Scar Flowers (6 page)

And hadn’t she been sent Simon’s film for a reason?

“What fools these mortals be,” she whispered, but her attempt at a smile faded.

She could not go home. She still felt the reciprocal pressure of his tongue when she had slid her fingers in his mouth. Interest. He’d had that punch-drunk look in his eye, the sudden dilation of the pupils. There was something in him calling her, and he did not even know. Yet. He had awakened something in her, some alchemical hunger.

Each time she had been called before, she had reached realization. Each time the rewards grew greater, the challenge larger. This was her art. Never before had she risked so much—or thought
that she might fail.

She picked up the phone,
thinking of Faith, but when the dial tone changed to a busy signal, she hung up.

Leah kicked off her shoes, toppling a book from the pile at her feet. A thick paperback about fight choreography. She pushed it with her toe. Her chest heaved. A ragged breath escaped her
, and she covered her face with her hands.

Rapid knocks sounded at her door, and Paul called her name. She sat up and pulled a compact out of her purse, dabbed the corners of her eyes
, and touched up her lipstick while he knocked again. She slipped her shoes on and let him in, pausing first to push the shopping bags of new clothes into the closet.

“Two more weeks on the set,” she said as she resettled her
-self at the desk. “That’s all I need. I can see you on the weekend, and then I’ll fly back.”

“I’m not going to lie for you
anymore. I can’t.” Paul stood just inside the door, jingling the change in his pockets.

“You didn’t object to my being
Nadia at the film festival.”

“That’s not the point.
I didn’t know you were going to get hired onto the picture!”

“It is the point. You’ll lie when it gets you what you want, and when it’s my turn
, you back down.” Leah tapped a pen against the hotel-logo scratch pad.

“Yes, I’m backing down. This is my career we’re talking about, not some bet you say I made. If Mercer finds out
, he’ll know I knew you’re not Nadia—”

“Then he’s going to
. . . what? Admit that he hired me by mistake? I don’t think so.” Leah propped one foot up on the bottom shelf of the desk, the slit in her skirt opening on a few inches of thigh.

Paul sat on the
couch and rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s not something you do, lie about someone you hire on a film. I’d be slitting my own throat.”

“You’ve already presented me to everyone as
Nadia, and your throat is intact.” She leaned back in her chair. “No one will find out. I’ll quit before there’s a chance I’d have to do any work. A family crisis or a sudden illness should do it.”

Paul
gripped the armrest. “Then why get hired in the first place? You don’t know anything about fight choreography. He’ll find out.”

“I knew enough to convince him to
hire me. How hard could it be?”

“And what happens to the picture after you quit and we have no choreographer?”

Her stomach sank. How had she missed seeing the threat to Paul’s work?

But she could not stop now, when she was so sure. She would make it up to him.

“You’ve said production schedules get changed all the time for stars’ hangovers and acts of God. The fight scenes can be delayed until a replacement is found.”

“Not the schedule!” His hands shook. “I know they change, but they shouldn’t change because of me. Not because of me.”

“It’s not your fault.” She lowered her voice, kept her words even.
Never push them, not more than they can take. Let them come to you.
“Paul. Would you like to trust me farther this time? It’s your decision. Maybe sacrifice is a better word, to have so much faith. But I’ll be there to watch over it. I know how hard you’ve worked at your career.”

“Like a saint, you mean?” An edge of sarcasm touched his voice, but his hands were steady. “Do I want to trust you like that?”

“Out of trust . . .” she prompted.

“
Comes closeness. I know. But you’re not my therapist.” He crossed his arms. “How can you be so sure this will be all right?”

He’ll do it.
And I’d better not be wrong.
“Paul. I know what your work means to you. If I’m wrong about Simon, you win our bet. Set the stakes. Anything you want.”

“What, as in you buy me dinner if you lose? It’s not worth it.” He crossed his legs and jiggled his foot, his gaze creeping across her knees and toward her lap.

“I mean you can ask for whatever you want. Saints, martyrs, the Passion . . . Or is there something else you want now?”

Thursday, May 25, 8 a.m. Day 4 of shooting.

Simon left Soundstage 12 for his meeting with John. The second-unit director stood
a few hundred yards away, under a small stand of trees flanked by a hedge. John brandished a bullhorn at a crowd, and Nadia helped him herd stunt men for the first few action shots of the brawl scene; Simon would take over directing the dialogue portion tomorrow. The fight choreographer, a dimin-utive figure in a green track suit, spoke with two tall, thin men of equal height: Victor and his stunt double, Ricky. They had gotten it wrong, whatever Nadia had been teaching them, and she demonstrated again on Ricky.

