Dreams Are Not Enough

by Jacqueline Briskin

  She’ll be back, he thought.

  When the wizened nurse carried in his lunch tray—broth and tea—an envelope lay on the napkin.

  His pulse jumped, and it was all he could do to wait until the old woman left to open it.

  As usual, the joined block letters touched him profoundly. Years ago, in a cruddy Hollywood motel, Alicia had traced the central hairs of his chest, admitting that in her peripatetic education she had never learned cursive script.

  Whatever its emotional connotations, the writing was highly legible. He read the few lines in one glance.

  It was a mistake barging in on you. If I’d given up on the relationship years ago we’d both be happier, and none of the recent rotten events would have taken place.

  On the other hand, it makes me so glad to have seen that you are (more or less) FINE. You are the most decent, most generous human being I have ever known.

  Have a wonderful life, and do all the good things you are capable of.

  Goodbye and God bless.

  Holding the paper in his bandaged hand, he turned his face toward the ugly buff wall. He knew a farewell letter when he saw one.

  72

  Three months later he was limping off the ferry in Bellagio.

  He had never been here in the middle of winter. Iron shutters hid the tourist shops, the narrow alleys swooping down to the lake were empty and the outdoor cafés along the shore were deserted except for a pair of bundled-up women.

  Reaching the curve of benches, he halted to look out at the dancing line of wavelets that reflected the large, pale sun. His expression was brooding.

  At the beginning of his slow recuperation from the repair surgery, each time the door was pushed open he would turn, hopeful that it was she.

  Convinced of the reality that she wasn’t coming back, though, he retreated into himself. I’ve lost her, he would think in a continuous refrain. I’ve lost her. Whole days would go by when he spoke less than a dozen sentences.

  In his silence he brooded about his brother’s betrayal of him, and his cousins’ betrayal. He was indeed dead, but without any of the advantages of forgetfulness.

  He had a fourth surgery, an unsuccessful and exceedingly painful attempt to lengthen the tendons behind his knee.

  During this convalescence he began to think of going to her. He used the thought sparingly, in much the same way that he doled out codeine pills to himself. At night, when the worst pain smothered him, he permitted himself to conjure up fantasies about their reunion.

  Although he had retained his faintly forbidding air of command and confidence with the staff, the loneliness and the pain had done damage to his spirit: those inner uncertainties always present within him had multiplied. For the first time in his life he felt unworthy.

  Then one sunny afternoon Hans, the red-faced German orderly, wheeled him onto the porch. Possibly it was the magnificent view, or the jovial tinkling of a horse-drawn sled coming up the hill, or the cold clear mountain air.

  It no longer seemed a pipe dream to see her again.

  Now that he had a goal for recovery, his natural excellent health asserted itself. Within the week he was back on crutches, riding the big elevator downstairs to scrutinize the most recent London Times and Paris Match—his French was excellent from working in Zaire, where, despite independence, French had remained the official language because there were at least eighty different Bantu dialects. From the week-old papers he learned that Alyssia del Mar was an Oscar nominee for Best Actress (he also learned Harvard Cordiner was receiving a posthumous Oscar for lifetime achievement) but not one clue of her whereabouts.

  In the past he could have embarrassed himself by phoning his father to discover where she was. (In his reading, he hadn’t come across any mention of Desmond Cordiner’s paralyzing stroke.) Or he could have called Maxim or PD. He could have crawled to Barry.

  But Adam Stevens must search for himself.

  She had told him she was at the Bellagio villa, but that was three months ago and wasn’t it highly improbable she would remain there? On the other hand, he didn’t know where else to begin his search.

  The ferry, with a series of mournful hoots, was pulling away from the dock. He rose from the bench. At the taxi stand, two drivers in heavy black coats were gesticulating to each other. Briefly he considered asking one to take him to the villa. But Adam Stevens’ account in Zurich’s Swiss Credit Bank had been opened with money from the relief center: though he had been the center’s main contributor, he never thought of the money as his, so whenever he considered extras like wine to pep up Château Neuchâtel’s blandly soggy meals or this taxi ride, pangs of conscience would assail him.

