Scar Flowers (7 page)

Karen
flipped her cell phone open just long enough to turn it off. She wore a pair of cloth napkins draped over her blouse and had replaced her high heels with running shoes. Around the edges of the green awning overhead the noon sun beat down, but the rows of picnic tables sat in the shade.

“I used to be,” said Leah. “Now I teach. Ballet.”

The useful part of the real Nadia Weston’s resume stopped a few years ago, when she left the film industry. Ballet was a safe cover story.

“I thought so. It’s in your demeanor. I’m Karen.” She extended her hand.

“Nadia Weston.”

Yes
, Simon would find Karen appealing. She looked like a couple of his exes: blond and aloof. Luminous skin, like Faith’s.

What was Faith doing now, back home in
Seattle?

“Why’d you stop dancing? You were a professional, I assume? You have the body for it.” Karen hesitated before the word “body” and gestured with her fork, as if searching for the right term. Her tone conveyed a judgment of dancers as simple
-minded creatures of the flesh, living in the shadows of propriety. For a moment a girl’s freckled features and plaid school uniform superimposed themselves over Karen’s blond form—a memory of Trudy Green, a girl from high school to whom Leah confided an incident with her Uncle Glen, who had touched her breast when he hugged her at a family dinner. She should have known that was a mistake, akin to giving someone a map to the place where they could hurt her. Sure enough, a twisted version of the story spread afterward, about how Leah had seduced her uncle during a family Christmas gathering.

“I went to the
School of American Ballet in New York.”

“Really? When
?” Karen twisted her fork in a mound of noodles.

“As a teenager.” Nineteen and far too small. Far too old
, too, in ballerina years, but her family would not pay the tuition, so she’d spent precious time earning it herself.

“Did you go on to the New York City Ballet?”
asked Karen, as though the idea filled her with awe. She leaned forward on her elbows.

“No.” The rejection letter from SAB had read,
While we appreciate your technical agility, we are looking for dancers with more artistic expressiveness.

A pleased expression flashed across Karen’s face.
“D’you ever feel trapped by expectations? As a woman. All the pressures.”

“What makes you ask?” Leah pushed her plate aside.

“I’m an actress; it’s my job to observe. I’ve seen you watching, learning from everyone. You do what you have to to blend in,” said Karen. “But you’re not like them. Mind if I smoke?”

Leah smiled. “Yes, I do.”

Karen’s own smile flickered, but she set her purse down unopened.

“You have a certain quality that reminds me of Julia. I hope you don’t mind if I model my performance on you. I know Simon would approve.”

Leah folded her hands in her lap. “You’re very flattering. Has he said as much?”

“He doesn’t have to.” Karen pulled the napkins off her shoulders and released her hair from its clip. “This business is hell for women. I’m sure you know what it’s like to finally get a job and then find you weren’t the first choice or even the third. It’s nice to find sisterhood in places like that, women who don’t get in your way.” Karen extracted a cigarette from her purse and stood. “I’m glad we talked.”

“So am I.”

“It was nice meeting you,
Nada
.” That last word came out sweet as poisoned candy. She ignited her cigarette with an engraved silver lighter, flipped the lid closed to extinguish the flame, and snapped her purse shut as she exhaled smoke.

During their conversation, Karen had slipped back into her high heels. She walked with a slow roll to her hips and flicked ash on the lawn, as Celia materialized to carry her running shoes.

Nada.
So Miss Karen was not so friendly after all.

But this was the same star of whom Celia complained, “Sweet Jesus, that girl even chews her fake nails! I have to buff and paint them every morning.”

Paul’s words from that morning: “You don’t know every-thing that goes on on this picture. Fran tells me all kinds of things. Like she thinks StarBorn’ll be sold, and she’d only fight to take
Babylon
with her to a new studio if I promise to stay on the project. If you want me to put in a good word for Mercer, you should give me more of your time.”

Leah
dropped her plate in the bin and returned to her scene. John, the second-unit director, waved his hands as he spoke to Ricky: “If I nail the brawl sequence, Simon’ll have to let me direct the rest of the scene too. I mean, it’s a crowd scene; he doesn’t need to do everything, and it’s my chance to—”

He turned as Leah approached. Ricky leaned against a tree nearby, a smirk on his face as John said, “Ricky and I reworked most of your choreography over lunch. Why don’t you take the rest of the day off?”

