What Movies Made Me Do (18 page)

I looked at him like he was completely nuts.

“I figured Anita would do anything to get at me,” he said.

“She’s more direct.” I grinned.

“She deliberately wore that red shirt,” he muttered. “I
told her I would never go near red on location. She won’t let me rehearse in my lucky sneakers. I’d like to go somewhere and take it easy,” he said hoarsely. “I like you, I like the way you like me.”

I had a flash picture of opening my front door to find him wearing my yellow apron and flipping an omelette in one of my unused shiny copper pans.

“What a seduction machine,” I scolded.

He drew his eyebrows together. “You been hurt
bad.
”

“That’s a fancy line. What do you really want to do?”

The coats slipped off his legs. I made no move to help him as he tried to pile them back on.

“I wish I wanted something,” he said sadly.

“You’re a good actor, and your work gets better.”

“Bullshit. Anita treated me like cheesecake.”

“I see rushes. I get real waves of feelings off your face, it’s very mobile and totally compelling. I can’t believe the misery.”

“The work makes me miserable.”

I tried not to smile. “You’re breaking through. You’re expressing a whole new range of feelings.”

“It’s all fake. I’m like a prostitute faking orgasms.”

“No, you’re deepening yourself.” I sounded like Mary Poppins with a clinical psychology degree. “Let’s stop negotiating and get you to the doctor anyway. We got ten minutes.” I handed him one of his sneakers.

I braced my leg against his and helped him stuff his arms in one of the coats. Outside on the rocking deck I walked him past the smiling man in the turban. I unzipped my pocketbook and gave him a hundred-dollar bill. “We’ll take an hour.”

At the gangplank Jack reached into his dungarees, brandished his own bent green passport, and dropped it into the deep gray ocean. I gasped as it washed sideways and sank.

“Goodbye, Jack Hanscomb,” he said in a loud voice.

“Very dramatic.”

I backed up a paved one-way street and parked in front of a turquoise building with a sign for a Dr. Mildvan. A ceiling fan and three molded plastic chairs were the only furniture in the waiting room. Pinned on the walls were a child’s watercolors of King David’s life.

As Jack slumped down into his chair, a short curvy woman in white with a stethoscope around her neck and a tiny diamond wristwatch came through a door. Her thick black hair made an aureole of curls around her head. She was wearing pale beige lipstick and dark eyeliner that emphasized her small almond-shaped eyes snapping with energy. She extended her hand to me. I hit him with my elbow. He jumped awake.

“Shalom,” she said formally in a British-Israeli accent. I smelled Chanel No. 5. Her hand was small and tense.

“He’s the patient,” I said.

“Let’s take a look,” she said in her liquid but tough voice. “This way, please.”

“The local virus,” he said, standing like he had two broken knees.

I watched her neutral face anxiously. She pulled a pair of round glasses out of her pocket. They magnified her dark eyes. She didn’t seem to recognize him. He looked like a scruffy invalid. “What are your symptoms?” I heard her ask before she closed the door to the examining room.

Alone, I noted her certificate in English and Hebrew. She was a colonel in the army medical corps. I bet she had some life story. But I was in a pickle. What was I doing? Was I really strong enough to resist his seduction? I didn’t need to get hurt again. Where could I stash him in New York? What was I going to do with a sick and distraught movie star who needed people jumping up and down and bursting into applause
every time he hiccuped. His hotel was completely public; everybody would know him.

The door opened. She leaned out. “You may come in.”

He sat on the edge of the steel examining table, buttoning his dungarees. I noted dark oil smears on his tee shirt. The room smelled of tart rubbing alcohol.

She was sitting on a stool and writing on a pad. “I will prescribe some sulfa drug for the hypothermia. His temperature must not fall below normal. He will lose consciousness.”

“We don’t have time,” I faltered.

She pulled open a drawer in a white cabinet. “I have samples in here.”

He asked her, “Am I contagious?”

She crossed her white-stockinged legs and shook her head. I tucked pills in my purse. “Four times a day, for ten days, and not on an empty stomach. Your virus is a small mystery. It resembles malaria and has become rather a star in the area of infectious medicine.”

“How come everybody on this island isn’t sick?” I asked.

“Inoculations,” she said slowly, smiling a little for the first time. “We give our babies a mild chicken pox virus and that seems to work.”

