The Slow Rise of Clara Daniels

by Christy English

  “Is this supposed to resemble Arabia?” Donna lifted a sardonic eyebrow over the rim of her Ray Bans.

  Clara laughed, extending her hand so the makeup woman could finish touching up her fingernails.

  “That’s what they tell me.”

  Donna dropped her cigarette and stamped on it with the toe of her sandal.

  “I don’t think any of these people have been to Arabia.”

  “I doubt it.”

  The nail woman waved a hair drier over Clara’s hand. Clara’s assistant, Lila, handed her a chilled bottle of Evian.

  Clara thanked her with a smile, grateful for the touch of the cool bottle. She sipped it carefully through a straw so she wouldn’t smudge her lipstick.

  “Sony has given the green light on the space trilogy Stan wants you to look at.” Donna lit another cigarette.

  The nail woman turned off the hair drier and left.

  “What space trilogy is that?”

  “You know. The one with the ray guns.”

  Clara laughed. “They all have ray guns, Donna.”

  “Well, this one has a lot of them. In the first film, you’d be a warrior princess leading a band of fighter pilots or something.”

  “It sounds like a Star Wars rip-off.”

  Donna snorted. “It probably is. But Star Wars sells, so a rip-off will, too.”

  “Is that their reasoning?”

  Clara handed the empty Evian bottle to Lila, who quietly disappeared into the trailer.

  “I don’t know that they use reason. Do you want to look at the script?”

  “As a favor to Stan for picking up this costume drama, I’ll look at it. But no promises.”

  “Of course not.” Donna pulled off her glasses to look Clara in the eye. “I thought you didn’t do favors.”

  Clara shrugged. A woman from the wardrobe department came to puff out the sleeves of Clara’s billowing dress. She was supposed to be a rich English woman, lost in the depths of the Arabian sands, rescued by a passing tribal chief. Basically, a rip-off of The Sheik, without the rape and the kidnapping element.

  Clara stood and let the woman straighten the rest of her gown. She knew she looked like a giant meringue.

  “I’m getting out of here.” Donna put her glasses back on. “California sun murders my skin.”

  Lila stood silent, ready with an umbrella to escort Donna to her car.

  “I’ll messenger over the space drama script.”

  “I’ll take a look at it.”

  “I’ll see you when you get back.”

  With that, Clara’s manager made her escape. As she strode away from the set, Donna looked down at each step her feet took, no doubt so she wouldn’t step on any snakes. Clara’s assistant followed Donna at a trot, keeping her shaded from the desert sun with a black umbrella stolen from catering.

  That night, Clara stood on the terrace of the little hotel where the cast and crew were staying. The stars were thick across the night sky, and the desert air was cold on her skin. The silk of her dress was soft against her thighs as she strolled in lazy circles over the flagstones. No one came to speak to her. People on her movies always left her alone unless she called someone over. Clara found herself enjoying the silence.

  She could hear the thoughts of the people drinking peacefully in the hotel bar. They sat at wicker tables, drinking frothy alcoholic drinks with little umbrellas in the glasses and fruit on the rim. Their thoughts were a quiet murmur, strangely relaxed for a crew this far into filming. The director was new and competent, and they were on schedule and under budget. Clara couldn’t remember the last time that had been true on one of her films.

  The director was a short blond boy fresh out of film school. He had a surprisingly good eye in spite of his training. And what would have been a banal rip-off of an old black and white film was turning into an honest love story. Clara felt even her performance improving under the direction of the blond boy. She fished in her mind for his name and found it. Charles. She liked to call him Chuck, to rattle him, but he never blinked.

  She had toyed with the idea of sleeping with him but had abandoned it. Her performance was one of the best of her career, and it was due to him. Sleeping with him would ruin that.

  Clara wasn’t much of an actress and she knew it, but it pleased her to find that she was improving. She needed to remember this Charles and see to it that he was hired again.

  She hadn’t slept with anyone on this film, with the exception of a grip one night when she was especially tired. Sam had the body of a Greek Adonis. Clara had indulged herself and hadn’t regretted it. As always, she had chosen well. Sam had been the soul of courtesy and had made no claims on her afterward.

  Clara lit one of her cigarettes with her ivory-handled lighter. The flame warmed her hand briefly in the cool desert air, and she drew a long line of smoke into her lungs.

  “That stuff will kill you.”

  She turned to smile at Fred. She hadn’t even heard him approach. Not a murmur of his thought, not a whisper of his shoes on the flagstone terrace.

  “You always manage to surprise me.”

  He smiled back. “That’s why you keep me around.”

  “Do I?” She arched a delicate eyebrow at him. “Keep you around? I haven’t seen you in three months.”

  Fred’s smile widened. He seemed to admire her, even when she was rude. Clara basked in his approval. She was surprised at herself, because since her mother died, she’d never given a rat’s ass what anyone thought.

  She found herself relaxing even more, as she always did when she was with him. His presence soothed her even when she didn’t need soothing.

  “Well, you don’t keep me around yet, but you will.” His voice held no bravado, only confidence.

