A Shoot on Martha's Vineyard (27 page)

When I next looked at my watch it was time to head for the airport, and Lawrence Ingalls fell right out of my mind.

I packed Joshua's traveling gear, and woke him up. He wasn't too happy about that, but when I told him his mom was coming home he perked up. I gave him a clean diaper, a powdered bottom, and a plug, and put him and his gear in the Land Cruiser. Ten minutes later we drove through the entrance of the County of Dukes County airport, where I had occasion to briefly muse once again on the matter of Dukes County not really being Dukes
County at all, but instead being, officially, the County of Dukes County.

But this island idiosyncrasy, caused, I'd been told, by some casual error in some ancient official document, did not long occupy my mind. I had better things to think about. I drove in and parked, and Joshua and I walked past a waiting limo and on into the outdoor waiting area. Zee had been gone almost a week, going on several years.

The county airport on Martha's Vineyard has one of the seediest terminals on the East Coast, which some people think odd, considering the island's fame as a resort for the rich and famous. Compared with Nantucket's modern, airy terminal, the Vineyard's is a disaster, being old, beat-up, badly designed, and otherwise shabby and sadly out of date. Still, as might be expected on an island where all matters are passionately disputed by partisan factions, there are vociferous parties opposed to modernizing the terminal on the grounds that doing so would somehow serve to erode the already endangered character of the island. The pilots who use the airport are not included in this group, but are aligned with the pro-new terminal aficionados, whose voices are as loud as their opponents'.

Not being one who often flies, I was neutral on the subject. All I cared about was safety, and I didn't know whether a new terminal would affect that.

A dot appeared in the sky and grew larger. It became the plane from Boston, a flying cigar of the kind that airlines use to fly passengers into small airports away from the big cities. The cigar landed and taxied to the terminal. The propellers stopped turning and the door opened and passengers came out.

After a while, Zee emerged, and my heart thumped in my chest. Behind her came Drew Mondry, and behind him came a handsome woman followed by a girl who looked like the woman. Behind the girl came a beautiful man and a beautiful woman. Mondry's wife and child and the Hollywood stars, I guessed.

Zee saw us in the waiting area and came running. The three of us met in a flurry of hugs and kisses, with Zee and me trying not to squeeze Joshua too hard between us.

“Oh, it's good to be home!”

Drew Mondry, the handsome woman, the girl, and the two beautiful people came into the waiting area. Mondry came right to me. “Hi, J.W.!”

We shook hands, and he introduced me first to his wife, Emily, and their daughter, Carly, then to Kate Ballinger, whose eyes flicked from my feet to my face, and whose handshake was a lingering one.

“Well,” said Kate Ballinger in her famous sultry tones, “I see why Zee was in a hurry to get home.”

“And this is Kevin Turner,” said Drew.

Kate Ballinger's hand withdrew and was replaced with another. A manly hand this time, with a firm grip.

Kevin was so good-looking that he put handsome Drew quite in the shade. He was sun-bronzed and had bright blue eyes, and obviously kept himself very trim. He was sporting a dashing mustache, which, like his thick hair, was sun-bleached and reminded me of some actor I'd seen portraying George Armstrong Custer. Come to think of it, maybe the actor had been Kevin Turner.

Kevin had a melodious baritone voice with which he proclaimed his pleasure at finally meeting me even as his eyes kept straying to Zee.

Around us, people were starting to realize that they were in the presence of more than mere mortals, and were beginning to stare and whisper to one another.

“We'd better move along,” said Drew. “You and Kate take the limo, Kevin. The driver knows where to go. I'll get the luggage and a cab, and Emily and Carly and I will be right along.”

Kate and Kevin, obviously used to having awed eyes around them, bestowed smiles upon the whisperers and starers and slipped away.

The luggage came off the plane, and I gave Joshua to
Zee and got her bag. Drew shook hands again. “I'll be in touch. I want to give you a job while we're here. Zee can tell you about it.”

“Come on,” said Zee, pulling on my arm.

“See you later, Zee,” said Emily. “Nice to meet you, JW.”

