Dreams Are Not Enough (42 page)

“Mr. Camron’s having a massage,” he reported. Cliff Camron had been signed for the role of Jason Mattingly after Jack Nicholson and Robert Redford had turned it down.

“I’ll bet he is.” Maxim gave an acid laugh.

“Get your butt back in there and tell him we’re ready for him.”

The young assistant director trudged to the trailer. Returning, he said, “Mr. Camron said his back’s been acting up and he can’t stand straight. The masseur is trying to work out the knots.”

“In case you’ve forgotten,” Maxim said, “we’re shooting a film here.

You, as part of the crew, are paid handsomely to do your job, which is getting Mr. Camron out from under the nimble fingers. “

The young assistant director was as crimson as if he were suffering from heatstroke.

“Mr. Cordiner, I can’t drag” — “The fuck you can’t!”

“Maxim.” Hap pushed back his hair, which the sun had streaked yet tighter.

“It’s nobody’s fault. If you keep sending for Cliff—you know what happened yesterday.”

The previous day, Cliff had departed during lunch with Cameo Hannaway, a pretty, frizzy-permanented blonde bit player. All afternoon the two-hundred-plus Hollywood crew and the forty-seven Masai extras were paid to wait while Cliff Camron had a boff and blow job. He had returned to the location just as the sun began its swift descent.

Alyssia went to her trailer with Beth.

The clouds increased and darkened as they shared the new Vogue.

An hour and a half later, Cliff trotted jauntily from his trailer.

Fairhaired, barely taller than Alyssia, he bore a resemblance to Alan Ladd, the movie idol of the forties, but projected his own goodnatured, highly sensual charm.

“Hi, guys,” he said.

“Sorry about that, but the old lower lumbar’s been acting up. Ready for me?”

“Ready, Cliff,” Hap said calmly.

As Cliff started toward the setup, where his brother, who was his standin, sat reading a week-old Variety, rain began falling in large drops, denting the carefully smoothed soil.

“Jeez, rain. What a tough break,” Cliff said.

“Well, maybe it’ll let up after lunch.”

“Mr. Cordiner.” The script girl held up her big hat to protect herself from the sudden deluge.

“This scene comes right after fifty-three, so we can’t have mud. Even if the rain stops, we won’t be able to shoot.”

“Jeez, what a fucking lousy break,” said Camron, and jogged through the downpour to the waiting Mercedes that was one of his production perks.

It rained intermittently through the afternoon and evening. Beth and Alyssia dined alone in Beth’s tent to the reverberation of huge drops on waterproof canvas roof.

“This puts us exactly thirty days behind schedule,” Alyssia said.

Beth, sawing on a rubbery chicken wing, looked glumly at her.

“This afternoon I was talking to Maxim. He figures they’re more than six million dollars over budget already.”

“At least Lang’s keeping hands off.”

Beth abandoned her battle with the chicken.

“Will he when he hears he has to put up another six million?”

“Everybody knows filming on a remote location like this can skyrocket costs. He must’ve known we’d go over.”

“Yes,” Beth said.

“And he knew Uncle Frank had no money to pay his gambling debts.”

Since this was the supposed onset of her period, they did not make love. Hap took off his safari boots and lay dressed next to her on top of the blanket.

“Hap,” she asked.

“Aren’t you at all worried about Lang?”

“No.”

“With anyone else, you’d feel responsible for the delays.”

“So let him pull the plug,” Hap said.

“Why’re we wasting time on him?

Let’s talk about us. What’re we going to do about us? “

“It’s too complicated,” she sighed.

“About me and Madeleine.” Hap’s voice was a low rumble.

“I once heard somebody call us the gold-dust couple. I guess that’s how we look from the outside. We’re constantly on the move. Tennis, sailing, the big charity things, parties, weekends with people she knows or I know.

Alone with her, I often can’t find a word to say. Literally, we spend entire evenings without exchanging a sentence. If she wants to talk, she does it on the phone. And, uhh, we haven’t, uhh, had sex for nearly a year. “

“You don’t have to tell me this, Hap,” she said, kissing his cheek.

“I’m not blaming Madeleine. We just don’t belong together.” He paused.

“One thing I’ve always wanted is to be the same on the outside as on the inside.”

