Dreams Are Not Enough (46 page)

The newcomers’ first meeting with Hap and Maxim took place that night in the production tent. Paul Trapani of the wild hair and overstuffed bush jacket lounged back in his chair: a diamond-surrounded gold Piaget adorned the thick wrist of the hand that held a quart bottle of Tusker’s beer. He had volunteered nothing about himself beyond his name, so his connection with Meadstar remained hazy. However, the man in the suit, Herrold Jones—he had spelled his Christian name twice—had informed them that he was the company’s vice president and treasurer.

Jones tapped his index finger on a shooting schedule that he’d just unrolled on Maxim’s desk.

“Mr. Lang has worked out how you can leave this location by the nineteenth of February.” He articulated each syllable.

“You realize, of course,” Hap said, “that gives us only a week. We need a minimum of twelve more days here.” Moving to the schedule glued to the canvas tent-divider, he pointed.

“This sequence will take four days at least, probably longer. Difficulties are bound to crop up when you deal with so many animals and unskilled extras.”

“Mr. Lang specifically mentioned that sequence. He believes it’s extraneous.”

“It’ll run behind the opening credits,” Hap said in the same unruffled tone.

“It’s our way of letting the audience know that they’re watching an epic-scale film.”

“We estimate a million dollars to shoot it,” Jones said.

“I want this straight,” Hap replied.

“The sequence stays. It’s nonnegotiable.”

Herrold Jones adjusted his bifocals.

“Mr. Lang asked me to convey his respect and understanding for your artistic dedication. However, The Baobab Tree had a shooting schedule of sixty-six days, which is eleven weeks, and you have already been here for longer than that with the English scenes still to shoot.”

“I told Lang that he can replace me anytime,” Hap said icily.

Jones glanced at his associate.

The chair creaked as Trapani sat forward.

“Mr. Lang’s poured a bundle into this movie, Cordiner. You’re finishing it. And you’re splitting from Africa in one week.”

“You can tell your boss that we’re already shooting as many setups per day as we possibly can and still maintain quality.”

“Better figure out a way to get what-all you need in seven days,” Trapani said.

“Because that’s how long we’re staying here with the jungle bunnies.”

“We?” Hap asked.

“You, me, Jones and the rest of the two hundred people.”

Jones, who was fastidiously polishing his glasses with a felt cloth, looked up.

“Two hundred and thirty-four,” he said.

Trapani took a gulp of beer, wiping his mouth.

“The way I see it, Cordiner, you better get every one of them overpaid slobs working. No more sitting around on your fat asses.”

Hap moved a step closer to Trapani.

Maxim said hastily, “I’ll see to it we’re on our way to England in a week.”

Cliff Camron had finished his scenes ten days earlier, and—with his retinue—was already in Los Angeles doing a film for Paramount. Jones and Trapani took over the tent he had vacated. Each evening the two of them strolled to the radio tent, where Jones sent a report to Nairobi that would be forwarded by cable to Las Vegas. So many pages of script had been shot, so many feet of film exposed.

Maxim was everywhere, ensuring that the newest schedule was being adhered to.

He did not have to cajole Alyssia to be on time. Since the arrival of Jones and Trapani, she had forsworn her program of short workdays.

Despite her bone-weariness, she rose before five for makeup, and on two nights shot until after ten. She had no control over her attacks, and suffered three fairly substantial ones during the week, but prodded herself back to the set in less than a half hour. On a certain level the hectic pace suited her. She had no energy left to brood about her disastrous relationship with Hap.

They filmed the final Kenyan sequence amid special-effects rifle shots, swirls of fuller’s earth, a melee of big game, Masai warriors and actors dressed as white hunters.

On the eighth day after their arrival, Jones and Trapani, along with The Baobab Tree principals, boarded a flight to London. (The crew, who would not be able to get work permits in England, were returning to California in a chartered plane. ) Alyssia sat sipping the warmish milk that the stewardess had brought her. She couldn’t shake her doom and gloom.

The English interiors would be shot in the Pinewood Studios. For the exteriors, which were scheduled first, Hap and Maxim had rented the grounds of a small, romantically turreted manor house in Sussex. The English crew were bused in from an inexpensive modern hotel in the seaside resort of Worthing, while the upper echelon stayed at a charmingly restored old inn near the location.

