Feast of Saints (46 page)

Another amateur shot was at a saloon on a night off filming in Wyoming. Lilly was wearing a cowboy hat and laughing with Bryce and some of the other crew.

In between the flickering club dress and cowboy hat was a professionally filmed clip from Brooklyn at the recreated
Infiorata di Spello
, the flower festival. Lilly had invited the crew to run through the flower carpets, scattering the petals everywhere. Joining in, she had lain down on a petal angel so that the angel’s outspread wings fanned out behind her. She remembered Cully filming her from the catwalk as she tried her best to look angelic for the camera. Then, in a fit of laughter inspired by the screeching of her crewmates, she suddenly scattered the petals with her arms and legs flapping furiously as if she were making a snow angel. In the video created by Park, multi-colored petals swirled in slow motion around her as she lay laughing on the ground, while Lightbody crooned, “I want to bathe you in the light of day.…”

As the video continued, Jake’s presence in the clips multiplied.

Lilly’s breathing hitched, and then she simply stopped breathing altogether as, one-by-one, Park unpacked and lay out before her moments that she’d buried inside, not intending to bring them out yet.
Not yet
.

Her folding the warming blanket around Jake between takes in snowy Wyoming.

Jake subtly touching her hip, brushing her stomach, as she worked on him in Hawaii.

Her screeching and hopping back, wagging a finger at Jake/Allegrezza as he lunged at her, fangs bared.

Jake walking next to her on a sunset beach in Maui, laughing at something she said and tucking her under his arm.

Some moments Lilly had never seen. Jake watching her across the piazza in Assisi. And the last scene. Jake, his finger to his lips, kneeled next to her catnapping form in a sunny corner of the LA studio, slipped off his tailored jacket and laid it over her.

Fighting sobs, she watched it again. And again.

A half hour later, sodden and bleary, she finally turned away from the screen.
It’s late afternoon in Vancouver.
Had Jake seen this? Would he approve? Did she? Trying to think about it objectively, she didn’t think the sexuality of their relationship was telegraphed in the piece. They looked… close. Affectionate. Like family. A wave of loss washed over her.

Not yet
, she thought again, firmly trying to push thoughts of Jake out of her head. She looked at her watch. She needed to catch up on sleep so she could take on the strenuous hike she had planned, but she was afraid that if she laid down in the dark, she wouldn’t be able to stop wallowing and would never get up again.

She was just thinking she could go to town and find some of her crew when there was a knock on her door. She looked up surprised. The bed and breakfast where she was staying was nowhere close to the hotel where most of the crew was housed.

“Lee-lee,” she heard Sergei’s unmistakable voice, calling her through the door.
Uggh and double uggh
. This could not be happening to her.

Sergei knocked again. “I have a present for you.”

Thank goodness she was still wearing her street clothes. Not bothering to try to improve her puffy face, she opened the door. Sergei stood on her doorstep, a bottle of vodka in hand, grinning at her expectantly.

“You cannot be working so hard without a reward,” he announced.

Although Lilly tried to block his way, he swept past her into the little room. Only after he was in did he register her appearance. Her nose and eyes were red and puffy. Kleenexes were scattered all over the bed.

“What has happened? Why are you crying?” These questions came out as “vat” and “vye”.

When Sergei would have moved closer to console her, she quickly sidestepped him. At her quick movement, she noted him stagger.
Oh crap, he’s drunk
.

Her trouble meter surged into the red. She needed to get him out of her room, or leave herself, before this got out of control. She opened the door wide and partially stepped out into the hallway so as not to get trapped.

“Sergei, I’m sorry you went to so much trouble on my account, but I’m not a big drinker, and I’m not feeling well. I’ll see you on Monday, okay?”

Sergei ignored her and started searching around her little room for drinking glasses. The proprietor had set out a tea service on a cart for Lilly, complete with a handmade doily. Sergei scooped up the delicate cups, staggered over and sat on her bed, trying to unwrap the foil top around the vodka bottle.

“One nightcap, Lee-lee.”
Von
. He patted the bed next to him.

Lilly’s self-preservation instinct was much too strong to allow her to reenter the room with him in it.

