Dreams Are Not Enough (27 page)

Her dress felt oddly loose. Turning, she saw in the mirrors that her crying jag had pulled apart the wardrobe mistress’s temporary stitchery. White satin gaped, exposing her sumptuously curved body from the small of her back to her naked buttocks.

There’s no way I can sew it up by myself.

More hammering.

“Hey, have a heart!”

Alyssia edged out. A heavily wrinkled man darted in.

The buffet line now extended around the hall, and since the wraps were hung in a deep alcove directly across from the powder room, there was no way to retrieve her borrowed white fox. Forming a smile, keeping her back to the wall, she slipped toward the front door.

She sidled down the marble steps, positioning herself so that the parking attendants couldn’t see her back. The limo drove up. She heard more stitches go as she maneuvered into the rear seat.

Back in the shabby little bungalow, the TV blared. Juanita, wearing her old chenille robe, a box of Cheez-Its on her lap, sat with her chair drawn up to the set. The couch was already made up for Hap.

“What a night!” Juanita cried.

“You’ve been on every channel.” Then she glanced around.

“Where’s Hap?”

“They’re having a monstrous party at his parents’. And I met with an accident….” Her intent to play it light withered. Turning to show the damage, she began to cry again.

Juanita gathered her in an embrace that smelled of Tabu cologne, cheese and comfortingly familiar perspiration.

“Shh, baby, shh.”

“I wanted to die, just like when … I was little and had to … pee in in the fields….”

“Oh, Alice, that’s over.”

“Never….”

“You’re famous, a real movie star.”

“I’m a … nobody … and he … Nita, you should see that mansion.”

The screen Bickered with a black-haired actress smiling provocatively.

A feminine voice-over intoned, “Alyssia del Mar, who nearly lost her leg because she refused to quit, found that it was all worthwhile tonight. The plucky actress emerged from the premiere of Wandering On as Hollywood’s newest star. Alyssia del Mar’s first performance in an American film is the stuff Oscars are made of….”

The dulcet televised voice was drowned out by Alice Hollister’s desolate weeping.

She was in bed, still crying erratically, when a car pulled into the narrow drive. It was well after three, and by now her rib cage ached while her throat was raw and clogged. When her door opened, she blinked in surprise. Hap never came in her room after dark.

“Why did you leave without me?” he asked in a low, restrained voice.

Aware she should make a jokey excuse about her dress, she said instead, “I was tired.”

“So you just came home?”

“It’s not a criminal act.”

“No, just a thoughtless one.”

“I’m terribly sorry.”

“Yes, you certainly sound it. I can understand that you were suddenly felled with weariness, but couldn’t you have stayed awake long enough to find me? We could have left together.”

“You and Maxim were the guests of honor.”

“Odd,” he said.

“I always thought you were the bravest person I’d ever met. But put you up against a pair of losers like Uncle Tim and Aunt Clara and you run.”

“Oh, leave me alone.”

“I have been, dutifully.”

“So that’s the problem.” Her raw throat tightened, but the actress in her got the words out easily.

“Well, there’s no commitment. You’re free to find whatever you want, wherever,” she said, her skin prickling with shame.

He stared a fraction longer, then quietly closed the door.

She could hear him in the bathroom, the whir of the Water Pik, the flush of the toilet. She began weeping again, silencing the sobs against her pillow.

“Alyssia?” This time she didn’t hear the door open, and he didn’t turn on the light.

“You asleep?”

“No….”

“You’re crying, aren’t you?”

“So what.”

He got on top of the covers. He was not touching her, but she could feel his warmth.

“I kept looking for you, asking,” he said.

“Finally PD said he’d seen you leave—the parkers told me you’d gone home. I stayed until the bitter end, pretending to have a blast. But I was positive you’d taken off.”

“Taken off?”

“Like when you went to France. I still have nightmares.”

“My dress ripped,” she mumbled.

“What?”

“That’s why I left. Where Minnie sewed me up, the seam split. I couldn’t fix it.”

“So that’s why you couldn’t come find me?” The mattress shook.

“First you have me crying, then laughing.”

“Were you crying, too?”

“I’m not as secure as you seem to think I am.”

She was stroking his arm. Her fingers began to tremble.

