In spite of her anger at Kirk, in this moment, she felt a rush of admiration for the way he dared stand up to the omnipotent studio head. She thought with a feeling of despair that Kirk was the most dynamic, attractive man she had ever met. He was exciting in a way that overwhelmed her. What is this power he has over me? she asked herself hopelessly. If they were alone right this minute and he asked her to go to bed with him, she wouldn’t know how she could find the strength to turn him down.
“Jerry Rhodes has talent. He’s going to be very big one of these days,” Kirk said evenly, his gaze leveled like a double-barrel shotgun at Kasserman’s head.
“He might be big one day,” Kasserman shot back. “Right now he’s a nobody.”
There was a moment of steaming silence. The Dentmens, Ginny Wells and Linda Towers looked upset. Kirk had convinced them that Jerry Rhodes would be ideal for the part.
Kirk began again. “The point is, my production group has discussed this. We love Rhodes for the part and I’ve as good as told him he can have it.”
“I’m sorry. You’ll have to tell him there’s been a change. You can’t use him.”
“What do you mean by that?” Kirk said, his voice sounding dangerous. “According to the deal we made with you, I can make that kind of decision.”
“I don’t care anything about any kind of deal,” Kasserman said, his voice rising. “I am not going to make a picture this costly with a nobody like Jerry Rhodes in the lead role and that’s final.”
Kirk again lapsed into fuming silence. He looked at his lawyer, who shrugged and made a hopeless gesture with upturned palms.
So much for any contractual agreements Kirk might have made with the studio, Natalie thought with a wave of sympathy for her embattled husband. In a showdown, Kasserman would choose to fight a contractual lawsuit rather than give in on a major point. With the legal and financial resources of a vast corporation complex behind him, he knew he had little to fear from Kirk, who was broke to begin with.
The studio head broke the fuming silence. “I’ve picked your lead. I want Tom Sacks in the part. I’ve talked to Tom. He’s read the script. He likes it. I’ve made him an offer and I think he’ll take it.”
There was an audible murmur around the room. Like the others, Natalie reacted with surprise. Tom Sacks was certainly big enough. He was the macho hero in every woman’s fantasy life. It was surprising that he would agree to do the picture. He had to be swamped with offers. Natalie had to give Kasserman credit—he swung a lot of influence around Hollywood. At the same time, she thought a lot of the budget would go to Tom Sacks. He could demand and get plenty.
Kirk reacted with a dark frown. “Sacks is an egotistical ham. He’s going to demand all kinds of special treatment. We’ll have to sacrifice shooting time to pay what he’ll want. And he’ll try to take over every scene he’s in.”
Kasserman gave Kirk a baleful look. “I’ll match your ego against Tom Sacks’ any day. With you directing, I don’t think we’ll have to worry about anybody else taking over anything.”
“Well,” Kirk added, “I guess he’s not the worst actor in town, though he certainly wouldn’t have been my first choice for the part.” He swung his gaze to Natalie. “How do you feel about acting opposite Tom Sacks, hon?”
Natalie shrugged. “I can work with him. I think he’ll be all right for the part. And as Sam says, his ego is no bigger than yours.”
A ripple of nervous laughter ran around the room.
Kirk’s lips moved in a wry, sardonic grin. “Touché.” Then he said, “I’ll compromise, Sam. If I have to take Tom Sacks in the role of the protagonist, then I want Mark Landers to play the heavy, the Middle-Eastern dictator.”
Kasserman scowled, then nodded slowly. “All right.”
“And for the part of Jerome Ambers, I want Sir David George.”
There was an audible intake of breath around the room. Kasserman’s eyebrows elevated at the name of the eminent British actor. He grunted. “You don’t want much, do you?”
“Well, you said you wanted some big names. The part of Jerome Ambers is important. It demands an actor with an air of reserve and dignity. At least Sir George is a real actor, not a ham like Tom Sacks who gets by on his macho image.”
