At last, she and Kirk were escorted to a table in a secluded corner and the other customers returned to their meals, too excited to notice the food had grown cold.
The café owner brought Natalie and Kirk a bottle of his best wine and promised an unforgettable meal. He made a parting gesture, kissing his fingers, then scurrying to the kitchen to help his wife with the meal.
Kirk raised his wineglass, looking moodily at Natalie. There was an edge in his voice as he said, “Well, shall we drink to our divorce?”
“I don’t think that’s exactly something to be toasted,” she replied coldly.
He raised an eyebrow. “Well, then, here’s to having you back.”
Her lips tightened. “I doubt if you even noticed I was gone. Surely your mistress kept you occupied.”
His reply was a dark frown. “What are you talking about?”
Natalie took the folded tabloid article from her handbag and flung it on the table.
He glanced at it, then chuckled. “Oh, that.”
“Yes, that. You don’t waste any time, do you? You can’t even wait until our divorce is final before you begin squiring your girlfriend around in public.”
“You may be jumping to conclusions. Who says Marsha is my girlfriend?”
By way of reply, Natalie pointed to the tabloid article. “She seems to think so.”
“Natalie,” Kirk said, with a note of exasperation, “surely you of all people wouldn’t be so naïve as to believe one of these scandal sheets. You know half the people in the entertainment industry are suing these tabloids for distortions and lies.”
“The picture is clear enough. Do you deny being out with her?”
“Well, what did you expect me to do, stay home and knit?” he snapped angrily. “You’re off in Los Angeles divorcing me. What am I supposed to do? It gets lonesome in the evenings.”
Natalie shrugged. “Of course you have every right to do whatever you want, see whomever you want. Why should I care? After all, you were involved with her long before I filed for divorce.”
Kirk sighed. “Marsha, Tom Sacks and I went out to eat dinner one night to discuss some scenes we were working on. I remember a camera flashing once when Tom left the table for some reason. That’s probably when that picture was taken.”
She gave him a long, puzzled look. Why was he trying to convince her?
“If you don’t believe me, ask Tom Sacks,” he persisted.
“I think I’d rather ask Marsha Sanders,” Natalie countered. “She’s the one who told the reporter, ‘We’re definitely in love,’ to quote the article.”
Kirk shrugged in a noncommittal manner. “I have no control over what Marsha says—if, indeed, she did say it.” He left it at that and drank his wine in brooding silence.
Natalie realized for the first time how tired he looked. There were dark circles under his eyes and lines of tension around his mouth. She remembered how he could throw himself into his work with such intensity that he went without sleep for days. She realized he looked exhausted, almost ill. Some of her own anger began to melt. She felt something inside her soften.
“You—you look tired,” she began hesitantly. “Aren’t things going well?”
“No, they’re not going well. As a matter of fact, everything is going wrong. We’ve gotten way behind schedule. We’re running into all kinds of problems out in the desert, sand storms, malfunctions. Half the crew is down with one ailment or another.”
An unexpected wave of sympathy swept over her. Feeling contrite for giving him such a bad time since stepping off the plane, she reached across the table and clasped his hand. “Kirk, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize things had gotten so desperate.”
Her gaze roamed over his tired, care-worn features and the softness grew inside until it caught at her breath. The urge to brush her fingers over the lines around his lips, to kiss the tension and worry away, was almost more than she could bear. “How bad is it, Kirk?”
“It could be the end of the production.”
“Oh, Kirk!” Now she felt her blood run cold.
He nodded. “You know the studio reluctantly agreed to the original budget. All the indications now are that it’s going to cost at least ten million more to finish this thing. That two-faced little assistant producer they hung around my neck sneaked some rushes back to Sam Kasserman and he’s screaming bloody murder.”
“Ansco had no business doing that!”
“Of course not! What can Kasserman tell from some unedited roughs? Nevertheless, he didn’t like what he saw. And with the shooting falling so far behind schedule, the cost escalating—” He shook his head. “I’m afraid they’re going to pull the rug out from under us, Natalie.”
She hardly knew what to say. She didn’t have the heart to remind him that the executives at Continental Films had warned Kirk from the beginning that his reputation for ignoring budget limitations could get him in trouble. She could only hold onto his hand as if to keep him from drowning. Forgotten for the moment were all the emotions of bitterness, anger and hurt that had dominated her heart a few minutes ago. They seemed petty in comparison to the crisis Kirk was facing.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
He shrugged with a helpless expression. “Keep on shooting until they pull the plug, I guess. Maybe we can get the desert shots on film.”
“But you haven’t started on the space scenes. The sets aren’t even finished.”
“I know. It doesn’t look good, unless we can get more financing.”
“Kirk, I don’t know what to say. It’s a terrific motion picture. Whatever personal problems we’ve had, I never had a single doubt about this being the big picture of the year. They just can’t shelve it.”
He smiled wryly. “Want to bet?”
No, she didn’t want to bet, she thought with a feeling of despair. It wouldn’t be the first production to be canceled because of a budget that had grown out of control.
