Lovers

by Judith Krantz

  Melanie Adams had desperately needed a mentor, and in Wells Cope she had found not just that mentor, but the only man she was ever to know who was content to make graceful and exquisite love to her without demanding any response, the only man who could immerse himself in her beauty, possess her at his leisure, and never ask any questions about whether she loved him.

  All Wells wanted in return was to own her. When had she realized that she was his creature, she wondered. How long had it taken before she saw that although her leash was flexible, silken, invisible, and allowed her to roam, it was made of steel and soldered around her neck? When had she begun to rebel, and when had she realized that short of being self-destructive, which tempted her not at all, she could win only the smallest of victories?

  She could spend as much money as she chose, but she wasn’t trusted to pick out her own dress for the Academy Awards. She could live anywhere in the world, she could buy a houseboat in the Vale of Kashmir, but she had to report for work on the day Wells appointed, for as long as he decided he needed her, in the role he had chosen for her from hundreds of scripts she was never given to read. She could, and had, rejected Wells sexually when he’d begun to bore her, but when she reached out and took the other man she wanted, he was neither surprised nor, it seemed to her, even interested.

  On the other hand, Wells condemned her to long periods of leisure—the curse of certain of the greatest stars—leisure she loathed, although she kept it filled with acting classes—until he finally settled on a project he deemed worthy of her. She could marry, but what would marriage be but another layer of ownership? What husband wouldn’t expect something of his wife, even if she was Melanie Adams?

  She could always fall in love, Melanie thought with a shrug, Wells couldn’t prevent that, but she had never been “in love,” whatever that meant, and she knew by now that it was not her destiny. All her life she had been adored, from earliest childhood she had been told how she was loved, love washed over her in endless, demanding, suffocating waves, from every direction. She resented it, she struggled uselessly to reject it, it affected her as if she were being force-fed an ever-full bowl of melted chocolate. No. No to love.

  Acting was all she was good for, she had to have acting or her life wouldn’t be worth living. This knowledge made her resign herself to being an object of love. It was the price she had to pay.

  Children? Melanie Adams shuddered. If there could be anything worse than to be owned by Wells Cope, it would be to be owned by children, whose birth was the one irrevocable act in any woman’s life. At least a legal contract eventually had to come to an end, but the unthinkable ties of motherhood were lifelong, a child was the one person in your life you could not exchange for a more satisfactory substitute. She had never understood, never even considered it possible to understand, how any woman could be so unimaginative, so unself-protective, as to want a child. Of course, there was no accounting for the slave mentality of other women, she realized. They needed to be needed. Even beautiful women wanted children. It was simply incomprehensible.

  All she asked, she told herself, was to be free, for no one to have any rights over her, never to answer questions, and, more important than anything else, to have some final proof that she existed, really and truly existed, outside of other people’s inadmissible, inescapable need of her.

  She was able to find this proof that she craved with such anguish only in acting before a camera, surrounded by a crowd of people whose only interest was in what she did, not in who she was—people who paid her to be there on the spot, not, thank God, for love but for their own eventual gain.

  Only when she felt herself being used to become someone else, someone who was essentially not Melanie Adams, only when she was asked to throw herself, body and soul, into another being, did she feel that she had exercised the capacities of her heart. Only her craft quieted, during the time that she was practicing it, her anguished life-long search for a true sense of her own existence. Only when she was acting did she approach, but never arrive at—did she come close, but never close enough—to happiness.

  For Melanie Adams, as well as for Eastwood, Newman, and the Rowans, four of the most comfortable houses had been rented in Kalispell. Other cast members, the union crew, and members of the production staff of Chronicles were put up in a variety of welcoming motels, but all of the extras were drawn from the local population.

