Dreams Are Not Enough (17 page)

The light caress roused nothing in her, not even mild anger.

Laperouse spreads through an ancient, charming house. Initially they were seated in the large downstairs salon, but Maxim spoke briefly to the captain and they were led up the highly polished old staircase to a secluded ell overlooking the dark Seine with its brightly lit boats.

After their orders were taken, Alyssia said, “if this evening’s about the film, the answer is still no.”

She anticipated a wittily cutting retort, but instead he turned in the banquette to look at her with somber earnestness.

“Let me level with you, Alyssia. I need you badly. Both of you.”

“Both?” she asked in surprise.

“Barry, too?”

“We don’t have a script, only a story line. The novel he’s working on covers roughly the same ground.”

“It does? He never discusses his work with me,” she admitted.

“What’s it about?”

“A loose, episodic journey. His title’s the same as the original, The Odyssey, ours is Wandering On. His locations are the lush est hostelries in Provence, we move up and down the Oregon and California coastline in a psychedelic bus. Our characters are anti-Vietnam, pro pot, pro sex.”

“Experimental stuff?”

“Very powerful stuff. New for American film, yes, but the time’s right. Alyssia, I meant it when I said you’ve grown beyond those dumb, leg-spreading American chicks. You deserve a real role. You are the sixties, the new woman, intelligent, loose, no hangups about sex.”

Nary a one, unless absolute fidelity to a near-celibate marriage would be considered a hangup.

A chic, elderly couple was seated at the nearest table. The man glanced at Alyssia, did a double take, then murmured to his Chanelclad wife, who after a discreet half minute turned to look. Generally Alyssia took innocent pleasure in recognition. In her current mood, the sliding glances vexed her.

Darting a frown at the offenders, she said in a low voice, “Maxim, I’m sorry. But I have my own reasons for refusing.”

“What about Barry? Have you ever stopped to consider the kind of life he has? Never earning a cent, living off you?”

“That,” she retorted, “is our business.”

“Oh, absolutely. Barry explained that never your twain careers shall meet. But I say bull to that. You owe him, Alyssia, you owe him. Minus you, he’d be a lawyer, pulling down large fees, at peace with Aunt Clara and Uncle Tim” — “You do realize you’re being obnoxious?” Alyssia snapped. After a few beats she said quietly, “Barry wouldn’t do it anyway. You know how often he’s called movie writers whores.”

“That’s what all the virgins say. It comes from fear—fear of not being asked, fear of being rotten at the job. Believe this, Alyssia.

He’d leap through flaming hoops to script Wandering On. “

“Then why not let him at least do a treatment?”

The first course had arrived. Maxim watched the ceremonial serving of their turbo ting braise aux echalotes.

When they were alone again, Alyssia said, “He’s a completely dedicated writer.”

Maxim took a bite.

“This is topnotch.”

“Give him a chance.”

Maxim continued savoring the food as if she hadn’t spoken.

“Taste it.

There’s an herb I can’t quite indentify. “

“Is this your way of saying the film’s a package deal? If I’m not in it, you won’t use Barry? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“I’m telling you to eat your turbo ting before it’s stony cold.”

As usual on Friday, Saint-Simon broke the rehearsal at one. Alyssia and Juanita loaded the Citroen, halting in Bellevillesur-Loire for fresh baked baguettes.

As they entered the house, they shared a glance of astonishment.

Behind the library door, typewriter keys clattered furiously.

“There’s something I haven’t heard for a while,” Juanita said.

The typing continued, its crescendo unabated until the dinner hour.

When Barry emerged his eyes were bloodshot, his face slack with fatigue, but he grabbed the wine bottle from the kitchen shelf, capering over to Alyssia, enfolding her in an exuberant bear hug.

“Hon, you are about to have the plum role of your career!”

She pulled away, gaping at him. Juanita, stirring the spinach bisque, watched impassively.

“You don’t know?” Barry asked.

Alyssia shook her head.

“Didn’t Maxim tell you? I was positive he said he’d already cleared it with you…. Or did I say I’d do it? The way I’ve been an adjunct to the typewriter, I can’t remember my own name.” Another hug.

“I know you’re nervous about tackling Hollywood and a proper starring role, but believe me, you’re ready.”

