by Lisa Tucker
At that moment, the idea struck her as incredibly romantic.
She said yes, and he did kiss her, over and over until she was dizzy. But then he walked her to the front hallway and let her leave with nothing but a goodbye.
Back in the VW with Janice, riding down Wilshire Boulevard, she realized she’d lost interest in smoking a joint. She wasn’t in the mood to talk about the party and she definitely didn’t want to listen to Janice going on and on about Charles. Especially in her silly pirate voice, which Lucy never liked much anyway.
“Aye, matey, it was his eye, I tell you. That wicked eye. Aargh, the eye made me do it.”
“Very funny.”
“Aargh. Better a weird-ass eye than missin’ a leg though. That’s what I always say since—”
“Cut it out.”
“I lost me middle leg back in ’fifty-seven. Aargh. Wonder if that big eye means a big di—”
“Shut up already, will you?”
“What’s your problem?” Janice was frowning, but then she glanced at Lucy. “Wait a minute. What’s going on here? Did he promise you something? Is that what this is about? Oh, you lucky dog!” She reached over and punched Lucy lightly on the arm. “Here I am out here for a year and a half with nothing but walk-ons and already you have a part in—”
“He didn’t promise me anything.”
“But he said he’d give you a role, didn’t he? And you know what? I bet he meant it. Everybody says he’s such an honest man, the most ethical person in Hollywood, the only guy in the industry with old-fashioned values, blah, blah, blah.” She honked the horn and yelled out the open window. “My friend is going to have a part in a Charles Keenan movie. Dammit! You lucky, lucky dog.”
“He never said anything about a part, Janice.”
“Then what?” Janice said, confused. When Lucy didn’t answer, she burst out, “Oh my God, don’t tell me you like him? That can’t be it. You like that weirdo?”
“He’s not that weird.”
“Come on, Lucy, he’s as weird as they come, and they come pretty damn weird in this city. He lives with his mother, for Pete’s sake. He’s always lived with his mother.”
“But he’s had girlfriends,” Lucy said, racking her brain to remember the name of the latest one, the one she read about in some tabloid. “He dated that model, Delia Beck.”
“ ‘Dated’ is the word. He’s never lived with anyone, never been married. Of course girls want him. Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac, as they say. But nobody is good enough for the fabulous Charles, that’s the problem.”
Lucy was trying to think of a way to change the topic without admitting it bothered her, when the radio saved her. Janice’s favorite song came on and before long both girls were sticking their arms out the window, screaming along at the top of their lungs. “‘Welcome to the Hotel California, such a lovely place …’”
By the time the song was over, Janice was ready to talk about all the cool people she herself had met at the party. Lucy listened, though each person Janice mentioned was interesting to her primarily because they were at his house. Were they his friends? Did they work with him? Had he ever said one of them was “not corrupt”?
If Lucy had had a real social life or something beyond her job as a waitress on the breakfast shift of the Venice Café, she might have been able to put him out of her mind. If either of the agents she’d tried had panned out, she might have already been on the way to being a success in her own right. Lucy would turn out to be a natural as an actress, but she didn’t discover that until Charles Keenan gave her her first role. The role of a lifetime, the critics would say later. The role that defined every part she would be offered for the rest of her career, even after Charles had disappeared.
Everyone said she retired early because of what happened to her family. That was part of it, but the other part was she could no longer stand the role of saint/savior that Charles had written for her and taught her how to play.
It was almost four months after the party before she saw him again. During that time, while she was scouring for news of him in The Hollywood Reporter and Variety (there was so little news! Didn’t the man ever leave his house?), he was writing the script for what would turn out to be his last Western, The Brave Horseman of El Dorado. The cast numbered in the hundreds, as in all Keenan’s films, but the star, the horseman, was actually a girl. It was a fascinating idea: to retell the Joan of Arc story as a Western. And the girl, the new Joan, had long red hair, according to the script. She was small, at most five-three, no more than ninety-five pounds. She had hazel eyes and tiny hands and very white skin and the lightest sprinkling of freckles across her cheeks and nose.
