Picture Perfect (15 page)

I bristled. “I'm afraid you're wrong,” I said. “This site belongs to the University of California.”

The man threw up his hands, disgusted, and turned his back on me.

The second man held out his hand. “I'm George Farley,” he said. “I'm an A.D.” He gestured over his shoulder. “Edward here is our D.P.”

I smiled at him warily.
A.D., D.P.
“Cassandra Barrett,” I said, hoping this was the appropriate response.

George waved an arm toward the sweep of the gorge. “We're filming a movie here, and when Edward was doing long-range pans today, he kept getting your tent. You see, we were under the impression we'd be the only ones here this time of year.”

A movie? How they had gotten permission to film in Tanzania was mind-boggling, but I could see that the already excavated sites on the edge of the Serengeti plain would save the production costs of bulldozing their own. “Well,” I said, “I'm sorry to disappoint you. But I'm working here too.”

“Tell her to take the tent down, then.”

The cinematographer—the
D.P.
—had not even bothered to turn around when he spoke, and my hands clenched at my sides. “I'm afraid I can't,” I said, biting off each word. “It's too hot to work without an awning.”

“Work?” The cinematographer pivoted, and slowly smiled. George Farley's eyes burned like a man who's discovered gold. “You're an anthropologist?”

Against my better judgment, I nodded.

“Ah,” Edward sighed. “There is a God.”

George led me back beneath my linen awning. “You're a UCLA anthropologist? You're here on an excavation?”

“Believe me,” I said, “this isn't exactly an excavation site.” I explained the program at the university; the various field sites used around Africa to teach excavation hands-on.

“So you're not really working,” George pressed. “You might have some…free time.”

“I might,” I said.

“Three hundred dollars a day,” George said. “Yours, if you'll agree to be a technical advisor on the movie.”

It was more than I made at UCLA; it was certainly enticing. Without knowing a thing about the movie, I thought of how tempting it would be to actually
profit
from Custer's enforced sabbatical. I thought of the satisfaction I would get from screwing Custer in a way that didn't jeopardize my future at the university.

When I did not say anything, George jumped forward to fill the silence. “It's a film about an anthropologist, and the star, Alex Rivers, insists that we get him the real McCoy so he can learn about excavation firsthand.”

“Insists?” Edward interrupted, smirking. “
Demands
.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Don't you have one already?” I said. “Seems to me you'd have thought of that before you came all the way out here.”

George cleared his throat. “You're right, and we did, but he had to leave unexpectedly about a week ago.”

“In the middle of the night,” Edward added, under his breath. “Probably by force.”

George gave him a dark look. “Alex isn't as bad as all that,” he said, turning back to me. “We wired the States but it would take time we don't have to find someone and you…well, you—”

“I've dropped into your viewfinder,” I said lightly.

“Three hundred and fifty,” George said. “And a room at the lodge in town.”

It wasn't ethical; it wasn't something Archibald Custer would condone. It would mean spending all my free time babysitting a spoiled movie star who'd already fired someone, instead of poking through the site for my own research. I opened my mouth, prepared to decline their offer graciously, when I thought of Connor.
Don't you ever wonder what you're missing?

“Well,” I said, smiling brilliantly, “when do we start?”

 

G
EORGE HAD LEFT ME WITH AN IMPROVISED CONTRACT SCRIBBLED ON
the rear flap of the romance novel I'd been reading, and almost immediately I'd taken down my awning and driven into town to call Ophelia. Me, on a movie set with Alex Rivers. Personally, I wasn't expecting much from a celebrity—living in L.A. had shown me how shallow and egocentric their worlds were—but I knew Ophelia would consider this a tremendous stroke of good fortune. She devoured the trade journals, always knowing what producer had hooked up with what director and what star; she stared like a groupie when we walked past movies that were being shot on the streets of L.A. I could imagine what her reaction would be—she'd die, or at least she'd say she was going to, because that was her answer for most things, from winning a part as an extra on a TV commercial to running out of lettuce when making a salad.

