Hearts' Desires

by Anke Napp

  Annoyed, Lauren dropped on one of the cable boxes and waited. That little idiot Thabo! Now they had to do this damned ‘first-meeting’ scene yet again where she had to look him in the eyes as if she had just found the immortal love of her lifetime! What a joke! The young woman sighed. He was just a little kid, nothing more! Moreover, she was already hungry. How long would it take now? And this idiotic dress! It was fastened with some pins in back, and the fabric itched everywhere. What girl in the world would walk around wearing such potato sacks?!

  Steps approached and Lauren turned around, discovering one of the crew with a glass of water. “Here you go!” He handed it over, and she was grateful indeed, even if the silly grin in this guy’s face was very obnoxious! Okay, she had flirted with him a little last evening to play to the gallery in front of Vance. Now this nuisance seemed to think she was interested in him?

  “Thanks. Good idea.”

  “Yeah, thought so. Pretty hot today.”

  “Hm.”

  “You should come join us under the sunshade.”

  “Thanks, but I think we’ll continue soon. I’m fine!” Just leave me alone!

  Alison walked through the set. She hoped Thabo would manage the next performance better than this morning, where they had done 5 takes to no avail! Lauren had given him a hard time, it was true. She was not very patient; an intelligent, hard worker with little understanding for other people’s perhaps slower pace. And Thabo, he let himself be distracted all too easily …

  In the sunshade in front of the crew’s RV some team members had gathered for a little midday chat. Words about all sorts of daily problems reached Alison, who tried not to pay attention. She did not want to get personally involved in her staff’s personal issues. This would compromise the climate on the set. However, she could not completely evade the worries of Chang about his two kids at school, or Terence’s complaints about his around-the-clock-shopping girlfriend. Alison felt annoyed, but at the same moment a little part of her envied them. She had never been part of this daily business and family matters, of chats like this. She blocked every stray thought, locked the little troublemakers up in the backyard of her mind. She couldn’t afford to spend time hanging out and being lazy! And she surely did not need a husband or kids to get on her nerves on top of everything else!

  Leaving the RV behind, Alison stepped up to the first camera. She shaded her eyes and used a handheld viewer lense to anticipate how the next scene would work. Filming in a garden area with trees and ample bushes was always difficult. It meant lots of sharp contrasts to master. However, Jake Bertoni was very good at doing this – a little ‘wizard’, as some people in Hollywood called him!

  “Alison?” She turned around and discovered Max.

  Now he closed in and tapped at his hat in a mock salute. “Madame General visits the battlestations! – You never take a break, Alison!”

  “I can’t, Max. You know that. A lot of money is riding on this production!”

  “Just as on every other one before. How do you think you ever can get along without work?”

  “Oh, I’ll be happy if this is over, believe me! Finally time again to read and … well, you know, doing all the things you can’t while working!” She laughed, but it was not heartfelt.

  “You have changed a lot since we last worked together, Max! I remember you were the first on the set, even before I was up!”

  He sighed. “Well… such a stroke can change everything! I was laying in the hospital for months, and had a lot of time to ponder all kind of things… And I discovered sometimes it is better to miss something – you might find the opportunity you were looking for sitting right next to you.”

  “This sounds very poetic! You should write a book!” Alison answered with a friendly smile; then she changed the uncomfortable subject: “Did you talk to the Rangers from the National Park about the hunting scenes in the Karoo?”

  Max Dumont nodded and gestured to a place in the shade. “That’s why I was looking for you. - Let’s go over there! … They had some trouble because of some environmental protection guy. Now they want to have proof we won’t harm the game during the filming.”

  “I’ll talk to them. Trouble with environmentalists is the last thing I want!”

  Everything was set up for one of the most difficult scenes on their entire schedule. It involved Lauren, Thabo and Vance and demanded a complex emotional play, as Camilla would discover the pitiful truth about her alcoholic father. It was never easy to play a drunk. In a lot of cases, it could end up looking like a sit com. On the other hand, they had to avoid it being too dramatic as well. The focus of the film was on first love, after all.

  Alison tugged on her T-shirt that was already sticking uncomfortably to her back. Better to get up from the chair, sun shade or not! The camera assistants signaled ready. But Meredith from the make up team was still in the scene, fixing Lauren's hair. Wandering in and off, Alison waited for her to finish. Hadn't she told her this morning she wanted a braid? And guess what, Lauren had appeared on the scene with a bun! If people couldn't focus their attention on such minor stuff, how on earth - ah, they were ready at last! The first take could start.

  Arend Marens leaned against the wall next to the front door, eyes squinting while he looked down at Camilla who had stopped in her tracks right in front of the porch, and Thabo, who stood a step closer as if ready to shield her from whatever was coming.

  Alison was satisfied with the positioning; the tension between the characters was graspable even before any line of dialogue. Now everything depended on Vance's performance…

  "You're here to remind me of my failure?!" Marens made a step forward and reached the balustrade with some effort. "I should've been with her that day! And it wouldn't have happened! I just shouldn't forget, should I?" His voice was a mixture of anger and desperation. Camilla shrunk back, embarrassed, and shot a nervous glance to Louis. The boy was up on the porch with three swift steps.

