Till We Meet Again (48 page)

“I think not,” Delphine replied stiffly.

“Are you cold?”

“Certainly not.”

“Then take off your hat and coat,” he said impatiently. “Let’s see what you look like.”

“Haven’t you seen my films?” She emphasized the formal
vous
, but he took no notice.

“Sure. I wouldn’t have hired you otherwise. I want to see what you look like
to me
, not to other directors. Come on, babe, hurry up. I haven’t got all day.”

Still sitting down, Delphine removed her hat and shrugged out of her coat, allowing it to drop to her waist, watching to spy his eyes widening in admiration. Sadowski’s unconvinced, suspicious, grudging expression didn’t change. He sighed. She waited, as impassive as he.

“Stand up and turn around,” he demanded abruptly. His eyes, unshielded, were black, the irises huge, the pupils small, as if he were a hypnotist.

“How dare you? I’m not a showgirl!”

“You waiting for me to get down on my knees and beg?” He glanced at her face. “Something similar would be acceptable, wouldn’t it? Ah—actresses! What else is new? Forget it, babe, you’ve come to the wrong place. I make films here, not pretty speeches. No brassiere?”

“I never wear one,” Delphine lied.

“I’ll decide that.” He gestured for her to stand. Delphine inclined her head mockingly and decided to rise, knowing that her beauty was the ultimate reproach for his crude, offensive manner. She turned around by inches, offering him the time to become humble. She permitted herself no expression of triumph, not even the minuscule lift of an eyebrow, when she faced him again. He had taken down the tent of fingers and rested his chin on one hand, nodding negatively. “I don’t know. I just don’t know … maybe yes, maybe no … it’s worth a try, I suppose.”

“What are you talking about?”

“This whole little masquerade of yours, the schoolgirl shit, your skirt-and-sweater Shirley Temple number. It could just work. It’s not as dumb as it looks, you may have something there.… We’ll do a Chloe costume and makeup test and find out.”

“I beg your pardon?”

He snapped his fingers. “Wake up, Delphine! Chloe, the character you’re going to play, the rich bitch? Isn’t that why we’re here? Obviously you realized Chloe could decide to dress down to put the police inspector off the scent after the murder. It’s an idea. Cute. Childish, I admit, and, of course, completely obvious to anyone with any brains, but yes, decidedly cute. It makes you look almost innocent. I like an actress who tries to make a creative contribution. Not too often, of course. Don’t get carried away, honey.”

“I’ll …”

“Fine. O.K., we’re done. You can go.” He swung his chair around and resumed inspecting the strip of film, his back toward her again.

“You need a haircut,” Delphine sputtered.

“I know. I’ve heard. It’ll have to wait until I’ve made this fucking, rotten scene work. Bring some scissors and do it yourself if it bothers you. Be my guest.”

“Asshole!” Delphine said in English.

Sadowski swung around and eyed her with a spark of
genuine pleasure. “Right! Nice! I’d forgotten you were American. I have cousins in Pittsburgh—you from anywhere near there? ‘Asshole’—there’s just no perfect word for it in French, is there?” He waved, indicating the door. “See you Monday. Bright and early. And when I say early, babe, I mean early. Don’t oversleep. Fair warning. And the last one you’ll get.”

“And if I should, by chance, oversleep?” Delphine asked, panting in fury.

“Don’t worry about it, you won’t. See, you don’t want to give me problems, babe, because you know it won’t work. Right? Now
go away
. Can’t you tell I’m busy?”

14

F
REDDY checked to make sure that her helmet was firmly fastened. The dark curls of the Brenda Marshall wig blew about her face, tickled her nose and got into her eyes, as she sat at the controls in the modified open cockpit of the little old Gee Bee. She knew better, after almost two years as a stunt pilot, than to try to convince the wardrobe department that no woman pilot would fly with her hair spilling fetchingly out of her helmet onto her shoulders. Anyway, in Freddy’s opinion, the female jewel thief with a heart of gold and nerves of steel, who always escaped the scene of the crime by air, that she was supposed to be in
Lady in Jeopardy
, was capable of almost anything, including flying a plane in an evening gown, as she had done only last week.

