Picture Perfect (9 page)

He broke away and changed the mood: light comedy, now a clown. Glancing down at the scatter of bones, Alex raised his eyebrows. “You're luckier than
he
was,” he said.

He left Cassie separating her bones into five lines, plus the mandible, and went downstairs to get the second half of her present: the Durofix and pillars of plasticine, the sandbox she'd use to support pieces of the skull while putting it together. He'd taken all this from her laboratory at the house.

By the time he returned, Cassie had already laid out several pieces of bone, end to end, and Alex could see how they would easily fit together. “The packing label says he's from the Dark Ages,” Cassie said. “I've named him Lancelot.” She reached into the box Alex held, pulling out the Durofix and laying a thin line of the glue along one edge of bone. Setting it sideways in the sandbox, she affixed the second piece, then built up a buttress of sand to hold the pieces until the fixative dried. “I'm going to put the vault together, and then do the face separately if I can. While they're drying I can set the condyles of the mandible into the glenoid cavities to see if the teeth occlude correctly before I permanently set the face.”

Alex shook his head. “And they say people can't understand
Shakespeare
.”

Cassie smiled, but did not look up from her work. “Well, no one has to understand what I'm saying. He's my audience”—she ran a finger along Lancelot's jawbone—“and his hearing is completely shot to hell.”

She worked for an hour, fitting pieces together in a three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle. Alex sat across from her, absolutely stunned.

Cassie peered at him. “Haven't you ever watched me do this before?” When Alex shook his head, she grinned. “Do you want to help?”

For a second his eyes gleamed, but then he gently picked up a minute piece of the ancient face and ran his thumb over the spiked edge. “I wouldn't have any idea what to do,” he said. “I'd be more of a pain in the ass than anything else.”

“It's easy.” Cassie's small hands guided his to a second piece, and she fitted the edges together in a way that made perfect sense. “You can glue these two for me.” He stared at the image of her fingers wrapped over his, her palms holding his own, then at the chips of bone. No one would ever think of connecting him with Cassie when they were apart, but once they'd been brought together, they, too, appeared to be an ideal match.

Cassie mistook his silence for confusion. “Give it a try,” she said. “It's like a model. You must have done models as a kid.”

As a kid, Alex had spent most of his time alone, daydreaming and exploring his way around the rural outskirts of New Orleans. He preferred to stay hidden, and for hours at a time he'd climb cherry trees to read books he'd pinched from the public library:
Huckleberry Finn, The Red Badge of Courage, The Joy of Sex
.

Alex's parents hated each other but cared too much about what other people thought to get a divorce. His mother turned away from him because he looked too much like his father; his father turned away from him because Alex was not the sort of son Andrew Riveaux had dreamed of: one who willingly waded the bayou with him, hunting grouse; one who could shoot a perfect round of trap and hold his whiskey afterward with the boys.

On Alex's twelfth birthday, Andrew Riveaux bought his son a complicated wooden model of a Conestoga wagon, the kind that had crossed the Oregon Trail Alex was learning about in school. “I'll help you with that, boy,” his father said, and Alex believed that this promise of time spent together was even better than the present.

Alex opened the box and carefully laid out the smooth wooden parts, the metal rings that would brace the covering of the wagon. “Not so fast,” his father said, slapping away his hands. “You got to earn the parts.”

The wagon was built in accordance with the number of times Alex acted, in his father's eyes, like a man. He shot his first goose, carrying it home by its quivering feet and stopping twice to throw up his breakfast, and in return his father helped him structure the box of the wagon. He sailed a pirogue through the black vines of the bayou after dark, using his sense of smell for direction, and found the shack of the old witch woman his father bought rotgut whiskey from, which won him the model's front seat and the hitch for the horses. He fell out of a tree and broke his leg clear through the skin and did not shed one tear, and that same night his father sat on the edge of his bed to help his trembling fingers stick spokes into four wagon wheels.

Sometime when he was thirteen, he finished the model. It was delicate and perfect, inch for inch a miniature of history. Alex finally glued the muslin wagon cover in place and one hour later took the model out to the woods behind his house and smashed it to pieces with a fallen branch.

“Alex.
Alex
.” He jumped at the sound of Cassie's voice. Her eyes were wide, and she was waving a paper towel in front of him. “Here,” she said. “You're bleeding all over yourself.”

He looked down at his lap, seeing the fragments of crushed bone and the cut running down the side of his thumb. “Jesus,” he said. “I'm sorry.”

