Miner's Daughter (28 page)

With a shrug, Judy began polishing the
furniture in the hotel’s lobby. “Search me. All I know is it isn’t
anybody who lives in Mojave Wells. We simply don’t do things like
that.”

Mari nodded and went off to seek out room
three. She guessed Judy was right, although she wasn’t as
absolutely positive about the integrity of her fellow citizens as
Judy. When folks needed money, they were apt to go a little crazy.
Mari knew as much from bitter experience. How else could she
account for agreeing to act in this picture, if not for insanity
brought about by financial desperation.

“Excuses, excuses,” she muttered as she
walked down the hallway. “If a person has true moral strength, such
things shouldn’t matter.”

That was downright depressing, when she added
it to all the other uncertainties her life contained at the moment.
Fortunately, before she could begin to wallow again, she reached
room three. She considered knocking, decided not to, and opened the
door. Everyone in the room turned to look at her, and she paused,
embarrassed, before grabbing the bull by the horns and walking in
as if she belonged there. Which she did, darn it.

“Hi, there,” she said, trying to sound
relaxed and friendly. She felt like picking up her skirt and
running fast in the opposite direction.

A woman she recognized as the one who’d
prepared her face for the camera during her screen test, gestured
for her to climb up onto the tall stool beside her. “Hello, Mari,”
the woman said. “Ready for your first scene?”

No, she was ready for no such thing. “I guess
so,” she said, and sat on the stool, folding her hands in her lap.
“Have at me.”

The woman laughed, which made Mari feel not
quite so glum “It’ll be all right,” the woman assured her. “You’ll
be great on film “

That was kind of her. “You think so, do
you?”

“Sure. I’ve been at this long enough to spot
naturals. You’re a natural.”

“I hope you’re right.” The woman’s words
didn’t do much to dispel the aura of gloom under which Mari had
been living since opening her eyes that morning. “Say, you know my
name, but I don’t know yours.”

“Helen Bernstein.”

“Hi, Helen.”

“Hi, Mari.”

This was stupid. Because she wanted to calm
her anxiety, she decided to get the woman talking about herself.
“So, how long have you been working in the pictures, Helen?”

Her ploy worked. As Helen brushed Mari’s hair
back from her face, slipped a band over her head to hold the hair
out of her way, and daubed on the first pancake of dead-white
makeup, she talked. “I wanted to be an actress, but there was more
work available for makeup artists than actresses, so I decided to
do that instead.”

Mari asked more questions. Helen answered
them, and before Mari was ready to climb down from her stool and
seek out her costume, the two women were fast friends. She was
pleased. That hadn’t been so hard. Even her nerves seemed
calmer.

Next, Mari visited Karen Crenshaw, the
costume person. She didn’t hesitate to ask Karen her name, or to
inquire about how she’d ended up working for the pictures. She was
surprised to learn that Karen was employed by Madame Dunbar, the
very same dressmaker whom Mari had visited on her trip to Los
Angeles.

“Oh, my,” she said. “She scared me.”
Instantly, she regretted admitting how shy she’d been with Madame
Dunbar.

But Karen only laughed. “She’s okay. She only
looks haughty.”

That was nice to know. Mari didn’t quite
believe her. “She sounded pretty haughty when I talked to her,
too,” she muttered.

With another laugh, Karen said, “Oh, all
right, I admit it. She’s a hard, difficult woman. But she’s a great
costumer and a wonderful teacher, and I’ve learned a lot from her.
Also, since I do most of my work on location, I don’t mind that
she’s difficult because I don’t have to be around her much.”

Made sense to Mari.

She’d been ensconced in room three for three
quarter of an hour before the door opened once more. Mari, who had
become quite lighthearted and gay as she chatted and joked with the
other two young women, immediately became tongue-tied when she
recognized Tony Ewing as the person who’d opened the door She was
especially unsettled to note that he was frowning and looked
irked—and they hadn’t even quarreled yet today.

He rapped out, “Are you ready?”

Mari swallowed and made a quick survey of the
room to make sure it was she to whom he had addressed his question.
“Um, I think so.”

