Lovers (31 page)

“Right, Doc. Miss Adams, I’m sorry, but I have a few questions I have to ask you,” the policeman said in a hushed voice, turning on his tape recorder. Melanie turned her marvelous eyes to him in startled wonder. His mouth opened and nothing came forth. He shook himself mentally and started over.

“Miss Adams, on the night you were shot, did Sid White say anything before he went for his gun?”

“Sid … how is he? Where is he?” Melanie asked imploringly. Zach straightened up, the hairs on the back of his neck rising in horror. She didn’t remember yesterday.

“He’s, well, he’s …” The policeman stopped. He didn’t want to announce Sid White’s suicide to this poor woman.

“He took his own life, Miss Adams,” the doctor said carefully.

“No! No! Oh, my God … poor sweet Sid … poor lost Sid, I was so afraid for him,” Melanie murmured in heartbroken tones, “he was so impulsive, so tormented, he wasn’t strong enough for this world … not like … the other.”

“ ‘The other’?”

Zach closed his eyes and all but fainted standing upright.

“Others, others … people in movies, officer. He was a gentle, beautiful soul and I loved him.”

“Miss Adams, he shot you,” the policeman persisted.

“He couldn’t have known … what he was doing,” Melanie whispered. “He could never have wanted to hurt me. He must have been insane. And now … Sid’s … gone. That proves his love … all those months … I kept telling him there was no reason to be jealous … but he never believed me … oh, Sid, if only you’d believed me …”

“Did you tell him it was over between you? Was that the motive?” the policeman asked.

“It had to be. What else could it have been? I should have listened to Zach … he wanted to get rid of Sid … I was a fool … I loved him so much that I listened to my heart.” Tears appeared in her eyes.

“Chief, for Christ’s sake, leave her alone now,” the doctor said angrily.

The chief rose hastily and left the room with a longing backward glance at the sight of greater beauty than he’d ever see again. The doctor took Melanie’s pulse, and then bent his head to listen to her heart with his stethoscope, just time enough for Melanie to look Zach full in the face and give him an all but imperceptible wink.

“She milked it!
Vito, she would have carried on for hours if the doctor hadn’t stopped her!”

“See why I love actresses, Zach?”

“I had a near-death experience. And she knew it. She
caused
it!”

“You gotta love ’em.”

“But this one? She’s on a whole different level of the beast. Actresses are my specialty, but I know when I’ve been slapped on the wrist and sent back to the minors.”

“That’s why you’re going to be able to finish this picture,
kid. If she was doing Duse today, she can do the Eastwood and Newman scenes before the ten days are up, no problem.”

“Paul proposes to her during a sleigh ride, and the fight scene takes place outdoors, on the steps leading to Clint’s mansion.”

“Not anymore. See here, on page eighty-eight, where I’ve marked it, that’s where she’s going to be thrown from a horse—a stunt double, naturally—and be injured. The proposal and the fight scenes will both take place in the hospital, with her in bed. Hair, makeup, period nightie, period cast and sling. When she’s back on her feet, which I predict will be sooner than anyone thinks, you can get her and the horse, not actually getting on, just about to. And from then on you’re home free, she plays the rest of the picture with a cast or sling or whatever. New costumes are your only problem.”

“But, Vito!”

“But what?”

“Melanie’s a piano teacher! It’s important in the book.”

“The shots of her giving lessons, you’ve got them, right? Great, so from now on she’ll start to teach singing—she can sing, can’t she?—if she can’t, you’ll dub her. Don’t be so literal-minded. The year I won the Oscar for
Mirrors
, the thing people remembered most about the film was Dolly Moon’s water breaking when her Best Supporting Actress Oscar was announced. People don’t read the book and then compare it frame by frame with the movie—ninety-five percent of
Gone With the Wind isn’t
in the film. Cheer up, Zach, no book is sacred. Who won the Pulitzer last year? See, you haven’t a clue. Why isn’t your scriptwriter here anyway? Get him here tomorrow, he can sleep on the floor.”