“Something is festering at the studio. I’m not sure what,” he said. “I’m just getting rumors out here. I think there’s going to be a shake-up. You know David Clawson, the head executive of the parent corporation in New York, has been after Sam Kasserman’s scalp for some time. He might be using this film to get Sam replaced as head of the studio. He wants somebody he can control. As soon as that happens, The Last Encounter is going to be shelved. You can depend on that. Or, Kasserman might shelve it first to save his own hide. Right now this film project is extremely unpopular both at Continental Films and the parent corporation in New York. The consensus of opinion seems to be that it’s turning into a costly disaster.”
“The publicity department had a writer from Persons and Events on the sets just before I left,” Natalie told him. “Do you think they’d be publicizing a film that’s going to be shelved?”
“It hasn’t filtered down to the lower executives and departments yet. From the rumors I’m getting, this is a struggle going on at the highest management level. Could even be something the board of directors at Atlantic Enterprises is fighting over. You have a great-uncle on that board. Have you heard anything I don’t know?”
She shook her head. “I haven’t been to New York since we started shooting this film. I spent the last three weeks in Hollywood with Ginny.”
The meal came. The French dishes were delicious, prepared with loving care, but Natalie had lost her appetite. She forced herself to eat, not wanting to hurt the café owner’s feelings. He bustled around their table like an anxious parent, making sure everything was perfect.
After the meal, Monsieur Petreaux asked Kirk if he would play the piano. “He has so much talent,” he said to Natalie. “Last night he played the Marseillaise. I cried.”
The café owner bustled off to fetch them a fresh bottle of wine as Kirk moved to a piano bar set up at the other side of the room. Natalie took a seat, watching Kirk’s strong fingers race over the keyboard. She understood Monsieur Petreaux’s emotions. More than once Kirk had made her
cry with his melodies. Tonight, she was very close to tears, swamped with a thousand bittersweet memories as the wreckage of a broken marriage lay at her feet.
She sensed from the kind of selections Kirk played as his fingers roamed the keyboard, that he, too, was caught up in a sentimental mood. Was he remembering the times they had laughed together, cried together, fought and made up? Did he feel any regrets? Or was he relieved to be getting out of a marriage that had meant so little to him?
Monsieur Petreaux reappeared from the wine cellar. “This is a special occasion,” he said, proudly placing a bottle on the piano bar with fresh glasses. “Our best Napoleon brandy.”
Kirk smiled and broke into a strain from the Marseillaise. The rotund café owner stood proudly at attention, tears filling his eyes.
As Kirk continued to play, straying from one melody to another, Natalie realized more people were drifting into the café and gathering around the piano. She decided this must have become a regular nightly event while Kirk was filming the street scenes in Tunis. He had attracted something of a following.
Tonight word had spread that he was in town for the evening and his friends had come to hear him. He played popular French tunes and they sang, and he played American show tunes and love ballads, and he played Chopin and Tchaikovsky and Cole Porter and Burt Bacharach. His mood ranged from sentimental to sad to brave to angry. He played like a man obsessed.
Natalie thought that for Kirk, the piano was a form of therapy, a means of emotional catharsis, where he could relieve the anger and tension and frustration that was tearing him apart.
When he played like this, Natalie came closer to understanding this complex man who had been her husband and her lover than at any other time. There were sides to Kirk that had forever remained a mystery to her. Perhaps that had been the fatal flaw in their marriage—the fact that she had never really known Kirk Trammer. Though they made love and slept together, they had remained strangers. She had intuitively sensed that he was a man living with some kind of relentless inner torment. Was it the grief and guilt over the accident that killed Jacqueline Davis, the woman he’d loved? Was it the emotional scars left over from war? Was it the inner, driving torment that often haunted and pursued creative people?
Whatever it was, Kirk had never been able to talk about it with her. Some parts of his inner being, he kept behind locked doors. He held her at a distance. But when he played the way he did tonight, she caught glimpses of those emotions he kept under wraps.
Natalie was oblivious to the passage of time. It grew very late. Monsieur Petreaux closed the café, locking the front door, but the group around the piano remained. Perhaps it was the Napoleon brandy she sipped or Kirk’s music or the emotional wasteland left behind by their broken marriage, but she felt detached from reality. In the small, smoke-filled room, the ceiling fan slowly turning overhead, the music made her feel that she was in a scene from Casablanca, filmed through a soft, hazy lens.
It was very late, long past midnight, when Kirk wearily rose from the piano. His friends crowded around him, shaking his hand and embracing him, and they all drifted out into the chilly Mediterranean night. The mist had turned into softly falling rain. Natalie shivered as the drops touched her cheeks.
In the taxi, it seemed natural that she would sit close to Kirk and be warmed by his strong arm. She rested her head on his shoulder as she had done so many times in the past. She was still in the dreamlike state, detached from reality. Dimly, she realized that the legal process of filing for a divorce decree did not automatically turn off patterns of physical response. Her body was ignoring the decree, fitting itself closer to his, following a comfortable habit of intimacy.