She checked her altitude. She was exactly at four thousand feet, as she had planned. Freddy took her hands off the controls. She had trimmed the plane carefully; there was no turbulence aloft on this early August day of 1938, and the ship flew straight and level by itself, and could continue on in this way for a long time. There was a mirror sewn into the inside flap on the sleeve of her jacket, which Freddy now used to inspect her lipstick. It was as bright as when makeup had finished with her, an hour ago. Ready to start, she looked around for the four camera ships, one close to her left, and three below, each at a different altitude, flying in a tight formation that would guarantee complete coverage of her bail-out. She waggled her wings, in her signal that she was ready to start, and watched each of the four planes. This was not the sort of stunt for which you could afford a retake.

The big, sturdy camera ships all responded with the signal that meant the cameras were turning. O.K., Brenda, time to get a move on, Freddy told herself, and assumed an expression of alarm that changed quickly into one of decision. She grabbed the velvet prop bag full of jewels, jammed it into her
jacket, quickly pulled up the zipper and hauled herself, parachute and all, to the side of the plane.

“So long, boys and girls, here goes nothing,” Freddy shouted, dialogue she thought was as implausible as the plot. She could see the camera in the plane directly alongside, catching her mouth shaping the words that would later be revoiced by Brenda Marshall. She pressed a bright red button positioned on the side of the cockpit that would activate the dynamite in fifteen seconds, after she was well past it, so far away that none of the debris of the explosion could stray in her direction. The instant she pressed the button, she dove out of the plane, expertly clearing the side of the ship, careful not to let the wind catch her, and fell free. At the count of ten she would open her chute.

“One … two … three …” she counted, beginning to reach for the ripcord. Above her, twelve seconds too soon and far, far too close, the plane blew up. The shock wave of the premature explosion knocked her unconscious. Burning gasoline, in arching sprays of fire, and shattered, jagged fragments of the plane were thrown in all directions around her falling body. The heavy motor missed her by a yard, a burning wing by inches.

She fell, inert, a piece of motionless flesh in a flying suit, headed for the ground below. When Freddy came to, she had no idea how long she had been falling. Her instantaneous reaction was to pull the ring on the ripcord. Within seconds her descent slowed, as the great parasol of white silk opened above her. She wasn’t on fire, she realized with a disoriented burst of relief. The gasoline had missed her. Swaying from side to side, she scanned three hundred sixty degrees of sky to see if any of the pieces of the plane were too close. The air around her was a mess of plunging fragments, but they were at an acceptable distance. The three camera ships still seemed to be holding their steady courses.

They got more than they had paid for this time, Freddy thought, as she looked upward to inspect the canopy of the blessed parachute that had opened so promptly. Leaping circles of flames, caused by drops of burning gasoline, rimmed large, gaping tears in many places all over the saving umbrella and were spreading rapidly, eating away at the silk that meant her life. She glanced down at the ground. She estimated that she had more than two thousand feet still to fall before she landed. In that time the parachute would burn to
ash, the flames fanned by the air through which she was plunging. Even if it didn’t burn up entirely, there wouldn’t be enough of it left to slow her fall.

Opening a chute was easy—closing it in midair was fucking impossible, she thought savagely, as she pulled on all the shroud lines she could reach with both of her arms, grappling them toward her, fighting for her life with every ounce of her strength. Gradually the parachute, and the air that filled it, yielded, as she hauled the lines in together at the bottom, preventing any more air from entering the parachute. Faster and faster she fell. Now only the bulging top of the silk umbrella, where air was still trapped, slowed her descent toward earth. She refused to look up to see if the chute was still burning. All her senses were concentrated on picking the right moment to release the shroud lines that would allow the parachute to open in time to break her fall, and before it burned away.

“Now!”
she shouted above the circled area where she could see the cameramen grinding on the ground. She could see Mac running toward the place where she would land. She opened her arms, letting all the straining shrouds escape her grip. With a jerk, the silk billowed out again, but still too fest, a deadly trifle too fast, the ground approached. She landed badly, her body meeting the field heavily. Her left arm and her right ankle broke at the same moment, and then, still fighting with her good arm to spill the air out of the chute, to keep from being dragged along the ground, Freddy passed out. When she recovered consciousness, Mac had fallen on top of her to bring her body to a stop, and the cameras were still grinding away. The last thing she heard was the director screaming, “Keep going, keep going, we’ll write him into the script.”

