Honey Moon (16 page)

"From the tone of this new script, the writers seem to be sending you a message to do something about her." Liz stopped trying to clean herself up and held the towel loosely in her hand. "You know what Honey wants from you. Everybody on the set knows it. Would it kill you to give it to her?"

His voice was flat. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"From the beginning, she's looked at you like you were God Almighty. She wants some attention, Dash. She wants you to care about her."

"I'm an actor, not a baby-sitter."

"But she's hurting. God knows how long she's been on her own. You've met that parasitic family of hers. It's obvious that she's raised herself."

"I was on my own when I was a kid, and I did all right."

"Sure you did," she said sarcastically. Anyone with three ex-wives, two children he hardly ever saw, and

a long history of fighting the bottle could hardly brag about how well adjusted he was.

He got up from the chair. "If you're so worried about her, why don't you play mother hen?"

"Because she'd spit in my face. I'm more the wicked stepmother type than a fairy godmother. This is a dangerous business for a young girl who doesn't have anyone watching out for her. She's looking for a father, Dash. She needs someone to put the reins on her." She tried to lighten the tension between them with a small smile. "Who better to do that than an old cowboy?"

"You're crazy," he said, turning away from her. "I don't know a damned thing about kids."

"You've got two of them. You must know something."

"Their mother has raised them. All I do is write the checks."

"And that's the way you like to keep it, isn't it? Just writing the checks." The words had slipped out of their own volition, and she wanted to bite off her tongue.

Dash turned back to her, his eyes narrowed. "Why don't you just come out and say whatever it is you've got on your mind."

She took a deep breath. "All right. I think Honey's identity has gotten all tangled up with Janie's. Maybe the writers are to blame, I don't know, but for whatever reason, the more you distance yourself from her, the more she resents it and the worse she behaves. I think you're the only person who can help her."

"I don't have the slightest intention of helping her. It's not my problem."

His coldness unearthed a fragment of old pain that Liz hadn't even known still existed. She was suddenly twenty-two again and in love with a stunt rider from Oklahoma who she had just learned was a married man.

"Honey's too needy for you, isn't she? That first month we filmed, she ran after you like a little puppy dog practically begging for some attention, and the more she begged, the colder you got. She was too needy, and you don't like needy women, do you, Dash?"

He gave her a dead, hard stare. "You don't know anything about me, so why don't you just mind your own goddamn business?"

Liz was silently berating herself for ever having begun this conversation. This show had enough problems without adding a conflict between Dash and herself. She shrugged and smiled brittlely. "But of course, darling. Why don't I do just that."

Without another word, she walked off the porch and headed for her motor home.

Dash stormed over to the catering wagon and got himself a cup of coffee. It burned his tongue as he swallowed, but he kept drinking it anyway. He was furiously angry with Liz. Where did she get the gall to act as if that little monster from hell was his responsibility? He had only one responsibility, and that was to keep himself sober, something that hadn't been requiring much effort on his part until Honey had stomped into his life.

He swallowed the last of his coffee and tossed away the cup. Ross was the person who should be keeping Honey in line, not himself. And from now on Miss Liz Castleberry could just mind her own goddamn business.

They called him for the next scene, a simple one in which he had to carry Honey across the yard and into the barn. The scene that followed in the barn would be trickier— what television people called the MOS, when the moral lesson for the episode was delivered. MOS stood for "Moral of Show," but all of them referred to it as the "Moment of Shit."

"Where's Honey?" the assistant director asked. "We're ready to shoot."

"I heard Jack Swackhammer took out a contract on her," one of the camera men said. "Maybe the hit man finally delivered."

"We should be so lucky," the AD murmured.

For ten more minutes, Dash cooled his heels while his temper burned. Someone located Honey with the horses, and one of the camera operators suggested that she spent so much time with the animals because they were the only ones who could stand being with her since they didn't have to worry about getting fired.

