or E.T.,” Linda agreed.

  Natalie felt a growing sense of unease. She remembered the warning earlier today from her agent, Ira. It was starting to make sense. Had Ira known about this? Had Kirk approached him? Or had he gotten the information through the Hollywood grapevine?

  “Why are you all telling me this?” Natalie asked her friends suspiciously. “You know Kirk and I have broken up. I haven’t even heard from the guy in two years. I have no interest in his production plans.”

  Bill looked embarrassed. “You knew he was back in the States, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, but I only heard it secondhand. He hasn’t tried to contact me.”

  Again there was an embarrassed silence.

  Her irrepressible cousin, Ginny, broke the silence with a bombshell. “Natalie, Kirk wants you to play the female lead.”

  Natalie was stunned. She sat immobilized in shocked silence. Now Ira’s hinted warning was clear. Now she understood the undercurrent of tension here tonight. Her thoughts were in disarray; her emotions were spinning. Suddenly the only clear thought she had was the way her entire existence had been turned upside down that day Kirk Trammer had first walked into her life. And now he was back, trying to do it all over again.

  CHAPTER TWO

  It all came back in a rush, every fragment of memory since that first magic moment they met.

  “Natalie, this is the fellow we’ve been telling you about, Kirk Trammer. Kirk, our good friend, Natalie Brooks.”

  The time, six years ago. The place, the campus of the University of Southern California, University Park, Los Angeles. Bill Dentmen had made the introduction.

  There had been something disturbing, vaguely frightening about her first meeting with Kirk. At the time, Natalie blamed the uneasiness on her characteristic shyness that kept her reserved and self-conscious with strangers. Looking back, she now suspected it was a premonition that this man was going to change her life forever. A change that drastic could certainly be frightening.

  He was tall, lanky, broad-shouldered, towering over her own five feet seven. His hair was dark and bushy. His scuffed old Western boots, faded blue jeans and rumpled jacket indicated an impatience with, and indifference to, surface appearance.

  There was something different about Kirk that instantly set him apart from the college bunch who had become her friends. He was older. His eyes were haunted with a firsthand knowledge of life and death and struggle that was not yet seen in the young men she met on the campus.

  He had the most unusual eyes she had ever seen. They were large, slightly almond-shaped, framed with thick lashes. Her first impression was that they were of a translucent quality, glowing with dark, inner fires. Then she realized they were a light hazel, almost golden.

  When she got to know him better and found out he had left home at sixteen; had searched the country from coast to coast on a motorcycle while working at odd jobs; had fought in Viet Nam; had carried a wounded buddy through a hail of sniper fire to a helicopter, for which he had received the bronze star; had come back to drive a truck; play piano with a jazz group; work in the oil fields; lose a girl he planned to marry—then she understood better those haunting eyes that gave him a maturity beyond his years.

  She knew none of those things about him at their first meeting. She only knew that the touch of his hand made her body quiver and the sound of his voice did strange things to the tempo of her heart. This was no run-of-the-mill college boy she was meeting. This was a man with a driving purpose in life. And she sensed with a hot rush of blood to her cheeks that in his gaze moving over her there was a man’s knowledge of a woman’s body and he was measuring what he saw against that knowledge.

  She was vaguely shocked at her own response to his searching, experienced gaze. Never had she so intensely felt her own womanhood. She felt her breasts suddenly full and aching, straining against her garments; her hips and waist, proudly asserting their curves; her thighs growing strangely warm, quivering slightly. She drew a shuddering breath, both frightened and aroused by the instant, overwhelming physical attraction.

  Over the rushing torrent of her emotions she heard Bill Dentmen adding to the introduction, “Natalie, Kirk is the genius I told you about who has been shaking up all the professors in the school of cinema and television.”

  “Hardly a genius,” Kirk shrugged, his dark eyes still directed toward Natalie as if at the moment she were the focal point of the universe.

  “The heck you say,” Bill said. “They don’t know exactly what to make of you. You break all the rules and then come up with something spectacular.”

  Natalie barely heard the exchange. She was still struggling with the impact this man was making on her emotions and her senses. Some kind of chemistry was boiling that caused him to be instantly, overwhelmingly attractive. Was it the subtle masculine smells, the obvious strength and hardness of his physique under the jacket and the tight blue jeans that hugged his muscular thighs? Or was it that burning intensity in his dark eyes drawing her as a moth to the flame?

  At that time, they were all in their last year at USC.

  Kirk was involved in some graduate work. It was a world away from the life she had known back East, where she had grown up as a young socialite, a member of a prominent family, a debutante. When she had announced her decision to go to USC, her mother had not been pleased.

  “Why go all the way to California? There are excellent colleges in New York,” her mother had argued.

  But Natalie was already packing. “Mother, I’ve checked into it. There are three schools in the country that have an outstanding film program: the University of California at Los Angeles, New York University and the University of Southern California. I’ve decided on USC.”

  “For the life of me, I can’t see why you’re so concerned about going to a school with a film-making curriculum. You’re an actress. You could have a brilliant future on the stage. You’re not going to be a cinematographer, for heaven’s sake!”

