by Susan Braudy
“Cut,” said Jack in hushed shock.
But Anita said nothing, while her crane continued to pan slowly around him.
“You still shooting me?” Jack yelled incredulously, twisting his head to look down for her. His neck was bent forward, but he still couldn’t see her in the wall of spotlights. He was locked against the cross by suction cups and nylon.
“Stop shooting,” I shouted in her ear. “He’ll kill you.”
“It’s worth it.” She sounded hysterical. “It’s worth gold.” She shot me a quick look. “Nobody move, just a few more seconds.”
“Cut, cut,” I yelled. I was watching a legal case in the making. Nobody shoots a star’s privates without weeks of coaxing and concessions.
She ignored me, mesmerized by the screen. “Jack, you look glorious. The light makes a halo all around you. Just another thirty seconds, babe. Just a few seconds more …”
He came to life, cursing and writhing. The whole cross started swaying. “What is she talking about?” he shouted out suddenly. “Somebody tell me, please.”
“Kill the electricity,” I said, grabbing a handful of Paul’s tee shirt, tripping over a gigantic fan. I yanked off my sandals.
“You almost knocked my ritter down,” she yelled over her shoulder to me.
“She’s losing her marbles,” I said.
Paul threw generator switches and frantically turned dials. “They argued this one for weeks. I thought she lost.”
The spotlights died.
“Lights, lights, do something,” she cried out, pummeling the screen with both fists.
The generator went quiet. The crane slowly lowered the cameraman to the sand. He looked disgusted. Nobody moved. The crew watched her like they were witnessing a traffic accident.
“No, no, no,” Anita shouted in despair. She sat down hard on the sand, peering at the black screen.
Jack had wrenched his right leg free and was kicking his heel at the cross. His whole body convulsed. “Stop kicking,” I called up to him, “you’re going to fall.”
He went limp, as if he’d passed out.
“That’s a wrap, Anita.” Paul nodded while the a.c. twisted the lens from the camera and handed it to a crew member. Anita leapt at him, tumbling sideways onto the sand, grunting with pain.
“You’re suspended for insubordination,” she told Paul.
I bent over her. Somebody handed me her crutch. She looked wildly up at me. I was furious.
“What are you trying to do, drive him off the set?” My voice shrilled. “You’re wrecking any chance of getting this film made.”
She clutched my elbow, hoisting herself to her knees, and crawled toward two crew members struggling to unbolt the heavy camera from the arm of the crane.
“Just hold it,” she said belligerently. “Take your hands off that camera.”
They ignored her. She had scraped her knees white.
I shivered in my tee shirt. “Anita, take it easy.” I handed her the crutch. She threw it on the sand.
“I can finish this film without him. It would be a lot more satisfying.”
Everybody ignored her. She watched the crew disappearing in the direction of their cars. It was dawning on her that she’d lost control of her set.
“Anita, get a grip on yourself.”
“I’m not afraid of him,” she said tremulously.
“Yes, you are, and you hate him for it.”
I glanced up at him anxiously while two special effects men began cutting the transparent twine at his ankles and wrists. Jack cupped a hand over his genitals. His silence was ominous. Then they set him in the bucket of the crane, swung him through the air, and deposited him on the sand.
I felt light raindrops.
“He knows that’s the way he should look,” she said in a subdued voice. “He better not get crazy about this. Nobody ever shows Jesus right. The Renaissance painters were prudes. I had a Hebrew University guy tell me Roman soldiers stripped Jesus in front of the crowd. He died naked.”
“No theater owner will book it.”
“I don’t give a fuck about box office receipts.” She sounded worried.
“You owe him a big apology.”
“I put a lot more of him in the movie, just like he wanted.” She fumbled around on the sand and found her huge Polaroid.
I stamped my bare foot. “They covered him for two thousand years because that’s what people want.”
“Listen, between us we can change the iconography forever.”