She ran through the move slowly first, then took him down like a folding chair. She turned to Victor, explaining, then gestured to him as if to say,
Now you try
.

As Simon drew near, Ricky said, “Watch out, mate. She’s little but mighty!”

Nadia regarded him as though he were an insect and she had not decided whether to swat or crush him.

“No hard feelings, eh, love? Didn’t mean to undermine your authority.”

“Do you need me to show you again?” Leah unzipped the jacket of her track suit. Underneath she wore a white T-shirt that read “Napa Valley Jujitsu.”

“Not me, hon. I’m a natural.”

Simon did not stay to hear Nadia’s reply. He had met with John, who claimed she was incompetent. He could give no specifics, so Simon chalked it up to clashing personalities. On his way back to the soundstage, he would not have looked her way except that a strong Aussie tenor belted out an earnest, sugary song about how he hoped he “got it.” Some show tune or other . . . from
A Chorus Line
? Simon turned. Ricky knelt at Nadia’s feet, arms spread and forehead creased, while heads swiveled.

A few crew members laughed, but Nadia appeared pleased by the serenade, as though she were indulging a prized student. Before the stunt double could sing the chorus a second time, she said, “Thank you, Ricky. That was very good. I wonder if you’re finished singing. You might want to snap out of it and get back to work.”

Ricky lurched to his feet and blinked, grinning at some inner vision of triumph. His smile faded as laughter rose around him.

As John restored order, Nadia met Simon’s eyes and nodded a greeting.

There was something fishy about Nadia, with her olive and her impromptu job interview behind security barriers at the film festival. Was she hiding something? Simon drew her aside.

“About this brawl scene,” he said. “Brian and I want a little extra focus on the two guys who’re going after Blake, so we thought we’d undercrank the bit with the tray of drinks and use lots of angles. What d’you think?”

His question made no sense. Some martial-arts pictures used undercranking, or fast motion, to speed up fight sequences, not to emphasize a particular element. But whatever answer she gave would be revealing.

Nadia blinked, shoulders suddenly tense. “Yes, if that’s what you want.”

She could have looked at him oddly because of the strange-ness of his question, but it was more like she had not understood him.

“Great. I look forward to seeing the dailies
. So you think we should undercrank?”

“I’m sorry; I was wondering about the need to focus on the thugs who go after
Blake. Was there a rewrite? I didn’t think they even had names in the script.”

“You know, you’re right. I must’ve got the scenes mixed up.”

She had given a decent answer without revealing whether she understood. Good enough—for now. He would quiz her on technique the next chance he got.

Thursday, May 25, 11:45 a.m. Day 4 of shooting.

Karen would not look at Simon.

Everything had been fine for the first scene between Julia and Blake, the hero. And she had been aloof but professional during rehearsals—rehearsals Fran had wanted to attend “to sup-port my star.” That set the producer off, when he refused to let her and Paul watch. Rehearsals were for the actors, not for the studio to show the director that he had better not sulk about the casting. When Fran barged in, he made everyone drop their scripts and do exercises. After thirty minutes of actors humming and tossing imaginary baseballs around the circle, she left in a huff. She had to—ever since the film festival, her main concern had been the budget:
Time is money, Si
.

Despite the squabble with Fran, h
e had looked forward to working with his Julia. Ever since he read the underground classic
Babylon
in high school, he had lived with the antagonist Julia in his head—unscrupulous, as full of desire for revenge as of hunger for love, yet most actresses who had auditioned played her as plain evil, a standard-issue vamp. Not as someone born disfigured who begs and borrows her way to surgery that re-creates her as a beauty, a transformation from invisible to sought-after. A nice allegory for sudden fame, that.

A
fter a five-minute break, Karen returned wan and mute, with only a shrug in response to his coaching.

She doesn’t trust me. She’s heard something since rehearsa
l, or she’s afraid, thinks we’ve all discovered she’s a fraud.

That’s no secret: we
’re all frauds.

The lights burned down. Hot, still air, motes of dust hang
-ing. Shouts. Gaffers and production assistants carried light cords and colored gels. Lunch break in fifteen minutes.

“
Julia,” he said.

At
being called “Julia,” Karen’s mouth tightened and set.

“Karen. You’re the one who’s trapped here, if you don’t convince him. You lose everything. After all you’ve risked to erase Blake’s past and plant new memories while he thinks you’re help
-ing him recover his old ones. Would Julia let that slip away?”

