Her Leading Man (35 page)

Blast it all, every once in a while Christina got
tired of waving
banners and setting examples for others.
Being the center of negative
attention could become
downright exhausting, even when one
believed
wholeheartedly in the causes one espoused.

Sometimes she just wanted to relax and have fun.
She even admitted to
herself—glancing at her grandmother
as she did so in order to make sure her
innermost
secret didn’t express itself on her face—she
wouldn’t mind having
a man around who enjoyed
pampering her. Heck, it must be sort of nice to
be
treated
like something fragile and soft and valuable.

Not, of course, that women weren’t valuable in and
of themselves. And
if she were to be perfectly frank
with herself, she knew good and well that
most
women
weren’t pampered at all, but were forced to
work too hard for too little
recompense, and half
the
time they
died before their time from sheer weariness.
She’d read Jacob Riis’s
heart-wrenching book,
How the Other Half Lives
. She knew the appalling
conditions millions
of her female fellows endured.
Why, women were no better than chattel most of
the
time and
to most of the world.

Christina knew full well, too, that she and her
family
were
among the privileged. Not only were they
an established family with roots here
in the United
States, but they were solidly middle class and, as a
family, more than
moderately intelligent. Any one of
those attributes gave people an advantage
in this unkind
world. When she added them all together, she
ought to be
perfectly satisfied with her lot in life.
She ought to embrace her family’s
heritage as rabble-rousing reformers with joy and contentment
and
be
satisfied with the occasional suffrage march or
letter-writing
campaign.

But did
she?

Heavens, no.
That was too simple.

She had to aspire to complete equality. She had to
want to be a doctor.
She had to fall in love with a
man who, while more tolerant and intelligent
than
most
other men on earth, possessed conventional ideals.
What’s worse, she
had to consider those conventional
ideals as being more important than all
of
Martin’s
good qualities and a serious impediment to
their continued
relationship.

If she wasn’t driving, she might just whack herself
on the forehead in
an effort to slam some sense into
her brain.

“
Whatever is the matter with you, girl?”

Christina jerked to attention behind the wheel and
darted a glance at
her grandmother, who was frowning
at her, full-force. One of Mrs. Mayhew’s
full
-
force
frowns was enough to make anyone sit up and
pay attention, and
Christina did so at once.

“
Nothing’s the matter,” she said, feeling
defensive
and hating herself for it. “I was just thinking
about
. . .
things.” She’d die before she admitted her
thoughts
to
Gra
n.
She could hear Gran’s ridiculing laughter
ringing in her ears
already

“
Well, pay attention to the road. I don’t want
to
be
splattered against a tree because your mind’s on
your young man.”
Gran’s voice was tart and more
than usually snappish.

“
I’m not thinking about Martin,” Christina
snapped
back.

G
ran sniffed in obvious
disbelief
.
“Sheer foolishness,”
she muttered.
“Idiocy
.
”

Unfortunately, Christina thought so, too.
Neither one spoke
again until they reached Indio
several hours later.

Martin didn’t want to have anything to do with
the next scene being
filmed. It was the infamous
bathing scene, and he didn’t want to see
Christina
rise, naked, from her bath in the full view of
cameras,
crew, onlookers, himself, and Pablo
Orozco. The
mere thought of Orozco ogling
Christina made his
blood run cold.

“
Are you
sure we have to do the scene this way?”

Phineas Lovejoy, who hadn’t driven back to
Pasadena after all,
believing correctly that Martin
needed his moral support, rubbed his eyes
and
sighed..
“Martin, we’ve been over this at least a hundred
times. This scene is
crucial to
the whole picture.”

“
I still don’t see why she has to be naked.”
Martin
tried hard not to sound as though he were
whining.

“
She’s not going to be naked,” Lovejoy
explained
patiently, as he’d done several times before, ever
since
Martin
had insisted on Christina not being totally naked..
“She’s got that
filmy thing covering her.”

“
Which is going to be soaking wet and
plastered
to her—” Martin couldn’t make himself say the word
breasts
aloud. As far as he
was concerned, Christina’s
breasts were his to look at, caress, and fondle.
The
rest of
the world could just go
and
look at some
other female’s
breasts, damn it all.

“
You’re the one who insisted on her wearing
it,”
Lovejoy pointed out.

“
I know, I know.” And what’s more, he didn’t
like
it any more now than he had when he’d suggested
it.
That sheer thing
was only slightly better than having her
bare
flesh
exposed to the world.

“
Besides, she’ll be covered from neck to
ankles,
Lovejoy said wearily. “And not only that, but we’ve
roped off the set so
that people can’t get close enough
to see anything.”