“Sergei, you need to leave,” she said firmly from her position in the doorway.

Sergei set the bottle down deliberately on the bedside table and laid back on her bed, allowing the clinking porcelain cups to fall out of his hands and bounce on the braided rug beneath the bed.

Enough. She’d had enough. Grabbing up her pack by the door, she just left him there.
Screw him
. It wasn’t like she was going to get any sleep tonight, anyway.

She took off on foot, deciding to make her way to the lakefront bar district to catch up with her crew. They’d invited her earlier to meet up at the Minus Five Ice Bar. They’d all wanted to try the bar, which had a room carved completely of ice. Even the cocktails were served in ice glasses.

Apparently one drink in the ice room was enough to satisfy curiosity. Lilly found her crew sitting in the “boiler room,” a warm and cozy area of the bar, having already tried the icy experience. Her team was well into their cups, laughing heartily, when she joined them. Billy was acting out a pretend scenario of Sergei directing Joe Pesci in the famous scene from
Goodfellas
in which Pesci shoots another actor in the foot. A wonder at impersonations, Billy had Sergei’s and Pesci’s voices and mannerisms down to perfection. She would have laughed harder, had it not been for the fact that every time he launched into Sergei’s eastern European accent, she pictured him sprawled across the bed back in her room.

As the evening wore on, she began to wonder where she was going to spend the night. But her problem solved itself as no one indicated a desire to go back to their hotel rooms. The bar didn’t close until four in the morning, only an hour before she had intended to set out on her hike anyway. Saying her goodnights, or good mornings, outside the bar, she headed toward the center of town.

The day hike she’d planned started in the town center at the Skyline Gondola, which ferried tourists up the side of a mountain to a restaurant and other alpine activities on the Ben Lomond Reserve. Lilly nodded on the bench waiting for the lift to open for the day. She and the baker for the mountainside restaurant were the first and only passengers on the cable car at five. She set off on the Ben Lomond Summit trail as soon as she stepped off the gondola.

The summit was one of the highest peaks in the Wakatipu basin and promised stunning views. On any other day, the strenuous hike was just what Lilly could have wished for to clear her head and try to find a mindset that would help her do more than just muddle through the next few weeks. But with zero sleep and the stress of the last two weeks, not to mention the months before that, Lilly found the uphill climb to be drudgery.

Long past the point she should have given up, she kept pushing forward.

She was out of gas by the time she reached the summit. As promised, a beautiful panoramic view stretched out before her of the Remarkables, Lake Wakatipu and Queenstown far below.

On the south side of the summit, a knife-edged rock cliff overlooked a sheer drop to the valley. Feeling exposed, Lilly crouched down and scooted closer to the edge, the wind whipping around her. Swinging her legs over the rocky ledge, she sat and stared out into the air.

She couldn’t remember a time in her life when she felt so unhappy. This miserable, tired person sitting here in this beautiful place was not the person she had been, or wanted to be. She needed to find a solution that would mend her life. Getting away from LA, far from the love and support of her brother and friends, had been a mistake, a mistake amplified by the gruesomely repetitive zombie production line and the confrontation with Sergei.

As she thought of returning to LA, her thoughts turned to Jake. She took a deep breath and puffed it out in frustration. Then, sitting on the edge of the mountain, she pulled out the Jake box in her head and opened it. On top were all of the moments Park had uncovered in the video of her last night. Digging deeper, she examined all of her feelings and her experiences with Jake. There was the Jake that drew her and intimidated her at the same time, so talented, so competent and confident. There was the Jake who spoiled her with food and thoughtful gifts. There was passionate Jake, who made love to her gently, and roughly.

Then there was the Jake that repelled her. Arrogant Jake. Jake who ran roughshod over her life, who would let some stranger into her home. Jake who could spend an intimate week of touching, laughing and making love to her, and then ignore her for days. Jake who lived an “it’s complicated” life with another lover.

Despair washed over her. The clouds and sky blurred with her tears. She just didn’t understand him. One minute he was trying to order her life to suit him, and the next minute it was like he didn’t care if she came or went. He had torn down all of her defenses until she was utterly vulnerable. A turtle with no shell.

