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  “I’d say that was the worst performance I’ve ever seen you give.”

  “He thinks what I really wanted was a role in one of his movies.”

  “Well, wasn’t it?”

  Diana shot him a withering look, but Tommy was watching Tony Austin and Rachel. After a moment, she said, “How can that bitch possibly prefer Tony Austin to Zack? How can she?”

  “Maybe she likes to feel needed,” Tommy replied. “Zack doesn’t need anyone, not really. Tony needs everybody.”

  “He uses everybody,” Diana corrected contemptuously. “That blond Adonis is actually a vampire—he devours people, drains them dry, then he throws them away when they aren’t useful to him anymore.”

  “You should know,” he said, but he slipped a comforting arm around her shoulders then and gave her a light squeeze.

  “He used to send me to meet his dope dealer. I got busted for possession one of those times, and when I called him from jail to come and bail me out, he was furious because I got caught and he hung up on me. I was so scared, I called the studio and they bailed me out and covered it up. Then they charged me back for all the legal costs.”

  “He obviously had redeeming qualities or you wouldn’t have fallen for him.”

  “I was twenty years old and completely starstruck when I fell for him,” she countered. “What’s your excuse?”

  “Middle-age crisis?” he said with a lame attempt at humor.

  “It’s too damned bad the hospital revived him after his last overdose.”

  The interior lights were going on in the stable, and he nodded in that direction. “Come along—it’s show time.”

  Diana slid her arm around his waist and they trooped down to the stable. “You know what they say,” she announced, “What goes around comes around.”

  “Yeah, but the trip usually takes too long.”

  In his own trailer, Zack hastily splashed cold water on his face and chest, pulled on a fresh shirt and left. He stopped when he saw Emily’s father pacing back and forth in front of hers. “Is Emily down at the stable?”

  “No, not yet, Zack. The heat has been making her sick for days,” George McDaniels complained. “She shouldn’t have had to spend so much time in the sun either. Couldn’t she stay in our trailer where it’s air-conditioned, until you’re sure you need her down there? I mean, you’re bound to want several takes with Rachel and Austin before Emily’s cue.”

  In other circumstances, the suggestion that a director should wait for a cast member because she wished to languish in comfort would have gotten McDaniels a scathing reply. Zack, however, had a soft spot for Emily, as did most of the world, and so he tempered his voice and said, “That’s out of the question, and you know it, George. Emily’s a trooper. She’ll handle the heat while she waits for her cue.”

  “But—I’ll get Emily,” he amended when Zack’s expression turned ominous.

  Normally, Zack had nothing but contempt for the pushy parents of child actors, but Emily’s father was different. His wife had run out on both of them when Emily was still a baby. A fluke coincidence brought Emily to the attention of a producer who saw the dimpled child playing in the park with her father. When that same producer offered Emily a part in a movie, her father had given up his day job to chaperon her on the movie set and started working nights instead. McDaniels had felt that she would be less likely to be “corrupted” if left alone with a sitter at night than with a paid chaperon on the set during the day. That alone wouldn’t have endeared the man to Zack, but it was also a known fact that he put every cent that Emily made into a trust fund for her. Her interests were all that mattered to him, and his vigilance had paid off: Emily was a good kid, astonishingly so for a Hollywood child star. She didn’t fool with booze or drugs, she didn’t sleep around, she was polite and decent, and all of that was due, Zack knew, to her father’s unstinting devotion to keeping her that way.

  Emily came rushing up behind him as he neared the stable, and he called over his shoulder, “Get your pretty self on that horse and let’s get this over with!”

  She passed him at a run, wearing the jodhpurs and riding jacket that were her costume. “I’m ready if you are, Zack,” she called, her eyes filled with unspoken anguish for what he was about to go through, then she disappeared around the comer where two grips were waiting with the horse she was to be riding.

