Oh, if only she had her life to live over again! By Christ, she would have picked the richest boy she met and married him. Love would have had nothing to do with it, so long as she was certain she could dominate him. Today she’d be the youngest social leader of the most desirable gilded communities, a triumphantly reigning young matron whose biggest problems would be deciding on the interior decoration of her fifth house, picking the name of her third child, and choosing her next lover. She would have led the life her mother had bred her for, and led it with such supreme style that she would have risen far above either envy or imitation. She would never even know how lucky she had been not to fall in love, hopelessly and permanently in love, with a man named Angus Caldwell.
But she didn’t have her life to live over again, Victoria thought bleakly. She was thirty-two and she had nothing.
There was the usual pile of all the latest magazines on her desk, collected weekly by her secretary so that she could check out the ads of companies that might be vulnerable to a cold pitch. Victoria opened the latest edition of Cosmopolitan, finding herself on a page that was devoted to yet another quiz. Cosmo editors, she had noted, loved quizzes, or was it the Cosmo readers? Automatically, as she read the questions, she found herself answering them in her mind.
What is your idea of perfect happiness? Being with Angus openly and forever.
What is your greatest fear? That Angus will never leave my mother.
What living person do you most admire? No one.
What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? Stubbornness.
What is your greatest regret? Not belonging to Angus.
Who is the love of your life? Angus.
On what occasions do you lie? When I tell Angus I’ve never fucked another man.
When and where was your most perfect moment? The first time Angus and I made love.
What is the trait you most deplore in others? Giving up.
Which living person do you most despise? Myself.
If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? To stop belonging to Angus.
What do you consider your greatest achievement? Belonging to Angus.
What is your current state of mind? I am in Hell.
12
In early September of 1984, Zach Nevsky completed postproduction on The Kalispell Chronicles and immediately started work on Vito’s new movie, Long Weekend. The film-business comedy was going to be filmed in and around Malibu. Most of the action during the twelve-week production schedule was going to take place in three separate houses in the Malibu Colony, a private, gated enclave of the rich beyond rich.
“We could have bought three beach houses for the rentals we’re having to pay,” Zach complained to Vito as they arrived on the site on the first morning of the shoot.
“Not in the Colony, unless you bought there years ago. You have to pay five or six million now to get a house on a sliver of land that’s cheek-by-jowl with your neighbors. It’s the most expensive beach property in the world.”
“There’s no privacy,” Zach commented. “You’d think that’s what people would want, but here everybody can come and picnic or sail a kite on the beach in front of the houses, so long as they stay below the high-tide mark.”
“The State of California owns the coastline, and the public has its rights. To me, the thing that’s most ridiculous is that you can see into your neighbor’s rooms through all the windows on both sides of most of the houses. And who are they? The very same hell-spawned pricks you’ve been doing business with all week. God, I hate this place,” Vito said happily.
It had been a nightmare to arrange the furnished rentals, and only the fact that the official summer was over had made it possible. The houses they had been able to negotiate for were suitably spacious, and whatever was missing in their decor, the set dressers would supply. Vito felt as relaxed about the prospects of this picture as he could remember feeling at this particular nerve-racking stage of waiting, when everything was set and nothing had actually started to happen. Such deceptive peace—the peace of a film on which nothing has yet gone wrong, the peace of a certain war in which the first shot has not been fired—was doomed to be fleeting, even nerve-racking for anyone with imagination, yet on this golden September morning he couldn’t help giving in to the sheer animal joy of finding himself on the edge of the North American continent, about to turn it into a mess of cables and lights and trucks and trailers.
Yeah, he loved this ridiculous, awful business, Vito reflected as he sat on the beach and watched from a distance as Zach dealt with the sixteen members of the cast who would be working on this first day, a party scene in which none of the principals were present yet. He was able—at least today—to keep himself from hanging around maddeningly close to the action in the style for which he was infamous among directors, who wanted a producer to be neither seen nor heard. Vito’s blazing energy level was so high that he found it physically unbearable not to poke his nose into every nook and cranny of a film, staying on top of everything that happened, as tightly aware of whether the star’s vegetarian lunch had been properly prepared, as concerned about the color of the star’s wigs, as he was of how many pages of the script had been filmed by the end of each day.
Vito knew he drove directors up the wall, and he’d never worried about it. If they didn’t like his style of producing, they didn’t have to work for him. But in the case of Long Weekend, he had resolved to keep out of Zach’s hair as much as possible. When Zach had first come to Hollywood from Off Broadway, he’d all but perched on Zach’s shoulder during the entire production of Fair Play. Now Zach had become such an assured and brilliant film professional that Vito felt it was a sign of respect to lounge around on the sand with his sneakers off as if he didn’t have a care in the world, as if he, the producer, weren’t the man on whom all ultimate responsibility rested, for it was he who had found the property, arranged financing, and hired the cast and crew as well as Zach himself.
So, if he was so sure of Zach’s ability, how come he hadn’t taken his eyes off him in the last hour, Vito asked himself. Deliberately, and with a feeling of self-imposed physical duress, he turned his back on the scene in progress and forced himself to scan the horizon.
