I smiled at her. “I thought it was supposed to be the other way around. You know, me being impressed because you’re in the movies.”
“Oh, I’m not really in them,” she said. “I’m Janet’s assistant.” She pointed to the woman in the Kalahari bush jacket who was scanning a script. “My name’s LeAnne.”
I introduced myself and shook her hand, and then gestured toward the milling crowd. “How come no one’s doing anything?” I asked.
LeAnne laughed, getting to her feet. “It’s the business,” she said. “A lot of hurry up and wait. Come on, I’ll bet you don’t know where the oasis is.”
When she started to walk away I followed her. Inside a long, low tent was a feast. My eyes ran from one end of the table to the other, taking in sweating pitchers of mango juice and lemonade, piles of bananas and kiwis, finger sandwiches filled with chicken salad and something that looked like sliced egg, covered platters of coleslaw and sesame noodles. “Is this lunch?” I asked.
LeAnne shook her head. “Mr. Rivers likes knowing there’s something to eat between takes. He arranges the whole thing, or actually, Jennifer does. She does for him what I do for Janet. If you think this is something, wait till you see the layout at lunch. Yesterday we had king crab. Can you believe that? King crab, inAfrica.”
I hesitantly took a banana, peeling it back and walking out of the tent into the hot sun. I lifted up my face, shielding my eyes. “What is this movie about?”
LeAnne was shocked that no one had told me. It was a sort of science fiction film; Alex Rivers was playing an anthropologist who unearths a partial skeleton that seems, at first sight, to predate anything ever found before. But when he gets the bones carbon-dated, he finds they come from the 1960s. Then he notices that the chemical makeup of the bones isn’t quite what it should be, even if it had been an ancestral skeleton.
Turns out it’s an alien, and that of course makes him wonder about the origins of man in the first place.
I nodded politely when LeAnne finished. Not something I would go see, but it would probably sell tickets.
I followed her back to a small knot of people, all of whom I was introduced to and whose names I promptly forgot. Most of the crew were sitting on the ground now. LeAnne started talking to another woman about the condition of the bathroom facilities on location, and I leaned back against a tall canvas chair.
It was just like the one the script woman had been sitting on, only this one saidALEXRIVERSacross its back. Still, it was empty, and Alex Rivers didn’t appear to be around, so I climbed into it.
LeAnne gasped and grabbed my wrist. “Get off that,” she said.
Startled, I jumped down, forming a cloud of dust that had everyone on the ground coughing. “It’s just a chair,” I said. “No one was sitting there.”
“It’s Mr. Rivers’s chair.” I stared at her, waiting for the explanation.
“No one sits in Mr. Rivers’s chair.”
For God’s sake. This was going to be worse than I had anticipated.
I tried to convince myself that three hundred and fifty dollars per day was more than enough compensation for explaining the rudiments of collecting bone fragments to a man who thought china pitchers belonged in an off-site camp and who was so full of himself that only his own precious bottom could touch his canvas chair.
I knew something was about to happen by the shiver that ran through the air almost as quickly as the whispers spread. The crew started to stand, brushing off their shorts and returning to their respective positions on the set. Three men climbed up the dolly to the camera; the sound technician pressed his hand to one headphoned ear and rewound a portion of tape.
The man who had run after the rope called out for a woman named Suki. “Female stand-in,” he yelled. “Suki, we need you for lighting.” A woman who was not Janet the actress wandered toward the tents, and immediately a series of lights were set up around her and shifted into position.
I stared directly into one bright white beam, which was why I didn’t see him until he almost walked on top of me. Alex Rivers threw his jacket onto the chair I had dared to sit upon, not noticing me any more than he seemed to notice the air around him. He was talking quietly with someone I assumed was Bernie Roth, since he looked nearly as important and wasn’t paying attention to anyone either.
Alex Rivers was saying something about the black rope that I’d seen earlier. He brushed my arm as he moved past me, and I jumped backward.
It wasn’t that he’d collided with me; it was the heat of his skin. I rubbed my own shoulder, certain there would be a red blister or a welt, some proof of what I’d felt. I watched him walk away from me, amazed when my sense of perspective did not kick in. Instead of Alex Rivers getting smaller and smaller, he seemed to fill my entire field of vision.
Without realizing what I was doing, I walked behind the tents, keeping several feet away from where he stood, but close enough to listen. He and Bernie Roth and a tall, muscular man were fingering the black rope that had been brought in earlier. A fourth man was bent back under the force of Alex Rivers’s anger. “Listen to me,” he said, cutting off whatever the man had been saying. “Just listen to me. Sven can jump with this rope, but this rope isn’t white like I told you. You have two choices. You can go into town and try to find a rope that is white that he can jump with, or you can use this black rope and have me pissed off at you for the next eleven weeks.” He ran his hand over his face as if he was very tired. “This is about safety. The key criterion is whether or not Sven can use the rope for the stunt. Secondary is what the hell color it shows up against a background.”
The muscular man and the terrified set dresser walked off to the left, leaving me with a direct view of Alex Rivers. I stared at his profile, the muscles at the base of his jaw, the wind lifting light strands of his hair.
What a sanctimonious asshole! I knew nothing about making movies, but I had seen my share of bureaucracy atUCLA, and Alex Rivers was no better than Archibald Custer. He milked the advantage of his position, and of the astonishment that everyone couldn’t help but feel around him. Well, if I’d learned anything in the anthropology department, it was that you couldn’t let the people who made decisions walk all over you. You had to put yourself in their league if you wanted them to believe you really belonged there.
I swallowed, then took a step forward. I’d introduce myself to him and Roth, mention the bush jacket and the ludicrous china pitcher, and then I’d give Rivers a piece of my mind.
But as soon as I stepped into Alex Rivers’s line of vision, I froze. He held me spellbound, and I truly couldn’t have said if I was in the Serengeti or Belgium or circling Mars. It had nothing to do with his features, although they were certainly arresting. It had to do with his power. There was something about his stare that made me unable to turn away.
His eyes gleamed, catching the light like the surface of a still pond.
Then he looked away, as if he was searching for something. When he caught my eye again, he was smiling.Resplendent. The word caught in my throat, and I wondered how I could spend hours working steadfastly beneath the high African sun, but become dazed by the image of a single man.
