The Movie (25 page)

Why does she bother? Megan Silver thought bitterly. It’s like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

Zach Mason would only ever consider a woman like R.oxana - luminously beautiful, naturally slim, a celebrity like himselE. Never mind that she was a vain, selfish bitch. Never mind that her petty objections held up the script. Never mind that all she considered was her own part, and never the movie as a whole. 1Loxana Felix lived and breathed in the same air of fame and riches that he enjoyed. She was designed for him - supermodl-cum-actress dates superstar-cure-actor. Models and rock stars, a classic pairing. Like salt ‘n’ vinegar or sugar ‘n’ spice.

Whenever Zach cast an admiring, stripping glance over the superbitch, Megan felt a little more dowdy, a little more plain.

She herself wore a loose shift dress in brushed cotton,

I97

sprigged with a pattern of roses, and the stacked sandals that were in fashion just now. Thanks to David Tauber’s Professor Higgins routine, Megan now weighed a hun° dred and twenty pounds. She was slimmer than she’d ever been in her life, her skin had cleared up, and she was nicely tanned. She’d have knocked the guys dead back in Frisco. But so what? Against R.oxana Felix’s awesome beauty, or even compared with your normal tall, blonde, stacked California babe, she was a nothing. Invisible. The moth amongst butterflies…

Zach said disrnissively, ‘A singer wouldn’t drink milk before he performed.’

‘Oh yeah?’ she snapped. David had warned her of the need to kiss up to the stars, but David wasn’t here today,

, and it was just too hot to take the macho bullshit. ‘What’s the matter? Milk lousy for your image? Does the guy always have to down halfa bottle of Jack Daniel’s before he faces his adoring public?’

Eleanor Marshall looked over at her, surprised, but said nothing.

R, oxana Felix laughed. ‘Well! The mouse that roared.’ You bitch, Megan thought, dropping her gaze. She bit

her tongue to stop the retort that wanted to fly out of her. Mason and she were sniping at each other constandy, but

so far she’d always been polite. She’d always had to be. ‘That’s got nothing to do with it,’ Zach said.

‘Give me one good reason why Jason shouldn’t drink milk before he sings,’ Megan insisted.

He looked at her levelly, liquid brown eyes meeting hers. God, he was gorgeous. It still got to her, sometimes, that she was fighting like mad with a guy who’d been tacked up on every wardrobe she’d ever had.

‘Because milk coats the back of your throat. You’d sing like shit.’

loxana Felix clapped her hands in delight and laughed again, cattily.

I98

Megan blushed, embarrassed. ‘OK. Sorry.’

Zach gave her a hint of a smile. ‘Maybe he could drink a diet soda.’

‘So, you don’t know everything, Megan,’ R, oxana Felix purred, stretching on the sofa. ‘Perhaps you could listen to

Zach next time. You might learn something.’

‘loxana,’ Eleanor Marshall warned her.

Ioxana paid no attention. She wanted her pound of flesh. ‘1Light, Megan?’

Megan gritted her teeth. ‘I guess.’

‘I know,’ 1Loxana said sweetly, and Megan saw her give Zach Mason the most dazzling smile. She lowered her head and crossed out ‘milk’ in the stage directions, substituting ‘diet Coke’, At least the bastard was fight about that. A diet soda would serve the same purpose for her characters. Focus on your work. Focus on your work. All she had to do Was write a great script and she was out of here; she could start another one that involved absolutely no fake-messiah musicians and their bitch-goddess girlfriends.

After the session was over, Megan gathered up her notes and headed for the car,feeling a little happier. She was having lunch with David Tauber. He’d picked a new place specially, a Chinese where they had nothing but low sodium vegetable dishes on the menu. Not normally her thing, but … he was teaching her how to look after herself. She should be gra.teful. She was grateful. After all, without David, she knew she’d be lost.

Megan glanced at her watch. Twenty after twelve. She was meeting Tauber at half-on, so she spun her tiny BMW towards the apartment. She could do with freshening up.

When she walked through the door Megan kicked offher shoes, revelling in the feel of the soft grey carpet against her bare feet, picked up her post and headed for the bathroom.. Two bills to forward to the accountants David had found

I99

for her. A letter from Tina and Jeanne. Amazing how people got really friendly the second you picked up a little success. Well, maybe she would read it later. And a

postcard from Dec. He was madly in love again.

