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“Is that a fact?” Theta said, though she couldn’t imagine anybody talking in a movie. People would probably laugh it out of the theater.
“You ready, sweetheart?” the director asked from behind the camera.
“Sure.”
The director barked out orders, and Theta followed every command.
“Not quite so much, sweetheart. This isn’t like the stage. The camera does some of the work for you,” he said.
“Oh. Got it,” Theta said, even though she didn’t. She was acting, just like she’d been doing her whole life. But she’d figure it out. Theta was a great performer; she knew that. So many performers needed the audience’s love and approval. Theta didn’t need it, and that seemed to be the very thing that drove audiences wild: They wanted what they felt they couldn’t have. When her stage mother, Mrs. Bowers, had forced Theta to smile and curtsy for all the managers and vaudevillians on the Orpheum Circuit, she’d told her again and again, You’re nobody without them and me. You belong to us. Then Roy had come along and told Theta she belonged to him. But when Theta was onstage, she was hers alone. There, no one could have Theta Knight without her permission.
“Okay, sweetheart! Give me those sad peepers!” the director shouted from behind his camera.
Theta gave a deep sigh, letting her shoulders sag as she pressed the back of her hand to her forehead.
“That’s it! Now I want you to show me your bear cat, but not too hot. You still want the Sunday school crowd thinking you’re pure. That’s the trick: Make ’em want you, make ’em think they’ve got a chance at making whoopee; then show ’em you’re strictly the marrying kind. Think you can do that?”
Theta resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “Can I do that? Pal, that’s what every girl learns along with her ABCs,” she mumbled. “Just keep that contraption pointed at my face.”
Theta lowered her head and looked up longingly at the camera with her soulful brown eyes. Lips parted slightly, she stared back at the camera as if it were her lover while she crept a hand up her neck in a desperate caress. She closed her eyes and shuddered. Then, just when she was on the brink of wanton, she clutched the picture of her soldier boy to her chest, kissed his face gently, put it down, and clasped her hands in prayer, beseeching the heavens for his safe return.
“You and your lover have been separated by cruel fate! You fear you will never see him again!” the director yelled.
She kept her eyes trained upward and thought of Memphis. His sweet, slow grin. The way he looked at her sideways from under cover of those long lashes, his head slightly bowed, like he was almost embarrassed by how much he liked her. When Theta was with Memphis, she felt as safe and happy as she could allow herself to be. She could be not just herself but all her selves. So why was she so afraid to tell him about the fire that burned inside her? About Roy and Kansas and the menacing notes that had been left for her? It was like being in a dream and reaching for something that was always just beyond your grasp. Would she always be reaching for a happiness she couldn’t hold?
A single tear coursed down Theta’s cheek, and then she was crying openly.
“That’s incredible,” the cameraman said. “Oh, baby. Keep it coming.”
“And cut!” the director shouted. He applauded enthusiastically. “Astounding.”
“Big word. Was I good or bad?” Theta said, wiping her eyes. They didn’t need to know how real it had all been.
“Good. Very, very good.”
Theta sniffed up the last of her tears and took out a cigarette. “Swell. Anybody got a light?”
“Miss Knight. How’d you like a contract at one hundred and fifty per week?” the director said.
Theta’s mouth hung open. “Are you pulling my leg?”
“Huh-uh.”
“Forget the light. Got a pen?”
The cameraman finally offered Theta a
match. “Honey, you should see yourself through that thing. Why, it’s like you’re lit from the inside.”
“Oh, um. Is that good, too?” Theta’s hands trembled on her cigarette, but at least they didn’t feel warm. Yet.
“You kidding me? It’s better than good. You’re a born star.”
A born star, Theta thought on her way out of Vitagraph Studios, past the revving sewing machines and hammering carpenters engaged in the world of make-believe.
A born star.
For no reason she could name, she stopped and said a silent thank-you to Mr. Bennington. “Just in case,” she told herself.
