by Sharon
In person he had an austere chic that couldn't be snuggled up to readily. If he liked someone, things tended to become warmer and warmer; if someone got off on the wrong foot with him, the relationship degenerated quickly because of David's acidly expressed intolerance. He had money invested in the movie, and he had not been pleased with the decision to sign Susan, though he was too seasoned either to bring his dissent to the set or to let Susan's inexperience disconcert him. He had confined his annoyance to asking several times, "What do you mean, she's Amish?" in a tone that was not cordial.
At the end of one day of working with her, he had appeared in the late evening in Wilde's suite, lounging with cultivated but effective movie-star grandeur in the doorway, and said, "Again we bow to the inimitable Wilde wisdom, and lie awake in our beds wondering whether you're brilliant beyond comprehension or simply damned lucky. Rumor, by the way, has it that you have carnal designs on that poor innocent. I had no idea you were so darkly romantic. Scratch a cynic, they say, and you'll find a raging sentimentalist."
Alan had been fighting a headache all evening, so patience became a conscious choice. Nothing short of disaster ever made him snap at actors, because, when it came right down to it, they needed every ounce of ego strength they could muster and he could encourage. Glancing up from the production board he'd been studying, he said, "If you want to talk about shoes and ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings or any other reasonable subject, please come in. If you want to discuss my personal life, go away."
The young actor produced a more intimate replica of the smile so loved by the paparazzi. "What an attitude from a man whose personal life is the topic of the hour. Did you ever wonder why there's always such a wealth of people fighting for the chance to work with you? We're enthralled with the intricacies of your mind. Wouldn't it be touching if you turned out to be pure at heart?"
Each morning, Susan awoke early, as always, but disoriented. She would look around her familiar bedroom, then suddenly remember: I'm in a movie. Today I'll be with Alan Wilde.
None of it made any sense, and the longer she did it, the less it seemed possible that she was being paid a fantastic sum of money for doing almost nothing. He would say, "Kneel here, and lift this book. Then smile for me, just a little smile," and she would do it, and someone would call Cut! and everyone would seem absurdly pleased with her.
She liked to think of Wilde at dawn. She could see the complexity of his character reflected in the muted colors, sense the mysteries of his soul lurking in the purple shadows.
He had magic, that she knew. She'd felt it on the first day, when she had been half-crazed, a dreamer slipping into the bittersweet flicker of another reality. His will had surrounded her with gentle force, bringing her back to him, making her want to return. He showed her himself as a craftsman, a weaver of spells, and she felt herself becoming one more colorful thread in the tapestry of his imagination.
But she was aware every moment of the man too. If he stood silently behind her, she felt it. His presence brought her desperate happiness.
It was hard for her to believe she'd been at this five days.
She sat outside at lunch with others in the cast at a place where the red-brick walk widened into a circle. It was busy there, but pretty. Beside her the bricks opened into a planting of tall red tulips with a birdbath among them. There she had been resting her elbow and dipping her fingertips in the water.
The day was misty, and Alan didn't like it. He had needed the mist that morning for the bridge scene, but later in the day it would be in the way, and because it came from nature instead of one of his magic machines, he couldn't get rid of it. With amusement she had seen him frowning at it as if he believed he could find some way to make it go away, if only he thought it over an extra minute or two. Someone had handed him a sandwich and he'd eaten it slowly while he stood, talking to Max, the director of photography. He always ate over business, as though food were no more than a routine fuel to maintain his body, and he left most things unfinished, never seeming to taste them.
A production secretary had handed Wilde a stack of correspondence and he'd tossed the rest of his sandwich in a trash barrel and sat down in a canvas chair near Susan, relaxed in an earth-toned sweater that looked as though it would be nice to touch, linen pants, and soft leather shoes. Lean and elegant, poring over the pages, absorbing the barrage of stimulation with flawless calm, he was having an odd effect on her pulse. She wished she could get her mind off his hands, how his fingers were long and graceful, how they felt on her skin.
