Picture Perfect (16 page)

I was surprised at the quiet. No cameras were rolling, no one was waving frantically and calling “Action,” no one was even saying anything that resembled a line. A fine red dust covered all the photographic equipment, as if it hadn't been used recently at all. No wonder it took twelve weeks to make a two-hour film.

The set, from what I could see, was in three parts. The first section was the actual excavation site of Olduvai Gorge, looking not much different from the UCLA site a half-mile away. The second area was a series of tents, and in front of one of them was an actress I had seen before but couldn't name. She was wearing khaki shorts and a Kalahari bush jacket, and I decided that my first piece of technical advice would be to tell the costume designer that the
National Geographic
look was nowhere near as realistic as a comfortable old T-shirt.

The third set was on a raised platform, designed to look like the inside of a tent. There was a cot and a collection of artfully arranged empty cartons, a low trestle table. On a shelf was a patterned china bowl and pitcher, and I couldn't help laughing out loud. China?

After a few minutes a girl came to sit beside me. “Shit, it's hot,” she said. She smiled, the first real smile I'd seen since I arrived. “Who are you here with?”

“Just me,” I said, taken aback by the question, as if I were supposed to bring a date. “I'm the technical advisor on anthropology.”

“Wow,” the girl breathed. “You mean you do this for a
living
?”

I smiled at her. “I thought it was supposed to be the other way around. You know, me being impressed because you're in the movies.”

“Oh, I'm not really in them,” she said. “I'm Janet's assistant.” She pointed to the woman in the Kalahari bush jacket who was scanning a script. “My name's LeAnne.”

I introduced myself and shook her hand, and then gestured toward the milling crowd. “How come no one's doing anything?” I asked.

LeAnne laughed, getting to her feet. “It's the business,” she said. “A lot of hurry up and wait. Come on, I'll bet you don't know where the oasis is.”

When she started to walk away I followed her. Inside a long, low tent was a feast. My eyes ran from one end of the table to the other, taking in sweating pitchers of mango juice and lemonade, piles of bananas and kiwis, finger sandwiches filled with chicken salad and something that looked like sliced egg, covered platters of coleslaw and sesame noodles. “Is this lunch?” I asked.

LeAnne shook her head. “Mr. Rivers likes knowing there's something to eat between takes. He arranges the whole thing, or actually, Jennifer does. She does for him what I do for Janet. If you think this is something, wait till you see the layout at lunch. Yesterday we had king crab. Can you believe that? King crab, in
Africa
.”

I hesitantly took a banana, peeling it back and walking out of the tent into the hot sun. I lifted up my face, shielding my eyes. “What is this movie about?”

LeAnne was shocked that no one had told me. It was a sort of science fiction film; Alex Rivers was playing an anthropologist who unearths a partial skeleton that seems, at first sight, to predate anything ever found before. But when he gets the bones carbon-dated, he finds they come from the 1960s. Then he notices that the chemical makeup of the bones isn't quite what it should be, even if it had been an ancestral skeleton. Turns out it's an alien, and that of course makes him wonder about the origins of man in the first place.

I nodded politely when LeAnne finished. Not something I would go see, but it would probably sell tickets.

I followed her back to a small knot of people, all of whom I was introduced to and whose names I promptly forgot. Most of the crew were sitting on the ground now. LeAnne started talking to another woman about the condition of the bathroom facilities on location, and I leaned back against a tall canvas chair.

It was just like the one the script woman had been sitting on, only this one said
ALEX RIVERS
across its back. Still, it was empty, and Alex Rivers didn't appear to be around, so I climbed into it.

LeAnne gasped and grabbed my wrist. “Get off that,” she said.

Startled, I jumped down, forming a cloud of dust that had everyone on the ground coughing. “It's just a chair,” I said. “No one was sitting there.”

“It's Mr. Rivers's chair.” I stared at her, waiting for the explanation. “No one sits in Mr. Rivers's chair.”

For God's sake. This was going to be worse than I had anticipated. I tried to convince myself that three hundred and fifty dollars per day was more than enough compensation for explaining the rudiments of collecting bone fragments to a man who thought china pitchers belonged in an off-site camp and who was so full of himself that only his own precious bottom could touch his canvas chair.