“Nice to meet you,” echoed Carly Mondry.

We walked out to the parking lot. There Zee almost hugged the Land Cruiser, then climbed in and took Joshua in her lap. When I got into the driver's seat, she pulled me to her and kissed me.

“Home, James,” she said when we parted, breathless.

“Yes, ma'am.”

I drove out of the airport. “You seem anxious to get away from your friends,” I said. “The last time we talked on the phone you were having a great time.”

“That was before I met Kevin Turner,” she said. “Kevin Turner is an asshole!”

Zee rarely used such language, so I was impressed.

“Really?” I asked.

“Really,” she said.

Joshua looked up at her. Really? he asked. She held him in both hands and looked him in the eye. “Really,” she repeated. “Really, really, really!” That was a lot of reallies. Really. I drove us home.

“He's just what I said he was,” said Zee. “Kate's got an eye for men, goodness knows, but Kevin Turner really thinks he's God's gift to women. He even has that Errol Flynn mustache to perfect the image.”

The sun was going down and we were on the balcony eating smoked bluefish pâté and cheese on crackers and drinking ice-cold Luksusowa martinis. Joshua was sitting in Zee's lap and listening to the conversation.

“Maybe Kate and Kevin should get together,” I said. “They could feed on each other.” I was feeling good.

“They may already be together,” said Zee. “Part of the time, at least. But not all the time. I saw her ogling you.”

“Women always ogle me,” I said. “Surely you must have noticed it over the years. They can't help themselves. But I only ogle you.”

“Sure you do, you liar. I've seen your head almost come unscrewed when a pretty girl walked by.”

“Never.”

“Ha!”

“At least not since we got married.” “Ha, again!”

“Well, sometimes, maybe, but when it happens I'm just comparing them to you, sweets, and they always come up short.”

“Yeah, yeah. Maybe I should buy you some blinders.”

I gave her a kiss. “I'm already blinded by your beauty, dear. Besides, I haven't noticed that you've lost your eye for other men since we tied the knot.”

She kissed me back. “Nonsense. My eyes are only for you. Officially, at least.” She sipped her drink and put her head against my shoulder. “But you and I are just oglers. Kevin is a predator. He has a slick tongue and a thousand hands, and the worst thing is that women just fall all over him.”

“It's a curse some of us suffer,” I said. “The gals just won't leave us alone.”

“Then you'd have understood the moves he put on me at Drew and Emily's party. I felt like Little Red Riding Hood at Grandma's house.”

I felt an unmistakable evaporation of my good humor.

“Oh?”

“Yes, oh. He was on my case the whole evening. He doesn't know what no means.”

“Is that a fact?” Kevin Turner's face appeared in my mind. He looked sleek and predatory.

“Yes, it's a fact,” said Zee. “I'm just glad you weren't there.”

I looked at her. “Why? It sounds to me like maybe I should have been.”

“Because you might have gotten protective like you do sometimes, and I don't know what might have happened.”

I thought I knew. “Protective?” I said. “Me?”

“Yes, you. But I can take care of myself, and I took care of Kevin.”

“How?”

She grinned. “He told me I had a body made for breeding. I told him I was sorry the same couldn't be said for him. There was a small crowd listening.”

I could see it happening. I smiled. “Good for you,” I said. Then I had a happy thought. “But does putting the star in his place mean that he'll blackball you from this movie they're making?”

“Oh, no. In his private life, Kevin is the seven-letter word I said he was, but he's all pro when it comes to his work. They still want me in the movie, even though it's
only a teeny part. Drew and Emily say that it can lead to better things.”

Better things. “You mean bigger roles?”

“That's what they say.”

Hmmmmm. I drank some martini, “What do you think of that idea?”

She shrugged. “I don't believe it, if you want to know the truth. But I don't know. I seem to photograph well, and they say that's important. And they say I can learn how to act. But it might mean I'd have to move out West and give up nursing, and I don't think I want to do either of those things. I don't know.”

“Some people make a lot of money being actors. More than nurses make.”

