Her Leading Man (38 page)

“
Don’t do it, Martin. He’s not worth
it.
”

Some of the ugliness tarnishing the air evidently
penetrated Lovejoy’s
ecstasy. He took a hasty step in
order to place himself between Pablo
Orozco and
Martin Tafft. “Yes, now,” he said in a loud voice,
then cleared his
throat. “Well, I think that went very
well. Very well. So
. . .”

He turned to Christina, rubbing his hands as if he
were still relishing
what had recently transpired and
been captured on film
.
“Do
you want to change for the
banquet scene, Christina? It’ll be the last one
for the
day,
and I’m hoping to get it in
the can in one take.”

Martin breathed deeply.
Calm down
, he commanded
himself.
Calm down
. There was no reason
for him to blow up
because Pablo Orozco was a disgusting
reprobate who wanted to add Christina to
his
long list
of conquests. Christina had better sense than
to fall for a fake like
him
.

“
Martin.”

Christina was Martin’s lover. She didn’t want
anything
to
do with a slimy actor like Pablo Orozco who
thought he was God’s gift to
women.

“
Martin?”

All he had to do now was calm himself. Martin
breathed deeply,
recalling from something he’d read
once that deep breathing helped to soothe
one’s
nerves.

“
Martin!”

Martin jumped, startled, and glanced around wildly,
expecting to see
some sort of desperate emergency
in progress. Instead, he noticed everyone
staring at
him.
They all wore expressions of patience
and understanding.

“
Um, I beg your pardon?
”
He
tried to smile but
couldn’t.

“
I said,” said Christina, “will you go with me
to
the
hotel. You probably need to change, too.”

Change.
Change? Change into what?

Enlightenment dawned. “Oh! Change! He swallowed
and felt ridiculous.
“Sure. I’ll go with you.
Yes, I probably need to change, too.” He glanced
at
Lovejoy,
who was looking faintly exasperated.
“Right. Next scene. Banquet, isn’t
it?”

“
Right.” Christina grabbed one of his
now-limp
hands and commenced tugging him toward the
hotel.

Martin followed
meekly.

Pablo
Orozco muttered, “Fah!”

“
Honestly, Martin Tafft, I don’t understand you
one
little bit.”

Furious with him and with everything and everybody
else in the world,
Christina yanked the wet garment
she’d worn in her bathing scene over her
head.

“
First you leave me sitting in that tepid water
for
an
hour while you argue about something that’s been
settled for months,
then you scold me for being in
the blasted tub—and doing a nude scene
certainly
wasn’t my idea!—and then you try to start a fight
with Pablo Orozco,
who isn’t worth the time of day,
much less the energy it would take to pop
him in
the
jaw.”

She yanked her next costume from a hanger and flung it on
over her head before she realized Martin
wasn’t moving She glanced up from
wrenching the
fabric over her hips and saw him standing there,
staring
at
her and licking his lips. All at once she felt
shy.

“
Um, I didn’t mean to cause problems,” he
said
after entirely too many empty seconds, during which
Christina felt like
covering herself with several blankets,
a heavy coat, and a quilt or two. His
gaze was
hot
enough to fry eggs.

She swallowed. “I guess you didn’t do anything
too terrible. At
least we managed to get the stupid
scene done in one take—after
waiting an hour
or so fo
r
you
to get
over your
sulks.
”

“Sulks.
”

She didn’t like the way he continued to stare at
h
er.

No, that wasn’t true. She did like the way he
looked at her. His
hot gaze made her feel soft and
feminine and desirable, three things her
upbringing
hadn’t taught her to value properly.
Her family was eager to praise
social rebellion and
a person’s willingness to fight for a just cause.
She
wasn’t
sure if her relatives simply didn’t understand
human desire or if they felt it
was somehow beneath
their dignity as Mayhews, but Christina wondered
n
ow why her parents hadn’t told her more about the
man-woman connection
in
other
than clinical terms.
She didn’t recall them
ever
mentioning love or emotional
attachment or the physical longing for one
person
that
was now causing her so much trouble. The
man-woman connection was, after all,
one of the
most powerful connections in the universe. If that
weren’t so, the
species would have died out thousands
of years ago.

“
Um
,
Martin? Shall we change?”

He didn’t answer for the longest time. Christina
reached for the
length of gold-threaded silk she was
supposed to wear over her slinky costume
and
wrapped
it around her. During the filming, she would
let it drape and flutter. Right
now, she hugged it close
to her body, trying in that way to fend off the
waves
of lust
coursing through her.

“
Blast it, Martin, we don’t have time to do
anything
now.”

