Dreams Are Not Enough

by Jacqueline Briskin

  Each time they arrived back at the leased house on Laurel Canyon, Alyssia would phone Barry to set up a date to discuss a divorce. Invariably he would reply that nothing could please him more. When they were together, though, his willingness always came with a disclaimer—they could start with attorneys as soon as he finished this urgent rewrite, as soon as he moved to his new apartment, the day his mother recovered from her latest illness. If Alyssia remained adamant, he would drink incredible amounts, then turn lachrimose, playing on her guilts, her sense of loyalty, her pity.

  • • •

  PD banged the rococo bronze mermaid door knocker. Though the furnished villa came with three servants, and though Alyssia traveled no place without her bespectacled personal maid, she answered the door herself. In a gauzy yellow kaftan that showed the outlines of her bikini, without makeup, her glossy black hair sleeked into a ponytail, she looked younger, more beautiful and far softer than her image on the screen.

  “PD!” she cried. “PD! I don’t believe this! What a mess I must look! Why didn’t you tell us you were coming?”

  “A spur-of-the-moment trip,” he said smoothly.

  “We’d have driven to Milan to meet you. God! Won’t you shock Hap! Come on, we’re outside.”

  In clear weather the garden had a view that could only be described as magnificent, and even on a hazy, obscured day like today, the pool deck, set into the bougainvillea-covered hillside and graced with ancient Roman pots from which sprang red geraniums, was romantically spectacular.

  Hap, wearing faded khaki shorts and zinc oxide on his nose, his feet adangle in the water, sat reading a script. The ferry was hooting its way into the Bellagio dock, so he didn’t hear them emerge. Alyssia paused to look at him, her eyes bedazzled as if he shone.

  Then she called, “Look who’s here!”

  Hap jumped to his feet.

  In spite of his exclamations and warm welcome, PD detected a lack of surprise, almost a hint of wariness. Hap’s always laid-back, he told himself to calm his nerves.

  “Hey PD,” Hap was saying. “A long flight. You must be beat. So why not bathe and take a nap?”

  PD drew a breath. “Later,” he said. “First I have a property I need to discuss.”

  “So that’s why you dropped in from the sky.” Alyssia smiled. “Before you start agenting, I’ll get you a drink.”

  PD gulped Pellegrino water, then used his considerable skills to pitch the story line of Transformations.

  Alyssia’s role, a bawdily outspoken young Detroit assembly line worker, sets off with her crude stud of a boyfriend to New Mexico, where her father is dying. The father turns out to be a billionaire along the lines of J. Paul Getty, and though the heroine is rebellious and disrespectful to the old bastard, she alone of the assembled, greedy family cares about him. The plot turns on past incest and the willing of the fortune.

  When PD finished, Alyssia said enthusiastically, “What a story, and what a role—what a fantastic role.”

  “The concept’s brilliant,” Hap said. “Before we go any further, though—PD, does this project have any connection with a man called Robert Lang?”

  PD felt as if somebody had punched the air out of both lungs. “Then Maxim spoke to you—”

  “Maxim?” Alyssia interrupted. “Is he in on this? He’s going to do a movie after all these years?”

  “The property belongs to him,” PD said. “It’s a novel.”

  “You haven’t answered me about Lang,” Hap said.

  “Uhh. . . .” PD shrugged. “He’s only on the financial end.”

  “Dad called late yesterday. He said you’d probably be contacting us. Forget it, PD. The answer is no. We are not doing this film. We are not working with Robert Lang.”

  “I’m not even going to have a chance to explain the deep hole I’m in?”

  “What are you two talking about? Who’s Robert Lang?” Alyssia asked.

  “Somebody to avoid,” Hap said.

  “PD,” Alyssia asked, “what did you mean, a deep hole?”

  “Let’s sit down,” PD said, mopping his forehead.

  He and Alyssia took two of the wrought-iron chairs under the jacaranda tree. Hap remained standing. Brief and unadorned, PD laid out his family’s plight.

  “This Lang.” Alyssia leaned forward. “All he wants is for us to do one film, then he’ll cancel your father’s debt?”

