The Perfect Location (43 page)

Walking inside for the screening, the reporters yelled out to Sapphira. ‘Would you say Italy changed your life?’

She turned her head and looked over her elegant shoulder. ‘In every way,’ she called back and walked inside the theatre.

The following year
The Italian Dream
cleaned up at all the major awards. Sapphira won the Oscar for Best Actress. Although she tried not to show her emotion, she was overcome when thanking Jack and Alex and dedicating it to Melesse.

TG was nominated for an Oscar for best direction, which he was thrilled about and the film won for best script.
The Italian Dream
also won for Best Ensemble cast at the SAG awards, which brought them all together again. Rose hosted a lunch the day after at her house in LA, with all the children, and Calypso brought Luna the dog.

And yes, Kelly had a little boy called Otis.

The black Mercedes pulled into Calypso’s driveway and she jumped out, helping the surprised driver with her bags.

Calypso lived in West Hollywood in a renovated house which was once a pool-house for a former mansion, long since pulled down. Built in the 1930’s, it was light and airy, with polished floorboards and white shutters. Nice and private, with a large wall and gates that kept the fans and the paparazzi outside, most of the time.

A hot-pink bougainvillea grew up over the side of the house and a huge frangipani tree swept gracefully over the kidney-shaped swimming pool in the backyard. Somehow the pool house survived during the great destruction of Hollywood’s architectural history during the 1980’s and Calypso had lovingly decorated it in her own inimitable style.

Bohemia meets the Jetsons
is how she described it when asked by visitors. French chandeliers hung over a modern Danish dining table and the walls were painted in bright Indian pinks and turquoise. Framed movie posters of some of Calypso’s favorite films were hung on the walls next to convex mirrors and Calypso’s collection of framed antique fans.

Calypso liked quirky and crazy, something she was finding it harder and harder to be since her star was on the rise. Hollywood is a processed city. Everything you say, wear and eat is watched, supervised and analyzed. To show your real self is rare and frightening to the studios. Calypso wondered what the studio would think of her house if they saw it in all its glory. It certainly was not interior-decorated within in an inch of its life, to be ready for the pages of an ‘In Style’ magazine shoot.

Before Calypso was famous, she used to frequent the flea markets in Hollywood. Nothing made her happier than lugging home a new find and restoring it to her own taste. Chairs, dressing tables, even clothes all found a place in Calypso’s heart and home.

Now she settled for eBay, having her treasures delivered to her parent’s house, or her manager’s office. The thrill of the find was all part of the attraction for Calypso.

Throwing her new Miu Miu purchases on the antique brass bed, she wondered if she had gone too far with the black Amex. Then she remembered, her film had grossed over $25 million on its opening weekend. The guilt quickly subsided and Calypso kicked off her French Sole red silk ballet flats and padded into her kitchen. Grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge she wandered outside, rolled up her jeans and stood on the top step of her pool.

Calypso had bought her house when she had first started on the TV show. The money was excellent but the scripts formulaic and repetitive. How many times could she diagnose the illness and save the day? She fulfilled her duties until it was clear it was time to move on.

The exposure she received through TV was enough to get a fan base that had come with her to the movies, but she had not been on television long enough for audiences to struggle with seeing her out of character. It was perfect timing and Calypso knew luck was really only when talent and timing came together.

Her mother had been dreaming of Calypso becoming a star since she was born and who was anyone, even fate, to argue with such a force as Leeza Gable? Calypso was fortunate though, she had a father who had invested all her money from her days as a child star, from all the commercials and guest appearances and right up to the recent TV contract, and now Calypso had a sizable nest egg.

She owned the house as well as a few others and now her new found wealth from the film would send her into a different stratosphere.

Calypso stood on the pool step, the cool water lapping at her feet. She wondered what next? Everything was changing. The biggest decision Calypso had made was employing a manager who wasn’t her own mother. It had been a big deal to convince Leeza that an independent representative would be good thing. Almost immediately, her wage had sky rocketed.