She shook her head, grabbed a handful of her hair in her fist. Swing gang crew watched through the doorway, laden with boxes. Waiting to start the next setup. He motioned for them to back up. They knew the rule: stay out of Karen’s eyeline during takes. He would have to fire one, or they’d think they could stop paying attention on set.

“I’m sorry,” said Karen. “I’ve never known how to say this line.”

She had a tremble to her lips, piercing yet sweet, like the tang of a raspberry bursting its velvet skin.
Had something happened to her since that first day? Boyfriend trouble? Drugs? Had she spotted her first wrinkle?

Not that it took much to throw an actor off. Nothing to it, acting: just be willing to bare anything, from the psychic to the physical, without being able to see or censor it. Just trust the direct
-or, a stranger, to settle for nothing less than your best work, to not let you underplay or go over the top. Actresses could expect matter-of-fact discussions of their breast size or perceived fuckability with regard to box-office draw.

“Let’s figure it out. Or d
’you want a break?” He leaned back and looked past her.

S
he inclined toward him, tilted her head to catch his gaze. “I want to finish.”

She needs her audience of one, doesn’t she?

He was not sure yet what approach would work best with her, but his Indian side knew that the best way to calm a white person was to respond to him or her immediately, even if it meant making a mistake. White people would rather be lied to than feel ignored.

“O
kay. You say this line to keep Blake from leaving. He’s been unpredictable, unreasonable, angry. He thinks he can dismiss you. If he shuts that door behind him, you’ll never see him again. He’ll never love you. ”

Ju
st within their range of vision, Gunnar stifled a yawn and checked his phone.

Karen sighed, and her eyes grew cold.

Fucking hell. She’d almost been there. Karen had to simmer with vulnerability while almost managing to cover it up. Her need must come through subliminally. At least in his inter-pretation. Good actors could always surprise him.

“
What do you think Julia is feeling when she says her line ‘Are you afraid?’”

“
She’s bluffing. She knows he won’t say, ‘Yes, I’m afraid.’ And if he doesn’t admit he’s afraid, then he has to let her do the hypno regression, and she uses the device on him and wins, boom.” Karen let the words out in a rush.

“
What if Julia has a response planned for either reaction from Blake? What if she wants him to say he’s afraid? Why might she want that?”

Karen
played with her pearls. Despite her clinical-professional Julia costume of a white silk blouse and high heels, she seemed like a child. There must be a way that she could keep a hint of that quality during a take.

“
Do you remember ever desperately wanting someone you love to stay as they’re walking away? Maybe after a fight, when you’ve both really hurt each other.” He waited, but she only toyed with her hair. Simon lowered his voice and said, “I do. She wore a gray sweater of mine that was too big for her, and it was raining, in a town where it never rained. We were by the side of the road, and the wet dust stuck to her shoes so that her footprints were the only dry earth for as far as I could see.”

And she wore silver rings and had black hair that streamed behind her, and I never found out how she got home that day.

Karen raised her head. Her voice caught as she spoke. “Okay,” she said. “Give me a minute.”

“Take your time. I need to give Victor a note
.” If she thought Victor needed notes, it might help her relax.

She pressed her lips into a smile and traced one eyebrow with her fingernail.

Simon took Victor aside. “We’re almost there. You okay with a few more takes?”

Victor nodded and shifted his weight.

“Can you do me a favor and help Karen out a little off-screen? Just talk to her once in a while. She hasn’t got your film experience.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll do that.” Victor’s mouth twitched to one side.

“Just think about it for now.”

“Sure.”

So much for that idea.

Simon returned to Karen
, who stood with her arms crossed and lip pushed out. A cramp like a thin band of cold metal had seized his gut, and he rubbed his temples to clear his memory of the black-haired girl. There were four more shots still to do today.

“
Karen.” Simon rubbed his chin, itchy with stubble, and sighed. “Drop. Give me thirty pushups. Now. Come on, come on.”

Karen stared.

“Now.” He raised his voice. “Do it.”

After a moment, she crouched to the floor, then sat back on her heels and laughed.

“You don’t really—”

“No girl pushups,” he said. “Keep your back straight. One, two, three.”

Around them, the crew quieted. Karen braced her hands against the floor and dipped into the first pushup. Her hair fell forward, touched the grit and dust on the floor as he counted aloud. Her makeup woman, a round Jamaican woman with cornrow braids, stepped forward but said nothing. By number twenty, Karen’s arms shook.

“Straight back. Get your ass out of the air.”

After number twenty-five, she stood and rubbed her biceps. Red-faced and trembling, she took a deep breath. Determined to go on.

“What was that, Karen?” asked Simon. “Are you ready to work now?”

Names. Much of their power lay in the fact that the only people who used them were either angry or bent on seduction.