Words were not spoken or needed. Kirk’s lips found hers. His hand moved under her dress, sliding up her inner thighs in a familiar caress that heated her deep inside and brought a quickened tempo to her breathing. For this moment, she seemed unable to remember that their marriage was ending. This coming together, this giving of her intimacy to his caresses was such a normal response that she could not find the strength to deny it, nor did she want to. Forgotten for now was the anger, the bitterness, the estrangement.
Passion was raging through her veins, demanding satisfaction from this man who, in spite of everything, could still excite her so.
Years ago, she had given her virginity to Kirk. There had been no man before him. He had been the one to awaken her to a woman’s passion. And she had shared no other man’s bed since she’d known Kirk. Why wouldn’t her body seek his for fulfillment?
Her lips responded to his hungrily. Her hands roamed over him as his did over hers. She felt his muscles, his hardness, and her breath strained in her throat. She slid her fingers under his shirt over his chest, plowing through the mat of crisp, curly hair at the same time that his hand found her breast under her blouse and cupped the round softness there.
She felt as eager as a bride when the taxi brought them to her hotel. “Hurry,” she whispered shamelessly.
Then they were in her room, again locked in each other’s arms. The only light came from the soft glow of a single lamp.
They stood kissing as their clothes fell in a heap at their feet. Kirk scooped her in his arms and carried her to the bed. Her bare flesh against his burned as if with a high fever. She groaned with pleasure as his weight bore down on her. Her arms and legs were locked around him in a straining embrace as they kissed feverishly.
“Oh, Kirk,” she moaned. “Oh...oh...oh—”
She gave herself to him with total abandon as never before.
The hours passed. Through the windows dawn began to tinge the eastern sky. Passion spent at last, Natalie slept peacefully.
* * * * * * *
Kirk sat by the window, smoking a cigarette and gazing moodily at his wife’s profile, soft and lovely in repose.
It had happened again, he thought with a sense of bitter frustration. Natalie had come to him tonight, not out of respect and love but out of pity, just like that night in Malibu. She had felt sorry for him because of the disaster that was looming over the production like a black cloud.
He was sure that the last thing she had expected or wanted was to sleep with Kirk Trammer ever again. Once again he had caught her in a vulnerable mood. She’d had no sex since that night on the beach at Malibu, months ago. She had been love starved. Her emotions had been swamped by the pending divorce. Everything had conspired against her—the compassion for Kirk because of the strain he was under, the sentimental mood his music had evoked, the brandy she had sipped, the romance of the ancient, exotic city.
But tonight’s interlude, lovely as it was, had solved none of their problems.
Their situation was by no means unique. They wouldn’t be the first couple to get a divorce because of their careers. Numerous well-known Hollywood marriages had gone on the rocks because the wife’s acting career blossomed into stardom while the husband went through a period of failure.
He had made a vow that he was not going to make another attempt to touch Natalie unless the picture was a success. Now that possibility was becoming more remote by the day. He felt like a condemned man going through the motions of directing the film as he waited for the ax to fall.
* * * * * * *
The next morning, they flew by helicopter to the desert location in the southern part of Tunisia. The set was a mocked-up Middle-Eastern village built in the rocky desert terrain by a crew Kirk had working overtime.
There for the next several weeks, Kirk drove the production company relentlessly, shooting scenes from the first light of day to the last without a day off. It was as if he were in a desperate race to shoot every foot of film he possibly could while there was yet time.
Ginny and her crew worked under lights at night to get the special effects paraphernalia set up for the following day.
As in the Central American sequence, there was a lot of dangerous stunt work, buildings blown apart, tanks rumbling through the rubble.
There wa
s a scene in which terrorists had torched an American embassy building. Ginny had the problem of creating the effect of the building being on fire. She used a portable, fire breathing machine patterned after one devised by a British special effects expert, Cliff Richardson. The machine built by Richardson and his son consisted of a Volkswagen motor and a pump mounted on a two-wheeled carriage. They had given it the suitable name of the “Dante.” Ginny had made some modifications of the original idea.
When the machine was turned on, the pumping machinery sent fuel surging up jets set behind windows and on the roof. Flames forty feet high leaped from the roof and out of windows. Paraffin was used for fuel because it was safer to work with than gasoline.
Chemicals were mixed with the fuel to color the flames so they would show up more vividly. Ordinary flames would appear almost transparent when filmed.
The effect was dramatic as stunt people wearing fire-protective material under their clothes and oxygen supplies under face masks stumbled out of the building ablaze from head to foot. And at the same time, tanks rumbled around a corner, blasting away with cannons and machine guns.
Tempers grew short. The cast was near exhaustion. “The man is insane,” Tom Sacks muttered angrily. “How long does he think we can keep up this pace?”
The answer came in the form of a telegram from the office of the head of Continental Films.
“Stop all work on The Last Encounter immediately. Decision made to suspend production on the film.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
New York and Hollywood..... It was the end.
The equipment was dismantled. The production crew was paid off and sent home. Natalie’s last hope for her marriage dissolved with the dust of the desert they left behind.
The Movie Page 17