Dreams Are Not Enough (37 page)

She fell silent as Roscoe labored up the path with the tray.

Eating thin-sliced papaya and freshly broiled shrimp (Beth was on a perpetual maintenance diet), they talked about the movie Alyssia was finishing at Universal.

“So the retakes are almost done,” Beth said.

“Then what?”

“A little vacation time. After that, PD’s put together a package.”

“Who’s in on it?”

“Old times revisited.” An Alyssia del Mar chuckle.

“Me. Maxim. Hap.”

“Hap?”

“It surprised me,” Alyssia said.

“I figured after he finished that movie in Yugoslavia, he’d be going back to Zaire.”

Beth had assumed so, too. She donated lavishly to the relief center that Hap had founded in Zaire (she still inwardly thought of the new country as the Belgian Congo), feeling a deep shame that the checks she mailed were not for good deeds but to keep her cousin geographically separated from her brother’s wife. Photographs of the center, which was in a remote section of tropical rain forest near the Ruwenzori Mountains, showed why it possessed no more ornate name. It was a twenty by twenty-five frame house on stilts with a thatch roof and broad veranda where those receiving medical care were nursed by their families. The supervisor was Dr. Arthur Kleefeld, a bearded young New Yorker, a graduate of Johns Hopkins. Those first five years Hap spent all of his time in Zaire. When he resumed directing, Beth was overjoyed that his films were made on location. He hadn’t come back to Los Angeles on a permanent basis until three years ago, when he married Madeleine Van Vliet, of the Van Vliet supermarket chain. At the big June wedding in All Saints Episcopal, Beth had felt a great burden lifted from her.

Madeleine never accompanied Hap on his African jaunts, and seldom went on location with him, but in all other respects they were a golden couple. They looked magnificent together—Madeleine was as tall for a woman as Hap was for a man, as fairhaired as he. They never argued.

She swam in a sea of Blue Book friends, a sociability that the Cordiner clan agreed was the perfect antidote to Hap’s tendency to shy away from large-scale parties.

At the rare family gatherings when Alyssia showed up with Barry, Beth kept a sharp eye on the onetime lovers. They would exchange a few cousinly pleasantries, then move apart.

Beth watched the goldfish darting below the placid surface of the pond.

“What’s the story line?” she asked.

“It’s called The Baobab Tree and it’s set in Africa.”

“Probably that’s what attracted him.”

Alyssia shrugged.

“Who knows? All I can tell you is why / agreed to do it. Beth, after they see this, they won’t dare offer me any more of those dumb sex comedies.”

The faint assertiveness of her tone disturbed Beth yet more. Her fingers shook as she emptied the pink paper of Sweet’n’Low in her iced coffee, and traces of white powder spilled on the table.

“It sounds fabulous,” she said.

In truth Alyssia had no idea what her role was or what the film was about. She knew the locale, East Africa, and the title, nothing more.

She had agreed to do The Baobab Tree for a single reason. PD had told her that Hap was already signed to direct.

Upon Barry’s release from Villa Pacifica, Alyssia had bought a new, one-story home in the Santa Monica Mountains a mile or so north of the Beverly Hills Hotel. The builder had developed five of what he called luxury manors, getting the utmost view from his expensive crag by layering the pads. The Cordiners’, the topmost of these, was reached by a long, steeply zigzagging private lane.

Alyssia wound up the hill, and as she pulled into the large parking area, Barry opened the front door, waving to her.

On the short drive from the Golds’ Holmby Hills estate, she had been thinking about Hap. How his gray eyes had darkened before they made love, the brief hesitation before he answered a question that gave his reply weight. The total security she had felt with him both on and off the set.

Seeing Barry, she experienced a cockeyed sense of alienation. It was as if she were observing a woman in white slacks and a smashing tee shirt emerge from a car and walk to a tall, balding man. A concerned, wifely voice inquired, “How did your lunch go?”

“Come on inside.”

Barry’s eyes glinted with boyish excitement. She followed him into a large, sun-splashed living area, which a decorator had strewn with sleek pale woods and large pieces of squashy red upholstery. Beyond plate glass glittered the heart-shaped pool that she’d recently put in.

“Mrs. Cordiner. ” Juanita emerged from the kitchen wing.

“You got some calls.”

