Chapter Nineteen #2
been making that crack about kissing a fish for years now. He can't
turn me on and he knows it. You're a theatre actor, aren't
you?”
“I was, yes.”
“Well, movie sex is different. And I know you're gay, but don't
worry if you get a hard-on while we're doing it, okay? I am pretty
hot after all. And it's just an animal response. Don't penetrate
me, obviously, but if the take's going well, run with it. No-one
will mind if you come.”
Laurie made a mime of reeling back from her, not entirely
feigned. He'd been meaning to reassure her. Serve him right for his
assumptions. “Whoa. You shoot from the hip, don't you?”
“Best place to shoot from, I find. Or maybe I just like to
shock upper-crust Englishmen with my vulgarity.”
There
was an uncertainty in her smile now. Laurie shook his head. He
wasn't especially upper-crust, and nor was she particularly vulgar,
not by contrast with what he'd seen on this set so far. “I'm not
shocked. It is the best place to shoot from. And I haven't done a
bed scene for camera, so—well, thanks.”
“Thank me in between the crimson sheets, big boy. Look, Doug's
ready. Come on, before he changes his mind again.”
***
Laurie's
transformations had stopped. There just wasn't enough of Devlin
Steele for him to be, and so he was only Laurence Fitzroy, a
stressed, distracted actor fighting his way through a
job.
And Douglas Brett was feeling artistic. This scene, he said,
would bring a touch of magical realism to Blood Moon, help it transcend its
genre. Laurie, who knew that its genre—vampires and their
glamour—was the only thing going for it, by now knew better than to
open his mouth. Instead he lay still while a team of set designers
fussed around the bed, tugging the silk sheets this way and that.
He waited till Brett yelled for action, and then he tried to
deliver it.
For the
first time in his life, he failed. Not the hiccup he'd experienced
back in London but an out-and-out collapse of his ability to act.
For the first time he was aware, from the top of his skull to the
tips of his sweat-damped toes, of his own self within his own skin.
He couldn't get out. And making this contraption, this puppet of
tendons and bones do his bidding was almost beyond his reach. He
was lying in a silk-draped bed in the middle of the desert, sun
beating down on his back. There were four Sony XDs trained on him,
a boom mic so close that its sheepskin brushed his cheek when he
leaned to whisper Devlin's intimacies to the naked girl in his
arms.
There was a naked girl in his arms. Normally Laurie wouldn't
have batted an eyelid. As Melchior, he'd tumbled
Spring Awakening's Wendla
Bergmann in a hayloft to great and controversial acclaim,
and Rocky Horror's Janet had pursued him backstage to finish what Frank had
started there. But now he wasn't Melchior or Frank. He was only
Laurie, and the only naked person who belonged in his arms was
–
“Cut!”
Brett
had been watching from about a yard away. His bellow made Laurie
and Nicole jolt apart in mid-embrace. Laurie fell back on the
pillows, shielding his face with his hands, and Nicole broke into a
fit of startled giggles. This was the eighteenth damn take. “I'm
sorry,” Laurie groaned, knowing the fault would lie with him. “What
am I doing wrong now?”
“Fitzroy, I don't pay my actors to be told what they're doing
wrong. They show me how they do it right. What is your problem
today? Miss Delgado here may not be your natural inclination,
but...” Brett sat down hard on the edge of the bed. He took hold of
Laurie's arm, shook it as if he could physically rattle out the
awkwardness and tension there. “Do what you have to. You like
Bailey Price, don't you? Think of him, or think of that little
Albanian you managed to smuggle out here on my dollar,
and—”
Laurie sat up. He tore his arm out of Brett's grasp.
“Romanian,” he snarled. “His name is Sasha. He's Romanian, and you
will not bloody
talk about him!”
A shadow
of genuine fear crossed Brett's face. Then it was gone, and he was
pursuing this new chance, the new opportunity. “That's right,” he
said. “Next take, show me that kind of passion. Show it to Carmen.
Make it so fifty million teenage girls want to be inside her skin.
Take five, everyone, but don't either of you two get out of bed—I
want to talk to Bud about filters.”
He
sprang up and was gone. Laurie folded his hands across the back of
his neck, pressed his brow to the blood-red sheet. “Nicole, I'm
really sorry about this.”
