The Body in the Cast

brother. It obviously had something to do with why they didn't speak to each other. Millicent rarely responded to questions, though, preferring to be the recipient of information and choosing what she would share. But the woman had wolfed down two of Faith's cookies and a large mug of coffee. It was worth a try.

“Did Penny and Alden have some sort of quarrel? I've heard they don't speak to one another.'

“Yes, I believe I have heard something like that. To be more precise, Faith dear—and it is so important to be precise, don't you agree?—Penny doesn't speak to Alden. He's constantly making outrageous remarks in her presence. Howsomever, these things are all ancient history, and we must concentrate on our present goal.”

Effectively shut out, as well as reprimanded, Faith could only think to comment, 'It's a shame Penny never had any children. She's so wonderful with them.”

Millicent looked down at the counter. 'Francis Bartlett had some sort of plumbing problem,' she said vaguely. Doling out this information as a sop for withholding the rest?

Now how on earth did she find that out? Faith almost found herself asking Miss McKinley, maidenly reticence not withstanding, but to her relief, Millicent stood up abruptly, brushed the crumbs off her plaid Pendleton suit, put on her gloves, and said, 'I can't sit here all day chitchatting, my dear:' And she left with one last parting glance of annoyance in Faith's direction for having wasted her time, diverting her from her mission.

Faith put the loaves she'd formed to rise again. All in a row, the rounded mounds looked like a series of low foothills. That reminded her of North Aleford. She was well acquainted with the way certain residents of this area of town regarded themselves. Maybe it was living on a hill, like Beacon Hill. Did people who looked down on the rest of the town eventually come to look down on them in other ways? Something about being top dog, top of the heap, king of the hill?

She thought wearily of working on Penny's campaign with Millicent, apparently the self-anointed campaign manager. The election was to be held March 26. If, as she hoped, she got the contract to cater the movie shoot, she'd be in the midst of the job and Tom would have to bear the brunt of the campaign responsibilities. She felt more cheerful. It was true that politics made strange bedfellows, but seldom ones who kicked half the night and hogged the blankets as much as Millicent did.

Faith had catered for shoots in New York, and she was quick to get her name in to Alan Morris. He arranged to come by the kitchens for a tasting later that week on one of his flying visits through town. Faith was ready for him.

“Great,' he said, referring perhaps both to the attractive lady in front of him and the mouthful of warm pizzette with pears, brie, and caramelized onions (see recipe on page 326) he'd just swallowed. Faith had let her shining blond hair grow longer over the winter and now it grazed her chin in a simple blunt cut. She'd diligently lost the weight she'd put on in pregnancy, and at thirty-two, she caused as many heads to turn as she had at twenty- two, a fact that, while diminishing somewhat in importance over the years, still didn't bother her in the slightest. After the initial shock of that milestone birthday, her thirtieth, she was enjoying being thirtysomething and firmly believed the best ten years of a woman's life were between thirty-nine and forty, which gave her something to anticipate.

Alan was now speedily devouring a plateful of spinach lasagna with a three-cheese bechamel sauce, while keeping a close eye on the medley of Have Faith desserts beckoning from the counter next to him: flour-less chocolate cake with raspberry coulis, a steaming fruit grantine, and crisp dark molasses spice cookies (see recipe on page 329). He smiled. 'Max is really going to be happy.' From the relief in his voice, it was no secret that keeping Max happy was Alan Morris's most important job.

Max was Maxwell Reed, the director of the film. At fifty-two, he was both a legend and an enigma in Tinseltown. Known as the 'New Jersey Fellini,' owing to his origins as the son of a wealthy shoe manufacturer from Montclair, Reed made obscure but critically acclaimed films, often in black and white. While he was the subject of a shelf full of biographies and critical studies in Europe, he'd received little recognition in his native land. He took great pains to make it clear this bothered him not at all, but the Word on the street was that he needed a big commercial success to keep attracting backers. And the movie about to be shot in Ale- ford had to be it. No matter how much Vincent Canby and The New York Times loved it, if it didn't do at least $9 million in wide release the first weekend, Reed would be yesterday's news for the foreseeable future and could watch his films move from 'New and Recommended' to 'Cult' in the video stores.

