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  It wasn’t the prospect of being in a movie that really excited Zack, it was the salary he was offered. So he got a waiver from SAG and learned to act.

  Actually, acting hadn’t been all that difficult for him. For one thing, he’d been “acting” for years before he left his grandmother’s house, pretending things didn’t matter when they did; for another, he was totally dedicated to a goal: He was determined to prove to his grandmother and everyone else in Ridgemont that he could survive on his own and prosper on a grand scale. To achieve that goal, he was prepared to do almost anything, no matter how much effort it required.

  Ridgemont was a little city, and there’d been no doubt in Zack’s mind that the details of his ignominious departure were common knowledge within hours after he left his grandmother’s house on foot. When his first two movies were released, he went through every piece of fan mail, hoping that someone he used to know would have recognized him. But if they did, they didn’t bother to write.

  For a while after that, he fantasized about returning to Ridgemont with enough money to buy Stanhope Industries and run it, but by the time he was twenty-five and had amassed enough money to buy the company, he’d also matured enough to realize that buying the whole goddamned city and everything in it wouldn’t change a thing. By then he’d already won an Oscar, gotten his degree from USC, been hailed as a prodigy, and called a “Legend in the Making.” He had his choice of starring roles, a fortune in the bank, and a future virtually guaranteed to be even more spectacular.

  He’d proven to everyone that Zachary Benedict could survive and prosper on the grandest of scales. He had nothing else to strive for, nothing left to prove, and the lack of both left him feeling strangely deflated and empty.

  Deprived of his former goals, Zack looked elsewhere for gratification. He built mansions, bought yachts, and drove race cars; he escorted beautiful women to glittering social functions, and then he took them to bed. He enjoyed their bodies and often their company, but he never took them seriously and they rarely expected it. Zack had become a sexual trophy, sought after solely for the prestige of sleeping with him and, in the case of actresses, coveted for the influence and connections he had. Like all the superstars and sex symbols before him, he was also a victim of his own success: He could not step off an elevator or eat in a restaurant without being accosted by adoring fans; women shoved hotel room keys into his hand and bribed clerks to let them into his suite. Producers’ wives invited him to their homes for weekend parties and slipped out of their husbands’ beds to climb into his.

  Although he frequently availed himself of the banquet of sexual and social opportunities spread out before him, there was a part of him—his conscience or some latent streak of conventional Yankee morality—that was revolted by the promiscuity and superficiality, the junkies and sycophants and narcissists, everything that made Hollywood seem like a human sewer, a sewer that had been sanitized and deodorized to protect the public’s sensibilities.

  He woke up one morning and suddenly couldn’t tolerate it any longer. He was tired of meaningless sex, bored with loud parties, sick of neurotic actresses and ambitious starlets, and completely disgusted with the life he’d been living.

  He started looking for a different way to fill the void in his days, for a new challenge and a better reason to exist. Acting was no longer much challenge, so he turned his thoughts to directing instead. If he failed as a director, he’d be a very public flop, but even the risk of laying his reputation on the line had a stimulating effect. The idea of directing a film, which had been hovering on the fringes of his consciousness long before that, became his new goal, and Zack pursued it with all the single-minded determination he’d devoted to achieving his others. Empire’s president, Irwin Levine, tried to talk him out of it, he pleaded and reasoned and wheedled, but in the end he capitulated, as Zack had known he would.

  The movie Levine gave him to direct was a low-budget thriller called Nightmare that had two leading roles, one for a nine-year-old child, another for a woman. For the role of the child, Empire insisted on Emily McDaniels, a former child star with Shirley Temple dimples who was almost thirteen but looked nine and was still under contract to them. Emily’s career was already on the downslide; so was the career of a glamorous blonde named Rachel Evans, who they cast in the other role. In her prior films, Rachel Evans had only minor parts, and none of them showed much acting ability.