Tony glared at Karen, who’d been fitting
Mari’s costume with pins here and tucks there. “Is she ready?” he
barked at Karen.

Karen gave him a crabby look, which he richly
deserved in Mari’s opinion. “Sure, I guess so.”

He turned back to Mari. “Then come with me,”
he commanded.

Mari’s eyes started to narrow. She didn’t
like being spoken to in this insulting and peremptory way. Because
she also didn’t want to start a fight in front of her two new
friends, she waited to tackle him until they were outside room
three and the door had shut behind her.

She didn’t get the chance. Tony turned so
precipitately that she bumped into him, and he took her in his
arms. The sound that came out of Mari’s mouth then couldn’t
properly be termed a word. It was more like a squeak.

“God, I’ve, been wanting you for hours today
already!” he said after he withdrew his lips from hers.”I couldn’t
wait a second longer.”

Absolutely dumbfounded, Mari discovered she
also couldn’t prepare a coherent sentence. All the words she knew
just sort of clumped together at the back of her throat, and she
was too befuddled to sort them out.

Once more, it didn’t matter, because Tony
kissed her again. Her body responded instantly and with enthusiasm.
Heat that had nothing to do with the weather prickled her skin,
tension puckered her nipples, unfamiliar and insistent sensations
danced through her veins like a troupe of ballerinas, pressure
built in her private area, and her head buzzed.

Unlike her body, her brain was having a more
difficult time reconciling this assault with a lifetime’s learned
values. This sort of behavior was improper, her brain told her,
even as her body rebelled at the prudish commentary. Tony Ewing, a
man so rich she couldn’t even conceive of his wealth, was taking
advantage of her because she was poor, her brain said. If she were
as rich as he, he wouldn’t dare take these liberties.

“So what?” her heart asked her brain.

“It matters,” her brain answered back,
“because as soon as he tires of playing with you, he’ll go away
again. And, unlike you, he will merely resume his old, expensive,
devil-may-care way of life. You will not be merely emotionally
devastated but quite possibly pregnant as well.”

Her brain finally succeeded in shocking her
body out of its delight in Tony’s caresses. She pulled from him so
hard, she startled him, and he let her go.

“Mari . . .”

“Stop it, Tony!” She patted her hair, which
Karen had just succeeded in nudging into the correct state of
glamour, tempered with Peerless’s notion that a miner’s daughter
might have to live rough. Mari could have put the notion of any
glamour at all out of their heads if they’d bothered to ask her,
but they hadn’t.

“But—oh, God, Mari, I’ve missed you so damned
much I didn’t know it was possible to miss somebody this much
overnight’’

He’d missed her? Had he been pining away all
night, as she had, for the sake of her?

No. Such a scenario was downright impossible.
Leastways, he’d have to do a lot more convincing before she’d allow
him to take liberties with her person again.

Like hell.

Mari groaned when she acknowledged the state
of her own mind and heart. She was madly and passionately in love
with Tony Ewing. He desired her. No equity of purpose existed in
this bleak picture.

Instead of saying anything so certain to
cause her acute humiliation as admitting the state of her heart,
she said, “For heaven’s sake, they just glopped all this makeup on
me, and you’re rubbing it off. Look at you. Your lips are all
white.” If her emotions hadn’t been rioting, she might even have
laughed, because he really did look funny.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand
and frowned. “I didn’t mean to mess up your makeup, but . . .” He
looked as if he were struggling to find words.

This was minimally encouraging to Mari, who’d
thought she was the only one. Because what she’d just said was
true, and because she couldn’t think of anything to say, she said
nothing, but only continued looking at him.

He took a deep breath. “Listen, Mari, about
last night . . .”

“Are you ready, Mari?” Martin’s cheerful
voice rang out. He sounded as if he were on the front porch.

The question made her jump and Tony swear.
But she turned toward the voice and forced herself to call out with
aplomb, or as close to it as she could get, “Be right there,
Martin.”