“That’s very kind of you, but no. I’d love to see what you two have come up with.” Her chest felt as if someone had tightened a belt around it.

“No, you should take the day off. In fact, you should take the rest of the picture off. My eight-year-old could’ve come up with something better.” John leaned in closer. “We’ll see what Simon has to say after I’ve talked with him about you.”

Friday, May 26,
1:00 p.m. Day 5 of shooting.

“That was quite a performance you got out of Ricky
on Thursday.” Victor, the leading man, lay sprawled on the couch.

“It was his idea, not mine. He’s a natural showman,”
said Leah.

“Well, ol’ Rick thinks you hexed him.” Victor put his hands behind his head. “As long as everyone gets along, I’m happy. The last thing I need is another soap opera.”

The set of Julia’s living room huddled in the middle of the soundstage, three walls and no ceiling surrounded by wires, sawhorses, and racks of lights. In the shadows outside the set, Celia sat on a folding chair and knitted with a ball of hairy purple wool. Leah watched Karen rummage through the drawers of a desk, rattling and banging. Like a spoiled teenager searching for her parents’ cache of liquor.

Julia’s sculptures of her patients’ dreams adorned the room: a one-winged, bear-like creature;
a three-faced woman; an obese cat whose cross-sectioned belly revealed that it was pregnant with human embryos. A decor designed to elicit reactions from visitors.

Simon and Brian the cinematographer walked in
with the set designer, a silver-haired woman with a stack of notebooks in her arms. Leah’s heart leaped. Nerves. She had promised Paul not to disrupt his film.

T
his was her first chance to work with Simon. A little over a week left before her bet with Paul came due.

“Thanks for waiting, everyone.” Simon dropped his backpack on the floor and resettled his baseball cap on his head as. The sparse beginnings of a beard fringed his jaw, and he wore black jeans and a purple T-shirt with a rip in one sleeve. Locks of hair stuck out from under the cap and curved against his neck.

“Reyna,” he said to the
set designer, “this room needs more red. The sofa should be red leather, and the wallpaper is too shiny. I want a more intimate feel, modern but not flashy. By tomorrow. Julia and Blake, there’s your sofa, and the door will be over there in the corner.”

Simon
pointed to the missing fourth wall, where the camera stood. Brian the cinematographer sat next to it, scribbling notes, wearing his stocking cap and a pair of khaki Army-surplus pants.

“The props are wonderful
. Julia’s notebooks are even here.” Karen stretched her arms over her head. She placed a hand on Simon’s shoulder and murmured in his ear.

“
Sure,” answered Simon. He put a hand on her upper arm for a moment—whether to extricate himself or to show reciprocal interest she could not tell—before he turned to address everyone. “Let’s walk through it once.”

Were they sleeping together? She made herself relax her jaw.

As Karen took her place, Simon turned to Leah. “Ready?”

“
Yes,” she answered.

“And I’d like to talk to you for a minute after rehearsal.”
His words sounded casual, but her pulse quickened. Would there be trouble?

Karen twined against
Victor on the couch, consoling and justifying, and he began to return her caresses. They argued, and Karen grabbed Victor’s shoulders.

“
Good,” said Simon. “Stop there. Let’s work out the confrontation.”

“
I’ve been thinking.” Karen sat up. Her white top did not cover the diamond stud in her navel. She flexed her bare toes against the floor. “Julia wants to know what Blake thinks of her. Even if she’s going to lose, she at least wants to leave her mark.”

“
Yes, good.” Simon rubbed his forehead. “Except Julia’s probably not thinking about losing. She still has a chance.”

“
Maybe she goes to kiss him, and when he pushes her away, she pulls a knife,” said Karen. “She’d be prepared.”

Leah crossed her ankles. Karen’s pink nail polish matched her shorts and lipstick.

“How about something that puts her at risk, reveals her vulnerabilities? It can be ballsy, but nothing that would really hurt him. Do you think she realizes she’s in love with him?” Simon slid a finger under the back of his baseball cap as he paced.

Subtle.
Simon left his actors a way to save face when he steered them toward a different approach.

