Her Leading Man (16 page)

“
I hurt
everywhere
,” Orozco announced
comprehensively.
“And I can’t move my arm. If it moves,
it hurts like hell. I have to
hold it with my other
hand.”

Since Martin had already observed this phenomenon,
he saw no reason to
doubt the actor.

“
Are you sure?” Christina asked, moving
closer.
“Want me to look at it? I’ve had some medical
train
ing
.” She had been allowed to attend nursing
college
in
Pasadena. Whoopee. But she did know how to set
bones and fix slings.

“
I want a doctor.” Orozco snarled, pulling
away
from her as if he were a bratty child hogging a
favorite
toy.
“I won’t allow a mere female to examine
me. I’m too important to settle for
half measures.”

“
You’re also too arrogant for anyone with half
a
brain to bother with,” Christina snapped back,
evidently
stung. She stepped away from the actor
abruptly and looked as if she
wouldn’t touch him
with a ten-foot pole if he begged and offered her
sacks of
money.

Although Martin had begun harboring a strange,
tingly sensation
about Christina somehow being responsible
for this problem—he knew he was
being
illogical—he tried to soothe her feelings along with
Orozco’s. “It’s all
right, Pablo. We’ll get this taken
care of right away.” Noticing the actor
still stood
wobbling, on one foot, he asked, “Um, is your right
foot hurt,
too?”

“
Yes,
it’s hurt!” Orozco bellowed. “I fell in a cactus.”

Christina
whirled around and covered her mouth.

Martin grimaced at her, but he couldn’t tell if she
was laughing or not.
He said, because he was peeved,
“This is not funny, Christina”

“
Of course it isn’t,” she agreed, although the
words
came out smothered.

“
It’s a
catastrophe!” announced Orozco, unwilling to accept a less dire
interpretation of recent events.

“
Here,
Pablo, can you walk?”

“
No. I
can’t.”

The actor had begun to whine, and Martin reached
for his worry lock.
“Well, do you want me to get
an automobile for you? It’ll take a few
minutes.”

He nearly jumped out of his skin when Christina
tapped him on the
shoulder. “What,” he barked, spinning
around
.

Tilting her head and gazing at him in irony, she
s
aid,
“I’ll be happy to go back and get my motorcar,
Martin. I can
drive.” She cast a withering look at
Orozco. “Even if I
can’t
tell a broken bone from a
camel’s hump.”

Martin gave up on his one clump of hair as being
too paltry a
pacifier for the circumstances, and ran
both of his hands through his hair,
dislodging his soft
cap. “Oh, God, this is terrible.
Very well
, get a car.
Thanks, Christina.”

Even if she had all but predicted this tragedy, and
he had an eerie
feeling in his guts that she was somehow
responsible—although that was
impossible and
meant he was completely crazy, which was too awful
even to think about
at the moment—he was grateful
to her
.

Lord, he had to get himself under some kind of
control.

“
No problem, Martin.”

She laid her hand on his arm for no more than
two seconds, but
Martin felt it through his whole
body. Every tense muscle, every
overwrought nerve,
every jangled synapse
in
him relaxed as if
she’d
passed
a wand over his head and cured him by magic.
He heaved a deep
sigh
and felt much better
.

What the devil was it about Christina Mayhew? It
was uncanny,
whatever it was. He watched her hurrying
back to the resort and wished he
could simply
trail after her and forget about Pablo Orozco,
Egyptian
Idyll
, Peerless Studio, and the whole rest of the
world.

“
That
woman is a curse.”

The words came from behind him and shocked
Martin to the soles
of his feet. He turned and stared
at Orozco. “I beg your pardon?”

Orozco jerked his head toward the retreating form
of Christina. It was
a lovely form. Tall, graceful, well
shaped, and refined, she was the only
woman Martin
had ever seen who looked genteel in men’s
trousers.

“
I said, that Christina Mayhew is a curse. She
did
this to me.”

Martin stared at him for a full minute, wondering
if the idiot really
had begun to
believe
his own press
releases. The
Peerless publicity department had billed
Orozco
as a Latin American grandee of sorts,
and
had
hinted at Gypsies and a variety of
fortune-tellers
and spiritualists in his background.
Martin knew full
well that Orozco
started out in the Italian ghetto in
New York City. His
last name, until Peerless had
got
hold of him, had been Orsini, and his father had
been a butcher in
the Bronx.
“How do you figure that?” He kept his tone mild
in case Orozco had
fallen on his
head and was suffering
delusions.

Orozco
sniffed. “I only know it is true.”

Good God, he’d even adopted a mysterious Latin-American
accent, the big fat ham
.
After gazing
after
Christina for another second or two, Martin turned
back to Orozco.
“
Um
, actually, I think you fell off
because you didn’t
follow Mr. Schuman’s instructions,
Pablo.”

