Lovers (69 page)

“It’s complicated, it’s about Ben, listen—”

“I couldn’t believe it when you missed the ferry,” Vito said rapidly, taking her by the arms so hard that it hurt. “Gigi, I don’t know how far things have gone with you and Winthrop, but there’s something I must tell you—I know you’re in a rush, but you should know—Zach called just before we left the hotel—”

“What’s he done to Zach?”
Gigi cried.

“Sometime after the fight at your house, Winthrop had lunch with our loan officer at the bank, he informed him that Zach has a serious cocaine problem, he said that Zach was stoned to the gills when he attacked him without any provocation, and that Zach was zonked during the whole shoot
of Long Weekend
—naturally, the bank called the studio, all hell broke loose—the studio called Zach’s agent,
the agent called Zach. Zach was probably the last to know, except me.”

“I’ll kill him!” Sasha raged. “I’ll kill him!”

“You won’t have to,” Gigi said, turning on her heel and heading for the elevator that had been rigged to go from the top to the bottom of the drydock.

As she stalked toward the platform next to the ship, she could see Ben’s furious impatience written in his face. Gigi reached the platform and mounted the steps.

“What the hell kept you?” Ben asked roughly, in a low voice so that the others wouldn’t hear. “I waited as long as I could. The press is getting restless. Damn it, I thought I was going to have to start without you.”

“Go on, make your speech.”

“Have you got the silver dollar? The earrings?”

“Yes.”

“Put them on.”

“Make your speech.”

“Not till you put them on.”

“Then don’t speak. It’s up to you.”

“Shit! This is no time to be temperamental! Can’t you see everybody’s waiting?”

“Speak, if you plan to.”

Ben turned away from her unrelenting face, picked up the microphone, and delivered the three-minute speech he’d rewritten ten times until it was perfectly smooth, graceful, and full of international compliments, explaining the reason for the replacement of the Italian coin with the American silver dollar, and proclaiming that the refitment of the
Winthrop Emerald
, the first ship of the Winthrop Line, would officially begin as soon as the coins were exchanged.

The welder raised his mask, took the plate he had just removed from the keel, and held it in front of Gigi with a gallant gesture and a smile.

She removed the Italian coin and passed it to Ben. Then she reached into the pocket of her blazer and took out the silver dollar.

“Here is the American silver dollar,” Gigi said, taking the microphone from Ben and speaking directly into it. She held the coin up between two fingers so that all the photographers could get a good picture. “As long as it remains in the keel of this ship, this ship is safe from harm.” She gave the coin to Ben, who carefully put it into the metal container that was set into the plate.

Again Gigi reached into her pocket, and brought out an emerald earring. She held it high, turning slowly, dangling it from its clip so that everyone could see its clear deep flash, a fragment of extraordinary color in the gray scene of the drydock.

“Here is an emerald. As long as it remains in the keel of this ship, the ship is safe from harm. This emerald is for the Mullers.” As Ben watched, frozen by surprise and the presence of the spectators, she placed the earring in the container, reached quickly into her pocket again, and held up the second huge, brilliant earring, rotating it in the flashes of the cameras and in front of the people in the bleachers. “Here is another emerald. As long as it remains in the keel of this ship, this ship is safe from harm. This emerald is for the Severinis.” As she placed it in the container, flashbulbs popped all around her and a questioning, curious, buzzing murmur rose from the press as hundreds of journalists asked each other who were the Mullers, who were the Severinis?

“Weld the plate into the keel,” Gigi instructed the welder, still using the microphone, as the men around her stood unable to move or speak or react, aware of the hundreds of pairs of eyes on them, eyes of reporters, eyes of photographers. They all watched in disbelief as the brief operation took place and the plate containing the silver dollar and the emeralds was welded into the body of the keel.

“This,” Gigi said into the microphone, holding up her hand again, as a silence fell so that everyone could hear her. “This is what a liar and a thief gets when he commits slander. This is for Zach Nevsky.” She turned to Ben Winthrop
and hit him in the face with every bit of force in her body.

For a brief minute, during which not a sound was heard, Gigi looked full into Ben’s eyes. Only after he had looked down to escape the blast of her brutal scorn did she leave the platform and walk across the floor of the drydock and into the elevator that took her back to the top.

“Something tells me it’s time to go,” Gigi said to Vito and Sasha, who grabbed her as she stepped off the elevator. “Even though the party’s just beginning.”

