Microsoft Word - Rogers, Rosemary - The Crowd Pleasers (52 page)

"Buena sera," Joseph Palumbo said pleasantly as he sauntered up. "It is a nice night, no?"

Sunday was one of the longest and most difficult days Anne had ever forced herself to endure. Sleep had not come easily the night before, in spite of the Valium. The setting moon shone into her room, and even after she had pulled the drapes together and had closed her eyes, she could almost imagine its cold silver light falling across her body. Dry ice-making her alternately cold and hot.

Don't think-don't think. If it hadn't been so late, she would have called Dr. Brightman.

She tried breathing deeply, concentrating on making every muscle in her body relax, but when sleep finally brought the blackness she looked for, it was after five in the morning.

Harris let her sleep late, but she couldn't very well sleep all day long, nor hide away in her room. Consciously escaping, she tried to hide ugly memories behind the fog-bank of tiredness in her mind.

The sun shone in the late afternoon and everyone was talking about the drought and how much California needed rain. People who had gone to town for the weekend were drifting back in-including Sarah and Jean.

Anne met James Markham briefly before he left with his taciturn, unsmiling friend, who was such a contrast to Markham's smiling charm.

"I'm looking forward to seeing this film. Harris tells me you're fantastic in the part .. ."

And Carol was staying on for two extra days, to relax. No escaping Carol, and her bright, curious eyes.

"Darling, I watched some of the rushes and couldn't believe it was you. We have to have a nice long talk soon-to catch up on everything!"

How much did Carol know? Carol and Webb exchanging tapes ... Karim glowering at her all through dinner ... Webb and Ria coming in late without any apology, sitting very close together. Everything Harris had told her seemed absurdly melodramatic, perhaps because she wanted to keep on thinking so.

People and bits of dialogue flickered through her consciousness like pieces of glass falling together to make a kaleidoscope pattern. But once, while everyone else had been talking, Webb had looked across the length of the table at her and their eyes had met, fusing together for what seemed an interminable time and could only have been a mere instant. Long enough for Anne to feel the blinding truth like a sunburst of light flashing across her mind.

It's the same for him . .. the same . ..

She sensed it and knew he sensed it, too, even across the distance that separated them and would always separate them. Like animals that stalked each other in the dark, each one seeking to destroy the other and yet fascinated by the scent of the other. He would kill her if he had to, and she would kill him if she had to save herself, but even that knowledge couldn't change what was there between them.

The moment was there and gone, leaving her with a sense of fatalism that stayed with her through the rest of the night and most of the next day.

The script was now a jumble of multicolored pages that seemed to grow thicker and bulkier by the day. Pleydel, backed up by the director of photography, kept changing times and setting-sometimes even the dialogue itself.

Anne was in costume already-too many layers of petticoats under her skirts. She and Sarah sat in an air-conditioned room, leafing through the pages while outside the window the workmen swarmed about, setting up the next scene. There was iced champagne-Dom Perignon, no less-in a silver bucket between them, and Carol, at loose ends since Markham had left, had drifted in and out.

She and Sarah knew each other-they had exchanged sweetened barbs already, while Anne had stayed neutral, sipping her champagne and wishing she could strip off her clothes and go swimming.

"You're not nervous, are you, darling? You've been doing just marvelously, everybody says so. You're going to be a superstar when this is finally in the can. Are you enjoying every minute?"

"It's too hot for all these layers of clothing. That's all I can think about right now."

Carol had laughed, running fingers through her magnificent mane of hair. "Do you ever think back to that time in Deepwood when you helped me out? All you had to wear then was my negligee, wasn't it? What a difference now."

Anne had managed to look directly into Carol's questioning, challenging eyes. "Yes-we're all very different now, aren't we?"

Carol was a basic bitch and she was getting to be one, too. After Carol had gone, Sarah gave a little sigh in her perfumed wake.

"You won't let her get you down, will you, dear?" She turned the air-conditioner up higher. "God! I thought it never got hot around here. I almost wish the fog hadn't been burned away. You're not nervous, are you? We don't have much to do this time, and Hal is really thrilled at the progress you're making in meditation."