In other words, Lucy herself.
“What if I hadn’t wanted to do this?” she asked, attempting to be playful, though she was so nervous her voice shook. He’d called out of the blue and asked where to pick her up. She’d phoned her waitress job, pretending to be sick, but they’d fired her. So what? Now she was riding with Charles Keenan in his black sports car out to a movie studio. She was flipping through a real movie script.
“I would have asked the casting people to find someone else.” He was wearing sunglasses; she couldn’t see his eyes. His tone was matter-of-fact, a little cold, but then he reached for her hand. Her sweaty hand, she worried—but he held it anyway all the way to the studio, and then again as they walked into the producer’s office.
Talk about a sweet deal, Janice said later. At Charles’s insistence, Lucy didn’t have to audition or even do a screen test. “She is Joan,” he said to Walter Urig, his producer, and later to the studio execs, and that was the end of the discussion.
It helped that he was willing to work with her so much during preproduction: to hire a voice coach to tone down her accent and trainers to teach her to ride a horse, hold a sword, and fire a gun; to get the best acting coach in town to help her through rehearsals. The acting coach was the first to proclaim Lucy a budding star. He told Charles, “She seems to draw on a well of emotion that is uncanny for her age.”
Lucy flushed with happiness, but Charles just nodded. Now that he’d made up his mind that she was the perfect Joan, he never second-guessed the wisdom of his decision. This confidence was part of the reason he was a good director, but it was justified, Lucy thought, by what seemed to be his extraordinary ability to see into an actor’s strengths and weaknesses. That big eye, Janice joked. Lucy couldn’t help laughing a little since she’d thought the same thing.
Anthony Mills, who was playing the evil landowner responsible for Joan’s arrest and eventual death, was one of the most sought after dramatic actors in Hollywood. Lucy had seen him on the big screen at least a dozen times, but even he seemed eager to take Charles’s advice on everything from line delivery to how to hold his arms during the trial scenes. “You’re a fucking genius,” he told Charles, at least twice a day. Charles never said anything. He was usually deep in thought about the next problem to be solved.
Making a movie was nothing like Lucy expected. It was so much work, especially for her because she was in almost every scene. She usually started at six a.m. and it would be eight or nine p.m., sometimes even later, before they wrapped and she could go home. Most of her day was spent standing around, waiting for lighting or costume or the art director or the DP or the script supervisor or any one of a thousand people that needed to talk to Charles before they could film. For every fifteen minutes of shooting there were ninety minutes, sometimes more, of blocking and lighting, decisions and preparations. Everybody stayed pretty focused, at least on set. There were rumors of after-hours parties with lots of drinking and casual sex, but Lucy never went to any of these parties, so she couldn’t say if the rumors were true. Nor did she particularly care, because she had other things on her mind.
What on earth was going on with Charles?
He’d never kissed her again. The hand-holding had ended after the first day. He never offered to drive her home, but instead had one of the studio’s
drivers pick her up and take her to the day’s location, and then drop her back at her house at night. He showed no response, not even with his eyes, when he heard her turn down a dinner with the handsome Anthony.
The worst part was he knew how she felt about him. He had to know because he was the one who helped her recognize how strong her own feelings had become.
It was during the shooting of the torture scene. The scene was about a third of the way through the script; Joan had already fought off the evil gangs of robbers and murderers from several towns in Mexico, and the people loved her for it. In each place she freed, she’d remove her hat and let her red hair fall down on her shoulders, and the people would gasp with surprise, then cheer for the woman who had saved them. They called her Saint Joan and begged to touch her coat for luck.
But then the evil Paolo (played by Anthony) kidnapped Joan and forced her over the border and into a jail in San Antonio. The sheriff was a churchgoing man, inclined to agree that this woman had to be in league with the devil to have such power. He gave his approval to Paolo’s request to “break her down and find the truth.”