She sucked in her thin cheeks. “I hear your movie is going well.” She sounded droll.

We both stared at her.

When he didn’t respond she twisted the rubber cord out of her stethoscope. “I never expected to treat you.”

His eyes darted to me, and he practiced smiling. He looked better already. I asked, “What happens to the star here?”

“I take pills and I sweat,” he said in a relaxed voice.

“He goes through cycles,” she said. “Right now, he’s bad, high fever, then hypothermia, but it goes away and recurs in mild forms. I gave him a chicken pox and sulfa shot.”
She switched on a small flashlight and beamed it into his eyes. “How’s your vision?”

“Fine.”

“Night vision?”

He shrugged.

“No hallucinations, no problems with moving things?”

He shook his head. No mention of cars coming at him.

“Can he travel?”

“The sulfa will work fine.”

“Is there anything I can do?” I asked.

“Baths to sweat the fever,” she said.

“How long will he be sick?”

“At least forty-eight hours,” she said. She pointed her finger at him and visibly softened. “Rest, calm and rest.”

He raised his head. “Any other symptoms, Doc, besides chills and fatigue?”

“Depression. The body’s response to a bug it can’t defeat comes as a kind of mental exhaustion.” Her eyes jumped all over his face.

He quirked his eyebrows at her. “You got a telephone number in case I need some questions answered later?”

She stood up. “Yes, and I have a monograph I published in
The New England Journal
on your bug.”

“Good,” I answered for him. He seemed to fade in and out. “What’s your fee?” I asked.

She was pulling a white file drawer, and handing me a glossy magazine. “I compare it to an epidemic of hoof-and-mouth disease in Cambridgeshire a few years back.”

“I got loads of Israeli dollars,” Jack said.

She waved her hand. “Well, I do have a favor.”

We both waited.

She poked at her thick hair. “I have a camera, if you wouldn’t mind—”

He lifted his head and beamed that big bright winning smile. That smile you would kill to protect.

She disappeared into the reception area and came back with an impressive Rollei. She focused it for me, and sat down next to him on the black chair, her hands folded on one knee.

“What about a prop?” he asked. “Stick your stethoscope inside my shirt.”

“No, thank you,” she murmured.

He looked her in the eyes while he plucked the end of the stethoscope from her chest, pressing the instrument to his neck. I clicked the camera.

He said, “You’re doing great, Doc.”

I watched her smile go a little wild.

“Have you been to the Grand Canyon?” I asked her a minute later as we linked arms behind his back, supporting him to the car.

“Yes,” she said in her careful voice. “That was fun too.”

Mae looked alarmed when we opened the car door. “This animal needs a home,” I said, picking up the fat yellow cat with both hands. I scratched her plump furry throat.

“I will find it one,” the doctor said.

“Her name is Mae.” The cat leaped out of my arms and up the path to her office.

In the car he tilted his head back. Sweat beaded his forehead. “Shit,” he said, “now what am I supposed to do? I’m really sick. In five years I’ll be fifty and sick will be a way of life.”

“You take pills, baths, and you get better.” I sighed, envying the doctor. She had a clean vital job. She didn’t have to hustle and connive to get her way. And what good work she did, no superficial tinsel-town hocus-pocus. She gave people health. She saved lives.

We didn’t talk until I made a skidding turn back on the waterfront path and stopped in front of the hydrofoil. “Thanks for the helping hand, you’re good company,” he said.

“I do enjoy a lot of my own company,” I said dejectedly.

“Come to Rome,” he said in his grandiose seductive voice. “I have a feeling it’ll be good for you.”

I braked hysterically by his hydrofoil. “New York will be good for you,” I said forcefully. “We can get a plane from Tel Aviv and be there in ten hours.” We got out, and I leapt to help him as he sagged against the car. Bending under his weight, I added, “I’ll nurse you. I’ll admire you.”

“You still got the black dog?” he asked abruptly.

“Yup,” I said.

The man with the turban appeared at the gangplank. I beckoned him for help.

“Maybe I’ll flip a coin,” he said inside the cabin, yawning. “Rome or New York.”

“No, no, you’re coming to Manhattan with me.”

“Wrong.” He laughed again, lying down on the couch. “You’re crazy about me. I can get you to do anything I want.”