I knew something was about to happen by the shiver that ran through the air almost as quickly as the whispers spread. The crew started to stand, brushing off their shorts and returning to their respective positions on the set. Three men climbed up the dolly to the camera; the sound technician pressed his hand to one headphoned ear and rewound a portion of tape.

The man who had run after the rope called out for a woman named Suki. “Female stand-in,” he yelled. “Suki, we need you for lighting.” A woman who was not Janet the actress wandered toward the tents, and immediately a series of lights were set up around her and shifted into position.

I stared directly into one bright white beam, which was why I didn't see him until he almost walked on top of me. Alex Rivers threw his jacket onto the chair I had dared to sit upon, not noticing me any more than he seemed to notice the air around him. He was talking quietly with someone I assumed was Bernie Roth, since he looked nearly as important and wasn't paying attention to anyone either.

Alex Rivers was saying something about the black rope that I'd seen earlier. He brushed my arm as he moved past me, and I jumped backward.

It wasn't that he'd collided with me; it was the heat of his skin. I rubbed my own shoulder, certain there would be a red blister or a welt, some proof of what I'd felt. I watched him walk away from me, amazed when my sense of perspective did not kick in. Instead of Alex Rivers getting smaller and smaller, he seemed to fill my entire field of vision.

Without realizing what I was doing, I walked behind the tents, keeping several feet away from where he stood, but close enough to listen. He and Bernie Roth and a tall, muscular man were fingering the black rope that had been brought in earlier. A fourth man was bent back under the force of Alex Rivers's anger. “Listen to me,” he said, cutting off whatever the man had been saying. “Just listen to me. Sven can jump with this rope, but this rope isn't white like I told you. You have two choices. You can go into town and try to find a rope that is white that he can jump with, or you can use this black rope and have me pissed off at you for the next eleven weeks.” He ran his hand over his face as if he was very tired. “This is about safety. The key criterion is whether or not Sven can use the rope for the stunt. Secondary is what the hell color it shows up against a background.”

The muscular man and the terrified set dresser walked off to the left, leaving me with a direct view of Alex Rivers. I stared at his profile, the muscles at the base of his jaw, the wind lifting light strands of his hair.

What a sanctimonious asshole! I knew nothing about making movies, but I had seen my share of bureaucracy at UCLA, and Alex Rivers was no better than Archibald Custer. He milked the advantage of his position, and of the astonishment that everyone couldn't help but feel around him. Well, if I'd learned anything in the anthropology department, it was that you couldn't let the people who made decisions walk all over you. You had to put yourself in their league if you wanted them to believe you really belonged there.

I swallowed, then took a step forward. I'd introduce myself to him and Roth, mention the bush jacket and the ludicrous china pitcher, and then I'd give Rivers a piece of my mind.

But as soon as I stepped into Alex Rivers's line of vision, I froze. He held me spellbound, and I truly couldn't have said if I was in the Serengeti or Belgium or circling Mars. It had nothing to do with his features, although they were certainly arresting. It had to do with his power. There was something about his stare that made me unable to turn away.

His eyes gleamed, catching the light like the surface of a still pond. Then he looked away, as if he was searching for something. When he caught my eye again, he was smiling.
Resplendent
. The word caught in my throat, and I wondered how I could spend hours working steadfastly beneath the high African sun, but become dazed by the image of a single man.

“Hon,” Alex Rivers said, “can you get me something to drink?”

I blinked at him, but he was already moving away with the director at his heels. Who the hell did he think he was? Who the hell did he think I was?

His assistant
. Or rather, he had been looking for his assistant and couldn't find her, and decided that obviously I'd been placed on this earth to serve at his beck and call. Like everyone else. I watched him settle into his high canvas chair, the soft seat and back molding around him, already cast in his form.

There was nothing I liked about him. I thought about what I would say when I called Ophelia.
Guess what
, I would begin.
Alex Rivers is a pompous bastard who orders people around. He's so wrapped up in himself he can't see two feet away from where he's standing
. And even as I was thinking this, I was walking toward the tent with the movable feast.