  Zack’s studio had foisted both females off on him for the patently transparent reason that they wanted to teach him a lesson—that acting was his forte, not directing. The film was virtually guaranteed to barely earn back its investment and, the studio executives hoped, simultaneously put an end to their most famous star’s desire to waste his moneymaking potential behind the cameras.

  Zack had known all that, but it hadn’t stopped him. Before they went into production, he spent weeks looking at Rachel’s and Emily’s old films in his screening room at home, and he knew there were moments—brief moments —when Rachel Evans actually showed some genuine talent. Moments when Emily’s “cuteness,” which had faded with her adolescence, was replaced by a charming sweetness that spoke to the camera because it was genuine.

  Zack coaxed and dragged all of that and much more out of his two female leads during the eight weeks they were in production. His own determination to succeed transmitted itself to both of them, his sense of timing and lighting had helped too, but mostly it was his intuitive knack of knowing how to use Emily and Rachel to their best advantage.

  Rachel had been furious over his badgering and the endless numbers of takes he made her do for each scene, but when he showed her the first week’s rushes, she’d looked at him with awe in her wide green eyes and said softly, “Thank you, Zack. For the first time in my life, it actually looks as if I can really, really act.”

  “And it also looks as if I can really, really direct,” he’d teased, but he was relieved and he let it show.

  Rachel was amazed. “You mean you’ve had doubts about it? I thought you were totally sure of everything we’ve done!”

  “Actually, I haven’t had a peaceful night’s sleep since we started shooting,” Zack confessed. It was the first time in years he’d dared to admit to anyone that he had any misgivings about his work, but that day was special. He’d just seen proof that he had a talent for directing. Furthermore, that newly discovered talent was going to dramatically brighten the future of a winsome child named Emily McDaniels when the critics saw her superb performance in Nightmare. Zack was so fond of Emily that working with her had made him long for a child of his own. Watching the closeness and laughter she shared with her father, who stayed on the set to look after her, Zack had suddenly realized he wanted a family. That was what was missing from his life—a wife and children to share his successes, to laugh with and strive for.

  Rachel and he celebrated that night with a late dinner served by his houseboy. The mood of shared candor that had begun earlier when they’d admitted their private doubts about their individual abilities led to a relaxed intimacy that, on Zack’s part, was as unprecedented as it was therapeutic. Seated in his living room in Pacific Palisades in front of the two-story glass wall that looked out over the ocean, they talked for hours, but not about “the business,” which came as a welcome change to Zack, who’d despaired of meeting an actress who could concentrate on anything else. They ended up in his bed where they further indulged themselves with a night of highly pleasurable and inventive lovemaking. Rachel’s passion seemed genuine rather than a repayment for making her look good on film, and that pleased him, too. In fact, he was thoroughly contented with everything as they lay in his bed—the rushes, Rachel’s sensuality, her intelligence, and her wit.

  Beside him, she levered herself up on her elbows. “Zack, what do you really want from life? I mean, really want?”

  For a moment, he stayed silent, and then perhaps because he was weak from hours of intercourse or perhaps because he was sick of pretending that the life
he’d carved for himself was exactly what he wanted, he answered with only a touch of derision, “Little House on the Prairie.”

  “What? You mean, you want to star in a movie sequel to ‘Little House on the Prairie’?”

  “No, I mean I want to live it. The house doesn’t have to be on the prairie, though. I’ve been thinking about a ranch in the mountains somewhere.”

  She burst out laughing. “A ranch! You hate horses and you despise cattle, everyone knows it. Tommy Newton told me so,” she said, referring to Nightmare’s fledgling assistant director. “He worked as a grip on the first Western you made when you were a kid—the one where Michelle Pfeiffer played your girlfriend.” Smiling, she rubbed her finger across his lips. “What have you got against horses and cattle anyway?”

  He gave her finger a playful nip and said, “They don’t take direction worth a damn, and they stampede in the wrong direction. That’s what happened in that first picture—the steers turned and headed right for us.”

