The Movie (35 page)

‘Maybe. I don’t know.’

She turned to the third page.

Tm glat somebody’s doing some work around here,’ Keller ploughed on, desperately. ‘With all these dehvery guys coming and going for Tom and Jordan, you’d think it was the first time anyone had ever conceived.’

He was unprepared for the effect of his remark. Eleanor’s face drained of blood as though someone had slapped her. She stopped examining the document, and reach for her pen.

With a dazzling burst of comprehension, Jake Keller suddenly realized what the hell was going on. Mentally he kicked himself for not having sensed it before. Of course! All that jumping apart whenever he’d walked in on the two of them…

Oh, this was just great. His shark’s nose had done more than scent blood in the water. Eleanor Marshall was badly wounded, a prey just waiting for a predator like himself to come along and restore the natural order. After all, this job should have been his in the first place, Keller thought. That P,.oxana Felix was a bright woman.

As he watched the Ice Queen sign her own death

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warrant, Jake Keller couldn’t resist one final, delicious cruelty. ‘Thanks,’ he said pleasantly as he took the papers from

her. ‘That’s great. You know, it’s kind of sweet, about this

baby stuff, don’t you think?’

‘Certainly,’ Eleanor managed, forcing herself to meet

her vice-president’s eyes.

Jake Keller looked at her impassively. ‘In all the time

I’ve known him, I don’t think I’ve ever seen Tom happier,’ he said.

Then he gave her a friendly smile, turned on his heels

and left.

Megan stepped smardy out of her BMW and tossed the

‘ keys to the parking lot attendant, usually a little smug and

supercilious in his silver and grey Artemis uniform.

‘Park it out back,’ she snapped. ‘And make sure it’s somewhere close to the exit. I may be leaving early today.’

He gaped at her, did a double-take, then a triple-take. Megan could see the doubt forming in his eyes-could that rally be Megan Silver? - and some of the icy block of nerves sitting in the pit of her stomach thawed a little.

Today was the first day of preliminary rehearsals. There’d be one week of them in LA, involving just Zach, R.oxana and a few of the main supporting actors, and then the cast and crew would ship out to the Seychelles, to start the first part offdming on location. David had told her she had to be available, to tinker with the script as and when it needed it, and according to him, once they started shooting that would be pretty much all the time.

It would be the first day since the movie had been green-lighted that she wasn’t actually supposed to wQrk. It would also be the first time she’d met most of the cast. Not to mention Fred Florescu, the most influential director of his generation, and her new boss. The prospect thrilled and terrified her all at once. She’d seen all Florescu’s .movies;

they were stylish and successful, and people spoke of the guy as the ‘new Spielberg’. Light Failing, his last picture, had made over a hundred and fifty million dollars - almost clean profit, since Florescu had shot it on a shoestring budget.

See the Lights would not have a shoestring budget - her exotic plot had made sure of that - but Megan hoped Mr Florescu would think that it had almost as good a script.

lecovering from his hesitation, the Artemis valet said ‘Yes, ma’am,’ to her, touching his cap as he did so, and opened her car door.

Oh yes, Megan thought dryly as she walked over to the soundstage where they were all supposed to meet up. That would be another first for the day. Everybody was going to get to see the new her.

She glanced down at herself as she walked. Well, it was certainly different. And from now on she’d be packing an attitude to match. Maybe she couldn’t compete with P,.oxana Felix, but she’d at least give the slut something to think about.

The rehearsal group was unmistakable - even from a couple of hundred yards away Megan could hear the excited babble, see the studio production executives, low level flunkeys, reporting to that scumJake Keller, scurrying around like the sycophantic toadies they were. Her walk slowed as she got closer, giving her a little more time to take in the scene. There was David, looking beautifully groomed in some hght brown Armani suit. He was standing next to a young guy with lo.ng black hair, jeans and a Nirvana T-shirt; it couldn’t be Florescu? It was. Wow. And Zach, in a Metallica shirt and jeans, looking over at Florescu with respect on his face.

Megan snorted. Check it out. Zach Mason respects something! Well, once he’s got the measure of you like I did, it won’t go two ways, you pathetic fake.

