“I can’t turn my house over to you right now,” she said. “It would be very inconvenient for me to pack my notes and manuscript and—”
“I’m not asking you to leave.”
“Surely you’re not suggesting that we stay there
together
.”
A trace of a smile hiked up one corner of his lips. “Yes. Live there together. Just as you and Rumm did.”
He lowered his foot and crossed his ankles, stretching his legs far out in front of him. Lacing his fingers together, he placed his hands on his stomach, supremely nonchalant. No one but he knew that his heartbeat had accelerated. Nothing as exciting or as unusual as Kirsten Rumm had happened to him in a long time. Lord, he was sick of people who fawned over him.
“Don’t look so shocked, Mrs. Rumm. We don’t have to share a bed.” He let a count of three go by before adding, “Unless your sex life with him is vital to my characterization.”
At that point, Kirsten had surged to her feet and turned her back on him. She dallied with several of the marble fixtures on the lacquered surface of Mel’s ebony desk. She flicked the cigarette lighter and discovered that it didn’t work. She moved the ashtray and slapped the flat side of the letter opener against her palm. Finally, bracing her derriere—which Rylan would have loved to squeeze—against the edge of the desk, she faced him.
“I think this is just a publicity gimmick that you and your agent dreamed up, Mr. North. I don’t like it and refuse to go along with it.”
“Do I ever pull publicity gimmicks?”
She glanced down at the floor. “No.”
“Well then?”
“Maybe your avoidance of them is a gimmick in itself.”
Rylan had always been a student of human nature. Even as a child he had mimicked people’s reactions to certain stimuli and analyzed the motivations behind them. Kirsten’s objections to his idea didn’t mesh. Her iris-blue eyes weren’t ringing true with what she was saying. She was saying one thing, but thinking another. His request had been met not only with disfavor, but with fear. Why? What could she possibly be afraid of? Him?
“You didn’t want me to play your husband in the movie, did you?”
“No.”
Anyone else might have been hesitant to give him such a truthful answer. He respected and appreciated her honesty. “How come?”
“My husband was gregarious, outgoing, friendly, and generous with his time. He loved crowds, loved the fans that flocked around him, and would spend hours in one spot signing autographs to please them.”
As she spoke, she aimlessly wandered around the room. Suddenly she turned to him. “You, on the other hand, shun your admiring public. You’re secretive. I’ve never heard anyone describe you as friendly
or
gregarious
or
generous. In fact, quite the opposite is said about you. You’re hostile and temperamental. You don’t . . . don’t . . .
smile
enough to portray my husband.”
“Maybe he had more to smile about than I do.” Rylan subjected her to a thorough once-over, partly out of a desire to rattle her, partly because he liked how she looked a helluva lot. “Maybe you were the reason Demon Rumm smiled all the time. That’s what I want to find out.”
Her eyes smoldered with resentment at his sexist insinuation. He didn’t blame her. He’d had his share of it and knew how debasing it was to be treated like a wind-up toy that was expected to perform for the pleasure of the one who’d wound it up.
In a voice as brittle as an icicle, she asked, “Isn’t it a little late for you to be worried about characterization? I thought the movie was almost finished.”
“It is. Have you seen any of the rushes?”
“No.”
“You’ve been invited by the director to watch them.”
“I didn’t want to see the film. I still don’t.”
Rylan was surprised. “Why?”
“I was married to an aerobatic stunt pilot. When I sent my husband off to work every day, he didn’t go to a nice, safe office job. Writing down some of the events I would rather forget was harrowing enough. I don’t care to see certain parts of my book—certain parts of his life—recreated on film.”
There was much, much more he had wanted to ask her then, but he held the questions back for a later time and more suitable place. “Well, for your information, the producer and director are more than satisfied with my performance so far. They think I’ve captured Rumm’s smile and pegged his public image to a
t
.”
“Congratulations. So why are you beginning to worry about characterization now?”
“His
public
image, Mrs. Rumm.” He stood up and joined her at the windows overlooking San Diego Bay. “I watched interviews, read interviews, gathered as much information about your late husband as I possibly could. Yeah, I feel like I’ve nailed his public personality.”