“Just change your drug.” I felt trapped. “I’m putting you on probation for twenty-four hours. If Jack wants you to continue, let him tell me. I’m closing you down; you went too far.” The effort was making the walls of my chest hammer against my breath. We were facing each other on the sand.
She turned away from me, laughing and crying. “If you close me down, you won’t have the authority to charge a breakfast meeting to the studio.”
“It’s the only way to save your ass. Now I got to go start negotiating with Jack all over. You better beg him to let you work again.” I beckoned to Paul. “Empty the film out of the camera. I want all the exposed film from today’s work.”
“You got it.” He sprinted away.
Anita was rocking herself in a little ball, her face hidden against her scratched knees.
“You take a rest,” I added, “take a hot bath. I’ll see to it nobody in Hollywood finds this out. I’ll take the heat.”
“Nobody tells me what to do,” she mumbled.
“You’re acting crazy. They don’t trust woman directors; one hysterical incident and the whole career is bye-bye. Oh, you’ll get interviewed for years by film magazines and The New York Times, but nobody’ll put up a dime to send you on location.”
Polly was wrapping Jack in a terry-cloth bathrobe. He looked like a beaten boxer. The crosses behind him were blurring in the yellow night fog.
“Jack, don’t worry,” I said, jogging to his side. He was walking unsteadily. He wouldn’t look at me. I heard his teeth chatter. “She’ll never print a foot of this. I’m getting you the film and we’ll burn it together in an hour, frame by frame.”
“Just burn your director,” he said as he stepped into an open jeep. His nose was running and he was shivering. His long hair stuck out in stiff knots from the fans and fog.
“You getting sick again?” I asked him. He shook his head and looked stricken.
The Arab driver turned over the engine.
“Meet me at the farmhouse,” I said, resisting an impulse to touch his cheek. “I’ll have the film.”
“Keep it as a souvenir of Hollywood,” he said grimly. “I don’t want it. I’m through with Anita and I’m through with you. I’m sick of your promises.”
The tires of his jeep crunched the sand. “Wait,” I called out.
I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know what to do next, go after him, throttle Anita, or take off for the airport.
Paul waved silver film cans at me. “Hey, you okay?” he asked, squeezing an arm around me. “Take these nude shots to somebody I know on Forty-second Street in New York who does star posters, you’ll earn a quick hundred grand.”
I watched the jeep’s rear lights spin away into the dark. “Very funny,” I said. “How much would you give for my movie career?”
“I never lost a production yet, but this one sure ain’t coming up roses.”
Anita was propped up on her crutch, pouring her heart out to Polly, who was wiping makeup brushes and drinking Egyptian beer from a can. Anita sounded needy, her voice cracking. “I told him you don’t see Jesus’ face in Ben Hur, you imagine his beauty, but no, he had to change things. Well, I guess I changed him, all right.”
Polly looked frightened and handed her the beer can.
“You need him,” I interrupted, “or you are washed up.”
Anita picked up a handful of sand and let it trickle through her fingers. “Jesus,” she said, winking at Polly, “isn’t it time you got pas
t star-fucking?”
“I’m not betraying you,” I snapped.
“You always try and please the man, no matter what. It took you ten years to stop hiding behind that husband of yours, the big brain of Philadelphia.”
“At least I don’t keep bullying men to prove I’m not afraid.” I leaned over to her. “You’re scared to death of him and his sexuality and that’s going to blow the whole movie.”
“I don’t want some sex symbol making goo-goo eyes at me and telling me my craft,” she said despairingly. “Same goes for that accountant with fangs who runs your studio.”
“I report to him,” I said.
“It’s taking its toll.” She gnawed at the skin around her thumbnail.
I felt ready to jump feet first into a bad fight. I couldn’t stand her attitude. “After six broken engagements you work up some fancy radical feminist theory about evil men and their horrible power. You want everything, male power and female privilege.” I had the horrible feeling that these words had been said to me.
“And what do you want? Anything different?”
