My Deja Vu Lover (4 page)

  
“Make the wall crenelated,” I laughed, gulping back tears.

  
He made a few attempts at stacking cushions. They slid off and he restacked, finally arranging them around us
 
until we sank down, giggling, in the center of the circle.

  
His hands and mouth were as familiar to me as my own because sometimes, between other others, we did that, forgot we weren’t lovers, remembered we did adore each other in our weird way. And I did not want to think about anything else.

  
“Am I the consolation prize?” I whispered.

  
He stopped kissing me and lifted his head. “Why would you think that?”

  
“You just broke up, didn’t you?”

  
“Oh.” He thought a moment, then said, “Lovey, I want you because I want you, that’s all. Should I quit?”

  
“You should, but then I’d have to go stand on a street corner and find somebody else.”

  
He laughed and between kisses he said other things, probably that he loved me, probably that I ought to marry him. I didn’t pay any attention because I knew him too well and he didn’t mean a word of it.

  
I did tell him, “I don’t believe a word you say.”

  
And he mumbled, “That’s good, because I don’t remember what I said.”

  
“Then just shut up and concentrate, Tommy boy.”

  
He was warm and familiar and safe and kind and gentle and loving and passionate and finally mind-blowing good.

  
Our barricade fell in on us unnoticed.

CHAPTER 3

  
We were dressed and watching TV by the time Macbeth brought Cyd home. Tom was stretched out on the couch half asleep, one arm draped around me. I sat on the carpet next to him, leaning back with my head resting against him.

  
They had gone out to dinner at some Italian place in the Pioneer Square area that overflowed with atmosphere and fascinating people, Cyd said, waving her arms and doing one-line descriptions of customers and waiters.

  
Macbeth said, “The pasta was lumpy.”

  
Ignoring him, Cyd continued her chatter while she went into the kitchen, filled two tumblers with wine, then returned. She wore a straight, sleeveless dress that fit under a suit jacket for work, a style of dress that looks wonderful on really slim women like Cyd. Every shiny dark hair on her head hung neat and straight, not quite touching her shoulders. When she moved, her hair swung out. Very jealous, yes, I was. Good thing she’s also such a terrific friend.

  
“The clientele is very arty,” she explained.
  

  
“They dress in Salvation Army rejects,” Macbeth said.

  
“We ran into Lisa from our dorm, remember her? Always starting something, never finishing? She’s into reincarnation now. Goes to some hypnotist who took her back to a Gold Rush wagon train memory.”

  
“An earlier life?” Tom asked, half-opening his eyes.

  
“No, this life, she’s well-preserved. God, Tom. Of course an earlier life. He put her in a kind of trance and she was sitting on a buckboard. Lisa said she could see the other wagons and hear people calling to each other and she even smelled the dust and the horses. She says she knew there was this man sitting next to her and she knew he was her husband and they were excited about the journey, but when she tried to turn her head to see him, the trance ended.”

  
The pressure in my ribcage stopped my breathing. The muscles tightened in my neck and shoulders. It was as though I was paralyzed, a mind held captive in an immovable tower. I could feel the man beside me in the car and smell his cologne. I could see my hands on the steering wheel.

  
Macbeth leaned down and touched my arm. “April?
 
Where are you?”

  
I shuddered and began to breathe again. “That’s what it was like. I could see and smell and touch, but it was another place and time. Do you think I was remembering another life?”

  
“I wish you hadn’t mentioned Lisa and her stupid reincarnation story,” Macbeth said to Cyd. By the way his eyes narrowed, I knew Cyd had told him what had happened to me.

  
“Maybe it’s not a story,” Tom said. “Maybe it’s real. Maybe Lisa saw a former life.”

  
Macbeth said, “Which history prof taught you that, buddy? Reincarnation is a theory, one more superstition sometimes tied to a religion by people who need a crutch to get through life.”

  
“Are you sure?” I asked.

  
“Listen, babe, even if it were true, even if they could prove it in a lab, it wouldn’t change anything. You can’t go back and change the past. So what’s the point? Done is done.”

  
He was usually right and that was okay because Macbeth kept the rest of us from flying off into self-destruct, well, he saved Tom and me. Cyd had her own built in system. If Mac was sure, then maybe he had a better explanation.

  
I said, “It makes a difference to me. If I knew for positive the crash I saw was something in a former life, over, done in a past life, couldn’t still be waiting to happen, I could forget it.”

  
Macbeth narrowed his eyes, ran his hand over his hair, glared at me, then tried to smile. “Okay, whatever you saw, it’s over. Probably a scene from a movie you’ve forgotten.”

  
“That won’t do. Let’s say I don’t believe in reincarnation and the past. That means the crash scene is a premonition. Something still going to happen.”
 

  
“No. April. Do you want to believe in reincarnation? Go ahead, because it puts your nightmare in the past.” Poor Macbeth. I was forcing him to argue against his own logic. “One thing I am sure of. No one can see the future.”