  “I know that. But it just seems that going to a school that has a film-making department will put me in closer touch with Hollywood. I can go to USC and enroll in their drama department and still take some cinema courses to learn something about moviemaking. I’ve read that eighty percent of their graduates get into professional work somewhere in the film industry.”

  Her mother sighed. “Hollywood! With your talent you ought to be thinking about the stage.”

  “Perhaps. I’m not really sure what I want to do at the moment. At any rate, the stage hasn’t exactly been beating down the door to get at me.”

  “If you’d let me, I could make a few phone calls. It might be just small walk-on parts at first but then—”

  Natalie shook her head. She rarely disagreed with her mother, but this was a turning point in her life and she stood her ground. “It’s not going to hurt my career to spend a few years in a big university until I decide what I’m going to do.”

  More than that, she thought, it was her declaration of independence from her mother and from the East Coast life imposed on her. For that reason she had decided on a college in Los Angeles, on the other side of the continent. She had enrolled in the school of performing arts at USC. Her decision had been made when she learned her cousin, Ginny Wells, was going to USC.

  In the Cinema and Television Department, her cousin took courses like Techniques in Motion Picture Production, Motion Picture Camera, Film History and Criticism, Advanced Camera and Lighting, Motion Picture Processing and Motion Picture Sound Recording. In the drama department, Natalie enrolled in such courses as Stage Direction, Acting I and II, Acting for the Media II, Advanced Acting
, Drama Performance and some experimental workshops. At the same time, she audited some of the cinema classes with Ginny.

  It was through Ginny that Natalie got to know the ambitious young film makers in the school. It was an exciting time. She was surrounded by young people fired with the magic of cinema production. When not in class, they were staring at movie screens. Then they talked the evenings away over what they had seen, criticizing, dissecting, analyzing how the films were directed, the camera angles, the special effects, the script, the acting.

  They made a pact. “One day, we’ll form our own production company,” Ginny exclaimed. “Bill and Sally will write the scripts. I’ll do the special effects. Linda will handle the editing. And Natalie will be the star.”

  It was an agreement and a promise, made and accepted with assurance. They all felt that they had been touched by fate and one day it would all certainly come true.

  Then Kirk exploded on the scene.

  That fateful day when Bill introduced Natalie to Kirk, he explained, “Kirk is taking a graduate-level course, a workshop. During the semester, he has to make two fifteen-minute movies. He’s rounding up some people for his film crew.”

  “Yes, and I need to find someone from the drama department to appear in a scene,” Kirk added, still holding Natalie within the hypnotic confines of his gaze. “Could you find the time to help us? Would you be interested? It would only take one day.”

  “Well...I—I don’t know,” Natalie stammered, too flustered by his dynamic presence, and too startled by his request to think rationally. “Why me?”

  “I saw you in the experimental theater workshop play last week. I was impressed.”

  “You were?” she asked, feeling awkward and painfully self-conscious. She wasn’t on a stage now, hiding safely in a pretend role. This was reality, the kind she had so much difficulty handling. The raw emotions

  Kirk Trammer had awakened in her were frightening. Her breathing felt strained. Standing close to him, she was acutely aware of so many things, the warmth of his body, the sunlight on his tanned face, the curve of his lips, the resonance of his voice. It was as if all her senses had suddenly become fine tuned. The sounds, sights and smells of the campus blended into a background blur as her attention was riveted on the man before her.

  “Yes,” Kirk said, “you have real acting talent. And in addition, you are exceptionally beautiful. You have a kind of regal beauty—cool, poised, elegant. You remind me of Grace Kelly. Once an audience sees you they won’t forget you.”

  His words didn’t sound like flattery. It was more like an objective, professional opinion. He spoke with an air of assurance and authority. She didn’t know when she had encountered such self-assurance in a student.

  She didn’t know how to respond. To be told she was beautiful by such a vital and attractive man was thrilling even if it was not voiced in a personal manner. There was a moment of self-conscious silence, interrupted by Kirk, who asked impatiently, “Well, how about it, Miss Brooks? Do you want to be in our film?”

  Natalie swallowed hard. She wasn’t certain what she was getting into. She glanced at Bill Dentmen, who nodded encouragement. “Well...all right.” She nodded. “Yes.”

  “Okay, fine,” he said, smiling briefly. “We’re going to pack the equipment into my station wagon today and drive out into the desert in the morning. Can you be ready to leave about three in the morning?”

  “Three in the morning?” Natalie repeated weakly.

  “Yeah, I want to have the camera set up to catch the sunrise.”

  “Do I have some lines to learn?”

  “Don’t worry about that. You won’t have much to say, if anything. This is going to be a visual film; very little dialogue.”

  At three the next morning, in the pitch dark except for a canopy of stars, Natalie found herself crammed into an ancient, rusty station wagon overloaded with equipment and people. The crew consisted of five students besides herself, who bore the titles of writer-director, cameraman, editor, sound man and production manager. Obviously, she was the entire cast. She sat next to Kirk, who drove. On her other side was the cameraman, Toby Calkins, an overweight, bearded fellow in a cotton T-shirt, who settled into the car and immediately went to sleep.

