Authors: Nina Berry
They had reached his car, but he stood there holding her for a moment longer, giving her a puzzled look. “I could make some calls,” he said.
Pagan kicked her feet in their sparkling heels in the air, bouncing in his arms a bit from the excitement of her idea. “Mercedes got As on her latest high school exams, and an A-plus in astronomy. I think it really interests her. I'm trying to convince her to go to college, so how great would it be if she could look through one of those really big telescopes while she's here? Or talk to a real scientist? She said something about the stars looking different in the southern hemisphere.”
Devin eyed her fluttering feet, a little smile on his face. “They do. And I might be able to arrange something. Putting you down now.”
As he lowered her carefully to the sidewalk, she made a show of standing only on her good leg, the other bent at the knee, shoe in the air behind her like a dance move. He still had his arm around her shoulders. And she kept her arms around his neck.
She leaned against him, her chest against his, her hip bone digging into his upper thigh. “Nobody would know if we tangoed right here for a moment.”
His hand tightened on her shoulder. “Pagan...” he said warningly.
“It's only a dance, silly,” she said. “Didn't you see? Back at the café they did it like this.” And she slid her powdered cheek along his, her lips near his ear. She resisted the urge to sink her teeth into his earlobe.
His chest rose as he inhaled slowly. His warm breath tickled her own ear as he exhaled. Carefully, he placed his free hand on the bare skin of her neck. His thumb stroked the line of her jaw.
“If you only knew how much I wanted to,” he said.
Her bones were made of liquid. The boundaries between her body and his were disappearing. Any second now she would melt into him.
“But we can't.” He released her, and she had to put her bad foot down or she would have fallen. His dark hair was mussed from her hands, black locks falling over his eyes, which glittered at her with a look so intense it might scald her. “I'm sorry.”
“You care about me,” she said. “I know you do.”
The fervor in his eyes altered. For the barest moment he looked much younger, like the boy he was, a boy who had lost something that meant everything to him.
“My feelings don't matter,” he said.
Tears pricked at her eyes, but she refused to let herself cry. “They matter to me,” she said.
“They're testing me,” he said. “They're probably watching me, too. I can't...” He broke off and leaned down to open the passenger's side door of the car for her. “This assignment is important to me, too. I don't want to fail them, or take advantage of you.”
“Take advantage!” She took a limping step toward him. He automatically put out a hand to steady her, and she grabbed it. “I'm the one trying to take advantage of
you
.”
His brows came together in an unhappy frown. “No, you don't understand. You're younger. You've been hurt. I could...” He ducked his head, stopping himself. When he continued, his voice was cooler, sterner. “I'm your boss. Now please get in the car.”
His touch was impersonal as he helped her in, and he slammed her door a little harder than was necessary.
He drove the few remaining blocks to the hotel in silence. Pagan stared straight ahead, in turmoil. As he pulled over to the curb, she said, “I'm sorry.”
He put the car into neutral. “It's not your fault. I shouldn't mislead you.”
“No,” she said. “You're worried about your job and you want to do what's right. You always try to do the right thing. It's one of the reasons I love you. Like you!” She sucked in air.
What had she said?
“I mean...”
Devin's eyes looked hollow, as if the wind had been knocked out of him. He leaned toward her. “Pagan...”
She refused to look at him. “Good night!” She hauled open her own door and sprinted into the hotel as fast as her ankle allowed.
CHAPTER TEN
Buenos
Aires
January 10 and 11, 1962
DISOCIAR
Disassociation. A position in which there is disassociation between torso and hips.
The moment Mercedes glimpsed Pagan's face, she stopped yawning and said, “What's wrong?”
Pagan threw her coat into the closet. “Nothing. It's late. Go to bed.” And she stomped into her room and shut the door. She stood there, breathing hard, staring at her empty bed with its gold brocade cover and its huge pile of useless pillows. She wanted something now, more than she wanted to take back what she'd accidentally said to Devin. The need drove every beat of her heart.
She opened her bedroom door again gently. Mercedes was still standing there, arms crossed, eyebrows raised.
“I'm sorry.” Pagan took a deep breath. It was still hard to say the words to her best friend in the world. “I really want a drink.”
Mercedes dropped her hands and walked over to the sideboard, where she clinked ice into a glass and splashed water into it. “Rough night,” she said, handing Pagan the glass.
“For all of us.” Pagan gulped it all down. Not as satisfying as a vodka martini. Nothing was. But it was a ritual she and M had now. She wanted a drink? Then have a drink. Of anything except alcohol.
“I saw the profile of the man following us, and I feel like I know him, but I can't remember how.” She set the glass down. Her throat hurt. “And then I ran into Devin.”
“Ah.” Mercedes paced, thinking. “Maybe it's not good for you to be around him,” she said. “Since you can't have him.”
Pagan dropped to sit on the couch, her head drooping. God, she was tired. And, by God, she was an idiot.
“Too late,” she said. “Too late. It's happened.”
It had happened. She'd said those stupid words to Devin because they were true. A thousand angry butterflies fluttered against her skin. She was vibrating like the steering wheel of her damned Corvette when she'd revved the motor before sending it over the cliff. She was falling over a different kind of cliff now, with no idea when she'd hit bottom.