“Saint-Simon” — “You’ll have time to finish Le Feu. And he’s not a pettifogger, he won’t hold you to the few extra months of your contract. I’ve never interfered before, hon, but you can’t turn this down.”

Alyssia sighed.

“Barry, you truly want to do the script?”

“This film’s exactly the boost you need in your career,” he said loudly.

“So much so that I’ve agreed to do the outline gratis.”

“What about your novel?”

“I’m doing this for youl” Barry shouted.

“Soup’s ready,” Juanita called from the stove.

“You turd,” Alyssia said.

“You unspeakable turd.”

“One day,” Maxim retorted, “you’ll be on your knees thanking me.”

It was the following afternoon. He had arrived alone at the chateau around eleven in the morning, closeting himself with Barry. The heavy library door muffled their outbursts of anger.

“You got him to do it without pay!”

“Writing on spec is routine for a novice.”

“And if I refuse to take the part, you’ll reject his outline?”

“I’d have to.”

“He could turn in a treatment that’s the best since Gone With the Wind, and you’d still reject it?”

“What choice would I have?”

“Don’t you care that you’ll destroy him?”

“Alyssia, you’re in the business, I shouldn’t need to spell this out for you. Without you we won’t get any studio to release Wandering On, so there won’t be any film. Barry’s destruction isn’t up to me. It’s up to you.”

The rest of the week Maxim stayed at the chateau to help Barry pare down his overblown treatment. The cousins argued day, night and over meals. At Le Negre, the two-star restaurant in Tours, the cousins disagreed about a scene so virulently that they were asked to leave.

By Friday they had an outline, and late that afternoon, Maxim departed. Barry celebrated with a vintage Beaujolais. The following morning Alyssia gave her husband a raw egg with Worcestershire sauce, and he retired to the library to begin work on the actual script.

When Alyssia’s scenes in Le Feu were completed, Saint-Simon formally released her from the remainder of her contract. His bushy whiskers prickling her cheeks, he wished her goodbye and “Bonne chance en Ollywooood.”

Barry yearned to return home in first-class triumph. But since both his and Alyssia’s salaries for Wandering On had been deferred, and since she was still in hock to Saint-Simon for the house repairs, he sat crammed shoulder to thigh with his wife and her maid on a Paris/ Los Angeles charter flight.

When he dozed, Alyssia and Juanita went to stand by the bulkhead near the toilets.

Juanita turned to her sister.

“Now we’re going home, why don’t you explain all this to me.”

“Explain what?”

“I know you’re only making this movie on Barry’s account. What I can’t figure is why you’re so antsy. I’ve never seen you like this before.

Is it to do with Barry’s uncle, Maxim’s dad? You told me he wanted you out of the country. “

Alyssia gazed down at the clouds.

“That was a long time ago—six years. By now he doesn’t care where I live.”

“So if you aren’t afraid of him, what’ve you got against California?”

Alyssia rested her cheek against the small oval window.

“Remember I told you I was in love and we broke up?” she said slowly.

“It was Maxim’s brother, Hap.”

“The one who’s directing?”

“Yes. Hap’s nothing like Maxim. He doesn’t have that clever mouth, he’s totally decent. I told him all about our lives, how I grew up, and it didn’t faze him. He’s got gray eyes and blond hair and he’s big. You trust him right away. Mr. Cordiner arranged for Saint-Simon to hire me to separate us. There was no way I could tell Hap about what his father had done, so he must’ve thought I picked a chance at a career over a life with him. He’s going with a very rich girl now.”

“And after all these years, you’re still carrying a torch?”

Alyssia’s assenting sigh fogged the window.

“I know it’s not logical, but yes. Oh Nita, how am I going to bear being with him every day, knowing he despises me? How am I going to bear seeing him with this girl?”

Hap had selected Mendocino and Fort Bragg in northern California for the Wandering On location. The neighboring small towns, situated on the ruggedly scenic coastline amid stands of redwoods, each represented a major constituency in the two divergent factions ripping at the seams of American society. The straight quality of Fort Bragg, a lumbering community, showed in the bars and gun shops, in the short-haired males, in the Hags Buttering at gas stations and stores.

Mendocino, the quaint remnants of a Portuguese fishing village, drew hip young vacationers as well as weavers and potters whose galleries were decorated with peace symbols. College dropouts peacefully tended small patches of cannabis hidden in the nearby forest.

