The Right Time

by Danielle Steel

“Does anyone here ever fall in love?” she asked, and he laughed.

  “You sound like Goldilocks. Hollywood is about making movies and becoming a star. Not about love. You can go to Arkansas for that. Or Nebraska. That’s where the real people are. Not here. Where are you from?”

  “Boston.”

  “And you live in Scotland with Mr. Green?” She nodded, remembering her role, and the identity she and her agent had created for him out of whole cloth.

  “I do.”

  “Do you go to Montana with him too?”

  “Most of the time.” She was nervous he would ask her questions about Montana, which she knew nothing about. “I’ve been in Europe with him for the last two years.”

  “Whereabouts?”

  “Italy, Ireland, France, England, Germany, the Czech Republic, Spain,” she reeled off all the places she had traveled to, and he looked vastly impressed.

  “Does he have houses in all those places?”

  “Some,” she lied.

  “He must lead such an interesting life.”

  “Not really. He writes all the time. He has no social life, he rarely goes out. His passion is writing.” She was talking about herself, which Malcolm didn’t know.

  “You can tell, that’s why he’s so good. How did he get interested in crime?”

  “I think his father got him into it as a boy.” He ate it up as he listened.

  They left the restaurant together, after splitting the bill for dinner, and walked outside to claim their cars from the valet. He drove a Porsche, which he said was leased.

  “I only drive good cars when I’m working on a movie,” he said to her as he unlocked the door and got in. “What you drive is important here.” She thought of the white Rolls they had rented for Mr. Green. It was all about fakery here, and appearances, for the length of the film. And then everyone turned into pumpkins and white mice until the next one. It seemed like an odd way to live.

  “Thank you for taking me to dinner,” she said and smiled at him.

  “It was fun. Give the man my best.” She promised to do so and they both drove off, and she thought about what he had said. She couldn’t help wondering if there were any real people there at all, and then she laughed out loud in the car, because she wasn’t real either. She was in L.A. as a fraud too, pretending to be a man who didn’t exist.

  Chapter 16

  The early days of the film were arduous and the film dragged painfully, until the actors began to warm up and understand the psychology of their roles. Sam did a terrific job of explaining it to them again and again, until it became second nature, while Malcolm fought for every word of the script, which slowed them down even more. And there were daily questions for Mr. Green, which Alex answered by email, as soon as she got home. After a month of it, she was starting to miss writing, where she could move at her own pace, not be slowed down by anyone, and soar. This was lumbering and agony at times.

  She was a familiar fixture on the set. The director was always pleasant to her, and Malcolm went up and down, depending on his mood, or possibly whether or not he had gotten laid the night before. She had a feeling he had a busy sex life, but he didn’t talk about it, to his credit. He would stand a little too close to her at times, and she could feel him breathing on her, but he never made a pass, and she didn’t expect it. In fact, she hoped he wouldn’t, no matter how handsome and sexy he was. Fiona would have loved the whole scene. They were coworkers and nothing more. She was the conduit to his idol, as Sam the director called her. He didn’t intend it meanly, that’s what she was to them. What they didn’t know was that the eyes and ears she was exercising were, in fact, her own.

  And then Malcolm startled her when they’d been on the set for six weeks. They were starting to shoot the crime scenes, which made it more interesting. Alex paid close attention, to make sure they got the details right, and they had so far.

  “Do you want to help me out tonight?” Malcolm asked her during a break. He was in a semi-bad mood, and as temperamental as the actors.

  “How?”

  “My date just bailed on me for tonight. She got a better offer. I’m going to a premiere. I tried everyone and no one’s free.” It wasn’t the most flattering offer she’d had, but she had been home every night since she got there, and she was bored. The premiere sounded exciting and definitely more fun than watching TV on the big screen. She had no friends in L.A. to go out with.

  “I’d love it.” But she only had one dress with her, and wasn’t sure it was the right look. It was short, black, and serious, and she had bought it in London to wear with Fiona’s family in Ireland over Christmas two years before. “How dressy is it?”