  Clara laughed her throaty screen laugh, and a few grips drinking together inside turned their heads to listen. She nodded to them, feeling magnanimous. Fred always made her feel expansive, as if she could afford affability.

  Clara breathed in her hashish smoke, then finished the cigarette and stubbed it out in a brass ashtray set into the marble railing of the terrace.

  “What brings you into the wilderness?”

  His blue eyes were warm as he smiled at her. “You.”

  “I’m flattered.” She waited to hear what he would say next.

  Fred didn’t speak, however. He tilted his head back and looked up at the stars. The sky seemed infinite above the desert, more than the sky above the city. Clara didn’t raise her head to look at the stars with him. Instead, she watched as he took a deep breath of the clean air and then sighed.

  “I like the country better than the city.” His voice was quiet, as if he were thinking out loud.

  “Any country? Or the desert in particular?”

  “Any country. Though this desert is beautiful.”

  “Not at noon it isn’t.”

  Fred laughed, a flash of teeth white in the moonlight. She could see his cobalt blue eyes glint. They were so dark they looked almost black.

  “I’ll be long gone by then.”

  “Did you really drive all the way out here to see me?”

  “Well, to give credit where it’s due, I didn’t do the driving. I came out here specifically to get you to sign a contract.”

  Clara laughed at that, her throaty laugh falling down into her belly. She laughed until tears came into her eyes, and she had to sit on the edge of the terrace railing to regain her breath.

  “I’m sorry, Fred. I shouldn’t laugh in your face. But that is rich.”

  He smiled at her pleasantly, unmoved by her amusement. He stepped away from her to a calfskin briefcase that stood like a sentinel a few feet away. He brought it over to the railing and propped it up on the marble, opening it with a flick of his wrist.

  “Here’s the contract. The light isn’t very good out here, I know. But you can trust me.”

  Clara laughed more. She held her sides, feeling that she might split in two.

  “Stop it,
Fred. I’m going to lose my dinner.”

  He sat down next to her on the railing and extended the contract. “Just take a look at it. I’ll send it to your lawyer in the morning.”

  Clara finally stopped laughing, wiping her eyes with her fingertips. “You really expect me to sign this?”

  “Of course. It’s a great film. Blast Away is the working title, but we’ll change that during production. The studio wanted you signed for all three films, but I didn’t think you should tie yourself down.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  He looked at her blandly over the creamy pages in his hands. “Not at all. You’ll be making double your usual salary, which I thought was quite generous.”

  “You’re being generous to me?”

  Clara listened to herself, expecting to hear fury in her own voice. But for some reason, she didn’t get angry. She only felt mystified.

  “Well, not me, the studio.” Fred looked into her eyes. “I happen to know that Sony has approached you with a similar space trilogy. Our script is better, and we’ll double your usual asking price. It’s a great deal for you and for us. Willoughby wants you back, Clara.”

  She became still at the mention of Willoughby’s name. “He should have thought of that before he passed on the costume drama.”

  “Oh, Clara, don’t hold a grudge. It isn’t like you.”

  “The hell it isn’t. You don’t know me very well.”

  She met his eyes again and found herself lost in their indigo depths. They were both silent for a long moment.

  He spoke first, his voice gentle. “I think I know you better than most.”

  Clara waited for a stinging retort to come to her lips, for her hands to rip the contact in half and cast it back his face. Neither of those things happened. She simply sat, the cold marble of the railing under her legs, looking into his eyes.

  “Double my usual salary, you say?”

  A slow smile spread like a sunrise over Fred’s face. His blue eyes had a clear light in them, almost as if he were proud of her.

  “Double. Though of course, we can negotiate that upwards for the second film, once we have your signature for the first.”

  Clara looked at him for a long moment. “Do you have a pen?”

  “What the hell were you thinking?” Donna’s voice sounded strangled over Clara’s cell phone.

  Despite the terrible service in the desert, Clara didn’t want to have this conversation on one of Sony’s telephone lines.

  “Did you just swear at me?” Clara smiled to herself, tapping her cigarette ash into a crystal ashtray.

  She was sitting in her trailer with the air conditioning on full blast, waiting for Chuck the Blond to set up the next shot. Her assistant, Lila, sat quietly in a corner, doing a crossword puzzle.

  “I’m sorry, Clara, but I’m in shock.”

  Clara listened over the line as Donna’s assistant poured her a glass of bourbon. She bit her lip so that she wouldn’t laugh.

  “Clara, it just isn’t like you to sign a contract before your lawyer has looked at it.”

  “You’re right, Donna. It was damn foolish. What did Philip say about it?”

  Donna sighed. “He said he’s never seen such a favorable contract come out of a studio. He wants to know what you’ve got on them so he can use it, too.”

  Clara laughed. Lila rose from her corner and brought her a bottle of Evian and poured it over ice.

  “Tell him I need to keep my dirt for future negotiations, but better luck next time.”

  “Well, it turned out fine. But Clara, promise me you won’t do that again.”

  “Donna, you know that I don’t make promises.”

  Clara heard Donna take a long swallow of bourbon. She relented in case her manager became too sloshed to finish looking over the contract.

  “In the future, I’ll be more cautious. This was a special case.”

