At least thirty people from the moving picture company milled about in the street, trying to look busy while they waited.
Near me a cameraman rolled his shirt sleeves to his elbows. He stood behind his large camera with its tripod of wooden legs that raised it to his eye level. He reached out to rest one hand on the crank and his lips moved as he counted to himself, preparing to start his steady rhythm of two turns per second.
On his far side, a boy held a black umbrella at an angle that shaded the camera lens and the man behind it.
Beneath another umbrella the director sat in an oak rocking chair, leaning forward, elbows on knees, a long cigar clenched in his fingers. He was a heavy man with graying hair slicked back from his forehead and a narrow, combed mustache, and he wore light slacks, a short-sleeved shirt, and a watch with a wide gold band.
An actor stood less than ten feet from the camera, costumed in an army uniform, clutching a fiber suitcase with metal edges and corners, and practiced a dismayed expression, his facial muscles taut. The glaring sun cast dark shadows.
The director shouted, “Push his hat back. I can’t see his eyes.”
An assistant shouted, “Wardrobe, fix the hat!”
Wardrobe said, in a tone of apology, “That’s the way the army wears them, sir.”
The director waved his cigar at the actor. “Turn a little to the left, Will. Tilt your chin up.”
The acting coach stepped into the scene, put his hand on the actor’s chin, then turned his face until the shadow no longer obscured his eyes.
The cameraman bent toward the director to whisper. The director nodded and said, “Six inches to the left. There. Good.”
I stood on the walk with three other actresses, waiting. If they didn’t use us soon, my chances would be ruined. I would look so terrible in the pictures that, even if they didn’t cut my scene, no one would notice me and rush to offer me a contract. My make-up itched on my hot skin. I could feel the tips of my hair, where my bob was combed forward across my cheeks, sticking to my rouge. Much longer in the sun and the Delica liquid color on my eyelashes would start to run in black rivers down the sides of my powdered nose.
My new rayon step-ins and my silk stockings clung to the perspiration on my body and legs. My crepe frock, in French blue, which I’d had to pay for myself because this studio was so cheap it only paid for the clothes for its stars, drooped in deep wrinkles.
And I felt as weary as my garments. We had all been kept up until eleven o’clock the previous night for an “emergency” filming. Whenever they decided to work us nights they called it an emergency. We’d had four emergencies this week. My arms hung limp at my sides.
Laurence’s fingertips barely brushed the back of my hand.
He whispered, “Be wonderful, Silver.”
The fragrance of his Eau de Coty shaving lotion, which I had given him, hung in the dry air.
I turned and watched him walk away from me toward the grip-prop man. He didn’t normally speak to me on the set but he must have known how discouraged I felt.
Watching him, I let my mind sing, “Laurence loves me,” and had I dared, I would have blown him a kiss.
But of course I didn’t. He would be furious. Still, I was happier knowing he was on the set and my gaze followed him as he stood talking to a crew member across the street, his back to me, his broad shoulders squared proudly, his blond hair gleaming in the sunlight.
Beside me the actress in the red dress said, “If they don’t use us soon, I am gonna pee right here on the sidewalk.”
The two others pretended not to hear her.
Over the clattering of the camera the director shouted, “All right, tea dance ladies, get ready to enter when I say. Remember, keep it moving, chatter, look at each other, not at the camera.”
Tea dance ladies, that was us.
I fluffed my skirt and prayed it wasn’t glued to the back of my legs, then ran my tongue between my lips and teeth to unstick them. I tried to feel my smile lift my eyes, the way my acting teacher had instructed me. The two actresses, the ones who had raised their eyebrows and ignored the woman in red, now bent over and clutched their thighs. Through the material of their skirts they pulled up on the bumps of their garters to tighten the sags out of their stockings. The woman in red casually leaned down, ran her hands up one leg to check her seam and smooth the silk, then gave her garter a quick roll above her knee to tighten it. Her skirt lifted, caught by her wrists, exposing the lacy edge of her step-ins stuck to the back of her thigh. Slowly she went through the same maneuver with her other leg.
An assistant director appeared beside us. He combed his hair in a style identical to the director’s but lacked a mustache. He, too, wore a short-sleeved shirt, slacks, oxfords, and carried a cigarette in a casual droop between his fingers.
He said, “Now, girls, you are four young society ladies, so try to look bright and saucy. You’re returning from an afternoon tea dance and you are very gay, very vivacious, so busy gossiping you don’t notice the soldier. Keep talking as you walk by, but keep your voices to whispers so you can hear the director. I want you in the red nearest the camera, dear. Lillian and Sally, you in front, and what’s your name, blondie?” he said looking at me.
And then not waiting for my answer he continued, “You be on the far side turning to face the camera as you walk, dear, but don’t look directly into it.”
The actress in red blurted, “All you’ll see is my back!”
“The director wants a good shot of your haircut, dear. Very chic.”
“He said that?” She looked doubtful.
“Especially noticed you, dear, because of the haircut. We’ll get a nice profile of you as you walk by.”
When she opened her mouth to ask another question, he held a finger to his lips and pointed toward the director.