“You’re the least phony person I know.”

“Not anymore I’m not. I started the relief center to forget you and now I’m positive that’s the main reason I married Madeleine. On the set I’m faking it, pretending to be the Rock of Ages, total selfassurance, and all the time gnawing and worrying.”

She traced his jaw—the fair stubble never showed, which made the toughness of the bristles surprising.

“At least you know you’re Hap Cordiner. What about me? Am I Alice Hollister, Alicia Lopez or Alyssia del Mar? Or any of the above?”

“I know who you are. I know every inch of you.”

No, you don’t, she thought.

During the night the rain ceased. Before dawn electricians were adjusting huge lamps to dry the earth, which turned the color of oxblood when wet.

It was eleven before the art director, the cinematographer and Hap were all satisfied that the ground was the right shade.

Before this they had never shot through the noon hours, when the rays of the equatorial sun are most intense, but today Maxim insisted. They were filming Mellie and Jason tossing horseshoes in front of a group of fascinated Masai, an intensely physical scene with technical problems.

On the fourth take, Alyssia could feel her head getting lighter and lighter, as if her large, gauze-swathed period hat were filling with helium. And then the sun turned black.

“I should’ve told Maxim to forget it when he insisted we shoot through lunch.”

“Hap, why won’t you believe me? The rest fixed me just fine,” she said. But she clung to his solid strength.

He had come into her tent two or three minutes earlier, shucking his clothes, as he had not done the previous night.

“The truth is,” he said, his voice level, “you shouldn’t be working at all—especially not here.”

Her skin prickled with apprehension.

“The rushes are that bad?” she asked with a little chuckle.

“Alyssia.” His hand curved over her naked stomach, a large, authoritative presence.

Gripping his wrist, she attempted to shift the hand. It refused to budge.

“Hap, why’re you making such a big deal? I’m not the first person to pass out. The midday sun here is murder.”

The mattress shifted as he raised up and the flashlight he’d set on the bedside table flared. The beam shone starkly on his face, flattening and whitening the features as if he were a player in an early silent film.

“How pregnant are you?” he asked.

The hunting lions, the bane of Beth nights, roared. The pride was close, and the intensity of the sound was like a drumroll reverberating inside Alyssia’s chest.

“In my fourth month,” she whispered unhappily.

A low, sibilant breath escaped Hap.

“So it’s Barry’s?”

“Yes—Barry’s.”

Clicking off the light, he shifted on the cot so he no longer touched her.

“Why did you do the film?” His voice in the darkness was courteous and measured.

“I told you in your office that first day. I wanted to be with you.”

“What were your plans for the future?”

“I wasn’t thinking, Hap, I was feeling.”

“Not one thought about completion?”

“I wear the corset; we were meant to be finished a couple of weeks from now. You and Maxim both have the reputation of getting in on schedule.”

“Did you,” he asked, “consider abortion?”

“Please stop.”

“Stop what?”

“Talking like that.”

“Rationally, you mean?”

“I know you’re hurting, Hap.”

“Shouldn’t I ask a few questions that’ve occurred to me through the weeks?”

“I did think about it,” she said.

“It took me less than ten minutes to realize I couldn’t.”

“Because the baby’s Barry’s?”

“Because I’m me. Oh, what’s the point of logic? I just couldn’t do it.”

“How does Barry feel?”

“He doesn’t know.”

“What?”

“I haven’t told him.”

“Why the secrecy?”

By now she was so frightened by Hap’s politely questioning tone that she burst out, “Would you rather hear that I’ve told him and he’s dancing jigs?”

“Even you aren’t a good enough actress to carry it off.”

“What does that mean?”

“Barry’s not much in evidence.”

“All right—you’ve made your point. I’ve been tried and convicted of the crime of the century. I hid something from you” — “Something?” For the first time Hap’s voice shook.

“If you want to know, I thought of telling you after I saw the doctor, but I put it off because I wanted to be with you and I knew that this would happen. You’re predictable—entirely predictable.”

He made an odd little sound in his throat before he said, “Yes, I imagine I am.”

“Well, now you can quit slumming!” she hissed, holding back her tears.

She felt the mattress shift beneath her. Don’t go, don’t leave me, she thought. Please, I’m sorry—I didn’t mean any of that. Don’t leave like this. But she could not speak.