  He started to walk.

  The gait he had developed, leaning on his cane while swinging his left leg from the hip, presented difficulties going uphill. When he reached the two-lane highway, the cars and trucks that occasionally careened around the hairpin bends forced him onto the shoulder. On slick pine needles, the going was yet tougher.

  At the VILLA ADRIANA sign, he rested to catch his breath in the brisk, westerly wind. What was he doing here? He was no longer Hap Cordiner, child of Hollywood’s royalty, award-winning director. He was a cripple, broke and without so much as an honest passport, seeking out a reclusive, world-famed movie star—who might or might not be in residence.

  If a certain doggedness hadn’t been a component of his character, he would have returned to the ferry. Instead, he toiled steadily down toward the nineteenth-century villa whose exterior mistakenly suggested a small bungalow.

  He banged the familiar bronze mermaid knocker. After a brief wait, the door opened a few inches. Juanita stood framed there. His chest tightened and he wasn’t sure whether the sensation were relief or terror.

  “Hello, Juanita,” he said quietly.

  The dark, broad face remained impassive. She evinced no surprise at seeing him alive on the recently washed doorstep. “Miss del Mar’s not here,” she said.

  He shifted his weight. “Is she down in Bellagio, shopping?”

  “No.”

  “Will she be back soon?”

  “Go away! Leave her alone! Ain’t you Cordiners caused her enough grief?” In Juanita’s sudden furious outburst concentric circles formed around her mouth, and she resembled one of those eternally outraged Mayan deities carved in pre-Columbian times.

  Her anger, so completely atypical, threw him off balance mentally and physically. Leaning more weight on his stick, he coughed to give himself a moment. “I’d like to see her,” he said.

  “What for?”

  “To talk.”

  “Talk, hahh! All of you Cordiners want something from her. The family’s like crows gathering round to peck the life from her—”

  Angry himself by now, he interrupted brusquely, “Will you please tell her I’m here.”

  Her tirade spilled on. “That Barry, he lived off her for years! She did everything for him. She was always there when he needed her. But the minute she’s in trouble, where is he? He’s getting the doctors to dope her up so he can take her baby to hand over to his high and mighty sister. And her, that Beth! She’s always snubbed Alice and treated her like she was a Hollywood Boulevard hooker. And now she’s got that darling little boy. Alice saved your father’s studio for him, but did he or your mom ever give her the time of day? She paid off PD’s dad’s gambling debts, she made PD a billion, and when the chips were down, PD threw her to the wolves. And what about your brother, Maxim? He shoved her around so she almost lost her leg, then he wheedled her into making more movies with that crook, Lang!”

  “You’re being totally irrational,” he snapped. Yet as he said this, it hit him that she had spoken the pure, undiluted essence of rationality. It was absolutely true. The Cordiner family had all fed off Alyssia.

  “And you! You’re the one who hurt her the worst. First of all she falls apart because she thinks you’re dead. Then she risks all sorts of danger to find you. And you kick her in the teeth!”r />
  Maxim would have come up with some clever witticism about scarcely being in condition to kick anyone anywhere, much less in the teeth. “I know I hurt her,” he said. His voice lacked resonance, and he sounded as he had during the worst of his post-op weakness. “That’s why I want to talk to her.”

  “That’s you all over! You think a polite ‘Sorry’ cures every rotten thing. She never told me what you did to her, but when she crawled back here, she was ill, so ill again. Now she’s finally snapping out of it and I ain’t letting you or any of the rest near her. Sometimes I think she can survive anything including the plague—but not the Cordiners!”

  So Alyssia had been ill. Lying in his hospital bed and hoping—no, praying—that she would open the door, he had never once considered illness as a reason for her absence. Remembering the defeated smile as she’d left his room, he swallowed.

  “You’re right, Juanita.” He sighed. “I shouldn’t have come.”