  “Hot. Sexy. It doesn’t really matter as long as you don’t show up in jeans. No one’s going to look at you anyway. They don’t know who you are.” And neither did he. What he said would have been insulting if he were anyone else. Coming from him, it was standard fare, and how he viewed the world.

  “Can I leave the set early?”

  “Sure. Why? And will Mr. Green care?”

  “He lets me do what I want. I want to shop for a dress for tonight. I don’t want to embarrass you.”

  “You won’t. Yeah, go whenever you want to.” And then he thought of something and lowered his voice. It had never occurred to him before. “Are you his girlfriend?…Green, I mean.” She looked at him and laughed. She would have loved to say yes, but that would have complicated things even more. Regretfully she shook her head.

  “No, I’m not,” she whispered back.

  “Are you sure? Will he be pissed if you go out with me? The last thing I want to do is piss him off.”

  “Me too,” she assured him. “He doesn’t mind who I go out with.” And then she made a suggestion that she knew Malcolm would love. “Do you want to use the Rolls? He’ll let me have it if I want.”

  “Hell, yes!” Malcolm’s face lit up like Christmas. “You’re not just taking it, are you?”

  “Not at all.” But he was faintly suspicious of her. If Alexander Green was that free with her, there had to be something more going on between them. But that only made her more interesting to him. Suddenly she was forbidden fruit, and enhanced by association. “Where should I pick you up?” she asked him.

  He gave her his address on a piece of paper. “Be there at seven.” If she looked hot enough, he would take her down the red carpet for photo ops. The evening was beginning to sound better than the flop it had been moments before when his date canceled. She was going out with a hot new rapper, with whom he couldn’t compete.

  Alex left a little while later, and drove to Beverly Hills. She headed to Neiman Marcus, walked through the designer section, and found a short tight white satin Saint Laurent dress that looked appropriate for the occasion, with high-heeled silver and rhinestone sandals and a small silver clutch. She found big rhinestone earrings that looked like real diamonds, and a matching bracelet, put all her bags in the car, and drove back to the house, pleased with herself. She had just enough time to bathe, wash her hair, dress, and be at Malcolm’s place at seven. She noticed that he lived in a seedy neighborhood in a run-down building, but the Porsche was parked outside. Apparently, L.A. was about what you drove, but not where you lived. She got out and rang the buzzer and he came downstairs a minute later in a well-cut tux, a white shirt, and no tie, and he hadn’t shaved. And he was wearing expensive black patent leather loafers and no socks. It was very L.A. The combination was the right mix of hot, laissez-faire, and trendy, and gave the impression that he hadn’t tried too hard, but just enough. It was a blend of messages and symbols she didn’t get, but he looked good, and he whistled when he saw her.

  “You clean up nicely,” he complimented her. “I like the dress.” It was a lot better and a whole different style than the one she’d decided not to wear, which would have made her look like an orphan or a Greek widow.

  She let him take the wheel of the car and he was thrilled. “He didn’t mind?” he asked, referring
to “Mr. Green.”

  “He said to have fun.” She smiled at Malcolm.

  It was a long and interesting night. Pleased with her outfit, he took her down the red carpet with him, and they were liberally photographed, because they looked great. His hair was a rich brown, as dark as hers, his eyes sky blue. She had a perfect tan from sitting in the sun on her lunch breaks. The white Saint Laurent dress was fabulous on her. The premiere was fun, and all the stars were there. Malcolm saw his ex-date with the rapper and snubbed her. They had dinner at the Chateau Marmont afterward, and wound up at a nightclub, talking till two A.M. After an evening with him, she liked him better than she had so far. There was still something plastic and insincere about him, but it was the nature of the beast for men his age in the film business in L.A. Alex had thoroughly enjoyed the evening. It was all different and new to her, and good research for future books.

  “I’m trying to figure out how it all works here,” she said to him over a glass of champagne.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like what matters and why.” She thought she might use it in a book one day, about a murder in L.A. She had already figured out most of the social ground rules just by observation, but wanted verbal confirmation from him that what she was guessing was right.