  Zack knew he had little chance of getting the scene perfect on the first attempt with or without a rehearsal, but considering everything that had happened last night, he wanted to get it over with in as few tries as possible. Moreover, the charged atmosphere between his wife, her lover, and himself was only going to become worse the more times he had to direct the sexually explosive scene.

  A shadow moved out from the shrubs near the doors, and Austin’s carefully modulated, conciliatory voice stopped Zack cold. “Look, Zack, this scene is going to be hard enough to shoot without hard feelings between us over Rachel,” he said as he moved into the light. “You and I have been around, we’re sophisticated adults. Let’s act like it.” He held out his hand for a handshake.

  Zack looked contemptuously at his outstretched hand and then at him. “Go fuck yourself.”

  7

  TENSION, THICK AND HOT, HUNG like a pall over the stable as Zack walked past the onlookers and headed down the aisle toward the darkened set. Sam Hudgins was already positioned at the floor camera, and Zack stopped beside him at a pair of monitors that were connected to the camera lenses, allowing Zack to see exactly what both cameras were seeing. He nodded at Tommy and things began to move in familiar sequence:

  “Light it up!” the assistant director called out sharply.

  There was the metallic sound of switches being flipped and the giant lights came on, drenching the area in hot white light. Shoving his hands into his pockets, Zack studied the images on both monitors. No one spoke, no one coughed, no one moved, but he was only dimly aware of the unusual stillness. For years, he had compensated for whatever was lacking in his life by totally submerging himself in his work and blocking out everything else, and he did it now without conscious effort. For the moment, this scene they were about to shoot was all that mattered; it was his baby, his mistress, his future, and he scrutinized every detail on both monitors, envisioning it all on a thirty-foot-wide theater screen.

  In the rafters above, a best boy and an electrician were waiting for instructions to move a light or change the angle of a deflector if necessary. The head gaffer was positioned behind Sam’s floor camera, waiting for directions, and two more electricians were beside a crane, looking up at the second cameraman, who was seated twenty feet above so that he could shoot the scene from that angle. Grips were standing by to move anything Zack wanted rearranged; the sound man had his earphones looped around his neck, ready to put them on, and the script supervisor was holding her script in one hand and a stopwatch in the other. Beside her, a production assistant was writing on the clappers that would be used to mark the scene when Zack gave the order to roll the cameras. Tony and Rachel were standing off to the side, waiting.

  Satisfied, Zack nodded and glanced at Sam. “How does it look to you?”

  As he’d already done repeatedly during the day, the director of photography put his eye to the camera and took a final look. With his eye still pressed to it, he said hesitantly. “That table bothers me a little, Zack. Let’s move it closer to the hay bales.”

  At his words, two grips sprang into action and rushed forward, grasping the table and moving it an inch at a time, watching Sam as he continued to look through his camera, directing them with his raised hand. “That’s good, right there.”

  Eager now to get going, Zack looked up at the cameraman on the boom up above. “Les? How’s it look up there.”

  “Looks good, Zack.”

  Zack took a last look around and nodded at Tommy, who made the routine call for silence and attention, even though the set was quiet as a tomb: “Quiet please! Places, everyone. This is not a r
ehearsal. We’re going for a take on the first try.”

  Tony and Rachel moved to their respective marks on the floor, and while a makeup artist did a last-minute brush of powder on Tony’s sweating brow and a wardrobe mistress tugged the bodice of Rachel’s dress down, Zack began rapping out his customary recap of the scene they were about to shoot. “All right,” he said, his voice brisk, businesslike, and decisive, “you know the story and you know the ending. We may be able to get it on the first try. If not, we’ll use this one as a run-through.” His gaze sliced to Rachel, but he addressed her by her character’s name as he customarily did: “Johanna, you come into the stable, knowing Rick’s lurking in here somewhere. You know what he wants from you. You’re afraid of him, and you’re afraid of yourself. When he starts trying to seduce you, you weaken, but just for a few moments—and they’re hot moments,” Zack finished, deciding he didn’t need to be specific about the sort of passion he expected to see between her and her real-life lover. “Got it?” he asked. “Very hot.”