Mercurial, with mood swings so rapid that a sentence could start on an up note and plunge two words later to despair, Max Reed had attracted a group of actors, actresses, and crew who slavishly followed him from film to film, deeming it an honor to work with the master. He rewarded their loyalty with his, making film after film with the same individuals, often playing roles himself, yet never duplicating an effect. His most famous film, Maggot Morning, cast his constant companion, the beautiful Evelyn O'Clair, as an elderly homeless woman. She won an Academy Award for best actress and went on to other roles, keeping herself available, however, for Max's films. Speculation was that fresh from her sizzling triumph for another director in Body Parts, Max wouldn't be hiding Evelyn's attributes under any bushel baskets or behind shopping bags the way he had done quite literally in Maggot, as it was called in the trades.

Maxwell Reed was also known for his obsession with security on the set. Often the actors themselves didn't know the name or plot of the movie they were shooting until it was released. He'd broken with custom this time and let it be known he was making a modern reinterpretation of Nathaniel Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter. The name of the picture was A. He'd also hired two actors who'd never appeared in any of his films previously but who were box-office magic. Over T9 Nants and Evians at the Polo Lounge, heads were nodding just perceptibly—Max was desperate indeed. If he pulled it off, the same nods could later be translated as 'I told you so.”

The first ringer was Caleb 'Cappy' Camson, star of the phenomenally successful TV series '1-800-5551212' when he was a teenager, later making a graceful transition to films. His tanned, well-developed physique, thick, dark, always slightly tousled curls, and deep brown eyes with the requisite gold flecks guaranteed any movie in which he was cast at least initially large audiences. Cappy had been in the business long enough to know his limitations and ventured from romantic comedy only for a comic romance. But nobody turned down the chance to work with Max Reed—not even Cappy. He'd modified the curls and agreed to less flattering makeup in order to play the role of the tormented young minister, Arthur Dimmesdale.

Max's other orthodox move was to cast Caresse Carroll as Pearl, Hester Prynne's daughter. Eight-year-old Caresse would be playing a major role; it could be a stretch, but Caresse was a pro down to her toenails. At age four, she'd nagged her mother, Jacqueline, into auditioning her for commercials. 'I can do that,' she'd said, and hadn't looked back. She was the child of choice for a whole string of space alien and horror movies. 'It may not be art, but I'm working,' she told her mother at six. Currently, the trades labeled her 'America's Sweetheart for the Nineties' after her gutsy portrayal of a little girl who saves the family split-level, after her parents lose their auto-plant jobs, by forming a recycling company that ends up employing most of the town. Caresse didn't have Shirley Temple's dimples or curly hair. In fact, her features werd a bit odd—straight, silken white-blond hair and large aquamarine eyes that Caresse was able to fill with tears, flash with fear, or twinkle with delight depending on the script. But it was her smile that was instantly recognizable to millions of Americans. Warm, engaging, it was the kind of smile that, well, gosh darn it, made you just have to smile right back. An eminently bankable smile.

Casting her as.Pearl months before, Max planned to use Caresse's pale luminescence to personify the name. The child was a metaphor, he told Caresse and her mother, for the essential innocence of Hester Prynne's act, a jewel beyond price to be worn proudly at her mother's breast, next to the scarlet letter of her supposed shame. Hester herself was Everywoman and Pearl, Everychild. Jacqueline and Caresse nodded solemnly when he'd related this to them in his office early in the fall. Neither had the faintest idea what he was talking about, yet, whatever it was, they both had no doubt. Caresse could do it.

Max knew Caresse was older than Hawthorne's Pearl, but audiences might find it hard to believe a three- year-old could discourse as eloquently as he'd planned on the meaning of life and existence of God. The director had told his assistant, Alan, that Hawthorne's book was a canvas—a masterpiece—to which they would essentially be adding brushstrokes, such as increasing Pearl's age.

Sitting silently in a chair next to Max since the Car-rolls' arrival was Evelyn O'Clair, who would, of course, play