Obsession

by Susan Lewis

  Lucky, he was thinking as he rode down in the lift, that he’d taken that call from Jeannie himself. She wouldn’t ring back now, not after what he’d told her, and he knew for a fact that Corrie’s number was unlisted – he’d just checked for himself.

  Annalise was still after him to fire her, but the hell he would. He wanted Corrie Browne right where he could see her, at all times, and Annalise was just going to have to suffer it. But it had come in useful as an excuse to get rid of Jeannie – or more precisely, Bennati – and he felt strangely indebted to Annalise for planting the idea.

  But Annalise would have to wait, he had more pressing matters to attend to right now, like the bastard screwing his own daughter! Old habits die hard he thought, bitterly savouring the cliché, and leaping into his Porsche he roared off across Battersea Bridge.

  – 21 –

  ‘GET OUT OF here, man,’ Cristos laughed, pushing David Easton away. ‘Go rehearse it on someone else.’

  Easton’s face fell in mock devastation, and all those standing around the coffee urns set up in Hyde Park started to laugh. ‘But I gotta know my gyrating hips are having the desired effect,’ Easton complained, fluffing out the frilly cuffs of his Georgian costume. He knew without lifting his eyes that they were all waiting to see what he’d do next, and so’s not to disappoint his audience he looked at Cristos through narrowed eyes, then pouting his lips sultrily as he let his hands go limp at the wrists, he squeaked, ‘And I just fancy the pants off you, Cristos Bennati.’

  ‘Get this jerk out of here,’ Cristos told Easton’s dresser. ‘He’s driving me crazy.’

  As Cristos made to walk off through the snow, which had been brought in that morning, Easton minced along behind him, making a grab for Cristos’s rear end. ‘And you’re just driving me crazy, honey love,’ he trilled ecstatically, and to everyone’s evident delight he started to chase Cristos through the trees.

  ‘All right! That’s enough!’ Cristos said, eventually allowing Easton to catch him up. ‘They gotta be about ready now, so back to work.’

  Laughing, and panting for breath Easton threw an arm round Cristos’s shoulders – which wasn’t too comfortable given the discrepancy in height – and walked back towards the set with him.

  ‘You joining us for dinner, tonight?’ he asked. ‘We’re eating in. The kids’d love to see you.’

  ‘Can I take a rain check?’ Cristos said.

  ‘Got another date with Paige? Bring her along too.’

  Cristos shook his head. ‘Can’t. She wants to talk about her big scene on Friday.’

  ‘That woman always wants to talk about something,’ Easton grumbled. ‘Can’t she let you go, even for five minutes?’

  ‘Come on,’ Cristos chided, ‘give her a break. You were there once yourself.’

  Easton was thoughtful for a while, then said. ‘You getting serious about her, man?’

  Cristos threw up his hands. ‘Shit! There sure is a lot of interest in my personal life going on round this place.’

  ‘Cristos! Ready to roll!’ the first assistant yelled, from the centre of the set.

  ‘We OK with the snow?’ Cristos called back, quickening his pace now as he weaved through the lamps the electricians were checking.

  ‘We’re set!’ the man on the snow machine answered.

  ‘OK, then let’s see if we can get this baby in the can,’ Cristos said, rubbing his hands together as he sat down on his chair. He looked at the small black and white monitor in front of him, waiting for the camera operator to line up for the first frame. When he was there Cristos raised a walkie-talkie and spoke into it, ‘Don’t forget, Kevin, we want to see the grass without snow over there and those buildings out on Park Lane before you come right off the Serpentine.’

  ‘Got it!’ Kevin responded from the crane.

  ‘Actors in position?’ Cristos asked the first.

  ‘Right there,’ the first responded.

  Cristos nodded and the first bellowed into a megaphone, ‘OK, Action snow!’ Then, when the snow was falling to Cristos’s satisfaction, ‘Turn over!’

  ‘Camera’s rolling,’ the follow focus announced over the radio.

  ‘Mark it!’

  ‘End board,’ the clapper-loader called back.

  Again Cristos nodded to the first.