One of Wilde's assistants, walking by her, asked, "Get enough to eat, Susan?"
"Sure. I already had a handburger." She gasped. "A hamburger."
David Thorne gave her shoulder a squeeze. "We must examine the ecology of your id one day." He joined her, propping a chair close, but out of the way of the makeup artist who was retouching her hair with a curling iron plugged into a portable generator.
Avoiding looking in Alan's direction, she watched David stretch out his legs and take a sip from his wineglass.
David never ate lunch. He drank wine and took pills. It was hard to understand what kept him alive. She wondered what illness he had, to take so many, pills. No one mentioned it. Although everyone treated him with great courtesy, or even awe, she had the feeling he wasn't much liked. That, at least, was no mystery. He looked at most people as if they were invisible.
She'd been an exception. On her first day here, he'd looked her over in a way that reminded her of a mother bird examining an orphan in her nest to decide whether she wanted to adopt it or peck it to death. She couldn't imagine what had made him lean to the former.
David said, "What did you think that was when you came across our monster in the forest?"
"I had no idea. Maybe… a bear with a skin disease."
That produced laughter, but Ben Rose looked pained. "After the money we've spent—"
"I guess the only other thing I could have thought was that it was the devil."
David smiled over his wineglass. "You'd better be careful. Maybe the devil doesn't look like that at all. Maybe he looks like Ben, here, or Alan."
The idea had occurred to her. Her throat started to get warm. She covered it with her hand. David said, "Do you worry a lot about the devil, Susan?"
"Not as much as I should, I guess. There's a lot of evil in the world."
"And it comes from the devil?"
"Where else would it come from?"
Joan arrived, friendly and vivid in a yellow wool jacket, in time to catch the last question. "I know where evil comes from. Testosterone."
Susan didn't know the word. Her expression must have showed it, because David supplied an explanation. "It's the male sex hormone."
"Oh." Susan grinned back at him. "That's probably right. Probably a lot of evil does come from that."
"That's it, Susan. Don't let them have it all their own way." Joan gave her a look of approval. "Has anyone seen Max? He's got a call from Japan that needs action."
"He was around a couple of minutes ago," the hairdresser said.
"He's in—the wardrobe trailer, I think. Sam mentioned it a while ago," Susan said.
Sam was eating a sandwich, sitting on a bundle beside the other cameraman. He gave her a look of surprise.
"Didn't you?" she asked.
"No."
"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't hear right. I was so sure I heard you say after he left that you'd be glad when he came out of the closet."
Ben choked on his coffee. Everyone stared at Sam, who was red. Joan laughed. Mystified, Susan looked over at Alan, who glanced up from his papers and said, "And so a dozen people who consider themselves sophisticated— with varying degrees of justification—are stricken to silence. The next time any one of you says anything off-color around Susan, I'm going to force you to explain it to her." He smiled at her. "Never mind, Susan, nothing of importance has happened."
"So I'll go find him in the closet," said Joan,
and walked off. Others left, went back to talking, worked on their lines.
"You're doing beautifully with Polly," David said to her. He crossed his dew-spotted boots at the ankle. "Nothing to it, is there? We're all actors."
"Why do you think so?"
"One learns young. What is growing up but learning to fake it? Don't you think so, Alan?"
Alan had gone back to his paper work, and Susan could hardly believe he'd been listening, but time and again she'd been amazed at his ability to concentrate on two tasks at once. Now he looked up and searched her face, and then directed a glance at the young man who was arranging her curls.
"Why aren't you working in the trailer?" he asked.
"We have a short in the wiring," the hairdresser answered. "Anderson is working on it."
Wilde dismissed the words with a nod. To David, he said, "It might be acting. Or it might be trying out different facets of ourselves."
The idea disturbed her. "Do you think people live in fragments, Alan?" It was not easy for her to call him by his Christian name, but she had learned she must. To call him Mr. Wilde was to be gently, though mockingly, corrected.