Kasserman drummed on his desk. There was a heavy silence. Natalie suspected he was struggling with a mental conflict over the cost the award-winning British actor could demand and the stature his name would add to the film. Finally, he said, “All right, if you think you can afford both Tom Sacks and Sir David George and still bring this thing in under budget.”
“Sure,” Kirk said confidently.
Natalie was both amused and exasperated by Kirk’s cocksure attitude. He wasn’t the slightest bit intimidated by Sam Kasserman. She doubted if he’d be intimidated by the devil, himself!
Kasserman nodded. “Good, then that’s settled. Now how about the other female role, the Russian girl.”
“I have her picked out, too,” Kirk said. “I’d like to see Marsha Sanders in the part.”
It was Natalie’s turn to be shocked and furious. She felt stunned, unable to believe that her ears were not playing tricks. Surely Kirk couldn’t be so utterly callous and inconsiderate as to humiliate her in this way—bringing the woman he had been linked with in all the scandal rags into the same picture with Natalie! It took all her effort to swallow a sudden rush of angry tears.
Kasserman plucked at his lower lip thoughtfully. “She’s dark, she’s beautiful—looks Russian. Not all that well known. But with names like Tom Sacks and Natalie Brooks on the marquee, to say nothing of Sir David George, that won’t be too much of a problem. She had the lead in that turkey of yours, The Two of Us, but that wasn’t her fault. Maybe by now the public will forgive her—”
“In Europe—” Kirk began heatedly.
Kasserman held up a hand wearily. “Please spare me. Don’t tell me about Europe. Okay, Marsha Sanders. If she’ll take the part, you’ve got her.”
Natalie felt smothered by a wave of heart-wrenching despair mixed with impotent rage. How could she possibly spend weeks, perhaps months acting before the camera with a woman who’d had an affair with her husband? And how could she know the affair was over? Obviously it was not or Kirk wouldn’t be so dead set on having Marsha in the picture. There were plenty of other competent actresses available, many of them with more screen credits. But none who bore the incredible resemblance to his dead sweetheart, Natalie reminded herself with a wrenching pang.
The meeting ended. Natalie gathered up her purse and walked quickly to the door. A hand caught her arm. She spun around to face Kirk. Her eyes flashed angrily.
“What’s your hurry?” Kirk asked.
“I have things to do,” she said coldly.
“I want to talk to you. Have lunch with me.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I have other plans.”
“Break them.”
She gasped, eyes widening. “Where do you get off giving me orders like that, Kirk Trammer?”
He considered the question, his dark-eyed gaze burning into her like a hot torch. “As your husband, I might not have that authority,” he said mildly. “These days they have laws against a husband using force with a rebellious wife. However, as your director, I am ordering you to have lunch with me. It’s a matter of business.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Very well. Strictly business.”
His firm hand grasping her arm led her from the office building across the studio grounds to a lunchroom where Kirk seated her in a secluded booth. He ordered a light lunch, then pinned her again with his penetrating gaze.
“I want an explanation,” he began.
“What do you mean?”
“You know good and well what I mean! I want answers to the questions I asked you before the meeting. Why did you pull the disappearing act after that night in Malibu?”
Natalie felt a fresh wave of anger. “You said you brought me here to disc
uss business.”
“We’ll get to that later.”
She started to rise, but he grasped her wrist firmly and sat her back down.
“Kirk, how dare you—” she said in a low, furious voice.
A taunting smile tugged at his lips. “Shall we have a family row in public? That should make juicy material for the scandal sheets.”
Natalie felt smothered by impotent rage. It was true that gossipmongers were everywhere, ever eager to pounce on a movie celebrity’s personal life. Kirk had her trapped here.
“Well?” he asked.
“Kirk, I told you there wasn’t going to be a repeat of what happened that night. I want a divorce.”
His brows drew together. Anger was sharp in his eyes. She felt a cold, deep chasm widening between them. It sent a shiver down her spine.
“Very well,” he said coldly. “But you’re not getting out of here until you give me an explanation. That night on the beach and in the cabin, you wanted me as much as I wanted you. You can’t make me believe you didn’t get a thrill out of making love with me.”
