“I have to ask my mother,” Adrienne told him, and walked across the room to the phone. Her legs moved so smoothly that, from behind, it was almost like watching the ocean recede. If her face and brain left something to be desired, that perfect ass, those lean, coltish legs, those incredibly slender ankles left him with nothing but desire. He licked his lips nervously. When the dick stands up, the brains go into the ground, he told himself, but his dick didn’t seem to be listening.
She was only on the phone briefly, then turned back to him. “Okay,” she said. “My mom says it’s okay.” And then she reached up and began to unbutton her shirt.
“Uh, listen. Let’s do it out on the deck,” he said. “I need the light.” And some air. And the camera, he reminded himself, and went into the hall closet to get it.
When he returned, she was standing in the middle of the living room, her clothes in a pile on the chair beside her. The only thing she was wearing was those cheap, scuffed white shoes, the pointed toes curling up, showing a bit of the sole. Her body was perfect, and its whiteness glowed in the center of the almost empty room. “Where do you want me?” she asked him.
“Outside,” he answered, not surprised to hear the hoarseness in his voice. She turned, and he followed that perfect ass out onto the deck. It was the contradictions of her body that created the tension he felt when he looked at her: she was lean yet curved, toned yet soft, long yet round.
He posed her on a wooden chaise longue. He had no cushions for it, but her white body against the rough wood stirred him deeply, and he figured it had to work on Sam, unless the guy was made of concrete. He shot a roll, thirty-six exposures. He had her stretch out with her arms over her head; then he asked her to hold a breast in each hand, then to sit up. He tried to keep her face out of most of the shots. “Sit at the edge of the chaise now,” he suggested. “Put both arms behind you.”
She did as she was told. He wondered how far her docility would go. She looked at him mildly, her face registering neither disapproval nor pleasure. “Hook your legs under each leg of the chaise,” he told her.
“Like this?” she asked, as she spread her knees.
“Yes,” he said, and squatted down, angling the camera up. A beaver shot. What was possessing him? He could never show this to Sam.
He felt as if he had been privy to a secret, a great mystery, and by exposing it to the sun, to his eyes, to his lens, he was desecrating it at the same time as he worshipped it.
“Look, I want to splash some water on you? Okay? There is a scene in the water.”
“Okay,” she agreed, “but it’s kinda cool. I don’t want to get sick, like my ma.”
“Don’t worry. We’re almost done.” He went to the hose beside the house, shut the nozzle, but turned on the faucet. He approached her, the hose dragging behind him, a long tail. He pointed the nozzle at her belly and pressed the trigger down hard.
The jet of cold water arched up into the sun and gushed down onto her flat white belly. It contracted, and the water splashed up to her perfect pointy tits, the doll-pink nipples immediately hardening, one pointing to downtown L.A., the other directly at Joel. “Oh!” she gasped, and he released his grip on the nozzle and threw it aside. He watched as the water ran down her belly, glistening on the soft brown patch of hair, wetting her between her legs. His penis pressed so hard against his zipper that he felt dizzy.
You are taking your life in your hands, he told himself, sounding like his own grandma. You French-kiss her and you may wind up with French foreign lesions. Before you put that in your mouth, do you know where it’s been?
“Come inside,” he said, against all his better instincts. “Come inside. I want to fuck you,” he groaned. As he knew she would, she stood up and began to follow him. He stumbled through the open door, through the living room into the bedroom. He walked around the unmade bed to the side table, opened the drawer. Thank God. Four condoms. He grasped at one, turned, but she wasn’t behind him. Had he misunderstood? Wasn’t she coming? He walked back out to the living room just in time to see her hanging up the phone. Christ! Had she called for a cab? Had she called the cops?
She was just hanging up the phone. She looked up at him. “My mother says as long as I got the job it’s okay,” Adrienne said, and began to walk toward him.
