Flavor of the Month (89 page)

“You okay?” Joel asked.

“Fine,” she told him, and her annoyance showed in her tone of voice.

But she wasn’t fine. Because she had worked so hard, had suffered such pain, had been so brave, all so that she could get here. Here. On this set. And, if she was really honest with herself, she knew she hadn’t made the best choice. If this movie bombed, she’d gone through the surgery, the humiliation, the loneliness, the fear…for nothing. She’d never get to play any of the great roles. She’d wind up nothing more than a TV whore, which, in her cosmology, was several steps lower than a Broadway gypsy. And she’d picked this role, against the advice of her TV director and her agent, for one reason.

So she could be with Sam, the man who had betrayed her once already.

She felt the butterflies dance in her stomach. Why should she be nervous, seeing Michael?
He
was the one who had behaved like a dog, not her. And if he had never called her, she certainly hadn’t wanted to be called. So why, now, did
she
feel almost—well—ashamed?

Ridiculous! she told herself, but the butterflies didn’t go away. Nor did the curiosity about April Irons and Sam. What
was
their relationship? If she watched them, wouldn’t she know? Couldn’t she tell who Sam slept with, after all this time?

Sam looked good on the set. Even leaner, his mouth more deeply parenthesized by the long dimples on either side, his jaw sharper. He was still tanned, and it still suited him, but it didn’t cover the darkness under his eyes.

Jahne wondered if he actually sat beside some pool, his face turned to the sun, Bain de Soleil with an SPF of 8 slathered on his face. Somehow, it put her off, thinking of him indulging in the most ordinary of Hollywood cosmetic improvements. As if
she
were in a position to judge anyone else’s vanity. She almost sighed again but caught herself before Joel had a chance to inquire about her health, digestion, bowel movements, or the state of her spiritual life.

Sam looked up from the conversation he was having with the best boy and a grip. He didn’t smile. Instead, he did that thing where his mouth stayed still but his eyes warmed. Jahne felt as if she could be tanned by the warmth. Oh, Christ! she told herself. Don’t be a fool.

She walked up to the group that sat under one of the location tents, slightly removed from the hive of activity. There was April, looking cool and elegant as ever, plus two other actors, and Michael. As she approached, Michael turned and looked up at her.

“Jahne!” he said, and stood up. “Jahne!” And before she could move, before she could react, he had his arms around her, and his mouth on her mouth! She was so surprised that she was speechless. Michael kept one arm on her back and walked her over to the group. She joined them and couldn’t help noticing April’s satisfied smile and Sam’s eyes on her. She couldn’t help it—under his scrutiny she blushed like a schoolgirl.

“Sit here, next to me,” Michael cooed, and laid his arm proprietarily across the back of her chair. Jahne sat down, conscious of all of them watching her.

Blessedly, the AD came over with a question for Sam. In that moment, Bob Grantly and Samantha Reiger, two supporting cast members, introduced themselves and said hello. Then the meeting began.

Jahne could barely keep her eyes on the script. Michael seemed to think that nothing had changed between them, or that, if she was upset by his disappearance, she would completely forget it now that he was back! Of course, he didn’t know that she knew about Sharleen, the matching necklaces, the calls to Lila—and perhaps a necklace for Lila as well. Well, Jahne didn’t care who Michael fucked as long as he kept his hands off her and didn’t rape her friends. She sat there, longing to wipe the feeling of his lips off of hers, so angry that the script in her hands trembled. The meeting seemed interminable.

At last, they were through. April wished them luck and left to fly back to L.A. It was then that Michael turned to her.

“How have you been?”

“Just fine. How about you? And Sharleen? And Lila?” she asked, her voice as cold and hard as she knew how to make it.

He had the grace to pause, at least for a moment, the smile gone from his face. Then he sighed and shook his head. “What’s that line?” he asked. “Hell hath no fury…” he murmured, and his smile turned to a smirk.

“‘Hell hath no fury like a woman raped,’ Michael? Is that the quote you’re looking for?”

His world-famous blue eyes grew cold as the north Pacific. “What are you talking about?”

“Sharleen Smith. Drunk and struggling.”

Michael barked out a laugh. “Come off it, Jahne. I dated her once. The little Okie
begged
me for it.”