  ‘OK! And, action everyone!’ the first roared, and a few seconds later the crane started to track the camera very slowly from the Serpentine, to swing over the trees and onto the set where the actors were waiting. Cristos’s arm was in the air, ready to swing it down for their cue.

  Knowing that this shot was never going to be done in one take, which meant they wouldn’t be needing Paige Spencer for some time yet, Jeannie crept silently away heading for Paige’s trailer.

  Paige was inside, picking at the meagre salad one of the runners had delivered for her lunch and idly flicking through a magazine. ‘Oh hi, honey,’ she said, when Jeannie knocked and put her head round the door, ‘come on in.’

  ‘Can we talk?’ Jeannie said, sitting down on the sofa opposite Paige. ‘Privately,’ she added, throwing a look at Paige’s dresser.

  ‘Sure,’ Paige answered, and nodded a dismissal to the dresser. ‘So what’s on your mind, honey?’ she said, when they were alone.

  Ten minutes later Jeannie left Paige’s trailer, walked back to the set and gave Cristos a beaming smile. If he ever got to find out about this he wouldn’t just fire her, he’d kill her, she was thinking to herself, but it had to be done and done it sure as hell was.

  The next three days proved trying on the entire unit – Cristos most of all. Watching him now Jeannie could see that his good humour was a thing of the distant past, and in a way she couldn’t help feeling as responsible for that as the snow machine which had started to fire snow halls instead of flakes, the Simon tower which hadn’t turned up and David Easton going down with a raging temperature. She couldn’t say for certain of course, ’cos with so much else going on it was understandable he was in a bad mood, but earlier that morning, having waited for what she’d hoped was the right moment, she’d told him that Corrie had been fired from her job and that her telephone number wasn’t listed in the directory.

  ‘So I don’t know how you’re gonna find her,’ she’d finished lamely seeing the look on his face.

  ‘Jeannie, you’re in danger of abusing our friendship here,’ he’d told her. ‘Now you just quit hassling me about Corrie Browne or …’

  ‘Cristos, just listen …’

  ‘No! You listen to me, ’cos we better get one thing straight here, Jeannie. If I wanted to find her I’d do it myself, without any help from you. So quit interfering in things that don’t concern you! And if you bring this up again when I’m about to start shooting I really will fire you.’

  As he stormed off towards the make-up trailers Richard had strolled up. ‘Looks like you succeeded in putting him in a good mood,’ he’d remarked jovially.

  ‘Don’t get smart. But you know, it kinda reminds me when you first fell in love with me. You didn’t much want to be in love either, did you?’

  ‘I still don’t, but you don’t give a man any say in the matter,’ and laughing he’d kissed her full on the mouth before going off to sort his lights.

  That had been some hours ago, and Richard wasn’t smiling anymore. None of them were, though Richard was closest to losing his cool, fighting like he was with those British electricians. Paige was a hot contender for second to blow, Jeannie noticed, turning round as Paige came bristling out of her trailer, telling the hairdresser she didn’t care how long it had taken to make the fucking wig she wasn’t wearing it!

  Jeannie watched, as leaving Richard to sort his own problems Cristos went over to handle Paige. To Cristos’s astonishment Paige seemed suddenly not to want to discuss it anymore – at least not with him – and flounced off to the make-up trailer, no doubt to wreak more havoc there.

  Turning back Cristos was on the point of calling Jeannie over when Colin Wal
ker, a British actor whose shooting days had been pulled forward to cover Easton, padded up to him.

  Inwardly Cristos groaned. The guy had just joined them that morning and already he was proving one of the biggest jerks Cristos had ever worked with. He had three scenes in the entire movie, and this was now the fifth time he’d asked Cristos where he was supposed to be coming from. Cristos was sorely tempted to tell him to read the damned script instead of just picking out his own scenes, but since it wasn’t his way to let off at the actors, he rounded up every shred of his fast disappearing patience and went over Walker’s scenes with him one more time.

  ‘If I were Cristos I’d tell the asshole to go screw himself,’ the script girl remarked quietly to Jeannie.

  ‘Me too,’ Jeannie said. ‘He’s so anal!’

  ‘Linda! Get over here and go through Colin’s moves with him,’ Cristos called out to the script girl. ‘He wants to know which hand his handkerchief was in when he turned out of the last shot.’