  “You’d only get scale,” PD said, deciding not to mention the deferral of her salary until they were away from Hap’s narrowed gray eyes. “No percentages, either.”

  “But he’s agreed to this story?”

  “Not yet, but I can’t see him turning thumbs down. He was quite explicit that he wanted an artistically meaningful project—and what else is this?”

  Hap’s fists were clenched against his shorts. “We are out! O,U,T!” Hap almost never lost his temper, but when he did, PD was remembering from boyhood, he was a far more implacable opponent than the terrifying but changeable Desmond Cordiner.

  “Hap,” Alyssia said, “sit down. PD’s not asking that much. Why can’t we do a film for only salary?”

  “Money’s the last thing I’m talking about.”

  “I wouldn’t have hauled ass all over the world,” PD said, “if I had anyplace left to turn.”

  “Why shouldn’t you come to us?” Alyssia said. “You saved my life.”

  A muscle moved at Hap’s jaw. “Can’t you see he’s playing on that? You never change, PD, do you? You’re always that weasel Tony Curtis played in Sweet Smell of Success.”

  “Tell me what the fuck I should do. Let my family go down the tubes?”

  “Maybe I’m obtuse, but I don’t see any big deal, Hap.” Alyssia’s tone was no longer pleading, but gutsy. “So Lang owns a hotel and casino—”

  “He also controls a big hunk of the US heroin trade,” Hap said.

  Stunned, PD took off his dark glasses, peering at his cousin. Hap stared back. Near naked, furious, he looked invincibly large.

  PD said the first thing that came into his mind. “There’s an unfounded rumor.”

  “Dad quoted considerable evidence to back it up.”

  “If Lang’s rough,” Alyssia said, “then all the more reason to help PD.”

  “Dad’s fought for years to keep slime like this out of the studio.”

  “Oh?” Alyssia raised her chin. “It’s news to me that your father has the same corner on virtue that you do.”

  Through the mist came the foghorns and deep throbbing hum of the ferry’s departure.

  Hap asked quietly, “Are you telling me I’m a sanctimonious prig?”

  “You’re behaving like one!” she snapped.

  Hap picked up his script and went into the house. The quiet click as he closed the French doors had more finality than a thunderous slam.

  “How could I have said that to him, PD?” Alyssia’s lips were white.

  “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, ashamed of having destroyed the unmitigated happiness he had witnessed earlier.

  “He’s so much above me—smarter, more decent, topnotch family, everything.”

  PD was perpetually astonished at his top client’s lack of confidence in her true worth. “Sure,” he said. “You’re only incredible-looking, talented and famous.”

  “I’m terrified one day he’ll come to his senses and leave.”

  “He’s mad about you.”

  “Not now, not anymore.”

  “Crazy talk. Hap’s nothing if not steadfast.” PD sighed and slumped forward in his chair. “Alyssia, I swear to you it came as a total shock, hearing that Lang dealt in big H.”

  She tilted her head at PD, as if finally noting his dejection. “It’s the world’s most fantastic part,” she said brightly. “How could I turn it down? And my guess is Barry’ll be delighted to do the screenplay. Maxim’ll produce. So you have a trio of us.”

  “It’s all four.” PD’s voice wavered. “Four or nothing.”

  She bit her lip th
oughtfully: the marks showed in the tender flesh when she spoke. “How long do I have to change his mind?”

  PD stared down at his hands. “The day after tomorrow.”

  37

  Hap did not fight the same way the men of her youth had, shouting with hard blows to emphasize a point, nor did he turn petulant, like Barry. Reserved courtesy was his style. He kept to his own territory in their king-size bed, and beyond the bedroom walls treated her as if she were a fellow houseguest to whom he had just been introduced. Alyssia was generally the first to extend the olive branch, not because he was in the right, though she conceded that almost without exception he was, but because she was positive a prolonged quarrel might cause an irreparable tear in the fabric of their relationship.

  Showing PD to the room he’d occupied before, she was already atremble with the need to surrender. But how could she, when she owed an incalculable debt to her guest? She went slowly down the flight of stairs to the master bedroom, finding Hap in the low-slung easy chair, reading the same script. He hadn’t turned a page in twenty minutes, but she couldn’t know that.

