Destiny (67 page)

"Yeah." He paused. "We might need money, though, Lewis. We might need that."

"Money? Money? Who needs it?" Lewis, forgetting about his trust fund in the emotion of the moment, threw his Chinese takeout box high in the air.

"We need it, Lewis. To make movies."

Lewis instantly sobered. He stared at Thad.

"JFedo?"

"Sure. You and L When we make movies together." Thad yawned, and stood up. "Let's sleep now, yeah?"

"Okay, Thad," Lewis said as meekly as a child.

He bedded down on the floor as usual, and lay awake for hours, staring up at the ceiling. He felt transfigured, remade. Thad wanted to make movies, with him. He had announced it casually, as if it were a matter of course, something they both understood. Lewis felt humble, he felt honored, he felt purposeful. When he woke up next morning, he had a hangover, but he still felt the same.

Five words and a yawn, and Thad had given him his metier. No one except his football coach had ever shown such simple confidence in him; Lewis felt then as he had felt on the football field, when he caught a perfect pass, feinted, and then ran, winging past the defense, knowing, just knowing, he could make it all the way to the goal line.

Lewis's mind grew foggier; the voice of the television football commentator rose to a screaming pitch. Lewis let his head fall forward on his arms; he slept.

He was still sleeping, some half an hour later, when Thad's cinematog-rapher, Victor—whom Thad had just released—walked past the small bar, whistling, and thinking with some pleasure of the party that night.

DESTINY • 415

In the room in Trastevere, Thad finished loading his camera, and with an odd expression on his face, turned away from Helene, went to the door, and locked it.

"You do understand?" Thad turned back to her, smiling. "Victor was in the way. It'll go better now. You'll get it."

Helene looked at him uncertainly. They had been working on this last sequence now for hours, and she knew she wasn't getting it right. He wanted something, a certain look, he said, and she couldn't give it to him.

All afternoon, she'd been unable to understand why. At that moment, when Thad locked the door, and turned around and smiled at her, she knew why, quite suddenly. She didn't feel safe anymore. She felt afraid.

"What are you doing?" she said, hearing her own voice rise. It was a stupid question, and Thad didn't bother to answer it. After all, she could see what he was doing well enough.

He was holding his camera tenderly, and rubbing grease across the lens.

When Lewis finally woke, it was late afternoon. He lurched out of the bar. As soon as he was in the fresh air, and vertical, he began to feel violently sick. He weaved his way down an alley, vomited over an earthenware pot of geraniums, and felt slightly better.

He staggered a few more yards to the location house, found Fabian had left, and sank down weakly on the stairs. Above him, the door was still closed. He heard the drone of Thad's voice, and then silence.

He had a vision of Thad, at some point in the past, probably in Los Angeles, explaining that yes, of course, he and Lewis were a team, that was decided, but that as a team, they were not complete. They needed another element, a third factor. They needed, Thad had said, a woman, an actress, only her acting ability was not of primary importance: what they needed, above all, was the right woman, with the right face.

In the three months in Paris, when Lewis had worked at the Cafe Strasbourg, Thad had spent a lot of time looking for that face. He had interviewed and auditioned about sixty women, as far as Lewis could make out, also behind closed doors. None of them had been right. And then, one night, Thad had turned up at the Strasbourg, sweating, out of breath, gleaming with excitement: he had found her, just met her, in the street, outside the Cinematheque. And she was perfect. She was waiting back in their room now. Thad had told her he'd find her a place to stay.

416 • SALLY BEAUMAN

They'd left the cafe and gone straight home. And there, waiting for him, sitting on the sofa in that attic room, was Helen. Her face swam before Lewis's eyes now. He groaned, and slumped back on the stairs, his mind swooping toward a dizzying unconsciousness again. Helen and Thad. Thad and Helen. Helen and Thad and Lewis . . .

He was not sure if he slept, but he felt as if he dreamed. When he surfaced again, Thad was standing over him. For a moment, Lewis couldn't think where he was, and couldn't remember what had happened, he was only aware that his head was throbbing painfully, and that his throat felt parched.

Then something in Thad's manner, something odd, brought his memory rushing back. His head cleared; he looked up at Thad, newly alert.