“Tell Mrs. Cordiner about them later,” Barry said.

Leading Alyssia to his study, he closed the door and then tamped tobacco in his pipe, an obvious attempt to prolong the mystery.

More to oblige him than out of curiosity, she asked, “What happened at lunch?”

“Gebhardt” —the visiting editor”—offered me a contract.”

“He didn’t!” Every trace of spectator hood vanished and she hugged Barry.

“Tell me what he said! Every word!”

“He called The Drifting Tide” (the much rewritten novel whose numerous versions she had never glimpsed) “overly literate for the marketplace.”

Her exultation waned.

“That other editor said it was a work of art!”

“Hon, Gebhardt’s right. Commercial novels are what the readership buys. So I pitched him the espionage thriller, the script outline I’ve been laboring over for lo these many weeks.” Barry’s chest expanded.

“That’s what they’ll publish.”

Alyssia kissed his cheek.

“Fabulous!”

“Since it’s only a sketch, not a real outline, Gebhardt warned me the advance will be minuscule.”

“That’s PD’s worry.”

“PD’s not a literary agent.”

“The woman in his office who handles books—isn’t she meant to be tops?”

“For out here, maybe. But to have the proper elan, the necessary prestige, one needs a New York agent. I’ll fly back east and interview them.”

“Can you wait a few days until I finish the retakes on Counter Point?

I’ll go with you. “

“Great idea,” Barry said, adding in the stilted tone that he used to voice compliments to her, “Hon, I told Gebhardt how supportive you are.

That night Barry edged over to her side of the outsize bed, curving his hands on her breasts, squeezing and kneading. Before turning to face him, she experienced a moment of disbelief. They had made love less than a month earlier.

Fans of the second-sexiest woman in Hollywood (according to an Esquire poll, she was close runner-up to Jacqueline Bisset) would be stunned to hear how seldom her husband availed himself of his conjugal rights—and possibly yet more astounded to learn that she had not attained orgasm in nearly a decade.

When Barry fell asleep, she cupped a hand to her pubis, then pulled her fingers away. She had never achieved anything but self contempt in the solitary vice.

Rolling onto her stomach, she thought, / really ought to start a little discreet adultery. But what was the point? She had voluntarily separated herself from the man she still loved, and now he was married to Madeleine. Then she sighed deeply. When she’d heard Hap would direct The Baobab Tree she had been unable to turn the film down, but now she was asking herself how she would feel, facing the class couple during the lengthy shooting schedule. Mercifully, Barry would be with her.

The following afternoon she was sensually fondling a telephone while flashing a come-hither smile at Edgar Wiatt, the romantic lead of three decades’ endurance who was her co star in Counter Point.

Edgar said, “What makes you so sure” -She didn’t hear the remainder of his line.

A sudden pain was shooting down her left arm, an agony that intensified so swiftly that it seemed to explode from within the marrow. Simultaneously, a heavy weight clamped against her chest.

Edgar was looking down at her questioningly; the short, black assistant prop man was holding up a chalk board with her line.

Alyssia’s pupils registered only the corruscating brilliance of the lights. The ghastly pressure increased against her rib cage. In her urgent need to draw air into her lungs, she opened her mouth.

“Alyssia, what is it?” Edgar asked.

I’m having an acute coronary, I’m dying.

“Cut,” the director called peevishly.

“Cut!”

Aware of eyes fixed on her, Alyssia gasped, ‘“Scuse me.” And fled from the circle of brilliant suns.

She left a wake of disgruntled voices.

“What is it this time?”

“You know, stars. They feel like leaving, they leave.”

She stumbled into her dressing room, locking the door behind her.

Dizzy from lack of oxygen, afraid she couldn’t make it to the couch, she lowered herself onto the floor, and, open mouthed, sucked in dust odors of white carpet fibers.

“Miss del Mar.” A masculine voice.

It’s only an attack, she informed herself. /( happened on the set, so it has to be an attack.

A light tap on the door.

“Miss del Mar?”