“Vito, for the love of God, how can we film in a hospital room? Melanie has the biggest one in the hospital, but the cameras, the crew, the lights, the cables—it’s an impossible fit.”

“How much would it cost to rent the operating room for a couple of days? In fact, why doesn’t the studio plan to build the hospital a new wing? Do well by doing good? You can build your set in the operating room, working nights. They can set up with a stand-in, wheel Melanie’s bed in just for the takes, and forget about master shots. Close-ups only. I did it once in Sicily at the beginning when I was still making spaghetti Westerns.”

“Have I ever told you I loved you?”

“More or less. Come on, Zach, I’ll buy you a drink.”

The bar of the Outlaw Inn was so crowded that Zach and Vito had to search for a table. Since the production was shut down until decisions were made, everyone but the busy studio arrivals seemed to have time on their hands and nothing better to do than gather and gossip and think about their paychecks mounting up.

“Grab that booth,” Zach said, as a group of cheery wardrobe people got up to leave. They slid in as the others slid out, with the unmatchable expertise of men who had spent their early years in New York and ridden the subways daily.

“What are you having?” Vito asked Zach.

“A Negroni, sweetheart, what else?” said a woman’s famous voice as Maggie MacGregor joined the party. “You bought me my first one, remember, pussycat? Rome, 1974, at the Hostaria dell’ Orso. I’ll never forget it.” She leaned over and kissed Vito on the lips. “If they don’t have Campari in Montana, I’m going to be very disappointed. What the hell are you doing here anyway?”

“I figured you’d show up, so I’ve been camping out waiting for you,” Vito said, laughing. He was astonishingly glad to see her, and if she wanted to start out by remembering the first time she’d interviewed him for
Cosmo
, when she’d been an unknown magazine writer, an interview followed by two weeks of lovemaking and deeply friendly mutual appreciation, it meant that any interim unpleasantness could be considered buried.

“As usual, you look like the best kind of cross between the young John Huston and the young Vittorio De Sica,” Maggie said, approvingly checking Vito out and noticing that his flash, his toughness, and his quality of bronzed warmth hadn’t suffered by either the passage of a few years or the drop in temperature. His short, curly hair was just as thick as she remembered, and of course his aristocratically large Italian nose and full mouth were as boldly Latin as ever. “Trust you, Vito, to wear heavy deerstalking tweeds and a cashmere vest in a place where everybody else is dressed like lumberjacks. Did you bring your astrakhan coat? Who’s this gent?” she asked, pointing at Zach.

“Maggie, may I present Zachary Nevsky, the director of
Chronicles.”

“I loved
Fair Play
, Zach.” Maggie trained all the force of her round, dark, Betty Boop eyes on him, weighing and judging eyes that had cajoled and terrified half of show business into admitting things they had never planned to reveal on the most public of forums, her interview program. At thirty-two she was in the prime of her prime, divinely voluptuous in all the vital places, utterly poised and an addictive presence to more than three-quarters of all Americans who watched television news shows in prime time.

“Thank you, Maggie,” Zach said respectfully.

“What exactly
is
Vito doing here?” she asked him.

“Ah … Vito … well—”

“I came up to persuade Zach to direct my new picture, Maggie, and when the fireworks happened I decided to stick around and watch.”

“What new picture?” she demanded imperiously.

“It’s top secret, too soon to announce it, even to you, love, but Zach has given me his word, haven’t you, Zach?”

“Sure have,” Zach said, knowing he was now committed to a picture he’d never heard of, as tightly as if he’d signed a deal memo. This was a neat answer to the question of how easy it had been to get Vito to jump on a plane.
Well, such an exchange was less than he already owed Vito for
Chronicles
.

“So you’ll be working together again. That’s wonderful—keep me posted. Say, Vito, do you remember the time we had dinner together at the Boutique of La Scala in Beverly Hills? Am I crazy, or was Billy pissed off that night about our reminiscing about the Mexican dog? I’ve always wondered about that … she’s never liked me, still doesn’t, but, my God, when I called to tell you that you’d won the Best Picture Oscar the day before the ceremonies, didn’t that make up for it?”

