Lovers (32 page)

“Forty-eight. I have slowed down a little, but you inspired me, Maggie.”

“There’s still hope for the human race. So tell.”

“It’s the eternal question of the before-and-after syndrome. We all know, or think we know, what Melanie was like before. We’ll never know what she’s like after. We’ll never have a heart-to-heart talk with her, only what the PR people let us know … unless
you
get to her. We’ll never know what it felt like for her to suddenly discover that the person she thought she was—one of the most celebrated and protected women in the world—was, in reality, nothing but a helpless cipher begging for her life. Will she ever
feel strong again? Will all the bodyguards in the world take away her feeling of vulnerability? Those are your kind of questions, Maggie. I can hear you asking them. I can hear you asking her what she wants to be remembered for, what she wants as her epitaph.”

“I’m still listening, but I haven’t had that click yet.”

“Does she still have courage?
Not an actress kind of courage, but a human kind of courage. That’s what I want to find out. And you can’t ask that, you can only
show
that.”

“How?”

“Zach has figured out how Melanie can do two of her biggest, longest, most emotional scenes, one with Paul Newman, the other with Clint Eastwood, lying on her hospital bed nine days from now. Only if she’s willing, only if the doctors let him, of course, and he won’t know until the last minute. These scenes would be draining under the best of circumstances, performed by an actress in the best of health. Now, Melanie absolutely does
not
have to make this effort. Nobody expected it of her. Nobody would blame her if she used all her energy to recover from the shooting. Nobody would hold her accountable for the picture being shut down. And she knows all that. But will she make a try? Will she want to give it her best shot?”

“I don’t know,” Maggie said thoughtfully. “Personally I might, I might not, but I’m no Melanie Adams. You’re right, Vito, it is interesting.”

“It’s going to be tough to make it happen,” Vito went on, as if he hadn’t heard her. “It’ll take a miracle of timing from the crew. Zach’s going to use the operating room as if it were a film set and work in there. Provided that Melanie has the guts and willpower to go through with it, she can save this picture single-handedly. Now
if
she can do that—she’s got something special. If she even tries to do it and breaks down under the pressure—which I’m inclined to think she may, considering that she only got out of intensive care a day ago—
it’s just as interesting as if she doesn’t
. Not as heroic, but more human. In any case, don’t tell me
you wouldn’t like to get all that behind-the-scenes action on television.”

“What makes you think that they’d let my crew come in and get all this, if it’s going to be so hard to do as it sounds?” Maggie was torn between suspicion and covetousness.

“Because Zach’s the director, and the director calls the shots.”

“Why does he need all that extra trouble, a television crew breathing down everyone’s neck, shining their lights at everything that moves, asking annoying questions, getting in the way? He’ll have a job and a half making the whole thing come together as it is.”

“Because his future father-in-law will ask him nicely.”

“Bullshit! Just what’s in it for you, lover?”

“He’ll be a lock for an Academy nomination for best director, who knows, maybe an Oscar. And that’s good for my next picture. Very good. Plus, as I told you, Zach’s family.” If he said that once more, Vito reflected, he was going to start believing it himself.

“See, Vito, you can never fool me for long,” Maggie crowed, delighted. “I knew you had to be getting something for yourself. But it’s a hell of an idea and if you can fix it, lover, I’ll do it and we’ll run an hour in prime time.”

“I’ll get on the case after dinner,” Vito promised her. “If it ever comes.”

Just what, he wondered,
was
his next picture? He’d just guaranteed Zach and
Chronicles
a new treasure of publicity, he’d captured a possible Oscar-winning director … and he didn’t have a single book or screenplay up his sleeve. Something would be magnetized to him, he thought, as he went back over to the bed. Why waste his energy on thinking about properties while Maggie was lying there purring so prettily at having figured him out? He and Susan Arvey had called it quits after Curt Arvey died suddenly and she became head of the Arvey Studio. They’d agreed that their business relationship was too important to spoil with sex, and there had been no one since then.

