Dreams Are Not Enough (18 page)

“Brought you our star woman Maxim said. With an adieu pat to Alyssia’s hip, he continued to the generator, talking to the electrician.

“Hi, Alyssia,” Whitney said. Her color-slashed cheeks, glamorous in repose, drew in so deeply when she smiled that the lower part of her face appeared hollow.

After Alyssia returned the smiles and greetings with forced animation, she moved to the white tape that was her marker.

The morning thus far had proceeded with the predictability that had given Wandering On its surreal quality. Everybody was behaving so true to form as to be distorted self-parodies. Since landing at LAX,

Barry had drunk steadily, blaming her for the stream of script changes. She knew that every alteration forced on him caused him to feel he’d failed not only as a novelist but also as a scriptwriter;

however, the knowledge didn’t help her transcend the often public humiliation he heaped on her. Maxim, on the other hand, stalked her like a predator. She kept up the pretence that his interest was a running gag between them, but the cast and crew, aware of Maxim Cordiner’s randy reputation, watched for further developments with interest bordering on the salacious.

Then there was Hap.

At the first rehearsal—after six long years—his greeting had been, “Alyssia, I can’t tell you how I admire your work. I’m a novice at directing, so I’d appreciate any feedback you can give me.” He had spoken with the deference granted to long reigning stars, and no other intonation.

“Uhh, it’s good to see you again, Hap,” she had murmured.

When the actors had started their initial reading of lines she had drawn on all her craft, but even so her voice had quavered embarrassingly. After a few minutes she had pleaded a sudden onset of the twenty-four-hour fill and left.

The assistant cameraman held up the slate board (scene 45/TAKE 1), clapping the two pieces together loudly.

“Quiet everybody,” the assistant director called.

“This is a take.”

Hap looked encouragingly at Whitney, who blew him a kiss before she began her designated stroll past the psychedelic bus.

Alyssia stepped forward on cue. She thought: To me it was the love affair of the century, to him nothing more than a few highly forgettable boffs. What was Desmond Cordiner so worried about?

“Why not forget going up to dinner tonight, Mrs. Cordiner,” Juanita said, folding a silk nightgown on one side of the turned-down patchwork quilt.

“I’ll go up and get you a tray.”

“Juanita’s right, hon,” Barry called from the bathroom. Recovered from this morning’s petulance, he was in a mood that could only be described as chipper.

“You look worn-out. Why not just get into bed.”

“I’m perfectly fine,” Alyssia lied. Fatigue dragged at her muscles and her nerve ends felt rubbed raw.

She was in almost every scene, and this had caused a full-blown case of star’s overload, the most terrifyingly lonely of all showbiz fears. What if she couldn’t summon up a credible performance? What if she couldn’t carry off Cassie’s transformation from outcast, oddball town girl to a free spirit? What if because of her. Wandering On flopped? In addition to the doubts that haunted her, she was shooting exteriors in rough weather conditions. The sensible course, as suggested by Barry and Juanita, would be to go to bed with a light supper. Instead, and this seemed the ultimate in masochism, every night she accompanied Barry to the table reserved for Maxim, Diner, Whitney and Hap in the inn’s dining room. Like a helpless moth fluttering to the light, she was unable to stay away from Hap.

Alyssia sat poking at her roast beef while pretending to listen to Maxim. Lounging in the captain’s chair next to hers, he was entertaining her with stories about the film Marilyn Monroe had made at Magnum. Hap’s head was inclined toward Diner as they discussed the rushes, which came in from a San Francisco lab on the daily commercial flight. At the far end of the table, Whitney was inquiring, “Barry, don’t you agree that John Barth’s the greatest living American writer?” Being an English major at a finishing school in Virginia had nudged her toward Barry, the company’s man of letters.

“—her skirt whirled out and the crew got a mass hard-on.” Maxim stopped abruptly.

“Alyssia, you aren’t listening.”

“Marilyn wasn’t wearing underpants.”

“You missed the key sentence. Nobody knew it, but she was.”

“No tests tonight, Maxim,” she said wearily.

“Please?”

“You do look run-in.” He pressed his warm, bony calf against hers.

She shifted as far from him as the large chair permitted.

“Working in the cold’s always rough on me.”

He glanced at the sleekly modern brass clock hands affixed to the rough rocks above the fireplace.

