Beauty and the Brain (18 page)

Several of the female actors commenced
clinging to each other in terror. One of them pretended to faint.
Another pressed a hand to her bosom and let out a shriek of mock
horror.

“Perfect!” Martin called, pleased with his
cast.

“This is ludicrous,” Colin grumbled.

“Fiddlesticks. You just have no
imagination.” She expected him to take instant exception to her
judgment.

He didn’t. He looked at her for a moment,
his brow furrowed into those two parallel lines that made Brenda
weak in the knees, pushed his glasses up his nose, and frowned at
the scene again. “Perhaps.”

Perhaps? His qualified response astounded
Brenda. “You mean you admit it?”

“I don’t admit anything, dash it. I said
perhaps I lack the sort of imagination that can take pleasure in
nonsense of this nature.”

“I see.” Drat the man. He was so difficult.
“Don’t you ever feel the need to escape from everyday life?” she
asked curiously. “I mean, don’t you ever get tired of being serious
and studious every minute of the day?”

He glowered at her for a second then turned
back to the scene. “No, I can’t say that I do.”

“Do you ever go to the moving pictures?”

“Sometimes.” The admission came out sounding
grudging.

“Do you enjoy them?”

“Some of them. Not the ones that depict
history inaccurately.”

“Don’t you ever take comfort in pretending?
Even if that means pretending things happened differently from the
way they really did?”

“No.” The word was clipped.

She heaved a large sigh. “That’s too
bad.”

Turning completely away from the action and
eyeing her suspiciously, Colin said, “Why is it too bad? Is it
wrong to prefer reality to idiotic fantasy?”

“Tosh. This is fun.” She squinted at him. “I
really do believe you’d be happier if you learned how to have fun,
Colin.”

“I doubt it. Not if fun means appreciating
inaccurate depictions of historical events.”

“I’m not talking about that. I’m talking
about taking things a trifle less seriously. Enjoying life.”

“I enjoy life perfectly well, thank
you.”

“If what you do is enjoying life, then I’m
glad I don’t.”

“And . . . cut! Perfect. Great! One take,
just the way I like it!” Martin chortled with pleasure as he rushed
up to the porch of the Cedar Crest Lodge. “Wonderful job, ladies
and gentlemen. You can pack up those costumes now. We won’t be
needing them anymore.”

The cast members congratulated one another
and went back inside the lodge. Brenda watched Colin watching them.
He appeared both frustrated and angry. She shook her head,
wondering how to get through to him the notion that life wasn’t all
hard labor and study. She was startled when he turned on her almost
ferociously.

“Was that man using me as his model?”

She blinked at him, astonished at his
question and unsure how to answer. She didn’t want to hurt his
feelings, if he had any. On the other hand, it might be good for
him to know that people found him fodder for fictional fussy
professors. “Um, I believe he may have been.”

He swallowed, and some of his ferocity fled.
“Do I really act like that? Like a blind, dumb animal with no
understanding of human fellowship’?”

For goodness sake, he’d pegged himself to a
T. Brenda hedged. “Well, I wouldn’t say that, exactly. But, um,
perhaps you do appear slightly blind to the conventions of societal
behavior and the finer points of, um, fraternity.”

“Good God.” He looked stunned.

Feeling small and unkind and not liking it,
Brenda said. “Mind you, I’m not saying it’s true, but sometimes you
do give the impression that you don’t give a hang about anything or
anyone but your precious academia.”

“I see.”

“That doesn’t mean you
don’t
give a
hang,” she hurried to explain. “Only that you give that impression.
Occasionally. Every now and then.”

“I see.”

She gazed at him inquiringly. “Do you care
about your fellow human beings, Colin? I mean, as a rule?”

He gave her a hideous scowl. She thought at
once that he’d make a perfect Jack the Ripper should Peerless ever
decide to fictionalize that twenty-year-old, particularly ghastly
series of murders.

“Of course I care about my fellow human
beings! Why do you think I despise this picture and the caricatures
it’s making out of Jerry and his family?”

“Oh,” she said, musing for a moment. “That
makes sense.”

He snorted.

“Brenda!”