  He started up the driveway. At a sickening screech, he halted abruptly. Tires were skidding on the road above. His mind jumping with memories of a primitive, winding African road, his own tires screeching, he held his breath for the accident. But no glass shattered, no metal crumpled.

  As the engine sounds faded in the direction of Bellagio, he turned. Juanita remained on sentry duty at the ornately carved front door. Aware of her unsympathetic gaze, he returned.

  “I promise not to upset her, but I’m not moving until I see her.”

  “Nita, who’s there?” It was Alyssia’s voice.

  She came running up the staircase. On the top step, she halted. Peering across the hall, she lifted her hand to her throat.

  The long window behind her served as backlighting. In the nimbus of bright winter sunlight, her face was not clearly visible. Hair falling over her shoulders, white robe sashed taut at her slim waist to show the curves of her body, she seemed to shimmer, and as she once had caused Barry to think of the immortal goddesses of love—Astarte, Aphrodite—so now Hap saw her as the truth of his being.

  He forgot his game leg, his exile from his parents and family and home; he accepted that his onetime goal of making a so-called perfect film and his omnipresent goal of bringing a marginal comfort to the earth’s poor were all externals.

  This gleaming woman was his truth.

  In the sanitorium he had been nearly devoid of desire. Now, staring at her, he experienced a lust stronger than any sensation he had ever experienced—stronger than his fear and agony on the night he had been certain of his own death, stronger than any desire he had previously felt for her. He shifted his cane to hold it in front to hide his physical manifestations.

  She moved a few steps toward the door, halting.

  Now he could see her face more clearly. Her fine-pored skin glowed with a faint, translucent pinkness across the cheekbones; her eyes were clear and unshadowed. Obviously she had recovered from the illness.

  “Hi,” she said in a normal tone.

  “Hello.”

  “Just passing by?”

  “I have something for you.” He reached in his pants pocket for the Lindt bar he’d bought when he changed trains for the second time at the Zurich station. Inside its wrapper, the white chocolate had taken on a curved shape.

  Smiling, she came to the door. “For a top director, you’re doing a rotten job on this scene,” she said, glancing out at the courtyard. “Where’s your car?”

  “I walked up from the ferry.”

  Her eyes went down to his knee.

  His desire wilted a fraction. “Exercise is good for me,” he said tersely.

  Turning to Juanita, she said, “We’d like to talk.”

  “I’m not having you get all shook up again,” Juanita said.

  “Why’re you growling like a Doberman guard dog?”

  “Because you need one.”

  “Not right now I don’t. Hap’s come a long way.”

  Juanita rolled her eyes up at the high, molded ceiling, as if inviting providence to note the feckless, improvident generosity of her younger sister, then she stamped across the parquet, disappearing down the staircase, opening and slamming a door.

  He and Alyssia faced each other across the threshold. He was incapable of looking away from her eyes. There had always been a mystery in her eyes, a hint of a shadowed past, and this nuance, caught by the camera, contributed to her allure. Now the melting blue depth held yet more mysteries.

  She looked away first. Taking the misshapen candy bar from him, she said, “Let’s go in the study.”

  They had used the study often, and without thinking he headed for the big leather chair, then, recollecting it was no longer his, he went to stand at the window. A speedboat carved around the inlet, the vroom of the engine barely audible within the study. She came to stand next to him. Her proximity impinged on all his senses.

  “You’re pretty good with that,” she said, glancing at the cane.

  “Better than my mud crawl?”

  “It’s a really big deal I saw you, isn’t it?”

  He shrugged noncommittally, then shook his head. “I didn’t come here to lie,” he said. “Yeah, thinking about it still makes me go hot in the face.”

  “How about the way I humiliated myself?”

  “There’s another thing. I can’t believe I sent you away.”

  “Why did you?”

  “At the time I was worried for you—the Lang business. But maybe it was because you’d seen me like that. Who knows?”

  “Maybe because you’d just had surgery.” She was speaking more softly.