I hated him for making me forget what I had been about to say; I hated him for getting me to come here in the first place; I especially hated him for making my pulse catch at odd intervals, pounding like the drums of the natives I sometimes heard over the wind when I was digging on site. I picked a red plastic cup from a stack on a table and filled it to the brim with ice, knowing that it would take only minutes to melt. Then I added juice—papaya, I guessed—and I stirred it with a disposable knife, waiting until the cup began to sweat and the liquid had taken the temperature of the ice.

Alex Rivers was still sitting on his royal throne, leaning toward a woman who was dusting his face with a light powder. When he noticed me, he reached out his hand for his drink and awarded me a second smile. “Ah,” he said. “I was beginning to think I'd never see you again.”

I smiled at him and dumped the juice and the ice, even the cup, into his lap. For a moment, I watched the stain spread over his trousers. “No such luck,” I said, and then I turned and walked away.

I
expected Alex Rivers to curse under his breath, demand my name, order me to be fired. As for me, I kept walking, with every intention of leaving the set, even leaving Tanzania. But Alex Rivers did the one thing that could make me turn around: he laughed. He had a deep, rich laugh, the kind that rained down warm. He caught my eye the moment I looked back. “So,” he said, smiling. “I assume you felt my temper needed to be cooled off?”

I probably could have withstood his wrath, but his understanding was my undoing. My knees began to shake and I grabbed onto a piece of lighting equipment just to stay upright. I was struck by the full force of what, exactly, I'd just done. I had not spilled a freezing drink on some assistant, some costume designer. I had deliberately antagonized the man I was supposed to be working with. The man who was paying me three hundred and fifty dollars a day just to be helpful.

He stood up and walked toward me, holding out his hand as if he knew very well I was seconds away from falling down. “Alex Rivers,” he said. “I don't think we've met.”

From the corner of my eye, I noticed the crew pretending very hard to look busy while they watched the scene unfolding before them. “Cassandra Barrett,” I said. “From UCLA.”

His eyes brightened to a shade of silver I had never seen before. “My anthropologist,” he said. “It's good to meet you.”

I glanced down at the crotch of his wet khaki pants, soaked in a stain the shape of a butterfly. I smiled right at him. “The pleasure was all mine,” I said.

He laughed again, and I found myself hoarding the sound so that I would be able to remember it later when I was in my bedroom at the lodge, the old yellow ceiling fan spinning over my head. He took my arm. “Call me Alex,” he said. “And I'll get you a script so you know what's going on. Bernie!” he called out. “Come over here and meet our technical advisor.”

The director of the film, who looked for all the world like a shadow ready to jump at Alex's commands, shook my hand politely and excused himself to find someone in the cast. It was easy to see that this was Alex Rivers's show. He started talking to me before I registered the importance of his words. “You want me to dig something up?” I said. “Now?”

Alex nodded. “The scene we're shooting this afternoon involves my character's initial discovery of the skeleton. I mean, I could sort of go on instinct, but I know I wouldn't be right. There has to be a method, doesn't there? You don't just reach into the sand and pull up a leg bone?”

I winced. “No,” I said. “You certainly do not.”

He had taken my arm and was pulling me toward the gaping hole where most of the finds from Olduvai Gorge had been unearthed. “I just want to watch you for a little while,” he said. “I want to see your movements, and your concentration, those kinds of things. That's what I need.”

“What you need is a tarp,” I said. “If you were really going to find something of value, you'd have set up a black tarpaulin over the site so that whatever bones you do locate don't get bleached out by the sun.”

Alex grinned at me. “That's
exactly
why I wanted you here,” he said. He motioned to two men who were standing off to the side, fixing the leg of a tent. “Joe, Ken, can you guys find some kind of tarpaulin to stretch across this thing? It has to be—” He glanced at me. “Does it
have
to be black?”

I shrugged. “Mine usually are.”

“Black, then.” As the men turned to go, Alex called back the one named Ken. “Congratulations on the little girl,” he said. “I heard you got the news last night. If she looks like Janine, she'll be a beauty.”

Ken broke into a big smile, and ran off after the other prop man. I stared at Alex. “Is he a good friend?”

“Not particularly,” Alex said. “But he's a member of the crew. It's my business to know something about everyone on the crew.”

