Beauty and the Brain

by Duncan, Alice

  “Shoot, Brenda, you always win.” A young man laughed and handed the woman something. Colin thought he detected the light of worship in the young man’s eyes, and his gaze thinned. As much as Colin understood the things that made up the world, he did not understand human emotions. At all. He’d like to learn; it was only that he’d never had the time.

  The woman rose from the floor with a grace Colin appreciated on an instinctive level. Her movements were fluid, and she swept the young man a deep, if comic, curtsy. “Thank you, Gil. You ought to know better than to play dice with me by this time

  Colin frowned slightly. The only jarring note in the picture the young woman presented—besides that of dicing with three men, which was so outlandish as to be almost off the scale of social normality—was that voice. The tone was delightful; bell-shaped and liquid. The accent screamed Lower East Side.

  Good God, had this woman truly made a success of herself on the stage? With that appalling accent? Colin found himself fascinated by her, his intellectual thirst craving to know everything there was to know about her.

  “Brenda,” Martin said, laughing and gesturing the woman to come to him and Colin. “I want to introduce you to my new research assistant—and my own personal lifesaver—Mr. Colin Peters.”

  When she turned, Colin felt as if someone had punched him in the solar plexus. Good God, the woman was amazing! As petite as a Dresden doll, she appeared fragile in the firelight, yet substantial. That is to say, her figure was substantial. In a small way. Dash it, she had the most delicious body Colin had ever seen. And he hadn’t even seen it, really.

  Her mouth was as red as roses and bowed beautifully, her lips neither too full nor too thin. Her nose was an artist’s dream. Her face was a perfect oval, and her chin was as delicately molded as Eve’s in Michelangelo’s painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

  Colin had never beheld a more beautiful woman. She looked almost unreal, she was so perfect. He tried to calm his buzzing senses with the practical knowledge that she undoubtedly owed a good deal of her magnificent shape to boning, and at least some of her coloring to paint, but he wasn’t entirely successful.

  “Mr. Peters,” she said, and her blue eyes, which matched her gown to perfection, sparkled like sapphires. She’d managed to subdue her New York accent for the introduction. “How nice to meet you. Martin’s told me so much about you. I’m Brenda Fitzpatrick.” She walked like a sylph over to Colin and held out a tiny hand.

  Colin stared down at that hand, marveling that it looked so innocent for one that had only lately held a pair of dice. Astounding. Clearing his throat and his mind of irrelevancies, he took her hand and shook it. “Very pleased meet you, Miss Fitzpatrick.”

  “Oh, please call me Brenda. Picture sets are so casual, and we’re all like a big family.”

  “I see. Charmed, I’m sure.”

  Colin, who had never behaved in any but the most dignified and reserved manner, hardly recognized the thin, shaky voice that issued from his throat. He was behaving like an imbecile, and all because Brenda Fitzpatrick was lovely. How unsettling. Since, however, it was his habit, the trained scholar inside of him noted his peculiar behavior with interest, as if he might document it later in educational monograph.

  Brenda’s eyelids fluttered, giving Colin a splendid view her eyelashes, which were thick and, unless he was much mistaken, homegrown. Her skin looked like white rose petals with a mere hint of pink—natural pink, it was, too—staining her cheeks. So much for his paint theory. In short, she was the most spectacular female Colin had ever encountered.

  Then she grinned up at him, revealing teeth like pearls, and startling him because he hadn’t expected such candid humor from this source. “May I call you Colin? I know it’s probably shocking to someone who hasn’t been in pictures for long, but trust me, we’ll all be pals before long.”

  Blinking, unsettled both by her beauty and the renewal of her accent, Colin stammered, “Oh. Certainly. I’m sure,” and felt himself shrinking in his own eyes. He stood up straighter. He did have an advantage over many people in that he was tall and straight and, while he might be an egghead, he didn’t really look like one. Except for his extremely thick eyeglasses, which took that opportunity to slide down his nose. He pushed them back irritably.

