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“Me, too.”
They ate by the pool on pottery plates generously heaped with Fleur’s favorite salad, a tangy mixture
of shrimp, pineapple, and fresh watercress. Fleur filled Belinda in on most of the events of the last week, but, even though she normally told her mother everything, she held back when the subject turned to Jake. By the end of their second day of shooting, which was Monday, she’d decided she’d misjudged him. He teased her and called her “Flower Power,” but he also seemed to be looking out for her. By Tuesday, she’d decided she sort of liked him. By Wednesday, she knew for sure she liked him, and by lunchtime today, she’d realized she had a tiny little crush on him, something she had to make sure Belinda didn’t discover or she’d never hear the end of it. So when her mother pressed her about him, Fleur only told the story of how she’d knocked him over the first day and how great he’d been about it.
Belinda reacted predictably. “I knew he’d be like that. He’s one of the biggest names in film, but he understood how embarrassed you were. He’s like Jimmy, all rough on the outside, but sweet and sensitive inside.”
Belinda’s conviction that Jake embodied all the qualities of her beloved James Dean irritated Fleur. “He’s a lot taller. And they don’t look anything alike.”
“They have the same quality, baby. Jake Koranda is a rebel, too.”
“You haven’t even met him. He’s not like anybody else. At least he’s not like anybody I’ve ever known.” Belinda gave her a funny, fishy look, and she shut up.
Mrs. Jurado, the housekeeper, who’d turned out to be sixty and loved showing off her double-jointed thumb, stepped out on the patio and plugged in the phone she was carrying. “It’s Mr. Savagar.” Fleur reached over to take it, but Mrs. Jurado shook her head. “For Mrs. Savagar.”
Belinda gave Fleur a puzzled shrug, tugged off her earring, and picked up the receiver. “What is it, Alexi?” She tapped her fingernails on the glass tabletop. “What do you expect me to do about it? No, of course he hasn’t called me. Yes. Yes, all right. Yes, I’ll let you know if I hear anything.”
“What’s wrong?” Fleur asked after Belinda had hung up.
“Michel disappeared from the clinic. Alexi wanted to know if he’d contacted me.” Belinda clipped her earring back on. “It must be obvious, even to your father, that he gave away the wrong child. My daughter is beautiful and successful. His son is a homosexual weakling.”
Michel was Belinda’s son, too, and Fleur lost her appetite. As much as she still resented him, Belinda’s attitude felt wrong.
Several months ago, gossip had surfaced that Michel was engaged in a long-term affair with a married man who was well-known in Parisian society. The man had suffered a fatal heart attack after the disclosure, and Michel attempted suicide. Fleur was accustomed to the open homosexuality of the fashion world and couldn’t believe the fuss everybody was making. Alexi refused to let Michel return to his Massachusetts school and locked him away in a private clinic in Switzerland. Fleur tried to feel sorry for Michel—she did feel sorry for him—but some ugly, unforgiving part of her found a terrible justice in Michel finally being the outcast.
“Aren’t you going to eat the rest of your salad?” Belinda asked.
“I’m not hungry anymore.”
The stench of Dick Spano’s cigar filled the projection room, along with a lingering onion odor from the rubble of fast-food containers. Tonight Jake was watching two weeks’ worth of rushes from the back row. As an actor, he never did this, but as a fledgling screenwriter he knew he had to see how his dialogue was working so he could think about what might need to be rewritten.
“You nailed it there, Jako,” Johnny Guy said in response to the first exchange of dialogue between Matt and Lizzie. “You’re one hell of a writer. Don’t know why you waste your time with those New York theater types.”
“They feed my ego.” Jake kept his eyes on the screen as Lizzie began to kiss Matt. “Damn.”
The men watched one cut after another of the kiss.
“It’s not bad,” Dick Spano offered at the end.
“She’s on the right track,” Johnny Guy said.
“It sucks.” Jake finished his Mexican beer and set the bottle on the floor. “She’s okay up to the kiss, but she’s never going to be able to handle the heavier stuff.”
“Stop being so negative. She’ll do fine.”
“It’s not in her to handle Lizzie. Fleur’s feisty, and she puts up a hell of a good front, but she grew up in a convent, for God’s sake.”
“It wasn’t a convent,” Dick said. “It was a convent school. There’s a difference.”
“It’s more than that. She’s sophisticated, but she isn’t worldly. She’s traveled all over the world, and I’ve never met a kid her age who’s so well-read—she talks about philosophy and politics like a European. But she seems to have been living her life inside some kind of glass bubble. Her handlers have kept a tight rein on her. She doesn’t have any ordinary life experience, and she’s not a good enough actress to hide that.”
Johnny Guy peeled the wrapper from a Milky Way. “She’ll come through. She’s a hard worker, and the camera loves her.”
Jake slumped in his seat and watched. Johnny Guy was right about one thing. The camera did love her. That big face illuminated the screen, along with those knockout chorus-girl legs. She wasn’t conventionally graceful, but he found something appealing about her long, strong stride.
Still, her odd naïveté was a far cry from Lizzie’s manipulative sexuality. In the final love scene, Lizzie had to dominate Matt so that his last illusions about her innocence are ripped away. Fleur went through the motions, but he’d seen women go through the motions all his life, and this kid didn’t ring true.
It had been a long day, and he rubbed his eyes. This film’s success was more important to him than anything he’d done. He’d written a couple of screenplays, but they’d ended up in the wastebasket. With Sunday Morning Eclipse, he was finally satisfied. Not only did he believe an audience existed for thoughtful films, but he also wanted to play a part where he could use more than two facial expressions, although he doubted he’d ever win any awards for his acting.