“Fifty million teenage girls, huh?”
“In your skin.”
“Eew.”
An
involuntary chuckle shook Laurie's shoulders. He looked up. The
cameramen and production staff were turning away about their
business, apparently as oblivious to Nicole as she was to herself.
The sheet had fallen down around her waist, exposing her nice
breasts. Laurie looked her over, appreciating her for the comely
creature she was. “You're really lovely. I don't know what's
blocking me, but it's not you, okay?”
“Okay. You're not so bad yourself.” She gave his hair a ruffle.
“Relax, all right? You're gentle, you smell good, and I bet you're
hot as hellfire when you let yourself go. I can handle a few more
takes.”
Laurie
nodded gratefully. He was puzzled, though. She had a rep for
tearing fellow actors into shreds, and until today she'd been a
mere cipher to him, a flash of scarlet nail polish and ice. “You're
being very patient. And nice.”
“And you can't figure me out, right? Nicole's not bad when you
meet her—why is she such a cold-hearted bitch with her fans? That
kind of thing?”
“I wouldn't have put it so bluntly, but...”
“Let me fill an idle minute by telling you why these
Blood Moon films will
ultimately bomb.” She flipped over onto her front, bunching up the
sheet. “Why nobody will have fond, faded posters of Carmen to take
down off their walls when they go off to college, the way their big
sisters did of Buffy and Xena. Everybody hates me. That's
why.”
“What, are you kidding? You can't step off the set without
being mobbed.”
“Ah, but did you ever seen me step off it without Wes or
Bailey? Or you, for that matter? Nobody loves Carmen Duprey, not
even the lesbians.” She tucked a glossy curl behind her ear and
grinned up at Laurie, as full of mischief as she was free from
self-pity. “Especially not them.”
Laurie
snorted. “Okay, I'll buy it. Why don't the lesbians love you? I
reckon I would, if I was one.”
“I'll cherish that gallant remark. But look at me. I'm the girl
who brings two handsome vamps to their knees. I'm the helpless
sexpot heroine who gets everything done for her because these great
immortal guys just long for her so fucking much. So the baby teen
fans loathe me out of jealousy, and the older ones—the moms who
grew up with kick-ass role models—can't abide my whiny little ass,
because I've dragged their daughters' expectations back by five
decades. The 'sixties might as well never have
happened.”
Laurie
listened, distracted despite himself from his own griefs. It was
quite surreal, to lie here in the shadow of cactuses and cameras
and hear this plain statement from a girl he'd thought shallow as
the character she played. For himself, he'd never believed the
women around him tainted with pre-'sixties mud. Marielle had her
problems, but his aunt Elise had raised a family of boys without
assistance and was one of the most powerful landowners in France.
And Clara... Clara was a creature in her own right, a phenomenon
beyond gender. He swallowed a pang of guilt for their last parting.
He hadn't even tried to contact her since. “If you believe all
that...”
“Why do I do it?” She propped herself on one elbow. “Because
there's a market for me, Fitzroy. A new one. All these big sisters
and moms—you can bet on the one thing they're finding out now. It's
fine to dream of growing up like a vampire slayer—quite another
thing to do it. There's nothing more lonely than a warrior princess
in her forties, divorced with three kids on her hands. It's tough
growing up. Tough being on your own. I'm a guilty pleasure for a
lot of women these days, and...” She narrowed her eyes, tapped him
lightly on one knuckle. “Well. Maybe not just women, huh, Fitzroy?
It's one thing to be a pretty boy, growing up inside your borrowed
skins. How's it feel to be a man, and have to stand there in your
own?”
Laurie
didn't know. He sat up, cold with the knowledge that he'd never
even tried. “Nicole, can I borrow your mobile?”
“My what? Oh, my cell? Sure, I guess. Why?”
“Because Brett always confiscates mine. But you have special
privileges, don't you?”
“Not really. I just throw bigger tantrums.” She yawned, her
intensity already fading, and lazily extracted her phone from
beneath one scarlet pillow. “Not calling London, I
hope.”
“No, just Los Angeles. Home.”