“Lilly,” she heard Jake’s voice in her head, whipping on the wind.

“Lilly,” he said her name again. “Come away from the edge, please.”

Okay, maybe not just in her head. Twisting to look behind her, there he stood, tall and grim-faced, surveying her sitting on the precipice.

“Please, Lilly,” he said, holding out his hand to her.

She blinked hard and the unshed tears spilled down her cheeks. He was thousands of miles away. But he was here. She turned back toward the empty air in front of her and scrubbed away her tears, but they kept welling up until she was sobbing into her hands, too shaken to move.

She felt Jake’s strong arm slip around her waist. Kneeling behind her, he pulled her back from the ledge and against his chest.

“Come on. That’s it,” he said calmingly. “Just a little further.”

Curling up her legs, she turned into him. With a shuddering breath, she wrapped her arms around him, holding on like her life depended on it. Jake rotated his back toward the cliff’s edge, pulling her with him, protecting her from the buffeting wind.

When her crying didn’t subside, Jake sat back on his heels, Lilly a sobbing wreck in his lap. She could feel him stroking her back, her legs, her arms, checking her all over.

“Lilly, look at me.” He tried to pull her back so he could see her face, but she just held on tighter, burying her face in his neck.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

“Noooooo,” she sobbed into him, hiccupping through her tears.

Jake gave up trying to move her and settled into a more comfortable position. He wrapped his arms around her, rocking her softly.

“Shhhh. Shhh,” he soothed, stroking her hair. Listening to Jake’s reassuring sounds, she loosened her death grip on him and finally stopped crying.

“We need to get off this mountain soon, or we’ll be walking in the dark.”

She nodded against him but didn’t budge. Gently, Jake held her back so he could look in her face.

“Can you walk?” At his concerned expression, she felt her tears welling up again.

“Lilly, what’s wrong?” She just shook her head, staring at him, too afraid to speak in case her hysterical crying started up again.

Jake cradled her face in his palms, stroking away her tears with his thumbs. “Can’t you tell me?” he asked.

You’re here. I was wishing so hard for you, and then you came. I was wanting you so badly
. She was crying in earnest again.
You are what I wanted. You are what I want
.

Jake circled her in his arms again and pressed her to him, rocking them both now. “Hush now.”

Long minutes passed. When she finally pulled herself together, she reluctantly pushed away from him, grabbed up her pack and moved to stand. Weary from the long night, the steep hike and her hysterical crying jag, she swayed on her feet. Jake swooped her up in his arms, pack and all, and carried her away from the edge of the mountain.

When he kept walking without putting her down, she grumbled, “Are you going to carry me all the way back to Queenstown?”

“If you’ll let me,” he said.

Not wanting him to put her down, Lilly nevertheless insisted. He made her walk in front of him so that he could keep an eye on her.

She walked in silence, although she had many things she wanted to ask him, not the least of which was how he found her. She had more painful questions for him, too, but for now, she just focused on getting off the mountain safely. It took all of her concentration to keep from stumbling down the steep path.

It was dusk when they arrived back at the pickup point for the Skyline Gondola. As they sat waiting for the cable car to arrive, Lilly asked one of her easy questions, “How did you find me?”

When he didn’t immediately respond, she searched his face. He was eyeing her warily, obviously not wanting to answer her.

“What? How did you find me?” she insisted.

Jake sighed and pulled out his cell phone, tapped it and handed it to her. Confused, Lilly looked at the screen. She saw a satellite view of New Zealand. Jake leaned over and touched the screen again to magnify the view. She recognized Queenstown and the surrounding mountains. Then Jake tapped an icon in the corner of the screen and a red dot appeared in the exact spot where they now sat.

“How?” Lilly asked, looking up from the cell phone to Jake and then all around her as if something in the scenery would make it clear to her. Jake reached into the side of her pack and pulled out the phone he’d given her months ago.

“I always know where you are, Lilly.” He indicated her phone, and then put it back in her pack. “That is, when you keep it charged and on you,” he added sourly.