Thad was shifting about on his feet—always a sign of nervousness in him. The expression on his face was a sickly mixture of suppressed excitement and alarm. He was sweating, though the evening was cool. His hands were in the pockets of his grease-stained jeans, and he jiggled the change and keys that always made his pockets bulge.

"Lewis. It's Helen. She's kind of upset. Can you come up?"

Lewis stood. He gave Thad one long look, and then bounded up the stairs. He came to an abrupt halt in the doorway.

The room was empty, he thought at first. Victor had gone. All the film lights had been switched off, and only one small table lamp was on. Cables snaked all over the floor; equipment was stacked in a comer. By the door was a neat pile of film cans.

The bed that dominated the small room was unmade, and it was a moment before Lewis realized that it must be Helen who was making that horrible noise. He crossed the room in two strides, and pulled the sheet back, his heart hammering fast, an awful sick dread rising in the pit of his stomach.

He didn't know what he expected to see—blood, perhaps, because it sounded as if she were in pain. But there was no blood. Just Helen, crouched in the fetal position in the middle of the bed, making the dry gasping sound people made when they'd been punched in the stomach.

Lewis leaned across and put his arms around her, aware that he was trembling almost as much as she was. Carefully, he lifted her arms away from her face. No bruises, no cuts, no swellings, no apparent injury; wet cheeks. She wouldn't open her eyes. She wouldn't look at him. She just went on making that horrible dry noise. Lewis was so frightened that it was a moment before he realized she was wearing only a thin dressing gown of some silky stuff, and that, under it, she was naked.

He laid her back gently against the pillow, and then drew the sheet up to

DESTINY • 417

her shoulders. Then he rounded on Thad, who was shifting fi"om foot to foot in the doorway.

"You bastard. You fucking pervert. Where's Victor? What have you been doing to her?"

He could hardly speak for the choking anger he felt. Thad's gaze slid away from his face. He took his hands out of his pockets and waved them in the air.

"Nothing. Nothing. I didn't touch her."

"Liar. You goddamned liar." Lewis lurched across the room and grabbed Thad by the shirt. He slammed him back against the wall.

"Did you hit her? Did you?"

"Hit her? Of course I didn't fucking well hit her." Thad wriggled his fat body ineffectively. "You think I'd get a kick out of beating up a woman? I never touched her. I didn't do a thing—Lewis, fucking well put me down, will you?"

Slowly Lewis relaxed his grip, letting Thad slide down against the wall. Thad started gabbling nervously.

"I let Victor go. Not long ago. An hour. Maybe two. I lose track when I'm working. I wanted to shoot the very last part myself I needed to, Lewis. Victor being there, it wasn't right, he was in the way, I could feel it. The vibes were all wrong. It's hand-held, the last bit, and I wanted to do it myself That's all. That's all we've been doing, Lewis."

"You fat prick. So how come she's in this state now? Look at her—go on, take a really good look. ..."

He twisted Thad's head around in the direction of the bed. Thad squirmed. "I don't know. I swear to you, Lewis, I don't know. I said some things, maybe—I can't remember. It wasn't going right. She wouldn't give me the look, not the look I wanted, and I had to get it, Lewis. Today's the final day. I said six weeks two days, and that's what it is. Lewis, let go of me, for fuck's sake. What are you—drunk or something? You're hurting me, Lewis. Let go. ..."

"If you've touched her, you asshole—if you've screwed up—I'll hurt you a whole lot more. I'll ..."

"It's all right, Lewis."

Her voice made him jump. He swung around and saw that she was sitting up in bed, the sheet drawn around her shoulders. She had stopped crying. Later—many years later—Lewis was to realize that that was the first, and the last, occasion on which he saw her cry.

"It's all right, Lewis. Really." She swallowed. Her face was chalk-white under her makeup, and her eyes were enormous and dark against its pallor. Lewis let go of Thad, and crossed slowly back to the bed.

He stood at the edge of it, hesitating, confused, aware that something

418 • SALLY BEAUMAN

was happening to him, something in him was changing. Then, awkwardly, he simply held out his hand, and Helen took it.

"It's my fault." Her voice steadied. "Thad was just doing his job. He needed that shot, and I couldn't get it right. He said a few things, that's all. And he—upset me."

