A scrawny young man I took to be the director hovered over her, gesturing with a rolled-up script toward the free-form pool, where a waterfall tumbled over Disneyesque rocks. He looked about twenty-five and was lost inside a huge gray T-shirt that claimed to be the property of the Chicago Bears, though I doubted the guy had ever heard of Mike Ditka, much less sweated through a nutcracker drill.
"Chrissy, you look positively fab," he gushed. "Perfecto! Next, scene three, catching rays in the lagoon."
Okay, so it wasn't Gone With the Wind.
Sitting in a matching chair was another model, a dark-haired, deeply tanned young woman in a green bikini. She seemed to be pouting, maybe because Chrissy was getting all the attention, or maybe it was just her normal look. A photographer toted a video camera to the edge of the pool while an assistant took readings with a light meter. Several technicians and production people busied themselves around the pool with lights, reflectors, and assorted accoutrements of their trade. The place hummed with serious activity, Mission Control before a launch. Everyone wore shorts and T-shirts, except this big lug of a lawyer, whose blue oxford-cloth shirt was already beginning to show sweat stains.
I headed toward Chrissy when a young woman with a stopwatch hanging from her neck held up her hand. "Whoa! Crew only."
"I'm with Chrissy," I said.
She looked at me dubiously, but I was saved by my client. "Jake! Over here. We'll just be a minute."
I gave the stopwatch woman my best crooked grin. "Making a commercial is pretty intense, I guess."
"An advertorial, not a commercial." She sounded offended.
"Sorry." I walked past her and into the little circle around Chrissy. My social standing had just improved by several strata.
The director was talking to Chrissy and gesturing with his hands. "It's not merely suntan oil. It's an attitude, a way of life. It makes you glow on the inside, as well as outside."
"Only if you drink it," I said.
Chrissy suppressed a grin. Annoyed, the director looked up then continued talking to this stunning young woman who, at this precise moment, was facing a murder charge but looked ready for a relaxing week in Barbados. "Let them see your joie de vivre. Let your beauty radiate outward like the rays of the sun, warming you with its breath, a lover's kiss. The sun gives us hope, renewal . . ."
"Cancer," I added helpfully.
The budding Spielberg turned to me and scowled. "If you're here about the insurance, it's been taken care of."
"The insurance?"
"Yes!" he said petulantly. "The liability policy. Aren't you the hotel risk manager?"
"Is that what I look like?"
Chrissy giggled as the director squinted at me. "No, not really. I'd cast you as a security guard, maybe an ex-boxer with a broken nose and a checkered past."
"I'm a lawyer."
"Maybe in real life, but on the screen, never! Too solid." He smacked me on my right shoulder, the one with the steel pin inside. "Not shifty enough. Too All-American."
"Not even third team," I told him, but he didn't get it.
Chrissy bounded out of the chair, a strand of blond hair curled across her forehead. The hair stylist put his hands on his hips and glared. "Don't blame me if you end up with the Hurricane Andrew look."
"Jake, thanks for coming," Chrissy said, hugging me. "Just wait a minute and we can talk."
A minute.
Maybe it's a modeling term that means "until we lose the daylight." Because it took six hours.
They shot video of the two models in the pool, the waterfall pouring over them. Why the fuss about the hair? Don't ask me; it stayed wet most of the day. They took more footage at the cabana, rubbing lotions on each other's backs while a deeply tanned actor in white slacks and a blue blazer said, "Even our attitude is sunny on a sunny day. Let's see how Chrissy and Sofia enjoy the sun." Then he said something about aloe, vitamin E, and healthy color. I don't think Brando could have done a better job.
The whole crew moved from the pool deck down to the beach, where the photographer took some footage of the models building sand castles, running into the water, frolicking in the miniature surf, snorkeling, knee boarding, Jet Skiing, playing kadima and Frisbee, and smacking a volleyball with two male models who mysteriously showed up, pecs glistening, pearly teeth grinning.
Generic stuff. It could have been one of those beer commercials with such impossibly beautiful people you hope somebody tears an anterior cruciate ligament diving for a ball or a brew. But this wasn't an ad for one of those piss-weak American beers. It was, pardon me, an advertorial for Pineapple Pete's suntan oil.
I waited a while, then moseyed over to Coconut Willie's for a Grolsch and a six-dollar burger. I had no choice but to chill while Chrissy earned her five-thousand-dollar daily fee, which was precisely five thousand more than I was making today.
By the time I got back to the beach, they were shooting the last segment, which the stopwatch woman told me was called "hanging out." Indeed, Chrissy and Sofia simply chatted as they strolled leisurely along the waterline. A few octogenarians toddied by, including one gent wearing a yarmulke and baggy boxer trunks that hung to his knees. He stopped and stared at the two women, a cute shot—the contrast of age and youth, and all that artistic stuff—until he ruined it by scratching himself in a place you'd never use suntan oil.
I hoped Don Shula didn't come walking along the beach. Or Joe Paterno. Or my granny.
I