  “It all matters, who you know, who you’re with, where you’re going, where you’ve been, what you drive, what you wear, who does your hair.” It was all superficial, there was no depth to any of it, and nothing was real, like her fake diamond bracelet and earrings.

  “What about what you think, or believe in, or how you feel?”

  “That’s not as important.” He smiled at her, vaguely curious about her for the first time. “You’re awfully serious. How old are you? Twenty-seven? Twenty-eight?”

  “Twenty-four,” she said with an air of innocence she was unaware of.

  “Wow, that’s young. You have a big job for someone your age.”

  “Is it really all about who you know here?” She wanted to believe there was something deeper, but he dispelled her illusions about that.

  “You become famous by association. You’re important because of who you work for. I become famous if I date someone famous. I get dumped if she meets someone more important. Or I dump her for the same reason.” It seemed normal to him.

  “That’s a cold way to deal with people,” Alex commented.

  “It’s how it works. Those are the rules here. It’s how you get to where you want to go.”

  “What if you make it on your own?”

  “No one does. And that’s a lot of hard work. The shortcuts work better.”

  “But the people who take the shortcuts are empty inside,” she said, but most of the people in his business were.

  “If you don’t have a talent, that’s how you have to do it. L.A. makes stars out of people who’ve never had a job and don’t have a talent. The paparazzi follow them everywhere.” He named half a dozen people and she realized he was right. “It’s all cardboard and glitter, but it works. For the most part no one bothers to look behind the scenery.”

  “That’s depressing,” she said, and she was pensive on the ride back to his apartment, where she was dropping him off. When they got there, he looked at her and smiled. They hadn’t had much to drink so they were both sober.

  “Want to come up for some fun?”

  “What kind of fun?” She could guess.

  “A fun night between friends?”

  “And then what?” She wanted to know what he had in mind and what it meant to him.

  “We do it again if we have a good time. Or we don’t. We check it out. We play for a while till something better comes along.” He was brutally honest.

  “This probably sounds crazy to you, Malcolm, but I want more than that. I had a great time tonight, but I don’t want someone ‘until something better comes along.’ I’m fine alone in the meantime.”

  “Isn’t that how it works? You make do for a while?”

  “Why?” she said, confused by the rules he lived by.

  “What do you want? A proposal and an engagement ring before you go to bed?”

  “Not really. Just someone who knows who I am, and loves me with my flaws and rough edges, and isn’t using me like a bus to get to the next stop.”

  “That’s a harsh way to put it,” he said, mulling over what she’d said.

  “But it’s true, isn’t it? You don’t know me. I don’t know you. I don’t want to sleep with a stranger.”

  “That’s fair,” he said, and leaned over and kissed her. “You looked great tonight. See you at work tomorrow.” And then she thought of something as he stepped out of the car and she slid over to the driver’s seat.

  “If I didn’t work for Alexander Green, would you go out with me, or want to sleep with me?” He considered the question for a minute and laughed.

  “Probably not. I don’t do freebies. And that’s a big ticket.” It was horrifying to her, but he meant it. It was all about using who you could. Never wasting an opportunity or a chance meeting. They were all scavengers on the make.

  “I thought so. Thank you for being honest.” He nodded. He wasn’t sure why he had been that open with her, but her own honesty demanded his.

  “I like you, actually. Better than I expected to. You’re kind of uptight on the set.”

  “I’m working.”

  “He wouldn’t have you as his assistant if you weren’t smart. He knows what he’s doing. The man is a genius.” He had said it before, and as Malcolm waved and walked back into his building, Alex realized that he might have fallen in love with Alexander Green because of who he was, but not with her. In Malcolm’s eyes, as plain old Alexandra Winslow, she didn’t make the grade. And neither did he.

