Destiny (94 page)

Helene stood in the shade, and people fussed around her. Someone was adjusting her hair; someone was touching up her makeup. The special-effects man was making the final adjustments to the harness concealed beneath her dress. It contained tiny plastic bags of artificial blood, and a device that would burst them at precisely the right second.

Helene was hardly aware of the people fussing and adjusting: she was in that narrow space, that limbo, between herself and Maria, waiting for the moment when the production team left her alone, and Maria would come to her.

They had finished at last; she moved forward impatiently toward her mark, and as she did so, she caught a glimpse of Stephani, just in the comer of her eye. She stopped; then moved forward again. She thought: of course—I know why I hke Stephani and why I pity her. She is a mirror image of me. A distorted image, perhaps, but a reflection nonetheless. It's true: neither of us knows who we are. Is that why we both want to act?

She had reached her mark. She lifted her head and looked around her. The wrecked car; her costar, holding two shotguns; the desert stretching away into the distance; equipment; cameras; people—and where was Maria?

She lifted her hand to her eyes; the hot air shimmered.

A voice, Gregory Gertz's voice, called: "Are you okay, Helene?"

"What? Oh, yes. I'm fine."

"Right. We're going for a take. ..."

Sound on; camera rolling; action. She had only two lines, then she must begin to run forward. They had rehearsed it before, and now she did it.

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The guns were lifted; the blanks went oflF; the harness device worked; bright chemical blood spouted, and she died beautifully.

"Great," Greg said afterward.

He came across to her, a puzzled frown on his face. He looked at her, pressed her arm, and then turned away.

"Right. Let's get Helene fixed up, and then do it again."

She died beautifully five times. But it was Helene who died, not Maria. Maria had gone; she would not come back to her.

After the fifth take, Greg said: "That's it. We'll break for the day. The hght's wrong, anyway." Then he came across to Helene, and looked down at her, still with that puzzled frown on his face.

He put his arm around her waist, and said, "It's so goddamn hot. Don't worry about it. Listen—have dinner with me this evening."

It was nearly six when she returned to the trailer, half-past by the time her dresser had gone, and various production people checking the details of the next day's shoot had finally left her, and she was alone.

She felt tired, and depressed by the failure of the scene, irritated by her inabihty to explain it. Obviously there had been times in the past when things had gone wrong, when she had not felt satisfied with what she had done, but she had never felt that blank emptiness before, the sensation that she was outside herself, watching herself failing.

Angrily, she began to rub off her makeup. It was then, reaching for some cotton, that she noticed the photograph of Cat was missing. She looked around the dressing table in confusion: it had been here, she had been looking at it, just a few hours before. . . . She pushed aside bottles and jars; no, it was not there. She bent, and looked on the floor, to see if it had fallen—but no, it was not there either. Straightening up, she thought, Stephani.

Stephani herself turned up five minutes later. She put her platinum head around the door, cautiously, and Helene turned and looked at her coldly.

"There was a photograph of my daughter, Stephani. On my dressing table. Have you seen it?"

Stephani blushed shghtly under the heavy makeup she wore. She lowered her eyes, hesitated, and then came into the trailer and shut the door. She opened her purse, took out the photograph, and handed it to Helene without a word.

"For God's sake, Stephani ..." Helene's temper snapped. "Stop doing this, will you? All right, if you want to borrow a Upstick or something. But

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not a picture of Cat. That's mine. It's private. Please don't do anything Uke that again."

Stephani slowly lifted her head. She looked at Helene shyly. "I'm sorry," she said finally, in her breathy voice. "I knew I shouldn't. I knew it was wrong. It's just that—she's so pretty, isn't she? I wouldn't have kept it. I only wanted to look at it. . . ."

"Stephani. Doesn't it occur to you that I might want to look at it too? Cat's my daughter, and I miss her. I miss her very much. And I like that picture to be here. Where I can look at it."