“Right now, I want this movie, and I’ll do anything to get it made,” I sputtered. “Do your business. Jack’s on the brink of something bad. It’s your job to tend to his feelings.”
“He’ll come around begging once he sees my footage.” She looked murderous.
“You’re failing as a director because you don’t handle your actor.”
“Who handles me? I am slaving to get this movie made right. I’m the one who sleeps four hours and works twenty, and now I find out he’s trying to get me fired behind my back.”
“Stop your megalomania,” I said. I wiped sand off my feet and slipped on my sandals to carry the heavy film back to Paul’s car.
“Hey, wait up.” She was struggling with her crutch. “What’s the matter with my megalomania? You love it on men. It’s the only thing that gets you hot besides power.”
I felt my throat tighten. “Drum me out of the feminist bugle corps,” I said, my sandals clopping on the sand. “You apologize to him or you’re fired.”
“Fired?” she screamed.
“That’s what we been talking about.” I turned to see her stricken face. “Creative differences,” I shouted at her. “I can see the Variety headlines.”
“Holy shit,” she breathed.
“I’m not kidding.” I spotted Paul’s sports car.
When I turned on the headlights I saw her next to the car, biting her thumbnail, ruminating in a fury. “I’m sick of you envying me,” she sputtered.
That stung. Words came out of my mouth in a pounding flow. “I used to admire you, but I don’t envy the way you’re blocked as a writer because you keep lying to yourself and lies don’t work on paper.”
“There you go again,” she said triumphantly. “What a nasty tongue on Miss Goody Two-Shoes.”
She couldn’t shut me up. “I don’t envy the way you’re stunted; you’re Mommy and Daddy’s self-indulged adolescent on a trust fund.”
“You always envied my dad’s money”—she kicked at the tire of the car—“because it freed me to be creative. You lammed on to me in the dorm because you were too scared to get in on movies yourself.”
“I made it in your business because you taught me the aggression of a sewer rat.”
“Yeah? You watched me fight my way into the business all alone, and then presto, you sail into the studio as the newborn independent woman executive on my recommendation.”
“I paid my dues, and you’re not so independent. Let’s not forget the six pawned engagement rings.”
“At least I’m not always hiding behind a man’s skirts,” she said. “First it was the star academic husband, with the bigger-than-life brain, who you dumped when marriage went out of fashion. Now you’re the pretty girl eating lunch with killer studio accountants, and you really hit it big with your fantasy movie star.”
“What do you want me to do? Become a nun?”
“I want you to see my point of view. You always side with the men.”
“You’re scared to death of men, and you envied me too, starting with my marriage.”
“You have the perspective of an old maid from Philadelphia.” She jutted her chin. We were inches apart.
“At least I have a moral perspective.” I stepped back against the car.
“I don’t envy it.” Her chin shook.
“Well, I’m your boss on this project,” I said, “and you hate it.”
“You walked onto a closed set, pushed me against the wall, and started undercutting me and flirting and playing up to my star. You don’t respect my work.”
I sighed into the night. “What a mess. You know I respect your work. I respect it like crazy.”
I was paraphrasing one of our favorite Mike Nichols routines from the fifties, where the boy tells the girl he respects her like crazy while he’s trying to neck.
“Hah, hah,” said Anita listlessly.
“I give up.” I needed a good cry, but not in front of the dragon lady.
“Okay, okay.” She raised her chin slowly. “We had fights before. Big deal.”
I was seated half in the car, idling the motor. I released the hand brake. “I dunno, not like this.”
“Why?”
“How can I trust you? This competition thing you do with men is ugly, it’s your downfall.”
“It got me an Academy Award and lots of work in twenty years.”
“Yeah, well, there goes twenty years of friendship. I can’t trust you anymore.”
She inched her way along the fender to the open door. “Carol, I’m sorry, this is the first time I ever went back on my word to you.”
I scowled in the dark. “I should have expected it. You always lie to the money people you work for.”
