Edward picked up what appeared to be a black remote control wand for a television or stereo system, and pressed one of its dozens of studs without looking. Samantha heard a muted electric whir and turned her head in time to see a full curved wall panel of tan suede smoothly roll away to expose an intimate dining alcove at the side of the circular room. Edward gestured to it with the remote and a dozen tiny halogen spotlights came to life to illuminate all within it.
Samantha followed her host to the elevated alcove where a small circular granite table and two intricately carved wooden chairs had been placed to allow both diners to continue to savor the view through the sweeping windows. From the size and the shape of the rest of the circular room, she guessed that there could be as many as five more alcoves hidden behind the curved wall panels. Cynically, she wondered which one would contain the bed.
In the dining alcove, the dark stone tabletop was strewn with pale yellow curls of flower petals and set with irregularly shaped black porcelain plates artfully decorated with salads and edged with gold. Beside them, a full complement of bronze utensils was assembled, twisted in shapes that owed as much to Giger as they did to notions of utility. And rising like crystal flowers from the table, more delicate Steuben flutes and goblets rose up, glittering beneath the pinpoint spots that lit the alcove like the stage it was.
Probably had a set decorator from the studio arrange this, Samantha thought. She wondered how much longer she would have to wait before she could command such indulgences. Julia Roberts had achieved it in three movies. Samantha wanted to set a new record.
Edward pulled out Samantha's chair for her, then slipped her so easilly toward the table that she was surprised by his strength. For a moment, she grew concerned that it might make a difference to how the evening would be played out. Force was against the rules, but it happened. Samantha would regret it if she would have to respond in kind, which she was fully capable of doing. She held her hands beneath the table and checked the alignment of the silver blocks on her ring and bracelet. Unlike her dress, her jewellery was her own, a century-old, heavy European design which had almost become fashionable again, with clever insets of silver which could be snapped out to provide studded cutting surfaces for self-defense. Samantha had yet to use the jewellery as it had been intended, but there was always a first time. She brought her hands back to the tabletop as she waited to see which direction the negotiations would take.
Edward sat gracefully in the chair opposite her. To his right a hammered copper sphere held a second bottle of champagne. The roughly textured metal globe, eighteen inches at its equator and sliced off at an angle through its northern hemisphere, rested atop a glass cylinder like an egg in a cup. Samantha had seen the piece in Connoisseur. It was worth more than the BMW convertible she had rented for the evening, maxing her Mastercard so she wouldn't have to park her six-year-old Civic on Edward's multi-million dollar driveway.
But Samantha kept her face composed and paid no special attention to the sphere, as if she were exposed to such opulence every day. She could not appear to be hungry for what Edward could offer her. That wasn't the way negotiations for parts were typically conducted in this town. But it was the way she was determined to behave.
Edward took the champagne bottle from its ice, wrapped a small linen cloth over its cork and twisted slightly until there was a small hiss. When he took the linen away, a pale exhalation of vapor cascaded from the bottle's open neck.
"Perfect," Samantha said. There was an appreciative flicker of response in Edward's eyes as he reached across the table to pour the pale liquid into her glass. The champagne frothed up within the narrow flute but not as robustly as the first bottle he had poured by the windows. Samantha decided to let her host determine if the bottle was off. She lifted her glass by its delicate stem and waited for Edward to have the first taste.
"To Hollywood," Edward said. "Where all things are possible, and beauty is everywhere." He sipped his champagne as another smile blossomed on his face. "And always at reasonable prices," he added with self- amusement.
Ah well, Samantha thought, money does not necessarily imply taste—in champagne or wit. "To Hollywood," she said, then returned her host's smile and sipped at her own glass. Unlike the first bottle, this champagne was only passable.
"We meant it about finding beauty everywhere," Edward said to the tabletop as he carefully replaced his champagne glass and picked up the smallest of three oddly bent forks. He looked up suddenly. "You are a very beautiful woman, Samantha."