They had had a late-morning session while Pleydel was supervising the shooting of some exterior scenes-mostly long-distance shots.

Anne had been relieved when Anna-Maria didn't appear, and annoyed when Karim, also up early, had tried to button-hole her on her wayback to the house.

"Why are you in such a hurry? You have been avoiding me, my little fair one. Is it because you are ashamed for having given yourself to me so freely?"

"Karim, I have a million things to do." She hated the feel of his fingers gripping her arm, bringing back the memory of the way he'd used her before. And she was also more than a little bit afraid of him.

"You always have things to do when it is I who ask for some of your time. But you would run off to spend a weekend with another. That .. ." She couldn't understand the string of Arabic words he used; fortunately, perhaps. And her meditation-the few minutes spent alone with Hal Brightman after the others had gone had really helped her. Better to block everything unpleasant out of her mind for the moment and exist from minute to minute. So she was able to look at Karim and force herself to stand still, not fighting the studied cruelty of his grip on her arm.

"I don't like being forced. Or tricked. Or hurt, either. And you're hurting me now."

"And I happen to know, also, that you are not always so icily controlled! Are you trying to drive me mad? Or is this your way of tantalizing me and leading me on? I thought you were different from most of these other women, especially the American bitches who think far too much of themselves and too little of their men. But now I am beginning to think that you are just like them-you act so independent, but like any bitch, you want to be taken and mounted and shown what a woman is meant for, don't you?" He shook her, his black eyes burning like coals.

At any other time she would have been frightened, but today her mind was numb-it had been dealt too many shocks already.

"Karim, you're all wrong. But there isn't time to talk about it now. Yves is probably looking for me already, and Harris .. ."

"Ah yes, Harris Phelps. Your protector, eh? But I do not think he minds too much.

And as for your other lover-perhaps you'll see him in a different light before too long.

And then you'll come crawling to me ..."

"Ah, I beg pardon for interrupting, but they are looking for you both, you know!"

Espinoza, strolling up the path towards them, wore his usual twisted, rather cynical smile. And why was it that they had happened to stop before the guest chalet that Webb occupied?

Anna-Maria, stretching and sleepy-eyed, came out the door, smiling as she came up without any embarrassment to link her arm through Espinoza's.

"So much noise so early in the morning! Hello, Karim. You look like a thundercloud."

She added unnecessarily, "I promised that I would wake Webb."

And that had ended that-for the moment. With the others there, Anne had made her mumbled excuses and fled back to the house; and even now, sitting with Sarah, waiting to be called, she didn't feel like thinking. Especially not thinking back.

She looked down at the script on her lap.

. . . 189. EXTERIOR-COURTYARD-LATE AFfERNOON.

"The light-the red light of the setting sun is most important. Very symbolic, eh?

Crimson sunlight-torches on the wall-and shadows. We must take advantage of this unusual weather while it lasts, eh?"

Yves Pleydel. Part of his usual preliminary pep talk.

Sarah whispered, "I'm sorry that I am supposed to be so bitchy towards you in this scene!" That was before Carol had visited, bringing out the bitchiness in both of them.

Anne wished that they could get started and have it over with. In spite of her conscious efforts to relax she was beginning to grow tense. Sal Espinoza, looking undeniably handsome and distinguished in his nineteenth-century clothes, came in to join them; he poured himself a glass of champagne, with which he toasted "two lovely ladies." He added his apologies to Sarah's. "I am supposed to treat you harshly-I hope you will remember that I am only a clumsy amateur pretending to be a real actor!"

Was she real? Were any of them? Outside, the sun had started to go down, throwing the crimson light Pleydel had been waiting for against the fake-adobe walls of the courtyard. Long, slanting light, matched by the fire that had been built-adding its flickering flame to complement the flaring torches set in sconces against the walls.

Anne tried to keep her attention on the script. This was the scene when Glory's father had the man who had kidnapped and violated his daughter punished. But while he was testing Jason Ryder's endurance, he was also testing his daughter ...

LONG SHOT. ZOOMING IN CLOSE, AS WE SEE ...