He made a quarter turn to look down at her. “But what was he like outside the limelight? In private. With the exception of a few of the stunts, those interior scenes are all we’ve got left to shoot. I don’t feel like I have a handle on who the man behind the legendary smile was.”
“You know that he was daring.”
“Or dumb.”
Rylan knew he’d gone too far when she confronted him. “It took a lot of nerve to do the flying he did. How dare you suggest—”
“Look, I think Rumm was long on guts, but a little short on gray matter to even attempt some of the stunts he did. That’s not to say that I take anything away from him for daring to do them. Okay?” She didn’t speak, but merely glared back at him with open animosity. Raking a hand through his hair in frustration over her failure to see his point, he tried again. “I need to get inside his head.”
“His life is an open book. Literally. I’ll send you a copy of my manuscript when I’ve finished it.”
He shook his head. “Not good enough. I need to touch the things he touched every day. Listen to the music he liked. Eat the food he liked. Occupy the rooms he occupied.”
“That’s crazy! And unnecessary.”
He slid one thumb into the belt loop of his slacks, which he was wearing beltless. “You didn’t think so when the leading lady wanted the same thing.”
He spoke the words with the triumph of a gambler slapping down the winning ace. He’d waited until it was necessary for him to play that ace, keeping it to himself that he knew she had granted the very favor he was asking to the actress who was portraying her in the movie. She had spent several days with Kirsten in the house in La Jolla.
“That was different,” she said defensively.
“How?”
“That should be obvious.”
“Our respective sexes?”
“For starters.”
They were facing each other belligerently when a discreet knock came from the other side of the heavy double doors.
“Come in.”
“Go away.”
They had answered at the same time, though in different ways. After giving him a dirty look, which he found cute instead of threatening, Kirsten crossed the carpeted floor and opened the door.
“Well, what have we decided?” Rylan’s agent asked heartily.
“I’d like to speak with Mel alone,” she said coldly.
Rylan gave her a mocking bow before leaving the room with his agent. They waited in the outer office with the receptionist, a Barbie doll look-alike. They came a dime a dozen in Hollywood. She squirmed in her knit dress like a caterpillar trying to work its way out of its cocoon and gave him tentative smiles. He ignored her. She offered them coffee or drinks, both of which his agent declined for him.
“How’d it go?” the agent asked under his breath.
Rylan shrugged, wondering if the receptionist had any idea how ridiculous her posturing looked. She either had a back ailment or was trying too hard to impress him with the proportions of her chest.
His agent continued. “It was probably a good idea for you to ask her yourself instead of getting her lawyer to do it for you. You do have a winning way with women.” There was a trace of envy in his agent’s voice.
Rylan only snorted and closed his eyes. “Mrs. Rumm is immune to heartthrobs. She lived with one, remember?”
“He was hardly of your caliber.”
“Thanks, but sex appeal is all a matter of taste.”
“What will you do if she says no?”
Rylan tipped down the opaque sunglasses and peered at his agent over the top of them. “Nervous?”
“As hell,” the other man admitted. “Don’t even think of walking off this picture. I haven’t settled that dispute with Steven Spielberg yet. For heaven’s sake don’t get me into another one.”
“That’s what you get paid for. An astronomical amount, if I might be so crass as to point that out.”
“Crass, my ass. Forgive the rhyme. Crass is the only way you operate.”
That was unarguable. Rylan North had been known to leave a picture if he didn’t like the “tone” of the film, if he felt that his character’s integrity was being compromised. That was a word often associated with him. Integrity. More than any actor of recent memory, he strived for purity of character. To him that meant making no compromises for the sake of the Motion Picture Association of America’s rating or box office sales or anything else.
If it weren’t for the fact that he possessed incredible talent that had only begun to be tapped, that every camera in Hollywood was in love with his face, and that he had a box office draw that equaled and often surpassed Cruise’s and Pitt’s, no one in Hollywood would have touched him. He was considered by all to be a real pain. Yet he was everybody’s first choice when “important” films came along.