  At six o’clock in the evening, Zach drove the short distance from his suite at the Outlaw Inn through the well-plowed streets of the residential section, whose lawns were watched over by elaborate snowmen, and parked in front of the rambling Victorian house that Melanie occupied with her personal hairdresser, a woman named Rose Greenway, who had styled Melanie’s hair from the beginning of her career. Rose had become her indispensable assistant in many matters, her confidante, and, as far as Melanie was capable of friendship, her friend. When Melanie left Wells Cope, she took Rose with her.

  It was through Miss Greenway that Roger Rowan had made all the arrangements for Melanie’s comfort during the shoot, which included employing a special vegetarian gourmet cook, a full-time masseuse, a personal publicist based in L.A., who regulated the access of the international press to the star, and a personal dresser who cared for her costumes. Wells Cope had surrounded her with all the luxuries of stardom, and Melanie had learned to take immensely good care of herself.

  “Come on in, Mr. Nevsky,” Rose Greenway said as she took his parka and his fur hat. “Miss Adams said to go right on up, she’s expecting you. The door’s open. Just close it behind you so the steam from the humidifiers doesn’t escape. This mountain air,” she added disapprovingly, “is really too dry for Miss Adams’s skin.”

  “I know, Miss Greenway,” Zach said to the familiar complaint, and mounted the stairs and entered the large front bedroom with its bay windows, part of the half of the second floor that Melanie Adams had turned into her living quarters. It was the first time he’d been on the second floor of the house, and he expected it to be decorated with the same abundance of Sears’ Best overstuffed but nondescript furniture that filled the downstairs. However, Melanie Adams had transformed the room with dozens of thin paisley shawls in a multitude of sizes and a wide range of exotic colors and mysteriously compatible designs. She had draped every surface with them, the sofas, the chairs, the tables, even the headboard of the double bed. Every lamp wore a paisley scarf over its shade, the curtains at the windows were covered in paisley, there were white fur rugs scattered over much of the wall-to-wall carpet, and the open bed revealed embroidered Italian linen. The duvet, Zach decided as he prowled around the empty room, probably had been stuffed with the choicest feathers of ten thousand ducks. There was a large fire in the fireplace, and a profusion of green plants everywhere. Votive candles in small hurricane lamps provided points of light here and there; the evocative deliciousness of Chypre filled the air from four green Rigaud candles.

  “Come on in,” Melanie Adams called from behind the open door that led to the bathroom. “The water’s fine.”

  Cute, Zach thought.

  “Thanks. I’ll wait till you’ve finished your bath,” he answered, and sat down on the largest of the sofas. He closed his eyes, and breathed in the luxuriously perfumed air, in which the warmth of the heat and the man-made humidity mingled with the subtle scented candles. All he could hear from the bathroom was the regular sound of a sponge being squeezed in and out and a muted splashing, as well as the drip of more water being added to the tub.

  A visit to the gardens of the Alhambra, he asked himself? A romp in a sultan’s harem? The most elegant little whorehouse in Persia? Whatever this was meant to be, he’d get pneumonia when he went back outside if he didn’t take off his sweater and his flannel shirt in this heat, Zach thought, as he stripped them off and relaxed in his jeans and his T-shirt. Interesting little operation Melanie had going here, he thought. Confound and confuse, a good way to spare herself confrontation. On the other hand, she had never had t
o deal with anyone but Cope himself before, who lived in famous style, so this must all be for her own pleasure … pleasure …

  By this time Melanie felt she had let Zach wait long enough and emerged from her bathroom, her hair wrapped in a turban of toweling, her thin white silk robe clinging to her moist body, wrapped tightly at her fragile waist, no trace of makeup on her astonishing face, he was deeply asleep.

  She looked at him in disappointment; her entrance was wasted. But, on the other hand, this was a good time to catch him at a disadvantage, to inspect him more carefully than she could while they were discussing the part or working on the set and she was aware of his eyes evaluating her with their bright compelling intelligence. Even unconscious, with his flow of self-assurance cut off by sleep, Zach somehow remained at the center, Melanie thought. It would be impossible to ignore his presence in the room, difficult even to turn her back on him, for no matter how quietly he slept, Zach radiated a kind of pure physical energy. It came, she speculated, largely from the sheer size of him, the grace of him as he lay there, the rude life of his black hair, the thickness of his neck, the arrogant molding of his head, the rough edges of his face with its prominent cheekbones and a nose that looked as if it had been broken a half-dozen times. Sleep had not tamed Zach Nevsky.