“Subconsciously she does.
So it needs to be something passionate.”

“
If Julia’s wearing a skirt here, it would be easy for her to mark Blake and learn his mind,” said Leah. Her heart thumped in her throat.

“
A skirt?” Karen looked as though she had smelled some-thing unpleasant.

Victor raised his eyebrows.

“The best way to read someone is to do the unexpected. In a wraparound skirt, Julia would be covered but with the potential for exposure, vulnerability, that Blake can see. She could beckon with one hand and threaten with the other.”

“
Go on,” said Simon.

“
To mark Blake and claim him, she slides her hand under her clothes and between her legs, then uses those fingers to paint him with her scent. On his upper lip, under his nose. That forces him to react primally; she’ll see how he really feels about her.” She was reluctant to look down at her hands, in case they were shaking. What was making her lose her nerve like this?

“
Visceral,” said Victor with a nod.

“
Scent? Do you mean perfume? Or BO?” Karen crossed her arms and legs.

“It’s a seduction.” Leah kept her eyes on Karen, but she felt Simon’s attention on her. “Julia knows to appeal to the animal brain.”

“Go on,” he said, his voice a note lower, rough at the edges.

“
Her other hand has a surprise too,” continued Leah. “Pieces of razorblade glued to the undersides of her fingernails, like knives. They don’t do serious harm unless you hit someone in the eye. She could jab her fingers up under his chin while she delivers her last line, cut him a little. To him it would feel like claws and would come from out of nowhere. I could mark that for you—Julia’s grab and Victor’s block.”

Simon rubbed his chin. No one spoke.

“
That’s the sort of thing that’d reach an audience,” he said at last. “After all Julia’s complicated games she finally cracks, reacts emotionally with an animal gesture. What do you think, Karen?”

Relief rose in Leah’s chest, but she suppressed it.
Careful; stay with it.

Karen’s face flushed.
“I’m not sure it would work.”

“
Let’s walk through it. Leah can show us what she means.”

By the end of rehearsal, Victor
and Simon found the choreography inspiring enough that Karen said she would do it.

As she stepped out into the sunlight, Leah felt Simon’s voice between her shoulder
blades: “Good work today, Nadia. Everyone making you feel at home? I hear you haven’t been showing up Friday nights at Fischer’s.” His hand grasped the strap of his backpack. Smooth hands and arms, marked with the finest white ghost lines of scars. He stood close, as close as Karen had stood to him earlier. Her knees had gone weak as water, but exhil-aration kept her strong. Sympathetic connection. She knew this state, knew how to guide both their reactions.

“Everyone’s been very gracious.”

“I hear that you’re with—” He cleared his throat and let the words trail off.

Before Simon could continue, John the second-unit director appeared.

“Simon!” John swirled his travel mug and sipped. “Say the word and I can get you a new fight choreographer. Someone with more experience. No offense, Nadia.”

“I told you yesterday I choose my own team,” said Simon. “What’s such a problem that you couldn’t wait for me to get back to you?”

“Her moves for the brawl scene yesterday were pedestrian, just standard TV-episode stuff: punch-block, punch-block. The film deserves better, and I thought—”

“Do you have a specific example of substandard work?”

“No . . . I filmed my choreography, not hers.”

“I’ve seen Nadia do good work, and I expect you to work with her. Do we need to discuss this further?”

John shook his head as he walked away.

Simon turned to her. “Don’t worry about John. He’s gunning for a promotion.”

She nodded. Success! A small one but definite. He had come to her defense.

Simon called to the intern to make a note about Julia’s wardrobe, already intent on his next shot.

“Where’d you learn that razorblade trick?” Karen appeared at Leah’s elbow.

“
From studying fight choreography.”

“Oh, yes.
Of course.” Karen smiled and turned to follow Simon.

Leah stayed a discreet distance behind.
Simon and Karen went behind a hedge and descended the stairs toward the south parking lot, which allowed Leah to get close enough to hear their conversation.

Karen said, “
But what about that razorblade bit she suggested? I knew I’d heard it before, from my friend who researched prostitutes for a role. It’s a streetwalker trick. Funny how she came up with it right off the top of her head like that—don’t you think?”