Mercedes sat down next to her, their shoulders touching. Her warm strength steadied Pagan. It wasn't like Mercedes to get so physically close. Which meant that she knew. She had to. She knew what Pagan was saying. Which was good, because no way was she saying it again.
“It happened a while ago. You just didn't realize it,” Mercedes said carefully.
“Back in Berlin.” Pagan swallowed hard, but the lump in her throat wasn't going away.
“Maybe,” Mercedes said. “Tomorrow you'll probably see this man they want you to identify. After that, this whole mission thing will be over. It might be best if you ditched the movie and we went home.”
Pagan lifted her head and looked at her friend. Mercedes knew: there was no way it could work with Devin. Maybe that was why Pagan hadn't wanted to admit to herself that she had any feelings for him. He was a spy. He lived in another country. However much she amused him, he was probably using her to get the mission done. All of her longing and confusion was for nothing.
“Either way,” she said. “When this is done, he'll be gone.”
Mercedes nodded and stood up. “You're limping. Let me get you some ice for that ankle.”
* * *
Pagan's ankle was only slightly swollen the next day, with no tenderness, so she wrapped it up tight and stumbled out into the foggy street at 5:00 a.m. to find Carlos and the car waiting. Fallout from the emotional storm last night and lack of sleep cramped the edges of her brain. She took deep breaths and tried not to think about a Bloody Mary. Oh, what a happy breakfast that would make. Until she found herself at the end of a three-day bender in Chang's Bar in San Francisco at midnight with Nicky Raven asleep in the red leather booth beside her.
She gulped the cup of coffee she'd brought with her instead and scalded the roof of her mouth.
Clearly this was going to be the best day in the history of the world.
By 7:00 a.m., Pagan's hair and makeup were stiff perfection, and her tulle-bedecked gown frothed around her like the foam left after a giant wave. Rada had fitted her with a bra that lifted her breasts so far up it hurt to cross her arms. They'd taped the fabric into place, but still she'd have to be careful during the dips in her upcoming dance number or something untoward might pop out. Her tight, pointy heels squashed her toes mercilessly as she stood under a colonnade looking out at the large courtyard of the Colegio San José, where the first shot of the day, and of the movie, would take place.
The wide square space, surrounded on all sides by three stories of vine-covered nineteenth century columns and doorways, was paved in beautiful alternating squares of black and white marble, a vast chessboard for the dancers and film technicians. As the best boy ordered his techs to turn on the huge lamps required for shooting in Technicolor, the polished stone gleamed, and the dark archways where grips, extras and wardrobe assistants lurked lit up as if it was noon, everywhere.
This was where Rolf Von Albrecht taught physics. Within this same complex, his son and daughter went to high school. A few blocks away, Devin Black was keeping an eye on the Von Albrecht house, and if any members of that family headed this way, he would come tell her to be ready.
Pagan was one of the stars of this wretched movie, and she would be dancing and flirting through most of the upcoming scenes with her costars. But making a movie also involved a lot of waiting while the technical details were worked out, problems were solved or other actors got their close-ups. She might learn a lot about Von Albrecht or bond more closely with Emma in between shots.
Later, during lunch break, thanks to Devin's mysterious connections, Mercedes would be visiting. She'd stop by to say hello, of course, but she was primarily there to check out the college's observatory, housed in a pretty cupola down a few hallways and up a lot of stairs from here.
M had babbled on about the history of the observatory and the quality of the telescope inside, but frankly, Pagan hadn't paid much attention. If Mercedes had her way, she'd get permission from some dusty professor to come back tonight and actually look through that telescope at the Southern Cross. And if that made her happy, Pagan was happy.
If you could be happy and anxious at the same time. Even as she waited for word from Devin that a Von Albrecht, any Von Albrecht, was in the vicinity, she was also waiting to start a new movie and to meet
Two to Tango'
s director, Victor Anderson. She'd heard him shouting something at the director of photography earlier, and outbursts of loud male laughter, but he hadn't bothered to come introduce himself during her long sit in the makeup chair, as was customary.
This movie didn't have the luxury of a table read or weeks of rehearsal at the filming location. They'd rehearsed the dance numbers on the soundstages at Warner Bros. for weeks, but Victor Anderson hadn't visited once. Perhaps he'd been busy.
Or perhaps he was as much of a self-absorbed jerk as the wardrobe mistress had implied.
Pagan had glimpsed him this morning, a tall man with distinguished wings of gray decorating his dark hair, striding around, shouting orders all over the courtyard. But she knew better than to walk up and introduce herself. That would be seen as arrogance on her part, thinking she was important enough to interrupt his work. Directors were the dictators of their movie sets, and this one clearly enjoyed that role.
Rada fluffed a section of tulle near the hem of the dress, pursing her lips sadly. “I told them white would get dirty too fast. Already there is some dust. By the end of the day, the hem will be black.”
“Looks like they polished the floor,” Pagan said. “It's pretty clean.”
Rada gave her head a doleful nod. “Wax. I hope it's not so slippery that you slip and fall. You could break something and the whole movie would be canceled.”