And loxana. No more than normally exquisite today:

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some kind of demure pantsuit in ice-blue silk, navy pumps and a pair of wraparound shades. Sitting next to Zach. Of course. But you’re not gonna faze me, you bitch, not

tody.

There were the other cast members, and Megan couldn’t suppress a slight blush. She’d never seen so many famous faces in one place together - Mary Holmes, Jack RJchards, lobert Finn, Seth Weiss. But she pulled herself swiftly together. They were all here because she’d written them suitable parts … the old Megan might have been overwhelmed, she told herself intently, but the new one wasn’t going to bat aprofessionally made-up eyelid.

Megan strode up to them, swinging her hips as she moved, working it all the way.

‘ ‘Hi, guys,’ she said coolly. ‘Sorry I’m a little late. The freeway was solid for miles.’ Megan paused, drinking in the shock on the faces that already knew her. ‘David, why don’t you introduce me? I hardly know anyone, and that can’t be right.’

‘Megan?’ Zach Mason asked.

‘Megan?’ David Tauber gasped.

‘Who else?’ she shrugged.

Tauber couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Megan had disappeared - the old mousy, shy, invisible little Megan with her nondescript brown hair, Tshirts and long skim. In her place was a tall, slender woman, toned, tanned flesh bared to the world. Long, lean legs stretched up indecently from outrageous stacked heels, ending only in a thigh-high Azzedine Alaia mini-dress of clinging black Lycra, a creation that left nothing whatsoever to the imagination and certainly not the high, rounded cheeks of her ass or the sizable proportions of her breasts, made to look even larger than normal in a balconette Ultrabra. It was as though she was flinging those curves in loxana’s face. And the surprise didn’t stop there. Megan had a Gucci belt knotted loosely around her newly wasplike waist and a Piaget

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watch on her left wrist. The long, gentle brown curls had gone and in their place was a sleek, geometric Louise Brooks-style bob, except that Louise Brooks had never had hair so dazzlingly platinum blonde that she made Marilyn Monroe look like a brunette. And the usually naked face had been painstakingly made up, with an expensive-looking foundation, heavy bronze blusher, dark green eyeshadow melting into a dramatic plum shade swept under the brow, and full, shiny lips, lined and glossed into a wet scarlet bow.

She looked rawly sexual. Demanding attention, Megan had revealed her new, desirable body in a way that could only be called exhibitionist. And there was something more than the hair and the dowdiness that she had cast off. David had been prepared to start screwing Megan anyway - not a wlolly disagreeable prospect - at loxana Felix’s orders. But now it would be a definite pleasure. The new Megan Silver was something David recognized, something he could deal with. Like Gloria lamirez, Megan Silver was tough. Like him. Like R.oxana. Like that ambitious teenager he’d fucked last week.

Megan Silver was no longer the little idealist.

She was hard.

‘Megan, you ook terrific,’ David said, feeling the beginnings of an erection ‘Don’t you think so, loxana?’

‘Very dramatic, dear,’ loxana Felix commented icily, in a backhanded compliment that delighted her. And as Tauber started to introduce her to Fred Florescu and the rest of the cast, Megan was aware of the unfamiliar sensation of being ogled, of men’s eyes roaming across her body, of being an object of desire. Every guy in the group had to be staring at her!

Every guy but one. As she finished shaking hands with the last supporting star, Megan glanced furtively at Zach Mason.

He hadn’t taken his eyes offher either, and as soon as she looked at him Zach’s gaze met hers.

It was filled with shock, disgust and contempt.

Fuck you, Megan thought furiously, and turned back to David, whose eyes were roaming her with new hunger, the hunger she’d longed to see there since the day she first met him. It was always David I wanted, not you.

Zach Mason meant less than nothing to her. Rdght? Right.

Megan slipped her hand firmly into David Tauber’s, and smiled, as brilliandy as she knew how.

She pulled up outside David’s apartment at quarter of twelve, slipping the BMW sharply into his reserved parking space, making sure to show off acres of nut-brown thigh as she pressed down on the brake with her Manolo Blahnik shoes. Jesus, even her driving was a production

now.

But, obviously, it was working.

‘Thanks for the ride,’ Tauber said, and Megan noticed both the hoarseness of his tone and the impressive bulge in

his pants. She was triumphant. So it had turned him on! ‘No problem,’ she replied, as casually as she could.

