Dreams Are Not Enough (41 page)

She looked at her pale reflection in the rearview mirror. An abortion?

she thought.

They weren’t leaving on location for three days, so she still had time.

Of course—an abortion.

All at once she could hear her mother’s stentorian groans, could see the blood-smeared, party-partying thighs.

Why think about that? Abortion was legal now. And she wasn’t May Sue Hollister, tended by a warty crone and two terrified children. Alyssia del Mar, movie star, would have a safe, sterile procedure.

I’ll go back to ask the doctor for the name of the top person, she thought. She left the car, plodding between slant-parked automobiles.

She didn’t hear the first honk, or the second. Not until a lengthy, irate blast did she shift onto the zebra-striped pedestrian path. The parking attendant eyed her questioningly, as did the elevator man. She didn’t notice. When she got to her doctor’s door, she gazed at his gilt-painted name and saw a meaningless jumble of letters.

The door swung open. A woman in a magenta velour warm-up suit swept out, giving an irritated sniff as she was forced to circle Alyssia.

All at once the puffy, wrinkled face did a comic double-take.

“Aren’t you” — “No!” Alyssia shouted.

“I’m not!”

She raced up the hall to the emergency stairwell. Gasping, she leaned her full weight against the door until the danger of pursuit had passed, then she sank down, huddling on the snow-coldness of a metal-edged cement step.

/ can’t do it.

Her mind was stripped of all pretence by her burst of primal emotions, and she knew that no matter how inconvenient the small cluster of cells multiplying in her womb, abortion was an impossibility for her.

Why?

What’s the difference? I just can’t.

Driving home, she decided that The Baobab Tree was entirely feasible.

They had an eleven-week schedule, which would put her only in her fifth month at the conclusion of shooting. She would be wearing a period corset, so nothing would show. She was still in a state of shock, otherwise she would have realized that her sanguine planning had less to do with the realities of filmmaking and childbearing than with her intense desire to be with Hap.

“What happened this afternoon?” Hap asked. Naked in bed, she had one arm behind her neck and was smiling somnolently as she watched him dress. He had dropped by on his way home from Magnum—he dropped by whenever possible, and they always ended up in bed. (What the Guatemalan couple thought, she didn’t know, but chances were that they considered visits from a lover normal for Alyssia del Mar. ) At his question, she shifted her arm, pulling the sheet over her breasts.

“I’m fine,” she said.

Hap sat on the edge of the bed.

“Then why have you been chugalugging Pepto-Bismol?” It was he who had insisted she make the doctor’s appointment.

“As my director you’ll have to get used to the new me. Sometimes when I’m working I get… edgy.” The most understated truth of the year.

“What, exactly, did the doctor say?” he pressed.

This was the question she had been dreading. Even in her most catatonic state she had known that she couldn’t share her news with Hap, who never made any secret about his hurt jealousy of Barry.

After a long pause, Hap took her hand, pressing it against his firm, naked thigh.

“Love, look—if there’s a problem, better to face it here at home than when we’re in Africa. Is he running gastrointestinal tests?”

“He says it’s not necessary. He thinks the problem’s either the cholera and typhoid shots or the malaria pills.”

“So he’s positive you’re only having a reaction?”

“That’s his opinion. I already told you mine. Nervous stomach. So take your choice.”

Hap released her hand, picking up his watch.

“I better get a move on,” he said.

“Only three more days,” she said, feeling tendrils of anticipation.

Madeleine’s complete absence during the eleven weeks of shooting and Barry’s recently announced postponement had given her a fuzzy sense that she and Hap were setting out on a holiday. But of course they would not be vacationing, they would be in equatorial Africa, working with several hundred sensitive, gossipy people. During preproduction she’d had a foretaste of those speculative eyes glancing from her to Hap. The utmost discretion was called for.

She pulled on her robe and went outside to give Hap a goodbye kiss.

After he drove away she stood on the doorstep gazing up at the near-full moon.

The phone rang. Positive it was Juanita, she darted inside. She couldn’t tell her sister, either. Juanita would insist on leaving Salvador to accompany her on location.

“Alyssia?” It was Beth’s voice.

“I was going to call. How’s Clarrie?”

“Still normal.”

“Thank God.”

“This whole thing’s really dragged me down,” Beth said.

“You ought to get away.”