No big crowd scene on this occasion. Private revenge. The Spanish governor's men, avid for vengeance. The turncoat Mexican officer who looked for the same thing.

The setting was real and the feeling was real; hardly needing PleydeI's call for

"Action!" to set it all in motion.

"Watch closely, daughter. Revenge is no substitute for your virginity, but you should derive some satisfaction from it. You were abducted against your will, were you not?"

She stood as stiffly between them, hardly feeling the bite of his fingers over her wrist.

Her father, and her stepmother. Don't think of them as merely Sal Espinoza and Sarah Vesper-it was her frozen expression that the cameras had to capture at this point.

Yves, mindful of the light, didn't call for too many takes. "It'll do, it'll do!" he said impatiently, shrugging his shoulders.

They were all eager to get into the real action-Karim in his dapper uniform that suited him, somehow, standing across from them with the coiled-up whip tapping against his high, shiny boot top, glancing over at her with a strange, pent-up expression for all that his teeth flashed white under his thin mustache. Even Sarah seemed tense, like all the other watchers-even those who weren't playing an actual role in this torch lit drama.

"I would like to shoot this scene without interruption- that is why you see so many cameras set up. We are going to concentrate on facial expression, the reactions of everyone to what is taking place. So, we will all remember this, and the sunlight we cannot waste. Come, we will begin now ..."

Carol Cochran, dressed in a forest-green pantsuit that complemented her eyes, let her lazy-lidded glance slide from Harris to Anna-Maria, who stood on his left, her teeth nibbling at her thumbnail.

"Yves is quite a perfectionist, isn't he? I wonder how long this is going to take?

Because I'm beginning to feel very thirsty."

"Yves knows what he's doing." Harris sounded unusually short, and Carol raised one slim, arched brow as she lit a cigarette.

"Darling! No need to snap my head off. It just seems different to me, watching from the other angle, I suppose. And I must say that sweet, innocent Anne has begun to surprise me lately."

"What? Oh yes." Harris sounded abstracted, and Anna-Maria ignored her. Carol wasn't used to being ignored. She directed her next comment at the other woman, who hadn't taken her eyes off what was happening before the cameras.

“Webb really does have a nice body, doesn't he? In spite of being such a bloody bastard. Especially without a shirt on .. ."

Funny how some remnant of the old fires continued to flare up at the oddest times; even when she was hating him most. And it wasn't that Jimmy wasn't a good lover-only he did tend to become somewhat boring when he went on and on about his daughter! She had two whole days left to enjoy herself before she had to fly back to New York like a good little girl, and there hadn't been a single time before when she and Webb hadn't managed to strike sparks between them. Why not? It would put both Anne and this common Cuban bitch in their places.

"WELCOME. You have been made comfortable, I hope?" Karim's voice came from behind him, and for no real reason Webb could feel the muscles in his back tense.

Had it been Karim's prompting that had made them tie his wrists so tightly to the crossbar that they had already begun to swell and grow numb? He could already feel the strain on his arms and shoulders; and damned if he hadn't suddenly begun to feel distinctly uneasy about this particular scene, especially in view of Pleydel's insistence on what he called
realite
.

Wet rawhide strips-he tested them and there was no way he could get free. He heard Karim laugh as he ripped the shirt off his back-it tore with a convincingly loud sound.

And now, mixed with the raging anger at his own unsuspecting foolishness, Webb could feel the nerves all over his body begin to crawl.

"How do you feel? I hope you are afraid. You have reason to be. It is not in my nature ever to forgive injury or insult, as you will soon find out."

The first explosion of pain was white-hot and unexpected, like the sting of a scorpion across his shoulders, and worse than anything he could have imagined. From somewhere outside himself Webb heard the breath escape from his lungs in a gasp.

Karim laughed jeeringly, the sound overlaid by the whistling swish of leather thongs cutting through the air before they bit deeply into his taut flesh.

Separate knife slashes of agony-hardly giving him time to draw in his breath between. The sweat was pouring down his face and down his arms as he concentrated fiercely on not screaming, lips pulled back from his teeth in an animal rictus of agony as he clamped them together.