Karen’s eyes grew enormous every time he said her name.

Simon stepped in close to speak in her ear. The heat of the lights grew thicker. Her hair, a dozen blended shades gold and amber, swung down over one eye. Her breath made a sound, the slow panic of emotion. Hatred? Fear? He put his finger under her chin
, where it would piss her off but wouldn’t smear her makeup. Smooth. Her skin. Karen flinched like she’d been shocked, and the back of his neck prickled from the recoil.

“If you’re angry, use it. If the line doesn’t come out right the first time, repeat it as a throwaway; I’ll keep the cameras rolling.” He nodded to Gunnar, who called for places.

Karen fumed like a wall of static at his back. She would use it. Now they could work. Simon circled the ring of lights to stand behind Victor.

Victor. That was it. He only paid attention to Karen during scenes.
Karen must be one of those performers who needs an off-screen rapport with her co-star.

Or, in the absence of that, with her director.

The makeup woman rushed in to adjust Karen’s hair while Gunnar called for quiet on the set and cued the clapper to start the audio.

Hunched at the camera, Brian checked the frame of the shot again, then tugged his stocking cap down over his plucked eye
-brows. Opposite the DP, behind Karen’s left shoulder, the script girl sat forward in her chair, pencil ready over the script, glasses balanced on her head. Next to her, a white face materialized out of the gloom, over black-clad limbs and crossed arms. Red hair pulled back in a braid. Nadia the fight choreographer. She was alone, wrapped in an aura of chill authority that fit better with a visiting producer than with a crew member. She must be on her way to lunch after morning rehearsal. The script girl raised her eyes at Nadia’s approach and mouthed
Watch out
to one of the camera operators, who tried unsuccessfully to mask his snicker as a cough. Nadia appeared not to notice the shift of energy in the room.

“All right, everyone,” Simon called out. “This isn’t break time. Concentrate.”

He had felt Nadia’s attention on him this week. On her
resume, she had listed twelve years of martial arts training and credits for stunt work and fight choreography on a few films from the late ’90s. All likely enough, and yet . . . Beyond the rumor that she was Paul’s girlfriend, she had not revealed what her riddle was. Gunnar had taken care of hiring her, and Simon had not spoken to her since the incident with Ricky yesterday.

It had been a whim, hiring
Nadia. Possibly a mistake. Why the hell had he?

Because she didn’t play
Hollywood games. Her own games, maybe, but not those of the backstabbing, “love you, baby” variety.

You don’t know what you’re doing this time, do you
, Mercer?

The smack of the clapper sounded. Scene 97.

“Action.”

Karen did
not move. She looked past Victor, not at the camera but into Simon’s eyes, and said her line while freezing every word: “Are you afraid?”

She spoke so quietly that
the mic would not pick it up. But Simon smiled. He could use this take. The audio could be looped later to fix it.

Simon took one step to his right, so that Karen could not see him behind Victor. From his new position,
Nadia faced him across the set. He found himself fixed on her as he spoke, as if she had been party to his thoughts this whole time. Why was she watching this scene when she probably had fight choreography to do? “Keep rolling. Karen, would you take it again. To Victor.”

Karen reached toward Victor, then let her hand drop. She purred the
line, words that threatened to shiver into pieces with hidden laughter. Simon felt her words in the back of his throat, in his belly, behind his eyes.

The recollection of
how he had heard—no,
felt
—Nadia’s voice at the film festival party flashed through him. Penetrating, a low vibration. Unexpected, coming from her slight form.

Karen turned to find out what had Simon’s attention and saw Nadia. The actress heaved a breath at the ceiling, snatched a scrim off a light pole and threw it to the ground. She marched out, hair bouncing on her shoulders. As Karen passed, Nadia’s eyes moved a fraction to catch Simon’s. He did not look away.

“Cut and print,” he said.

The fight choreographer stepped back into the hallway, a half smile on her lips.

Trouble is
, there’s as much happening off-screen as on. And whose story is it?

12:05 p.m. 

“Are you a dancer?”

Leah looked up from her script to find Karen sitting across the table. She had hoped to use this time to gather her wits after a tense rehearsal with the second-unit director. This was the Karen who minutes ago had stormed off the set—she of the Simon rumors, said to be a drug addict, a man-eater. Leah knew enough about the hatred behind such whispers to dismiss them, but . . . most every time she had seen Simon lately, Karen hovered at his elbow or had her hand on his shoulder.

The back of Leah’s neck prickled. What had Paul said once?
Stars don’t have lunch with crew unless there’s blood in the water somewhere nearby.