‘I was, uh, wondering if you’d care to come up for a coffee?’ David asked her, and Megan turned to see the glitter of lust in his eyes. Unmistakable desire, and it was all for her. ,

How would R.oxana play this?

‘If I come upstairs, I’ll be wanting more than coffee,’ Megan said.

Tauber smiled at her, the smooth, practised smile she had longed for him to use on her for months now. Why isn’t it more fulfilling? Megan asked herself, but then Tauber unclipped his seatbelt and leant over towards her, his hands finding her breasts, lightly rubbing across the tips of her nipples, his lips and tongue flickering across her

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pushed herself hard against his touch, all her doubts receding in a hot burst of physical need.

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Eleanor Marshall rushed into the women’s executive bathroom and flung herself into the nearest stall, her fingers fumbling in her haste to bolt it shut. The lock rattled into place just in time as she knelt forward, gasping, gripping the seat with both hands, and threw up. Wave after wave of nausea wracked through her, and she knelt there, shuddering and wretched, until it finally passed and she was left with a dry, raw throat and an empty stomach.

Eleanor flushed the vomit away and took a deep breath, trying futilely to calm herself. Then she reached into a concealed pocket in the lining of her smart beige jacket and took out ‘the three essential items she’d taken to carrying around with her: a travel toothbrush and tube of paste, and a trial-size flask of antiseptic mouthwash.

Male chief executives react to extreme pressure with stomach ulcers, Eleanor thought wearily. Why can’t I do that? It would be so rtauch simpler…

She scrubbed and rinsed out. her mouth right there in the stall, thanking God that there was obviously nobody around to hear her. So far all her attacks had come in the early morning, when none of the secretaries were around, but she dreaded the day the sudden terrible crunch in the pit of her stomach would hit in the middle of a meeting, or in the lunch hour, when this bathroom was always so full. Then it would be tough to hide, and the inevitable rumours would begin to fly around: Eleanor Marshall can’t

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take the heat. Eleanor’s cracking up. Eleanor’s throwing her guts up every day at work…

Eleanor stood slowly, looking around her at the cool eggshell-blue walls with their pristine white accents, trying to compose herself before she walked back to her office. OK, that was better. She flushed again, unlocked the door and surveyed her reflection in the wall mirrors opposite: pallid as hell, but otherwise acceptable. A lalph Lauren pantsuit in caramel wool, a crisp white Donna Karan shirt, Walter Steiger black suede pumps.

Elegant and understated as normal. Perfect dressing for Eleanor Marshall, president of Artemis Studios and emotionless control freak.

She smiled without humour. Some joke. Well, her universe was crumbling around her, but at least she was wearing the appropriate clothes.

Jordan’Cabot Goldman was pregnant with her husband’s child. Tom’s child. The child of the man she loved, the man she had let herself hope for, with silent desperation, for some fifteen years, the man whom she had finally made love to and spent the most blissful night of her life with. The man whom she could never have.

It wasn’t as though she could avoid the agony of that, run from it, ignore it, block it out the way an ordinary mistress might have. No, she had to be with Tom every day, witness an endless stream of congratulations every day. The flowers had eventually dried up, but that wasn’t an end to it; every producer or agent who met them opened the meeting with good wishes, congratulations or, most often, father-to-father advice and jokes. Jordan herself had started to come by the office, and though Eleanor made an effort to be somewhere else when she arrived, she couldn’t help but see her sometimes, her face so incredibly young and blooming with health, graciously accepting everybody’s attentions, especially Tom’s. That really hurt watching Tom scramble to open doors for her, rush to get

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her a chair, refuse to allow her to hft anything heavier than a porcelain coffee cup. He treated his wife like she were the most precious thing in the world, and made of spun sugar, liable to break at any second.

And it wasn’t merely the loss of Tom Goldman, robbed in mercilessly every day like salt in an open wound. It was the idea of Jordan, twenty-four and pregnant with her first baby, a little Goldman son or daughter, with more to come. Eleanor had read somewhere that twenty-four was the average age for American women to marry, and twenty-five for. the conception of their first child. So blonde-haired, blue-eyed, All-American Barbie was doing it exactly right, perhaps a little ahead of schedule, whilst she, Eleanor, was almost forty, still single, and childless.