Anyhow, she wasn’t sure she wanted to talk
about last night. At least not with Tony and not now. Maybe in,
say, a century or two, she might be able to relate to her
great-great-great-grandchildren that she’d once spent an idyllic
evening with the man of her dreams. Not now. Now, if she even tried
to talk about it, she knew she’d burst into tears and mortify
herself.

“Mari,” Tony said. He sounded fairly
desperate, which surprised her. It might even have gratified her,
but she was too flustered to tell.

But she couldn’t possibly think about his
desperation at the moment, not with her own threatening to
overwhelm her. “I have to run, Tony.”

“But—”

“I’ll talk to you later,” she said as she
started trotting outdoors to her doom. Rather, to her first scene.
She heard Tony’s soft “Damn” behind her, and an unintentional sob
shook her. She ferociously commanded herself to get herself in
hand, stopped just before the front door of the inn to gather
herself together, yanked the door open, and walked outside,
assuming an air of serenity. At any rate, she hoped to heck she
looked serene.

The bright sunlight made her blink and
squint, and she lifted a hand to shade her eyes so she could find
Martin.

She knew she looked pretty good. From a
distance. There was no way she’d ever think this dead-white makeup
looked anything but ghastly up close. Yet she’d seen herself on
screen—well, on a wall—and knew for fact the makeup carried onto
celluloid beautifully. According to Helen and Karen and Martin and
a whole bunch of other people who ought to know, white makeup
filmed much better than natural skin tones or beige-colored
makeup.

So be it. She smiled broadly at Martin when
he came up to take her hand and lead her onto what passed as the
“set.” It was actually a stretch of dry desert on which some
storefronts had been erected. Evidently, the real thing didn’t look
authentic enough for the picture folks, so they’d had George Peters
design a mining town out of cardboard and two-by-fours.

As they walked over to the set, Mari had to
admit that George’s conception of a rugged western mining town was
much more picturesque than Mojave Wells. That made her a little
sad, although she couldn’t have said why. Maybe it had something to
do with the fact that this is the way most people in the world were
going to view her life forevermore, and it was false.

On the other hand, what did she care? She
scolded herself for getting sentimental and prayed for the
umpteenth time that the good Lord rid her of her too-ready
emotionalism. She had to live a hard life. She needed be tough
minded and hardy, not slushy and weepy.

By the time she and Martin reached the set
and Martin showed her the mark on the ground where she was supposed
to begin her scene, Mari had herself more or less under control.
She was pretty sure she wouldn’t collapse or fall into a crying fit
or anything. Besides, this first scene was easy. All she had to do
was sit on chair beside a table, both of which were supposed to be
inside a miner’s cabin, and carry on a silent conversation with
Reginald Harrowgate, who was playing her father. She’d met
Harrowgate since her first unfortunate introduction to him, and she
knew he’d not forgiven her for Tiny’s behavior, but she was willing
to make the most of it.

Ten thousand dollars
, she told
herself.
You can do this for ten thousand dollars
. In fact,
ten thousand dollars, served as her mantra during that first
scene.

Harrowgate let her sit in the hot sun for a
full five minutes, and Mari had begun to fear she’d slide right out
of her chair because of how much she was sweating, before he strode
onto the set like a king to his throne. He peered down at her as if
she were some disgusting species of fungus. “All ready here,
Martin,” he said, and he, too, sat.

Mari dared to smile at him and say, “Hello,”
but he merely scowled and put a finger to his lips.

As if it mattered. The pictures were silent.
Nobody’d know if they spoke to each other. With a sigh, Mari let it
ride. She didn’t care if this silly man liked her or didn’t like
her. She only hoped she wouldn’t make a complete fool of
herself.

“All right. And, ready? Action!”

Martin had explained the language of
picture-making to Mari, so she knew these esoteric commands meant
the camera would now start to crank, and she and Harrowgate would
assume the roles of father and daughter. Given the strength of the
actor’s animosity toward her, Mari didn’t feel any too confident
about her first foray into the realm of fantasy, but she gave it
her best shot.

“All right now, Miss Pottersby, as you know,
I’ve just come home from a hard day’s work in the mine.”