The attacks had begun immediately after she broke up with Hap, which meant she’d been having them for approximately ten years. Thus far she had discerned only one rule. They invariably occurred while she was working. Beyond that, nothing could be calculated, all was random. Sometimes, as today, she would be felled in the midst of some simpleminded dialogue. It could happen when hordes of union scale extras surrounded her or when she was alone with her makeup woman. Sometimes two or three would blitz her in a single week, then several months would pass, raising her hopes of a cure, making the inevitable recurrence more devastating. She had told nobody but Juanita, safe repository of secrets. And to Juanita she had revealed only a tiny fraction of the physical dimension of her problem and none of the terror—this awesome, primal terror. Through the years she had consulted with cardiologists, internists, an oncologist or two. Each gave her a clean bill of health. She tried a psychiatrist. He stated unequivocally that the problem must be uncovered before the symptoms could be cured. Accordingly, she visited him five evenings a week after leaving the studio. Within six months the attacks were coming so fast and furious that she was forced to choose between analysis or her career. To the disgruntlement of her psychiatrist, she chose her work.

The attacks again became sporadic.

A series of knocks sounded on the door. Prone on the rug, she felt the jarring vibrations.

“Miss del Mar, can you hear me?” The peevish voice of the director.

Go away, leave me alone.

“Miss del Mar, we need you on the set!”

From a book on phobics, she had gleaned a useful tip: count backward: . ninety . eight . ninety . seven . A muttered but intentionally audible, “The last time I work with the fucking bitch.”

She had a reputation for being difficult.

The attack, while demonic, was not long-lasting. The worst of her terror and excruciating agony ended within fifteen minutes. She crawled to the sofa, lying with her hand over her still struggling chest. Her face was slack, her makeup sweat-streaked.

An hour later she was back on the set, glowing and simpering at Edgar Wiatt.

In New York she and Barry took an apartment at the Sherry Netherland—Juanita was housed many flights below in the comfortable rooms reserved for servants of hotel guests.

While Barry made the rounds of literary agents, Alyssia foraged through Bergdorf’s, Bendel’s and the nearby shops and boutiques. She bought a floor-length white Arctic fox cape and a red-dyed “fun” mink, sweaters and slacks and low-cut dresses; she chose a bakers’ dozen pairs of Maud Frizon shoes and three Hermes bags. She dropped in at Van Cleef’s, selecting a gold minaudiere and a pave diamond pin shaped like a bee. She dragged Juanita to Saks, charging four outfits plus a Persian lamb coat and six strands of freshwater pearls.

“Where will I wear all this, in the kitchen?” Juanita protested. She bought gifts for Edgar Wiatt and everyone connected with Counter Point, even the snippy director. She bought exorbitant presents for Beth, Irving and Clarrie, for PD. She bought luxuries for her husband—cuff links in gold, in platinum; Dunhill pipes, a score of Turnbull and Asser shirts, Sulka cravats—he never wore ties—and hand-knit sweaters. She was in the grips of what she called the shop pees a recklessness that salespeople blessed and her business manager deplored but could not stern. Bourgeois caution in spending was not part of Alyssia del Mar’s background.

Barry became a client of the Karl Balduff Agency. During the two days that Balduff negotiated the contract for the four-page outline of Spy, the author and his wife explored the galleries of SoHo and wandered through Central Park, munching ethnic food from pushcarts. In horn-rimmed dark glasses, with a scarf covering her glossy black hair, Alyssia was seldom recognized.

After Barry signed the contract, he said, “What a magnificent few days!”

“I have until November. Let’s burn around Europe.”

“My book!” he cried in outrage.

“What about my book?”

“You always liked working in the chateau,” she said. The family who had leased it from them had moved out three months previously.

“The perfect environs for literary endeavors,” he said, kissing her fondly.

“We’ll go to BellevillesurLoire.”

They arrived late one September afternoon when a golden haze endowed the rundown nineteenth-century house with the same be-glamoured mystery as the nearby historical chateaux. Getting out of the chauffeured Mercedes, Barry stared around.

“I’d almost forgotten what a jewel it is. We’ll start the renovations.

First the roof. And the shed’s falling, so we might as well demolish it and incorporate a proper garage into the house. “

“Barry, we’re only going to be here a few weeks,” Alyssia reminded him.

“I’ll pay you back when my royalties start rolling in,” he said stiffly.

“Oh, Barry, that’s not what I meant at all. But you know me. I’m not much with decorating and that kind of thing. So everything’ll be up to you. And you’re here to work on Spy.”

“There are firms who specialize in modernization.”