  Evidently sensing some of Colin’s tension, Martin broke in with his customary easiness and charm. “I can’t tell you how happy I am to have Colin assisting me on this picture, Brenda. He’s an expert on just about everything there is to know about American history. He’s really keen on Indians.”

  Her blue eyes opened wider, a feat that amazed Colin, who wouldn’t have believed it possible until he saw it. “Is that so? How fascinating.”

  He didn’t believe her. Not only was her accent enough to let anyone hearing it know her for an unlettered booby, but nobody thought his work was fascinating except Colin himself. Some of his initial and unexpected ardor cooled. “Indeed.” It came out more stiffly than he’d intended.

  “I think it’s marvelous that you know so much about the Indians,” Brenda went on, apparently either not noticing or choosing to ignore Colin’s awkwardness.

  He didn’t believe that, either. “Yes,” he said. “I find my work interesting.”

  “He’s a walking encyclopedia,” Martin said, slapping him on the shoulder and making him jump. “Just the man we need for this picture.”

  Brenda gazed appraisingly at Colin, making his discomfort acute. He’d not encountered many self-assured women in his life; this one disconcerted him.

  “I’m sure you’re right, Martin.” She smiled at Martin and transferred her smile to Colin. “I’d be interested to know something about the Indians if you ever have time for it, Mr. Peters.”

  If there was anything needed to break the spell Brenda Fitzpatrick’s loveliness had spun around Colin, it was this artless comment. He detested people who spoke about “the Indians” in that magnificently casual and totally uninformed way.

  Realizing this was only one more of God’s little jokes—a pea-sized brain in a beautiful package—Colin shook off the remaining remnants of the magic he’d been under. “I fear there is no such thing as ‘the Indians,’ Miss Fitzpatrick” His voice was cool. “There are several tribes belonging to a race of people we have come to designate as American Indians, but they are no more akin to each other than a German is to a Spaniard.”

  “Really? I didn’t know that.”

  Good heavens, she didn’t even flinch from his tone. She must truly be a good actress because she even looked interested. What was the matter with this woman? Was she too stupid to understand he’d just tried to make her feel foolish?

  Brenda darted a quick glance around the room. Her attendant swains had given up waiting for her and wandered off. Colin saw them standing in a clump at the other side of the room, lounging and smoking in an artistic grouping of chairs and sofas, gazing at Brenda and chatting with each other. It looked to him as if they were all three trying to pretend they didn’t want to be the first to race to her side after she stopped toying with Martin’s research assistant.

  He started when Brenda laid a small hand on his arm and stepped closer to him He barely stopped himself from taking a startled step back.

  “Listen, Mr. Peters,” she said in an undertone, as if she didn’t want to be overheard by anyone else. “I know you think I’m nothing but a pretty face, but I really am interested in the Indians—at least the Indians in this picture. I’d appreciate it if you could help me to understand a little bit about them.”

  For the third time in less than five minutes, Colin didn’t believe her. “I’m sure I’ll do my best to provide you with any information you require,” he said in his best schoolmaster’s voice.

  She sighed, dropped her hand from his arm, and stepped back, still gazing up at him. She opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again to say merely, “Thank you.” She turned away from him.

  Colin could have sworn she braced her
self before she took off at a jaunty but extremely dainty pace toward her flock of modem’ courtiers.

  “She’s a lovely person,” Martin said at his elbow.

  Surprised because he’d forgotten there was anyone else nearby but Brenda, Colin turned and stared at Martin for a moment before his wits gathered themselves together. “Er, yes. She’s lovely” That much was true, no matter how little of solid worth Colin had detected underneath her surface beauty.

  But Martin shook his head. “No, I don’t mean only that she’s beautiful. A blind man could see that. But she’s got a good heart, too. She’s a fine person.” He tapped his head. “She’s smart, too.”

  He watched Colin as he spoke, making Colin feel vaguely like a bug pinned to a board. It was as if Martin, a scientist, was assessing him through a microscope. It was an uncomfortable feeling.