  ‘It was in his fucking pocket where we’ve never seen it,’ Linda muttered, then smiling sweetly trotted off to do her duty.

  After what seemed like an eternity the snow machine was functioning with flakes, the electricians had been sorted and Paige was wearing her wig. They were ready to roll.

  ‘Five up!’ the script girl called to the clapper-loader – and the first, waiting for his cue from Cristos stood poised with his megaphone. Cristos nodded, the camera started to roll and the first had just drawn breath to shout action when …

  ‘Wait! Wait! Wait!’ Colin Walker cried.

  Gritting his teeth Cristos looked up from his monitor. ‘What is it?’ he said.

  ‘I was just thinking, perhaps I should hit my hands to my head before hitting them to my heart. What do you think?’

  ‘Cut the camera!’ Cristos shouted.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Colin giggled as Cristos walked over to him, ‘I don’t want to be a nuisance, but we do want to get it right, don’t we?’

  A few minutes later the camera was rolling again. Everyone was standing by, even Colin Walker, and this time Cristos was standing at the edge of the set to watch the action.

  Jeannie’s fingers crossed in her pockets. There was an explosion in the offing, she just knew it, but meanwhile the snow was falling, the wind was whipping it about, and the dry ice machines were breathing mist into the mayhem. The whole unit was holding its breath, and as the camera tracked forward through the snow and the electricians changed the lights from green to yellow to blue Walker, in his tattered Georgian costume, turned into shot, his eyes filled with tears, his false moustache and beard speckled with frost. Cristos brought his arm down and the background action began. Walker looked around – as directed. He was lost, he was in the wrong place, the wrong time. Women and children in modern day summer costumes merged into the shot. Walker blinked. He was confused and frightened. A child ran past him, looked at him curiously – as directed. Then Walker clutched his hands to his chest, groaned in agony and fell sobbing to his knees.

  ‘Cut!’ Cristos roared.

  Jeannie hid her face and Walker almost cowered behind a snowman as Cristos stormed towards him.

  ‘What the fuck did you do that for?’ Cristos yelled glaring down at him.

  ‘I thought … It felt right … It …’

  ‘We went over this five minutes ago! No hands! No knees! No sobs! This is a fucking movie. You’re not playing to the back of the stalls, you’re playing here!’ He put his hand over the actor’s face. He continued to glare at him, more angry with himself now for having lost it on the set. ‘Reset!’ he shouted. Then in a dangerously low voice, ‘Do it the way we said. Just do it for me, all right?’ He reached out a hand and pulled Walker to his feet. ‘You’re doing fine, you’re great, just bring it down, OK? And don’t be an asshole all your fucking life.’

  Twenty minutes later, after five takes, the shot was in the can and the first assistant called a much needed break. Cristos went straight to his trailer, threw everyone out and slammed the door.

  His anger was such that he couldn’t sit down. He would never have tolerated that sort of outburst in anyone else and damned well wasn’t going to tolerate it in himself. He paced the trailer, dashing a hand through his hair and slamming his fist against the wall. Never in his life had he spoken to an actor that way, and though Walker, with his wingeing pigheadedness and absurd theatrics probably deserved it, that was not the point. The point was that he, Cristos, was not in control of himself.

  He looked out of the window and saw Jeannie hovering not far away. He wrenched open the door to tell her to get the fuck away from him, but when she looked up and he saw the genuine anxiety in her face he slammed the door without saying a word.

  He slumped down into a chair and put his head in his hands. There was no getting away from it, the more he tried not to think about her the more he thought about her. Corrie. Corrie Browne. He couldn’t get her out of his mind. Three fucking times, he raged to himself, slamming his fist on the table. Three times I’ve seen her and she’s turning my whole fucking life inside out. So far the days hadn’t been so bad, but at night … at night she just tormented him. He couldn’t sleep and now his tiredness and frustration was spilling into the day. He could hardly believe it was happening to him. He was a reasonable man, a man who dealt with life and got on with it. He knew all there was to know about love, he should, he’d shot it from every conceivable fucking angle, so what was this all about? He’d asked himself over and over what was so special about her? Why was it that she could do this to him when no other woman ever had? The crazy thing was that he could hardly picture her face now. But it wasn’t her face, was it, it wasn’t her body either, though God knows the need to touch her was driving him half out of his mind. It was her! It was that quirky naivety, those absurd remarks she came out with that she thought so smart, and the way things went wrong when she tried to be cool. He almost smiled then as he recalled the first time he’d made love to her and the way she’d made him laugh by trying so hard. Godammit, he didn’t know how she’d done it, but she’d got to him right where it hurt. And now, knowing that Fitzpatrick had fired her from a job she cared passionately about, to think of her out there somewhere alone, Cristos was about ready to break.