  —

  She and Malcolm had dinner several times during the filming. And there were a few close calls where she almost gave herself away, but she didn’t. The crime scenes took forever to film, but turned out well. She checked them closely in the dailies for “Mr. Green.” And Sam commented once that he wished he had an assistant like her. She had eyes like a hawk, and worked tirelessly on the set to defend Green’s interests and the book.

  She had Thanksgiving dinner with the crew, since she had no friends in L.A. Malcolm was sleeping with one of the young actresses in the movie by then, and was being seen around town with her. She was an up-and-coming name and very pretty. They wrapped the film two days before Christmas, and she had three weeks off before she had to come back for postproduction, so she went home to Boston. She hadn’t been there for the holidays for two years. The nuns had decorated a huge tree in the front hall, had dinner together on Christmas Eve, and worked at a homeless shelter on Christmas Day, and she got to spend time with Brigid and the baby while she was in town. Brigid was already five months pregnant and big again by then, and tired from being pregnant with one baby and another in her arms. Alex went over to help her whenever she could. Brigid had taken an extended leave from the public school system to stay home with her babies, and Patrick’s parents were helping them financially as best they could, as they’d promised.

  “We’d be starving if they didn’t,” she told Alex, but she seemed happier than ever. And this time they knew that the baby was a girl, and Brigid was excited about it.

  Alex went back to L.A. in mid-January, and Malcolm was dating a different starlet by then, whom he’d met at a party over Christmas. She was glad she hadn’t gotten caught up in his games. There was nothing malicious about him, and it wasn’t personal, but there was no depth to it either, it was all tinsel. She couldn’t wait to start another book when she finished working on the movie. And she was trying to figure out where to live. Living alone in the house in L.A., and her apartments in London before that, made her realize that she didn’t want to go back to live at the convent again, as much as she loved the nuns. She talked to Bert about it, and he suggested New York.

  “You’re ready for the big leagues, Alex. It’s exciting being there.
You can’t hide away forever.” Rose agreed. New York was electric, and she thought it would do her good to be there, at least for a while.

  Alex had saved most of her writing money, and was careful with it, and she had the money from the sale of her father’s house. Rose told her she should rent an apartment downtown, in one of the trendy areas where young people lived, and see how it felt.

  “You can always go back to Boston if you hate it. Check it out,” Rose encouraged her. Alex was still young and needed guidance, although she had grown up a lot in London and L.A.

  They finished postproduction on her movie in mid-March, and everything had gone smoothly. No one had ever suspected that she was anything more than the reclusive author’s assistant. She had played her part well, and she went back to Boston and talked her plans over with Mother MaryMeg, who stunned Alex by agreeing with Bert and Rose.

  “You’re not a nun, Alex, and you shouldn’t be. That’s not your life. You can’t live here forever like one of us, you need to get out in the world and have some fun, meet new people, and do more than just work.”

  “Are you throwing me out?” she said wistfully.

  “Of course not. You can have a room here forever. We love you. But go play with kids your own age,” she said, smiling, and Alex laughed.

  “Do I have to? What if I don’t want to?” She had in London, but she was scared now. Her life with them in Boston was so safe, and it was nice being home. She was very torn about where to live.

  “Yes, you do have to.” Mother MaryMeg looked at her firmly. “Why don’t you try New York for a while? You can always change your mind. But at least give it a chance for six months.” It was almost exactly what Rose had said. Alex had lived in New York for her summer job, but that was different. She’d been a kid, she’d had roommates, and it was for a short, finite time. Moving to New York, alone in her own apartment, seemed even more daunting than being in London, although she wasn’t sure why.

  Alex thought about it for another two weeks after she got back from L.A., and in April, she went to see her agent, and looked at some apartments in the West Village and found one she liked. It was a big loft with a beautiful view of the Hudson River, sparingly furnished but with fine things and expensive furniture. The rent was high, but she could afford it, and there was a doorman, so it was safe. It was available for six months, so she took it and flew back to Boston to get her things. A week later, she moved in. The nuns were sad to see her go, but Mother MaryMeg pushed her to continue moving forward. And Bert encouraged her too.