Dazzle The Complete Unabridged Trilogy (75 page)

A stab of resentment caused her cheeks to prickle and flash
becomingly. She couldn't help but think that she was not a
woman—not any more—but a slab of meat at the butcher's,
waiting to be grabbed, poked, prodded, and sniffed at by finicky customers, as prone to rejection as acceptance. It was a
humiliating, inhuman, and unjust position to be in.

Yet somehow, despite it all, her heart pounding in her ears, she kept on moving with a queenly stride, her chin raised, her
head held at a regal angle. All outward indications said she was the self-assured, quintessential beauty, a siren, a heart
breaker.

Miraculously, she made it across the room without stum
bling. As she approached Oscar Skolnik he noticeably sat up
straighter, raising his crystal blue eyes to meet her gaze. In
response, she readjusted her line of vision accordingly by rais
ing her own gaze further, somehow managing, at the same
time, to paint what she hoped was a coolly confident smile on
her face. But the smile was not real. It was a false smile, as plastic as the shell of the radio in Inge's room.

'Ah, just what we need!' Skolnik said when she halted
beside the easel, facing her panel of judges from a distance of
five feet. He sat back in a deceptively casual pose, crossing
one leg over the other, but his sharp eyes never left her for an
instant. 'What do
you
think of it?'

His voice made her start, its sudden sonorous baritone
breaking the acute silence as a gunshot might a hushed tomb's.

'Wh-what?' Her vision lowered, meeting his eyes for the
first time, and she stared at him blankly.

'I asked what you thought of it.' His crystalline eyes bore
into hers. 'Sometimes a fresh, impartial opinion sheds a good
deal more light on such matters.'

Opinion?
She felt her heart stop for an agonizing moment.
An opinion of what?

She flitted a sideways glance at Louis Ziolko, but he was no
help. He gave her a lopsided little grin. She turned her head and looked now directly into Skolnik's face.

Everything about the man seemed bigger than life. He was
too rugged to be called distinguished; he was a man thoroughly capable of the exploits that were part and parcel of his growing
legend. Just as other men could instantly give off the
impression of being oily or unctuous or fastidious, he exuded
raw, potent, unadulterated power. He was clearly a man to
be reckoned with. He smoked a pipe, drank champagne, and never gambled—other than on big business deals, which were
gamble enough—and was a man who appeared, remarkably,
to have only one vice, an exorbitantly expensive one: women,
women, and more women. Rumour had it that he had bedded
all the single women worth having in Hollywood, and had
then gone on to raid Los Angeles' marital bedrooms, gossip
Tamara wouldn't have doubted the truth of for an instant.
There was a way he had of undressing a woman with his eyes,
something of which she was uncomfortably aware at the moment. His eyes were the pale blue of arctic ice and conveyed the deceptive laziness of a riverboat gambler.

He wore a paisley silk dressing gown with Turkish slippers,
and was puffing on a clay pipe. His hair was prematurely grey.
His voice was cultured, a melodious, rich baritone. He was
saved from the fate of being merely handsome by the network
of telltale facial scars, evidence of the dangers of aviation: he
had crashed three times in prototype aircraft of his own design,
and had lived to tell the tales. Yet for all the scars, possibly
because of them, there was something brutally attractive
about him, a blatant quality of bursting sexual vitality. Every
crease and scar told of a man who had already crammed a
lifetime of living into a few short years.

She forced herself to pull back from Skolnik's smouldering
magnetism. He was certainly no man to treat casually; she had
the distinct feeling that a woman could easily get hurt around
him. But still, she couldn't help conjuring up an unbidden picture of him naked. It seemed to jump up before her eyes.
A lion! That was what he was. A jungle creature. A hungry,
predatory beast forever on the prowl.

She realized with a sudden start that he had been studying
her with the same frankness with which she was studying him,
almost as if he had been able to seize on her inner life force
and pull it out of her. Frightening.

Then, with an easy grin that disarmed, that redeemed his
improbably stony features and his deeply rooted lusts, he said,
'You must excuse me. Of course you can't know what we've
been discussing.' He thumbed a gesture toward the canvas beside her. 'Well? What's your opinion? Should I buy it or
not?'