35
Jahne sat, protected from the lights both by a creme block and the white canvas umbrella, staring at the script. Her heart was pounding in her chest. Today was the first day of shooting with Michael McLain, and she was nervous. Nervous about seeing him, about April Irons’ visit today, about the script that still wasn’t working. Sy Ortis had been at least partly right. The working script for Birth of a Star wasn’t awful, only pedestrian, but Jahne hadn’t been prepared for the rewrites. Each day, new versions were distributed, and each one worse.
While the story hadn’t changed, the settings and style had. And now there were three—count ’em, three—scenes with nudity. She put her hand to her chest, as if it would do any good to cover her breasts now. Well, at least she wouldn’t be the one who had to expose herself in front of a couple of hundred strangers. Sy and her contract had seen to that. But she felt sorry for the poor, anonymous girl who would.
The San Francisco soundstage, large as an airplane hangar, was chaotic. Cables crossed the floor in a demented roadmap. Equipment of every conceivable sort was heaped about. Grips called out to one another, barely audible over the noise of hammering and rendered invisible by the shower of sparks from arc welding that fell in a bright cascade from somewhere on a catwalk overhead.
Mai had told Jahne how different movies were from television, but she couldn’t have imagined the scale without seeing it. From the lushness of her trailer to the vastness of the soundstage to the numbers of crew, the enterprise was intimidating. Jahne thought of the little band of players in St. Malachy’s basement, and of the cast of two in the original production of Jack and Jill. How had Sam learned to handle so much so soon? And could he handle it? Jahne had always admired him as a director, but this was too much for anyone to manage.
She made her way through the maze of workers and crates and props and lights, the little AD at her side. Jahne, always polite, remembered that his name was Joel Something. She turned to him. “Joel, who will attend this meeting?”
“Oh, Sam, April, Michael, Bob, and Samantha Reiger.”
“April Irons will be there?”
“Yeah. It’s unusual, but this is such a big-budget baby that I guess she wants to see it off on the right foot.” He flashed an ingratiating grin at her. “Not that it won’t be a huge success with you in it,” he told her. “I really admire your work.”
Jahne nearly laughed. After almost a year, she still couldn’t get used to the L.A. crowd’s talking seriously about dreck like Three for the Road. And sometimes it was hard to figure if they, too, knew it was dreck, in which case they were toadies, or if they actually did admire it, in which case they were subliterate. Joel, she could see, was a toady. That made it easy for her. She didn’t have to feel sorry for him or like him.
She sighed. “Tired?” he asked. Christ, the little worm was right in her face! Jahne knew the biggest job of an AD was babysitting the stars. Well, she didn’t need a sitter. What she did need was a little more confidence in her judgment and fewer butterflies in her stomach. Her fear was that Sy might—just possibly—be right: that Birth of a Star was nothing but a potboiler. And Sy called her every other day to remind her over and over how important her first picture was. “If this goes down the toilet, you’ll be a TV queen forever,” he had said. “Totally ABC’s Movie of the Week. Coming down with the newest disease or vamping through some stupid romance. Strictly Jane Seymour territory.” Involuntarily, Jahne put her hand to her stomach.
“You okay?” Joel asked.
“Fine,” she told him, and her annoyance showed in her tone of voice.
But she wasn’t fine. Because she had worked so hard, had suffered such pain, had been so brave,
all so that she could get here. Here. On this set. And, if she was really honest with herself, she knew she hadn’t made the best choice. If this movie bombed, she’d gone through the surgery, the humiliation, the loneliness, the fear…for nothing. She’d never get to play any of the great roles. She’d wind up nothing more than a TV whore, which, in her cosmology, was several steps lower than a Broadway gypsy. And she’d picked this role, against the advice of her TV director and her agent, for one reason.
So she could be with Sam, the man who had betrayed her once already.
She felt the butterflies dance in her stomach. Why should she be nervous, seeing Michael? He was the one who had behaved like a dog, not her. And if he had never called her, she certainly hadn’t wanted to be called. So why, now, did she feel almost—well—ashamed?
Ridiculous! she told herself, but the butterflies didn’t go away. Nor did the curiosity about April Irons and Sam. What was their relationship? If she watched them, wouldn’t she know? Couldn’t she tell who Sam slept with, after all this time?
