At the time, Romania had seemed like a lifeline, the fresh start that he and Chrissie so badly needed. Chrissie had cheated on him because she was unhappy in LA and felt like a failure there. Dorian believed in marriage. His parents had managed it for the better part of fifty years under far more difficult circumstances. He owed it to Chrissie and to himself to try to repair the damage. Here was a chance to take Chrissie and their newborn daughter as far from the Hollywood madness as it was possible to go. Dorian would sweep Chrissie up on his white charger and install her as queen in his fairytale castle. Little Saskia would grow up as a princess. And they would all live happily ever after.
Or not.
If he were completely honest with himself (not always Dorian’s strongest suit), becoming a father had not been the seismic, emotionally transformative event that he’d expected. The baby was sweet enough. But, after waiting so long for parenthood, Dorian began to realize that the idea of having a child was considerably more intoxicating than the exhausting, often deathly dull reality. He also realized, not without a sense of shame, that a part of him was disappointed that Saskia had not been born a boy.
For her part, Chrissie also revelled in the idea of motherhood or, more specifically, the idea of herself as the perfect mother: devoted, selfless, instinctively maternal. It was a self-image Chrissie clung to doggedly as Saskia grew older, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and one that she demanded her husband validate by praising her mothering skills at every possible opportunity. But the truth was that, like Dorian, Chrissie Rasmirez found young children boring and her own daughter was no exception. By now a semi-professional martyr in her marriage (Chrissie had long ago convinced herself she had sacrificed her career for Dorian, and not on an altar of her own fear), her new role as tireless carer to a demanding toddler added another arrow of resentment to her ever-growing armoury.
New parenthood wasn’t the Rasmirezes’ only problem. Despite yearning for a fresh start, Dorian had misgivings about the move back to his homeland. Romania had been his father’s dream, never his. And while he felt a sense of duty (and curiosity) about his ancestral home, unlike Chrissie, Dorian enjoyed his life in LA, and did not relish leaving it. If he was going to continue working, he’d have to get used to a gruelling transatlantic commute. The thought of having to spend time away from Chrissie made his chest tighten painfully with anxiety. But if it saved the marriage, it would all be worth it. He owed it to his father and Chrissie to go back.
Though she would rather die than admit it now, Chrissie had been very enthusiastic about the idea at first.
Transylvania!
Even the word sounded romantic. From what Dorian had told her, the house – castle! – was stuffed with wealth beyond even her wildest imagination: hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of antique crap. Apparently, the Romanian government had some ridiculous rules about all the treasures having to stay in the country, but a good American lawyer would find them a way around all that old-world baloney. If she could no longer enjoy fame in her own right, Chrissie could at least experience the thrill of being European royalty and joining the ranks of the super-rich. Plus, domestic help would be super-cheap over there, so she could have nannies and housekeepers up the wazoo. She would be Queen of the Castle, ordering around a fleet of servants, and go to bed at night draped in emeralds that had once belonged to Catherine the Great.
Not bad for a little girl from the valley.
Who knew, maybe she’d even think about trying for a second baby, and giving Dorian the son he so obviously still wanted.
Needless to say, it had not worked out like that. Almost from day one, Chrissie loathed Romania. The Schloss was as palatial as she could have wished it, the staff as slavishly obsequious, the emeralds as big and heavy as golf balls. But there was nothing to
do.
No one to
see.
Sure, the scenery was breathtaking, as lush and green and spectacular as a still from
Shrek.
Little Saskia was entranced by the Transylvanian landscape, with its wide, fast-flowing rivers, brooding pine forests and romantic, snow-topped mountains that ringed the castle like mythical, protective giants. ‘Polar Express!’ she would squeal excitedly every time they drove into town, pointing to the snow-tipped Carpathian Mountains with barely contained rapture. But her mother failed to share her enthusiasm. What use was it, ruling your own fantasy kingdom, if you couldn’t go out to Cecconi’s on a Friday night and boast about it to your friends?