“Nearly quarter past ten. Time for me to escort this worn-out star to her cottage.”

“No!” she snapped.

“Barry’ll take me.” She glanced down the table.

“Barry?”

Her spouse continued to wax erudite on The Sot-Weed Factor.

“Barry?” she repeated more loudly.

He finally turned away from Whitney.

“Yes, honI don’t think I can last through dessert.”

“Go on ahead then, hon.” He poured Napa Valley Bordeaux into Whitney’s glass and his own.

“I’ll be down in a little while.”

“So much for Barry-boy,” Maxim said sotto voce, adding normally, “Can’t have shadows under those big blue eyes tomorrow, can we? Come on, Alyssia. Beddie bye.”

Diner gave her and Maxim a sliding glance. From allusions and gratuitous smirks around the set, she had learned for certain that he was homosexual, and—though neither a glance on his part nor a word of gossip verified this—she intuited that his affections were directed toward Maxim. Maxim’s flagrant pursuit of her must therefore be as painful to him as she found witnessing Hap and Whitney enter their shared cottage.

She continued to protest.

“You ordered chocolate souffle. Maxim. Stay and eat it.”

“We can’t have you tripping.”

It was then that Hap turned to her.

“I’ll see you down, Alyssia,” he said.

She had been taking a final sip of wine. The glass shook and red drops spilled on the white cloth. Although Hap epitomized professional solicitousness, he had never before extended personal chivalry. To be alone with him in the pine-fragrant darkness? After those dreams about him, dreams from whose eroticism she awoke with her thighs clenched?

What if her control failed her, what if she threw her arms around him, kissing him—what if she found herself caressing him in the old, explicit ways?

“I appreciate all the concern, guys,” she said resolutely, and stood.

“But I’m a big girl.”

Maxim, too, was standing.

“Alyssia, forget the women’s lib business,” he said.

“Come along.”

Clasping her cape tightly around herself, she walked apart from Maxim as they crossed Highway One and circled the three enormous gray boulders that gave the inn its name. A fog had rolled off in the Pacific and the occasional lamp suspended from the tall sequoias cast hazy, aureoled pools of light on the winding path ahead of them.

Maxim broke the silence.

“What gives, Alyssia?”

“I was thinking about tomorrow’s lines.”

“Stop being obtuse. I meant about us.”

“Oh, Maxim, come on.”

They were passing the fork that led to Whitney and Hap’s cottage.

Maxim halted under the light to extend both hands.

“Look,” he said.

“Not a finger missing. No symptoms of leprosy.”

“Let’s forget this pointless conversation.”

“I’m asking about you and me, chick.”

“There’s nothing,” she said.

“Nothing? Isn’t nothing exactly what you’re getting from Barry?”

“He’s all upset.” She was too weary and too caught up in fending off

Maxim’s advances to realize that this defense of her spouse answered the question.

“He doesn’t understand that scripts are written to be changed.”

“Let’s omit his problems as a writer as well as his obvious difficulties with the bottle. What’s pertinent is, can he get it up?”

Alyssia started toward the next lantern.

“So he can’t,” Maxim said.

“Then why not you and me?”

“Oh, get lost!”

Gripping her arm, he halted her again. His eyes glinted in the darkness for a long moment as he stared down, then he bent to kiss her. His lingual foray toward the back of her throat, a slithering, curling exploration, nauseated her.

Wrenching her neck backward and to the side, she managed to escape.

“No!”

“Nature didn’t intend a body like yours for celibacy,” he muttered.

Exerting her muscles, she pushed both hands at his bony chest.

Surprisingly, he released her. Adrenalin Hooding her, she dashed downhill toward her cottage.

At the gingerbread fretwork porch, she fumbled with the large iron key. Maxim, catching up, took it to unlock the door.

“See you tomorrow morning,” she said.

“It’s not goodnight time yet.”

He shoved her into the tiny vestibule, grasping her arm, dragging her into the bedroom.

She shouted, “Goddamn you, Maxim, get away from me or I’ll kill you!”

She slapped, kicked, but her cries and blows had no more effect on him than if she were a paper cutout.

“You need it, need it badly,” he muttered.

“And I’m really hung up on you.”