Room service, Vito reflected, had said a half an hour or more, which meant at least an hour before dinner. Maggie had learned some fascinating moves since
The WASP
ended their relationship. Was it all the fresh air, was it the Presidential Suite, or was it just Maggie that made him so horny?

The mass of the media, as Maggie had predicted, had gone home by the end of little more than a week’s frenzied digging for details, endless informal interviews with everyone on the crew they could capture, many formal interviews with a patient Rose Greenway, a nastily impatient Roger Rowan, a fluffed-up Norma Rowan, and every doctor and nurse in the Kalispell Hospital. The rumors about Allen Henrick had surfaced and floated for a few days and eventually drifted to the bottom for lack of any hard proof. No one had been allowed inside the Kalispell Hospital, no one had been permitted closer to Melanie Adams than a photo taken of the window of her room, Newman and Eastwood declined to be interviewed, and Zach Nevsky had been too busy to talk to anyone from the press.

Maggie MacGregor had been as busy as Zach, but her loyal crew had the talent of invisibility and the forthcomingness of a religious order vowed to silence. In a fur hat pulled down to the collar of her fur coat, fur-lined waterproof boots, and sunglasses, Maggie hustled about on her errands almost unrecognized by the rest of the media, who took her continued presence as a compliment to the importance of the story on which they themselves were working.

All of the television equipment was moved, piece by piece, into the hospital at night and stowed away.

Zach planned to film one of the big scenes on a Friday and the other on a Saturday, waiting until the last possible dates before the schedule would cause him to lose Newman and Eastwood. Either Melanie could do it or she couldn’t, but it would be too much of a risk, he decided, to ask her to work until she absolutely had to.

As he worked on the infinite number of details that went into bringing off his plan, he became aware that Wells Cope was in Kalispell, staying at a private house he had managed to rent. He was being allowed, at Melanie’s request, to visit her for a few minutes each day. Cope kept out of Zach’s way, never intruding on Zach’s turf, never even having a drink in the Outlaw Inn bar, but he had been spotted here and there by dozens of the production staff.

“What’s he up to, best guess?” Zach asked Vito.

“He can’t be protecting his investment, Melanie doesn’t owe him a thing anymore. Since that’s the only motive I’d ever count on with Cope, I’d have to say he’s more sentimental than I thought. Maybe he just came to visit a sick friend, for old times’ sake. Hey, maybe he’s in love with her. Ever think of that?”

“Give me a break, Vito.”

“I’m as mystified as you are. So long as he stays out of the way, there’s nothing we can object to. You said Melanie didn’t seem upset by him, didn’t you?”

“Yep. It’s almost as if he isn’t here, according to her. He brings flowers, asks her how she is, talks about the weather, and leaves.”

“That’s fucking sinister,” Vito said after a considering pause.

“Be serious.”

“I am serious, kid. He knows about our plan, I assume.”

“Oh, sure, she didn’t make any secret of it. He thinks it’s a great idea, gives me a lot of credit, says it’s what he’d do himself.”

“That’s even more sinister than I thought.”

The day after Melanie had triumphantly completed the second of her big scenes, brilliantly directed by Zach Nevsky, she gave Maggie the long private interview for which Maggie had been preparing.

“Well?” Vito asked, as Maggie emerged from the hospital
room, after her crew had hauled away all traces of their presence.

“There won’t be a dry eye in the house. She made
me
cry.” Maggie blew her nose indignantly. “What courage! You were right, Vito. Am I glad I listened to you. And don’t worry, I have some terrific stuff with her and Nevsky, she gave him all the credit.”

“Stick with me, kid.”

“I sometimes … almost … wish I had. But it’s too late now, isn’t it, Vito?”

“Afraid so, my darling. But think how many times we’ll meet again. And in what strange places.”

“Nevsky, do you have a minute?” Wells Cope asked, approaching Zach outside of Melanie’s room.”

“Now I do,” Zach said in irritation. “Been enjoying your stay in Kalispell, Cope?”

