Dazzle The Complete Unabridged Trilogy (72 page)

He lifted the megaphone to his lips. 'Kill the lights!'

Instantly the blazing-hot klieg and spotlights high in the
catwalks faded into crackling darkness, and Pearl Dern and
the skeleton crew of fourteen seasoned technicians who were
casually dressed and wore their boredom with the same casual
ease with which they performed their various duties turned
away and took the opportunity to light cigarettes.

Tamara instantly felt the humid, biting chill of the unheated
soundstage raising gooseflesh along her arms. Shivering, she rubbed them briskly with her hands. A girl from wardrobe
hurried over to carefully drape a blanket around her shoul
ders, and Tamara managed a grateful smile as she exchanged
the white feather boa for the blanket, clutching it tightly
around her. Involuntarily, her teeth began chattering, which
was not in the least bit surprising. The moment the blinding
lights were switched to maximum wattage on her, she would
break out into a sweat so that her face and shoulders had to
be dusted with an absorbent powder; invariably, as soon as
the lights dimmed, the chill would take hold of her again.
Hot, cold. Hot, cold. She had seldom had to endure such
temperature extremes, and she feared that if she wasn't care
ful, she would come down with pneumonia, or pleurisy at
least. Her otherwise splendid costume, a short, skimpy white
silk bodice dress, heavily sequined, with two rhinestone-
studded spaghetti straps looped over her shoulders, ostrich-
plume fan attached to her waist, and feathered headband, did
as little to keep her warm as the two long strands of pearls
hanging low from her neck and the paste diamonds around
her wrists and on her fingers.

Tamara turned away as Ziolko bore down on her, so that
he wouldn't see her blinking back tears. 'What did I do now?'
she asked in a timid voice, as though addressing the wall in
front of her. For obviously she must have done
something
wrong again; why else would he have stopped the cameras
from rolling? Still, she was almost certain she had been playing
the scene perfectly.

'This time it isn't anything you've done wrong,' he said in a
voice of weary resignation. 'It's those damn spots.'

'Spots?' She turned to face him. 'What spots?'

He slid the blanket off her shoulders. 'Those.'

She looked down and inspected her shoulders. A little
whimper of surprise escaped her lips. Everywhere the feathers
of the boa had touched her skin, red splotches rose up into
ugly raised welts.

She was allergic to feathers.

Damn. This was a fine time to discover that.

He leaned close into her face. 'What I want to know is, why
didn't you say something about having allergies?' he
demanded, his voice none the less threatening for its low tone.

'How was I supposed to know?' she shot back angrily. A
rivulet of tears slid out of one superbly made-up eye, damaging
the exacting makeup with a streak of black mascara. 'It's not
as if I dress up in chicken feathers all the time!'

His expression softened as he sighed. 'Okay, okay. Just
don't cry, huh? It's ruining your makeup.' He motioned Pearl
over to repair the damage. 'Put enough makeup over her back
and shoulders to hide the welts,' he said irritably. 'That'll do
it, don't you think?'

Pearl nodded and looked at Tamara sympathetically.

Ziolko clicked his fingers at the wardrobe mistress.
'Exchange the boa for a white fur wrap.'

The wardrobe mistress hurried off.

Tamara looked at Ziolko in surprise. 'But won't the makeup
ruin the fur?'

He shrugged and looked at her steadily. 'Maybe, but what's
the alternative? Who cares about a piece of fur as long as the
scene works out?'

Fifteen minutes later they shot the scene again. 'Take twentynine,' Ziolko boomed through his megaphone. 'Silence on the
set!'

The assistant cameraman leaned in front of Tamara. His
wooden clapper snapped together like two noisy jaws, and the
camera began to roll yet again.

'Action!'

Tamara clutched the fur stole casually around her and
ignored the sudden blazing heat of the lights. For all of thirty seconds she walked slowly toward the camera, her face regis
tering the haunted, faraway look of a person whose life was over. Then her footsteps slowed, she paused, and caught her breath. Though she did not know it, the lights shimmered on
her sequined dress like molten silver. Her breasts rose and
fell.

Her breathing quickened. Her eyes gleamed and held a look
of disbelief, and her lips parted in a hint of a smile. And then
her ever-quickening footsteps brought her rushing toward the
camera, a look of hope imprinted on her exquisite features.
The assistant cameraman caught her just before she could
collide with the camera.