Bruce Rand was directing that week's episode. He had been responsible for some of the best episodes of M.A.S.H., and Ross had brought him in because he had a reputation for tact. But after working with Honey all week, even he was starting to show wear around the edges.

When she finally ambled onto the set, Bruce looked relieved and began blocking out the scene. "Dash, carry Janie from the bottom of the porch steps across the yard toward the barn. Janie, give the line about being opposed to violence when you reach the corner of the porch, then start to struggle when he ignores you."

He finished the blocking and called for a rehearsal. Dash and Honey climbed the porch steps to the open front door. The assistant director, whose job it was to maintain continuity from one shot to the next, looked down at her notes.

"You had her under your left arm, Dash. And Honey, you need your hat."

Several more minutes passed while one of the wardrobe people ran back over to the corral to retrieve the navy blue cap she had been wearing. When it was on her head with the bill turned up, Dash tucked her under his left arm and they walked through it.

They returned to the porch, but as Dash turned to pick her up, he saw something he didn't like in those light blue eyes of hers, a subtle air of calculation. He remembered the episode in November when she'd been stuck on the roof of the barn and had deliberately blown her lines so he had to keep climbing up after her. His back had bothered him for a week afterward-

"No tricks, Honey," he warned. "This is an easy scene. Let's get it over with."

"You just worry about yourself, old man," she sneered. "I'll take care of me."

He didn't like it when she called him that, and his anger settled in deeper. No matter what the mirror said, he was only forty-one. Not that damned old.

"Quiet, please," Bruce called.

Dash walked to the bottom of the porch steps and picked Honey up under his left arm.

"Stand by now. We're rolling. Marker. Action."

"No, Pop," Janie screamed, as he began to walk. "What are you doing? I said I was sorry."

He reached the corner of the porch.

"Don't forget you're opposed to unnecessary violence," she shrieked. "You can't turn your back on your principles."

She was giving it one hundred percent, just like always, and he had to clutch her more tightly as she struggled.

"No, Pop! Don't do this! I'm too old for this ..."

She started to kick, and her knee caught him in the small of his back. He grunted and his arm tightened around her waist as he continued to move purposefully toward the barn. Without warning, she jabbed the sharp point of her elbow in his ribs. He gripped her even tighter, warning her without words that she was going too far.

Her teeth sank into the flesh of his arm.

"God damn it!" With a sharp exclamation of pain, he dropped her to the ground.

"Ow ..." Her hat flew off, and she looked up at him, outrage stamped all over her small, furious face. "You dropped me, you fucker!"

Fireworks went off inside his brain. She was ruining his life, and he'd had enough. Reaching down, he snatched her up by the seat of her jeans and the collar of her shirt.

"Hey!" She cried out in a combination of surprise and indignation as she left the ground.

"You messed with me one too many times, little girl," he said, hauling her off to the bam, this time in earnest.

Her struggles before were merely a rehearsal for what she did now. He pinned her against his side, not giving a damn whether he hurt her or not.

Honey felt the painful pressure of hard muscles clamping her ribs and cutting off her breath. Apprehension ate away at her anger as she grew conscious of the fact that he was in deadly earnest.

She'd been looking for her limits, and she'd finally found them.

The faces of the crew members flew by. She called out to them. "Help! Bruce, help! Ross! Somebody call Ross!"

No one moved.

And then she saw Eric standing on the side smoking a cigarette. "Eric, stop him!"

He took a drag and looked away.

"No! Put me down!"

He was carrying her into the barn. To her relief she spotted half a dozen crew members working there, adjusting the lights for the next scene. He couldn't do anything horrible to her with so many people standing around.

"Get out of here!" Dash barked. "Now!"

"No!" she screamed. "No, don't leave."

They scampered away like rats from a burning building. The last one out closed the barn door.

With a rough curse Dash sprawled down on a stack of hay bales that had been arranged for the next scene and threw her over his knees.

She'd read the script and she knew what happened next. He lifted his hand to spank her only to find out that he didn't have the heart. Then he told her a story about her mother, she started to cry, and everything was all right again.