Tamara peered cautiously around the easel, then took two
steps forward and turned her back on the group. She stared at
the painting. It was a large rectangle, painted off-white. Off-
centre near the top was a perfect black square, its angles lining
up with the edges of the canvas. Another, smaller perfect
red square under it was painted slightly on the diagonal. She
furrowed her brow, trying to make sense of it.
What could she
say?

'I really know nothing about art,' she said slowly, furrowing
her brow. 'I
do
find it . . . interesting, though.'

She could hear Skolnik chuckling.

Bernard Katzenbach, the man with the Vandyke beard, was, above all, a salesman. He raised his beard-pointed chin
defiantly. 'It is
more
than interesting,' he intoned indignantly,
displaying glossy rabbitlike teeth. 'All art is interesting, of
course,' he went on in sepulchral tones, 'since even the worst
creative efforts have the redeeming quality of giving us a glimpse of the artist's soul. But this . . . this is an interesting,
a heroic, a
majestic
vista of a tormented soul which has ultimately reduced life's myriad complexities to their simplest,
most manageable and profound forms.'

Two squares
profound?
Tamara couldn't believe her ears.

'Tell me,' Skolnik interjected laconically with a lazy twirl of
his index finger, 'is it worth two thousand dollars?'

'I
s it . . .' Katzenbach sputtered,
'
is it worth . . . can a
monetary price
ever
be put on such genius? Why, it's a
Malevich—'

'I asked the lady,' Skolnik said easily.

Oh-oh, Tamara thought, and said nothing.

'Well, Miss Boralevi?' Skolnik prodded gently. 'Would you
spend two thousand dollars on this painting?'

She turned to face him and was silent for a moment. 'Two thousand dollars?' She managed to laugh lightly, 'I don't
have
two thousand dollars, never have had, so there is absolutely
no way I can begin to imagine spending it. I'm afraid you've
asked the wrong person.'

Did she hear a palpable sigh of relief emanating from the
stick figure that was the art dealer? Or was it her imagination?

'Well-said,' Skolnik said approvingly. 'You must have been
bred for sociability. An important asset in a star when it comes
to dealing with the press and the public.'

Did this mean she had passed his test, whatever it was?
And he'd mentioned the word 'star'. Did this mean he really
intended to make her one?

'Louie,' Skolnik said without rising, 'I think you should
introduce us to the beautiful lady.'

Louis Ziolko nodded. 'As you all know, this is Tamara Boralevi, whose screen test you have all seen.' He turned to
Tamara. 'Tamara, I'd like you to meet the powers that be at
IA. To start with, seated in the chair, Oscar Skolnik, president
of IA.'

Tamara nodded. 'Mr. Skolnik.'

'Standing directly to his left, Roger Callas, our general man
ager. Next to him is Bruce Slesin, vice-president, publicity.
And on the right, the gentleman nearest O.T. is Milton Ivey,
our general counsel.'

'Gentlemen,' Tamara said.

Except for Oscar Skolnik, who remained seated, each man stepped foward and shook her hand in turn, each of them
murmuring that he was pleased to meet her.

'And the gentleman on the right?' she asked.

'Claude de Chantilly-Siciles,' Ziolko said, 'our art director.
Claude gives our pictures their unique look.'

The short, dapper Frenchman bowed low over Tamara's
hand. 'Enchanté, Mademoiselle Boralevi,' he said gallantly,
his breath prickling the back of her hand.

'Don't let his continental manners and phony accent fool
you,' Ziolko added with a chuckle. 'Claude's as American as
apple pie, and a slick old lecher to boot. So don't say you
weren't forewarned.'

Claude de Chantilly-Siciles put on a pained expression.
"They are jealous!' he said fervently with a mock scowl. 'Can
I help it if the ladies find me attractive?'

Tamara laughed along with the rest of them.

'And then, of course, representing the talent divisions are
the ladies,' Ziolko continued. 'Seated beside Mr. Skolnik is
Miss Rhoda Dorsey, who heads the reading department. It is
she who provides us with the various properties we might wish
to consider buying and making into films.'

'Miss Dorsey.' Tamara inclined her head. 'I hope I have the
chance to overtax your department's workload.'

The woman wearing heavy horn-rims, her hair pulled back
into a no-nonsense bun, laughed. 'I only wish you would.
Sometimes I think my readers are nothing more than lazy
bookworms enjoying themselves.'

'And the lady who is standing is Mrs. Carol Anderegg, vice-
president, talent. It is her department which combs the
country for suitable talent.'