What Movies Made Me Do (12 page)

His voice was making me giddy. It made everything in that meadow special. Then he broke off the waltz and without
pausing began to play fierce, sorrowful music, like a lament. “He sounds pent-up or something.”

“He loves desecrating a piano.”

“Weird, weird,” I said to nobody in particular. “I wish you’d get him to express himself like that on film. Is he very unhappy?” I was still savoring the sounds of his voice, the mournful piano, the bright pool and deck in front of the cottage, and the wind bending the wheat. “It’s like seeing the Grand Canyon,” I said stupidly.

“You can take the girl out of Philadelphia,” Anita muttered.

“At least I’m not jaded,” I said.

“You’re naïve.”

“Okay.”

We were walking up to the sun deck. “Who lived here before?”

“My fag production designer.”

I stared at her.

“He left last Sunday.”

I stamped my foot on the sun deck. This was a disaster. “Dammit, nobody told me.”

“No, Carol.” She turned, curling her finger, beckoning me to the screen door. “I paid him off to go underground for a month until I finished shooting. It’s too late to get somebody else to come here.”

“You didn’t want Michael and me to know how things were falling apart.”

She grinned brazenly at me. “It almost worked.”

I smoothed my hair with both hands. I wished I had combed it.

“Anybody else deserted?” I asked while she stood blocking the open screen door.

“Nope.”

“Come on,” I said, dreading what she’d say.

“Well, it sounds worse than it is—the engineer, the wardrobe mistress, and Carlos, the second-unit man, left two days ago. A local kid found them a villa on the beach near the Red Sea. I agreed to pay them half their wages if they don’t show their faces until I get the movie in the can.”

“What, that much of the crew is gone?” I almost exploded. This production was a nightmare.

“It cost me.” She grimaced again.

“But now Jack needs some tender loving care,” I said, trying to calm myself. “Let’s nail him down.” I put my hand over my mouth. “No pun intended,” we said in unison, and she linked her arm in mine.

“Just watch out,” she whispered, rapping the door, “he’s nutty.”

The piano stopped. I heard birdsong and slow splashing from the swimming pool. He started chording slowly up the scale, singing, “Show me the way to go home, I’m tired and I want to go to bed.”

Anita was watching me. I realized with shock I was singing along with him. I rubbed my nose. “Does he still want to make our movie?”

“Yeah, yeah.” She peeked through the screen door. “He wants to look serious. Every ambitious Hollywood hustler wants to be an artist.”

“I never met an unmotivated star,” I said. “But you know they’re spoiled and pistol-whipped by fans and critics until they’re out of their minds.”

She pounded the door until it rattled. “This one’s insane,” she muttered. “Remind me to tell you about the lucky charms in his pocket and how he cries if he has to walk under ladders.”

“Knock and it shall be opened to you,” he said in that famous crackling voice.

“He thinks he was born to play Jesus Christ,” she whispered.

“Give me a couple minutes alone with him.”

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” She tried to sound jaunty.

Inside, the room was dark. The minute I saw him I closed my eyes. Red spots whirled inside my eyelids. “Shalom,” he drawled. His black hair parted in the middle and hung to his shoulders. He looked like I wanted Jesus Christ to look: tortured, Semitic, and full of hyped-up charisma, his blue eyes flashing, his mouth sullen. I forgot how broad he was in the shoulders. I forgot the power he had over me. I loved the fact that genes and God and the random molecules of the universe had conspired to produce a beauty like him, and then more prosaic forces like commerce sent him to Los Angeles to be touched up, photographed, and reproduced into lots of people’s dreams.

A white ceiling fan turned over his head like a weird halo. I felt tipsy, like an older Alice in Wonderland stepping through a movie screen. “How do you feel?” I asked.

He squinted at me like an old rabbi. “You look like the kind of woman rich men marry,” he said finally.

“You look dark and desperate, like a speed freak from 1969.” He had lost more than thirty pounds. I would have to check rushes to make sure they were hiding his weight changes with lights and makeup. Otherwise he’d shrink and balloon up from scene to scene.

“What brings you to the temple?” He set his lips in a patient, false smile.