“Okay. Knock yourself out.” She sat up restlessly. “Don't know
about you, but I'm starting to feel a bit neglected over here. What
the hell is Bailey up to now?”
Laurie
followed the direction of her gaze. It was one thing to be set up
for a surreal desert sex scene, quite another to be left on the bed
while the production staff wandered off about other business. Brett
and his new assistant were hammering on the door to Bailey's
trailer. One of the cameramen was giving a leg-up to the wardrobe
girl, who was trying to see in the window. Slowly but surely, every
disengaged member of the cast and crew was gathering
round.
It
wasn't at all like Bailey Price to lock his door. He only did it,
he'd confided to Laurie, when he needed his privacy for a
particularly big, delicious hit. In the remote event of Laurie ever
deciding to set aside his principles and join in the fun, he'd
leave an extra key on top of the trailer's front wheel.
A secret
key, just for Laurie. Bailey was a crackhead. He was also a
sweet-natured boy who'd been sucked so deep into the Hollywood
dream that he'd taken it for the whole world. A lonely bird-call
filled the air, and a moment later a huge shadow rippled across the
lot. Laurie threw the crimson sheet aside, making Nicole shriek and
grab for a pillow. He took five seconds to haul on his trousers—not
the ridiculous leather pair but the tracksuit bottoms he'd left on
the sidelines, good for a barefoot dash—and then he ran.
He
shouldered through the crowd. The key was where Bailey had
promised. Snatching it off the warm tyre, Laurie scrambled up the
trailer steps and jammed it into the lock. For a moment the door
resisted his frantic efforts, and then it swung suddenly
wide.
The air
inside the trailer was motionless and cold. Laurie stopped dead and
Brett cannoned into him from behind. “Price!” Brett was yelling—had
never stopped yelling since the group had begun to gather round the
van. “Price, damn you, this is your last warning. Makeup,
now!”
Laurie
turned on him. He was half naked, breathless, but suddenly eight
feet tall. He looked down from this height on Brett, on the
assistants, on Nicole Delgado, elbowing her way forward in a
scarlet sheet, her face avid, suddenly ugly. “Shut up, all of you.
Be quiet and stay still.”
They
obeyed him. Laurie didn’t know why and didn’t care. Even Brett’s
unstoppable mouth was silenced. That would do. Laurie gave his
tracksuit bottoms a hitch to keep them in place, folded his arms
across his chest and slowly went into the lounge.
Bailey
was curled up neatly on one of the white leather sofas. In a last
gesture of obedience to Brett, he had been to makeup on time after
all, and was dressed and ready for his next scene. He was washed,
combed and perfect, tidier than Laurie had ever seen him, except
for the needle in his arm.
He had
vomited. The stain of it was like a cry thrown out across the pale
carpet’s purity, more eloquent than blood. It stank. The shell of
the creature called Laurie Fitzroy would have recoiled in disgust,
and not all the roles, the heroes and villains he’d absorbed in his
life could have stopped him. The only difference was that Laurie
had lived with and loved a good man. He knew what Sasha would
do.
He knelt
at Bailey’s side. Sasha had insisted, when they had started taking
holidays off the beaten track, that they both learned first aid,
and first Laurie checked Bailey’s wrists and throat for a pulse.
Gently he drew down his jaw, far enough to be sure that whatever
was killing him was in his veins, not choking him. He gestured
blindly to the blurred row of faces until someone stepped
forward—not Brett, of course; not Nicole Delgado, but one of the
lean-muscled cameramen. “Help me lift him down. Lie him flat. Has
somebody called 911?”
“I don’t know.”
“Somebody call 911!” Laurie took hold
of Bailey’s shoulders. The cameraman hoisted him under the knees
and together they eased him down awkwardly onto the floor. The
cameraman’s face was kind. With a glance he offered to take on the
CPR, but Laurie had to do it—this one thing. He cleared the traces
of vomit from Bailey’s mouth with his bare hand.
Laurie
breathed for him. He compressed his frail chest, bony beneath its
costume shirt, and then he breathed for him again. He did this
until sirens began to wail in the distance, and he was quite
certain that Bailey was dead beneath his hands. Then he gathered
the wasted body up into his arms, hid his face and wept.