Megan smiled. Some things never change.

She was about to hit the shower when she noticed the little red hght flashing on her answer machine. That was weird. She’d only been at Artemis an hour, and she wasn’t

expecting any calls.

She hit play.

‘Megan? This is Zach.’

Megan froze. Oh, God. Had she gone too far? Was he goingto tell her he was having her replaced?

‘Electric City have asked me to jam with them on Friday

‘ night. I was wondering if you’d like to come along. For

research. Anyway, call me.’

Electric City. After Dark Angel, they were the second biggest band in the alternative-rock revolution; though they’d never carried the social weight that Dark Angel had, they sold millions of records. She had two Electric City albums. Dec had all of them. The gig on Friday, a stadium show at the Cohseum, had been sold out for two months.

To see Zach Mason jam with Electric City! To go as his guest!

For a second Megan stood there, thrilled. Then she remembered. Zach Mason was a fake, a betrayer of all the things his fans had t4hought he stood for. He was just another egotistical jerk who wanted to be a movie star. And he’d been down on her like a ton of bricks from the second she met him.

He said research and he meant research. Zach just wanted the movie to be the most realistic it.could be, the

perfect vehicle to show him offin all his glory.

He’d sounded sincere, though.

Forget it! Megan” thought angrily, shaking her head. She’d seen the way he looked at 1Loxanna Felix - his

2O0

were well suited.

She’d believed in Zach Mason once - before she’d met him.

Yeah..She would go to the show, Megan thought. Because it was good research. Zach could be as patronizing as he liked, but her only concern was for her script.

She turned on the shower. She couldn’t keep David waiting.

1Loxana favoured the gaggle of visiting executives with a slight smile as she strolled across the Artemis lot towards her waiting limousine. Tom Goldman escorting a bunch of Wall Street stiffs; young guys, analysts most likely, she guessed. It must be about time for the studio to announce its quarterly earnings - P,.oxana knew that some entertainment companies liked to put on a show for the bankers, take them around, show them some stars.

Well, these boys had got lucky. They’d got to see her. All eight balding heads had literally twisted round as she walked past, lean hips clicking and pumping under the white satin shorts. Once a model, always a model. She’d heard one of the businessmen mutter ‘Jesus Christ!’

tkoxana had sauntered past him, unimpressed. She always blew men away. She was used to it. If he got as rich and powerful and useful as that limp dick Howard Thorn, maybe she might have given him a second look. As it was, though…

Seeing her approach, the chauffeur leapt forward to open the limo door, saluting. She didn’t look at him either. Zach Mason might drive himself around, but she was P,.oxana Felix and she wasn’t into fraternizing with the help.

As the limo eased seamlessly out of Artemis’s wrought iron gates and headed towards Sunset Boulevard, t(oxana bit her lip in frustration. Zach Mason. What the hell was

201

wrong with the guy? Was he gay? Not unless every mmour she’d ever heard was a lie. Was he involved? All her contacts said no. And anyway, when had a man’s being involved made a difference? She could make a twenty-year marriage fall apart with one flutter of her long, thick lashes. She had done, more than once.

tkoxana was under no illusions about men’s morality. Sooner or later, every last one of them thought with his dick. And ever since she’d hitpuberty she had realized that her beauty was a potent weapon. Ifa guy was straight, she was a goddamn nuclear bomb. Nothing could withstand her. Never, not once in all her life, had she set out to

seduce /man she wanted and been refused.

It just didn’t happen.

It was incomprehensible.

And she was not about to permit Zach Mason to be the first to do it.

LA slipped by her, basting in the sun, palm trees waving gently in the faint breeze. The sky was a deep, cloudless blue.

‘tkoxana noticed none of it. Her anger was consuming her. It wasn’t like Zach didn’t see her dressing up for him, didn’t register it. On the contrary, he looked her over every time, as though rating her. Undressing her with his eyes. Sexually approving her. These were tributes she received every day of her life, of course, but from Zach Mason they meant more - for the simple reason that he’d been linked with some of the most desirable women in America. In the world. He was the ex-lead singer of Dark Angel, and as far as Ioxana Felix was concerned, that made him a connoisseur.