  "Mister Marens, you want me to bring you into your --"

  "Get your dirty hands of me!" he shouted, trying to evade Louis’ helping arms and in that movement losing ground and stumbling on his knees.

  Good, Alison thought. No: Perfect. That had been the sequence worrying her most.

  Lauren alias Camilla still stood petrified, watching the disaster in front of her. Hopefully, her facial expressions, caught by the second camera, matched the scene. Vance struggled to his feet again; an absolute convincing performance of a man who tried to save the last bits of his crumbling dignity in front of the others. No doubt, she had underestimated his acting skills…

  It was shortly before sunset, the moment when the cool breeze of the evening already brought relief and the birds awoke. Vance had been wandering around, going over his dialogue for the upcoming scene tomorrow. Now he sat down on the steps that led from the porch of the old farmhouse into the garden. He took out his cigarettes but then paused, watching two fighting Cape-Sugarbirds. Their long tail feathers brushed through the sand and swirled up tiny sand devils.

  Only when the birds flew up, Vance discovered Alison standing next to him on the porch. The last sun rays painted everything in an orange – red, even her hair. As if it was set in flames…

  “Wonderful evening…” Alison said, more to herself than to him, and folded her arms over her chest. The wind moved the leaves of the oaks and the rose bush. Some old, dry ones sailed down to the ground peacefully. She had not had time to notice such things for years. And she hadn’t thought about her father that much in a very long time either. Vance’s performance had forced her to face things she did not want to deal with again. But now she discovered a lot of missed colors beneath the grey shroud where she had buried the time before her emigration.

  “It’s as if… the land itself opens and spreads beauty… as a barrier before nightfall… I love this hour of the day,” Vance murmured; the unlit cigarette still in his fingers and looking over the slowly darkening view in front of him. “I’ve sensed this only
here in this part of the world, nowhere else. ’Course this is sentimental nonsense! Don’t pay attention.” He snorted. “Seems I’m still homesick!”

  Some minutes passed in silence. Alison realized that Vance still played with the new butt. “You may smoke, if you want. I’m not allergic.”

  “And you won’t give me a sermon?” He smiled saying this, and she thought it did not sound as rude as she might have considered it under other circumstances from other people.

  “My wife says I’m a total addict! But that’s not true. I could stop, if I wanted.”

  “That’s what they all say.”

  “No. I mean it. But why should I?” Vance lit the cigarette. “I’ll celebrate my 50 birthday soon and –“ He stopped shortly before he could add ‘who the fuck cares’. Silence settled again. Even the birds had gone by now.

  “I’m not sure that you’re not portraying your character as too sympathetic,” Alison said after a while. “Marens is a self centered tyrant, hating the world and everything in it.”

  „I don‘t think so,” Vance answered, simply eager to contradict her.

  And Alison felt unprofessionally annoyed to hear his disagreement. ”His whole world has crumbled right in front of him. The politics, the ideals, and the truths he believed in – everything changed almost overnight when the new government came to power. He even thinks his wife had betrayed him and worked for the ANC. This made him full of grief and bitterness. But he‘s not a bad man. He doesn’t deserve to be portrayed as such, in my opinion. He just doesn’t want anyone to see any emotion inside him; he wants to be the patriarch in control of everything, even if he has lost this very control a while ago. He has emigrated to himself. But it’s all there, you know! He is a really interesting character… I start to… well… like him.” Alison listened to his explanations, given so vividly and intense that the excitement spilled over to her. So far, she had avoided giving Marens more than a superficial thought. The character reminded her too much of her father. Vance words were doubly unwelcome because he had pointed out her weakness and brought the past back. She had stopped thinking of her father with any sort of emotion at the age of 14. In his aloofness he was the unreachable goal she had to strive for, and at the same time feared to become. She did not want any emotion sneaking into the picture now via the backdoor, after she had closed the front door so firmly! Of course that was not something she could possibly admit in front of anyone from her team. It would have looked like she was a stubborn teenager struggling with puberty!

  “Seems you’ve dug yourself quite deep into that character.”

  Vance was slightly amused by her – barely visible – surprise. Did she think he was not capable of such sophisticated thoughts?!

  “That’s what I always try to do,” he answered. “In case there is something to dig into, of course. There are a lot of character settings which are as flat as a table cloth.”

  The comparison made Alison smile. “That’s true.” She took a deep breath. “Well, Vance, I always had a policy on my set: if an actor comes up with an idea for his or her character, I’ll give it a try. So, go with it and we will see after the next scenes if it fits in or not. It will be my decision in the end.”

  “Of course.”

  Before they realized it, it was dark and they still stood there talking about scripts and character settings – until Alison asked the one question that had been on her mind since the beginning:

  “What happened on the set with Robert Harker back then?”

  “Afraid of Van Sorel the troublemaker?” Vance asked startled by the change of subject that seemed rather abrupt to him. He turned his gaze away from her. “I’m sure you know the details. No one could miss the bad press.”

  “True, but I want to hear your side of the story.”