To this optimum site Harvard Productions transported a skeleton crew of less than thirty people including the half-dozen actors. All were successful and sought after. Yet because Wandering On made a strong pro-Civil Rights, anti-Vietnam statement, each had agreed to accept union scale. Despite this political solidarity the immutable caste system of the Industry prevailed. Nowhere was it more obvious than in the housing that Maxim had arranged: the assistant director, the assistant cameraman, the script girl, the electricians—all the lesser folk, among them Juanita—took over a Spartan motel outside of Fort Bragg. The prettily shingled cottages scattered around Three Rock Inn sheltered the producer, the director and his lady, the cinematographer, the stars and the scenarist.

“I damn well smell it’s going badly,” Barry said, his pugnacity bolstered by Johnny Walker.

Maxim replied, “And of course your nose is attuned to these things, being a long-term film-sniffing veteran.”

“I’ve been close enough to the business to know any production with a script that’s being constantly rewritten during shooting is in serious trouble.”

“Barry-boy, we aren’t grinding out dead studio sausage. Wandering On lives and breathes. Therefore your immortal prose must inevitably be altered. Which, if you recall, is why you’re here.”

Their argument was taking place in a small, crammed trailer. The double bed built into the rear remained, as did the red breakfast booth where Barry crouched behind his typewriter, but all other fittings had been removed to make space for a small copying machine and a large, pink hairdresser’s chair now occupied by Alyssia. For her role of Cassie, she wore a long madras dress glinting with bits of mirror, leather sandals, a half-dozen turquoise and silver necklaces.

Ken Papton, his face intent, dexterously tousled her hair while she watched her husband and Maxim.

She had always considered Maxim the most arrogantly spoiled of the cousins—the family wastrel. But during the two weeks of preproduction rehearsals in Los Angeles and the ten days on location her opinion had altered radically. Maxim rivaled Saint-Simon in organizational ability. He cajoled, coerced, expedited, outdoing the frugal Frenchman in thrift. When July rain had fallen, days that other crews (on full pay) would have been playing cards, knitting, or listening to KMFB on the radio. Maxim had kept them working. He was a genius at location logistics.

Since filming had begun he had lost five pounds, and now, leaning with one hand on Barry’s table, he resembled a wire-thin, Giacometti statue.

With ostentatious movements, Barry inserted a new sheet of paper into his typewriter.

“I’ll have new lines for you by noon,” he said, glaring at Alyssia—it was for her role that Maxim had requested the additional dialogue.

The hairdresser said, “Spray coming.”

Alyssia curved her hands on around her cheeks and forehead as hard-scented lacquer hissed through the trailer.

Maxim coughed.

“The next best thing to Mace,” he said, opening the door.

“Come on, Alyssia.” He trailed a caress down her Hank as she edged past him.

Maxim was forever giving her long, knowing smiles or touching her. Yet she could not quite believe he meant serious business. For such a famed philanderer, his smiles lacked intimate heat and there was something noncommital about his touch, as if his fingers were tracing a road map rather than her flesh.

Though this was the latter part of July, the cloud cover sagged like a cold and sodden army blanket. Today they were shooting in an area the locals called the Pygmy Forest—here, for some lack in the soil, the pines grew no taller than man-high.

As Alyssia hurried to where the crew worked around a bus gaudily decorated with slogans and signs, Maxim easily matched her pace.

Draping an arm on her shoulder, he let his fingers dangle possessively near her breast. She broke away, jogging to a clump of scrubby trees where Hap, wearing a sleeveless quilted vest, stood talking intently to a tall, extraordinarily striking blonde.

Whitney Charles of the Charles-Boston Bank played Louise, a minor, also-featuring role. Other than her part there was nothing minor about Whitney. A great deal of money had gone into producing the nearly six foot, athletic yet curved body, and at least a million strokes of a brush held by nannies and governesses had polished the blonde hair which fell straight and gleaming around her shoulders. The shearling coat thrown over her costume was no ordinary sheepskin, but had been designed for her by Revillon.

As Alyssia neared them, Hap turned, smiling. The smile could be the standard for courteous respect. His mouth curved amiably, his gray eyes showed nothing but polite pleasure.