Her cheeks flamed. “All right, I won’t deny it. You’ve been gone for two years. I was vulnerable—starved for some lovemaking.”
“Not with just any man, though,” he insisted, his gaze boring into her.
“That’s true. Sex with you has always been special. I’ll admit that. But there has to be more to marriage than lust. And we don’t have more than that. I want out, Kirk.”
“All right, if that’s what you want,” he said with cold fury. “I don’t go chasing after any woman!”
Except Marsha Sanders, Natalie thought bitterly. Then she corrected herself. It was actually the ghost of his real love, Jacqueline Davis, the only woman he’d ever loved, come alive in her living counterpart.
She wondered if Kirk was really aware of the true nature of his attraction for Marsha? Was it a subtle, unconscious thing, a searching to fulfill a longing that had been denied him? Whatever it was, he was completely under its power. There was no room left for Natalie.
The lunch became a strained, impersonal matter. Kirk talked about the picture, his plans for flying the cast and the camera crew to Rio to begin filming that phase of the production while Ginny Wells and her special effects crew began work on the space station sets.
As for Natalie, she made perfunctory replies, poking at her untouched food, unable to swallow past the hurting lump in her throat. She was enormously relieved when Kirk paid the bill and she could escape his presence.
* * * * * * *
Before leaving for Rio, Natalie paid a visit to Special Effects Unlimited, Inc., where her cousin, Ginny, and her crew of experts were tackling the problems of visual effects that would be seen in The Last Encounter.
Several weeks had passed and the preproduction work had been underway. Casting, budgeting, props, set design, costuming, and location scouting were matters that had to be taken care of before a foot of film could be shot. A whole army of people had been hired: art director; set designer; costume designer; wardrobe masters and wardrobe mistresses; the property master who was the custodian of the props; specialists in various fields such as electricians; camera crews; stuntmen and stuntwomen; makeup people and hairdressers and the grips—the handymen who handled the chores of moving things around for various camera setups. It was the grips who made difficult camera angles possible by building scaffolds for camera crews or setting up tracks along which camera dollies could move.
Already, storyboards portraying major scenes in the film had been sketched and painted by artists and were arranged along a wall.
Despite her emotional turmoil over her pending divorce, Natalie couldn’t help feeling a wave of excitement as the movie production got underway. Seeing the artists’ projection of the major scenes brought the movie more alive than just reading the script. She exclaimed over the dramatic scenes in outer space, the colorful episodes in romantic Rio and the suspenseful action sequences in the strife torn Middle East.
Natalie pointed to a sketch showing astronauts flying around the space station in their self-propelled space suits. The background was the black velvet of the universe sprinkled with diamonds of distant planets.
“You special effects experts never cease to amaze me,” Natalie said, shaking her head in wonder. “How are you going to pull that off?”
“Simple if you know how.” Ginny shrugged.
“Having people fly around in the air is simple?”
“Often we do stunts like that with piano wire. We’ll design the space suits, put stunt guys in them and hang them from scaffolds with piano wire. That’s how a lot of flying sequences, cars dangling over the edge of cliffs, stuff like that, are done. Piano wire is extremely strong, but very thin and invisible when filmed against the right background. After shooting the space men suspended in midair, we’ll use rear-screen and front-screen projection techniques as well as matte and traveling matte processes to make it look like they’re in the outer space setting.”
Ginny showed Natalie some models of the space station and shuttle. “Miniaturization,” she explained. “On the screen they’ll look full size. The original King Kong was a brainchild of the pioneer animator, Willis H. O’Brien. Y’know, King Kong was actually a clay model eighteen inches high. He was made to move by using stop frame photography, that is, shooting one frame at a time, while adjusting the figure to move slightly with each advancing frame. It’s the same principal in cartoon-type animation, except there the figures are drawn. When the completed frames are run through the projector at normal speed you get the effect of fluid motion.”
“Takes a lot of time,” Natalie observed.
“Yes, and patience, although our modern setups use a type of camera synchronization that speeds it up.”