For an awkward moment, Samantha lost the flow of their conversation, as if Edward had jumped ahead a page in the script they were supposed to follow. The scene that line led to properly belonged after dinner, with cognac, after the part at least had been mentioned in passing. She took another quick swallow of champagne to give herself time to recover.
"Why, thank you, Edward." Totally banal, she thought in distress. But he had sprung the compliment on her so unexpectedly that she had nothing to work with. She tried to think what her acting coach would suggest or where her scene partner might take the dialogue in an improv class. Work with it. Work with it.
"Oh, my dear, we are not the one to thank." Edward narrowed his eyes an instant, cutting them off from the sparkling highlights of the glass and gleaming black porcelain, making shadows form beneath his brow as black as the silhouettes outside his window. Samantha felt he had something more to say, but had changed his mind. Then his brow lifted again and his suddenly visible eyes once more filled with light, like the candles beyond them in the living room, like the fires that sparkled in the night outside the windows.
Before Samantha could reply, or even think of a reply, Edward spoke again. "Tell me about yourself."
That line Samantha was prepared for. She speared a piece of roasted red pepper with her fork. "I'm an actor."
Edward waited for elaboration but none came. "My dear, we are all actors."
"Even you?" Samantha asked, crumbling a small piece of chevre with her salad knife.
Edward sat back in his chair and reached for his champagne again. "To be a producer of motion pictures is to be many things to many people. So yes, even we have been, and perhaps still are, an actor."
"Then you know everything you have to know about me," Samantha said. The past was the past and she was not inclined to discuss it. Perhaps, when it became absolutely necessary, something appropriate could be created for People and Premiere. But for now, all that mattered was her talent, her skill, and her appearance. She wanted to make it in this town on her own, not because of her carefully hidden connection to the business.
Samantha could feel Edward studying her as she concentrated on her salad. She wondered who had prepared it. She wondered if there were anyone in the house now, or if Edward had arranged for complete privacy. Sending the help away was not a good sign. Samantha felt comforted by the weight of her jewellery.
"Perhaps we do . . . ," Edward said at last.
Samantha looked up from her plate. Edward's eyes were firmly locked on hers.
". . . know all we need to know about you," he concluded. "A woman without a past, without connections. How charmingly enigmatic." He removed the champagne bottle from its copper sphere once more. "How . . . Hollywood."
Samantha heard more than a note of criticism in Edward's voice as he drew out the last word he had spoken. She decided that she should try to explain her position, to soften it, at least.
"Does it really matter how I spent my summer vacation when I was fifteen?" she asked, trying to keep her voice light. She held the stem of her glass as Edward filled it again. One more sip, she cautioned herself, and that's all. Until the negotiations are concluded.
"Matter in what way, my dear?" Edward finished topping up Saman- tha's glass, then returned the bottle to the ice without adding to his own.
He's watching what he's drinking, too, Samantha noted. He knows this is a business meeting.
"In what we're discussing," Samantha answered.
Edward placed his hands on the table to either side of his place setting. "And what might that be?"
Samantha felt that the script had been changed on her again—that Edward's business manager had misrepresented her presence at this dinner, that she was expected to be just another starlet du jour, good for an evening of sexual aerobics at a producer's house in exchange for a non-speaking, topless walk-on in a direct-to-video feature. She made up her mind to leave. And then she saw the briefest flicker of a smile on Edward's face.
"Forgive me," he said warmly. "You were about to depart, weren't you?"
Samantha thought for a moment, then decided not to answer.
Edward's smile grew even broader. "Now we know all we need to know about you. Principles are so rare to find in this town. And so refreshing." He picked up his glass and nodded to her. "We are here to discuss Star- dreamers II."
Samantha took a small sip of champagne to ease the sudden dryness in her throat.
"So let us begin. What do you know about it?" Edward asked. He returned to his salad.
"That you feel it's time for the continuation of the Stardreamers' story to be told," Samantha said.
Edward nodded.