  “I willed you to come back. God, how I wanted you back, Alyssia.”

  “I’m Alice now.”

  “Alice,” he repeated. “Juanita said you’d been ill.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “What did she mean, then?”

  “It’s all part of the same thing as Alyssia and Alice.” She gazed pensively at the small, uninhabited, pine-covered island across the lake. “Remember years ago when I told you it was like a wonderful dream, being on the other side of the screen—like being Alice through the looking glass? And you said dreams weren’t enough?”

  “We were at Don the Beachcomber’s.” The memory of that long-ago, uneaten meal, and what they had done afterward at the Cahuenga Inn Motel, revived his stallionoid condition.

  “Yes, there. Well, after that Villa Pacifica business, when Barry and I got back together, sometimes Alice had a problem being on the other side of the screen. I couldn’t breathe properly.”

  “Anxiety?”

  “Yes—anxiety attacks. Later, when I thought you were dead, they got worse, and not only on the set. They’d come over me all the time. They tried to treat me for it when I went into the maternity clinic. I’m not sure what drugs they gave me, but they made me feel so awful, far worse than the attacks, which didn’t go away,” she sighed. “That’s really why I gave him up, my baby.”

  “Juanita said Barry pushed you to.”

  “Only because he thought it was best for the baby. And that’s why I agreed. Hap, it was the right thing.” She sighed again.

  His throat clogged and he couldn’t speak. He, too, stared toward the uninhabited island.

  “Don’t look so sad,” she said. “I’m a lot better; the baby’s well off. Besides, think of the positive side for you. It’s impossible to feel ashamed in front of me.”

  “I’ve missed you,” he said in a low, shaken voice.

  She took his hand, pressing it between her breasts. He could feel the savage pounding of her heart.

  With an incoherent sound, he put his arms around her, covering her throat with kisses. She was clutching him as tightly as she could, as if to reassure herself of his living body. Backing her to the leather couch, he pulled her on top of himself. She threw aside the robe. He wanted to caress her, feel the warm cream softness of the astonishing breasts, feel the unique smoothness of her thighs, but he was unzipping his jeans. She rose up, straddling him. As she
sank onto him, engulfing the world, he cried her name. “Alice . . . ahh, Alice. . . .”

  73

  She was lying on top of him, and he shifted a bit so that there was space for her on the couch. Still entwined, he pulled back, gazing at her, finding it nearly impossible to believe the reality of the flushed and beautiful face. For the past months she had been a continuous denizen of his dreams and reveries, yet no more accessible to him than to the audiences who idolized her in movie theaters.

  “Hap, stop brooding. It was wonderful.”

  He gave a snort that was half laughter. “We’ll do better next time. No, I was thinking you couldn’t be real.”

  She tugged his beard. “Will a bit of pain convince you?”

  Smiling, he moved her hand. “Know something? If I had to pick one minute in my life—lives—this would be it.”

  “Not while we were—”

  “No. This minute.”

  “Was I heavy? Did I hurt your leg?”

  “Who noticed? It was like a storm, an earthquake, something outside of me. I don’t know if it could ever be like that again. Right now I’m just normal-human-being happy.”

  “Me too.” She ran her hand down his stickily wet thigh, a gentle, wandering touch on the hard, raised scar tissue. “When are you going to tell me about how this happened?”

  “Later,” he said, resting his bearded cheek between her breasts. “Now let’s just be happy.”

  They began to make slow, tender explorations of each other, and after he went into her they continued to move voluptuously until the end. When they got up from the couch, he realized he’d eaten nothing today and was ravenous. The squat, heavily muscled cook (and her husband who tended the garden and the car) were off, so Hap whipped up a huge omelet topped with provolone while Alice fixed coffee and set the scrubbed pine kitchen table. The pale gold melted cheese and eggs smelled and tasted more savory than any food he could remember, the bread immeasurably fresher, the butter sweeter, the coffee richer and stronger. They divvied the white chocolate for dessert.