He shuddered all over, briefly, and seemed to come
to his senses.
Christina didn’t know whether to be
relieved or disappointed. When she
considered alternatives,
she guessed she was relieved, work-wise. On
a personal level,
she was bitterly
disappointed.

Although it didn’t seem likely, she harbored a faint
hope in her deepest
soul of souls that she and Martin
might overcome their differences if they
craved each
other enough Physical craving was good, wasn’t it,
if it was a part of
a deep and meaningful
relationship?
As long as it didn’t interfere with one’s
duty
to one’s
gender or one’s willingness to fight to right
the world’s wrongs.

Sexual impulses couldn’t possibly be considered
bad. Could they?
Although her brain was a trifle
clouded at the moment, Christina didn’t
think so. After
all, God had created human beings and all of their
desires. Therefore,
sexual impulses were a natural
part of life.

Then again, if she followed that rationale, she
guessed she’d have
to say that God had created starvation
and poverty, too, and she didn’t like
to lay
those
hideosities on a kindly Creator.

Fudge. She was getting all mixed up. Giving herself
a hard mental shake,
she snapped, “Get dressed.
We have to get this over with one of these days,
and
the
longer we delay, the more expensive the picture
will be. Surely you don’t want
that to happen.” Had
that been more than necessarily cutting? Honestly,
she
didn’t
know.

Whether it had been or not,
her
comment
seemed to galvanize
Martin into action at last. Thank heaven. He
said,
“Right.
I’ll be there in a couple of shakes. You go
on out there and try to keep everyone
calm.”

He turned and stripped. Christina’s heart gave a
huge spasm as she
saw his bare backside come into
view. He was certainly a beautiful man.
Michelangelo
would have adored him Christina adored
him
.
Shoot,
even Paul Gabriel adored him
.

She muttered curses to herself as she left the room
and went back out
onto the set.

By the time Martin strolled onto the scene, dressed
in his slave
costume—only with a length of striped
cotton swathing the lower part of his
face, because
he was supposed to be in disguise—Christina had
draped herself on a
couch. Piles of grapes and round
loaves of bread—did Egyptians bake loaves
of bread
like
that? Oh, who cared?—were spread on a table
beside her.

Paul Gabriel lounged on a couch at her side. This
was to be the
beginning of the orgy scene, in which
Martin’s slave character was supposed to
kidnap
Christina for the last time and carry her off to
live
in
eternal bliss with him
.

Christina couldn’t help wondering if her character
wouldn’t be better
off with Pharaoh’s brother, who
could at least provide her with plenty of
food, nice
clothes, decent baths, and body lotion so her skin
wouldn’t get
chapped.

The prospect of living in filthy poverty on a barren
desert with an
escaped slave didn’t sound awfully
comfortable. Especially if their love
produced a herd
of children she’d have to take care of and feed and
clothe. Given what
she knew about Middle-Eastern
cultures, she’d get precious, little help with
those
chores
from her slave husband, who’d probably be
out seducing somebody else because
she’d lost her
figure three or four children ago.

Good
heavens.

That was her cynical side speaking. Love was
supposed
to
conquer all, at least in pictures. As she
watched Martin stride onto the set,
she wondered if
love could help to conquer the divisions between the
two of
them.

Perhaps all that was needed here was a little
education.
Some conversation without rancor or blame.
If Christina
explained carefully why equality between
men and women was so important to
her, Martin
would surely understand. Wouldn’t he?

With a shock, the notion that
he
might
want to
educate her about his own opinions conked her on
the head.

But that was
silly. After all, she was right.

Wasn’t
she?

Of course she was. There wasn’t any possible way
that he could
disagree with her about women being
the equals of men. At least they were in
all the essentials.
There was no way to change basic physiology;
not at this point in
the annals of human history.
Women would forever bear the children, and
men
would
forever be physically stronger than women.
That wasn’t the problem. The problem,
as Christina
saw it, was that men wanted to pretend that women
were less
intellectually capable than men, and that
was a flat falsehood. Men liked to
pretend that
women were
mentally unstable and could be overtaxed
by thought,
especially political thought.
They
wanted women to remain politically powerless so
as
not to
upset the status quo.

Men enjoyed having their little slavies at home,
doing their laundry
for them, so that they could go
out and have fun with other men. Drink
themselves
silly at their stupid clubs, gamble away the
family’s
food
money on cards and races. Have mistresses.

The notion of
Martin with a mistress other than
herself sent a dart
of fury through Christina. She
snarled.
,
“It’s about time you
showed up. It’s hot out
here, in case you didn’t know it.”