She pointed to the artist sketches of Middle-Eastern desert and village scenes. “This is going to be tough and expensive. Kirk wants to build full-size sets of buildings and streets for battle scenes, shelling, fires. I have to come up with armored vehicles and tanks, no less. Then there are the robot-controlled space craft developed by the power hungry Middle-Eastern dictator, the battle scenes in space between our space shuttle craft and the attacking rockets.” She shook her head. “This is expensive stuff, Natalie. And Kirk is so darn demanding. He’d think nothing of tossing months of work out the window if it doesn’t satisfy him.”
Natalie frowned. “Ginny, is he going to be able to stay within the budget on this film?”
“Frankly, I doubt it. Not with the kinds of things he wants to do. You know Kirk.”
“I think we’re going to be in for a lot of problems with the studio,” Natalie murmured.
“You know they’re insisting on naming their own associate producer. Kasserman wants Howard Ansco.”
“Good Lord, Kirk hates him.”
“I think the feeling is mutual.”
“Ansco will be sniffing around every move Kirk makes, and reporting back to the studio.”
“We’ll be lucky if the battle scenes are only in the film. So you’re off to Rio next week.”
Natalie nodded.
“Lucky you. While we’re slaving away on these sets you’ll be soaking up South American sunshine, living it up in Rio.” Ginny grinned. “You ought to get plenty of inspiration to play the love scenes. Rio is one of the most romantic cities in the world. And you’ll be there during the carnival season. I should have taken up acting instead of special effects!”
“Lucky?” Natalie asked. “I’m not sure about that, Ginny.”
Her cousin touched her arm, her eyes filling with sympathy. “I know it’s going to be tough on you, Natalie, working with Kirk every day while going through the strain of a divorce. I—I wish there were something I could do to help.”
Natalie shook her head. “I don’t guess there’s anything anyone can do to make a divorce painless.”
“I wish it hadn’t come to this. We were all hoping that you and Kirk—”
“I know. Bu
t it’s a hopeless situation, Ginny. I can’t go on being married to a man who doesn’t love me, whose only interest in me is using me to realize his ambition. When this film is finished, when Kirk gets what he wants, he’ll have no further use for me. He’ll take off for Europe again, probably with Marsha Sanders. I’m just beating him to the draw. It hurts now, but in the long run, I’m going to save myself even worse heartbreak. When we get this film done and my divorce is final, maybe I can pick up the pieces and start over with a new life.”
Natalie thought it was going to be a real test of her acting ability to play love scenes with another man while her husband, Kirk, the only man she had ever loved, whom she was now putting out of her life, would be watching every move. And to make the strain even greater, the actress Kirk was involved with, Marsha Sanders, would be in many of the scenes, too.
She doubted if the scenes in front of the camera were going to be half as dramatic as the real-life situation going on behind the cameras.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Rio de Janeiro....
High above the city of Rio de Janeiro, on the peak of Mount Corcovado, shrouded in clouds and mists, stood the magnificent figure of Christ the Redeemer, arms outstretched, as if in benediction for the world below. Across Botafogo Bay the rounded peak of Sugar Loaf Mountain posed like a sentinel looking out to sea.
The grandeur of the setting dissolved into the reality of a small crowded street where sweating camera crews waited impatiently as makeup people rushed in to make hasty repairs to the actors wearily preparing to do the seventh take of the same scene.
On a crane high above their heads, the film director, Kirk Trammer, shouted instructions to the technicians.
Natalie felt like a broiled potato in the scorching sun of Rio’s February midsummer day. She tried to be patient as her makeup lady did her job.
Natalie was a professional. Long, weary hours repeating take after take in uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous situations were part of her job. One day, months from now, an audience would sit in the air-conditioned comfort of a movie theater and be transported into a fantasy world of romance and adventure on the screen. Right now it was difficult to reconcile that make-believe story with the reality of glaring sun, dusty streets, tired muscles and strained emotions. Working under a demanding perfectionist, whom it was next to impossible to satisfy, did not make matters any easier.
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