  He also didn’t buy the part about Brenda Fitzpatrick being smart. Unless Martin meant smart in the ways of the world, which Colin didn’t doubt for a second.

  “Not everyone knows that,” Martin went on “Few people have the wit to see past her physical beauty to the beautiful woman underneath.”

  Now there, to Colin’s mind, was a tolerably poetic way of phrasing a basic quality of human nature about which Colin himself was uninterested. Martin Tafft obviously made his living in the realms of fiction. “Really?” he said politely.

  Martin sighed. “Really”

  “I suppose I’ll have to take your word for it” Colin felt a little small after he said it. While he didn’t usually find much to interest him in the world around him, except when he was digging into its history, he always tried to be polite.

  But Martin said, “Oh, I expect you’ll learn for yourself one of these days.” And he turned and walked away.

  Colin, feeling insignificant and unimportant, decided to go up to his room on the second floor of the lodge and change for dinner. He had to walk past Brenda Fitzpatrick and her throng of worshipers to get to the stairs, and he had the fanciful notion that they were all staring at him with disfavor. Worse, he was pretty sure they were amused by him, as if he were some kind of object of fun, like the class pundit or the teacher’s pet or something.

  Never, in his wildest dreams, which occasionally visited him during especially deep sleeps, would he have envisioned himself as the man of Brenda Fitzpatrick’s dreams.

  Chapter Two

  It came as no surprise to Brenda that Colin Peters considered her a pretty bit of fluff and nothing more. After all, she’d been cultivating that very image for most of her life. Exactly half of her life, actually.

  At present twenty-four years old, Brenda had been either modeling or acting, first in various vaudeville milieus and later on the legitimate Broadway stage, for twelve of those years, ever since her father died. What’s more, she’d done a darned good job of re-creating herself, if she did say so herself. Indeed, she’d enjoyed it since the world seemed more willing to accept fluff than substance in its female populace. Brenda had been accepted beyond her wildest expectations.

  Usually she was pleased by her success. Today she wasn’t. Accustomed as she was to conquering men with little more than a smile or a discreet lowering of her eyelashes, today she wished her armaments contained more formidable weapons. For instance, a vast knowledge of American history with which she might have impressed Colin Peters, would have come in handy.

  The fact was that, as odd as the notion seemed even to her, she’d taken one look at Colin, with his thick glasses slipping down his patrician nose and his air of having his head in the clouds, and known without a doubt that she’d just encountered the man of her dreams.

  She frowned inside, never once allowing that frown to surface. She knew better. Frowns not only caused wrinkles, but they gave one’s face a forbidding aspect that was death to models and actresses. “Bother.”

  No one, with the exception of a very select number of family members and friends, knew that Brenda possessed a hungry and considerable brain. Most people considered her little more than a gorgeous commodity. A decoration. Window dressing. A man’s expensive accessory.

  The truth of the matter was that Brenda had, by clever and industrious design, created an image for herself that allowed her to earn a considerable income, independent of most, of the restrictions usually placed on women. The good Lord knew, the world neither wanted nor needed women with brains. Ergo, she’d created of herself a package of prettiness. An empty shell. Not, she sometimes thought, unlike one of those Russian eggs that jewelry fellow, Faberge, designed, the ones that were all magnificence on the outside and contained nothing but air inside. One of her admirers had given her a Faberge egg a couple of years back. It now resided in a bank vault in New York City, along with hordes of diamonds, emeralds, rubies, pearls, and other pricey gifts, given to her by licentious men who’d hoped to get into her drawers by giving her trinkets. None had succeeded.

  And now, darn it all to heck—Brenda had acquired a rather colorful vocabulary during her formative years on the stage—she’d met a man whom she instinctively knew was the only man in the world for her, and he’d bought her image. Hook, line, and sinker, the rat.

  Although Brenda wasn’t contemptuous by nature, she had a cynical thought as she watched Colin march up the Cedar Lodge stairs. He, she thought, would be perfectly happy with a vapid shell of a woman. He’d probably be proud to have a porcelain doll on his arm to show off to his friends. She could probably have him on those terms with a snap of her fingers.