Sam looked good on the set. Even leaner, his mouth more deeply parenthesized by the long dimples on either side, his jaw sharper. He was still tanned, and it still suited him, but it didn’t cover the darkness under his eyes.
Jahne wondered if he actually sat beside some pool, his face turned to the sun, Bain de Soleil with an SPF of 8 slathered on his face. Somehow, it put her off, thinking of him indulging in the most ordinary of Hollywood cosmetic improvements. As if she were in a position to judge anyone else’s vanity. She almost sighed again but caught herself before Joel had a chance to inquire about her health, digestion, bowel movements, or the state of her spiritual life.
Sam looked up from the conversation he was having with the best boy and a grip. He didn’t smile. Instead, he did that thing where his mouth stayed still but his eyes warmed. Jahne felt as if she could be tanned by the warmth. Oh, Christ! she told herself. Don’t be a fool.
She walked up to the group that sat under one of the location tents, slightly removed from the hive of activity. There was April, looking cool and elegant as ever, plus two other actors, and Michael. As she approached, Michael turned and looked up at her.
“Jahne!” he said, and stood up. “Jahne!” And before she could move, before she could react, he had his arms around her, and his mouth on her mouth! She was so surprised that she was speechless. Michael kept one arm on her back and walked her over to the group. She joined them and couldn’t help noticing April’s satisfied smile and Sam’s eyes on her. She couldn’t help it—under his scrutiny she blushed like a schoolgirl.
“Sit here, next to me,” Michael cooed, and laid his arm proprietarily across the back of her chair. Jahne sat down, conscious of all of them watching her.
Blessedly, the AD came over with a question for Sam. In that moment, Bob Grantly and Samantha Reiger, two supporting cast members, introduced themselves and said hello. Then the meeting began.
Jahne could barely keep her eyes on the script. Michael seemed to think that nothing had changed between them, or that, if she was upset by his disappearance, she would completely forget it now that he was back! Of course, he didn’t know that she knew about Sharleen, the matching necklaces, the calls to Lila—and perhaps a necklace for Lila as well. Well, Jahne didn’t care who Michael fucked as long as he kept his hands off her and didn’t rape her friends. She sat there, longing to wipe the feeling of his lips off of hers, so angry that the script in her hands trembled. The meeting seemed interminable.
At last, they were through. April wished them luck and left to fly back to L.A. It was then that Michael turned to her.
“How have you been?”
“Just fine. How about you? And Sharleen? And Lila?” she asked, her voice as cold and hard as she knew how to make it.
He had the grace to pause, at least for a moment, the smile gone from his face. Then he sighed and shook his head. “What’s that line?” he asked. “Hell hath no fury…” he murmured, and his smile turned to a smirk.
“‘Hell hath no fury like a woman raped,’ Michael? Is that the quote you’re looking for?”
His world-famous blue eyes grew cold as the north Pacific. “What are you talking about?”
“Sharleen Smith. Drunk and struggling.”
Michael barked out a laugh. “Come off it, Jahne. I dated her once. The little Okie begged me for it.”
Jahne blinked. For a moment—half a moment—she wondered if perhaps Sharleen had exaggerated or misunderstood. Then, disgusted with him and herself, she looked him in the eye. “You’re a pig!” she said.
“You’re a slut,” he answered, and began to turn away.
All at once, her fury at him, at all men who did what they wanted with women and then walked away, seemed to rise up in her. Before he’d taken three steps, she was beside him and had grabbed at his shoulder. He turned, surprised, and she lifted her right arm, swung it back, and then slapped him, as hard as she could, across his world-famous left profile. The sound her hand made as it connected was loud and frightening. All of the crew stopped what they were doing. Silence fell over the place. Michael, stunned, lifted both hands to his face and stifled a groan.
Without a word, Jahne turned and walked off to her trailer.
“Jesus Christ!” Sam cried. And ran over to Michael’s side.