“More than you know. But I have a bone to pick with you.”

“Do you now?”

“Indeed. When you first found out about the grips, you should have gotten rid of both of them immediately.
At once!
The minute you knew who they were. That was criminally stupid of you, Nevsky.”

“Christ! That’s easy enough to say in hindsight, Cope. You’ve got a bloody nerve.”

“Hindsight? I had to do it on four pictures, Nevsky, and I expected you to have as much sense.”

“You … you mean she makes a habit …?”

“Oh, good Lord, you didn’t believe her when she said it was the first time, did you?” he asked, looking at Zach’s face. “By the Almighty, you did, you fell for it. Oh, really, what innocents they allow to make movies these days. She gets off, as they put it so delicately, on jealousy, Nevsky.”

“She said …”

“She said she wanted to be free, didn’t she? To be her own woman? She’s always said that. She thinks she doesn’t want to be loved or needed, but that’s just her way of
saying she’s the most selfish woman in the world. Melanie needs love … and then she wants to kill it, to grind it in the dust, to watch its death throes, to listen to its final cries of anguish. And then, when that’s no longer amusing for her, she
needs
to repeat the process. Over and over. It’s a very dangerous way to find pleasure. I’ve told her often enough, but she won’t stop and I can’t make her. So I get rid of the grips—it’s always grips, thank goodness, never actors—and I keep getting rid of them until the picture’s over. I must have bought summer places for half the shop stewards in the IA by now.”

“Wells?” Melanie’s voice called from inside the room. “Come in here, and bring Zach with you.”

Melanie was sitting up in bed, still made up for Maggie’s interview. “Did you tell Zach our news, Wells?” she asked.

“Not yet. I was getting around to it.”

“When we finish here, I’m going to make another picture with Wells,” she said in her imitable valuable cadence, her fabled climate of seduction. “He’s the only person in the world who understands what an utter monster I am, and I’m the only one who understands what a twisted beast he is—and we forgive each other—so we might as well work together. I’ve thought about it a lot while I’ve been getting better—oh, don’t look at me as if I’ve been hypnotized, Zach.”

“He thinks I’m some sort of Svengali, darling.”

“I need Wells and he needs me. But of course the rules are going to be different now. One film at a time, no more multiple-picture deals. Wells is going to let me choose the scripts I want to do, he’s going to let me decide when I want to work and when I want to play, and he’s never going to tell me what to wear to the Oscars.”

“It sounds like the best of all possible worlds,” Zach breathed incredulously.

“And I owe it all to you. That’s what I told Maggie, on camera. I knew it would drive Wells mad with jealousy. He
pretends not to care, but I know him too well to believe that.”

Zach looked at Wells Cope and saw a quickly suppressed flicker of pain in the man’s eyes, as if the bright point of a poignard had jabbed his skin. He could almost pity him, Zach thought. But only almost.

“You both deserve congratulations. I hope you have a long and happy life together.”

“Thank you, Zach, darling. You
are
divine. Too bad I was put out of commission … I had such lovely plans for you.”

“ ‘Only grips,’ Wells?’ ” Zach asked. “Are you so very sure?”

B
y the last week in April, as soon as photography had been completed and the cast and crew had packed up and left Kalispell, Maggie MacGregor’s much-publicized news special appeared on the network, drawing such enormous ratings that even Maggie was astonished.

To Gigi’s surprise, instead of insisting on taking her out, Vito invited himself for dinner that Friday night. After dinner he announced that she and Davy were to join him in front of the television set, resolutely overturning Gigi’s variety of flustered objections. Vito wore a convincing poker face that Gigi, more sensitized than anyone in the world, recognized as personal involvement. Her father was an incorrigible case, Gigi realized, with his way of appropriating the spotlight wherever it was. You might imagine this TV special was one of his own productions, she thought with the special emotion that Vito always aroused in her now, a
combination of undemanding, amused love and acute clearsightedness.