Jahne blinked. For a moment—half a moment—she wondered if perhaps Sharleen had exaggerated or misunderstood. Then, disgusted with him and herself, she looked him in the eye. “You’re a pig!” she said.

“You’re a slut,” he answered, and began to turn away.

All at once, her fury at him, at all men who did what they wanted with women and then walked away, seemed to rise up in her. Before he’d taken three steps, she was beside him and had grabbed at his shoulder. He turned, surprised, and she lifted her right arm, swung it back, and then slapped him, as hard as she could, across his world-famous left profile. The sound her hand made as it connected was loud and frightening. All of the crew stopped what they were doing. Silence fell over the place. Michael, stunned, lifted both hands to his face and stifled a groan.

Without a word, Jahne turned and walked off to her trailer.

“Jesus Christ!” Sam cried. And ran over to Michael’s side.

The pandemonium had calmed down. Sam had run back and forth, between a raging Michael and a frigid Jahne, until one had been soothed with both an ice pack and an apology, and the other bribed with a promise that she didn’t have to see Michael anywhere except on the set. And an invitation to dinner with her director.

The crew had been buzzing all afternoon, but now, as evening came on, the scandal was calming down. Sam sighed, flipped the visor on the car to block the rays of the setting sun, and turned to Jahne.

“Couldn’t you wait until after the wrap to hit him?” Sam asked plaintively, but then he had to laugh. “Not that he doesn’t deserve it, but it could make filming rather—how you say—
difficile?
”

Jahne shrugged. For once, she’d behaved badly, and this trip was her reward. She had actually seen nothing of California in the year since she had relocated. She’d arrived in L.A., got the Melrose job and then
Three for the Road
. She’d been on back lots and gritty locations like Louisiana and Idaho for
3/4
, but had seen nothing of the Golden State. Now she would see something, if she could keep her eyes off Sam. He was taking her out, going to show her around, he said, before dinner. It was supposed to be a meeting to calm her down, to discuss the script, he said. Now that Michael’s face had been packed in ice and Sam had spoken to him, it was her turn. She smiled. She actually felt good. She’d never in her life acted like a prima donna, she’d never caused a scandal. And now she wasn’t being punished for it, she was being “handled.” She smiled and looked at Sam again. It’s probably just business, she told herself, but he
had
asked her out. He had. And, like a teenager waiting for her first date, she wondered if he liked her. But that’s the old Mary Jane. I should only be worrying about whether
I
like
him
.

Sam had picked her up a few minutes early, as if he couldn’t wait to be with her. Stop reading into things, she’d told herself sternly. Just stop. But she couldn’t. She slid into the low seat of his rented Nissan 300ZX Turbo and breathed the same air he had been breathing. Her lungs hurt.
Eine kleine Nachtmusik
was playing on the sound system, filling the car. Sam had stepped around to the driver’s side and folded his lanky frame into the black leather seat. As he accelerated away from the hotel, she felt herself pushed back into the seat, almost as if his weight were already on her.

“I’d thought we’d go to Santa Cruz for dinner,” he said now. “Have you ever been?”

“No,” she told him. “I don’t know Northern California at all.”

“Never been to Muir Woods? Never been to the wine country? No? I’ll have to take you. It’s wonderful.”

She tried to remember if he used to say “wonderful,” back in New York. She didn’t think so. But then, not much had been wonderful. Except maybe
Jack and Jill
. Except maybe their time together. And, then, she thought, maybe it had only been wonderful for
her
. Hadn’t he just said something about taking her someplace? He meant to see her again. He
assumed
he would. And she felt both angry and breathless.

Well, of course he’ll see me. Why shouldn’t he? I’m the star of his latest production. He’s a star fucker. And I’m pretty. I’m sixty-seven thousand dollars’ worth of pretty. Why shouldn’t he expect to see me again? And why should it make me happy that he does? I ought to learn to take this stuff for granted, as Mai told me to. She sighed.

“Well, that doesn’t sound like a delighted response,” Sam said dryly.

“No, I guess not. But I
am
delighted. I’d love to see Napasonomamendocino, or whatever the place is.”

Sam laughed. “Those are
three
places, and the third one is the prettiest. I know a little inn at a small winery there. It’s just great. A sort of merging of all that’s best in Europe and California.”