  “Got it,” she replied and only a flicker of her green eyes betrayed a trace of uneasiness at what she was about to do in front of a roomful of people.

  Zack rounded on Tony, who’d assumed his place just inside an empty stall. “You’ve been waiting here for Johanna over an hour,” he reminded him in a clipped voice. “You’re afraid she won’t come, and you hate yourself for wanting her. You’re obsessed with her, you’re thinking about going up to the house and telling her daughter and the housekeeper and anyone else who’ll listen that she’s slept with you. You’re humiliated because she’s been avoiding you and because you have to meet her in stables while her husband sleeps in her bed. When she comes in here and walks by that stall door without seeing you, all that rage and anguish that’s been building inside you for months explodes. You grab her, but the minute you touch her, you want her again, and you’re determined to make her want you. You force her to kiss you, and you feel her initial response. When she changes and starts to struggle, you’re too far gone to believe she wants you to stop. You don’t believe it until she grabs that gun and points it at you, and then you’re furious. Out of control. You grab for the gun, and when she shoots you, you’re too enraged to realize that it was accidental. All that passion and obsession you felt for her is converted to momentary rage as you wrestle with her for the gun. The gun goes off a second time, Rachel crumples to the floor, and you drop the gun—you’re sick with regret and fear when you realize she’s badly hurt. You hear Emily—you hesitate, and then you split.” Unable to completely hide his loathing, Zack added in an acid voice, “Do you think you can handle that?”

  “Yeah,” Austin said tightly, sarcastically, “I think I can manage.”

  “Then do it and we’ll end this nauseating charade,” Zack snapped before he could stop himself. Turning to Rachel, he added, “You never intended to use that gun on him and when it goes off, I want to see that you’re horrified—so horrified that you don’t react fast enough when it’s pointed at you.”

  Without waiting for her to acknowledge his instructions, Zack turned to Emily and softened his voice a little. “Emily, you hear the shots and you come riding in here. Your mother is wounded but conscious and you realize she’s not fatally hurt. You’re panicked. Her lover is running for his truck and you grab that telephone in the groom’s office and call for an ambulance, then you call your father. Okay with all that?”

  “What about Tony—I mean, Rick? Shouldn’t I start to chase him a few steps or pick up the gun like I’m thinking of going after him?”

  Normally they’d have covered all this in a rehearsal, and Zack realized he’d been foolish to think they could use the rehearsal for a take, particularly when he’d been toying with a notion since yesterday that Rachel probably shouldn’t fire the first shot, even though the script called for that. After a brief hesitation, he shook his head at Emily. “Let’s play it the way it’s written the first time through. After that, we’ll improvise if we need to.” He glanced around at the cast and crew, his tone turning brisk. “Questions?”

  He gave them a split second to answer before he nodded at Tommy and said, “Let’s do it.”

  “Kill the air-conditioning,” Tommy called out, and an instant later the air conditioners went silent. The sound man put on his earphones, both cameramen leaned forward, and Zack took a position between the camera and the monitors where he could both see the monitors and watch the live action in front of him.

  “Red light, please,” he called, instructing that the red light outside the stable be turned on to warn that filming was underway. “Roll cameras.” He waited for verbal confirmation that the cameras and sound equipment were rolling at proper speed.

  “Rolling!” the cameraman on the crane called out after a moment.

  “Rolling!” Sam Hudgins echoed.

  “Speed!” the sound man called.

  “Mark it,” Zack ordered, and the production assistant quickly stepped in front of Sam’s camera holding the black and white clappers that listed the scene number they were shooting and the number of takes they’d had. “This is scene 126,” he announced, repeating what was written on the clappers, “take 1.” He slapped the clappers together for the benefit of the editors who’d use that later to synchronize the sound with the action, then he quickly stepped out of the way.

  “Action!” Zack called.