Cassie shrugged, holding the damp towel to his hand, applying pressure. “They're fragile. I should have told you that.” She smiled hesitantly. “Guess you aren't aware of your own strength.”

Alex turned away. Cassie had completed the face; it stared up at him through empty eyes from a bed of sand. He sat silently while Cassie put together the back of the skull. Almost all of the pieces were there, and he watched her neatly placing four fragments around the spot where the bone he had broken would have fit.

He stood up, mumbling something even he did not understand. All he knew was that he had to get out of that room before Cassie finished. He wouldn't be able to see the skull anymore as a sum of all those parts; instead his eyes would be drawn to what was missing, to what he had ruined.

 

“W
E
'
RE GOING TO ROB A GRAVEYARD
, ” C
ASSIE HAD ANNOUNCED, “ON
Halloween.” It was two weeks away, and it was the perfect dare, and Connor never turned those down. She had been trying to find something to get Connor's mind off his worries—his father had lost his job and had taken to spending his days in the garage with a fifth of scotch, and it was becoming increasingly clear that Connor wouldn't be able to afford college, although he was desperate to become a veterinarian. Cassie had seen the spark in his eyes, and she knew she'd hooked him.

So now, Halloween night, they were sneaking out at midnight. They had done their research: seniors at school told them that the police sat up every year at St. Joseph's but the pet cemetery off Mayfair Place was unguarded.

They stole down the street like cats, keeping to the shadows and holding their knapsacks away from their bodies so that the trowels and picks didn't bang together. They walked past evidence of the night that had already ended: trees strung with toilet paper, rural mailboxes dripping with eggs. Cassie walked ahead, and Connor watched her footsteps in the moonlight, careful to step exactly where she had.

The pet cemetery was a small gated area bordered by silvery pines. Everyone in town had buried something here—a cat, a guinea pig, a goldfish—although many of the graves were unmarked. By silent agreement, Connor and Cassie moved toward one of the few headstones in the cemetery. It heralded the resting place of Rufus, an unpopular mastiff that had been the only creature to escape the sharp side of old lady Monahan's tongue. Rufus had been dead for six years, and Mrs. Monahan for three, so Cassie didn't really think they'd be offending anyone by digging up the dog's bones.

“You ready?” Connor was looking around nervously, but he already had his pick in hand. Cassie nodded. She pulled out her tools and waited for Connor to strike the first blow.

The dog was buried so deep that Cassie wondered if there'd been a coffin. The Monahans had been the richest family on the lake, after all, and Rufus was their only child. She scraped at the soft earth with her hands, shoveling out what Connor loosed.

He was standing four feet into the pit, his legs braced on the sides of the dug walls for fear of stepping right on Rufus when he least expected it. He leaned over and chipped the edge of his trowel against something unforgiving. “Holy shit,” he said.

Cassie wiped the sweat out of her eyes. “You find it?”

Connor swallowed. He had turned a shade of gray. Cassie reached out a hand to pull him up, and when he was on level ground again, he fell to his knees to vomit. He wiped his hand across his mouth.

Cassie stood with her hands on her hips. “For God's sake, Connor,” she said. “How're you ever going to sew a dog's intestines back together if you can't even handle seeing them already dead?” Shaking her head, she leaped into the pit, wincing a little when her sneaker struck bone. She leaned over and started pulling the thin white curves up, one by one, tossing them inches from Connor's feet. In a way she was surprised. She'd been thinking of the skeleton as one big piece, like in the cartoons, not something that time could break into fragments.

Finally, she reached through the dirt and pulled out the dog's skull. Bits of hair still covered the crown. “Awesome,” she breathed, rolling it out of the pit toward Connor.

He was sitting with his back to the grave, his eyes shut tightly. “You ready to go?” he said, his voice scratchy and rough.

Cassie felt a grin split her face. “Jeez, Connor,” she said. “If I didn't know you better I'd think you were scared shitless.”

Connor stood up in one fluid motion, turning and grasping Cassie's arms with a strength just beneath the point of pain. He shook her so hard her head snapped back. “I am
not
scared,” he said.

Cassie narrowed her eyes. Connor never treated her like this. He never hurt her. He was the only one who didn't. Angry tears burned under her lids. “Coward,” she whispered, saying anything that would strike his heart and make him sting as badly as she did.

They stayed like that until time stopped, and all Cassie could feel was the cut of Connor's fingernails in her skin and the heat of his gaze as it swept her face. A tear streaked out of the corner of her eye, and Connor let go of one of her shoulders to wipe it away.