I squatted down at the edge of the site and sifted through the chalky dirt. If he was trying to impress me, he wasn't going to get very far. “That's impossible,” I said. “I mean, there have to be at least a hundred people around.”

Alex stared at me so forcefully I felt myself looking up at him before I even wanted to. His voice was tight and controlled. “I know everyone's name and everyone's wife's name. Back when I was bartending I learned that if people think you're paying attention to them, they're more likely to hang around. It's easy for me to remember, it makes them feel important, and things get done twice as fast because of it.”

He spoke as if he was defending himself, as if I had challenged him, when that wasn't my intention at all. The truth was, I was shocked. It was hard to reconcile the man who had thrown a tantrum over a length of rope with the man who made it a point to know the names of everyone working for him. “You didn't know my name,” I pointed out.

“No,” he said, and then he relaxed. He offered me a brilliant smile. “But you made sure I'll never forget it.”

We settled down to the task at hand, kneeling in the excavated pit. I showed Alex the different tools used to dig, the gentle brushes used to clear the excess earth. I tried to explain the markings on the plain that would indicate the presence of fossils, but this was difficult to understand unless you had been trained. “There,” I said, sitting back on my heels. “That's pretty much all I can show you.”

“But you haven't shown me anything at all,” Alex complained. “I need to watch you excavate a skull or something.”

I laughed at him. “Not from this site,” I said. “Everything's been stripped dry.”

“Pretend,” Alex urged. He grinned. “It's easy. I've built a career on it.”

I sighed and bent into the pit again, trying my best to imagine a bone fragment that was not there. I was starting to see why my predecessor had left. Maybe pretending was easy for Alex Rivers, but—as he'd said—this was his career.
Mine
was based on hard evidence and physical proof, not an overactive imagination. Feeling like an idiot, I swept away a top layer of red dust and ran my fingers over the bumpy ground. I took a small pick and began to dig in a circle around this nonexistent skull. I brushed the earth with my fingers and wiped away perspiration on my forehead with my shoulder.

I closed my eyes and tried to imagine how big this invisible skull might be. I could not picture it at all; I felt ridiculous trying. I had been trained too fully in the literal to even consider the figurative. “Look,” I said, planning to tell Alex this wasn't my cup of tea.

But before I could finish my sentence, Alex Rivers crouched down behind me. He reached his arms around my shoulders, almost like an embrace, and covered my hands with his own. “No,
you
look,” he said, and he nodded toward the site I had been digging. I blinked, and what was only earth now looked like bone. A trick of the light, I thought, an illusion. Or maybe the sheer power of Alex Rivers's imagination.

 

H
E WAS UNLIKE ANYONE
I'
D EVER MET
. H
E DID KNOW EVERYONE'S
name; that was apparent as soon as the set was being readied for filming. He politely left me sitting next to his assistant, Jennifer. As he went to crouch behind the camera and talk with Bernie Roth about the best way to approach a particular shot, he joked with the male stand-in who had to sweat in the hot sun while the lights and reflective panels were set up around him.

He was a hundred places at once; I got tired just trying to find him here and there. But every time I glanced down at the script in my lap or wandered to the low table stacked with storyboards, I'd feel his eyes on me. I would turn around and sure enough, there was Alex Rivers, fifty feet away, staring at me as if I were the only other person for miles around.

The scene they were filming was exactly what Alex had said it would be: his character, a Dr. Rob Paley, finding the bones of what he thinks is a fossilized hominid. Bernie had climbed onto the crane that held the Panavision camera, and was walking Alex through the scene. “I want you to come in…that's right, a little slower…and crouch down, good, like that. Now what are you doing with your hands? Try to remember, you haven't had any luck for a good three weeks now, and suddenly you strike gold.” Alex stood up and shouted a question at Bernie, but the wind carried it away before I could make out the words.

When they were ready to film, all the people holding walkie-talkies stood in a spread line, shouting “Quiet!” one after the other, a human echo. The cameraman murmured, “Rolling,” and the sound technician, bent low over his electronic oasis, said, “Speed.”

In the seconds before Bernie called for action, I watched Alex slip into his role. All the light drained out of his eyes, and his body relaxed so dramatically it seemed as if he'd been sucked dry. And then, within seconds, the energy snaked back through his body, straightening his spine and flashing in his eyes. But he didn't have the same face. In fact, if I had passed him on the street, I would have taken him for someone else.