Jahne wondered if April Irons had introduced him to it. And if it was before or after he had agreed to cast Crystal Plenum in the role of Jill.

“You know, Jahne, your conduct on the set today won’t make this production any easier to get off the ground.”

“He’s an animal.”

“It wasn’t very professional,” he admonished.

“It wasn’t very professional for him to grab me and tongue-kiss me. We broke it off months ago. He’s a pig. And I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

The car took a sharp curve, and Jahne felt Sam’s shoulder brush against hers. The soft leather of his jacket was warm against her bare skin. She felt a chill run up her back.

Something had changed in the air between them. Somehow, she
knew
that he was interested in her—that he wanted her. Was it her slap at Michael that had done it? Was it because she’d acted like a brat? Or like a woman? She didn’t know. But something
had
changed.

Well, this time, she swore, whatever happened, it would be different. As the French put it, this time she would be the one who was kissed, not the one who did the kissing. This time, Sam would love her more than she’d ever let herself love him. She’d no longer play Miss Havisham. It was Estella all the way.

They broke free of the traffic and moved onto the coast road. Jahne marveled at the dry brown hills—austere but beautiful in their way. The wind from the Pacific rippled the long grasses as Jahne had always imagined wheat fields to ripple, a beautiful undulation, a sexual wave that fascinated her.

“Where exactly are we going?” she forced herself to ask, but she didn’t really care. Cupped in the comfort of the car, the Mozart rippling around her, Sam beside her at last, she only wanted this moment, this final reward, to continue forever. Her great expectations were at last coming true. Let me remember this, she told herself. Let me remember it and know that once I was perfectly content.

“I’m taking you to a restaurant in Santa Cruz,” he said as the sports car effortlessly crested each hill. “It’s sort of the end of the line, the last stop on the train for all the wanderers and frontiersmen and westward-ho-ers. When they got to Santa Cruz, there was nowhere farther west to go but into the ocean.”

“Did some of them drop into it like lemmings?” she asked.

“Probably the better genetic stock started swimming for Asia. The chickens stayed behind.”

“So Santa Cruz is based on chicken stock, like a good cassoulet?” she asked.

He laughed. “You’re a little too clever, aren’t you? Santa Cruz is the end of the road, kind of like Key West. Ever been there?”

She’d been there with Sam, on the one and only vacation they’d ever taken together. All at once, she was flooded with the memory of their walk down Duval Street, the beer in Sloppy Joe’s, their visit to Hemingway’s house. That was a time when she thought he’d loved her. For no reason, tears filled her eyes. She’d been through a lot today. She was not handling this as easily as she had planned. She turned her head toward the sere hills and blinked the tears away.

“Yes. Route One ends there,” she managed.

“Well, so do a lot of people’s dreams. Santa Cruz is like that. And it’s been the location of a lot of films—they did the last
Dirty Harry
here, and then
The Lost Boys
.”

“It sounds kind of gruesome.”

“No. It’s got a real down-at-the-heels charm. Rather like my own.” He smiled.

She could almost feel his warmth, his seductive “like-me-even-though-I’m-trouble” come-on envelop her. His profile, hawk-nosed and as clean as a paper silhouette, was dark against the sunset behind him. In the ruddy light, his skin glowed. She wondered how it felt. She’d have loved to reach out and stroke his face, feel his cheek under her palm, run a finger across his wide mouth. She clutched her hands together in her lap and looked away from him.

The Mozart CD ended, and Sam slid in a new disk. Tom Waits’ raspy voice filled the car. Sam had introduced her to Waits’ clever lyrics and almost unbearable vocals years ago.

“Ever heard Tom Waits?” he asked now.

How many women had he asked that question of? she wondered. Had Crystal Plenum liked Tom Waits? Had April Irons? Oh, God, she thought. I’m going to drive myself crazy if I keep this up. Just let it alone, Jahne. Tell him no.

But she couldn’t stop herself. “Yes,” she said. “And the piano sounds drunk,” she added, misquoting a lyric.

Sam smiled in delight. Her friend Molly used to call this “the Seiko phenomenon”—when two people met and discovered the mundane things they had in common, they all seemed to be preordained and of earthshaking significance. “You use Paul Mitchell shampoo? I do, too!
You
wear a Seiko?
I
wear a Seiko!” She laughed at the thought.