“Fah!”

Orozco turned away and stared off into the distance
as if he were a
prince surveying his kingdom. Martin
shook his head, giving up on even trying
to
understand
the workings of an actor’s mind, and
glanced
around to see if he could
find the came
l
. The
damned
animals cost almost as much as the
actors
.

Thank God. There was Schuman. Martin left the
actor to contemplate
the nature of
cursed
females by
himself and trotted over to see
if the camel had been
damaged
.
It sure looked sulky. Then again, camels
always looked slightly
pugnacious. Martin
guessed it was in their natures to be thus. Not unlike the
natures
of
some actors he’d dealt with.

“
Is everything all right, Howard? Is the
camel
hurt?”

Schuman looked as if he’d like to shoot
some
thing.
Or someone. Martin
suspected Orozco.
“I think he’ll be all right.
Upset, though We won’t
be able to use
him again for a while.” He glared
at
Orozco,
who glared back. “Why in the name of
heaven didn’t you just do as I told
you?”

“
Fah. I
know how to ride animals.”

Martin was losing his patience here. “Doggone it,
Pablo, you acted in
one cowboy picture and were
taught to ride a horse. That doesn’t qualify you
as
an expert
in riding camels, especially since you’d
never ridden anything more exciting
than a streetcar
in the Bronx before you came out West.”

Orozco lifted his chin, adopted a noble expression,
and stared off into
the distance some more, as if he
didn’t care to dignify Martin’s comment
with a
response.

“
I swear, Orozco,” said Schuman, who was
still
boiling mad, “if this animal is hurt in any way,
I’ll
take it
out of your hide. And your pocketbook.”

“
All
right now, fellows, let’s just—”

Martin’s attempt at conciliation was ignored by
both parties. Orozco
turned on Schuman in a
fury.
“I will sue you! I
will make sure you never ride
another camel in California! I will—”

“
You’ll do no such thing,” countered
Schuman,
fully as furious as Orozco.
“Dammit, you argued
with me and argued with me and
didn’t do what I
told you to
do, and now look what happened! You
caused the blasted accident! You’re
the one
who’s
at
fault
here!”

“
Bah! I never—
”

A motorcar’s horn blared behind them, and
Ma
rtin whirled around
to see Christina driving toward
them,
followed by a veritable comet’s tail of dust. “Thank
God,” he
whispered
, considering her intervention as
some kind of
miracle. Maybe there really was something
mystical about her.

“
How’s the patient?” Christina asked, sounding
absolutely
down-to-earth and way too cheerful, in Martin’s
opinion, under the
circumstances
.

He was too rattled to take her to task for not being
more upset about
this disaster. “He thinks his arm’s
broken.”

“
I know.” She looked down her nose at
Orozco,
who
was scowling at no one in particular. She also
sounded as if she didn’t care
about his arm. “Anything
else?”

“
Not
that we know about yet.”

Martin thought she muttered, “Too bad,” but
wasn’t
sure.

Mr. Schuman had begun leading his unsettled
camel back to the
stable. Watching him—or perhaps
it was the camel she was watching—with
interest
,
Christina said, “I asked Mr. Carpenter to
call in a
doctor.” Mr. Carpenter managed the. Desert Palm
Resort
.

“
Thanks, Christina.” Deciding he
didn’t have time
to be jealous over whether or not Christina found
Schuman attractive,
Martin went over to Orozco and
held out an arm.
“
Here,
Pablo, do you need help
getting into the motor?”

Orozco didn’t budge. Eyeing Christina, who sat behind the
wheel, with something that looked very
much like contempt, he said, “Will
she be driving?”

Christina spoke before Martin could, and her voice
might have been
chipped from a
block of ice. “Of
course I’ll be driving. This is my machine. I
drove
Gran
and me out
here just the other day.”

“
Come on, Pablo,” Martin urged, hoping to
forestall
another temper tantrum. Christina already hated
Orozco’s guts. If he
said very many more nasty things
to her and/or about her, Martin wasn’t
sure she
wouldn’t just up and quit, and then where would they
all be?

His stomach churne
d
at the possibility.
He consoled
himself with the thought that his upset stomach
was merely the
result of contemplating having to film
an Egyptian epic with the heroine
having run off and
the hero with his arm in a cast. It had
nothing to
do with the notion of Christina
Mayhew leaving and
him possibly never seeing her again.

Running
his hand through his hair again,
Martin
wondered if maybe Orozco was right. Maybe the
picture
was
cursed.

He shook off the nonsensical thought. “Here, I’ll
help
you.”

“
My foot hurts,” Orozco announced. “It has
cactus
spines embedded in it. I’m sure it will become
infected.”