Within weeks of their arrival, Chrissie’s boredom was fermenting into resentment. It was all Dorian’s fault, for dragging her here. He was punishing her for her affair by immuring her and Saskia in this gilded prison, while
he
jetted off to enjoy their old life back in LA, which from eight thousand miles away no longer seemed so terrible. She, Chrissie, had sacrificed her career for her husband, and what did she get in return? Neglect. Abandonment. Using the only weapon left available to her, she did a 180-degree about-face on a second baby, point-blank refusing to even contemplate another pregnancy until Dorian ‘sold this dump’ and moved them back home to spend the proceeds. No amount of explanation by Dorian would convince her that this was both a practical and legal impossibility; that the Schloss was theirs to enjoy, but not theirs to sell.
Moreover, unbeknownst to Chrissie, their finances back in the States were in fact in increasingly dire straits. Dorian’s last film, the exquisitely shot but hugely over-budget war movie,
Sixteen Nights
, had been a major critical success. But it was box-office receipts that paid the mortgage on Dorian and Chrissie’s Holmby Hills mansion and the upkeep on the Schloss, not to mention financed Chrissie’s couture habit, and those had been distinctly lacklustre. Two studios had offered to come on board with funding but, unable to bear the thought of ceding creative control, Dorian had turned them down, ploughing millions of dollars of his own money into the movie instead. He’d ended up massively in the red.
To make matters worse, since the news of Dorian’s inheritance, Chrissie’s spending had multiplied exponentially. Nothing could convince her that they were not now billionaires – they had Renoirs in their drawing room, for fuck’s sake! – and she laughed openly at Dorian’s claims that the castle’s upkeep was in fact bleeding them dry.
‘Don’t you see?’ he told her, exasperated. ‘That’s why the Romanian government were so keen to have us back here! They couldn’t afford to keep the place going themselves, and they figured we were rich enough to do it for them.’
Chrissie shrugged nonchalantly. ‘Well, we are.’
No we’re not!
Dorian wanted to scream. But he was too frightened of Chrissie leaving him to force another confrontation, or to admit the full extent of their debts. He’d already seen her flirting with some of the younger, more attractive boys on their staff, and lived in constant dread of another affair. And Chrissie was right. He was the one who’d brought her here, brought them all here as a family. It was up to him to make it work, to dig them out of this financial hole he’d gotten them into, and to make her happy. Either that or give up the castle, which to Dorian would be tantamount to trampling on his dad’s grave.
‘More champagne, sir? Or something to eat, perhaps?’
The stewardess’s voice brought Dorian back to the present. They were at cruising altitude now, and his fellow passengers were reclining their flatbed seats or turning on their entertainment systems, scrolling down the list of movies. Dorian had already read the in-flight guide before takeoff. Three Harry Greene movies. None of his.
Dorian tried not to mind that Harry Greene’s truly terrible, derivative
Fraternity
franchise continued to go from strength to strength. But it was hard to be magnanimous when Greene seemed to have made it his life’s mission to destroy Dorian’s reputation, slagging him off not only in public, in the press, but also in private amongst Hollywood’s power brokers. Harry Greene was an immensely powerful man in Hollywood. He was also a recluse, prone to wild fits of paranoia, especially where women were concerned. Twice he had taken girls to court: having bedded them, in the morning he’d accused them of petty theft simply because he couldn’t remember where he’d left a certain coat, or a pair of cufflinks. Once he’d even tried to have his housekeeper arrested for attempted poisoning. A lamb stew had given him a stomach upset, apparently, and Harry was convinced the wholly innocent Mexican grandmother had laced the dish with arsenic.
His beef with Dorian had begun over a script. Harry had fallen out with a certain screenwriter, and the row had turned ugly. When the screenwriter came up with his next movie idea a few months later, he brought it to Dorian instead of Harry. The irony was, Dorian never came close to making the film. It was a bromance, commercial but far too vanilla for Dorian’s taste. Nonetheless, Harry Greene became convinced that Dorian and this screenwriter were ‘in league’ against him. Over time, thanks to some shift in Harry’s addled brain, the screenwriter faded from the picture, leaving Dorian as the sole target for his bizarre conspiracy theory.
It wasn’t long before his professional resentment began to turn personal. For all its international influence, Hollywood remained a small town at heart, and the paths of two major producer-directors like Dorian Rasmirez and Harry Greene were bound to cross socially. After the script incident, Dorian did his best to avoid Harry. But a few years ago, for reasons that to this day Dorian had never fully understood, Harry got the idea into his head that Dorian had badmouthed him to his then wife, Angelica. And that it was Dorian’s malicious intervention that had wrecked his (Harry’s) marriage.