“
Ha. The only reason the scene’s in the picture
is
so
that people will be able to see things. Everything.”

“
Martin, will you try to be sensible about
this?
You know good and well that the cameras will be
far enough away that
they’ll only hint at her nakedness.”

“
Ha!”

“
Besides that, they have to be far enough
away
from the two of you so that nobody will recognize
the change in actors
from Orozco to you.”

Martin knew Lovejoy was tired of arguing about
this scene. He even
understood his best friend’s frustration
with Martin’s sudden
recalcitrance—after all,
until he’d fallen madly in love with Christina,
Martin hadn’t had any qualms whatever about her
parading
stark naked in front of the entire
universe. He
couldn’t help it, though. He loved her now, and he
wanted to keep her
to himself.

“
I’m beginning to think it would be less
provocative
if she were naked than to have that filmy thing
pasted to her body,
blast it, Phin.”

Lovejoy sighed heavily. “I don’t know what you’re
in such a dither
for, Martin. We’ve gone over this a
million times. The scene was settled
before the
crew came to Indio. We’ve even moved the cameras
back several feet
because of Orozco’s
broken arm.”

Despising himself for being irrational, Martin
muttered
his
final, desperate argument. “I’m afraid we’re
going too far, Phin. People are
getting fed up with
the pictures and have started calling all of us
immoral
swine
and saying we’re ruining the
nation’s morals.
Look at the headlines. Every day, there’s
another
story
about some drugged-up actor or boozy actress
getting into trouble. The Purity
League is calling for
a ban on nudity in the pictures, and they’re
getting
more
and more vocal.”

“
To hell with the Purity League.” Lovejoy was
losing
his temper.

Martin didn’t really blame him, but he grabbed on
to his latest and
last
argument
because it was his
only hope. “But Phin, if we don’t
start regulating
the industry ourselves, some censorship body is
going
to step
in and do it for us. It would be
much better
to behave responsibly before they tell us
how to produce
our own pictures.”

Lovejoy was tugging madly at his lower lip. Martin
was tugging madly at
the lock of hair he pulled on
when upset. Martin knew the two of them were
at
their
collective wits’ ends. What’s more, he feared it
was all his fault
for making this fuss. The time to
have done that was before they began
production on
Egyptian Idyll
. Even he knew
it was too late to try
to change anything now.
Nevertheless, he persisted.

“
And look at what the temperance
people are saying
about the industry.” He waved a
Los Angeles Herald
Examiner
in his partner’s
face. “There’s another
story on the first page about wild parties and
drunken
revels and sex orgies. I think it’s the sex that’s
really
got
the Purity people and the D.A.R. riled up. That,
and
the
drunkenness. We’re going to get it if we don’t
watch out, and you
know it as well as I do.”

“
Marty,” Lovejoy said, sounding as tired and
frustrated
as he looked, “this whole thing has been settled
for months.
Christina’s ready. The cameras are ready.
The crew’s ready.” He gestured at
Martin’s faux
Egyptian costume. “Hell, even you’re ready. Let’s
get
the
damned scene shot and over with, and then we
can all relax.”

Martin gave up at last. He knew he couldn’t win.
Dash it, he knew he
was being unreasonable and irrational
about it, even. Still, he hated
it.

He felt more than usually glum when he walked
onto the set.
Christina had been soaking in her bath
for forty-five minutes, while he and
Lovejoy had argued
about the scene, and she was probably wrinkled
up like a prune by
this time. Martin knew he’d been
foolish to prolong her agony. If he hadn’t
caused such
a
furor, the scene would be in the can by this time,
and Christina would
be all
covered up again. At least
the weather was so warm, her water didn’t
have a
chance
to get cold.

Damn it, he
hated this.

He did, however, look pretty darned good in his
Egyptian sandals,
robe, and headpiece, even if he did
say so to himself. He looked a darned
sight better
than Orozco had, mainly because Martin’s legs were
firm, hairy, and
muscular
—probably
because he rode
his horse and played polo on his
extremely rare off
hours—and Pablo’s legs were skinny. He hoped
Christina
appreciated the
difference. At least she
wouldn’t have Pablo leering at her from up
close.
He’d
be on the sidelines, leering with the rest of the
crew.

Damn it to hell and back, he wished he hadn’t
thought about that.
Cranky and gruff, he called out,
“Places.”

Spying an Indio resident standing behind the
roped-off set with a
pair of opera glasses in his
hands, he shut his eyes and told himself not to
blow
up. This
would be over soon, and it wouldn’t do Peerless
any good if the director
of
Egyptian
Idyll
beat
the tar out of an innocent bystander. Even if said
bystander was a
disgusting, lecherous, evil-minded
voyeur.