"Of course. That's what makes fiction appealing. We have some part of every character hidden inside. Take any story as an example. Take—"
"Red Riding Hood," she supplied, wondering at herself for the choice, wondering at the strange smile she could feel pressing at the corners of her mouth.
The smile he returned, showing that he appreciated her choice, left her breathless. "All right. Take Red Riding Hood. We're one part Red Riding Hood, walking into trouble we can't foresee. And we're one part wolf, ambitious and efficient predators. But the part of us that needs to be adored wants to be the woodcutter, who saves the day at the last minute. To make a successful film, we have to throw in characters to get all that across so those in the audience can experience all of themselves. Then they feel satisfied."
She wondered if there could be a predator in herself. Not much of one, she didn't think. Not according to his meaning of the word. Maybe they think I'm incomplete. They respect the predator. "What about the grandmother?"
She had spoken to Wilde, but David answered. "Grandma becomes the wolf, the loved ones we trust who'd like to eat us alive."
The queasy sense of being in a foreign land returned. They thought so differently. She wanted to dispute him somehow, but her thoughts were interrupted, as so many were on the set, from many directions at once. Apologizing for the interruption, David's private secretary arrived, urgently needing his signature on a pile of letters. Alan took a long-distance call on a portable telephone. The hairdresser asked her to shake her head. She obeyed, and let him tip her head forward to work on her nape, where the warmth of the curling iron felt pleasant on her skin.
Trucks roared into the compound behind her and, she knew the second unit had returned from filming at another location. Voices of the arriving crew members floated through the fog. Their footsteps made scattered tapping sounds on the damp pavement. She looked up through her lashes to see the monster appear behind a veil of mist. She got a kick out of seeing it, now that she knew it was only Dash inside.
David gestured expressively at the monster. "There goes the neighborhood."
The monster was elaborately made, to allow it to express emotion, and now it registered offense. Massive and violent, it roamed forward, giant mouth agape, upraised iron claws closing around David's neck from the back, and the air shimmered with the eerie hiss of the creature's electronically enhanced inhalations. The hideous bared teeth opened over the young actor's throat. David planted a kiss on the monster's jaw and shoved it back.
"Don't touch my body," he said. "I charge for that."
"Who could afford it?"
Dash's chuckle resounded in the costume. He opened a claw in greeting to Susan. A mob of technicians in muddy sneakers had arrived with him, some umbilically connected to the monster by dangling wires that could help him move, grow distorted, change, light up.
Alan had risen; he handed his correspondence back to the production secretary with quick instructions and gave the telephone back to an assistant. He spoke to Dash and the technicians who had arrived in the monster's wake. "You're late. Problems?"
"Problems?" Tim, the second unit director, was striding by carrying a bullhorn. "The kid Jerry hired forgot to load film in the camera, the dolly tracks we rented are warped, and Dash is sweating to death in that suit. We had to put an extra hole in the head because his eyes were fogging and—damn!" His heel connected hard with the curling-iron cord, jerking it sharply from the hairdresser's hand.
Susan felt the iron skate a burn across her neck and saw it flip, sizzling, into the two inches of water in the birdbath. Registering it as a minor mishap, she started to reach out to retrieve it.
She had no idea that she was doing anything wrong, and the blaze of reaction around her was a horrible surprise. Alan's "Susan, no!" cut through startled shouts, and before she knew what was happening, Alan had grabbed her and dragged her out of the chair and away from the birdbath with such force that her chair went flying and fell cracking on the bricks. Her heart banged painfully against her ribs. She stared, astonished, into his eyes. A sickening weakness flooded her.
"What did I do wrong?"
He looked as though it were difficult for him to calm down enough to speak. Behind him Tim shouted, "Alan, it's okay. We've cut the power."
Alan glanced at him and accepted the words with a nod before his pained gaze sank into hers again. His soft voice was barely recognizable. "Susan, never, never put your hand into water ii an electrical appliance is in it. Do you understand?"