What will change next?
She thought.

There was no boyfriend on the horizon to confuse things. The last relationship she had was with a comedian. He played the wacky sidekick to the closeted gay star of her last movie. He had wooed Calypso relentlessly on set by being goofy and funny. Teaching her card tricks and singing silly songs on his guitar outside her trailer she eventually gave into his charms. He had made her laugh and that was all it took to get Calypso into bed. For a while she had even thought she was falling in love.

He had ended up sleeping with everything on set while she was stuck doing some additional voice-over recording in LA.

She had only found out after reading about it one of the scummy trash websites she secretly went on in her weaker moments. The photos of her boyfriend and the extra on the secluded beach were embarrassing and she was disappointed, to say the least. Keeping her head up high and her pride in place, she battled through the gossip alone. Calypso didn’t have girlfriends. It was not as though she didn’t want them but friendships eluded her and there was just something distinctly different about how Calypso viewed the world and your average girl of twenty-five.

Instead she kept a low profile and made sure she looked a million dollars when she went into the public. There was no way she was going to have some sad pathetic picture of her taken with a cover line of a magazine screaming out ‘
Heartbroken.
’

Growing up in Hollywood, Calypso had learnt from an early age looks meant nothing when deciding on a partner. Anyone could get implants, dermabrasion, extensions or even their ass fat put into their face. But making people laugh, now that was a gift. The boys she had grown up with in the industry were vain, ambitious and self involved and didn’t interest her at all.

Calypso stayed away, even though Leeza had tried to manipulate different relationships with some of her teen co-stars to get publicity. Calypso was never into the manufactured pairings so many stars went for to cross-promote their shows. And while Leeza was a force, Calypso had an iron will and a stubbornness that had up till now served her pretty well.

There had been no major mistakes, no driving under the influence, no mug shots on The Smoking Gun and no 24-hour weddings. Calypso had been a good girl, oh yes. She barely drank alcohol and the only drugs she took was the occasional joint when sleep was hard to come by. Calypso was a good investment for the studio and now she had made a ton of coin at the box office, they were going to milk her for all she was worth.

Calypso knew this. She was prepared for the junket, the endless repetitive questions, the posing with fans, attending cinemas all across the world and making sure she was the best version of what the public loved every time. This was her destiny and she was ready.

She wouldn’t complain, she would do her job and then when the time was right she would make her move to the next tier.

Calypso knew that the time was right for her to have everything she wanted. The only problem was, she had no idea what that was. Calypso’s future had always been mapped out for her. First by Leeza, then by her agent and her managers.

Calypso’s downtime, if you could call it that, was spent reading scripts or self-help books, exercising and health food. Growing up in Californian hippy culture, it was hard not to fall into the trap of self-improvement and Calypso wanted to be and do her best, all the time. Her hard work and professionalism on-set was renowned. She was warm to the crew and her cast members, chatting with the extras, unlike her co-stars who treated them like annoying flies. She ate with everyone and spent little or no time in her trailer, preferring to chat with the makeup and wardrobe girls, learning the tricks of the trade. The film crew were always more fun than the actors, she had thought. More real, less self-involved.

Even the make-up artist, Kelly, had become that rare treat – a girlfriend she could confide in. Someone she trusted, she shuddered to think, more than even her mother.

The film-set was like she had imagined school would have been, but Leeza had decided school interfered with auditions so she pulled her out and home-schooled Calypso herself. But how does someone so single-mindedly obsessed with fame and fortune give someone an open-minded education?

Leeza soon tired of it, so Calypso took over her own education. She read voraciously and loved to watch left-of-field documentaries, art house movies and Warner Brothers cartoons. Calypso was a student of the world and she had the most extensive and bizarre general knowledge of anyone her age.