Ophelia Fox had been my roommate since we'd been thrown together by a computer our freshman year at UCLA. Back then, she'd had the unfortunate name of Olivera Frug, and she'd still been a B-cup and a blonde. I sort of anchored Ophelia to the real world, and in return, well, I suppose she made me laugh.

I also knew more about Ophelia than anyone else did. When I stayed at UCLA during my first Christmas break because there was nothing for me in Maine, I was surprised to see Ophelia was staying too. In her usual flip manner, she told everyone it was a way to work on her tan. But on Christmas Eve we got drunk on a bottle of Glenfiddich, and when Ophelia thought I had fallen asleep she began to talk. She spoke of the stepfather who had been feeling her up since she was twelve. She spoke of the smell of his aftershave. She spoke of the insomnia she cultivated so that she would be able to hear the slightest breach of her bedroom door. When the sun came up we did not unwrap presents, but instead shyly treasured this gift of each other.

We were unlikely friends, but we were inseparable. When Ophelia began to remake herself in a different image, I stood by her. After all, I understood what she was trying so hard to disguise. She bought herself breast implants as a graduation gift and legally changed her name; and while I started work on my master's, she threw herself into the task of finding us an apartment close enough to the studios for her and to UCLA for me. It was a small place, but the rent was low, and we'd been there now for almost seven years.

“Go ahead,” the operator said.

“Ophelia?”

I heard her let her breath out in a rush. “Thank God you called,” she said, as if I were a half-mile away. “I'm having a crisis.”

I grinned. “You're always having a crisis,” I pointed out. “What's the problem today?”

“I'm supposed to meet my therapist at four o'clock, you know?” Ophelia had been seeing someone to enhance her self-assertiveness ever since she had decided the sessions with the psychic weren't working. “Right now I'm seeing him twice a week, and I'd really like to cut back to once, but I don't know how to tell him that.”

I didn't want to laugh, I didn't mean to, but the sound leaked out. I covered it with a cough.

“Maybe I just won't go,” she sighed. “I'll tell him Thursday.” She was quiet for a moment, and then seemed to remember where I was. “And how's Africa?” she dutifully asked.

Ophelia did not understand my attraction to anthropology—to her it was a glorified way of getting filthy—but she knew how much it meant to me. “It's much more interesting than I expected,” I said. “I'm moonlighting.”

“As a safari guide?”

“As a technical advisor on Alex Rivers's new movie.”

I heard a crash in the background. “Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod,” Ophelia said. “
How
did this happen?”

Relating the entire story to Ophelia brought back my original doubts. “I know I'm going to regret this,” I said. “If it wasn't for the money—and for a chance to screw UCLA—I wouldn't be doing it.” I grimaced. “I bet he won't even want to get his hands dirty.” I let my breath out slowly, mulling over the consequences of a hasty decision. I didn't like Custer, but I could avoid him when I was at the university. I wasn't going to like Alex Rivers, but I had committed myself to being his shadow for ten hours a day.

“I'm sending you clothes,” Ophelia announced. “My black sleeveless dress and the pink satin bra and—”

“Ophelia,” I interrupted, “I'm his technical advisor, not his mistress.”

“Still,” Ophelia countered, “you never know. Just sign for the damn package and you can stuff it into your bag and forget about it.” She took a shaky breath. “I can't believe this. I just can't believe this. I
knew
I should have majored in anthropology.” Her voice tumbled over her words, racing with excitement. “God, Cass,” she said.
“Alex Rivers!”

I smiled. If I even wore that bra within twenty yards of Alex Rivers, Ophelia would probably frame it when I got home. “He's just a person,” I reminded her.

“Yeah,” Ophelia said. “A person who makes four million per film and has the entire female population casting him in their fantasies at night.”

