Phoenix Falling (36 page)

"You're wise. Sometimes I think that moviemaking is an incurable disease." Rainey smiled self-mockingly. "The business makes me crazy, but I wouldn't want to do anything else. Especially if I can make movies on my terms, not Hollywood's."

"
The Centurion
will make that possible," Val said confidently. "But success and wild acclaim are months away. Tonight I have a better solution to the world's ills."

Rainey grinned. "Ice cream?"

"Right." Val fished out her cell phone. "I'll call room service so they can get started on our dinners right away. After you've showered and eaten, we'll find out if these Brits can made a decent hot fudge sundae."

Feeling less drained, Rainey settled back in her seat. Old friends and ice cream were cures for a good number of the world's ills.

* * *

As Kenzie opened the classic Victorian straight razor, light glittered menacingly off the hollow ground blade. He'd borrowed the razor from the set, where it had rested innocently among Randall's other toiletries.

In recent years, the strange form of self-mutilation that drove people to cut themselves had come out of the closet and onto the airwaves. He'd watched a talk show on the subject once, where young girls rather proudly explained how the physical pain of cutting themselves had mysteriously relieved their unbearable inner pain. He understood, having cut himself sometimes when he was young.

He rested the blade against his arm. Not the inside wrist, where a cut could cause bleeding to death, but higher up, on his forearm. He imagined the razor slicing through skin and muscle. First there would be shock at seeing the severed flesh and knowing it should hurt. Then the pain would explode, throbbing, so overpowering that for a time it would obliterate everything else in the world.

He increased pressure on the razor, wondering how hard he'd have to press to break the skin. Then, exhaling roughly, he snapped the razor shut and tossed it onto a chair. He wasn't that hard up.

Not yet.

Chapter 28

Dinner, shower, and a very respectable hot fudge sundae restored Rainey to the point where she could watch the dailies and note the best scenes. Great stuff. If everything came together as she could see it in her mind, they'd have a fine movie. Not a blockbuster, but a moving, well-crafted film that should find an appreciative audience.

But her long nap left her awake and twitchy after Val had gone yawning to bed. Restless and wanting to stretch her muscles, she quietly left the hotel for a walk. The killing production schedule had meant less exercise than usual, and the sessions she'd managed had been early and abbreviated.

As she stepped out onto Park Lane, she drew the cool English air into her lungs. It was good to be alone and anonymous. Brooding was more difficult when there were other people around, and she was in a broody mood for sure.

Tomorrow they'd finish shooting the movie. The wrap party would be that night, and the next morning, a small, private memorial service for Charles Winfield. Then she and Kenzie would go their separate ways once and for all.

Of course they'd see each other occasionally in the future. There would be a premiere for
The Centurion
, some joint publicity appearances. Since they traveled in similar circles, there would be casual meetings now and then. She'd pretend that seeing him didn't make her feel kicked in the stomach, even if he had some gorgeous female on his arm. They'd chat. Terribly civilized.

Then she'd probably go to the nearest ladies' room and throw up. Her stomach felt queasy just thinking about it. Eventually, the pain would fade to a dull ache, but she didn't expect that to be soon.

Loss was still a day and a half away, though. Tomorrow she must endure her most challenging scene yet, with Sarah and Randall resolving their problems in the bed where they'd finally consummated their marriage. Having affirmed their love and commitment, they would decide that their best hope for a new life was to leave England and its suffocating restrictions and expectations.

Australia was an easy choice. Randall's uncle had settled there many years earlier, and his letters to the family described a raw, energetic land where a man could be free in ways impossible in the Old World.

Traveling halfway around the world appealed to the adventurer in Sarah, and her intuition told her that their marriage would prosper there. Nonetheless, the thought of leaving home and family was wrenching. When he realized that, Randall would say there was no reason to emigrate. They could manage very well in England.

Sarah, at her most noble and self-sacrificing, would quote Ruth's Biblical speech to Naomi in perfect King James prose.

"Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge. Thy people shall be my people, and thy God, my God.

Where thou diest, will I die, and will I be buried. The Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me."

From the creative point of view, Rainey knew that speech was exactly right. A product of her time and place, a young woman coming into her strength, Sarah would freely and gladly follow her husband anywhere.

But as a modern woman, Rainey hated the way Sarah gave up everything for a man. When and if she produced and directed another movie—a horrific prospect at the moment—she'd use a modern setting, and a relationship where a man and a woman had to struggle to achieve a balance between them.

Equality was more interesting, and more difficult, than a relationship with one party dominant. In fact, she'd read a novel a couple of years earlier that might serve as the foundation for a really good screenplay....

Between horror and amusement, she realized that she was actually considering future projects. Moviemaking really was an incurable disease.

Her path eastward took her past Buckingham Palace and St. James Park, then down to the Houses of Parliament, a dramatic sight at night. Turning north, she started along the Victoria Embankment, a handsome walkway that edged the Thames.

As she walked, she wondered why Sarah's self-sacrificing nature irritated her so much. Rainey believed in a woman's right to choose her path in life, and a man's right to do the same. So why did Sarah's submissiveness make her crazy?