The entire scene was to be done with only the sounds of whips and knives to indicate what Paolo and his men were doing to her, and Paolo’s voice, horrible in its cruel simplicity, saying over and over, “Choose, Joan.” The choice he was giving her was to confess or be tortured, but for Joan herself, the choice was between suffering this pain or renouncing God. It was a tight shot; the camera was never to leave her face and she was never allowed to speak. Her agony, her faith, her heartbreak, her joy in the love of God, would all have to be readable from her expression.
Charles had written the script this way, and he was insistent on it staying this way. But Lucy wasn’t pulling it off. They did take after take, and though she found the pain and fear, she was failing at anything approximating joy.
Everyone in the cast and crew was even more tired than usual. They’d only been back for a few days after three hard weeks on location in Mexico. They were taking a break when Charles came over to her while she was drinking coffee.
“You’re having problems with this.”
“It’s very hard,” she admitted, hoping she didn’t sound defensive. Charles didn’t like working with defensive actors. He’d given them several speeches about the importance of being open to suggestion and criticism for the film’s sake.
He was resting his hand on the right side of his face, a habit he had. The effect was unexpected. Though he was covering the small eye, leaving the big left one exposed, she felt less intimidated than usual. It took her a while to realize why: with the small one covered, the big eye didn’t look as big.
He paused for a minute, maybe more. “I’d like to try something to bring out your more positive feelings. All right with you?”
“Sure, but what—”
He had already walked off to consult with the DP before the next take.
It was time to begin shooting, and everyone took their places. Lucy crouched on the cement floor with her arms curled under her chest, waiting for the first snap of the whip. She was also glancing around for Charles, wondering why he wasn’t in his usual spot behind the camera, still wondering what he had in mind to try.
She found out not a minute into the scene, when she looked up and found Charles sitting straight across from her on the floor. He was just out of range of the camera, behind a cardboard partition. No one could see him but Lucy—and he was taking off his shoes. Wincing like he had on the day they met, when he had those blisters.
Before she could laugh, he moved his hands over his heart with an expression so sad it made her want to cry for him. But before she could give in to that sadness, he took a plastic coffee spoon from his pocket and began to wrap it in a piece of duct tape, so it would look like silver. He slowly raised it to his mouth and kissed it. Then he looked directly into her eyes until she smiled and blushed as the truth suddenly hit her.
I’m falling in love with him. The next revelation came so quickly that it felt like both ideas had arrived in her mind at the same moment. And he knows it. This is why he’s sitting here. He knows if I look at him, my face will have to show all this.
He kept staring at her, and she couldn’t look away. Paolo said, “Choose, Joan,” again and again while the whip continued to crack, and she looked at Charles until she had convinced herself that he must love her too; otherwise, how would he know?
After the scene, the crew broke into applause. The other actors told her that the play of emotions on her face was truly astonishing. But Charles himself only said mildly, “Good job.”
“Time to set up the next shot, people,” the line producer shouted. “Let’s go. We’re three hours behind already.”
She went home that night and told Janice that she was so confused, she wanted to jump off the roof.
“We live in a one-story,” Janice said. “Knock yourself out. Break a leg.”
“Ha-ha.”
“See, I got you laughing already.”
“I didn’t know that was the point.”
“Come on,” Janice said, grabbing her purse. “Let’s take a walk.”
“I’m tired,” Lucy began, but her friend took her arm and pulled her to the door. It was June, but a breeze was blowing from the ocean. Lucy shivered when they stepped outside. Janice turned left and began walking the four blocks to the beach, and Lucy caught up with her.
Ocean Front Walk was crowded with people, even though it was a Wednesday night, after ten. Janice waited until they’d walked down the path through the sand and found a bench that wasn’t occupied by a homeless person.
“Okay,” she said slowly, “I know you don’t want to hear this, but I’m going to tell you anyway. Ever since you started working for Keenan, you seem miserable. A hell of a lot more miserable than you ever were at the café, and that’s a shit job.”