Others had begun to join them, running up, asking what had happened. The excited conversation became a blur of sound. Embarrassment and confusion, thick as oil, rose in her cheeks. She hardly knew what she was saying.
"I beg your pardon. I had no idea… I didn't mean to cause any damage."
"Not damage." He was holding her tightly, as though he were afraid to let her go. His eyes were haunted. "Water conducts electricity. Reaching into it would have electrocuted you… killed you." His words were slow.
She felt only an overwhelming, disordered shame. Dimly she heard David's voice.
"Alan, under your fingers is human flesh."
Alan seemed to wake then. His hands went slack, and Susan stepped away from him, murmuring an apology. She was not really thinking as she picked up the cloth bag she brought every morning from home and whispered, "Pardon me. I—I'll go for a walk. Excuse me." But she walked only the first steps and then began to run, zigzagging between trailers, around equipment and startled crew members.
He found her in the mist-shrouded seclusion of the forest glen. She stood alone on the footbridge, her cape a black silhouette against the gray, lichen-covered wood. She watched the water beneath her, its surface silvery smooth except for patches where it purled over rocks in the stream bed.
He came closer, standing near the tall grasses on the embankment.
"I'm sorry, Amish."
She looked up and gave him a smile whose sweetness rippled through him.
"I know."
She seemed very alone to him suddenly, isolated in her scarred pride, and the distance between them became untenable. He rarely took his tension out on others, and she was surely the last one in the world he wanted to hurt. Even as he walked toward her, he could feel the insanity of what he was trying to do, and the insanity was intertwined in his mind with its inevitability as he crossed the bridge to her side, His overriding impulse was to hold her, just hold her. . "Peter thought he might have burned you when the iron flew out of his hand."
Her eyes told him it was unimportant. "Only a little."
"Show me."
She turned obediently, dipped her head, and brushed the curls on her neck upward. A small pink line streaked the tender flesh. In pity he bent to let his lips make the softest contact with her skin, just beneath the burn. He closed his eyes and willed
her to heal, sorry that she'd come to harm at the hands of his culture. But it was a mistake. He could feel the deep warmth under the moist surface of her skin. He could taste her through his flesh. Her innocent fragrance flooded his senses, and desire spilled through him. His mouth moved higher, tasting her curls, her fingers, the curve of her neck, and his breath caught and hurt.
"Why do you do this to me?" she whispered.
"I'm not sure," he said softly, nuzzling her ear with his mouth. He could feel her breath quicken, but as his hands came around her to part the cloak and touch her body, she pulled away, turning toward him with passion-brightened eyes that raised the heat in his body like a tide.
"I've brought you a present." Her words seemed random, whimsically sincere, and they made him smile. The cape fell in a black halo around her as she knelt by her cloth bag. He watched curiously as she drew out a dark object half-hidden by her hands. "No," she said, dissatisfied. "You should see it in the right way." She went to a small apple tree on the far side of the bridge, arranging the object in the crook of a low branch heavy with blossoms. He saw then that it was a nest, with red and yellow ribbons woven gaily into the twigs.
"One year when I was very young, we had a different teacher, not an Amish one, and she wore colored ribbons in her hair. That spring she lost a blue ribbon outside, and a month later my sister and I came across it woven into a bird's nest." She stood utterly still while she spoke, though her eyes were vividly expressive. "We wondered after that if the birds had only used it because it seemed practical or if they might have enjoyed the pretty color. So the next year, Rachel"—she paused, finding the word difficult— "made ribbons from cloth scraps and hid them in the forest, and sometimes we found them later in nests. But this one was special. Robins built it in the maple tree outside my window, and I watched the eggs hatch and the tiny nestlings grow and finally fly away. One day the robins abandoned the nest, and a breeze came in late summer and blew the nest inside my open window while I was sleeping." She was smiling as she let out a soft breath on the ribbons, sending them fluttering, but the smile faded as she faced him again. "At the time I thought it had great significance, and that it meant a wonderful thing was going to happen to me."