The director leaned back in his rocking chair, lifted his megaphone with his initials painted on it, and shouted, “Now, tea dance ladies, walk this way! Lighter, girls, lots of hand-waving as you talk, watch your feet, don’t step out of your marks, no! Don’t look down, look at each other, you there in the red, face away from the camera, that’s it, I want the back of that bob, don’t walk so fast, pause, go on talking, laughing, you don’t see the soldier, good, now move on slowly, still laughing.
“You in the blue, turn, glance back, yes, that’s right, look at the soldier, now slowly stop smiling. I want a long thoughtful look. Good, now turn back to your friends, now pause, all right, now start smiling again. Great! Cut.”
As he spoke, I turned back, widened my eyes, put on my pensive face, one of the dozens of expressions I had practiced in the mirror, almost raised my hand to brush away a strand of hair that fell across my forehead, remembered I must do only what the director said, saw the camera pointed directly at me, turned again to my three “friends,” and did a slow thoughtful smile.
That was the most acting I had ever been given to do and my heart pounded wildly. Perspiration ran from my armpits down my sides.
When the director called, “Cut,” I lifted my arms as much as I could without being conspicuous, toying with my hairdo as coverup, trying to keep my dress dry.
I squinted against the sun, searching for Laurence. It meant so much to me to know if he had seen me act. He had told me to be wonderful and I’d tried. But now I could not see him anywhere, and a rush of sadness overwhelmed me because I wasn’t at all sure I could ever make him love me as much as I loved him.
***
The scene shattered.
“April. Honey. Are you all right?”
Tom’s voice startled me, shocked me, drove me deep into one last second of blazing sun and then I was back in our front room sprawled on the couch, and they were all staring at me. Tom leaned over me, his hand on my shoulder.
“Hey, babe, you fall asleep?” Macbeth asked. He stood in the kitchen doorway holding a wine glass.
I tried to smile, make a joke of it, mumbling, “Yeah, I guess so.”
&n
bsp; My last memory was of sitting on the floor, and Tom was on the couch, so I must have crashed over on the rug. He must have picked me up and put me on the couch.
I hadn’t been asleep, not dreaming, no, I’d been in another world. And I had felt a love that was so achingly deep it consumed me. Terrified me, too, because in all my life as April Didrickson, I had never loved anyone that way. Compared to the way I felt about the man named Laurence, I had never been in love in this life and if love could hurt that much, I hoped I never would be.
“I think you passed out,” Tom said softly, leaning close to me. “Do you feel sick?”
I couldn’t remember what had happened. I shook my head no.
Cyd read my silence the way she sometimes read my mind. “You’ve been seeing things again.”
Tom touched my face to gently brush my hair back with his fingertips. “Was it that accident? Were you thinking about that again?”
Macbeth stood and glared down at us. He sounded angry, I don’t know why. “She doesn’t have to tell us every thought she ever has, guys. Let it go.”
“No, it’s all right,” I said slowly. If I explained, maybe they could figure out why this was happening to me. “I saw a film company in, umm, California, I suppose. They were making a silent film, or I think it was, and I was an actress.”
“A movie star?” Cyd asked. “Wow.”
“No, I was part of a crowd scene, sort of. Hard to explain.”
“Maybe you became a star later. What was your name?” she asked and I knew Cyd liked the whole reincarnation idea and wanted to go there whether I did or not.
“Greta Garbo,” Macbeth said.
Cyd said, “Stop that,” and made a face at him.
I said, “I don’t know. The director called me blondie, but that wasn’t my name.”
“You were a blond?”
“I suppose so. My hair was very short. I couldn’t see it but I could feel it with my hands. God, I was sweating like a pig. They were filming outside. This is really boring, right? Like telling each other’s dreams, really boring. I must have been asleep.”
Although I needed someone else to tell me what was going on, I realized I didn’t want to sit here and tell Tom there was a man in the dream and I loved him in a way that transcended anything I’d ever felt. Tommy and I weren’t in love and we both knew it, but still, he was a great lover and well, the whole thing was too ridiculous and embarrassing.
“Maybe I’m losing my mind.”
“Any minute now,” Macbeth agreed.
The three of them exchanged looks and I knew them all so well, I could have supplied dialogue for their silent agreement. We will talk about something else and let April calm down.
They spent the rest of the evening arguing about a fictionalized biography of Napoleon that had been a PBS special, and whether or not Napoleon was fond of garlic. That’s how mind-boggling important our conversations usually were. For some obscure reason, Tom favored the Napoleon-loved-garlic theory and Cyd opposed it.
“How can anyone know?” Macbeth demanded of them.
He didn’t like theories. I’d heard his argument before. According to him, theories were either intentional lies or were an excuse for lack of research.
He continued, “At best, all you have are written accounts of the man by people who may have sat near him at dinner, and did he clean his plate because that’s the way he’d been raised? Or did this writer assume anyone with Italian heritage likes garlic? He could write anything about Napoleon, depending on the impression he wanted to create, and so could anyone in the past who claimed to know him.”
“So you think biographers make facts up?” Cyd asked.
“Look at the magazines at the supermarket checkout counters. And those people are all alive to refute the writers. Most don’t bother.”