“Two stubborn killers.” Then her voice strained. “I can’t afford to lose you. I only got you and Mom. Nobody else can stand me.”
“You have a point.”
She limped into the round beam of my headlights and raised her hands in an imploring gesture. “I swear I won’t keep screwing up.”
I hit the horn. “Move it.” I felt a flash of familiar affection. What an exhibitionist and, as always, two steps ahead of me.
“No, listen, I’ll apologize to him on my knees. I’ll share directing credit. I’ll tell him I’m a no-good man-hater like you say.”
I got out of the car. She hugged me awkwardly, but finally I knew she meant what she was saying. “My old friend. What a pill you are,” I mumbled gruffly.
“Work on Jack.” She spoke dryly. “It’s a filthy job, but somehow I have a feeling you can do it.”
“Very funny,” I said, turning the steering wheel as hard as I could.
Eight
I left the motor running and stumbled into the wheat field. The night dew had wet the stalks. There was a soft glow in the distance, the light at his screen door. I pictured Jack playing angry chopsticks at his white piano. I’d better hurry. Somehow he hadn’t sounded like a man taking a little music break. More likely he was speeding across the island in his jeep. I had a dizzy fantasy. I’d run away with him. Forget New York. Forget the job. I stepped on a fleshy lump—a sleeping sheep. It jumped up, locking its joints, and fled. I heard a rhythmic splashing as I approached the house and the swimming pool. “Hello, hello?”
“Who is it?”
“Is somebody home?”
“Oh, hi, I just heard a car,” she said. It was the same naked girl. She held on to the low diving board, treading water.
“That was me driving.” I asked nervously, “You live here?”
“No, I swim all the time. I trained for the Olympics as a kid.”
“He’s not home?”
“That was him before in the jeep,” she said, reaching for a towel crumpled near my feet. “I guess he came and went.”
“Where to?”
“Seaplane, I guess. He skips out every couple of days to unwind.”
“W
hat a mess,” I muttered. I was unable to contain my curiosity. “What do you do?”
“Dialogue coach.” She rubbed her wet hair. “You like the way he says Bible verses like he’s from Kansas?”
“I like it,” I said. “Listen, didn’t he stop and talk?”
“No, he’s in his own world.”
I tapped open the screen door of the cottage with my palm, thinking she probably wasn’t sleeping with him, and I was glad.
“I heard what happened on the set.” She walked up to me wrapped in a towel.
“I just want to make sure he didn’t catch a cold,” I lied stupidly.
“He’s been sick all along. He’s had everybody hopping.” She scrutinized my face as I turned the doorknob.
Inside I fumbled my way to a lamp and switched it on. Sheets of music had blown to the floor. The place looked deserted. The closet was empty. A squeezed-out tube of Israeli toothpaste sat in the brown tile bathroom with two towels lumped on the towel rack.
I sat down on a single bed behind the piano next to a pile of books. I was so curious about him. I fingered a water-stained copy of Winesburg, Ohio, like a bloodhound learning his scent. I suspected he was one of those depressed middle-aged people who decided he’d better read good books he’d missed out on as a kid. I pocketed his book. Still collecting souvenirs at forty, pretty weird. When I was a Girl Scout I won the only merit badge in my troop for making a photograph scrapbook of movie stars. I smiled to myself. Still star-struck. But I was dawdling. I knew what Carole Lombard would do on the trail of Clark Gable. I grabbed two Perriers and some local yogurt from his refrigerator, provisions for my trip.
Out on the deck, the girl was buttoning up a billowing man’s shirt. “When did he leave?” I asked.
“Maybe a half hour ago.”
Damn. “Where does he catch the seaplane?”
“Take the road north, seventy-five miles, it forks a lot. Keep bearing left.”
“He say anything at all?”
She draped the towel over her shoulders. “Yeah, that he was splitting for good.”
My pulse banged behind my eyes. “I really need a map.”
She began rummaging in a beach bag and handed me a wrinkled map of the island. “He lent me this.”