  “Michelle says you saved her life that day. You picked her up and carried her to safety.”

  Zack tipped his chin down and grinned. “I had to,” he joked. “I was running like hell for the rocks, and the steers were right behind me. Michelle was in my path. I picked her up to get her out of my way.”

  “Don’t be so modest. She said she was running for her life and screaming for someone to help her.”

  “So was I,” he teased. Sobering, he added, “We were both kids back then. It seems like a hundred years ago.”

  She shifted onto her side and stretched out beside him, her finger tracing an enticing path from his shoulder to his navel, then stopping. “Where are you really from? And please do not give me all that studio bullshit about growing up on your own and riding in the rodeo circuit and hanging around with motorcycle gangs.”

  Zack’s candid mood did not extend to discussing his past. He had never done so before, nor would he ever. When he was eighteen and the studio publicity department wanted to know about that, he’d coolly told them to invent one for him, which they had. His real past was dead, and the discussion of it was off limits. His evasive tone made that emphatically clear. “I’m not from anyplace special.”

  “But you’re no vagabond kid who grew up without knowing which fork to use, that much I do know,” she persisted. “Tommy Newton told me that even when you were eighteen, you already had a lot of class, a lot of ‘social polish,’ he called it. That’s all he knows about you, and he’s worked with you on several films. None of the women who’ve worked with you know anything either. Glenn Close and Goldie Hawn, Lauren Hutton and Meryl Streep—they all say you’re wonderful to work with, but you keep your private life to yourself. I know, because I’ve asked them.”

  Zack made no attempt to hide his displeasure. “If you think you’re flattering me with all your curiosity, you’re wrong.”

  “I can’t help it,” she laughed, pressing a kiss to his jaw, “You’re every woman’s fantasy lover, Mr. Benedict, and you’re also Hollywood’s mystery man. It’s a well-known fact that none of the women who’ve preceded me in this bed of yours have gotten you to do any talking about anything really personal. Since I happen to be in this bed with you, and since you’ve talked to me tonight about a lot of things that are personal, I figure I’m either catching you at a weak moment, or that . . . just maybe . . . you like me better than the others. Either way, I have to try to discover something about you that no other woman has found out. It’s my feminine pride that’s at stake here, you understand.”

  Her jaunty bluntness reduced Zack’s annoyance to exasperated amusement. “If you want me to keep liking you better than the others,” he said half-seriously, “then stop prying and talk about something more pleasant”

  “Pleasant . . .” She draped herself across his chest and smiled teasingly into his eyes as she threaded her fingers through the mat of hair on his chest. Based on her body language, Zack expected her to say something suggestive, but the topic she chose startled a surprised chuckle from him: “Let’s see . . . I know you hate horses, but you like motorcycles and fast cars. Why?”

  “Because,” he teased, threading his fingers through hers, “they do not gather into herds with their friends when you leave them parked and then try to run you down when you turn your back. They go where you point them.”

  “Zack,” she whispered, lowering her mouth to his, “Motorcycles aren’t the only things that go where you point them. I do, too.”

  Zack knew exactly what she meant. He pointed. She moved lower and bent her head.

  * * *

  The next morning, she cooked him breakfast. “I’d like to make one more picture—a big one—to prove to the world I can really act,” she said while she popped English muffins into the oven.

  Sated and relaxed, Zack watched her moving around his kitchen in pleated slacks and a shirt knotted at the midriff. Devoid of sexy clothes and extravagant makeup, she was far more appealing and infinitely lovelier to him. As he’d already discovered, she was also intelligent, sensual, and witty. “Then what?” he asked.

  “Then I’d like to quit. I’m thirty. Like you, I want a real life, a meaningful life with something more to think about than my figure and whether or not I’m getting a wrinkle. There’s more to life than this glossy, superficial fantasyland we inhabit and perpetrate on the rest of the world.”