He had never touched her like that, either. So softly that she wondered if she had imagined it, or if it had been the night air. “I'm not a coward,” he whispered, coming so close the words fell onto her own lips.

Neither of them knew how to kiss. They both turned in one direction, then the other, and finally they came together in a quiet sigh. Heat funneled up through Cassie, burning her fingertips where she touched Connor's shoulders. She was certain she would leave her marks.

She opened her mouth to him, and when his tongue touched hers, all she had the power of mind to think was,
He tastes the same as me
.

Years later, when Cassie thought about her profession, she tried to understand what exactly had made her choose anthropology. Unconsciously, she had made her decision at age fourteen, that night at the pet cemetery. But she never knew if it was because of the marvel the bones themselves held for her, or because of a first kiss under moonlight, or simply in tribute, since it was the last time she saw Connor alive.

They stood in the cemetery for an hour, learning each other all over again. The moon turned them white, two ghosts lost in a kiss, glowing bones at their feet. Then they walked slowly back to Cassie's house, joined at the hand, this time with Connor leading.

T
O
celebrate the resurrection of Lancelot of the Dark Ages, Alex told Cassie he'd take her out to dinner. “Le Dôme,” he said, dialing a number he'd memorized. He glanced at Cassie. “You might want to straighten up a little.”

Of course she had planned to, she'd been buried in sand and plasticine all day; but it still hurt to know that Alex had found something wrong with her.

“Louis? Alex Rivers. Yes, tonight; nine o'clock. Just my wife and I. In the back, please.” He gently placed the phone into the receiver and lifted the skull from the dining room table, bending the jaw back and forth in mock conversation like a deadly parody of Señor Wences. “'S all right?” he mimicked.

Cassie smiled, she couldn't help it. “'S all right.” She wrapped her arms around herself, wondering what she would find in her closet to wear.

But to her surprise, Alex followed her into the bedroom and opened her closet. He found a three-piece gray silk suit, cut in simple lines, and tossed it onto the bed. “There you go,” he said, as if he did this all the time.

Cassie leaned against the doorframe of the bathroom and folded her arms. “Do I get to pick for you, too?” she asked dryly.

Alex glanced up, confused, as if he was only just realizing what his actions must look like. “You
always
ask me to pick,” he said. “You say I know what people are wearing these days.” He began to put the ensemble back into the closet.

Cassie bit her lip. “No,” she said, stepping forward. “I like it. I mean, I didn't know. It's fine.”

She scrubbed herself in the shower until her skin was iridescent and her hair was laced with the scent of lilies. She sang “Hey Jude” at the top of her lungs and wrote her name in the steamed glass. When she opened the door, Alex was standing there, looking ethereal in the hot mist and smoky mirrors. He was naked, and this only embarrassed her more. She crossed her arms over her breasts and turned away. “I didn't know you were in here,” she said.

“I could have heard you singing in San Diego,” Alex said. He smiled and caught her wrists, pulling her hands free. “I've seen it all before,” he said gently. He wrapped a towel around her hips, pulling her near.

“I thought we were going to dinner,” Cassie said.

“I'm working up an appetite,” Alex said. He traced the edge of her nipple with his tongue. “I'm a growing boy.”

He could do this to her, start a fever raging and make her blood ache. Cassie reached between them and guided him inside her, scratching at his shoulders in an effort to get closer. At some point the fogged mirrors cleared, and over Alex's bent head she watched them in triplicate, a chimera with tangled arms and legs, heaving and swelled with its own power. Her face was flushed, her damp hair strung around her neck. She reached out toward her reflection.
My God
, she thought.
Is this me
?

 

A
N HOUR LATER THEY WERE AT
L
E
D
ÔME
,
MAKING THEIR WAY TO A
quiet table in the back in between handshakes and promises for lunch and called greetings. For a Thursday night, the restaurant was crowded. Cassie stood nervously behind Alex, her hand curled into his, while he conducted business over other people's dinners. She watched him speak to a studio executive, and it took her several minutes to realize that Alex was carrying on a conversation about the weather in Scotland while the other man was discussing the advantages of syndication. Hollywood did not talk to each other, but rather at each other. Cassie couldn't help but think of three-year-olds who hadn't yet learned to share.

While Alex ordered wine, Cassie screened herself with her menu. She already knew what she was going to have, but she liked being hidden. It seemed as though every table seated either a celebrity trying to look supremely bored or an ordinary person craning his neck to see what Alex Rivers was having for dinner.