  On cue, Rachel entered the stable from the side, moving nervously, looking around, her face a perfect mirror of terror, excitement, and apprehension. “Rick?” she called in a shaky voice, exactly as the script required, and when her lover’s hand shot out from his hiding place in the empty stall, her choked scream was perfect.

  Standing beside the camera, his arms crossed against his chest, Zack watched it all through narrowed, impersonal eyes, but when Austin started to kiss and fondle Rachel and drag her down onto the hay bales, everything went wrong. Austin was awkward and clearly embarrassed. “CUT!” Zack shouted, infuriated by the realization that he was probably going to have to watch Austin fondle and kiss his wife repeatedly at this rate. Stalking forward into the pool of light, he raked the actor with a look of glacial scorn. “You weren’t kissing her like an inept choirboy in my hotel room, Austin. Let’s see a little reenactment of that scene instead of this amateur performance you’re giving us now.”

  Austin’s face, which had been likened to Robert Redford’s for its boyish charisma, turned a bright red. “Jesus, Zack, why can’t you be adult about all this—”

  Ignoring him, Zack rounded on Rachel, who was glaring at him, and with unprecedented crudity, he said, “And you—you’re supposed to be in heat, not dreaming of giving yourself a manicure while he mauls you.”

  The next two takes were very good, and the entire crew knew it, but both times, Zack stopped them before Rachel could even reach for the gun, and he made them do it over. He did it partly because he’d suddenly developed a perverse satisfaction in forcing them to publicly perform the same adulterous groping and fondling that had made a public fool out of him but mostly because he felt something was still wrong with the scene. “CUT!” he called, interrupting the fourth take and walking forward.

  Austin came up from the hay bale furious and spoiling for a fight, his arm around Rachel, who’d finally developed enough sensitivity to be embarrassed and equally furious. “Now look, you sadistic son of a bitch, there was nothing wrong with the last two takes! They were perfect,” Austin ranted, but Zack ignored him and decided to try the scene the way he’d considered doing it yesterday.

  “Shut up and listen,” he snapped, “we’re going to try this a different way. Despite what the author thought when he wrote this scene, the fact is that when Johanna shoots her lover, even accidentally, she loses all our empathy. The man’s been obsessed with her, sexually and emotionally, and she’s been using him to fill her own needs, but she never had any intention of leaving her husband for him. She has to be wounded with that gun before he is, or he becomes the only v
ictim in this film, and the entire point of this picture is that they were all victims.”

  Zack heard a murmur of surprise and approval from people behind the camera, near the doorway of the stable, but he didn’t need it to reinforce his judgment. He knew now he was right. He knew it with the same gut instincts that had enabled him to win an Academy Award nomination for a film that had seemed routine and ordinary until he directed it. Turning to Rachel and Tony, who looked reluctantly impressed with the change, he said curtly. “One last time, and I think we’ll have it. All you have to do is reverse the outcome of the original struggle over the gun so that Johanna is wounded first.

  “Then what?” Tony demanded. “What do I do after I realize I’ve shot her?”

  Zack paused, thinking, then he said decisively, “Let her get control of the gun. You didn’t mean to hurt her, but she doesn’t realize it. You step back, but she’s got the gun and she’s pointing it at you now, crying—for herself and for you. You start backing away. Rachel,” he said turning to her, completely absorbed, “I want to see sobs from you, then you close your eyes and pull the trigger.”

  Zack moved back into position. “Mark it—”

  The camera assistant stepped in front of the camera with the clappers. “Scene 126, take 5!”

  “Action!”

  This was going to be the last take, a perfect take—Zack sensed it as he watched Austin grab Rachel and force her down onto the hay bales, his hands and mouth devouring her. There was no dialogue now, but a background score would be dubbed in later, so when Rachel groped for the gun and got it between the two of them, Zack urged her on, goading her to fight harder. “Struggle!” he barked, and on a stroke of irony, he snapped, “Pretend he’s me!” The ploy worked, she squirmed and hammered at Tony’s shoulders in furious earnest, she got her hand on the gun.