She pulled away from me. “I'm not a nurse because of the money.”

I pulled her back. “I know.”

She leaned against me. “I make as much money as I need. I won't take a job I don't like just so I can make more.”

“Maybe you'll like being an actress,” I said. “What are you going to be doing in this movie?”

“Not much, and I'll probably end up being the face on the cutting room floor. Wait here.”

She put Joshua in my lap and trotted downstairs. When she came up again, she had a manuscript in her hand.

“Here,” she said, giving it to me. “This is the script.”

I had never seen a script before. This one was for
The Treasure Hunters.
I started reading it. It consisted of dialogue and rather cursory technical information about what the actors were doing and how the cameras were going to be used.

“Actually,” said Zee, “it's not the final script, it's what I think they call a shooting script. They might change it a lot before they're through. I guess Jack Slade—he's going to be the director—has a reputation for doing that. Anyway, this is me.”

She flipped through the script until she came to a character called Pirate Girl, who had one line: “This will buy you a night you'll never forget, Captain.”

Zee smiled at me. “That's me. Pirate Girl. The scene is a dive on the waterfront back in the seventeen hundreds. I'm the girl the pirate captain—that's Kevin Turner, of course—chooses when he gets into port after capturing a Spanish galleon loaded with treasure from Peru. He tosses me a piece of eight, and after I bite it to make sure it's real gold, I promise him the night of his life.”

“I've had a few of those with you, myself,” I said. “And every one of them was worth at least one piece of eight.”

“Which, now that you mention it, I never got,” said Zee. She turned more pages. “And here I am again. Only this time I'm a modern girl sitting in a modern bar. The modern treasure hunter, Kevin again, who just might be the descendant of the old-time pirate captain, sees me and flashes back to the Pirate Girl scene. And I have two other teeny scenes: modern girl passing and eyeing modern Kevin on the modern street, and pirate girl passing and eyeing pirate Kevin on the pirate street. That's it. That's my whole bit. Four scenes.”

“It's enough,” I said. “Academy Award for best supporting actress.”

“We can put it up there on the mantel, right beside your dad's best decoy. Anyway, that's how the movie's being done. The modern treasure hunters are after the gold the old-time pirate buried somewhere, and the guy leading the expedition has these flashbacks. All the actors play double roles: modern ones and eighteenth-century ones. The idea is to parallel modern swashbuckling and skullduggery with old-time swashbuckling and skullduggery.”

“A fable for our times.”

“Well, actually it's more a vehicle for Kevin and Kate. And Jack Slade's movies may make a lot of money, but they aren't famous for intellectual content, I'm told.” She
grinned at me. “The same can be said for Kevin, of course, but that doesn't keep him from being a star.”

“I've always suspected that it was my lofty mind that kept me from being a leading man, and now I know. You'll be the exception to the rule: a beauty who is also a brain.”

“Not all stars are dumb,” said Zee. “It just happens that Kevin isn't too bright. As for you, it wasn't your mind that attracted me; my eyes never got above your belt. Didn't I ever tell you that?”

“Remember what you're learning about women, Josh,” I said. “This information could prove invaluable to you in about fifteen years.”

I gave him to his mother and went downstairs to fix supper.

Later, when Joshua was finally asleep after the excitement of seeing Mom come home, I added another IOU to my pieces of eight debt, and Zee and I afterward lay wound in each other's arms feeling musky and satisfied.

“What does Drew have in mind for me?” I asked. “He mentioned a job.”

“I think he wants you for local knowledge. As a driver who knows where places are. Or as somebody who knows where to find things they might need when they begin shooting. Materials for a scene, maybe. You might like it. It would be something different for you.”

“That it would.” And I could use the money.

“Kevin and Kate will be vacationing for the next few days, but other people will be coming in all week and Drew will be working with them. Props people and electricians and lawyers—”

“Lawyers?”

“They haven't killed them all yet, in spite of Dick the Butcher's advice. There are contracts to sign, like one with John and Mattie Skye for the use of their farm, and with other people for other places they might use, and where there are contracts, there are lawyers.”