Alex pulled the top of her menu down with one finger. He was smiling at her. “This,” he said, “is why we don't get out much.”

They had just toasted Lancelot when a woman slinked toward the table sighing Alex's name. Cassie leaned forward, breathless. She had believed Ophelia was beautiful, but nothing could have prepared her for the sight of this woman. Dressed in a floor-length sheer black sheath that wrapped her from her neck to her wrists, she threw her arms around Alex's neck. A slit ran the length of her leg and Cassie noticed she wore no underwear, just thigh-high stockings. “Where,” she gushed, “have you been hiding yourself?”

“Miranda,” Alex said, nearly pushing the woman from his lap, “you remember my wife. Cassie, Miranda Adams.”

Miranda Adams leaned toward her, close enough for Cassie to smell the cloud of alcohol that hovered about her. She straightened, and Cassie was shocked to realize she could see right through the woman's dress. Miranda's nipples were dusky and triangular, and over her left breast was a series of birthmarks, or maybe a tattoo, in the pattern of the constellation Orion.

She assumed Alex and Miranda had worked together, although it was difficult to picture. The only films Cassie could remember starring Miranda Adams had featured her as a bouncy, wholesome virgin.

“We're eating,” Alex said pointedly, and Miranda executed a little pout. She kissed him full on the mouth, leaving a ring of red lipstick that Alex wiped away before she even left the table.

Cassie wondered if Alex had made love to her before coming to Le Doˆme just because of scenes like this. He had wanted to, yes, but it seemed that he had also needed her to know that he was hers, no matter what. Even now she could feel patches of her skin that were warmer than others, still glowing with Alex's imprint. “Is she the one who was in your trailer naked?” Cassie asked.

Alex's jaw dropped. “Where the hell did you hear that?”

She wasn't sure; she thought she'd read it in a tabloid headline at Trancas Market:
ANGEL SETS OUT TO HAVE A DEVIL OF A TIME
. She smiled, just to let Alex know it didn't bother her.

“Yes,” he said, “she was in my trailer, naked, but my assistant Jennifer was the one who found her there.” He leaned toward Cassie and kissed her softly, and they both turned in the direction of a bright camera flash.

“Goddammit,” Alex murmured, clenching his fists around the pristine tablecloth. Cassie thought of the shattered tile in their dining room table, the blood that had run down the side of Alex's hand; she found herself praying that he would not stand up and make a scene just right now. Alex pushed back his chair.

He stopped as Louis, the maître d', walked toward the table where the picture had been snapped and physically hoisted the diner to his feet. It was no one Cassie knew, but she realized that didn't mean much these days. The man had a half-filled plate in front of him, and a camera bag strapped to the back of his seat. Louis escorted him in the direction of the door, and then came to Alex's table, bowing. “My apologies, Mr. Rivers,” he said. He pulled a roll of film from his pocket, unraveling it into a long shiny arc and laying it on the table. “And with our compliments, another appetizer.”

She ate half of Alex's rack of lamb, and he ate half of her crab. For the most part nobody else bothered them, with the exception of Gabriel McPhee and Ann Hill Swinton, a rare pair of happily married young actors who swung by the table on their way out. Gabriel held their little girl in his arms, shifting her weight from side to side as he said hello to Alex. They talked for a few minutes, until the child started to scream and kick and people began to stare.

As they left, Alex shook his head, as if he needed to become re-accustomed to the quiet. He picked up a spoon and studied his reflection, distorted long and upside down.

“We don't have any children,” Cassie said.

Alex glanced up at her. “Did you think I was hiding them from you?”

Cassie laughed. “I was just wondering. I mean, we've been married for three years, and, I don't know, you said I'm thirty—”

“Oh my God,” Alex said. “Not only do you have amnesia, you've also broken your biological clock.” He grinned at her. “We might have kids, maybe down the road, but three years isn't that long to get to know each other. Plus, you head down to Africa for a month every summer, which wouldn't be easy with a kid. We decided to wait while our careers settled around us.”

Cassie wanted to ask him why they could afford three residences, but not a nanny. She wanted to ask him what would happen
if
. She thought about Ophelia, earlier that morning, smirking:
You mean
he
decided
.

She lifted her eyes, preparing an argument, but was stopped by the look on Alex's face. His jaw was tight and his skin was unnaturally pale. “You've been taking your Pill, haven't you? I mean, I never even thought to show you where they are.”