“You invited me here,” I said boldly. I was remembering kissing his relaxed lower lip six years ago. He had laughed and uncurled my arms from around his neck. “You got a steamy side, Carol,” he’d said. “It comes rushing out of you through windows that you keep slamming shut,” and he tugged me to his starched hotel sheets.

Now he raised his arms in mock benediction, his white sleeves billowing. “Thank the Lord, it still works on girls.”

“What?”

“The cheap pimp talk.”

My heart sank. “I believed everything you said on the phone,” I said firmly. It seemed like I was always throwing myself at him in strange rooms. “You need me to take care of things.”

He crooked his uneven eyebrows and smiled like the glowing big screen. Hypnotizing me.

“Stop it.”

He shrugged. “No problem.”

“I didn’t come waltzing around the world just to play.”

“Wait, wait, guess why I threw a fit and forced you to fly over here.”

“Why?”

“I want to know you.”

“Stop vamping.” I stamped my foot.

He spun himself around on the piano stool and fixed me with a stare. “I want to do
business
with you.”

“Why?”

“Nobody else can handle Princess Anita. I see the way she talks about you.” He wagged a finger at me. “You had trouble getting your ass over here. I had to put pressure on your boss.”

I put my hands on my hips. “So this was all your plan?”

Smiling and smiling, he played the Stravinsky waltz. “She’s nuts, but I have faith in you. You get what you want.”

When he kept on smiling I said stupidly, “You look amazing, a Puerto Rican plastic Jesus.”

He hit a ripple of sweet chords, and sang in a country twang, “I don’t care if it rains or freezes, long as I have my plastic Jesus, sitting on the dashboard of my car—”

I stepped closer, mesmerized. Above his white tunic, his face looked golden brown from sun. But his cheeks were sunken, and I didn’t like the new puffy flesh around his eyes. I bet he felt as shaky as I had when my marriage broke up.

“Please, I’ll do anything, just stop singing that song.” The door slammed behind Anita.

“Who invited her?” he asked me in that stammering cocky drawl that sounded like Jimmy Stewart. He pounded two booming C major chords.

“Very funny,” she yelled. She whispered to me, “I hate that song. He sings it in the middle of takes he doesn’t want me to print.”

“It’s the piano,” I said, pushing my elbow into Anita’s ribs. “She says it’s out of tune.”

I watched them stare each other down. I said, “Anita has one or two things on her mind.”

“Just give me the tune.” She was trying to sound humble. “From now on, I’ll play it your way.”

His eyes darted at me. He stopped playing, and faced Anita. “You’re a sore loser. All I want is to act the fuck out of the best role I ever had in my life.” He began playing slowly up and down the keyboard. “You tried to ruin me.”

Anita looked cornered. “I’m offering you my formal apology.”

I just hoped he didn’t know her well enough to hear the insincerity in her voice.

“But you don’t look destroyed,” I interrupted, trying not to stare at that familiar face like something I loved in a dream.

“You kept your looks.” He winked at me. “What’s your beauty secret? Clean living or maybe no living at all?”

I flushed. Anita closed one eye at me suspiciously. I leaned against a cool plaster wall to hear myself think. “How is your strained back?” I asked, pulling a fistful of crumpled production reports out of my shoulder bag. “Your burnt hand, your headache?”

“Terrible. Want to see?”

“You know each other?” Anita limped past me toward the screen door, her crutch dragging on the old stone floor.

“Not well enough.” He had a taunt in his voice. I swiveled back to him, my heart racing. He was the only thing I ever lied to her about. He better not let anything slip.

The piano stool scraped the floor. He strode to me, his right hand outstretched. I must have looked terrified. He winked like we had a private joke. His palm felt warm. “I’m trying to fix this mess,” I whispered, staring at him like a dope.

He backed away, pulled up his white shirttail, and sat on the piano stool again. “Too late, I want you both out of here.”

The negotiation had begun. “I guarantee her cooperation,” I said.

“If I’m fired, she’s fired,” Anita added quickly from the doorway.

I watched his brow furrow in new places. “I didn’t figure that.” He looked at me coldly. “Who do I have to fuck to make an appearance in my own movie? I want a new director or I just plain quit.”

I felt my face go hot.

“Don’t bother selling me your movie,” he added. “I’m not the problem. She’s making me audition like I’m nineteen years old again.”

“You got all the power. Your job is to get a movie made you believe in.”