“I told you I’m worn-out. We were working night and day in Mexico. It was—”
“But what about before? You haven’t seemed happy the whole time you’ve been making this movie.”
Lucy was listening to the slap of the water, peering into the darkness, trying to see the waves. What Janice was saying seemed too ridiculous to take seriously.
“Well?” Janice finally said. “Aren’t you going to tell me why I’m wrong?”
“It’s a chance of a lifetime. You said so yourself.” Lucy paused. “Plus, there’s something I haven’t told you yet.”
“Are you grinning?” Janice said, peering into Lucy’s face. Her voice sounded a little annoyed. “I thought you were about to jump off the roof.”
Lucy was grinning, though she couldn’t have said why. This was what it had been like for her all day: back and forth between despair and a silly happiness that was unlike her, even as a child.
“You want to hear a secret?” she whispered, stifling back a giggle. She never giggled. What was wrong with her? She sat up straight and tried to compose herself. “I think I’m in love with him.”
Janice didn’t say anything for the longest time. Lucy sensed she disapproved, but she didn’t care. The surge of happiness had welled up and lifted her right out of her day-to-day existence, and now she could see her life from the outside. She was sitting on a bench facing the Pacific Ocean, hundreds and hundreds of miles from her tiny town in Missouri. She was nineteen years old, and she was acting in a movie. More than acting, she was the lead.
“Well, I hope you’re wrong,” Janice said. “Falling in love with him would be really, really stupid.”
Her voice was so sudden and harsh that Lucy felt like she’d been slapped. She turned to Janice and gasped, “Please don’t.”
“Lucy, he doesn’t even know you! When the movie is over, you’ll see. If it’s a hit, he’ll use you again, but if it isn’t, you’ll fall off the earth as far as he’s concerned. They’re all like that. It’s this business.”
Without even thinking, Lucy jumped up and started running. She was ankle deep in the wate
r, with her shoes still on, when Janice caught up with her and discovered Lucy was sobbing.
“Oh honey, shit.” She threw her arm around Lucy, and Lucy let herself lean against her friend, but she couldn’t stop crying.
“Come on, Lu, what do I know? I’m strictly a walk-on, remember?”
“It’s not that,” Lucy stammered.
“What is it then?”
But Lucy couldn’t answer because she really didn’t know. She wasn’t crying about whether Charles loved her. Part of her thought he already did, and all of her was hopeful he would someday. Janice calling her stupid had reminded her of the way her uncle had treated her (though stupid was a mild insult from him), but she wasn’t crying about that either.
She cried and cried and her tears weren’t for anything she could think of in her present or her past. Which left only the future, but why would she be crying about the future? She was so young; she still had her whole life ahead.
eight
IT WAS THE last week of filming when Lucy heard that the studio executives thought there were “significant” problems with The Brave Horseman of El Dorado. No one was questioning the quality—or her own performance, Lucy was relieved to hear—it was the theme itself that worried them. Why would the audience want to watch a story where the main character dies? A story about God of all things? A story about a saint from hundreds of years ago? A Western with a woman as the hero, and an unknown to boot, rather than Clint Eastwood or one of the dozens of well-known men?
The cast was gossiping constantly about whether the movie would even be released. A Charles Keenan movie had never done poorly at the box office, but then he’d never made a movie like this. The only person who refused to worry was Charles himself. He made an announcement on Wednesday that all of this speculation about the future was not only useless, it was counterproductive. “We’re here to find the truth of the characters and the story,” he said. “It’s no concern of ours what some twenty-year-old in the marketing department thinks the public will buy.”
Lucy admired this view, though she couldn’t totally share it. If the movie failed, it might hurt Charles, but it would probably kill her own chance at a career. She loved acting, and she really loved not being poor. She and Janice had just spent the weekend looking for a new apartment, and there was one she’d fallen in love with that had a dishwasher and a garbage disposal and two bedrooms and two baths.