Pushing her on the bed, he pinned her shoulders to the quilt. By the dim, brown cone of light from the bedside lamp that Juanita always left on, Alyssia saw that Maxim’s thin lips were twisted.

His expression was one of yearning grief.

Maxim sad? Impossible.

Then his mouth came down on hers for another brutal kiss. She wrenched away.

“Get out of here,” she panted. By now terror ruled her. Though his hands immobilized her shoulders, she flipped and twisted in the same way as a landed fish attempts to escape the boat deck, a struggle over which her brain had little control. She tried to knee him, but he anticipated her, capturing her raised thigh between his thin, strong thighs.

“Maxim, get out!” she panted.

“Do you hear me? Get the hell out of my room!”

He jerked her onto her stomach.

One hand manacling both her wrists behind the small of her back, he managed to drag down her slacks and French silk underpants. Thrashing, she thought of Henry Lopez—had she been quicker and stronger then, or was Henry a more clumsy rapist than Maxim? He was on top of her, his hands roughly spreading her buttocks.

She had never been sodomized. An indomitable part other refused to let Maxim know the full extent of pain he was inflicting on her, so she buried her face in the smooth cotton folds of the quilt, smothering her agonized groans.

His hands clasped her waist and his body hammered against hers more furiously. Then, with a drawn-out groan, he fell away from her. Almost immediately the mattress shifted and he got up. As he left the cottage, the lock didn’t catch. The door blew open and shut and for an un measurable length of time she lay with the cold, damp air slapping in gusts at her naked buttocks.

Slowly she clambered from the bed, inching to the vestibule. It wasn’t until she had locked the door that she realized the warmth trickling down her thighs was not only semen but also blood. She turned on the shower. Resting her shoulders against the tiles, she sagged downward until she was squatting in near-boiling water. The rape had banished Alyssia del Mar. She was Alice Hollister again, and as her skin turned crimson she expended the feeble remnants of her strength on hating the Cordiners, one and all.

The following morning, when she emerged, made up and coiffed, from the trailer, Maxim was waiting to drape an arm around her waist and give her a proprietorial smile. Seemingly by osmosis, everyone on the film—except Barry—knew that Maxim Cordiner had scored again.

During shooting, Alyssia’s entire body ached and certain motions tore unbearably. Thank God Hap broke early for lunch. Alyssia ignored the buffet, heading back to the trailer.

Diner caught up with her.

“Alyssia, can we go someplace to talk alone?” he asked quietly. He took off the brightly embroidered denim jacket that was part of his costume, draping it over her shoulders.

“I

promise not to keep you long. “

Dreading the reproaches or whatever else might ensue, she said, “Dill, I’m zonked.”

“Please?” His voice shook.

“Let me get some tea first.”

She took a few sips from the Styrofoam cup as Diner led her deeper into the scrubby little trees.

“Alyssia, we’re friends, aren’t we?”

“Of course we are. Dill, you don’t need to spell anything out. I understand. And it’s never mattered to me what a person’s preferences are.”

“Sure I’m gay.” Diner shrugged.

“I came to terms with it years ago.

This thing with you and Maxim”— ” Put your mind at rest,” she interrupted bitterly.

“It’s totally one sided—part of his obsession with the female half of the human race.”

“Maxim’s obsession is hiding from his father.” Diner held aside a branch for her, then said, “It’s no secret how Desmond Cordiner feels about homosexuals.”

She stumbled as Diner’s meaning penetrated.

“I can’t believe what you’re telling me,” she said in a shocked whisper.

“Maxim? But he’s been married. He’s had a million girls.”

“We’ve been lovers for three years.”

The Styrofoam had cracked and lukewarm tea dripped onto the long skirt of her granny dress, but she didn’t notice.

“So then I’m a beard. But if he just wants to stay in the closet, why not keep on with the public passes? Everybody thinks he’s super stud anyway. Why did he have to jump my bones?”

Diner’s eyes were moist.

“Alyssia, he’s convinced that you’re his key to a straight life.”

“Me? He can’t believe that, Diner. He knows my feelings are totally negative. Me? The idea’s so far out it’s crazy….” Her protestations faded as she recalled the cone of lamplight and Maxim’s peculiar expression of yearning grief.

“He wasn’t like this with his wife or the others—they really were beards. He never stops talking about you.”