  Yes, she wanted him. She had wanted him from the beginning, but after she and Wells had stopped being lovers, he had insisted that she never have an affair with her director. Chief among his reasons was that she would lose her advantage, the advantage she owned because her director must, inevitably, ache to have her. And that aching, like a strong current of water imprisoned by a sheet of ice, would work for her, would give the director the motivation to attain heights that he had never reached for another actress, to become more brilliantly inventive, to stretch himself, to think ceaselessly about her scenes, to improve them, to make her surpass herself.

  It was not by accident that Melanie Adams was known as a director’s wet dream.

  However, Wells Cope and his instructions and control were behind her now, Melanie told herself with deep pleasure. She was on her own, and Zachary Nevsky would give her a chance to test Wells’s theory. Why should Wells be right? What if an affair with her director gave her even greater advantages than withholding herself?

  Zach started and opened his eyes to find her inspecting him with an intent look in her eyes that he recognized and understood.

  “Nice bath?” he asked, instantly awake.

  “Lovely, thanks,” she said, stretching her arms behind her back. “You don’t know what you missed.”

  “I’d rather shower.”

  “That’s so silly, yet I’ve never known a man who took a bath. One of life’s greatest pleasures is wasted on an entire gender.”

  Melanie’s voice had never been trained by a coach, never lost that touch of Louisville, the haunting hint of sweetness that created its own climate, a semitropical climate of tantalizing, far-off music and delicately tangible invitation.

  Melanie sat down on a low chair near the couch and crossed her legs, letting her robe fall open high on her thighs. She unwound her towel turban and shook out the long curly hair she had just finished brushing, a heart-stopping tumble of light maple-sugar-brown hair with red lights in it, hair that changed in every light, with every move she made, hair whose exact color had never been properly named, although thousands of attempts had been made.

  “It’s quiet here,” Zach said, suddenly aware that they were sitting in a deep hush broken only by the small sounds of the fire.

  “Rose took everybody out for pizza and the movies after you came,” Melanie answered. “She does that every Friday night, even when we’re on location. Would you like a drink?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “I’m going to pour myself some sherry … you’re sure?”

  Her voice was innocent, disarming, with a hint of humor in it. Melanie rose and went to a table where there was a tray bearing several glasses and bottles. Zach watched her move. She was aware of every step she took, of the exquisite shape of her wrists and hands and fingers as she picked up the small wine glass, of the miraculous tilt of her throat and her chin as she sipped, of the enticing pout of her lips as she pressed them to the edge of the glass, of the faint circles of her nipples riding high on her firm pointed breasts, of the shadows of her thighs leading up to a thrilling tangle, impossible to miss, under her white robe, since the fire behind her provided the brightest source of light in the room.

  She knows as much about lighting as any actress in the world, he thought. Does she think I’m that easy?

  “You get the part,” Zach said abruptly.

  “What part?”

  “Violet-tressed Aphrodite.”

  “Now that is a compliment … or it is? After all, I’m not auditioning.”

  “You’ll never need to. Aphrodite has ‘blandishing persuasion which steals the mind even of the wise’—or so Homer said.”

  Melanie crossed the room and sat down on the arm of the couch, close to Zach, dry-mouthed but holding her rising excitement in check, judging exactly the slight forward inclination of her spine that would enhance and reveal the swell of her breasts, knowing to the millimeter how the flesh of her thighs would spread softly as she pressed them into the arm of the sofa.