With a jolt, she recognized that her reaction was really about Clementine. Even as a little girl called Rainbow, she'd known her mother was too anxious to please the men in her life. Clementine would become so involved with her current lover that she often neglected her career and her daughter. A classic "woman who loved too much."

Some of those lovers treated her in ways that would drive any self-respecting woman out the door, and Rainbow had been furious on her mother's behalf. No wonder Rainey had grown up swearing she'd never, ever let a man take advantage of her. She'd kept that promise, too, which was why she disliked playing the obliging Sarah.

Beginning to tire, Rainey sat on a bench and gazed across the water. Next up the river was Waterloo Bridge. Whenever she saw it, she thought of the old movie with Vivien Leigh and Robert Taylor. She and her friends had watched it on television one night in high school. They'd all been outraged by the story of a gentle English ballerina who fell in love with a handsome, aristocratic soldier during wartime.

The pair became engaged, but the dancer lost her job by cutting work to bid her beloved adieu at the train station. After hearing a false report of his death, she'd become a prostitute to support herself. Then her fiancé returned from the dead and took her off to meet his family, not knowing what she'd done. Riddled by guilt, the dancer killed herself by jumping in front of a bus on Waterloo Bridge. In 1940, it wasn't enough for a woman to repent of her sins—she'd had to die messily.

The twit. If she feared the truth coming out, she should have confessed her fall from grace to her fiancé, who might have loved her enough to marry her anyhow. And if not—well, the girl was young, she could have built a new life. The movie was supposed to be a great romantic classic, but there was nothing romantic about stupidity and guilt. Rainey much preferred stories of redemption and reconciliation.

Of course, Sarah was not the dancer of
Waterloo Bridge
. Her head was screwed on much better. Better than Rainey's, probably.

But she didn't envy Sarah's admirably level-headed personality. What she admired, and resented, was Sarah's ability to make an absolute commitment to a man.

Raine Marlowe, twenty-first-century woman, had never made such a commitment in her life. She'd been so determined not to be the victim of a man that she'd approached love with her list of conditions raised like a shield. No man would hit her, or cheat on her, or take advantage of her, or take her for granted, or marry her for her money. If a man broke one of her rules, she'd take off.

Given her doubts and suspicions, it was amazing she'd actually married Kenzie. Of course, she'd gone into the marriage knowing it was doomed to fail—and that had become a self-fulfilling prophecy, hadn't it?

How much was a woman supposed to give? Clementine gave too much, Rainey surely not enough.

She began to weep, feeling more alone than at any time since her mother's death. Despite all her defenses, she'd fallen heart over heels for Kenzie, but she hadn't made a true commitment. All the time they'd been together, she'd been waiting for him to betray her, so she was always ready to leave. She hadn't even sold her house.

Thought this battered heart of mine would never mend.

Yet here I am, heart over heels again.

Heart over heels, moth to the flame.

Maybe this time, Lord, maybe this time...

Her mother had picked the wrong men, and that had contributed to her death. But she'd had the courage to love with her whole heart, a courage Rainey lacked.

Not long before her mother's death, Rainbow had asked why a moth flying into a flame was in a love song. Clementine drew her daughter onto her lap, saying, "The moth is consumed in the fire, but don't you have to envy it for wanting something so much?"

Young and already pragmatic to the bone, Rainey hadn't understood, but tonight, finally, she did. She had never dared let herself want anything—or anyone—that much.

Her reasons for seeking a divorce were clear cut and entirely justifiable. No one blamed her for leaving a man who'd been unfaithful. She was in firm possession of the moral high ground.

Yet now she blamed herself for not trying to understand why it had happened. The more time that passed, the more she doubted that Kenzie had betrayed her from simple lust.

Moviemaking was grueling, and playing intimate scenes with an attractive member of the opposite sex could create the illusion of a love, or at least lust. Kenzie probably succumbed to Angie Greene's silicone-enhanced charms from sheer, exhausted loneliness after months of work on a demanding movie with only brief visits to or from his wife.

Though Rainey had never been unfaithful to Kenzie, she understood how such a lapse could happen. She'd experienced that kind of desperate loneliness when working on location. Before her marriage, she'd also succumbed to that craving for warmth and physical comfort when the stress of work grew overpowering. Separation and strain were a major reason why so many Hollywood marriages didn't last long.

She couldn't blame herself for turning around and flying back to California immediately. Her shock and pain had been devastating.

But looking back, she questioned her decision to immediately file for divorce. She hadn't made the least attempt to salvage her marriage. She'd never suggested counseling, or even asked her husband if he was sorry and wanted to try again. She'd just walked away, following her personal rules of disengagement.

Kenzie hadn't contested the divorce. In face, he'd said repeatedly that she was better off without him. But like John Randall, he'd never said that he didn't want his wife.

Making
The Centurion
had drawn them into intimacy over and over again. When he was at the breaking point, he'd come to her, and she'd offered comfort without question. He'd done the same for her.

Wasn't providing shelter from the storm an important part of marriage? Despite the legal wheels grinding away in California, they were still deeply connected to each other. Maybe not enough for a real marriage, but enough to make her question her original belief that divorce was the only possible choice.