While they filmed, drizzle fell unabated and a plague of colds descended.

Alyssia, awakened by a coughing spell, was reaching for the tin of black currant pastilles when the phone jangled.

“Hello,” she said, stifling a cough.

“Alyssia—is that you?” her brother-in-law inquired.

Any call at this hour was bad news. She sat up.

“Irving, Irving-what’s wrong?”

“Clarrie….” His voice disappeared, and for several long seconds there was only the sibilance of the interminable rain.

“She died a few hours ago….”

“Oh, Irving. I’m so sorry. Poor Beth, poor, poor Beth. How’s she taking it?”

“Not too well. Dear, let me talk to Barry.”

Barry, who had trained himself to sleep through his wife’s wake-up calls, was snoring gently.

She pressed his arm.

“Mmmf?”

“It’s Irving,” she whispered.

“Clarrie’s dead.”

Barry jerked up on his elbow, grabbing for the phone.

“Irving, I had no idea the encephalitis wasn’t under control.” Silence.

“Yes, but if we could distance ourselves, we would see that in the long run Clarrie—and you and Beth—are being saved from incalculable heartbreak.”

A long silence.

“Yes, that’s precisely the way she would take it,” Barry sighed.

“She’s always been a totally responsible person.”

Another lengthy silence.

“Of course it’s no problem.”

Handing Alyssia the phone to replace, he jammed on his glasses and hopped out of bed, hastily stripping off his flannel pajamas.

“What is it, Barry?”

“Beth’s refusing to talk to anyone, even Irving. We agreed if anyone could help her, I could.” Barry was pulling on his underwear.

“Call the airport and get me a seat on the early TWA flight, will you? And ask the desk to have a production car brought around. Oh, and pack my toothpaste and shaving gear.”

Rotund in a swaddle of wool clothing under his fleece-lined raincoat, he grabbed the flight bag she had hastily packed and the red plastic loose-leaf journal in which he was keeping his notes about the production. For Barry the ailments and problems of his blood kin superseded any that might beset Alyssia. Filled with concern for his twin, he blew his pregnant, sneezing wife a kiss and dashed out.

Alyssia returned to bed, but couldn’t fall back to sleep. Her mind formed an image: a pretty, redheaded little girl in crimson corduroy overalls skipping along the sun-dappled paths of elaborately landscaped grounds, a child seemingly all things bright and beautiful, yet followed by a uniformed registered nurse. All at once a pink-faced infant was superimposed over Clarrie. Alyssia blew her nose violently.

The double image refused to separate.

She turned the pillow. Sleep, sleep, she told herself. Your call’s at five fifteen. Go back to sleep. Finally she turned on the light, asking the drowsy-voiced desk clerk to ring room 37, which was located in the annex across the gravel courtyard.

“Ho?” Hap said. Though she knew she must have awakened him, his monosyllabic query was alert.

“Hap, I thought you’d want to know. Clarrie died a few hours ago.”

Alyssia took a woebegone pride in her performance: family member imparting sad tidings. Her voice held no trace of either her incipient hysteria or her urgent need to touch base with him.

“Irving called to tell us.”

“Clarrie? When did it happen?”

“A few hours ago.”

“I didn’t know she was so ill.”

“Nobody did,” Alyssia said.

“Beth’s in a bad way. Barry just left to be with her. Will you tell Maxim?”

The call had done nothing to allay her anxieties. Coughing, she went to get some vitamin C and an antihistamine. She was at the medicine cabinet when a tap sounded.

“It’s me,” Hap called softly.

She spilled half the phial of chewable vitamin C into the sink. After weeks of polite estrangement, what was Hap doing at her door in the middle of the night? More aware than ever of her ungainliness, she drew the blue velvet lapels of her peignoir to her throat as she went to undo the chain.

He wore Nikes and a rain-dotted Burberry. She looked swiftly away from the long intervening stretch of tanned, blond-haired legs.

“You sounded rotten,” he said. It was the first personal remark he had addressed to her since that disastrous day when Lang had watched her Hub every line and nuance of the seduction scene in the stable.

“My cold,” she said.

“It’s very nice of you to come over, but also nuts. It’s a mean night out there.”