“That’s what Irving says. But he’s totally tied up with the Tahoe project. I was thinking I’d zip on over to Kenya. I’ve never been to the game reserves.”

“Oh….”

“Do you think I’d be in the way?”

“It’s a fabulous idea, Bethie. But wouldn’t someplace closer be easier?”

Beth sighed.

“I would be a nuisance.”

“Oh, Beth, don’t be silly—Maxim and Hap would love to have you. And Barry won’t be there at the beginning, so when I’m not working we could chum around—I’ve never been to Kenya, either.”

Alyssia hung up thinking, /// had a brain in my head, I’d have scheduled an abortion for first thing tomorrow morning.

To the west, the deep blackness of the sky showed a silvered edge that dimmed the enormous stars. The curve of horizon became visible, and suddenly one could make out a silhouetted march of elephants.

Watching the swift ascent of dawn, Alyssia stood at the mosquito webbing that substituted for windows in the tents. She had never expected to be enthralled by the panorama of Africa—having had her fill of the outdoors during her first fifteen years, she was no nature lover. Yet on the untouched land of Masai Mara Game Reserve, which is Kenya’s side of the vast Serengeti, she would find herself imagining that she’d been thrust back through uncountable eons to the cruel, miraculous age before humankind reared up on two legs. Nights were mysterious and velvety, days vast, with clean, limitless distances.

The sleek, tawny lions were a different breed from their brethren incarcerated in zoos, as were the elephants, the giraffes, the herds of trim zebra, the hundreds of species of antelope, the magnificent profusion of brilliant birds.

“Miss Alyssia, the shower is ready.” Sara’s lilting soprano was behind her. (Alyssia’s contract specified that she have a personal maid on the company payroll and Sara, hired in Nairobi, was Juanita’s replacement. ) In the rear of the tent were two beds: only one had been slept in. The eight weeks that Alyssia had been in Africa, Barry had remained at the chateau, finishing Spy, hassling with the clatterous workmen, and dispatching wordy explanations for his continued absence.

Alyssia’s thongs flapped across the tent’s raised wooden floor and down the two exterior steps to a canvas-fenced private yard lit by a kerosene lamp. Next to the open-topped, six-foot-high, corrugated iron shower enclosure stood two young black men wearing khaki shorts and sweatshirts imprinted the baobab tree.

“Jambo,” they chorused.

“Jambo,” she replied, adding, “Asante sana.” Unlike most of the company, Alyssia had picked up a serviceable Swahili vocabulary. Jambo meant hello, as ante sana, thank you very much.

Inside, she shucked her terry robe, slinging it over the corrugated iron. Nights were cold on the highlands, and goosebumps rose on her flesh. The bath boys had heated the water at the kitchen cooking fires before pouring it into an overhead contraption. She pulled a cord to release the hot flow through the inaccurate showerhead, then began soaping herself vigorously. Her breasts were a fraction fuller and their blue tracery of veins more visible. Her stomach curved slightly between her pelvic bones. She reassured herself with the thought:

Even Hap hasn’t noticed.

An overladen tray had been delivered to her tent. The head cook, a longtime fan, personally fixed her breakfast, and nothing she said could pursuade him not to include a half dozen of the strongly odored, brighter-yolked Kenyan eggs crisscrossed with bacon rashers. Leaving on the metal cover, she helped herself to fruit, scarcely making a dip in the terraced slices of mango, papaya and pineapple.

The tent flap was pushed aside. Beth came in carrying a coffee cup.

She wore a crisply ironed safari suit and a broad-brimmed khaki hat adorned with a fish-eagle feather. Her delicate nose was red and peeling, her eyelids puffed from sunburn, her bare arms splashed with freckles. Though she never left her tent without a hat and slatherings of #15 sunscreen, the equatorial sun had marked its vengeance on her fair skin.

“Did the lions keep you up?” she asked.

“Lions? What lions?” replied Alyssia, who had sunk into a heavy sleep a minute after Hap had slipped from her tent.

“The lions that Masai Mara’s famous for, the lions who roared until four this morning,” said Beth.

“Oh, those lions. No, I didn’t hear them. But then, Bethie, I’m a star—and stars get soundproofed tents.”

Beth chuckled, then pressed a finger to her temple. Already the nerves behind her eyes were vibrating, not yet a headache, but moving toward one.

Africa was Beth’s nemesis.