As Leeza’s management style became more of a stranglehold than a nurturing push, Calypso found solace in her workout routines and her dedication to being the healthiest she could. Regular colonic treatments, acupuncture, yoga and a diet that would make a Buddhist monk bored, as recommended by her nutritionist, gave Calypso a much needed sense of control in her life.

Her body, as a result of her fastidious dedication to it, was lithe and strong and she glowed with the good health of an athlete. But lately the workout routines had become boring; she found her mind wandering in her private yoga session, no matter how much mindful meditation she tried.

Sometimes she wondered what else she could have been if her path had been different. Could she have gone to College? Had a different career? Maybe worked as an interior designer or perhaps been an artist. She looked back at her house, with Moroccan lamps hanging from the deck and a lime green hammock beckoning her. The objects seemed to mock her inexperienced explorations and creativity.

She looked at her perfectly polished toe under the water of the pool, realizing with a start that she had been working for twenty-two years and she was only twenty-five years old.

‘It’s a lifetime’, she thought, wondering if she could do it for another twenty-two years. She chided herself for being so melodramatic.
My life is good.
She let out a deep sigh.

Calypso stepped out of the pool, shook off her mood and walked with delight towards the mountain of Miu Miu bags that lay in wait for her on her bed. She had a week’s worth of Antiques Roadshow on TIVO and she was happy to color code her wardrobe and insert hew new Miu Miu glamour into it, while watching her favorite show.

Her life looked like it was perfect to the outsider, thought Calypso, and perhaps it was, to some. Deep inside, she knew she wanted something else, she just had no idea what that was. Yet.

In between was the Golden Globe Awards, which they attended, as Paul, had been nominated for Best Actor in a Drama. They sat at a table with other people in his film, including the French director and his wife who had taken an instant liking to Rose. Speaking in French all night to the couple, which drove Paul mad with jealousy, Rose found herself being offered a small art house film which the director was producing and his wife, a successful director in France would be directing.

Shooting in Poland, it was an art house, small budget film with a great script and an unknown leading man in America. Rose jumped at the chance and decided not to tell Paul and asked the couple to not mention it either.

The director had gladly complied, Paul Ross has been a pain in the derriere, arguing with the director about his choices for scenes, controlling the set, demanding that everyone call him ‘Mr. Ross’ and screaming when he felt that the crew looked him in the eye or spoke in a way that was too familiar.

Rose, who had not worked in 18 months, was excited and when the script was couriered over to the house, Paul had signed for it and was reading it when she came home from a trip to the beautician. The one place Paul allowed her to go. Rose had begun lying, saying she had regular appointments but would instead would drive around California trying to find a way out of her own life.

Paul declared the script a waste of time and beyond Roses talents as an actor not knowing she had already signed on. Then he left for South America again and Rose, thankful to have him out of the house, packed for Poland.

Though Rose tried to call him many times to tell him she was taking the film, Paul didn’t pick up his cell phone. She left him a voice message that she was leaving. When she hung up, she realized that the message sounded like she was leaving him, not just leaving for the shoot. She didn’t bother to ring back to correct the mistake.

Her South African co-star was the panacea that Rose required. It wasn’t just his beauty that attracted her, it was his ruggedness and spirit. With no entertainment in the mountains of Poland, the cast and crew had nothing to do but amuse each other. The Polish crew aided them with vast amounts of vodka. It was just the respite and the break from LA that Rose needed.

In the second week of shooting, Rose began to find herself again. Filming a crucial love scene where the soldier took her character’s virtue in the woods before he left for war, Rose felt a longing she had not felt in what seemed like forever.

One evening early on in the shoot, the woods were filled with crew and equipment. They had scheduled with the timing of the full moon, so the woods were shadowed in corners and as bright as a hospital theatre in other parts.

Rose waited patiently, as the makeup and costume dressers ensured she was wet enough to look as though she’d been in the rain. The dress clung to her breasts and legs. It was freezing and her nipples became erect. Embarrassed, she covered them as she crossed her arms. The South African came over and stood next to her, ‘Ready?’ called the director.