  “I’d like to discuss Transformations,” she said. Her voice was level though her hands trembled.

  “Of course.” Gravely, he marked his place. “But what’s the point? We aren’t doing it.”

  “We?”

  “I’d prefer that you didn’t, but of course I can’t tell you what parts to take.”

  Alyssia heard in Hap’s tone a modicum of the aloof precision that Rosalynd Cordiner used on her.

  “Well I can’t ignore PD!” she snapped. “And I don’t see how you can either—he’s your cousin. His family’s your family! Don’t you give a damn about family? Or do only the dirt-poor learn to help one another out?”

  “I refuse to be involved with heroin.”

  “Lang’s not sticking needles in you. He’s financing a film.”

  “Taking his money means I condone the needles.”

  “Terrific!” She was shouting now. “PD or one of your other relations get their skulls bashed in while Mr. Morally Superior Cordiner soliloquizes about right and wrong!”

  She ran into the dressing room. As she yanked on slacks and a loose sweater, she grew more and more frightened that Hap would decamp. Throwing open the door, she shouted, “I’m going into town!”

  She drove the mile into Bellagio, parking in the square that abutted the little town’s ancient, square-spired church. Striding down a cobbled alley in the direction of the lake, she ignored the tall, narrow houses with flowers that fell raffishly from every cranny—normally the little town’s opera-buffa vistas delighted her.

  Reaching the lake, she hurried past the ranked, outdoor tables where locals were leisurely taking their afternoon snacks, continuing to the end of the promenade, where she paid to enter the gardens of the Villa Melzi. The extensive grounds bordering the shore were empty in the twilit mist. As she passed the little Moorish temple where Liszt had composed, her footsteps crunched slower on the gravel and she hugged her arms around herself. I’ll have to use strategy, she thought bleakly. She considered it wrong to bring psychology to bear against anyone, and to work Hap seemed the ultimate treachery to love.

  “Signorina del Mar.”

  The desiccated little guard, Rizzio, was running after her to explain it was closing hour. She replied in her serviceable Italian, picked up while doing the Fellini film, that she was just about to leave.

  • • •

  PD peered at her through the ocher light coming from the outside lantern. It was a few minutes before dinner, and she had just brought a bottle of Marzemino d’Isera to the guest-room terrace.

  “Take off?” he asked. “You’ve got me baffled. There’s no way I can convince Hap if I take off.”

  She looked away. “Alone, I can, uhh, convince him.”

  He picked up the wine. “You’re the boss,” he said.

  At her insistence, he hired a driver to return his car to Hertz.

  • • •

  No matter where she fell asleep in a bed, she invariably awoke curled around Hap. That night she retired to the adjacent room.

  The triumvirate arose before dawn, driving to the Milan airport.

  After they waved PD onto his plane, Alyssia turned to Hap. “I need a couple of things on Via Monte Napoleone.”

  Via Monte Napoleone, a short, narrow street in the old central part of Milan not far from the Duomo, was where wealthy, superhumanly well-groomed Milanese shopped at Gucci, Ferragamo, Valentino and other top designers.

  Leading Hap into a perfumed boutique, Alyssia said, “I won’t be long.”

  He sat on one of the uncomfortable gilt chairs, which were far too small for him, while she disappeared into an elegant fitting room. She chose several feloniously expensive silk outfits for herself, then asked to see clothes in Juanita’s size, buying the two high-priced suits that would fit her sister. The beaming manageress offered to deliver her purchases to her car—or even to Bellagio—but Alyssia said no, she’d take everything with her. She piled her packages into Hap’s arms, leading him to Gucci’s, where she selected two dozen richly flowered silk scarves to take home as gifts, handing him these, too. If they hadn’t been embroiled, he would have told her to knock it off, but instead, he carried his burdens like the perfect gentleman. At Ferragamo, her saleslady stayed past the inviolable lunch closing hour of one o’clock to sell this American movie star all the shoes that fitted her slim, high-arched feet.

  Outside, Alyssia exclaimed, “I’m ravenous.” Hap crammed her purchases in the trunk and drove the few deserted blocks to Don Lisander’s charming eighteenth-century courtyard restaurant.