  But that wasn’t what Brenda wanted. She was sick of being an ornament. She craved something more from life, although, she acknowledged with the deep self-knowledge she’d acquired over the years, she’d live with this fiction of herself as long as it worked for her.

  She also knew that, when her looks faded, she’d settle for lots of money and a big house with a huge library in which to slake her thirst for knowledge, if that was all she could get. She was not, by temperament, a solitary creature, however, and if she could find a good man with whom to share her intellectual—and physical—passions in the big house, she knew she’d be a lot happier.

  That Colin was the man she wanted, and that she was the woman for him, she discerned in her innermost soul.

  Now, how the devil was she supposed to make him know it? She muttered, “Bother,” again and decided to recruit Martin in the task.

  With her customary skill, she dislodged herself from her group of admirers—long ago she’d begun to consider these young hangers-on as akin to a pack of dogs sniffing at a bitch in heat—and sought out Martin Tafft. Good old Martin. He was one of the nicest men she knew, as well as one of the smartest. If he wasn’t so blasted busy all the time, Brenda might have plied some of her charms on him. She wouldn’t mind being married to a nice man, especially if he had a lot of money. And Martin, if what she’d heard was true, was well on his way to becoming one of America’s new “movie millionaires.”

  She found him in the back parlor of the lounge, deep into a discussion with a man she didn’t recognize. When she entered the room, the two men turned. Martin smiled in greeting. The other man’s mouth fell open, and he goggled at her. She was used to it.

  Pasting on her “perky” smile, she moved toward the men. “Hello, Martin.” She nodded to the man, who didn’t seem able to control his jaw muscles. They still sagged, revealing a set of fine choppers. Brenda was impressed.

  Martin elbowed the man at his side, who closed his mouth with a click of those strong teeth. “How-do, Brenda. May I introduce you to Mr. Septimus Cadwallader, who is engineering the transport of several Indians from the reservation in Arizona Territory to work in our picture?”

  She held out her hand and gave Mr. Cadwallader an up-voltage version of her usual friendly smile. This one generally left men gawking in appreciation, and Brenda always tried to please her audience. “How do you do, Mr. Cadwallader? Thank you for your help in our picture.”

  “Hoo dow you dew?” Mr. Cadwallader stuttered, a
nd corrected himself. “I mean, who do you dow? I mean—’

  “She knows what you mean,” Martin interrupted gently. He often took pity on Brenda’s victims, and she appreciated him for it.

  Because she wasn’t sure of Mr. Cadwallader’s state but figured he was unfit to entertain a question, she asked Martin, “When do the Indians arrive?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon. We’ll have a run-through in the morning, just to get the cast and crew familiar with the story line. I’ll introduce everyone tomorrow morning, and then introduce the Indians as soon as, they get here.”

  “How many will be coming?” The notion of a tribe of Indians arriving by truck train tickled Brenda’s ironic side, although she knew good and well that there wasn’t anything amusing about what the white men had done to Indians during the last half-century. While she didn’t have the time to indulge her intellectual curiosity as much she’d like, she read a lot. What she’d read about the Indian conflict had left her emotions in turmoil. She’d absolutely love to discuss the matter with Colin. Among other things.

  “Fifteen. Young men, for the most part. There’s the part of the Indian maiden, of course, but we’re using a white girl for that. Heavy makeup.”

  “Right.” Which, of course, meant that the Indian maiden in Indian Love Song would look like a white girl in heavy makeup. Brenda didn’t even sigh. She was used to that, too, by this time. “Say, Martin,” she said, “when you’re through with Mr. Cadwallader”—she gave the other man yet another version of her brilliant smile and had the satisfaction of watching him swallow convulsively—“may I talk to you for a minute?”

  “Sure. Be right with you. We’re almost through here.”

  While Martin tried, to get Mr. Cadwallader’s attention to unstick from Brenda and refocus on the matter under discussion, Brenda wandered over to a table in a corner, comfortably set between two of the Cedar Crest’s homey easy chairs.