Alex stared at me so forcefully I felt myself looking up at him before I even wanted to. His voice was tight and controlled. “I know everyone’s name and everyone’s wife’s name. Back when I was bartending I learned that if people think you’re paying attention to them, they’re more likely to hang around. It’s easy for me to remember, it makes them feel important, and things get done twice as fast because of it.”
He spoke as if he was defending himself, as if I had challenged him, when that wasn’t my intention at all. The truth was, I was shocked. It was hard to reconcile the man who had thrown a tantrum over a length of rope with the man who made it a point to know the names of everyone working for him. “You didn’t know my name,” I pointed out.
“No,” he said, and then he relaxed. He offered me a brilliant smile.
“But you made sure I’ll never forget it.”
We settled down to the task at hand, kneeling in the excavated pit.
I showed Alex the different tools used to dig, the gentle brushes used to clear the excess earth. I tried to explain the markings on the plain that would indicate the presence of fossils, but this was difficult to understand unless you had been trained. “There,” I said, sitting back on my heels. “That’s pretty much all I can show you.”
“But you haven’t shown me anything at all,” Alex complained. “I need to watch you excavate a skull or something.”
I laughed at him. “Not from this site,” I said. “Everything’s been stripped dry.”
“Pretend,” Alex urged. He grinned. “It’s easy. I’ve built a career on it.”
I sighed and bent into the pit again, trying my best to imagine a bone fragment that was not there. I was starting to see why my predecessor had left. Maybe pretending was easy for Alex Rivers, but—as he’d said—this was his career.Minewas based on hard evidence and physical proof, not an overactive imagination. Feeling like an idiot, I swept away a top layer of red dust and ran my fingers over the bumpy ground. I took a small pick and began to dig in a circle around this nonexistent skull. I brushed the earth with my fingers and wiped away perspiration on my forehead with my shoulder.
I closed my eyes and tried to imagine how big this invisible skull might be. I could not picture it at all; I felt ridiculous trying. I had been trained too fully in the literal to even consider the figurative.
“Look,” I said, planning to tell Alex this wasn’t my cup of tea.
But before I could finish my sentence, Alex Rivers crouched down behind me. He reached his arms around my shoulders, almost like an embrace, and covered my hands with his own. “No,youlook,” he said, and he nodded toward the site I had been digging. I blinked, and what was only earth now looked like bone. A trick of the light, I thought, an illusion. Or maybe the sheer power of Alex Rivers’s imagination.
HE WAS UNLIKE ANYONE I’D EVER MET. HE DID KNOW EVERYONE’S name; that was apparent as soon as the set was being readied for filming.
He politely left me sitting next to his assistant, Jennifer. As he went to crouch behind the camera and talk with Bernie Roth about the best way to approach a particular shot, he joked with the male stand-in who had to sweat in the hot sun while the lights and reflective panels were set up around him.
He was a hundred places at once; I got tired just trying to find him here and there. But every time I glanced down at the script in my lap or wandered to the low table stacked with storyboards, I’d feel his eyes on me. I would turn around and sure enough, there was Alex Rivers, fifty feet away, staring at me as if I were the only other person for miles around.
The scene they were filming was exactly what Alex had said it would be: his character, a Dr. Rob Paley, finding the bones of what he thinks is a fossilized hominid. Bernie had climbed onto the crane that held the Panavision camera, and was walking Alex through the scene. “I want you to come in . . . that’s right, a little slower . . . and crouch down, good, like that. Now what are you doing with your hands? Try to remember, you haven’t had any luck for a good three weeks now, and suddenly you strike gold.” Alex stood up and shouted a question at Bernie, but the wind carried it away before I could make out the words.
When they were ready to film, all the people holding walkie-talkies stood in a spread line, shouting “Quiet!” one after the other, a human echo. The cameraman murmured, “Rolling,” and the sound technician, bent low over his electronic oasis, said, “Speed.”
In the seconds before Bernie called for action, I watched Alex slip into his role. All the light drained out of his eyes, and his body relaxed so dramatically it seemed as if he’d been sucked dry. And then, within seconds, the energy snaked back through his body, straightening his spine and flashing in his eyes. But he didn’t have the same face. In fact, if I had passed him on the street, I would have taken him for someone else.
He moved differently. He walked differently. He evenbreatheddifferently. Like a tired old man, he made his way across the yellow strip of plain, carefully lowering himself into the excavated pit. He pulled a pick and brush from his pocket and began to dig. I smiled, watching my own idiosyncrasies being played before the camera: the habit I had of picking left to right, the methodical sweep of the brush like an umpire at home plate. But then came the moment when his character discovers the skeleton, skull first. Alex’s hands swept over the spot he’d cleared, and he paused. Moving faster now, he began to chisel away at the earth. A fragment of bone appeared, planted minutes before by a set dresser. It was yellowed and cracked, and I found myself leaning forward in my seat to get a better look.
Alex Rivers lifted his face and looked directly at me, and in his eyes I saw myself. His expression was the same one I’d worn at that dazzling moment when he held his arms around me and, out of nowhere, I’d seen a skull. I recognized my own surprise, my dedication, and my wonder.
I began to feel hot. I pulled at my loose cotton collar and lifted my hair off the back of my neck. I took off my baseball cap and fanned myself with it, wishing he would turn away.
He threw back his head and turned his face to the sun. “My God,”
he whispered. He looked like any scientist who knew, in his heart, he had made the discovery of his life. He looked like he’d been doing this for ages. He looked, well, like me.
I had spent years working toward the anthropological discovery that would raise my status among colleagues. I had fashioned the moment over and over in my mind the way most women picture their weddings:
how the sun would feel on my back, how my hands would spread through the earth, how the bone would flow smooth beneath my palms.
I had envisioned my face turned to the sky, my prayers offered up in exchange for this gift. Although I’d certainly never discussed it with anyone, least of all Alex Rivers, he had played the scene exactly the way I had imagined mine.
He’d robbed me of the most important moment of my life, one that hadn’t even happened yet. It was this injustice that made me spring from my canvas chair the moment the director called “Cut.” I could barely hear the claps and whistles of the crew over the pounding within my own head.Howdarehe, I thought. He said he’d only wanted to watch me dig. He didn’t say anything about mimicking my expressions and my instincts. It was as if he’d climbed inside of me and sifted through my mind.
I ran to the hospitality tent, complete with cots and electric fans and pitchers of ice water. Dipping a paper towel into a bowl, I dripped water down my neck. I felt it run in the valley between my breasts, down my stomach, into the waist of my shorts. I leaned closer to the bowl and splashed some onto my face.
He knew me so well. He knew me better than I know myself. In the distance I heard Bernie Roth make the decision to use that single take, since Alex couldn’t possibly be any better. I snorted and threw myself down on a cot. I had made a contractual commitment; I would see it through. I would show Alex Rivers whatever technical moves he wanted; I would let him know what props he’d need and what was inaccurate in the script. But I wouldn’t let him get close, and I would never show him my heart. I’d already done that once because he’d taken me by surprise, but it wasn’t going to happen again.