He moved differently. He walked differently. He even
breathed
differently. Like a tired old man, he made his way across the yellow strip of plain, carefully lowering himself into the excavated pit. He pulled a pick and brush from his pocket and began to dig. I smiled, watching my own idiosyncrasies being played before the camera: the habit I had of picking left to right, the methodical sweep of the brush like an umpire at home plate. But then came the moment when his character discovers the skeleton, skull first. Alex's hands swept over the spot he'd cleared, and he paused. Moving faster now, he began to chisel away at the earth. A fragment of bone appeared, planted minutes before by a set dresser. It was yellowed and cracked, and I found myself leaning forward in my seat to get a better look.

Alex Rivers lifted his face and looked directly at me, and in his eyes I saw myself. His expression was the same one I'd worn at that dazzling moment when he held his arms around me and, out of nowhere, I'd seen a skull. I recognized my own surprise, my dedication, and my wonder.

I began to feel hot. I pulled at my loose cotton collar and lifted my hair off the back of my neck. I took off my baseball cap and fanned myself with it, wishing he would turn away.

He threw back his head and turned his face to the sun. “My God,” he whispered. He looked like any scientist who knew, in his heart, he had made the discovery of his life. He looked like he'd been doing this for ages. He looked, well, like me.

I had spent years working toward the anthropological discovery that would raise my status among colleagues. I had fashioned the moment over and over in my mind the way most women picture their weddings: how the sun would feel on my back, how my hands would spread through the earth, how the bone would flow smooth beneath my palms. I had envisioned my face turned to the sky, my prayers offered up in exchange for this gift. Although I'd certainly never discussed it with anyone, least of all Alex Rivers, he had played the scene exactly the way I had imagined mine.

He'd robbed me of the most important moment of my life, one that hadn't even happened yet. It was this injustice that made me spring from my canvas chair the moment the director called “Cut.” I could barely hear the claps and whistles of the crew over the pounding within my own head.
How
dare
he
, I thought. He said he'd only wanted to watch me dig. He didn't say anything about mimicking my expressions and my instincts. It was as if he'd climbed inside of me and sifted through my mind.

I ran to the hospitality tent, complete with cots and electric fans and pitchers of ice water. Dipping a paper towel into a bowl, I dripped water down my neck. I felt it run in the valley between my breasts, down my stomach, into the waist of my shorts. I leaned closer to the bowl and splashed some onto my face.

He knew me so well. He knew me better than I know myself
.

In the distance I heard Bernie Roth make the decision to use that single take, since Alex couldn't possibly be any better. I snorted and threw myself down on a cot. I had made a contractual commitment; I would see it through. I would show Alex Rivers whatever technical moves he wanted; I would let him know what props he'd need and what was inaccurate in the script. But I wouldn't let him get close, and I would never show him my heart. I'd already done that once because he'd taken me by surprise, but it wasn't going to happen again.

I fell asleep for a little while, and when I woke up a fine sheen of sweat covered my body. Sitting up, I reached for the paper towel I'd used before. I wet it again and set it across the back of my neck.

The flap of the tent that served as a door whipped open to reveal a young man with a ponytail of bright red hair. His name was Charlie; I'd talked with him earlier. “Miss Barrett,” he said, “I've been looking all over for you.”

I gave him my nicest smile. “And here I thought no one cared.”

His fair skin flushed and he looked away. He was a gaffer—something to do with lighting. He'd told me that earlier and I had whispered the word several times to myself, just liking the way it lay on my tongue. “I have a message for you,” he said, but he wouldn't meet my eye.

To put him out of his misery I took the note he was holding. It was a simple piece of brown paper, the kind the rolls of backgrounds were wrapped in for transport.
Please join me for dinner. Alex
.

His handwriting was very neat, as if he'd spent hours getting it just right. I wondered if he signed his autographs as precisely. I crumpled the paper in my hand and looked at Charlie, who was obviously waiting for an answer. “What if I say no?” I asked.

Charlie shrugged, already starting to leave. “Alex'll find you,” he said, “and he'll make you change your mind.”