'Cut!' Ziolko's reverberating voice yelled through the mega
phone. 'And
print!'

He grinned at her. The twenty-ninth take was a charm.

Still, in the end the entire five-minute screen test was to
take two-and-a-half days of shooting, and this was only to
prepare her for the final test, a scene with dialogue and danc
ing with none other than Miles Gabriel, IA's leading man.
The green-eyed young hopeful was more terrified than ever.

Chapter 7

'T'mara! It's fer you!' Jewel shrilled excitedly. She held out the telephone receiver and did a series of feverish hops. 'It's that Silko guy you been waitin' to hear from!'

'Ziolko?' Tamara said blankly. She finished refilling the big
chrome coffee urn and plonked the lid down on it. She wiped
up the spills. She glanced at the hatchway and then checked
the customers hunched over the counter. The two orders she'd
given José weren't ready, and the customers were either busy
sipping their coffees or eating. Only then did she slowly
approach the phone.

'Sweetie!' Jewel hissed. 'What the
hell's
the matter with
you? The suspense is killin' me!' She thrust the receiver at
Tamara and did another impatient little dance, her fists
clenched.

Tamara lifted the receiver to her ear. 'Mr. Ziolko?' she said
tremulously.

For a moment she could only hear the static and rushing
sounds on the line. 'Louie,' he finally said. 'I thought we
agreed you'd call me Louie.'

'Louie.' Her voice sounded as weak, indistinct, and faraway
as his.

Jewel was gesturing frantically. 'What's he say?' she
mouthed silently.

Tamara turned her back on Jewel and tightened her grip on
the receiver. 'It's bad news, isn't it?' she said into the shiny
black instrument.

There. The dreaded fear had been spoken aloud. It hung
like a poisonous snake in the air.

'Bad news?' Ziolko's voice came back. 'What's bad news?'

She could have strangled him. Why was he toying with her
like this?

'The screen test,' she found herself saying. 'What else?'

He sounded surprised. 'What makes you think it turned out
badly?'

Her heart was going
bam
. . .
bam
. . .
bam
_,
like a sledge
hammer steadily pounding away at an anvil. She could almost
see the sparks fly. 'Then . . . how
did
it turn out?'

'I'll let you see for yourself. What are you doing day after
tomorrow, at seven?'

'In the morning?'

'Evening. Seven
pm.
We're invited to O.T.'s for dinner.'

'O.T.'s? You mean Oscar . . . Skolnik's?'She couldn't trust
her ears. 'The head of IA?'

'Don't know of any other.' He laughed easily. 'It's a date
then, I take it.'

'But what about the screen test?' she cried in anguish.

'O.T.'s house has a screening room. You'll see it then.
Afterwards we'll talk about it.'

'But we're talking now!'

'Listen, there's no point in discussing it over the phone.' He
paused. 'It's a little complicated.'

Complicated!
Oh, God, she could see her world crumbling
already.

'Where do I pick you up?'

Her voice was subdued. 'Paterson's Mortuary.'

He laughed. 'Paterson's Mortuary?'

'That's what I said.'

'Well, just don't go killing yourself in the meantime. We
want you alive, not dead.'

Her heart gave a hopeful surge. Was that to be construed
as a positive sign, that they wanted her after all? She was dying
to ask, but she said instead, 'I live there.'

'Okay.' He didn't sound surprised. 'I'll pick you up at six-
thirty.'

And with that he clicked off.

'A new dress?' Inge asked at dinner that night. 'Well,
ja,
I
suppose we can afford it. I manage to put aside a little money.
Why not? Is not every day my actress is invited to a studio
Mongol's home.'

'Mogul,' Tamara corrected without malice. Inge herself had
demanded that she be corrected each time she misused
English. 'A Mongol's from Mongolia.'

Inge waved her soup spoon airily. 'Mogul, Mongol, is all
the same to me. We go tomorrow to Goodwill.'

Tamara's face fell. Somehow she managed to get the
ungrateful-sounding words out before they strangled her. 'I'm
not trying to be an ingrate, Inge,' she pleaded, 'but can't we
get something new? Just this once?'