“Alyssia, look—I know things are rotten between us, but what’s the point in kidding one another? You called because you were touching bottom.”

She shook her head in denial, then moved from the doorway.

“I am feeling pretty bleak,” she admitted.

He followed her into the suite’s sitting room.

“Want to talk about it?”

“I was thinking about” —she colored”—the baby.”

“Is something wrong?”

“What if it’s like Clarrie?”

“Clarrie was unique.”

“They’d be first cousins—closer, because Barry and Beth are twins.”

“Fraternal twins are no different than any other brother and sister,” he said.

“Irving told me that the doctors called what she had an acute chronic childhood psychosis, and that there was never a hint the problem was genetic.”

“Yes, I know…. But Beth’s terrified of having another child.” She put a lozenge in her mouth, asking, “Think I’m overreacting?”

“A bit,” he said.

“At three o’clock in the morning it’s permissible.”

She smiled faintly.

After a couple of moments he said, “I’ll go back for the funeral.”

“Hap, that’s crazy! Jones and Trapani” — “Screw them. Beth’s my cousin. I’m going.”

“The new schedule” -Hap interrupted with low vehemence, “You don’t understand how sick I am of being Lang’s creature. I can’t look myself in the eye when I shave.”

“I’ll be there, too,” Alyssia said, and broke off in a sneeze.

“You’re what?” Maxim was saying to Hap ten minutes later.

“Going to the funeral. And save your breath. Nothing you say’ll change my mind.”

“Hap, I feel enough of a turd for dragging you into this mess. But here’s the cold fact. You go to Los Angeles and we lose three more days.”

“My flight’s already booked. And so’s Alyssia’s.”

The star and director of The Baobab Tree stood with their respective spouses amid the family-only mourners at Hillside Memorial Park as a small white coffin was lowered into the California adobe next to the basalt plaque marking the burial site of Clara Friedman Cordiner.

Hap and Alyssia had not requested adjoining seats on either flight. On their return to London, after the fasten-seatbelts sign went off, he moved through the first-class cabin to take the empty chair next to her.

“I thought you ought to know before it’s all over everywhere,” he said.

“In the car coming back from the funeral, Madeleine suggested we make our separation permanent.”

Alyssia felt a weakness tremble through her, and for an irrational moment waited for him—the director—to tell her how to react.

“Madeleine has great timing,” she said, and knew instantly the remark was wrong, cheap.

“Actually, she was very decent. No recriminations.” The plane was banking, and the sudden blaze of sun made his eyes seem a flat, dead gray.

“Hap, I’m sorry,” she said.

“Are you?” The sympathetic closeness he had shown in her suite the other night had been a transitory thing.

“I wanted things to work out for you.”

“It’s been coming for a long time,” he said.

As she watched him return to his seat, the pressure in her ears increased unbearably because of her cold. She bent over, pressing her hands tight against her head.

They moved to London for the interiors of The Baobab Tree. Shooting concluded at the end of February with a boisterous wrap party at Pinewood. Alyssia, who had played her final scene in near numbness from heavy lacings of antihistamines and cough suppressants, returned directly to The Connaught. She did not join in the festivities.

The following morning’s Daily Mirror, in line with the rash of negative publicity on The Baobab Tree, inquired: “Is Alyssia High-Hatting the Brits?”

At home, she stayed in bed for a week, sneezing or sleeping. Even after her cold was entirely gone, she continued to sleep a minimum of ten or eleven hours. Barry left long before she awoke—he had subleased an office in an old Beverly Hills building favored by writers. She was surprised, therefore, when he brought her coffee in bed one morning. Depositing the cup on her nightstand, he sat on the mattress next to her.

“Hon,” he said, then paused portentously.

Stretching, she said, “Yes?”

“I sold a piece to The New Yorker.”

Realizing today was April first, she wondered if he were fooling her, but his exhilarated face told her otherwise.

“The New Yorker!” she cried, sitting up to hug him. She was as thrilled as he.

“Oh, Barry … how fabulous! That’s always been your ambition, to sell them a story.”

“This is nonfiction. They’re devoting almost the entire issue to me.”

“The whole magazine! Barry, I’m dying! Is this what you’ve been working on in your office?”

“Yes.”

“What’s it about?”