That made me mad. “Why don’t you just go to Rome by yourself?”

Silence. He opened one eye at me. “Okay, I’m getting hustled, but I’m not sure I can make it alone. I need you, I’m coming back with you.”

He turned over. “Carol, you look exhausted,” and he pointed to a cot in a dim corner. “Lie down and cover yourself with some of these coats. It’s too damp in here. I don’t want you getting sick too.”

“I’m fine,” I said, closing my eyes with relief. I began rummaging through my bag. “I have crackers you can eat before you take your next pills.” I checked my watch. I had to remember to call Anita and tell her to pretend he hadn’t disappeared. We’d both be fired if Michael got wind of this caper. I wanted to shout yippee. I was taking him back to New York, where I’d have time to coax him into finishing my movie. It was amazing. I was going to get to spend time with
him. Strictly business. I handed him a wrapped saltine and sank into the cold Naugahyde sofa.

“Sex was lousy between us, wasn’t it?” he said from the other side of the room. I heard him chewing a dry cracker.

I gulped. “I’ll lie if you want.”

“The truth.”

The motor rose to a chugging roar.

“It reminded me of a car accident. We didn’t know each other but we kept crashing into each other.”

“What was your problem, do you think?” He spoke through a yawn.

“It wasn’t anybody’s fault.” The boat began to churn water. I sat up and watched the shoreline shrinking through a small window. I had a pang. I never meant to leave Israel so soon. I almost understood things here.

“Hey, how’s it look?” he asked.

I was watching our wake cut a fat white line behind us. Suddenly the vessel leaped and we were smoothly skimming the water—flying and sailing at the same time.

“Go stand on deck, the wind smells fresh,” he said.

“I’m fine down here.” I tore open two silver aspirin and codeine packets, and began guzzling the last Perrier bottle. His eyes narrowed like he was listening to my thoughts. Then his voice crackled as he said, “Take it easy, all you need is one long weekend with me.”

“Don’t talk like that, it’s vulgar.” It hit me that he was coming with me because he felt challenged in the sex department.

“If you don’t like the way I talk, find somebody else to bully.” He sounded belligerent.

“Now I’m a bully?”

“No, not really, or I wouldn’t be following you around the world,” he said gently. “No, you’re like a crank from India, you’d sell your soul to make that movie.”

“Hey, truce.” I retreated to the cot. “I’m too tired to fight you.”

“And remember our pact. Don’t bug me about finishing this movie.”

“Sure, sure,” I lied.

“Fasten your seat belt.” He giggled drowsily. “It’s going to be a bumpy date.” I heard the springs of his couch like he was turning over.

Something nagged at my tired brain. “What will people think if they find your passport?”

He laughed bitterly. I curled up on my side. The cot smelled like seaweed as I relaxed into the flying rhythm of the boat, and my whole body sank into a deep solid sleep.

Sound track whistles “I Love New York” as camera somersaults past New York skyline to glinting yellow roof and windshield of cab.

My toes rubbed in the new penny loafers from the Tel Aviv airport store. I was freezing in two tee shirts and two sweaters. Jack turned up his coat collar, shivering. “Could we get more heat?” I asked the driver.

“My best isn’t good enough?”

“He’s sick.”

Jack Hanscomb hunched into his old Israeli overcoat like an escaping prisoner of war. It was 6 a.m. and we were driving into the bright dense city. I blinked whirling silver dots, wired like a kid who’d robbed a great candy store. If I could find Jack a quiet hotel near my apartment and calm him down about Anita, I could get him back on location this week. Above all, he mustn’t give me the slip. Above all, I had to keep my presence of mind around him.

I admired his blunt and brown fingers as he opened his Shakespeare book. I suddenly pictured Barry’s long, cool trembling fingers. I hadn’t lost him. I’d try to make friends. I blinked away pain and started scribbling strategy notes on one of my business cards.
Call Anita.
I had to make sure she
covered Jack’s disappearance. I had to jump two steps ahead of Michael Finley and discredit him at the studio. If Michael discovered Jack’s disappearance, he’d shut down the movie and blame this latest disaster on me. It was grounds to fire me and collect the production insurance money.

I caught Jack staring abstractedly at me. “Hey.” I poked his shoulder. “You think you’ll be recognized at a hotel?”