  It took some time for him to cool down, but even before he did he knew what he was going to do. He just couldn’t do it when he was this angry.

  Everyone was well advanced into setting for the next shot by the time he got to his feet, and pulling open the trailer door again, he called out, ‘Jeannie! I know you’re hiding there somewhere, so get yourself in here.’

  Immediately Jeannie put down her coffee and ran around to the front of the trailer.

  ‘Let’s have the TW number,’ he said, as soon as she’d closed the door behind her.

  ‘You gonna call her?’ Jeannie beamed.

  ‘No. I’m gonna call Fitzpatrick and find out where she is.’

  ‘Oh gee, Cristos, am I sure glad to …’ she broke off as the trailer door opened.

  ‘Jeannie, honey, I saw you come in here …’ Paige was saying.

  ‘Ah, Paige,’ Cristos said, throwing a look at Jeannie as he swung his legs up onto the table in front of him. Paige was a problem he’d have to sort before he saw Corrie. ‘I wanna have a talk with you some time … Like tonight. Are you planning on …’

  He stopped as, to his amazement, Paige started to back out the door. ‘When this is through,’ she hissed, ‘I’m gonna have a lotta things to say to you, Bennati. Until then I’ll do my job, but I don’t want you to touch me, and I don’t wanna be in the same room as you unless someone else is there. Have we got that straight?’ Without waiting for a reply she slammed out the door.

  Cristos turned to Jeannie, dumbfounded. ‘What the hell was all that about?’ he said.

  ‘Search me,’ Jeannie shrugged, hoping she wasn’t over-doing the innocence. ‘But looks like she’s out of your hair, doesn’t it? Now, about Corrie Browne.�
��

  ‘Just give me the number Jeannie, then be on your way. OK?’

  Corrie was on the point of going out filming. She really wasn’t looking forward to it, not only because they’d be out there in a battered wives refuge until well past midnight, but because life had become so intolerable working with Annalise. Everything Corrie suggested was rejected, or even ridiculed, and were it not for the fact that she could see how badly Annalise was hurting inside, she’d have brought things to a head again.

  She hadn’t spoken to her father since the night at the Ritz either, except for one phone call when he’d rung to say that he thought they ought to let things calm down for a while. That hadn’t surprised Corrie, though it infuriated her to think that once again he was backing away from a situation. She’d have to speak to him soon though, because if Annalise’s attitude since having her engagement to Luke announced in yesterday’s Times continued, then as far as Corrie could see she was heading for some kind of breakdown. Annalise’s jubilation was so forcefully pronounced that Corrie knew she wasn’t the only one who could see through it. Her eyes were too bright, her laughter too brittle, and the way she kept looking at Corrie was as though she had gone ahead with the engagement just to score some kind of victory over Corrie. And that in itself was leading Corrie to wonder if perhaps Annalise’s feelings for Luke were at last starting to fragment. The problem was, with things as they stood right now, Annalise’s pride would never allow her to admit that; certainly not to Corrie, but maybe she would to her father. Perhaps he could coax her out of this sham of an engagement. It wasn’t very likely, Corrie knew that, but someone had to get through to Annalise, and though she had promised herself she would try again at the weekend when they were editing together, she felt quite strongly that Phillip should try too.

  Right now the office was in chaos; a story had broken in the Middle East which meant getting a crew out there fast, and everyone was shouting, phones were ringing, the fax, photocopiers, PA machines and computer printers were all in full volume too, and as Corrie picked up her bag, unable to wait to get out of the noise, she found herself automatically picking up the phone.