“I am doing my best work, and I want a director lighting me like I’m the Hope diamond.”

I heard Anita snort. But thank God I also heard her crutch dragging the stone floor toward us. I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

He looked desperate. “And when I’m cold, the director turns the heaters on, she shoots me a lot in close-up, she pretends she loves me, and she makes me look like my character and like the star. She makes me feel brave when I risk mistakes. She makes me a little better than I been before.” He
groaned. “She doesn’t step on my lines, hide my face, and joke about me to the crew.”

She was by my side, leaning on the crutch. “I don’t make fun of you.”

He pointed at her. “I been making faces at movie cameras for twenty-two years. I know how easy it is to fail, and I know what it takes to get me going.”

“What kind of monster do you take me for?” she asked in her hurt voice.

“I think you’re pissed off. You figure you’re stuck with an aging sex bomb trying to play the holiest Jew in history.”

She looked at me fast out of the corner of her eye. He grinned: he had her pegged. I saw sweat on her upper lip. I grabbed a pillow off the single bed. “Do me a favor”—I tossed it at her feet—“sit down. Admit you’re in pain.”

She ignored me.

He hit middle C with one thumb. “It’s hell working with somebody lying to you.”

“I’m no liar.” She leaned on the piano.

“No more lies, no more fights, no more insecurities,” I said happily. “The two of you need to work.” I nudged Anita’s bare ankle with my sneaker.

“I have a lot of explaining to do.” She spoke slowly. “You’re the biggest actor I ever worked with. I was afraid to share the spotlight.” Her voice was strained. But since she was standing in front of me, I couldn’t read her face. I crossed my fingers.

“I want to take my best shot,” he stammered, “but I keep thinking no person can feel Jesus’ pain.”

I said, “You two will talk and talk.”

Anita interjected piously, “I fought dirty. I’m an asshole—working against my own best interests.” Her voice gathered momentum and she stepped closer to him. “But I’m not crazy; so far nobody has made a great movie showing Jesus’ face.”

“It’s your challenge,” I said, watching her put one hand on his shoulder. At least they were touching each other.

“It was unbelievable,” he said, looking over to me after a pause. “I’m working and working and suddenly I’m not in the rushes.” He sounded relieved. She squeezed his shoulder. My pictures of him kept flashing like footage. I saw him rolling over onto his back in that hotel bed laughing at my attacks of inhibition, his erection high and straining. My socks were still on and he kept trying to unbutton my blouse. I held on to the buttons.

Now I blinked at both of them in warm confusion.

She was holding the piano for support. Facing me, she made a covert victory circle of her thumb and forefinger. I didn’t react. I hoped she wasn’t faking.

He narrowed his eyes at her bare back. He looked wary. I suddenly remembered how he picked his head off the pillow in the hotel, incredulous after I recited all his lines from his first big love scene. Then I’d said, “Wait till you see the acting technique.” I wrinkled my forehead and made my mouth go slack and he shouted, “Turkey!” and pushed a pillow into my face.

Now Anita was leaning toward me from the curve of the piano, watching me mistrustfully.

“I want two days, ladies, just for shooting my close-ups,” he said.

She whirled on him. “I decide which takes to print.”

“No, defer to our star,” I interrupted. I was petrified; I was exceeding my authority as a junior executive; she could explode any second.

She stamped her good foot.

“Agreed?” I said loudly.

“What’s my choice?” she asked.

“We talk out every word, every silence, and see what I’m feeling.” He stared without compassion while she dragged past me to press her nose against the screen door and look out
at the wheat field. I felt sorry for her, watching her fragile bare back under the yellow halter.

“I’m a good cutter,” Jack said suggestively.

Anita jiggled the door handle. “I got final cut.”

I whipped my head around. She was still inside the door, looking bewildered.

“I cut my scenes,” he said slowly. “I sit in the cutting room and I choose my angles and close-ups.”

The door slammed. She had disappeared. I was in a panic. I turned back to him, trying to sound calm. “She’s just cooling off.”

He played four solemn chords of Beethoven’s Fifth. “Maybe she won’t come back.” He sounded scared also.

“You got your concessions too,” I told him, wondering if I should go after her. “No more extra hours in makeup. No more blowing lines so scenes have to be reshot.”