As usual, the Pacific at Malibu was flat and boring, without even a flock of kids playing to supply animation. They must all be back in school now, he thought, spying only one other person sharing the beach with him and watching the actors. Wouldn’t you know it, he thought, filmmakers can’t even work a couple of hours without attracting a rubbernecker. By tomorrow there’ll be a whole group of them and by Wednesday there’ll be a crowd that will have to be kept back by some sort of barrier. He looked at his watch. Still a while till the lunch break, when he planned to grab a bite with Zach and find out how the first morning had gone.
Vito got up and strolled in the direction of the solitary watcher. If he didn’t talk to someone, he knew he’d be unable to keep himself from stealthily approaching closer to the temptation of the set, and he wanted to have at least one morning of noninterference under his belt on which to congratulate himself.
“Mind if I sit down?” he asked the woman, who was sitting, as he had been, on the sand, clad, as he was, in jeans and a faded denim jacket.
“It’s a public beach,” she said, agreeably enough, without looking at him, her eyes intent on the filming.
Vito sat down and glanced at her, looked away quickly, and then, cautiously, looked back. Could you fall in love with a profile, he asked himself in total wonder and total terror.
“It’s a nice day,” he heard himself saying. Maybe she would turn around and he’d see her full face and it would all be over, an illusion, a trick of the light and the angle, or else she was the one girl he’d been looking for all of his life without knowing he’d been looking.
“That it is.” She didn’t turn, not by so much as a quarter of an inch. She had dark hair, pulled back carelessly and knotted with a bit of bright yellow woo
l; the one eyebrow and eye he could see were equally dark; her lips, bare of makeup, were a soft pink. Her skin was very white, with the luscious matte quality of a gardenia, and there was a flush of pink where the sun had touched her cheekbones and her nose. He’d never been so moved by a profile in his life. It possessed a nobility, a purity, and a sadness that transcended all of its individual details, Vito thought. What vile beast had made her sad, he asked himself, overcome by an irrational feeling of protectiveness.
“You’re going to get sunburned,” he said, “if you don’t watch out.”
“I put sunblock on a little while ago,” she answered, unmoving, “but thanks for thinking of it.” She smiled faintly in acknowledgment, still watching the actors, and Vito’s heart turned over. It felt as if it had literally flip-flopped in his chest, he said to himself in horrified fascination, and he hoped that was physically impossible.
“You seem very interested in filmmaking,” he managed to say.
“In this one, yes. For some reason I’ve never seen Zach in action before.”
“Zach,” Vito said flatly. He was fucked, totally fucked.
“He’s the director, see that tall, great-looking guy with broad shoulders in the white T-shirt, that’s Zach, the one who’s telling the cameraman something. Just look how dynamic he is, on top of everything, totally in his element. He’s just so beautiful, I love to watch him,” she said fervently.
“Yeah.”
“Do you have the time?” she asked.
“It’s about eleven-thirty,” Vito said. Eleven-thirty on the day the world started and ended in two minutes of conversation.
“I came early to watch, but time seems to stand still when you watch a movie being made. Zach warned me about that. I’ll starve before he’s ready for lunch.”
“You’re having lunch with … the director of the picture?”
“Right. He told me that it would probably be okay the first day. He said he’d be too busy later on, discussing the morning’s work, so it wouldn’t be convenient for me to come out.”
As she spoke, the woman turned her head toward Vito and he realized that the desolation he had felt before had been happiness compared to this. Her profile had only warned of the fascination of her full face; the delicate indentation that led from the base of her nostrils to the top of her vitally alive upper lip was the most perfectly shaped fraction of human flesh that he had ever seen or imagined. And her eyes. Jesus, he should never have looked into both of her eyes. He should have gotten up and walked away and never come back. No disguise has ever been invented that can hide the expressions of a person’s eyes, and these were so lively, so humorous, so sportive, in spite of a certain desolation, that they told him he would die for this woman who belonged to Zach. Not die to have her, because that was impossible, but die to defend her, to keep her from harm.
Unable to move, although he wanted to run for his life, Vito watched Zach stop the action, give the cameraman some final instructions, and walk toward them, putting on a sweater as he advanced.
“Hi!” he yelled from a distance, and the woman got up and ran eagerly to Zach. He put his arms around her and lifted her up off the sand in a great bear hug and kissed her on both cheeks in a way that spoke of many exchanged kisses, many exchanged confidences, many hours of happiness together. Zach and the woman approached Vito smiling, and Zach put his arm around Vito affectionately.
“We finished early,” Zach said, “and I knew my little one here would be dying of hunger. Come on, let’s go eat. There’s a little place down the beach that’s supposed to have great hamburgers.”
“No, thanks,” Vito mumbled. “I have to get back to the office.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, do you think I don’t know what torture you’ve been going through all morning?” Zach said, laughing. “Just give me a break and don’t do it this afternoon, my mind is half on my work and half on wondering if you’re going to explode from not messing in my picture. You might just as well drive me crazy one way as the other.”