I thought about this: Alex Rivers had not been in any of my fantasies, but then again most of my dreams had to do with chipping away at piles of dirt and finding men who'd lived millions of years ago. I tried to remember which of his films I had seen. I must have gone to them with Ophelia, because she was really the only person I spent my free time with, and she usually forced me to see the latest box office hit. Vaguely I remembered
Desperado
, some Western made when we were in college, and
Light and Shadows
, which had been one of the token Vietnam coming-of-age pictures of 1987. There were a few action films whose titles I couldn't remember, and then the last one I'd seen, about six months ago, that love story.
Applewild
. I'd forgotten about that one. It had surprised me, because I'd never seen Alex Rivers cast as a romantic hero, and he had made me believe in him.

The film's message had stayed with me the whole drive home: Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. I wondered if it was really true. Love, to my knowledge, was nothing more than a planned seduction. In college, I had lost my virginity to a fraternity boy, just because I wanted to know what it was like. There hadn't been any great ache around my heart, or a connection of the spirits. There was the speeding of my blood, the mix of our hot breath, and the simplicity of sex.

There had not been many others, but I didn't think I was missing much. Most of the time I was too busy to notice. I would have liked kids, one day, but I would only create a child with someone I really cared about, and to this date the only person I had ever even imagined falling in love with was Connor.

“I have to go,” I said. “This is costing a fortune.”

“Call me Thursday after you meet him.”

“Ophelia—”

“Thursday.”

I closed my eyes. “We'll see,” I said. “No promises.”

 

I
HAD NEVER SEEN SO MANY PEOPLE WHO WERE PAID TO DO NOTHING
. People sat on the ground, on folding canvas chairs, on boulders. There were cranes set up with tremendous cameras, and wires leading everywhere. A man wearing headphones sat in front of a portable sound system colored with knobs and levers. Everyone was talking, George and Edward were nowhere to be found, and no one seemed to be in charge.

I was used to being sent to desolate locations without knowing a soul, but here I was out of my element. It seemed everywhere I placed my foot I got it tangled in some cord, and I had run right into a man carrying a profusion of wigs and tweed caps, knocking him to the ground. “Oh my God,” I said, “let me help you.” But he had just given me a dirty look, gathered his things, and rushed away.

I walked up to a woman who sat on a high canvas chair labeled
SCRIPT
. “Excuse me,” I said. “I'm looking for the director.”

She sighed, but she didn't look up from the open loose-leaf binder she held in her lap. “You and me both, babe,” she said. She scribbled a note with a red pencil, and then yelled out someone's name, waving him over with her hand.

I bobbed and weaved past people with walkie-talkies looped into their belts. Lying across a table was a pile of scripts. “‘In His Image,'” I read aloud, running my fingers over the Warner Brothers insignia at the bottom.

“Can I help you?” A harried-looking man stood in front of me, tapping his foot. He snatched the script out of my hand.

“I'm looking for Bernie Roth,” I said. “The director.”

The man sneered at me. “Like I don't know who he is?” He snapped his fingers as two brawny men walked by carrying a heavy black rope. “Hey—hey, where are you going with that? I told you it was supposed to go
behind
the tent.”

“Wait,” I said as he scurried after the rope, “Bernie Roth?”

“In a minute,” he stalled. He yelled after the two men carrying the rope. “
Behind
the tent!”

I slung my knapsack onto the table and pulled a khaki baseball cap onto my head. If Mohammed can't get to the mountain, I figured, I'd just wait for the mountain to come to Mohammed. Sooner or later, someone was going to try to locate me. I sat down with my back against a tall tree, and hugged my knees to my chest.

I tried to think about Alex Rivers. I knew what he looked like, of course—he was on the cover of a magazine every month, or so it seemed. He was, in a word, stunning. His brown hair was shot with gold; his jaw was square and marked by the cleft of his chin. He had a full, generous mouth that always looked as if he was holding back a secret. And his eyes, his claim to fame, were remarkable. They were the split-silver of an empty mirror, and like a mirror, when you looked into them even in a publicity photo, you could swear you were seeing your soul.

I supposed it wouldn't be a hardship to face him every day.