  An unprecedented statement like that from an actress made Rachel an unexpected breath of fresh air to him. Moreover, since she was planning to stop working, it seemed as if he’d actually met a woman who was interested in him, not in what he could do for her career. He was thinking of that when Rachel leaned over his kitchen table and softly said, “How do my dreams compare with yours?”

  She was making him an offer, Zack realized, and doing it with quiet courage and no games. He studied her in silence for a moment and then made no attempt to hide the emphatic importance he was placing on his next question. “Do you have children in your dreams, Rachel?”

  Sweetly and without hesitation, she said, “Your children?”

  “My children.”

  “Can we start now?”

  Zack burst out laughing at her unexpected reply, then she plopped onto his lap and his laughter faded, replaced by stirrings of tenderness and a vibrant hope, emotions he thought had died when he was eighteen. His hands slid under her shirt, and tenderness merged with passion.

  They were married in the graceful gazebo on the lawn of Zack’s Carmel estate four months later, while a thousand invited guests, including several governors and senators, looked on. Also present, although uninvited, were dozens of helicopters that hovered overhead, their blades creating cyclones on the lawn that whipped up women’s gowns and dislodged toupees, while the reporters who occupied the choppers aimed cameras at the festivities below. Zack’s best man was his neighbor in Carmel, industrialist Matthew Farrell, who came up with a solution to the invasion of the press: Glowering at the helicopters hovering frantically overhead, he said, “They ought to repeal the damned First Amendment.”

  Zack grinned. It was his wedding day, and he was in a rare mood of utter conviviality and quiet optimism, already envisioning cozy evenings with children on his lap and the sort of family life he’d never known. Rachel had wanted this big wedding, and he had wanted to give it to her, although he’d have preferred flying to Tahoe with just a couple of friends. “I could always send someone to the house for some rifles,” he joked.

  “Good idea. We’ll use the gazebo for a bunker and shoot the bastards down.”

  The two men laughed, then they fell into a companionable silence. They’d met three years ago when a group of Zack’s fans climbed the security fence around his house and set off the security systems at both residences as they fled. That night, Zack and Matt had discovered they shared several things in common, including a liking for rare Scotch, a tendency toward ruthless bluntness, an intolerance of pretension, and, later, a similar philosophy toward financial investment
s. As a result, they were not only friends, they were also partners in several business ventures.

  * * *

  When Nightmare was released, it didn’t receive an Oscar or even a nomination, but it made a healthy profit, received excellent reviews, and completely revived Emily’s and Rachel’s faltering careers. Emily’s gratitude was boundless and so was her father’s. Rachel, however, abruptly discovered she was not at all ready to give up her career, nor was she ready to have the baby Zack had wanted so badly. The career she’d claimed she didn’t want was, in fact, an obsession that consumed her. She could not bear to miss an “important” party or ignore an opportunity for publicity no matter how minor, and she kept Zack’s household staff, his secretary, and his publicist in an uproar as they tried to cope with her social demands and cover up her more outrageous publicity ploys. She was so desperate for fame and acclaim that she despised any actress who was better known than herself and so pathetically insecure about her own ability that die was afraid to work in any picture unless Zack directed it.

  The optimism Zack had experienced on his wedding day collapsed under the weight of reality: He’d been gulled into marriage by a clever, ambitious actress who believed that he alone held the key to fame and fortune for her. Zack knew it, but he blamed himself even more than he blamed Rachel. Ambition had caused her to marry him, and Zack could empathize with her motive, even if he didn’t admire her methods because he, too, had once felt driven to prove himself. He, on the other hand, had been compelled to commit matrimony out of an uncharacteristic and embarrassingly naive streak that had actually let him believe, albeit briefly, in a cozy picture of devoted spouses and rosy-cheeked, happy children clamoring for bedtime stories. As he should have known from his own youth and experience, such families were a myth perpetrated by poets and movie producers. Faced with that realization, Zack’s life seemed to stretch before him like a monotonous plateau.