“Come under the blankets,” she whispered.

“You’re sure it’s okay?” He was whispering, too.

“I’ve wanted to for weeks.”

“Then… ?”

“I’m far more insecure than you seem to think I am.”

He pulled back the covers. At first he put his arms around her, holding her gently, as if she were friable, but when she pressed against him, shaking as she caressed his shoulders, the deep indentation of his spine, the hardness of his butt, his arms tightened, strong and demanding.

“Oh, God,” he whispered hoarsely.

“More than six years … six long, lonely years.”

They brunched on juanita tantalizingly spiced huevos rancheros, Hap and Alyssia on the couch, PD cross-legged in front of the coffee table, Sunday papers strewing the rug around them.

Alyssia was concluding her lighthearted explanation of her previous night’s hasty exit because of a split seam.

“You were bare-assed?” PD asked, chortling loudly.

“Alyssia del Mar, that boundlessly talented star, bare-assed?” He reached for a section of the Times.

Hap and Alyssia both groaned.

“Not again,” Hap said.

“You can never get enough of a good thing,” PD retorted, his chest expanding under his navy French-knit shirt as he drew breath to

^

read.

“Tt is a rare book or film that can capture the spirit of an entire generation, but Wandering On does exactly that. Its youthful director and producer, sons of Desmond Cordiner, the head of Magnum Pictures, are definitely the best and brightest of the new Hollywood.

Working on a shoestring budget of $350,000, they have put the old Hollywood to shame. No film this corrosively honest, no film of this political persuasion, could have been made under the timidly stodgy aegis of the studio system. Yet, for all their anti establishment frankness, the Cordiner brothers never forget that the first duty of any film is to entertain. Harvard Cordiner, making his directorial debut, gets the jumpy edginess, the manners and mores of today’s youth so perfectly that one feels as if one is eavesdropping. By some sleight of magic he also manages to make credible the often hilarious yet ultimately tragic screenplay by another family member, Barry Cordiner. Diner Roberts, the talented actor who died recently in a tragic automobile accident, gives a brash yet haunting performance as Duke, the hippie wanderer. But it is Alyssia del Mar who endows the film with its heart and humanity. Miss del Mar’s boundless talents have hitherto been wasted playing dumb American broads in European films. The actress combines the breathtaking raven-tressed, sapphire-eyed beauty of a young Elizabeth Taylor with the delightfully comedic sexiness of Marilyn Monroe, but her sizzling charm is uniquely her own. Take note of October 15, 1966. On that date a star was born and her name is Alyssia del Mar. ”” PD looked up.

“In case you don’t know it, Alyssia, you don’t often see that kind of rave.”

“Finish your eggs,” she told him, blushing.

“Nothing’s more fickle than luck.”

“You call that performance luck?” Hap asked. Pulling her closer, he nuzzled his unshaven cheek against her smooth one.

Alyssia’s glow deepened and she kissed his nose.

In the hospital PD had seen how hung up the couple were on each other, but he had never seen them display such open affection. They seemed unable to stop touching.

Still holding Alyssia close, Hap grinned at PD.

“Now she’s softened up, PD. It’s the right time for your pitch.”

PD set down his empty plate.

“I’m the wrong agent for you, Alyssia,” he said somberly.

“What?” she exclaimed.

“That’s not how you were talking last night.”

“I hadn’t had time to think it through,” PD replied.

“Alyssia, you’re hot, hot as they come. We’re talking a major career. You’re entering uncharted waters, so let me give you some input. The new trend is for the big boys to package talent—nowadays often the script, the director, the stars, all come from the same agency. No way I can compete with that.” He paused.

“Alyssia, if I were you” — “Thank God you’re not,” Alyssia interrupted.

“If you were, who’d have saved my life by racing me to the hospital?”

Juanita brought in the coffee tray, setting it in front of Alyssia. PD waited until she had gathered up the plates and returned to the kitchen before speaking again.

“Being grateful,” he said, “is an entirely different thing from choosing representation.”

“Aren’t you a good agent?” She handed him his coffee.

“Thanks,” he said as he took the cup.

“I’m good, very—I do battle for my clients. But I’m still in the minors.”

“A big agency’d make me uncomfortable,” she said, pouring Hap’s coffee.