Rada was not the best kind of person to have around when you were apprehensive. Pagan looked around for a chair, a bench, preferably far away from Queen Gloom.
“It's okay if I sit down in this dress, isn't it?” she asked.
“Only if I put a towel down first, very carefully,” Rada said. “I'll fetch one.”
“Miss Jones!”
The loud voice she'd been unconsciously following around the courtyard boomed through the archway at her. Boot heels clicked, and something smacked against fabric as Victor Anderson strode into view. “About time I came to say hello, isn't it, little lady?”
He showed his teeth under a narrow Clark Gable mustache in what passed for a smile. He was a vigorous man with an athletic build in his late forties, but Pagan had a hard time tearing her eyes from his jodhpurs and riding crop. Famous movie-maker Cecil B. DeMille had worn that type of outfit, back in the thirties, but now it was a movie director cliché. No other director Pagan had ever worked with had worn such things. Instead of lending him authority, the outfit made him look oddly out of place, as if he was about to hop on a horse with a braided mane to go foxhunting, rather than stand around a movie set all day.
“You look better than I thought you would,” he said, and smacked his crop a few more times against the leather of one shiny black knee-high boot, as if eager to whip her into action.
She felt sorry for anything he did ride.
Pagan blinked hard to keep herself from saying exactly that to him and instead issued her most vacuous smile. “Thank you so much, Mr. Anderson. It's a pleasure to finally meet you.”
She managed to keep the edge out of the word
finally
, but it hadn't been easy.
His eyes ran up and down her body. “Have you put on weight? Come here.”
She forced herself to take two steps toward him.
Make nice with the awful man, Pagan. He can make or break how the next few weeks of your life go, on set.
Victor took her chin between his fingers firmly, and turned her face to the right and left as he scrutinized it. “Left side's a bit better. We'll have to light carefully around that nose. Eddie!”
He released her so suddenly she tottered on her heels, and he strode back out into the courtyard as if forgetting her existence. He beckoned the director of photography, no doubt to discuss the problems posed by her nose and her possible weight gain.
Pagan had heard critical things about her figure and her features all her life. That was part of being an actress. But according to Mama, Pagan was beautiful, no matter what others said. Eva Jones had been a tough taskmistress, pushing her daughter every day to work harder on her dancing, her singing, her line reading, but thank goodness for her pragmatic German views on eating and exercise. Eat well to stay strong, keep your body flexible and fit and pay attention only to your mother's criticism. No one else's opinion mattered.
Not even your own.
And Mama had been very critical. But in this, at least, she'd served Pagan well. So many of the actresses Pagan knew were always on some strange diet of watercress or celery, or taking uppers or laxatives to shed pounds they didn't really need to lose. Mama had made Pagan promise never to take those “terrible pills” or starve herself. She'd needed Pagan hearty enough to keep earning money to pay the mortgage.
All of which meant that nasty men like Victor Anderson, who saw Pagan as an object that wasn't pretty or thin enough, could get bent. Mama would have gone over Victor Anderson's head and spoken firmly with the head of the studio if she'd heard him say that kind of thing to Pagan. And the studio head would have privately warned Victor to tone it down or else Eva Jones would make their lives a living hell.
Now Pagan had to navigate this nonsense without her bulldog mother to shield her. The words didn't hurt, but they were just the beginning. Days, weeks, of this would wear her down. Victor Anderson was the last thing she needed while working an important, anxiety-producing case with Devin.
“Places!” shouted the second assistant director. “Extrasâplaces, please! Pagan, David, places, please!”
Already? No one had warned her. Usually a production assistant came to give you a heads-up before they called places for the first shot of the day. And before that, the director or the AD showed you where your place was and walked you through the scene as it would be shot. Apparently there was no such courtesy on Victor Anderson's set.
Pagan walked out into the courtyard as dozens of extras emerged from the other archways. The black-and-white floor was covered with men in tuxedoes and women in long, big-skirted dresses, each a slightly less fluffy version of her own, although no one else was in white. She'd stand out among a sea of red and blue dresses, during this fictional ball thrown by the American embassy in Buenos Aires. It was clever if you liked things obvious.
She smiled at several of her fellow dancers as they took their places. But no one had told her where to stand. So she headed toward the camera, lodged for now in one corner of the courtyard. She spotted the choreographer, Jared, talking to some of the dancers nearby, and her other costar, handsome sandy-haired Dave McKinney, was standing there in a tuxedo tight enough to show every bulge in his biceps. A makeup lady was giving his tan cheeks one last pat-down of powder.
“Tell me you're not going to make a habit of being this late,” Victor Anderson demanded as Pagan clicked over the marble toward them in her heels. He was slapping his riding crop impatiently against his calf. “It's gonna be a tough shoot if this keeps up, won't it, Dave?”
Dave shot him a frowning look and did not reply as Pagan's stomach dropped. She took a deep breath and hoped her breasts wouldn't pop out of her neckline. Ever since she'd stopped drinking she'd made doubly sure she was never late, to always know her lines and her blocking backward and forward. An accusation of lack of professionalism when it wasn't her fault was much tougher for her to take than random jabs at her looks.