  No one had much to say. On the long, bouncing ride, jammed between the two men in the front seat, Natalie couldn’t escape the touch of Kirk’s body. At every turn his hard, muscular thigh pressed firmly against hers, sending a warm surge of blood through her body. Once, as he navigated a turn, his elbow brushed against her breast, causing her heart to lurch.

  Where he had touched her, her breast suddenly ached and throbbed. A torment of mingled emotions clutched at her throat. She found this physical contact with him exciting in a way that was unnerving. Never before had she experienced the kind of sensations that raced over her nerve ends, causing them to tingle. She felt both disturbed and aroused. She couldn’t remember feeling so acutely alive to every sensation, every emotion.

  When they reached the location in a deserted strip of desert, Kirk leaped out and galvanized the crew into action with fast, precise orders.

  For nearly two hours, Natalie sat in the station wagon, watching as Kirk ran the cameraman ragged, shooting footage of the rising sun, the landscape, the cactus.

  The production manager had followed them in a vintage car, a 1930 Model A Ford coupe. Where they had located the ancient vehicle, Natalie couldn’t begin to imagine. Later, she found out Kirk had talked a buddy into borrowing it from his father’s classic car museum.

  “Kirk wants you to wear this,” the production manager said, bringing a dress around to the station wagon.

  Natalie stared at the garment. She looked around at the wide-open spaces surrounding them. “Where am I supposed to change?” she demanded.

  The production manager shrugged. “Here in the car, I guess. Nobody will see you. We’re all busy over there where they’re doing the shooting.”

  He left her with the dress which, when she gave it a closer look, turned out to be a faded evening gown of about the same vintage as the old car.

  Natalie went through a series of awkward gyrations, changing from her shirt and jeans into the flowing garment in the front seat of the station wagon. She had brought along her makeup kit and did the best she could with her hair and face under the circumstances. She gasped when Kirk suddenly appeared at the window. Hastily, she pulled the dress down, covering her legs. With a flush, she wondered how much he had seen.

  “All ready?”

  “Yes.”

  They had parked the Model A Ford beside a clump of cacti. Kirk directed Natalie to get out of the vintage car, stand beside it for a moment, looking around, then walk directly toward the camera.

  She stumbled around the barren soil in evening slippers, perspiring as the sun grew hotter, and they made take after take. She was beginning to suspect that the entire crew, especially Kirk, were completely insane. Nothing they were doing made any sense to her. When she tried to get Kirk to explain, he only shrugged impatiently. He was in the grip of some kind of concentrated, burning inner energy.

  At one point, the production manager dragged a large wind fan and portable generator out of the back of the station wagon. He cranked up the generator. As it spluttered into life, the blades of the fan began turning, whipping up a cloud of dust. The wind tore at Natalie’s hair and pasted the thin evening gown to every curve of her body. She was blinded by the flying dust. Over the roar of the fan and generator, she heard Kirk shouting instructions to her and the cameraman. She took several steps toward the camera. Suddenly, she lost her footing. A cry of despair was wrenched from her as she teetered blindly, waving her arms in a futile attempt to regain her balance, and then sprawled backward in the dirt. A flash of pain raced down her leg.

  Somebody turned the fan off. Sobbing with pain and humiliation, still half-blinded by the dust, Natalie could barely make out the faces of the film crew in a circle around her, staring down at her. Their
expressions registered numbed shock.

  Kirk shouldered his way through the circle. He bent and scooped Natalie out of the dirt. She seemed light as a feather in his strong arms. He helped her to a standing position. “Are you all right?” he asked, surveying the damage. Then he muttered an expletive. “You must have fallen into a cactus bed. There’s a prickly pear leaf stuck to your thigh.”

  Natalie could only cry helplessly.

  “Hold on,” Kirk muttered. “This is going to hurt.” Gingerly, he grasped the cactus. He winced sympathetically as he pried it loose. Natalie gasped and gave vent to a fresh flood of tears.

  “Okay, fellas,” Kirk said to the others. “That’s all the shooting for today. Let’s get back to town.”

  Gently, he helped Natalie back to the station wagon. She cried out with pain as she tried to sit down. Kirk wadded up his jacket for her to sit on in a way that her injured thigh did not rest against the seat. He ordered the fat cameraman to ride home with the production manager so Natalie wouldn’t be crowded in the front seat.

  She caught a glimpse of herself in the rearview mirror. Her hair was a tangled mess. Her face was a mask of dirt and dust streaked with tears. She wanted to die.

  The deadly silence on the ride home was interrupted only by an occasional fresh sob from Natalie as a jolt awakened the pain in her throbbing body. She thought that when she got hold of Bill Dentmen, she was going to tell him his friend Kirk Trammer was dangerously insane and should be put away where he wouldn’t be a threat to society. Whatever had made him attractive to her when they first met was totally lost in this nightmare of humiliation.

  He dropped off the members of the crew from the back seat. Then as he made several turns, she became aware that they were headed away from the college campus area. “What are you doing?” she demanded. “My dorm is in the other direction.”

  “I don’t live on campus,” he explained.