“Oh, you know how Billy used to—”

“Didn’t she realize that nothing really happened
that
time?”

“Listen, folks, I’ve got to run,” Zach said, getting up abruptly.

“Something I should know about?” Maggie queried automatically, never taking her eyes off Vito.

“My CPR class, wouldn’t do to be late for that,” Zach said, and left the bar in a hurry, before a hysterical bellow of laughter could fight its way out of his chest.

“He’s cute,” Maggie said, “very cute indeed.”

“Taken, Maggie.”

“How taken?”

“My daughter. He’s family.”

“Well … in that case …” Maggie’s momentary spark of interest disappeared.

“It’s so noisy in here I can hardly hear you,” Vito complained. “Why don’t we have our drinks someplace quiet, like your room? We have a lot to catch up on. I’m sharing Zach’s suite or I’d ask you there.”

“Come to my place. We can kick off our boots, order dinner from room service, and just relax. Nothing exciting is going to happen here tonight.”

“You’re staying here too?”

“Well, obviously, Vito,” Maggie said in amazement. “I have the Presidential Suite—my network knows how to treat a girl.”

By the time dinner was served, Vito had made Maggie believe that it was her idea to make an hour-long special on the saving of
The Kalispell Chronicles
.

“Funny, it’s not the movie itself as much as the human interest that I’m fascinated by,” he said as they lay entwined, having postponed food for an intensely thorough reunion.

“The attempted murder-suicide? But, Vito, that’s the story that everyone’s covering. There’s going to be so much written about it that people will be sick of it in ten days. I almost didn’t bother to come, but the program department insisted.”

“I agree, you’ve seen one attempted murder-suicide, you’ve seen them all, even with Melanie Adams as the victim. What interests me is what’s going to happen next. Here’s this actress who’s enjoyed the easiest and quickest rise to stardom in film history. She’s never had anything bad happen to her. Sure, she’s a huge talent, sure, she’s exquisite, but we both know those are things she was born with. And there’s something so basically
unfair
about that. She’d led a charmed life. You weren’t born to one and neither was I, and neither were most people.”

“I’m listening.”

“So I want to know
how
this trauma is going to affect her. She can’t just carry on as if nothing happened, it’s not humanly possible. One night in her bedroom she faced an ultimate nightmare, a murderous man with a gun, running her down, shooting at her
face
, narrowly missing killing her. That’s something she’ll never get over,
never
. She can’t help but realize how close she came to dying, or at the very least losing her career. How has this experience changed her? I don’t think anybody is ever going to get that story.”

“Oh, tosh. Melanie’ll hire round-the-clock bodyguards like a lot of people, and get some big German shepherds, and if she has some sense, which I doubt, she’ll be a lot more careful about the guys she lets into her room at night.
Maybe she’ll go into therapy, like all the other stars, but that’s not a story.”

“Maggie, you amaze me.” Vito tied a bedspread around his waist and picked up the phone to order dinner. He knew her so well he didn’t have to ask what she wanted to eat.

“They said a half-hour wait,” Vito announced. “Want a walnut or a piece of this delicious complimentary fruit?”

“Uh-huh. Why do I amaze you?”

“Because you can get a story no one else can get and increase your ‘legendary power,’ to quote those cover stories on you in
Time
and
Newsweek
, and all you’re doing is lying there looking sexier than ever and saying the obvious things.”

“The hell I am!” Her pride was stung.

“You just did. You took the point of view of the average housewife reading about this. So Melanie Adams almost got shot by a jealous lover. Yawn. I should be so lucky, look at her anyway, just as rich and gorgeous as ever. Yawn.”

“Hmmm.”

“What does that mean?”

“When I say ‘hmmm’ instead of ‘bullshit,’ that means you might be right. Tell me how you might be right. I’m too exhausted to figure it out for myself. You certainly haven’t slowed down with age. What are you now, Vito, nineteen?”