So what was the fucking problem?

In script meetings, in public, no problem. He’d stare at her, flirt with her, whatever. The rock star and the supermodel. Great. And if they rehearsed a scene, there was incredible sexual heat there. Damn, she actually .wanted

him, in the way she’d wanted no other man for years, with the sole exception of Sam Kendrick - something she couldn’t explain.

Desire for Mason was easier to understand. He was quite simply the best-looking, most sensual man she had ever seen. Even for a palate as jaded and cynical as hers, Zach Mason represented temptation at the deepest level. He was rangy and lean, but not in a wimpy way - more sinewy, well muscled and dangerous-looking, like a wolŁ. Zach had wolf eyes. Long, black, unkempt hair, a chiselled face, and menacing, glinting wolf eyes. In a still photo, she knew, he might look angelic, Greek-god beautiful, but to see him move, to watch him talk, that was something else.

Usually, tkoxana was utterly uninterested in the career of anyone besides herself. And she was nobody’s fan. But since she’d met Zach she had ordered Tauber to send her up some ,˘ideos of Dark Angel.

The music was dreadful, of course. Meaningless white noise. She had turned down the volume and merely watched Mason, watched him move across the lip of the stage, watched him cradle his rhythm guitar, watched him speaking to crowd after crowd that rose in a body to salute him.

He was awesome. Incredible. Intense. And when those huge video screens they erected magnified his wolf eyes, staring at the crowd, staring into the camera, loxana had shivered. It was almost as if he was gazing into her soul, burning away talk and pretence and every other civilized defence. His stare could do that to you.

For a few seconds she had been spellbound, unable to flick the television off. Just for a few seconds, of course. But nonetheless, Zach Mason was remarkable. She, P,.oxana Felix, had responded to him sexually. It wasn’t just going to be great for her career to see him for a while, she thought; it was going to be great, period. And the next day, when she’d come on to him at the script meeting, he’d

203

reacted perfectly; all raised eyebrows and long, slow, assessing looks.

And that was it!

He hadn’t phoned. He hadn’t called her over. He hadn’t sent round flowers.

The next day she’d worn a shorter dress and been more obvious.

He’d noticed, but - nada. Rien. Nothing doing. loxana invited him to lunch, in front of Megan and Eleanor. Zach accepted right away. And then he’d .just discussed their characters, throughout the entire meal!

She had no idea what pathetic game Mason was playing. Hard to get? Did he want her to come right out and say it, was that what this was about? When she’d tried to grab him after the session this morning he’d actually brushed her off!

Well, loxana thought to herself, seething against the cool cream leather of her limo, if he thinks he’s getting

propositioned by me, he’s gonna have a long wait. But she had no idea how to break him down.

loxana closed her immaculately made-up eyes and coacentrated.

Zachary ‘Mason is just a man like any other. There’s a way round this. I just have to find it…

She reminded herself of her mantra. I always get what I want. Always…

The Manhattan skyline glittered below her, New York’s concrete forest glinting in the thin autumn sun. As the plane banked and veered, preparing for the descent into JFK, Poxana took another sip of her mineral water, swirling the ice and lime wedge round in her crystal glass. She felt refreshed and ready for action. After all her problems in LA, it was a nice break to come back to New York, a city she had conquered long before, and be treated like the queen she was. Amongst the pack of reporters waiting for her at immigration there would be faces she knew. When they called the press conference at the Carlyle, the hotel management would already have prepared her favourite suite exactly as she liked it, right down to the number of kumquats in her fruit bowl. And when they set up the cover shoot for Vogue, Bob Alton would be there, and he wouldn’t have any tiresome explanations as to why she couldn’t do this or wasn’t ready for that. He’d just be failing over his handmade English shoelaces to kiss her toned, tanned ass.

Exactly the way things ought to be.

The call from Unique had reached tier via David Tauber on Monday morning. Robert Alton wanted to speak with her urgently. He’d rung the night before, but they hadn’t wanted to wake her.

1koxana had checked her watch. Eight o’clock. Five in the morning on the East Coast. Well, it was time that fat, lazy asshole got up anyhow.