“Promise me you won’t get soap in my eyes?” Freddy asked Mac anxiously, as she knelt on the floor of the bathroom, naked to the waist. Her ankle and arm were still in the plaster casts which she had been warned not to get wet, when she left the hospital a few days before. Mac had figured out that the only way he could wash her hair was if she hung her head into the bathtub, supporting herself on her knees, with her shoulders leaning on the edge of the tub.

“Why would I get soap in your eyes?”

“By accident … it’s a mystery … no matter how hard
people try to give someone a painless shampoo, they always end up getting soap in their eyes. There’s nothing I hate more,” she answered.

“You like to jump out of airplanes and you hate to have a shampoo?”

“You’re beginning to understand me.”

“Get your head down in there, close your eyes tight, and don’t worry.”

“Wait!” she said, alarmed. “It’s not the soaping, it’s the rinsing that’s the dangerous part. How are you going to do it?”

“With this cooking pot. It’s simple. I’ll fill it with water from the cold and hot taps and pour it over your head. Jesus!”

“Go get a pitcher with a spout,” she ordered. “A pot … only a man would try to use a pot.”

“How about a watering can? That would give me perfect control, a drop here, a drop there …”

“Great. No, on second thought, it would take too long. Just a pitcher.”

“Don’t go anywhere, Freddy. I’ll be right back.” He ran downstairs to the kitchen, and found a pitcher. He was, he knew, trying unsuccessfully to keep from fussing over her like a mother, but he was just so damn glad to have her back in one piece, that he’d wash her hair for her a strand at a time with a wet toothbrush, if that was what she wanted. The heavy, lopsided casts emphasized the airy, exquisite delineation of her feet and wrists, but Freddy was so strong that he kept catching her trying to hop around in spite of his fear that she’d fall and break something else. She was so brave, so fine, so undefeatable, this precious girl of his—too much by half, he thought as he raced upstairs, three steps at a time.

After the hair wash, Mac picked Freddy up, over her protests, carried her back to their bed and started to dry her hair with a towel. It was, fortunately, cut shorter than it had been before she started stunt work, because she had to tuck it under wigs so often that she’d hacked away at it from time to time for the sake of convenience, but he still had difficulty dealing with the rebellious mass of tangled strands. Once her hair was half dry, he started to comb it out, dealing gently with each damp, snarled curl. She looked up at him with engrossed, dreamy eyes, half-child, half-woman, like a Da Vinci angel, he thought, standing by in an Annunciation scene.

“Where’d you learn your technique?” she asked.

“I had a big, smelly, shaggy dog when I was a kid.”

“You never told me,” she said accusingly.

“He ran away.”

“That’s the saddest story I ever heard,” Freddy blurted, and burst into tears.

Stunned, for he had only been joking, Mac tried to get her to stop, but the more he cuddled her and told her it really hadn’t happened, the harder she cried. Finally she subsided into little hiccuping sobs mixed with a wail of “Poor, poor little dog,” until finally she lay silent, sniffling in his arms.

“What was that all about?” he asked when she had calmed down.

“I don’t know,” she said in muffled tones, into his chest.

“I think you’re having a delayed reaction to the accident.”

She sat up and gave him a fragment of her old smile, shaking her head in negation.

“No. It can’t be that. I’ve figured out the accident completely,” she assured him, as she had so often during the week in the hospital. “The riggers who packed the dynamite had to have miscalculated the lengths of the fuses, not that they’ll ever admit it. That’s the only thing it could have been. Everything else went perfectly.”

“Understanding it is one thing, Freddy, but coming to grips with it emotionally, being able to accept that it actually happened to you, is another. You’ve had a big shock, even if you still refuse to realize it.”

“I didn’t say that it wasn’t a shock. And I ruined my best chute. But I’ve had other accidents, I’ve broken bones before.” Her bravado was intact.

“Not accidents like this,” Mac said somberly. “Freddy, when are you going to give up stunt flying?”