"That you have a script that Spielberg likes."
Another nod.
"That having Jacqueline Eight die at the end of the first movie was a
terrible mistake and that you will need a new love interest for Austin Three in the sequel."
Edward waved his hand in polite protest. "Jacqueline's death was not a mistake. We had no choice. Demi Moore was most adamant about not doing a sequel. It was never in her contract."
"Really?" Samantha asked, truly surprised. "But . . . sequels are money in the bank. People love sequels."
Edward looked dubious. "Even though most sequels never do as well as the first of a series?" He spoke as if he were extending an invitation to a debate.
Samantha leaned forward. "But what about Godfather IIP"
Edward shook his head. "What about Ghostbusters IIP"
"Aliens," Samantha said.
"Back to the Future II," Edward countered.
Samantha gestured forcefully with her fork. "That was a marketing mistake. They had a classic second act problem, no resolution, just like . . . like The Empire Strikes Back" She could hear the excitement in her own voice. She loved the business. She wanted in. She needed that part. "But at least people knew that with Empire, they'd still have to wait a few more years for Jedi. With Back to the Future III coming out just a few months later, the audience for II didn't take it seriously. They . . ." Samantha felt something sticking in her throat and had to stop to cough. She covered her mouth but nothing was dislodged. She coughed again. Edward held out her champagne glass and she put her fork down to take it. Surprisingly, the liquid was almost flat, but it soothed the irritation. Unfortunately, she had lost the momentum of her argument.
"I'm sorry," she said apologetically, "I forgot what I was saying." She could feel her cheeks redden. She was an actor. How could she not remember her lines?
"Quite all right," Edward said, topping up her glass again. "You were saying that some sequels do end up being better than the originals."
"Do you believe that, too?" Samantha asked.
"Ah, my dear, we are living proof of it." Edward laughed and Samantha joined him uncertainly.
"Have you produced other sequels?" she asked. She had called up everything she could about her host on the Baseline computer service. Until Stardreamers, Edward Styles's credit list as producer had been as lowkey and unassuming as her own as an actor. But he said he had been an actor, too, Samantha reminded herself. Maybe that's what he meant about sequels. Or maybe he directed one when he was starting out.
"Other sequels?" Edward repeated. "Not in Hollywood." He held up a finger to forestall her next question. "And certainly not in your lifetime, my dear." He turned his knife and fork over on his plate. "Our past has little to do with our present. Even less to do with our future. Just the same as you, my dear. We are what we are, are we not? We live just for the moment. And what better place to be for that than here—a town with no memory for the past, no thoughts of the future, only an eternal present where appearance is all."
"I can understand that," Samantha said. At least, she hoped she could. That last swallow of champagne had put her on the brink of her limit and she felt she was in danger of having the room suddenly start spinning out of control.
"Of course you can, my dear. You are everything this city holds sacred. Beautiful, driven, without a past, and ..." He reached across the table to take her hand in his. ". . . prepared to do whatever you have to do to get whatever you want." He lightly danced his fingers across the heavy silver ring she wore.
"What do you mean?" Samantha tried to pull away but Edward's hand felt warm and oddly soothing on her own.
"Your ring, dear Samantha. And your bracelet. I recognize them. A deFontaine design. Paris. 1880s. Monsieur deFontaine produced gentlemen's canes with daggers. Ladies' brooches and jewellery with secret catches for . . . self-defense. The Bijan of his day, no doubt."
Samantha's hand refused to move from beneath Edward's. He's so strong, she remembered. But she couldn't feel any pressure, any sense that she was being held against her will. Only warmth.
"Just as you were prepared to leave when you thought we might try to . . . what's the properly cinematic phrase to use here . . . have our way with you? And you were also prepared to use this ring and bracelet on us if you didn't get what you wanted. Were you not?"
Samantha watched Edward quickly remove her jewellery as if she were watching dailies. There she was up on the screen, but there was nothing she could do to affect the outcome of the take.