There was no way that Cassie could know he was thinking of his own father, and that damn model wagon, and of the fact that he had sworn off children because he did not want to turn into someone like Andrew Riveaux. Still, in that way she had of sensing his pain, she reached across the table for his hand. “Of course,” she said, although she had not seen any birth control pills since she'd arrived home. “We decided.”

Alex took a deep breath. “Thank God,” he said. He pushed back his chair and stretched his legs. “I'm going to go to the bathroom. I don't think anyone will bother you when I'm gone.”

Cassie rolled her eyes. “I think I can take care of myself.”

Alex stood. “Sure. Last time I let you out of my sight, you wound up at the LAPD.” He walked through the rows of tables, turning heads. Cassie watched the easy movement of his body and the confidence that clung to him as closely as a shadow.

She was so busy watching Alex that she did not see the man sit down at the table. He was good-looking, though nowhere near Alex's caliber, and slightly shorter and lighter of frame. Cassie smiled shyly. “Can I help you?”

The man leaned forward and grasped her hand, whispering his lips along the edge of her wrist. “I've been waiting all night,” he said, and Cassie pulled away.

“I'm afraid I can't remember your name.” Cassie sat as stiffly as possible in the chair, her eyes darting left for Alex's approach. She wanted this man gone by the time Alex got back. She wanted to get rid of him herself.

“I'm devastated. Nicholas. Nick LaRue.” He spoke with a strange accent she could not place, something that was neither Continental nor eastern.

Cassie flashed him her brightest smile. “Nick, then. I'm afraid Alex and I are on our way out. I'll be happy to tell him you said hello.”

He reached for her wrist, pressing her hand to the table so that pulling away again would attract attention. His other hand began to dance the length of her arm. “Who said I came to see Alex?” he said.

“Get your fucking hands off my wife.” Alex stood behind her, and Cassie closed her eyes, instinctively sinking toward his heat. Suddenly she sat erect. Nick LaRue. He had been in that movie with Alex, the new one,
Taboo
. Their characters were best friends, partners in a jewelry heist. But she could remember Alex coming home from the set, stalking the house like a panther, anger seething from his skin. “He thinks his trailer should be closer to the soundstage than mine.” “He's holding out for top billing.” And what had she done? She'd poured Alex a drink every night, promised him that in ten weeks, or eight weeks, or six, he'd never have to work with Nick LaRue again, and then she'd given him herself to help him forget.

Alex had taken off his jacket and Cassie felt it draped over her lap, warmer than his own skin. Nick stood opposite him, and Cassie stared into his eyes only to see twin images of Alex, drawn in rage. The diners at the other tables started to file out of the room like sand in an hourglass, and sure enough, when the last one had disappeared the two men each took one step closer.

In the front of Le Doˆme, Louis called the police. He would certainly not be the one to interfere, and even if he had been a foot taller and thirty pounds more muscular, he wouldn't have been able to choose a side. Both Alex Rivers and Nick LaRue were A-level clients.

Cassie shrank back against the wall. She did not think anyone had ever fought over her before, and she wasn't sure if she should be flattered or sickened. She saw Alex's fist swinging forward and she closed her eyes, knowing anywhere the unmistakable sound of bone striking bone.

 

W
ILL LIKED HAVING THE BEAT ON
S
UNSET
. H
E AND HIS PARTNER
—a Hispanic named Ramón Pérez, and this irony did not escape him—drove for hours at a time down Sunset and back, anticipating a summons. From time to time there was a drug bust, a construction detail, an occasional robbery, but more often Will just stared out the window and waited for action. Yesterday he'd gone into Cassie's church and lit a candle for her. He sat in a pew in the back, whispering a one-way conversation to her God that basically hoped she was doing all right.

“Hey, Crazy,” Ramón said. “Wake the fuck up.”

Ramón still insisted on calling him Crazy Horse, which Will did not find funny and which he'd warned him against several times, to no avail. “I wasn't sleeping,” Will said.

“Yeah, well, then tell me where we were just dispatched.”

Will turned his face to stare out the window.

“Le Doˆme,” Ramón said. “Le Goddamn Dôme. Two hot-shit movie stars having a fight.”

Will sat up and pulled his regulation hat low on his head while Ramón read him the off-the-book code on celebrity disturbances.
You don't rough them up. You call them Mr. So-and-so. You never bring them down to the station. You don't borrow trouble
.