“Before you start gnawing those bloody nubs that pass for fingernails,” he told his agent, “let’s see what Mrs. Rumm has to say.”
He dozed. The agent chewed his fingernails.
Finally they were summoned back into the inner office.
She had said yes, and now he was here, floating in the Pacific Ocean behind her estate. After the grueling days spent on the set, two months without a single day off, the spontaneous swim felt wonderful.
His eyes stung slightly when he opened them to gaze up at a cloudless sky. Kirsten Rumm’s eyes were a deeper blue than the sky, he thought sophomorically. They sparkled like jewels. But something dark lay behind them, shadowing that sparkle. He would find out what it was.
He was here to research the character of Charles “Demon” Rumm, but having met the man’s widow, he was certain that she would be his most valuable source of information, the key to the dead man’s soul.
Rylan was almost as interested in Mrs. Rumm as he was in her late husband, and he already considered Demon Rumm one of the most complex characters he’d ever portrayed. Why would any man have such an unrelenting death wish when, to all appearances, his life was so damned terrific? Before he left this house, Rylan was determined to know.
He rolled onto his stomach and, with long arcing strokes of his arms, swam back to shore. The seawater sluiced down his lean, naked body, emphasizing his sleek and supple form. Droplets clung to the dark body hair as though reluctant to fall free of it.
Rylan grudgingly pulled on his discarded jeans, which he’d left lying on the beach. If the far-from-merry widow had eyed his duffel bag as though it were a loathsome creature that had crawled up out of the ocean, he could imagine how she would look at him if he walked back into her office wet and unclothed. Such an exhibition would probably confirm as truth every sordid, sensationalized story she’d ever read about him.
Because he kept his private life just that, it was the topic of broad speculation that ran the gamut from drugs to religious cults to sadomasochism. Recently he had been photographed driving away from an alcohol abuse treatment center, where he’d gone to visit a friend. But the story that had accompanied the photograph declared that Rylan North had been in the expensive sanitarium for the last six weeks to dry out after having been evicted from a plush night spot after he became drunk and disorderly.
Another recent rumor had him dying of AIDS. It was a popular belief that he must be gay and that his well-publicized affairs with a lady governor, his last leading lady, and an Olympic gold medal figure skater were staged to protect his secret life as a homosexual. He was just too attractive not to be, it was said.
None of the gossip diluted his popularity with either men or women. Indeed, the reverse was true. The tabloid stories only whetted the public’s appetite to know more. And it wasn’t just the moviegoing public that was rabidly interested in him. The mavens of Beverly Hills kept his agent’s mailbox stuffed with invitations. He rarely attended parties. When he did go to one, it was immediately catapulted into
the
social event of the year. Rylan viewed it all with a jaundiced eye and ignored every rumor, except those that were destructive to someone else.
Even the Hollywood barracudas respected his intelligence, his talent, and his refusal to corrupt either for the sake of a buck. He chose scripts carefully and discussed the director’s interpretation of them before ever penning his name to the dotted line of a contract. Even then he didn’t hesitate to break a contract if he thought the terms of it had already been breached by the director.
He was indifferent to what the public thought of Rylan North after they left the movie theater. While they were in that darkened arena, he wanted the ticket holders to be enthralled by the character he was playing, not by himself. What the hell difference could it possibly make to the audience if he were gay or bi or straight, or what he ate for breakfast, or whether he wore underwear or not? For their five-dollar ticket, he owed them nothing except a couple of hours of entertainment. His obligation to them ended at the theater’s exit.
He considered his good looks an advantage to being offered the best roles. That was the only consideration he gave his handsome face and powerful, well-proportioned body. He didn’t fear aging, the curse of most movie stars. Maturity would allow him to play roles that were denied to him now.
All that taken into account, he found it surprising that he cared so much what Kirsten Rumm thought about him. In this case, the way he looked could be a hindrance rather than an advantage. His famous face might be a barrier between them and—
Between them and what? he asked himself as he climbed the steps back up to the house. She certainly hadn’t put out any signals that could have been interpreted as come-ons. She seemed interested only in getting rid of him as soon as possible.