"I wouldn't have . . ." she said slowly. The warmth in her hand was also spreading in other regions of her body. "I only wanted the part."
Edward stood and slipped the jewellery into his pants pocket. "Well, in that, at least, we are different." He walked around the table to stand at her side. "You wanted one part, whereas we want them all."
Samantha felt herself being pulled out from beneath the table and spun around to view the living room again. Beyond the windows, the city's web
of lights danced and blurred as if the torches were combining to form one hellish conflagration, blazing with the heat that coursed through her body, a frightening magnification of the comforting glow that spreads so wonderfully from a single sip of . . .
"Champagne," Samantha said. Her mouth felt thick and slow and detached, as if Dr. Morely had overinjected her lips, making them swell hopelessly beyond any useful size.
Edward stepped down from the dining alcove to stand before her with the remote control wand in his hand. "Never drink champagne with salad," he said. "The dressing makes it impossible to truly appreciate the subtle nuances of flavor, or to identify the presence of methoprominol." Edward's smile was broad and winning as he held the remote over his shoulder and pressed a stud. Behind him, a cloud of bundled fabric descended over the panoramic windows like a theater curtain coming down at the end of the final reel.
"What are you doing?" Samantha had to struggle to form the words. Despite the disorientation she felt in her mind, she was still sitting upright in the chair, without slumping, as if she were slowly losing control over her body.
"Why, we thought you knew," Edward said kindly. He aimed his remote at a series of points along the curved wall opposite the now covered windows. Samantha heard more muffled electric motors as the suede wall panels rolled aside. "I'm preparing for my next production."
Samantha slowly turned her head to see more shadowed alcoves revealed by the moving wall panels. Five of them, just as she had suspected. She had terrible visions of there being movie equipment hidden in them, so that Edward could film her drugged body committing unspeakable acts. And if he ever releases the stills, she thought in her growing delirium, my career will be ruined.
Then Edward pressed the stud that turned on th
e lights in the first alcove and Samantha saw that things were even worse than she had imagined. Quite possibly worse than David Cronenberg could imagine as well.
There was a body in the alcove: a more than middle-aged man in a bright blue suit with wide lapels and flared trousers. His tie was a screaming mixture of orange and lime green flowers. His face was sunken, like a carved and hollow rotting pumpkin falling in on itself. He was obviously dead, strapped to a flat wooden angled panel like an insane hunter's trophy.
"Who . . . who . . ." It was all Samantha could manage to say.
"This is Bernie," Edward answered helpfully, guessing her question. He looked at Samantha with concern. "We don't think you'd know him. So few people did. Television producer. Did a lot of co-productions in the late sixties, but nothing big. Nothing . . . notable." He walked over to the body. "And after a good twenty years of nothing remarkable, Bernie left town the same month that we . . . arrived."
Edward held up his arms in an exuberant shrug. "Quelle coincidence, n'est- ce pas?"
Samantha tried to shake her head but that act was beyond her. All she could do was say, "I don't understand."
Edward pursed his lips, then activated the lights in the next alcove.
Samantha moaned. There was another body, strapped to another angled panel, also male, also dead.
"Now this is Harold," Edward said as he walked over to the second alcove. He spoke as clearly and as matter-of-factly as if he were doing a voiceover for a National Geographic special. "He ended up in television, just like Bernie. That's where they met, actually."
Harold had short-cropped hair atop his caved-in head and wore a grey suit with a thin black tie. The once-white shirt beneath that tie was stained with something dark and sludgelike that had run around Harold's neck from behind.
"Harold started out in radio," Edward continued. "In New York. That's where all the action was back after the war. Radio turning into television. Lots of people breaking into the business. No one could keep track of them all. Easy to make good money and keep a low profile at the same time." Edward looked sadly at Samantha. "That's why they could be older, you see. Being unknown was more common back then. Not like now. To find someone with a low profile today means to find someone young. And with principles. Just like you, to be precise."
The Ultimate Frankenstein Page 24