  
Okay, he was right, I decided. Forget the whole thing, credit it to a dizzy spell. Lay the blame on skipping breakfast.

  
That’s what I decided.

  
And then I ceased being me.

***
  

  
I was a girl standing on a concrete sidewalk in front of a stucco bungalow on a street of stucco bungalows, low one-story houses that would have been called summer cottages back home in Minnesota but here, in California, people lived in them year round. Painted in pastel shades, most of them beige or pink, the low bungalows had multi-paned windows below faded awnings. Red-tile trim edged the flat roofs. The front gardens were patches of brown grass with strips of foundation plantings, spiky oleander bushes behind sprawling geraniums, both with flowers in harsh shades of pink. The sky was so bright it made my eyes ache.

  
At least thirty people from the moving picture company milled about in the street, trying to look busy while they waited.

  
Near me a cameraman rolled his shirt sleeves to his elbows. He stood behind his large camera with its tripod of wooden legs that raised it to his eye level. He reached out to rest one hand on the crank and his lips moved as he counted to himself, preparing to start his steady rhythm of two turns per second.

  
On his far side, a boy held a black umbrella at an angle that shaded the camera lens and the man behind it.

  
Beneath another umbrella the director sat in an oak rocking chair, leaning forward, elbows on knees, a long cigar clenched in his fingers. He was a heavy man with graying hair slicked back from his forehead and a narrow, combed mustache, and he wore light slacks, a short-sleeved shirt, and a watch with a wide gold band.

  
An actor stood less than ten feet from the camera, costumed in an army uniform, clutching a fiber suitcase with metal edges and corners, and practiced a dismayed expression, his facial muscles taut. The glaring sun cast dark shadows.

  
The director shouted, “Push his hat back. I can’t see his eyes.”
 

  
An assistant shouted, “Wardrobe, fix the hat!”

  
Wardrobe said, in a tone of apology, “That’s the way the army wears them, sir.”

  
The director waved his cigar at the actor. “Turn a little to the left, Will. Tilt your chin up.”
 

  
The acting coach stepped into the scene, put his hand on the actor’s chin, then turned his face until the shadow no longer obscured his eyes.

  
The cameraman bent toward the director to whisper. The director nodded and said, “Six inches to the left. There. Good.”

  
I stood on the walk with three other actresses, waiting. If they didn’t use us soon, my chances would be ruined. I would look so terrible in the pictures that, even if they didn’t cut my scene, no one would notice me and rush to offer me a contract. My make-up itched on my hot skin. I could feel the tips of my hair, where my bob was combed forward across my cheeks, sticking to my rouge. Much longer in the sun and the Delica liquid color on my eyelashes would start to run in black rivers down the sides of my powdered nose.

  
My new rayon step-ins and my silk stockings clung to the perspiration on my body and legs. My crepe frock, in French blue, which I’d had to pay for myself because this studio was so cheap it only paid for the clothes for its stars, drooped in deep wrinkles.

  
And I felt as weary as my garments. We had all been kept up until eleven o’clock the previous night for an “emergency” filming. Whenever they decided to work us nights they called it an emergency. We’d had four emergencies this week. My arms hung limp at my sides.

  
Laurence’s fingertips barely brushed the back of my hand.

  
He whispered, “Be wonderful, Silver.”

  
The fragrance of his Eau de Coty shaving lotion, which I had given him, hung in the dry air.

  
I turned and watched him walk away from me toward the grip-prop man. He didn’t normally speak to me on the set but he must have known how discouraged I felt.

  
Watching him, I let my mind sing, “Laurence loves me,” and had I dared, I would have blown him a kiss.

  
But of course I didn’t. He would be furious. Still, I was happier knowing he was on the set and my gaze followed him as he stood talking to a crew member across the street, his back to me, his broad shoulders squared proudly, his blond hair gleaming in the sunlight.

  
Beside me the actress in the red dress said, “If they don’t use us soon, I am gonna pee right here on the sidewalk.”

  
The two others pretended not to hear her.

  
Over the clattering of the camera the director shouted, “All right, tea dance ladies, get ready to enter when I say. Remember, keep it moving, chatter, look at each other, not at the camera.”
                 

  
Tea dance ladies, that was us.

  
I fluffed my skirt and prayed it wasn’t glued to the back of my legs, then ran my tongue between my lips and teeth to unstick them. I tried to feel my smile lift my eyes, the way my acting teacher had instructed me. The two actresses, the ones who had raised their eyebrows and ignored the woman in red, now bent over and clutched their thighs. Through the material of their skirts they pulled up on the bumps of their garters to tighten the sags out of their stockings. The woman in red casually leaned down, ran her hands up one leg to check her seam and smooth the silk, then gave her garter a quick roll above her knee to tighten it. Her skirt lifted, caught by her wrists, exposing the lacy edge of her step-ins stuck to the back of her thigh. Slowly she went through the same maneuver with her other leg.