"I won't do it again." Stephani passed her tongue across her lips. They were shiny with Helene's lipstick. Helene turned away in exasperation. She wiped off the last of her makeup; Stephani did not move. She watched Helene in the mirror. After a pause, just as Helene was about to ask her to go, she said in a small voice, "You look so lovely. Just hke that. With no makeup on at all. I wish I looked hke you. I wish . . . You always look so cool, so elegant. I wish I looked that way. I wish I looked beautiful, and rich."

Helene stared at her reflection. She could think of no reply. Stephani gave an odd, sad little laugh.

"Anyway," she said. "You don't need to worry. I won't be bothering you anymore. I've only got one more scene—tomorrow. Then I'm going back to L.A."

"One more scene?" Helene turned. "But I thought . . ."

"Yeah. So did I." Stephani shrugged. "They cut all those other scenes. Greg Gertz doesn't hke me. I guess. Anyway. It's okay. I've got some work. I talked to my agent just now. He thinks he can get me in on some vampire movie—they're shooting in the studio now. But one of the girls got sick." She paused. "Six lines, he says. And a scene with Peter Cushing. That ought to be okay. I suppose."

"Stephani . . ." Helene felt suddenly contrite.

"So. I'll come and see you before I go. And I'm sorry about the photo. Really."

She had just reached the door of the trailer. She was about to step out, when she stopped and frowned, a small puzzled slightly speculative frown.

"Hey," she said. "It's odd, you know. I never thought of it before, but it's kind of weird."

"What is, Stephani?"

"Well, you always have a picture of Cat. Right there, on your dressing table. But you never have a picture of your husband. Not there, not anywhere ..."

"Stephani. This isn't a picture gallery. It's a dressing room, a place to work in. . . . Why should I have a picture of Lewis?"

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"Oh, I don't know." Stephani gave a small dimpling smile. "He's very good-looking, isn't he?" She shrugged. "I would, but then, we're very different, I guess. ..."

She lifted her hand in a small wave, and tripped down the steps.

ll/ ould you like steak? Or steak?" Greg Gertz smiled at her over T f the top of the menu.

"Oh, steak. What a lovely idea." She smiled back at him. He turned to the waitress to give their order, and Helene leaned back against the plastic banquette. The film star's Ufe! She knew, from the letters she received from her fans, how most of them imagined such a hfe. A succession of beautiful restaurants, champagne, parties, handsome escorts and exquisite dresses. And that was part of it, sometimes. But this was part of it too. A small town eight miles from Tucson, stuck down in the middle of the desert. Gas stations; a cluster of houses; the railroad and the highway; a town in the middle of nowhere, a town that people stopped off in, and that happened to have a large motel.

The motel was their headquarters; they had taken it over for the duration of filming. It was their home, their club, their restaurant, and for one simple reason—there was no alternative.

She looked around her: walls covered in an unlikely tartan wallpaper; a line of stags' antlers; a lot of varnished wood; a bar; red banquettes. She could have been anywhere in America. It was smaller, but not very different from the Howard Johnson's where Billy took her for her fifteenth birthday.

She turned her face to the window; black plate glass, the desert beyond, but invisible. Tonight Orangeburg felt close, and she knew why that was. It was because the moment was approaching when she would go back there. She was almost prepared, almost ready, there were just a few last moves to make. . . . For a moment she saw Billy's face, and then Ned Calvert's, and realized what it was that had provoked the memory. The motel restaurant had Muzak. It was playing a medley, and the latest tune was "Blue Moon."

Greg Gertz had said something. She jumped.

"I'm sorry?"

"You're miles away, you know that? I said—how's Cat. . . ." He hesitated, just a fractional pause. "And how's Lewis?"

"Cat's fine. Very well. I missed her birthday. . . ."

"I know that." Greg Gertz was looking at her steadily.

"And Lewis—Lewis is fine. He's working on a new script. Writing, you

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know. It's going very well. I think." She hesitated. "I don't like to ask too much, not when he's right in the middle of it. You know what writers are like. . . ."

"Oh, sure. Don't we all?"