“I’ll come back tomorrow. You and … your friend … well, I don’t want to butt in.”
“Huh?” Zach looked puzzled.
“You have a lunch date, Zach.”
“Well, so what? Why can’t you join us?”
“This lady has a lunch date with you,” Vito said, at the end of his rope. “Two’s company, Zach, didn’t we make a picture with that name?”
“Vito, what’s wrong with you. Sunstroke?” Zach asked.
“Vito? Vito Orsini?” Sasha cried in amazement.
“Sasha, are you going crazy too?”
“Sasha—your sister?” Vito asked, wondering if he’d forgotten how to pray.
“No, Sasha my grandmother. What the fuck did you think? It’s not possible that you two … haven’t … met … before … is … it? I mean, how could it be possible? It’s impossible. Totally impossible. Gigi would have introduced you years ago.”
“But she didn’t, did she, Vito?” Sasha said, blushing for almost the first time in her life, and looking down at the sand, unable to meet his eyes.
“No, she missed the chance, somewhere along the way.”
“Bad, bad Gigi. And to think I used to consider her my best friend.”
“Cruel Gigi. I’m writing her out of my will this afternoon.”
“Look, guys, you two go and get lunch, or whatever you have in mind,” Zach said, throwing up his hands. “And don’t bother to come back!”
In the car on the way to lunch, Sasha kept sneaking quick peeks at Vito while she chatted nervously, since he seemed incapable of saying more than a word or two.
“You’re sort of like a figure out of mythology,” she said. “I’ve been hearing about you for so long from other people that after a while I decided you were sort of an Italian-American Zeus and never appeared except to a choice swan or two, not to mere mortals.”
Why, Sasha wondered, looking at Vito’s powerful profile, his inborn attitude of total authority, his commanding look that made her think of a leader of a band of fearless outlaws, a man beside whom even her own superbly vigorous Zach seemed almost tentative, why had Gigi never introduced her to this one particular magnificent human being? Jealousy was the only possibility. Gigi, that horrifying bitch, understood her taste in men too precisely not to have known that Vito was meant for her.
“I mean, think of all the times we might have bumped into each other,” Sasha continued, rattling on after a brief pause, “all those years I lived with Gigi in New York … but of course you were working in Europe then … and later, when the two of us shared an apartment out here before I got married …”
“But Gigi said—”
“I’m divorced now.”
“Good.”
“Good? Most people say, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ ”
“Bullshit. Josh was wrong for you. Nice guy, but all wrong.”
“How do you know him?”
“When I was married to Billy, he handled our pre-nup and our divorce.”
“Oh. Oh! I forgot all about that. It was so long ago, ages before I met Gigi. Well, that’s really amazing, that makes another connection. There’s Gigi, Josh, Spider, Zach, Billy …”
Had Billy been utterly out of her mind, Sasha thought. She’d let this glorious bronzed pirate, this conquistador, this dazzling man, of all the men in the world, get away? How could she possibly be content with Spider, darling Spider, but just another big, blond All-American sweetie-pie, after she’d been married to Vito? It was unthinkable, beyond her imagination. But of course that marriage had lasted only a year, so obviously they hadn’t been right for each other to begin with. Billy could be so blindly, stupidly stubborn … Vito must have been too strong for her, too right about too many things, unwilling to let her follow all her extravagant rich woman’s impulses that so often led to some kind of mixup. They must have been hideously miserable together, she thought with a leap of pure joy.
“Did Zach say a little place down the bea
ch?” Vito asked.
“I don’t remember, we’re driving up the beach. We just passed Trancas.”
“What about here? I know you’re starving.”
“It looks fine.” Starving, Sasha wondered, why would she be starving?
They pulled into a simple, rather shabby beach hotel with a restaurant facing the water. Vito secured a round table in the corner on a screened porch where an awning flapped idly in the sea breeze. They both studied the menu earnestly.
“Anything look interesting?” Vito asked.
“Everything, anything … maybe a chicken salad.” She could just play with it, Sasha realized, she wouldn’t actually have to try to swallow.
“What about a drink first?”
“Oh, yes. Please. What’s good before lunch?”
“Champagne, dry sherry, either Tio Pepe or La Ina, Lillet, Negroni, Bloody Mary, Cinzano …” Had he been a bartender in a former life, Vito wondered as he rambled on, but she wanted to know, so he was telling her. Anything she wanted to know he would tell her. Anything.
“Cinzano, please, on the rocks,” Sasha said, seizing on something she didn’t know if she liked, just to make a decision.
“Waiter, two Cinzanos on the rocks and a chicken salad for the lady—”
“Why don’t we wait to order? Unless you’re hungry.”
“I’m not. I was before, but I’m not now,” Vito said.
“Me neither. Phantom hunger,” Sasha said, wondering what she meant.
“Yes. That’s what happens when …” Vito stopped, looking for the courage to proceed. It was now or never, and if it was never he might as well know before he got in any deeper, not that it was possible to get in any deeper than he was already.
Lovers Page 31