  “Why is that?” Donna sounded intrigued at the possibility of new information, her drink momentarily forgotten.

  “I can’t go into it here, but we’ll talk when I get back to town.”

  “All right. Just don’t do anything else crazy, like run off to Hawaii before your PR tour, all right?”

  Clara laughed her throaty laugh. “Put it out of your mind. Have I ever missed an opportunity to let the public adore me?”

  Donna’s snort was her only reply.

  “I’ll see you in two weeks.”

  “Really? The costume drama is going to wrap on time?” Despite her consummate professionalism, Donna could not keep the surprise out of her voice.

  “It’s all due to Chuck. He knows what he’s doing.”

  Donna sounded mystified. “Fancy that.”

  11

  Los Angeles, 2013

  Clara drove into Los Angeles for the first time as the sun was setting. The traffic moved around her, but it wasn’t rush hour, so her car kept a good pace. She watched as the buildings of downtown loomed before her. The hills that surrounded the city rose in the distance. She felt a pang for the sight of the desert and squelched it.

  The rental agent had written down the address of her new apartment, a little studio in the Hollywood hills.

  “Slightly pricy,” the real estate agent had said, eyeing Clara’s fake driver’s license with a raised eyebrow.

  In spite of the look on the woman’s face, Clara knew she passed easily for eighteen. She had paid a year’s worth of rent in cash, so the agent hadn’t been too choosy. She had read about her mother in Vanity Fair and had heard of all the money Clara’s family had made in oil seventy years before. The woman hadn’t asked any questions.

  Clara walked into the apartment as the first stars of the evening were coming out. She could see very few past the bright lights of the city, but her deck faced the mountains, and the air that blew in her face was almost fresh. Clara smiled, leaving her suitcase on the deck while she turned to look at the rest of the house.

  There was one long room, its hardwood floor stretching twenty feet in both directions. Clara found the closet, which was smaller than the maid’s closet had been in her mother’s house. In Darren’s house, she corrected herself. He owned the house in Palm Springs now.

  The kitchen was very clean and newly furnished with all the latest gadgets. The white tiles gleamed under Clara’s feet as she opened every cabinet and peered into their cavernous emptiness. She stood looking at her little home in silence for a long time, reveling in the sound of quiet all around her. Her building was a converted house in a residential neighborhood. The sound of street traffic was far away.

  Clara sat on the wooden floor of her empty apartment after bringing her suitcase inside. She plugged in her cell phone to charge it, placing it on a small tea table she’d brought from her bedroom in Palm Springs. It was the only thing, other than her clothes and a picture of her mother, that she had taken from that house.

  She pulled on the sweater her Aunt April had given her on her twelfth birthday. The sleeves were too short and she could no longer button it, but wearing it gave her comfort. It was as if she could feel her aunt’s arms around her again whenever she wore it.

  Clara called a pizza place she’d noticed a few blocks away. She spent the first night in her new home eating pepperoni pizza on the floor, before she curled into her sleeping bag. She slept until the sunrise slanted through her six long-paned windows.

  The next day, the gates of Barnett studios loomed in front of Clara. She had taken the bus to the studio so she wouldn’t have to park her car.

  Clara spent the morning eating a bagel and drinking endless cups of coffee at a sidewalk café, as she watched people move in and out of the studio gates. She listened to the surface of their thoughts, and smiled when she found the man who would get her inside.

  He was short and harried, with a clipboard clutched in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He was a second assistant director for a feature film, and he was late for that day’s shoot. He had gotten drunk a
t a woman’s house the night before, only to wake and find that his car wouldn’t start. He now stood outside the studio gates, fumbling in his pockets for his pass.

  Clara moved to stand next to him, taking his clipboard. “Hi. I’ll hold that for you.”

  He grunted, looking at her suspiciously through narrowed eyes. “Do I know you?”

  “Damn, Pete, I should hope you’d remember.” She smiled at him, a slight smile, looking up at him through the corner of her eye. He shifted uneasily for half a moment, then decided to believe they’d slept together and that he’d forgotten.

  “Oh, yeah. Hi, uh…”

  “Clara. Clara Daniels.” Clara kept her tone light and teasing with no hint of irritation.

  Pete relaxed and smiled. He had found his pass.

  “Are you here for the shoot?” he asked.

  “No, I’m here to do their taxes.”

  Clara flashed him another smile, and he grinned back.

  “Yeah, right.” He flashed his pass and waved the guard away when she moved to follow him. “She’s with Flaming Arrows. An extra.”

  The burly guard nodded and stepped aside.

  “Where’s your pass, Clara?” Pete dropped the stub of his cigarette and stamped it out underfoot.

  Clara didn’t miss a beat as she fell into step beside him. “They forgot to give it to me at the casting office yesterday.”

  She looked around surreptitiously so her curiosity wouldn’t be noticed. She had never been on a studio lot before.

  “Shit.” Pete reached into his shoulder bag and drew out an extra’s pass. “Pin this on.”

  Clara walked with him into one of the huge, barn-like studio buildings.

  “Go check in over there, kid, and I’ll see you later.”

  She smiled at him as he moved off, then stepped over to the extras’ bullpen.