Greg Gertz smiled easily, but his perceptive eyes did not leave her face. Helene felt uneasy. She hated to be asked about Lewis; she hated to have to talk about him. This was Lewis's third script. The first had gone to every producer and director in town, and was now languishing in a file at his agent's. The second had been optioned by Sphere—and that option had just run out, with no prospect of renewal or production. The third, the one Lewis was working on now, was a love story called Endless Moments. Lewis had announced his intention was to package and produce it himself.

Lewis, as a writer, was a failure. She knew that, Lewis knew it, and she suspected that Greg Gertz, along with the rest of Los Angeles, knew it. The shared knowledge hung between them for a moment, unspoken. Helene looked away, quickly.

She would never admit this failure, not to Lewis's friends, not to Thad— who questioned her most of all on the subject—not to Greg Gertz; she tried very hard not to admit it to herself, and she tried especially hard to hide her knowledge of it from Lewis. She did not always succeed: Lewis could read it in her eyes, the awful painful hope that this time what he was doing was going to work, and the equally awful and painful fear that it was not. Her doubts hurt Lewis; they also made him violently angry, particularly when he had been drinking, or when he had taken some of his new pills. The pills made him wildly euphoric and confident; when they wore off they left him in the blackest despair. Lewis would not give them up; he would not give up the alcohol. He said he needed them for his writing, that they made the words flow.

"Stop interfering. Stop putting me down!" Lewis would shout. It was a constant refrain. She heard it daily. No, indeed, she did not want to talk about Lewis.

Greg Gertz, she suspected, knew this. He was a clever man, with sharp instincts, a quiet man who said little, and saw much. She had grown to like him over the weeks they had worked together; she had grown to trust him —as much as she ever trusted anyone, which was not very far. He was wary, as she was, and kept people at a distance. He was also divorced—it had been a particularly ugly divorce, with a protracted custody battle. The three children had gone to his wife. This he never discussed. She also liked him for that.

He was looking at her now, still with that slight frown, as if he was trying to figure something out. Helene knew he wanted to ask her what had gone wrong that afternoon, and she also knew that he would wait.

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Meanwhile, though he had to know she would have preferred to change the subject, he persisted.

"I hadn't realized Lewis was still writing. I thought he might have decided to go back to producing for a while. He was very good at it once." He paused, realizing he had been untactful. "I don't know. Work with Thad again, perhaps?"

"I don't think so. That was another era." She forced herself to sound bright. "Lewis hasn't produced Thad's last three pictures—well, you know that. Thad handles most of that himself—he likes to coproduce now, he told me. And I suppose it's relatively straightforward, because of the tieup with Sphere. ..."

"But they're friends still, presumably?" He put the question suddenly, and because she knew he knew the answer anyway, Helene felt suddenly tired: why he?

"No," she said, looking at him directly. "Not really. They hardly see each other at all. They didn't quarrel. There was no fight—nothing Uke that. They just drifted apart. Besides, Thad is a loner. He's close to no one. You know what he's like."

"I'm not sure I do, no." He glanced away, and then back. "I always thought he was very close to you, though. Are you saying that's not the case?"

Helene frowned. Somewhat to her own surprise, she realized that she was not sure of the answer. "I don't think I am—close to him," she said at last. "No one is. I've worked very closely with him, obviously. And I go to his house sometimes—which no one else seems to do. He invites me over, and we have tea, and talk for an hour or so, usually about work, and then I go. That's all. ..." She paused. "Really, I feel I know Thad no more now than I did when we first worked together. He's still as secretive—more probably. And just as mad . . ."

She smiled then, but Greg did not smile back. He was looking at her seriously. There was a pause while the waitress delivered the steaks, french fries, and salad which had been everyone's staple diet since their day of arrival. Greg picked up his knife and fork, and then put them down again.

"So you didn't feel crowded by Thad. You didn't feel he was closing you in?"

"Thad? Closing me in? Why should I feel that?"

"I think you know why. I think that's what you felt." He paused. "Okay. You finished Ellis, when? A year ago. Since then you've made three films. The one with Peckinpah, the one with Huston, and this one with me. That's the longest break you've had from Thad since you started working."

"Yes—but Thad was tied up. He's been working on Ellis, doing the

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editing, the post-production. And those films came up, the parts were good. ..."