  “Melanie, I’ve wanted to have a private minute with you for some time now,” Zach said earnestly, turning toward her and allowing himself to scrutinize her face openly. Never, he thought, never had anyone had skin of such ravishing transparency, such passionate luminosity, a skin far more perfect without makeup than he had ever seen it on a screen.

  “Have you indeed?” She didn’t allow herself the gratified smile she felt rising to her lips.

  “I don’t know if you realize that the only reason I took this picture was because you were going to star in it. I believe—I know—that you’re the greatest actress of your generation,” Zach said honestly.

  “Why, thank you.” Melanie permitted herself a modest acknowledgment of something she had been convinced of for years. Somehow she hadn’t expected this to start with the usual dance of compliments.

  “Lydia Lacy,” Zach said, finally lowering his eyes from her face, “is an eighteen-year-old virgin music teacher, utterly innocent, and so virginal that it hurts.”

  “That’s not news to me, Zach,” Melanie said, her voice becoming wary.

  “What you don’t know is that Ackerman, that criminal old fart, had the unbelievable stupidity to raise the question of whether you could play a convincing eighteen. Ackerman! He’s got to be a hundred and ten … but he’s still the studio boss. I had to take a meeting with that doddering, meddling, ancient oaf, he kept saying that you were almost twenty-eight and why couldn’t we get a young girl to play the part—as if any young girl existed who could do the brilliant job you’re doing—he nattered on about how the story is based on the premise that Eastwood and Newman, these two old guys, will do anything, literally anything to each other, because they’re driven insane by Lydia’s absolute youth. They’d kill to possess youth in such pure flower.”

  “And you came here tonight, now, two months into production, to tell me this? Your sense of timing is bizarre. No, incredible,” Melanie said ominously, rising and folding her arms in front of her breasts.

  “Frankly, I never dreamed you’d ever have to know. Why should you be burdened with hearing what passes for thought process with Ackerman? I was wild with rage … but you don’t scream at Ackerman, not if you value your life. Those first two weeks, when I was sending the raw stock to the lab in L.A. to be developed, and getting the dailies back here a couple of days later, proved that he was fucking insane. I know you make it a rule never to go to dailies, but you’d be thrilled with them. You looked more like seventeen than eighteen.” Zach paused and looked embarrassed.

  “Just what are you trying to say?”

  “Then I had a phone call from Ackerman. You know that the studio brass always sees the dailies bef
ore they send them back to us? Anyway, Ackerman phoned and said that he’d noticed a few signs of … I can’t believe he had the nerve … but that senile old bastard called it … ‘wear and tear.’ He actually accused me of working you too hard, of not giving you time to get a good night’s sleep, considering that you have to be on the set at six in the morning. He’s been around for so many centuries that I suggested that, with all due respect, maybe there was something wrong with his eyesight. He told me that the other guys in the screening room agreed with him. I told him you hadn’t had to shoot at night since we’d been on location, and he started to ramble on about collagen …” Zach broke off and looked fixedly at the fur rug nearest the couch.

  “Collagen! What did he say exactly?”

  “His son-in-law is a dermatologist, specializes in injecting collagen, you know, the stuff under the skin that makes a baby’s ass look so good, that luscious, round, innocent stuff that seeps away, just simply disappears year by year, God knows where, no matter how perfect anyone’s features are …”

  “I know what collagen is, for Christ’s sake! What did he say?”

  “His exact words? Ackerman said, and I quote, ‘It’s a question of collagen. Just because there isn’t a single line or flaw on your skin doesn’t mean that your collagen level is unchanged. Even a three-year-old kid has already lost collagen.’ Unquote. He told me that his son-in-law insists that everything depends on your getting a good night’s rest … especially considering your dry skin. He said that he’d send you the latest safe-to-take sleeping pills from his own doctor if you needed them. Also the facial specialist of your choice. He told me we weren’t lighting you well enough, and when those particular dailies got back here, the camerman and I jumped on them together … we saw what Ackerman was talking about. We’ve been lighting you to hide the circles under your eyes …”