The pandemonium had calmed down. Sam had run back and forth, between a raging Michael and a frigid Jahne, until one had been soothed with both an ice pack and an apology, and the other bribed with a promise that she didn’t have to see Michael anywhere except on the set. And an invitation to dinner with her director.
The crew had been buzzing all afternoon, but now, as evening came on, the scandal was calming down. Sam sighed, flipped the visor on the car to block the rays of the setting sun, and turned to Jahne.
“Couldn’t you wait until after the wrap to hit him?” Sam asked plaintively, but then he had to laugh. “Not that he doesn’t deserve it, but it could make filming rather—how you say—difficile?”
Jahne shrugged. For once, she’d behaved badly, and this trip was her reward. She had actually seen nothing of California in the year since she had relocated. She’d arrived in L.A., got the Melrose job and then Three for the Road. She’d been on back lots and gritty locations like Louisiana and Idaho for 3/4, but had seen nothing of the Golden State. Now she would see something, if she could keep her eyes off Sam. He was taking her out, going to show her around, he said, before dinner. It was supposed to be a meeting to calm her down, to discuss the script, he said. Now that Michael’s face had been packed in ice and Sam had spoken to him, it was her turn. She smiled. She actually felt good. She’d never in her life acted like a prima donna, she’d never caused a scandal. And now she wasn’t being punished for it, she was being “handled.” She smiled and looked at Sam again. It’s probably just business, she told herself, but he had asked her out. He had. And, like a teenager waiting for her first date, she wondered if he liked her. But that’s the old Mary Jane. I should only be worrying about whether I like him.
Sam had picked her up a few minutes early, as if he couldn’t wait to be with her. Stop reading into things, she’d told herself sternly. Just stop. But she couldn’t. She slid into the low seat of his rented Nissan 300ZX Turbo and breathed the same air he had been breathing. Her lungs hurt. Eine kleine Nachtmusik was playing on the sound system, filling the car. Sam had stepped around to the driver’s side and folded his lanky frame into the black leather seat. As he accelerated away from the hotel, she felt herself pushed back into the seat, almost as if his weight were already on her.
“I’d thought we’d go to Santa Cruz for dinner,” he said now. “Have you ever been?”
“No,” she told him. “I don’t know Northern California at all.”
“Never been to Muir Woods? Never been to the wine country? No? I’ll have to take you. It’s wonderful.”
She tried to remember if he used to say “wonderful,” back in New York. She didn
’t think so. But then, not much had been wonderful. Except maybe Jack and Jill. Except maybe their time together. And, then, she thought, maybe it had only been wonderful for her. Hadn’t he just said something about taking her someplace? He meant to see her again. He assumed he would. And she felt both angry and breathless.
Well, of course he’ll see me. Why shouldn’t he? I’m the star of his latest production. He’s a star fucker. And I’m pretty. I’m sixty-seven thousand dollars’ worth of pretty. Why shouldn’t he expect to see me again? And why should it make me happy that he does? I ought to learn to take this stuff for granted, as Mai told me to. She sighed.
“Well, that doesn’t sound like a delighted response,” Sam said dryly.
“No, I guess not. But I am delighted. I’d love to see Napasonomamendocino, or whatever the place is.”
Sam laughed. “Those are three places, and the third one is the prettiest. I know a little inn at a small winery there. It’s just great. A sort of merging of all that’s best in Europe and California.”
Jahne wondered if April Irons had introduced him to it. And if it was before or after he had agreed to cast Crystal Plenum in the role of Jill.
“You know, Jahne, your conduct on the set today won’t make this production any easier to get off the ground.”
“He’s an animal.”
“It wasn’t very professional,” he admonished.
“It wasn’t very professional for him to grab me and tongue-kiss me. We broke it off months ago. He’s a pig. And I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
The car took a sharp curve, and Jahne felt Sam’s shoulder brush against hers. The soft leather of his jacket was warm against her bare skin. She felt a chill run up her back.
Something had changed in the air between them. Somehow, she knew that he was interested in her—that he wanted her. Was it her slap at Michael that had done it? Was it because she’d acted like a brat? Or like a woman? She didn’t know. But something had changed.
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