She heard him fumble for his clothes, heard fabric slither on flesh, heard and felt the reverberations of bare feet padding on boards. For a moment she saw a dim outline against the moonless night, a large masculine body with slumped shoulders. The canvas fell into place and she was alone.

Alyssia—no, it was Alice—began to weep in loud sobs that drowned out the hunting lions.

The following morning on the set they exchanged amicable greetings and discussed the nuances of Mellie’s first kiss.

It was a close-up. Cliff and Alyssia swung gently on a hammock that hung by chains from the roof of the veranda. The sound people had booms over them, the camera crew was less than three feet away, grips stood by the flat, shimmering reflectors, and Hap leaned over the veranda rail.

“I think we ought to go inside….” Alyssia murmured her line, her lips parting.

The instant before she would meet Cliff’s kiss, a sudden pain infiltrated her left arm. She gasped.

The sound men exchanged glances. The gasp would be picked up and amplified with Dolbyized fidelity.

The pain curved swiftly across her chest. Rocking the hammock askew, she lurched to her feet, pushing through the encirclement of technicians. She didn’t hear the concerned, questioning voices. She was racing across carefully tended, pale-brown wild grasses—she never considered taking the hard-packed path because the grass was the shortest distance to her trailer. Hauling herself up the steps, she gasped into Sara’s frightened dark face, “Get out! Get out!”

The maid, galvanized, darted away, leaving the door open. Alyssia locked it. How can I breathe with this damn corset? Dizzily, she fumbled through the things on her dressing table, overturning bottles and jars before finding her nail scissors. With the short, curved blades, she severed her way down both her exquisitely fragile Edwardian bodice and the constrictive corset. She could hear her own whimpering gasps.

“Alyssia! It’s me—Beth. What is it, dear? What’s wrong?”

“Be all right….”

She collapsed on the day bed Knocks were accompanied by worried queries. Her breathing had eased a bit when Maxim’s voice came through the window louvers.

“Let me in.”

“Be fine.”

“Just open the damn door before I get a hacksaw.”

Later, she would ponder what there had been in his low, furious voice that made her obey. But now she wasn’t thinking coherently. Yanking off the ruined costume and corset, she tied a yellow robe over her nakedness.

She unlocked the door.

Maxim came in, blanching as he surveyed her.

“Jesus!”

She hadn’t realized that spot lets of crimson were oozing through the buttery silk.

“I … I cut myself.”

“Suicide?”

“The corset was too tight….” She glanced at the strew of pale, jaggedly cut costumery on the floor.

“I had to use scissors.”

He took a step, standing over her. Sweat gleamed on his long, angular face.

“No more of this shit, Alyssia. If you and Hap have a blow-up, that’s between the two of you.”

Hap told him? Unbelievable. Impossible.

“What’re you … talking about?”

“You and Hap.”

She turned away.

“That was years ago.”

“Put the crap in the can where it belongs, Alyssia. I know what’s been going on in tent city. Who gives a shit? All I care about is that you earn your two mil when you’re in front of the camera.”

“Get out of my trailer!”

“Not until I’m finished.”

“One more word and you’ll be talking to my lawyers.” Though her breathing had somewhat regulated itself, she still needed abnormal effort to control her voice.

“Robert Lang isn’t into talking,” Maxim said.

“Lang?”

“He knows far better than Dad ever did how to keep his people in line.”

“I gather that’s a threat?”

“Alyssia, are you trying to destroy my brother?”

“Hap?”

“He’s the only brother I have. I love him. I prefer to keep him around. Or hasn’t it occurred to you that Lang might conclude that Hap’s sabotaging the production?”

She sank into the makeup chair.

“But Maxim, why would he blame Hap?”

“It’s too obvious to need explanation. Hap tried to back out of the film. Under Hap’s direction, we’ve shot exactly half the number of scenes we should have.”

“The rain, Cliff, the first-time extras” — “Sure, we know that. But Lang’s got it in for Hap. So you tell me. Is Lang more likely to lay it on the weather, Cliff, the local darkies?

Or lay it on Hap? “

The rain started again three evenings later, just after dinner. Beth draped a bush jacket over her shoulders before she sat under the dangling light bulb to write her letter: