I fell asleep for a little while, and when I woke up a fine sheen of sweat covered my body. Sitting up, I reached for the paper towel I’d used before. I wet it again and set it across the back of my neck.
The flap of the tent that served as a door whipped open to reveal a young man with a ponytail of bright red hair. His name was Charlie;
I’d talked with him earlier. “Miss Barrett,” he said, “I’ve been looking all over for you.”
I gave him my nicest smile. “And here I thought no one cared.”
His fair skin flushed and he looked away. He was a gaffer—something to do with lighting. He’d told me that earlier and I had whispered the word several times to myself, just liking the way it lay on my tongue. “I have a message for you,” he said, but he wouldn’t meet my eye.
To put him out of his misery I took the note he was holding. It was a simple piece of brown paper, the kind the rolls of backgrounds were wrapped in for transport.Please join me for dinner. Alex.
His handwriting was very neat, as if he’d spent hours getting it just right. I wondered if he signed his autographs as precisely. I crumpled the paper in my hand and looked at Charlie, who was obviously waiting for an answer. “What if I say no?” I asked.
Charlie shrugged, already starting to leave. “Alex’ll find you,” he said, “and he’ll make you change your mind.”
HE COULD MAKE MIRACLES. I STOOD IN THE DOORWAY OF WHAT HAD been a set only hours ago—the interior of his character’s tent—and surveyed the fine white linen tablecloth, the tall bayberry candles in ivory holders, the champagne chilling in a silver bucket. Alex was standing at the opposite end of the tent, wearing a dinner jacket, black trousers, white bow tie.
I blinked. This wasAfrica, for God’s sake. We weren’t even staying at a motel, only a camping lodge twenty miles from Olduvai Gorge.
How had he managed this?
“That’s all, John,” Alex said, smiling at the man who had driven me back to the set in a jeep. He was a friendly man, big as a sequoia.
“He’s very nice,” I said politely, watching John’s retreating figure in the red glow of the standing torches outside the tent. “He told me he works for you.”
Alex nodded, but did not take a step toward me. “He’d give up his life for me,” he said seriously, and I found myself wondering how many others would as well.
I was wearing the black sleeveless dress that had arrived courtesy of Ophelia that afternoon, and low black flats that had at least a pound of sand in them. I had spent the past three hours showering and drying my hair and rubbing myself with a lemon after-bath lotion, all the while trying out different conversations where I took Alex Rivers to task for his performance that afternoon.
But I hadn’t expected him in evening wear. I couldn’t tear my eyes from him. “You look wonderful,” I said quietly, angry at myself even as I spoke the words.
Alex laughed. “I think that’s my line,” he said. “But thanks. And now that you’ve seen the effect, can I get out of this before I melt?”
Without waiting for me to answer, he stripped off the jacket, unlaced the bow tie, and rolled up his sleeves past his elbows.
He pulled out a chair for me and lifted a silver dome from a plate of crudite´s. “So,” he said, “what did you think of your first day on a movie set?”
My eyes narrowed, recognizing my opportunity. “I think that I’ve never seen so much time wasted in my life,” I said simply. “And I think that it’s shameless to steal someone else’s emotions for your own performance.”
Alex’s jaw dropped, but he recovered himself just as quickly. He lifted the china platter. “Carrot?” he said calmly.
I stared at him. “Don’t you have anything to say?”
“Yes,” he said thoughtfully. “Why do we keep getting off on the wrong foot? Do you just hate me, or is it all actors?”
“I don’t hate anyone,” I said. I glanced at the crisp napkins and delicate crystal, thinking of all the trouble he’d gone to. This was obviously his attempt at an apology. “I just felt used.”
Alex looked up. “I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said. “I was trying to—well, hell, it doesn’t matter what I was trying to do.”
“It matters to me,” I blurted out.
Alex did not say anything. He stared over my shoulder and then shook his head. When he spoke, it was so quietly I had to lean forward to catch his words. “The problem,” he said, “with being one of the best is that you still have to get better. But you’re competing with yourself.”
He looked at me. “Do you know what it’s like to do a scene, to have everyone slap you on the back and tell you how great you are, but to realize that you’ve got to be just as good the next time, and the next?”
His eyes glowed in the candlelight. “What if I can’t? What if the next time is the time it doesn’t work?”
I knotted my hands in my lap, not knowing what I was supposed to say. It was obvious that I had touched a raw nerve—Alex Rivers was not bragging; in fact, he seemed truly terrified that he might not be able to live up to the very image he’d created.