She couldn’t take the intransigent brightness. She loathed the emptiness of the rolling grassland. The free-roaming animals terrified her. And as for the nights—she had never imagined anything so hostile as Masai Mara’s predatory nights. She and Alyssia generally ate dinner at the trestle table outside Hap and Maxim’s tent: long before nine thirty, when the generator went off and light bulbs all over The Baobab Tree encampment faded, Beth was rushing Alyssia to their neighboring tents. Striding a bit ahead, she would grip her large Eveready flashlight like a truncheon. Once zipped inside, she didn’t emerge until morning, not even when her bladder begged her to use the chemical toilet two steps down from the rear tent flap

In the eight weeks she had been in Africa she had never ceased fretting about Clarrie’s health: the cheerful letters from Irving that arrived in the Harvard Productions pouch did nothing to allay her worries.

Yet, for all Beth’s acute discomfort and maternal brooding, she never considered going home.

On the surface she had no cause for alarm. While filming, Hap and Alyssia displayed only professionalism. At the supper table, they were friendly and never worked the seating to be next to each other. They hadn’t renewed their affair, of that Beth was positive. She was equally positive that the instant she left Masai Mara Game Reserve, her sisterin-law would leap naked into Hap’s narrow camp cot.

Beth’s suspicions and Alyssia’s semi amused resentful ness of her sisterin-law’s chaperonage should have dulled the edge of their friendship. Instead, their existing warmth had grown and they were closer than ever. Beth would help Alyssia learn her lines; they shared paperbacks, magazines, worries about Clarrie, dreams of success for Barry’s novel, light gossip and laughter.

The makeup artist arrived, also carrying coffee. She, Beth and Alyssia chattered, and continued to talk while the hairdresser ratted Alyssia’s hair into a period pompadour.

The chain-smoking wardrobe mistress came to perform her task.

“Alyssia, you really oughta let me lace the corset,” she said, cigarette dangling from her lips, nicotine-stained fingers moving deftly to adjust the white organza gown.

“Sara doesn’t get the damn thing tight enough.”

“Why do you think I let her do it?” Alyssia replied, winking.

“I’ll have to move these hooks. Again.”

“Africa gives me an appetite.”

“You’re telling me!” said Beth.

“I’ve gained ten pounds at least.” In actuality she had lost three.

A minibus was waiting for Alyssia, and Beth climbed in with her. There were few roads on Masai Mara, and none in this remote section. The bus traveled across the open land in a cloud of red-yellow dust. A herd of Thomson’s gazelles pronged away, their white butts bouncing. One of the giraffes around a clump of acacia trees glanced at them, then the entire group shifted in their slow grace to browse at more distant vegetation.

From the top of a slight rise they could look down on the set. As always, Alyssia caught her breath at the superbly cinematic image. The sweep of empty beige savannah, the baobab tree of the title with its barren branches resembling upside-down roots, the solitary, garden less brick villa backed by the era’s ubiquitous carriage house stable that belonged in some middle class London suburb.

This was the home of Mellie, the role that Alyssia played. Her miserly Cockney father, having struck it rich in the Transvaal, has come to Kenya with a mineral map showing rich veins of gold in the Rift Valley. (Mellie will steal the map for her lover, Jason Mattingly. ) As the minibus jounced down the slope amid a maze of tire ruts, the turmoil in the dip to the left of the house became visible. Land Rovers jeeps, minibuses were parked higgledy-piggledy near trailers.

Wranglers and animal trainers bustled around the corrals, an assistant director raised his megaphone to a crowd of elegantly tall mo ran—Masai warriors—whose hair was reddened with ocher.

The minibus braked at a trailer above whose door was painted:

production.

Maxim greeted Alyssia and his cousin, then cocked an eyebrow toward a drifting continent of gray-black clouds.

“That’s one mean mother,” he said sourly.

“The short rains, don’t you know,” said the ruddy-faced Kenyan who was their socalled local expert.

“I say, there might be a spot of rain in November and December.” ” Maxim mimicked the Kenyan’s rather high-pitched voice.

“You call twenty-one days of rain in eight weeks a spot?”

Hap had emerged. Fatigue lined his face, but his calm manner invited confidence.

“So let’s shoot while we can,” he said.

The very young second assistant director, whose shirt and shorts already showed dark sweat stains jogged to one of the trailers. In two minutes he emerged.