  • • •

  “What’s the matter?” she demanded. “Isn’t the zuppa inglese good? It’s usually marvelous here.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “You barely took two bites of your risotto and your veal.” She had eaten less of hers.

  “Alyssia, they’re waiting for us to finish,” he said with patient courtesy.

  The other tables were deserted and their waiters leaned disconsolately against the famed antipasto buffet. As Hap raised his finger, the short waiter with the mustache darted over.

  “Signore?”

  “I’d like a brandy,” Alyssia said.

  • • •

  Again she slept in the adjacent room.

  At first, unable to place the odd, rusty little sounds, she imagined some wounded animal had found refuge in their hilly garden. Then she realized it was crying.

  Running into the next room, she dropped on the bed to clutch Hap’s large, overwarm body. “Oh, darling, darling, don’t.”

  His controlling breath shuddered against her. “This kind of situation,” he muttered, “when something’s right and wrong at the same time, is something I can’t handle.”

  “I’ve been a total bitch.”

  “You don’t have to tell me.” He rubbed his wet cheeks against her breasts. “Alyssia, I’ll do the film.”

  “Hap. . . .”

  “I should be doing it for PD and Uncle Frank, but I’m not. I’m going ahead strictly because I just can’t fight you.”

  38

  Lang’s demands included a swift release. Luck was with them and there were incredibly few foulups. Transformations was ready for release seven months later, at the end of April. Members of the Motion Picture Academy were treated to a preview showing of Transformations. The downstairs lobby of the Academy’s big, comfortable new theater on Wilshire was jammed, and some casually clad people were still making their way down the broad, thickly carpeted staircase to the larger, brilliantly lit lobby where the temporary bars and buffets were besieged—in honor of the New Mexico locale, the caterers were serving chile verde, carne asada and gold puffs of sopapillas.

  Well-wishers formed kaleidoscoping groups around those connected with Transformations. (An invitation had been sent to Robert Lang, but he had preferred to view his investment privately—thus far he’d
had no contact whatsoever with any member of the cast or crew.)

  Maxim received his adulation in front of a glass-encased exhibit of Billy Bitzer’s cameras.

  Barry held court on the steps.

  Alyssia stuck close to Hap. She had no belief in her own talent, and lavish compliments always made her feel an imposter. The only way she could get through functions like this was to play a role she had long ago prepared for herself. Wearing blue velvet hip-huggers and a blue fitted tie-dyed chiffon top, she continually tossed her head, flashing her new ultralong gold earrings as, eyes asparkle, lips moist, she uttered breathless disclaimers.

  Desmond Cordiner had come over. “Alyssia, it’s a damn blessing you’ve got an obligation to do a picture for us,” he said. “I wouldn’t want Magnum to be at the tail end of the line.”

  “Those lines, Mr. Cordiner, are for the buffet,” she bubbled.

  Rosalynd Cordiner embraced Hap. Smiling at a point a few inches above Alyssia’s head, she said, “You were excellent, dear, as always.”

  “Wonderful direction, Mrs. Cordiner,” Alyssia said.

  But Rosalynd was already making her stately way toward a pair of gray-haired matrons in designer pantsuits.

  Alyssia flushed. She reflected that at least she didn’t have to worry about a run-in with Clara and Tim. The demand for tickets had been so great that Maxim had decreed two Academy screenings: her in-laws had insulated themselves from her by requesting the second night’s performance. So had Frank and Lily Zaffarano. Frank and Lily had yet to invite her to their home, and though she feigned indifference, she couldn’t control her bitterness—or her desolation. Rejection hurts.

  A minute later Beth was there. “You were fabulous,” she said.

  “With a role like that, who wouldn’t be?”

  Beth lowered her pleasant voice to a whisper. “I’m really grateful, Alyssia. PD told me the entire story.”

  “It’s nothing compared to what he did for me.”

  Beth touched her arm. “Will you look at Barry!” Barry was laughing with an oval-shaped, long-haired older man whom Alyssia recognized as a Metro big gun. “He’s finally out of his slump . . . thanks to you.”