In reality, Dorian barely knew Angelica Greene, then or now, and had said nothing to her about her husband’s womanizing, which was in any case an open secret in Hollywood. The only person responsible for the demise of Harry Greene’s marriage was Harry Greene. But, be that as it may, in the wake of his divorce, Harry gave numerous interviews blaming Dorian, and did his best to have him ostracized by Hollywood’s elite. As the
Fraternity
franchise went from strength to strength and Harry Greene’s influence grew, the more difficult Dorian’s life became.
He returned his attention to the stewardess, who was still hovering with her drinks tray.
‘No, thank you,’ he said politely. ‘I’m fine.’
‘OK. Well, if you change your mind, you know where to find me. I did just want to say, I really enjoyed
Sixteen Nights.
I love your work.’ The stewardess blushed.
‘Thank you,’ said Dorian. ‘You’re very kind.’
She was a pretty girl, he noticed, not hard and over-made-up like so many of her profession. You could still see her creamy, natural complexion, and the tops of her full breasts jiggled invitingly beneath the white blouse of her uniform.
Sexy. But not a patch on my Christina.
‘I hope you’ll go and see my new movie when it comes out.’
‘Oh, I will,’ she gushed. ‘I certainly will. What is it?’
‘Actually it’s a remake,’ said Dorian. ‘
Wuthering Heights
.’
The stewardess gasped. ‘Oh my God, I
love
that book. Such a romantic story.’
Dorian smiled. ‘You know it?’
‘Of course,’ she laughed. ‘Doesn’t everyone? Heathcliff and Cathy. They’re like Romeo and Juliet in the rain.’
For the first time all day, Dorian felt a fraction of the tension ease out of his body. One of his concerns about his new project had been that the story might be considered too highbrow, too much of a classic for ordinary moviegoers to be interested in. Dorian had first read the book in high school and had been instantly captivated by the plot. Heathcliff, a mysterious orphan boy, is adopted by the kindly Mr Earnshaw and brought to live at Wuthering Heights, a grand but lonely house in the Yorkshire moors. Tragedy ensues when Heathcliff falls in love with Earnshaw’s daughter Catherine, who also loves him, but decides to make a more socially acceptable marriage to a neighbour. The ramifications of Cathy’s rejection of Heathcliff: her regret, his madness, and an ongoing saga of death and revenge, of innocent children being forced to pay for the sins of their parents, made for uniquely compelling drama, not to mention one of the most enduring love stories in English literature. But, cinematically,
Wuthering Heights
was a challenge. Whoever played Heathcliff would have to age convincingly, while remaining attractive enough to work as a romantic lead. Should original Cathy and young Cathy, her daughter, be played by two actresses, or one? How to deal with Nelly, the book’s nurse narrator? And then of course there was the issue of location. In a plot where the house was as much of a character as any of the protagonists, finding the right location would be key.
A couple of the big studios had tried to warn Dorian off, as had his agent and friend, Don Richards.
‘You can’t follow Olivier and Merle Oberon, man. That 1939 movie is one of the all-time greats.’
‘They only shot half the book,’ said Dorian. ‘It’s half a story.’
‘That’s because the whole story’s unfilmable. It’s a fucking miniseries.’ Don frowned. ‘Did you see the seventies version? It blew.’
‘I know,’ Dorian smiled. ‘That’s why I’m doing a remake.’
‘If you do it, you’re gonna need two big names in the lead roles,’ Don warned him. ‘And I mean real bankable stars, none of your “respected character actor” bullshit. Oh, and Cathy’s gotta get naked. A
lot.
’
‘I see,’ said Dorian wryly. ‘Young Cathy or Old Cathy?’
‘All the Cathys have to be young,’ said Don firmly. ‘And hot.’
‘Right. So all I need is to find a major movie star who’s prepared to work for peanuts
and
get her panties off for some gratuitous nudity.’
‘It wouldn’t be gratuitous.’ Don looked offended. ‘There’d be a very important point to it.’
‘Uh-huh. And what might that be?’