Tom said, “We have to accept history on the basis of what’s been written. There is no way to verify past events.”
Cyd took off her glasses and then stared at me and said slowly, “Except by going back to them. Maybe reincarnation has a purpose.”
“Shell game,” Macbeth snorted. “Have you ever heard of anyone having a reincarnation memory that clarified an historical fact?”
“How do I know where biographers get their stuff? Maybe Lisa is on to something. Maybe we should all go to this hypnotist and get regressed. And don’t bother telling me I am already regressed, bloody boy.” Pushing her sleek hair back from her face, Cyd scowled at him.
Macbeth did his gap-toothed smile at her.
Tom sat beside me on the couch, his arm loosely around my shoulders. He leaned toward me and said softly, “You don’t have to go with Cyd if you don’t want to. How about this, I’ll go with her and then I’ll tell you what it was like. And you can think about it and say yes or no.”
I nodded but I didn’t say anything. Maybe it was a premonition or maybe it was just common sense trying to regain control, but either way, it seemed to me the pursuit of the past would lead to disaster. But the choice wasn’t mine. I’d like to believe that. Some other power controlled me.
Maybe predestination, that was a good cop-out, right? Maybe I was predestined to remember another life and therefore all the blame belonged to someone else, not me.
CHAPTER 4
It wasn’t me who opened the flood gate. What did? What triggered all this memory? I don’t know. But once started, I raced toward disaster.
I was home alone the next day, Cyd off to work, me gathering up laundry to take down to the apartment building’s laundry room, when it hit again.
Shocked, I held my breath to listen. A man and woman were talking. Was that my voice? It seemed higher than my own and behind it was a kind of anguish I had never felt.
A voice in my mind said, “Blondie.”
My voice said clearly, “Don’t tease me. You know I hate that name.”
And then my winter-gray apartment disappeared and I was standing in a sunlit hotel room.
Laurence, that’s who it was, stood in front of a window, silhouetted by sunlight, facing me. His blond hair was parted slightly off center, smoothed back from his face and plastered in place with hair oil, accenting the straight line of his brows above his deep-set eyes, the heavy jaw line, the square chin that photographed so well. He’d removed his coat and tossed it on a nearby chair, and the collar of his shirt was open, his silk tie pulled loose.
“I heard that little bastard on the set,” he said. “I damn near said the same thing to him. Don’t call her ‘blondie.’ She hates it. Wouldn’t he have pissed his pants if I had?” His mouth turned up in the smile I knew would one day make him famous. “If you like, I’ll call you Millie, but it doesn’t suit you. You really are Silver, you’re such a glamour girl.”
“Don’t make fun of me.” I was wearing a pink georgette with a basque top and a full skirt, its hemline scalloped and edged with ruffled lace. Embarrassed, I tried to flatten the puffy skirt by smoothing it down with my sweating palms. “This was my party dress. It’s the best thing I own but I am never going to wear it again. I forgot how silly it is.”
“You look like the princess on the chocolate box.”
“I look like a child.”
“Mary Pickford is making a fortune out of that look. You will, too.”
He moved toward me and slid his arms around me.
When I leaned my face against his chest, I could feel his body heat through his thin shirt. Blinking back tears, I tried to forget the hotel dining room with its pillars and chandeliers and starched tablecloths and discreet waiters.
The other women guests wore afternoon frocks of Margot lace or shell-pink crepe or taupe chiffon, sleeveless and cut so that the skirts hung straight with softly draped lines and stopped just below their knees. They wore ropes of pearls and smart little hats that fit close to their heads.
Laurence’s mouth was warm against my face. He stroked my hair and ran his fingers lightly across my cheek and then behind one ear and down my throat. He trace
d the neckline of my dress to the buttons at the back.
“Tomorrow I’ll give you some money for a new frock,” he whispered. “You can go round the shops.”
“I won’t know what to pick. Come with me.”
His hands tightened on my shoulders. He didn’t push me away but for a terrible moment I thought he might.
“Silver, you know I can’t. I took a risk in the dining room.”
I had entered the dining room alone, awed by the elegance, rows of tables covered in white linen, glowing with silverware and bright floral centerpieces. He had told me when to meet him and had whispered the false name he had given the desk clerk. The maitre d’ called me madame and led me past the wide windows that framed the view of the sea, past tables of diners in smart outfits who gave me shaded glances and then leaned toward each other to whisper.
At first I was afraid someone recognized me but then I heard the words pink and sweet and I knew it was my dress that was all wrong.
In an alcove at a table screened from casual view by potted palms, Laurence waited, smiling and standing when I reached him. He looked so handsome, his linen coat cut just right to fit him. His shirt collar was a slash of spotless white beneath his tanned face. His slacks were a neat pleated cut and he must have stopped to get his shoes shined at the barber shop off the lobby.
He held my chair and then he took the menu from the waiter and waved him away. I couldn’t help noticing even his hands were perfect, his nails manicured and buffed. He told me how lovely I looked and filled my mind with his smile.
“Here. Want me to read the menu to you? I’ll bet they have things you’ve never heard of.”
My Deja Vu Lover Page 3