  Vance shrugged. He had nothing to hide. “Harker dumped some shit over one of the crew members who didn’t deserve it, you know what I mean. He was just in the mood and looking for a victim. Well, I stepped in and told Mr. Harker that the times of slavery are over. He answered I should not stick my nose into other people’s business - and so on. It got nasty; he kicked me and I fought back. We both landed in hospital, I had a broken rib, and Harker some bruises that he threatened to sue me for, if any visible scars remained. When he was back on the set, he refused to continue to work with me. Of course the producer gave him the bird - if they had fired me, it would’ve meant to shoot a couple of scenes again, and they did not want that. So he had to stick it out with me! I bet he really enjoyed that final scene, when his character finished off my character! - You don’t believe a word I’m saying, do you?”

  “I absolutely do. I know Robert Harker. He uses to annoy me with his chauvinist small talk on every major event!” Alison smiled wryly. “This could have cost you your career, Vance.”

  “Maybe it has. Harker got his third Oscar last year. And what do I get? Jobs like ‘Ten Days’!”

  Hearing this, Alison had to smile. Hadn’t that been exactly her thoughts? Their eyes met and wove a thin band of mutual understanding.

  Vance smiled back. “Well, at least it paid off and I could afford an apartment in L.A. instead of sleeping in the car any further!”

  “Why have you never clarified what exactly happened?”

  He shrugged. “Robert Harker was Robert Harker already, and I nothing but a newcomer who should have been glad to get a part next to a celebrity like him. And then… I’ve always been the black sheep of the family anyway, since I joined a theatre group! – Well, this was my revenge for being dragged to a cold unfriendly place named Canada!”

  His slight grin and the sparkle in his eyes softened the words, but Alison could hear old regrets shining through nonetheless. “So your parents emigrated?”

  He nodded. “I was barely 17. I don’t say I liked the politics in my home country back then. I just didn’t give it a thought, you know? I was a kid, and I was mad at my parents, damned mad! No one asked me – I just had to leave everything behind; my friends, my plans… Ah, don’t want to bother you with my personal crap.”

  He discovered Nora Mendez walking through the garden, talking into her cell phone. Without noticing the other two people, she leaned against one of the oak trees and caressed her belly while speaking, as if she wanted to transmit something to her child. Perhaps she was talking to her husband. His mood sinking again, Vance rose. Reality always stood weapon at the ready to blast magic to hell, it seemed!

  “I think I’ll get some sleep now. We start at five, after all. Good night, Alison.”

  "Good night.” She watched him walk away and then sat down herself on the wooden steps.

  Homesick, she recalled his words. She had certainly not been homesick. She didn’t think that word ever occurred to her during the last years.

  Lauren started the day doing a few stretches outside her bungalow, not only because there was more space, but more so because she hoped Vance would get the chance to admire her. Instead it was Thabo who greeted her with a friendly Good Morning and – to her annoyance – installed himself on the bench next to where she was exercising.

  “I thought we could go over to breakfast together,” he said after some moments, sounding as if asking this question had taken a huge amount of courage. He couldn’t see her disapproving face, because she just had bent low to the ground in another exercise.

  “Oh, just go ahead, I’m not finished yet. And I have to stay in shape.”

  Up and down again. Her hair touched the sand. “As a pro, you absolutely have to stay in shape,” she added.

  From the other side of the yard, Vance showed up. Shielded by the veil of her hair, Lauren took in the sight for some seconds.

  “Have you done a lot of movies?”

  I hate him! How can someone be this annoying and NOT notice it, for heaven’s sake?!? “Yes. I didn’t keep track exactly.” She made it sound as if these had been international, award winning productions, and not TV-series, an R-rated crappy horror film and a five-minut
es-appearance in a dance show.

  Vance walked past them, his mind already busy with today’s work. He had gone through the decisive scenes of the script again and felt a lot closer to the man he was supposed to play. A person who had almost lost everything he cared about, including his own perspective. Sounded a bit familiar, didn’t it?

  Shortly after, he had taken position on the porch for scene 29. Alison watched him with a sharp line between her brows and suddenly halted the procedures.

  “Vance, could you put that hat on I saw you with at our arrival in Cape Town?”

  “Sure.”

  “That antique will probable add the flair I’m still missing for this scene…”

  Vance hurried to his bungalow to get the hat. Why does every woman have to bitch about the hat, dammit? He thought, slightly amused. Okay, it wasn‘t new, and it wasn‘t in mint condition either, but hell, it had accompanied him for over 30 years and through ups and downs! When he came back, Alison nodded her approval at last.

  Behind the camera, Jake grinned. Yes, Vance looked definitely ‚daring‘! Lauren waited for her signal, then walked to her position as well, enjoying the sight of her acting colleague. She loved it, when Vance had to wear his shirt half open and she could see the oh-so-sexy hair on his chest!

  -“Picture is up!”

  “Action!”

  Marens stepped down the stairs. “You have been seen with him again. Let me tell you something: Louis is a farmboy, a COLORED farmboy.”

  A hasty sign from Alison to the second camera. They moved in, in an angle showing clearly the threatening air between father and daughter, even before the next words were spoken.