She glanced up and saw Martin waving at her
to come back onto the set. With one last glance at Colin, she
headed over to the faux Indian village. She called back, “Will you
talk to me later, Colin?”

He looked surprised. “About what?”

She shrugged. “Everything.”

Without waiting for a reply, she started
trotting to the set.

Colin watched her uneasily. What the devil
did she want to talk to him about this time? Was she going to press
him for more details about Indian life? He snorted derisively,
feeling as low as he’d ever felt and knowing beyond a doubt that no
beautiful woman would care to gather information from him if there
was another source.

Or perhaps she was going to try to teach him
some social graces, which was almost as awful a prospect as the
first one. The notion that she believed he needed to be taught how
to behave in company made his heart squinch painfully. Of course,
her idea of proper social behavior and real manners probably
differed considerably. He hadn’t been caught tossing dice on the
floor of a fancy hotel.

He knew all about the social graces, dash
it. His mother, a fine woman and a great lady, had drilled him in
polite behavior from the cradle. So had his father, who had greater
social deportment than Brenda Fitzpatrick would ever possess. If
she thought she was going to turn him into a grinning dimwit like
that idiot Carruthers, she had another think coming.

Although, he acknowledged reluctantly, it
might be pleasant to spend some time in her company. She was an
enjoyable companion; the first female, in fact, to achieve such a
status in his life. Even his mother, whom Colin loved dearly, was
boring as all get-out when he had to talk to her for any length of
time.

Strange that it should be an undereducated
actress who kept his interest alive in conversation. Colin, feeling
even more low and confused than he had a minute earlier, put his
experience of Brenda to a rigid test. He was a male, after all, and
she was the most tantalizing female he’d ever met. Could it be mere
sexual attraction that kept him interested?

He thought about it, studying the overall
impression Brenda created from all angles. All angles were equally
delectable and attractive, to be sure. But, he decided after a long
and hard examination, there was more to her than physical beauty.
She was an interesting and interested colleague. He wasn’t sure he
liked admitting it, mainly because it would be much easier to
dismiss Brenda if she were merely a sexual object.

Bother. Colin had never found life
particularly difficult until he’d been hired by Peerless Studio as
Martin Tafft’s research assistant. In all the other venues he’d
operated, his knowledge and insistence upon accuracy had been
prized. Here, on the set of this mindless motion picture, it was
deplored. He probably should have sought different employment this
summer, but he’d been interested in how pictures were made, so he’d
grabbed this one eagerly. Showed how much he knew about
anything

The notion that Brenda found him dull and
boring surely didn’t thrill him. He ought to have admitted that he
did enjoy pretending, at least in his head. He’d always considered
his fanciful side to be a weakness. Maybe it wasn’t.

“Dash it, of course it is.” Fancy could only
get a researcher into trouble, and Colin knew it.

Was there a way to separate the researcher
from the man? The idea was new to him, and he mistrusted it. His
parents, both of whom were thinkers and teachers, had deplored any
tendency in their children to forsake pure research for invention,
considering tall tales and fairy stories as beneath their notice.
Colin had considered them thus, too, since he’d been taught they
were incorrect and, therefore, wrong.

Maybe there was a place for the imagination
in the world of scholarship.

Good God, what was he thinking?

The camera started its thunderous cranking
noise, drawing Colin’s attention out of the mire of confused
thoughts and into the reality of filmmaking He watched the scene
unfold with distaste.

“Look scared, Brenda!” Martin called through
his megaphone. “Jerry, keep that nasty expression on your face.
It’s perfect!”

Perfect, his eye, Colin thought grimly. This
whole enterprise was a travesty.

Brenda managed to snabble Colin that evening
after dinner. She was tired after a strenuous day’s work during
which she’d been kidnapped, carried off into an alien environment,
and made to don an Indian dress, complete with buckskin fringe and
beadwork, all of which Colin considered ethnically wrong, and set
to grinding corn—all for the sake of the Peerless Studio—but she
wanted to help Martin in any way she could. Therefore, she aimed to
fulfill her promise to try to civilize Colin.

