Babylon Confidential: A Memoir of Love, Sex, and Addiction (21 page)

When Dodi returned we sat down and had a heart-to-heart. I expressed my doubts about his lifestyle, that it wasn’t for me. I told him that I needed to get back to L.A. to prepare for the upcoming season. Instead, Dodi convinced me that we should cruise the Atlantic for a few days on his yacht
Jonikal
. The weather was welcoming, and my mood cleared as well. It had been more than a decade since Dodi and I had traveled at sea, and I was looking forward to reliving the experience.

At sea there was less interference from others. Dodi and I had enough privacy to enjoy each other and reconnect. As we relaxed together all the tensions and petty annoyances that had been building up between us drifted away.

After we made love on the gently rocking boat one night a sweet intimacy settled over us. We started talking about our lives. Dodi poignantly confessed his fear of dying without becoming a father. His father Mohamed was overbearing and had never spent much time with him as he was growing up. Dodi dreamed of having kids who could be “normal.” Kids he could take to the park or the movies without having to mobilize a private army. The whole issue had been weighing on his mind. At the time, I assumed it was because he’d recently turned forty and was having a midlife crisis. Question: What does the man who has everything regret missing out on when he hits middle age? Answer: A normal life. In retrospect, though, I can’t help but wonder if he had a premonition of his own death, much as my mother had of Patrick’s.

While I lay with my head on his arm he asked if I’d consider having a child with him. I was totally caught off guard. Dodi and I had dated on and off for more than a decade, but I had always considered us to be ships passing in the night.

I was certainly touched. Dodi trusted me because I didn’t want or need anything from him. I had my own money, my own home, and my own career—in contrast to the flock of hungry seagulls who usually hovered around him.

“I’ve known you for a long time now. We have a strong friendship. We would be good parents.”

I was hit by a powerful wave of emotion. My heart lit up as I entertained the possibility that it might just work.

I told him I’d think about it, that I needed time.

We had voyaged southward and entered the Mediterranean. Now we anchored at Monte Carlo. He was going away for a few days on business, and I could sense he was going to press the issue when he got back. We held each other for a long time, and when we let go and looked into each other’s tear-filled eyes, we kissed and hugged and said our goodbyes.

Back at his Kensington flat I sat surrounded by photos of Brooke Shields and other models and actresses he’d dated. I had promised Dodi that I’d think it over seriously, and I did. I knew one thing for certain—I didn’t love him. I mean, I felt a kind of love, a tender, maternal affection, but it wasn’t a mature, soulful love, the kind I’d felt with Rod and John Flinn, the kind you build a lifetime partnership on. And what kind of partnership would it be, anyway? He’d asked me to have his children, but he didn’t ask me to marry him, and that didn’t sit well with me. Wasn’t I good enough? Would Dodi’s other girlfriends keep coming around and competing with our children for his attention while I raised the kids? Screw that.

Then there was his family. Dodi treated me with respect, but his family existed in a different culture. I’d seen his father’s relationship with the mother of his youngest children, so I knew that if I had Dodi’s child—with or without marriage—I’d have to spend more time in that household. Women have to eat in a separate room, apart from the men. I was a young, successful, independent Western woman. I didn’t tolerate that kind of thing when I was at the Davises’ dinner with Kissinger, I didn’t let Dodi get away with it, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to sign up for a lifetime of it. And even if I somehow managed to avoid the family, I knew I would probably lose control of the child if anything ever happened to Dodi.

Still, I rang my mother and asked her for advice. It was a big decision, and I wanted to make sure I was being objective.

“Hi mom. Dodi asked me to have his baby. I was wondering . . . ”

“Do it!”

Was that what she thought of me? That I needed to cash in and settle for a second-rate relationship? In hindsight, I’m sure she meant well. All parents want their kids to settle down, but right then and there my mother’s enthusiasm to see me knocked up and “taken care of” was the deciding factor. I was and still am a very stubborn person. I got up early the next day, wrote Dodi a note, and caught the next flight back to L.A.

I love you Dodi, I always will, but even though you think I’m the most mature girl you know, I’m still a girl. I want my life and I want to see how it plays out. I’m sorry to leave without saying goodbye . . . but we had our beautiful goodbye in Monte Carlo after an incredible weekend. Please call me when you come to Los Angeles, I miss you already. CC

I knew it would make him angry, and later I heard from mutual friends that it had. Dodi had never spent much time around independent women, and he certainly was not used to being turned down. It felt like the coward’s way out, but I also saw it as a way for him to save face. From Dodi’s point of view, he had honored me with the ultimate request—to have his child—and I simply wasn’t ready for it. It seemed kinder just to go.