“Do I come to your office to sign papers or what?”

“I’ve never required a contract,” he said. Why should he? His elderly, spritely clients would never depart his hard-driving representation.

“A handshake does it.”

“Then …” She extended her hand.

“This wouldn’t be meaningful to me if you’re doing it out of obligation.”

“Will you quit playing hard to get.” Alyssia wiggled her fingers.

“Shake.”

PD gripped her hand.

Alyssia smiled.

“Finally I have an agent.”

“And that means, lady, from here on in you come to me with your business problems. Never listen to the big bozo here.”

“Now it’s the bozo’s turn, PD,” Hap said.

“Tell me how you’re going to guide my career.”

“With your contacts you don’t need me.”

“I’ve never been great on making deals. Besides, with Alyssia and me you have a mini package Star plus a one-shot director.”

“It’d arouse a certain interest,” PD said.

The cousins grinned and shook hands.

Spooning sugar into his coffee, PD made an inward prayer of gratitude to the blue-robed Virgin at Good Shepherd. His intense campaign had paid off, and he had nailed them both.

That same week Barry signed with Talent Management Corporation, and was handed over to a pompous young man in the literary department.

Whitney also signed with TMC: she explained to Barry it was due to her family connections that Martin Naderman, TMC’s founder, had taken her directly under his wing.

The under-thirty crowd waited in long lines for every performance of Wandering On, and within three weeks an impressive $33,700,000 had been pushed through the box-office grates of houses showing the film.

The gross was unprecedented for a Magnum release.

Rio Garrison swept into the executive dining room for a celebratory lunch. Before taking her late husband’s chair at the head of the oval table, she embraced Desmond Cordiner in full view of his minions, several of whom had been angling for his job.

“Desmond, you genius! Not even Art ever brought in a hit that cost so little.” Her dark eyes moistened emotionally.

“He must be looking down and applauding.”

And her lover chimed in, “So the winning team’s all in the family, ehh, Cordiner? What’s the next project?”

“PD, be at the office at three this afternoon,” Desmond Cordiner snapped over the phone.

PD exulted that he hadn’t been forced to call his uncle.

“Uncle Desmond, let me see if I can juggle my appointments” — “I said three.”

PD arrived a few minutes early, kibbitzing away the time with the younger of his uncle’s two secretaries, a girl with spectacular legs whom PD had taken to lunch several times at the nearby Brown Derby on Vine Street.

At three promptly, the buzzer sounded.

His uncle remained behind the altar like desk. Not inviting PD to sit, he snapped, “What’s this crap I read in Joyce Haber about Alyssia working over at Fox?”

The moisture already trickling beneath his shirt, PD said, “She’s doing that big-budget Western of theirs and” — “Get her out of it.”

“Out of it? Uncle Desmond, I’ve worked like a dog on the deal. I’ve got Fox up to one eighty plus two points of the gross, which I don’t have to tell you is pretty damn good. Naturally I’d have come to you first, but you gave no indication that Magnum had interest in Alyssia and I hate to take advantage of the relationship” — “Quit stinking up my office with pig fart Desmond Cordiner snapped.

“I’ll give her two hundred and two points.”

“Oh? Then you have a project with her in mind?”

“The Colman McCarthy best-seller I bought last year.”

“The One Mary, mmm … a thriller. Weren’t you talking to Julie Christie?”

“She’s too British.”

PD sat in one of the deep leather chairs.

“Uncle Desmond, I’ll lay it on the line. Fox also wants Hap. They have a project aimed at the youth market and they’ve offered him a hundred plus a point and a half.”

“They did? He never told me.”

“You know Hap—too much integrity for his own good. He thinks you’d think he was pressuring Magnum for that kind of deal.”

“They won’t be working together at Fox.”

“Would they be here?”

“Of course. Him, Alyssia and Maxim.”

“I don’t handle Maxim so I can’t answer for him. But … that two and two for Alyssia is firm?”

“You heard me.”

“And what about Hap?”

“One ten and a point and a half.”

“He’d be in on the other film from the beginning. Casting and” — “One twenty-five, and that’s my limit.”

“Hap’d never sign unless he has approval of the final cut.”

“No final cut!” his uncle thundered.