It wasn’t an easy task. “Um, I think you’d
better reconsider that move, Colin,” she said, holding her
exasperation at bay with difficulty. What she really wanted to be
doing was sleeping, but she was at present in the parlor, trying to
teach the man how to play poker.

“Why?” He looked grumpy. No surprise
there.

She pointed at the cards in his hand, which
he was obligingly showing her—the only obliging thing he’d done
since they’d met—and explained, “You have two pairs. You don’t want
to discard one of either set in the hope that you’ll be dealt
something better because there’s no telling. That’s the sort of
optimistic play that ends up with people losing their shirts, not
to mention the family farm and everything else—and I know you don’t
have a family farm to lose. It’s a figure of speech.” She sighed
and told herself not to get sarcastic. “In poker, you’re better off
keeping what you have, if you have anything at all.”

His concentration was intense. Brenda
wondered if he was this conscientious whenever he set about
learning something new. Perhaps that’s what scholars were trained
to do, but it was rough on their teachers.

He pointed at her cards. “But you have
a—what do you call it? A flush? Two pairs can’t beat a flush, can
it? Wouldn’t I be better off—or not any worse off, at any rate—if I
tried to pick a better hand?” He squinted at the paper she’d given
him, upon which she’d written down the various combinations of
winning poker hands.

“Yes, but remember that if we were playing
this game for real, you wouldn’t know what was in my hand. All
you’d know is that you have two pairs in your own hand. Now that’s
a pretty good hand as it stands, and if you keep your face straight
and stop scowling and continue playing, you might draw a third or
even a fourth seven or five.”

“This is a very frustrating game. I don’t
like not knowing what’s going on.” The scowl Brenda had noted
before deepened.

She repressed a soulful sigh. “Yes, I’ve
noticed that quality in you.”

He looked up at her, squinting with
suspicion from behind his thick spectacles, which he pushed up his
nose. She smiled wearily and decided poker wasn’t the best carne to
be teaching him tonight. She didn’t have the energy or patience for
it. Thank God the horde of young men who had been her constant
attendants since she’d arrived at the Cedar Crest had been shipped
off to Los Angeles after the ballroom scene. She was sure she
wouldn’t have the wherewithal to deal with Colin and them, too.

Martin strolled over and peered at the game
in progress. Brenda wrinkled her nose at him, and he winked back.
“How’s the game coming, you two?” he asked jovially.

Well and good for him to be jovial, Brenda
thought bitterly. Martin wasn’t attempting to teach Colin Peters
how to play poker. She was beginning to think that teaching Colin
anything at all was a task beyond her feeble skills.

How had all his other teachers accomplished
the task? Somebody must have, since he knew so damned much.

Colin grunted something Brenda didn’t
catch.

She said, “I think I’m too sleepy for it, to
tell you the truth.”

Colin’s head jerked up and he stared at her
the way he’d seconds earlier been staring at his poker hand. “Do
you want to let it go for now?” He sounded hopeful.

She grinned at him “Would you mind? Maybe we
could have a nightcap in the bar instead.” She saw with interest
and some vexation that Colin looked disapproving, from which she
gathered that the females in Colin’s family didn’t frequent bars.
They were probably all stuffy and pedantic as he was.

Heavens, what a thought: a whole family of
frigid academicians. She wondered how many of them there were and
had a sudden vision, spawned, she was sure, by her state of
exhaustion, of dozens of Peterses spreading their wintry influence
on the eastern seaboard until the whole East Coast froze into a
solid cake of ice.

Colin plopped his cards on the table. “I
don’t mind at all.” As if he feared she’d change her mind, he rose,
hastened to hold her chair for her in a gentlemanly manner she’d
bet her last dollar he wouldn’t have done if he’d been interested
in the game.

She exchanged a wry glance with Martin and
rose with as much grace as she could summon. “I think I’ll have a
Manhattan.”

“A Manhattan it is,” Martin said. “What
about you, Colin? I’ll tell the bartender what you want while you
two pick up the cards.”

Colin appeared disconcerted. Brenda assumed
it was because he didn’t drink. She asked, “Do you like sweet
drinks? You might like a Manhattan.”