The flat of his hand slammed down hard on her bottom.

She screamed in surprise.

He hit her again, and her scream changed into a yelp of pain.

The next one hurt even worse.

And then he stopped. The flat of his hand cupped her bottom. "Here's the way it's going to be. From now on you've got one person to answer to, and that's me.

If I'm happy, you don't have anything to worry about. But if I'm not happy, then you'd better start saying your prayers." He lifted his hand and slapped it down smartly on her rear. "And believe me. Right now, I'm not happy."

"You can't do this," she gasped.

He smacked her again. "Who says?"

Tears stung her eyes. "I'm a star! I'll quit the show!"

Smack. "Good."

"I'll sue you!"
Smack.
"Ouch!"

"You'll have to stand in line."
Smack
.

Her face was hot with pain and mortification, and her nose had started to run. A tear plopped down onto the floor of the barn and made a small dark stain on the wood. Her muscles screamed with tension as she waited for the next blow, but his hand had fallen still—as still as his voice.

"Now what I'm going to do is this. I'm going to start calling people in here that you've insulted. One by one, I'm going to call them in and hold you down and let each one of them take a whack at you."

A sob erupted from her throat. "This isn't the way it's supposed to be! This isn't the way it is in the script."

"Life isn't a script, little girl. You have to take responsibility for yourself."

"Please." The word slipped from her lips, small and lonely. "Please don't do this."

"Why shouldn't I?"

She tried to take a breath, but it hurt. "Because."

"I'm afraid you're going to have to do better than that."

Her bottom was burning and his big hand cupping over it seemed to hold in the heat and make it worse. But worse than the pain in her body was the pain in her heart. "Because ..." she gasped. "Because I don't want to be like this."

He was quiet for a moment. "Are you crying?"

"Me? Hell, no. I—I never cry." Her voice broke.

He lifted his hand from her bottom. She scrambled up, pushing herself off his lap and trying to get to her feet. But the scattered hay on the barn floor was slippery and she lost her balance so that she sprawled awkwardly on the bale next to him. She immediately turned her back so he couldn't see her tear-smeared cheeks.

Everything was quiet for a moment. Her bottom burned, and she clenched her hands together to keep from rubbing it. "I—I didn't mean to hurt anybody," she said softly. "I just wanted people to like me."

"You sure have a strange way of going about it."

"Everybody hates me."

"You're a mean-tempered little bitch. Why shouldn't they?"

"I'm not a b-bitch! I'm a decent person. I'm a good Baptist with a-a strong moral code."

"Uh-huh," he replied skeptically.

She hunched her shoulder so she could use the sleeve of her T-shirt to catch her tears before he saw them drip off her jaw. "You're not—You're not really going to call all those people in here and—and let them take a whack at me, are you?"

"Since you're such a fine Baptist, you shouldn't mind a little public repentance."

She tried to stiffen her spine, but her misery was cramping her insides and keeping her bent forward. How had her life come to this? All she'd wanted was for them to like her, especially this man who held her in such contempt. There were too many tears to hold them back, and a few of them dripped onto her jeans. "I—I can't apologize. I can't embarrass myself like that."

"You've embarrassed yourself every other way. I don't see what difference it'd make."

She thought of Eric seeing her like this. "Please. Please, don't do it."

His boots shifted in the straw. There was a long silence. She hiccupped on a sob.

"I guess I could hold off for a while. Until I see if you've decided to mend your ways."

Her misery didn't ease. "You—you shouldn't have hit me. Do you know how old I am?"

"Well, Janie's thirteen, but I know you're older than that."

"She's sup—supposed to be fourteen this season, but the writers haven't changed her."

"Television time passes slow."

The tears kept leaking out like a faucet with an old washer, and her voice sounded all mushy. "Except on the s—soaps. My Aunt Sophie watched one show where a baby was born. Three—three years later, that baby was a pregnant teenager."