She looked up at Thad as she said that. Lewis saw their gazes intersect for a moment, coldly, with a kind of perfect understanding. Then she looked away. Lewis had no doubt she was lying.

Images rose up in his mind, beauteous images and bestial ones. He pushed them away, knowing he feared them, and fearing that, deep down, they also excited him. At that moment, as Thad stood there silently, Lewis sensed for the first time Thad's capacity for domination. He felt a sense of some dark pull, winding him in, winding Helen in. He sensed that he ought to resist in some way, and that nothing in his own nature, nothing in his life had equipped him to do so. He felt he had blundered, brashly, innocently, into something he did not understand, and could not grasp, and that it was desperately important to blunder out again, unscathed. His desire to hit Thad then, to assert his superior physical strength and just to smash Thad into the ground, was very strong. He took a step forward, and then stopped. He pushed his blond hair back from his forehead, and hesitated. He looked from Helen to Thad, from Thad to Helen, and then said, to neither in particular, "Oh, hell. Let's get out of here."

At once, without hesitation, she slid from the bed, pulling the dressing gown around her. She took Lewis's hand.

"Lewis—I want to go with you."

Instantly Lewis felt an obscure sense of triumph, a sudden winging elation, as if he had done battle and won. He looked at Thad, but Thad appeared indifferent. He shrugged.

"The party's started by now, I guess."

"I don't want to go to the party." She turned to Lewis. "I don't want to go back to that house. I want to leave, go somewhere else. Now^

She made the demand with a kind of childish imperiousness, appealing to Lewis as if Thad were not in the room. Lewis found the plea curiously flattering; it was as if she believed that Lewis could deal with anything on her behalf.

"We don't have to go back there. We can go anywhere you like."

"Thank you, Lewis." She pressed his hand. "I'll go and change."

She turned away and went into one of the rooms beyond, which had been used for makeup. She closed the door. As soon as it was closed, Thad let out his breath in a little whistle. He leaned back against the wall, smiling and shaking his head.

"Oh, Lewis. Lewis ..."

DESTINY • 419

He sounded amused, and infinitely patronizing. Lewis glared at him.

"Can I share the joke?"

"I doubt it, Lewis. I really do."

Lewis looked at him for a moment uncertainly. Then, as his elation evaporated, together with the oddly mystic sense of power he had felt a few moments before, he slumped down on the bed.

His hangover was catching up with him; the confusion was catching up with him. He must still be drunk, he decided. He didn't understand what the hell was going on, just that he felt jealous and angry, involved and excluded, powerful and impotent—all at once. What had just happened felt like a power game, a test of strength, apparently between him and Thad, in fact between Thad and Helen. She had seemed to need him; she had turned to him, not Thad; and yet, somehow, dimly, he had the feeling that he was being used. He buried his face in his hands.

It was at that point that Thad became very gentle. He explained that Helen was very strung up, that making the film had meant a lot to her, that it was the tension of finishing it that had made her snap like that. Women who seemed very calm were always the most hysterical underneath. What she needed now, he suggested, was to go away somewhere and rest, just as he'd been saying for weeks. Obviously, Lewis was the person to go with her. She trusted Lewis, she'd made that obvious.

And someone had to keep an eye on her—they'd agreed on that—otherwise she might just take off again, the way she did in Paris. And neither he nor Lewis wanted that. They wanted to work with her again—when Lewis saw the rushes, he'd understand. She had this incredible quality on film, it was just amazing. Though it was better not to let her know that yet—they didn't want her getting too confident, getting independent. She was very young still, half woman, half child, and when she got these ideas in her head—well, it was like handling a child; it was a good idea to humor her. If she didn't want to go back to the party, back to the palazzo, so what, that was no sweat. . . .

He kept on in this vein for some while, until Helen returned. When he saw her then, it seemed to Lewis that what Thad said made sense. She seemed perfectly recovered, still a little pale, but calm, the attack of nerves, if that was what it was, entirely over.

It was decided that Lewis would take her out to dinner, and that over dinner they would plan what to do next, whether to take a break, and if so, when and where. Thad took little part in this exchange. He appeared to have lost all interest. He simply prowled around the room, fiddling with