fuss everybody was making. Alexi refused to let Michel return to his Massachusetts school and locked him away in a private clinic in Switzerland. Fleur tried to feel sorry for Michel-she did feel sorry for him-but some ugly, unforgiving part of her found a terrible justice in Michel finally being the outcast.
“Aren’t you going to eat the rest of your salad?” Belinda asked.
“I’m not hungry anymore.”
The stench of Dick Spano’s cigar filled the projection room, along with a lingering onion odor from the rubble of fast-food containers. Tonight Jake was watching two weeks’ worth of rushes from the back row. As an actor, he never did this, but as a fledgling screenwriter he knew he had to see how his dialogue was working so he could think about what might need to be rewritten.
“You nailed it there, Jako,” Johnny Guy said in response to the first exchange of dialogue between Matt and Lizzie. “You’re one hell of a writer. Don’t know why you waste your time with those New York theater types.”
“They feed my ego.” Jake kept his eyes on the screen as Lizzie began to kiss Matt. “Damn.”
The men watched one cut after another of the kiss.
“It’s not bad,” Dick Spano offered at the end.
“She’s on the right track,” Johnny Guy said.
“It sucks.” Jake finished his Mexican beer and set the bottle on the floor. “She’s okay up to the kiss, but she’s never going to be able to handle the heavier stuff.”
“Stop being so negative. She’ll do fine.”
“It’s not in her to handle Lizzie. Fleur’s feisty, and she puts up a hell of a good front, but she grew up in a convent, for God’s sake.”
“It wasn’t a convent,” Dick said. “It was a convent school. There’s a difference.”
“It’s more than that. She’s sophisticated, but she isn’t worldly. She’s traveled all over the world, and I’ve never met a kid her age who’s so well-read-she talks about philosophy and politics like a European. But she seems to have been living her life inside some kind of glass bubble. Her handlers have kept a tight rein on her. She doesn’t have any ordinary life experience, and she’s not a good enough actress to hide that.”
Johnny Guy peeled the wrapper from a Milky Way. “She’ll come through. She’s a hard worker, and the camera loves her.”
Jake slumped in his seat and watched. Johnny Guy was right about one thing. The camera did love her. That big face illuminated the screen, along with those knockout chorus-girl legs. She wasn’t conventionally graceful, but he found something appealing about her long, strong stride.
Still, her odd naivete was a far cry from Lizzie’s manipulative sexuality. In the final love scene, Lizzie had to dominate Matt so that his last illusions about her innocence are ripped away. Fleur went through the motions, but he’d seen women go through the motions all his life, and this kid didn’t ring true.
It had been a long day, and he rubbed his eyes. This film’s success was more important to him than anything he’d done. He’d written a couple of screenplays, but they’d ended up in the wastebasket. With
It had happened so fast. He’d written his first play in Vietnam when he was twenty. He’d worked on it in secret and finished it not long before he was shipped home. After he’d been released from a San Diego military hospital, he rewrote it, then mailed it to New York the day he was discharged. Forty-eight hours later, an L.A. casting agent spotted him and asked him to read for a small part in a Paul Newman Western. He’d been signed the next day, and a month later, a New York impresario called to talk about producing the play he’d sent off. Jake had finished the film and caught a red-eye east.
That experience marked the beginning of his hectic double life. The producer staged his play. Jake received little money, but a lot of glory. The studio liked his screen performance and offered him a bigger part. The money was too good for a kid from the wrong side of Cleveland to turn down. He began to juggle. West Coast for money, East Coast for love.
He signed on for the first Caliber picture and began a new play. Bird Dog buried the studio under an avalanche of fan mail, and the play won the Pulitzer. He thought about quitting Hollywood, but the play had earned less than half of what he could get for his next picture. He made the picture, and he’d been making them ever since, one after the other. No regrets-or at least not very many.
He returned his concentration to the screen. Despite the way he teased Flower Power about being a glamour girl, she didn’t seem to care much about her appearance. She didn’t look into a mirror unless she had to, and even then she never spent an extra second admiring herself. Fleur Savagar was more complicated than he’d expected.
Part of his problem with her was that she didn’t look anything like the real Liz, who’d been petite and brunette. When he and Liz had walked across campus, she’d needed to take two steps to his one. He remembered looking up into the stands when he was playing basketball and seeing her shiny dark hair caught back with the silver clip he’d bought her. All that naive, romantic bullshit.
He couldn’t handle any more memories or he’d start hearing Creedence Clearwater and smelling napalm. He headed for the door. On the way, his foot caught the empty beer bottle, and he sent it crashing into the wall.
The morning after her arrival in L.A., Belinda waited at the back of the soundstage while Fleur was in makeup. Finally she heard his footsteps. The years slipped away. She was eighteen again, standing at the counter of Schwab’s drugstore. She half expected him to pull a crumpled pack of Chesterfields from the pocket of his uniform jacket. Her heart began to pound. The slouch of his shoulders, the dip of his head-a man is his own man. Bad Boy James Dean.
“I love your movies.” She stepped forward, neatly blocking his path. “Especially the Caliber pictures.”
He gave her a crooked smile. “Thanks.”
“I’m Belinda Savagar, Fleur’s mother.” She extended her hand. As he took it, she felt dizzy.
“Mrs. Savagar. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Please. Call me Belinda. I want to thank you for being so nice to Fleur. She told me how you’ve helped her.”
“It’s hard at first.”
“But not everyone is kind enough to ease the way.”
“She’s a good kid.”
He was getting ready to move away, so she set the tips of her manicured fingers on his sleeve. “Forgive me if I’m being presumptuous, but Fleur and I would like to thank you properly. We’re tossing some steaks on the grill Sunday afternoon. Nothing fancy. Strictly Indiana backyard cookout.”
His eyes skimmed over her navy Yves Saint Laurent tunic and white gabardine trousers. She could see he liked what he saw. “You don’t look like you’re from Indiana.”
“Hoosier born and bred.” She favored him with a mischievous look. “We’re lighting the charcoal around three.”
“I’m afraid I’m tied up Sunday,” he said, with what sounded like genuine regret. “Could you hold that charcoal for a week?”
“I just might be able to do that.”
As he smiled and walked away, she knew she’d done it exactly right, the same way she’d have done it for Jimmy. Cold beer, potato chips served in the bag, and hide the Perrier. God, she missed real men.
The following weekend, Fleur glared down at her mother. Belinda lay on a lounge at the side of the pool, her white bikini and gold ankle bracelet glimmering against her oiled body, her eyes closed beneath oversized tortoiseshell sunglasses. It was five minutes past three on Sunday afternoon. “I can’t believe you did this. I really can’t! I haven’t been able to look him in the eye since you told me. You put him in a horrible position, not to mention me. The last thing he wants to do on his only day off is come here.”
Belinda spread her fingers so she could tan between them. “Don’t be silly, baby. He’s going to have a wonderful time. We’ll see to it.”
Exactly what Belinda had been saying ever since she told Fleur she’d invited Jake for a Sunday cookout. Fleur grabbed the leaf net and marched to the edge of the pool. It was bad enough she had to watch how she behaved around Jake all week. Now she had to do it on Sunday, too. If he ever suspected she had this dumb crush on him…