My relationship with John Flinn was quickly approaching its end, too. We were coming up to the two-year mark, and I’d never had a relationship that lasted more than three. He was very understanding about the whole thing and very forgiving. I was still relatively young, and he could see that I was restless and in need of a change.

As fate would have it I met another man who would light a fire in me I’d never felt before. There was something combustible between us. We both felt it, a little foretaste of an earth-shaking encounter, and it wasn’t long before we fell headlong into the flames of a tumultuous affair.

Toward the end of season four Joe Straczynski started calling me into his office for private conversations. He didn’t do that with many cast members, but I felt that it was a natural progression of the friendship that had been growing over the course of the series. It was common knowledge that I’d broken up with John, but I hadn’t advertised the fact that I had started seeing a new paramour. One day Joe asked me if I’d like to go and see a show with him. I agreed, and never gave it a second thought. We were all pretty buddy-buddy on the set and the cast and crew would often socialize after work, though Joe had never asked me to go anywhere with him before.

I suddenly knew I’d made a mistake in accepting his invitation when the next day a dozen red roses appeared at my front door.

Shit, this is a date!

But maybe it wasn’t. Maybe Joe was just being nice. I went out to meet him, and when I saw the black stretch limo pull up any doubts I’d harbored were washed away.

Fuck, this is definitely a date!

I was more than a little freaked out. I’m not normally thrown off guard by men, but it does make a difference when your boss, the guy who puts the words in the mouth of your character, who can kill or dishonor your character, asks you out on a date. It’s not entirely inappropriate; this was Hollywood after all, and things like that do happen. But that night it totally threw me for a loop. I wondered what people would think. Here I am, I’ve just come off a long relationship with the director of photography, and now I’m climbing into a limo with the show’s creator. And then I started to worry about Joe’s expectations. I’d said yes to seeing the show, I’d accepted the roses, and then I climbed into the limo with him. How do you give back roses without causing offense? In hindsight, I should have made a joke about the whole thing:
Roses? You know, I don’t date writers, Joe. I married the last writer I dated, and they’re still searching for his body.

We went to the show, and I endured some awkward conversation. It was clearly an uncomfortable evening for both of us. When he dropped me off back at home I quickly thanked him and closed the door to the limo before he had time to move in for anything physical.

It was a small thing, really, just a miscommunication between friends. But these things do change relationships. They change how people act toward one another. After that night I don’t think we ever recaptured the trust and friendship that we’d previously enjoyed.

Back on set Joe stopped calling me into his office, and I’d stay in my trailer on breaks and head home straight after work. We’d shot the last episode of the series, “Sleeping in Light,” and were preparing to shoot two
Babylon 5
TV movies. Everyone had already started auditioning for other jobs. I’d even read for the character Seven of Nine on
Star Trek: Voyager
, a role that ended up going to Jeri Ryan.

I really thought that any discomfort between Joe and me would vanish once the show was over. But sadly for both me and Susan Ivanova, that wouldn’t happen.

Joe had originally intended
Babylon 5
to run five years. Every season our ratings got better. Internationally, our popularity was higher than ever. Under ordinary circumstances we would have been able to complete the five-year story arc without a hitch. But in the fourth season the network—Warner’s Prime Time Entertainment Network—started having financial trouble, and it looked as if we weren’t going to have the money to do a fifth. Just to be safe Joe shortened the story arc so that by the end of season four all the loose ends had been tied up. The story was over. We filmed what was supposed to be the last episode, and my manager signed me to star in a TV movie on the USA cable network called
A Wing and a Prayer
. It was the first time I was the star of a Movie of the Week. I’d been a co-star, guest star, and everything in between, but never “the star,” and it was a big opportunity to take a leap forward in my career.

Then we learned that TNT and Warner Brothers had come through with the money for a fifth season.

That’s when the problems started. I couldn’t sign up for twenty-two episodes because I needed the first few episodes off to do the Movie of the Week. Joe promised that he would write me out for those episodes. He’d done the same thing for some of the other cast members. I was happy with that, but the cable network wasn’t prepared to take me on if I was double booked, because it would affect their ability to get insurance. I pressed my manager, because I was committed to continuing with the show, and he got USA to agree that everything would be okay if I got a guarantee in writing from Babylonian Productions stating that I would be released for those episodes that would be shot while
A Wing and a Prayer
was shooting.

Joe told me that he was unable to do that. If he renegotiated in writing for me then it would open the door for the rest of the cast to do the same, and that would affect the budget and scheduling and jeopardize the entire fifth season. TNT wanted all the lead actors, which included me, committed to all twenty-two episodes.

They set a deadline for me to sign the contract. I was caught between a rock and a hard place and hoped that Joe and the producers could find some way to work around it.