I
n the middle of an early-November afternoon, Zach Nevsky chose to sit in absolute isolation in the front row of the projection room for the screening of the editor’s assembly of
Long Weekend
. This was the first time he would see his work in one piece, as rough as film could get, put together from the takes he’d chosen, without sound effects or music. No matter how raw the assembly was, it contained the essential material that would become the finished film.

Two minutes after the lights had gone down and the film had started, the door at the back of the theater opened soundlessly and Vito Orsini looked in. He nodded at the only other person in the room, the editor, sitting in the last row where he could communicate with the projectionist. The editor nodded back, in observation of the etiquette of the screening room, which demands utter silence, and turned his attention back to the screen. A few minutes later he noticed that Vito was gone, but that a small female
figure was sitting in the last seat in the last row on the other side of the room. Incuriously he decided that if the producer had brought her in, she had a right to remain there, and he immediately forgot her existence.

More than two hours later the rough assembly ended and the lights were turned on. Zach got up, trying to stretch some of the tenseness out of his body, and called to the editor, “Thanks, Ed. Well, we’ve got a lot of work to do. So what else is new? I’ll see you tomorrow, bright and early.”

The editor left quickly, and for a few minutes Zach paced back and forth in front of the blank screen, deep in thought about what he would do in the editing room, how he would change the pacing of scenes, second by second, often frame by frame, until the picture flowed as he intended it to. Editing was crucial, the pure, delicate, and original work of shaping the finished version toward which he had been aiming throughout the shooting of the picture. Finally, still lost in abstraction, he started up the steps to the door to the theater. As he reached the door, he jumped at the sound of a muffled sob.,

“What the hell?” He looked around and spotted Gigi trying to hide behind a crumpled Kleenex, sitting in the inconspicuous seat she had been occupying since the beginning of the screening.

“You?
Hi, slugger, was it really that bad?”

“Oh,” Gigi spoke tremulously through her tears. “It’s … so silly … but I always cry … at happy endings.”

“Did anything make you smile?”

“That was the hardest part, not laughing out loud, so you wouldn’t know I was here. Oh, Zach, all those real people with raging egos, who didn’t understand each other at all, blundering around and getting it all wrong before they got it right—they were funny and sad and mean and generous and cynical and innocent—so miserably, wonderfully
human
—and yet it’s romantic, so unexpectedly romantic … how did you do it?”

“Did I really do it?”

“You
must
know you did,” Gigi declared.

“Well … let’s say that I have the tiniest little glimmer of hope that after I spend a couple of months beating this thing into shape, maybe, just maybe, it’ll turn out to be ever so slightly better than I expected.” As he spoke, Zach knocked steadily on the wooden armrest of one of the seats.

“Still superstitious, I see,” Gigi commented in a scoffing tone, giving her armrest a little rap. Just in case.

“How many Kleenexes did you use?”

Gigi groped around in her lap. “Eight, no … nine, counting the last one. But there were three different happy endings,” she said reprovingly, “so it only counts for three apiece. I’m not a fountain.”

“Oh, you noticed all three, did you? And I thought I’d managed to sneak at least one of them in. Nine, huh? That’s something I can probably double in the editing. Maybe … just maybe … it’ll turn out to be a date movie.”

“You mean where the girl decides what they’re going to see?”

“Right. Of course, you’re not the average focus group. Perhaps you just cry easily.”

“Don’t you remember better than that?” Her gently questioning tone was magically complicated. Many things could have been read into it: nostalgia, reproach, wistfulness, teasing indifference.

“Okay, you don’t cry easily,” Zach said hastily, afraid to interpret anything she said. “Or rather, you didn’t. You could have changed since you’ve started punching out guys all over the front pages.”

“Once, don’t exaggerate,” Gigi said primly, still thrilled by memory of the physical strength that she hadn’t realized she possessed.

“You’re lucky that gent didn’t hit you back. Of course, it would have made him look even worse, if possible, than he looks now, thanks to those photographers and reporters.
Gigi, you saved my reputation, and I still haven’t thanked you properly.”

“I did get your letter.”

“Certain kinds of gratitude can’t be covered by the best letter ever written. Thank you, Gigi. You were a … total wonder.”

“You’re welcome. Any time. Tell me, Zach, if I hit you, what would you do?” Gigi asked irrepressibly, putting her wad of Kleenexes into her handbag.

“Hold you down and tickle your ears.”

“You know too much,” Gigi muttered, blushing. Only Zach knew under what particular circumstances she peed in her pants.

“I think it’s cute. Don’t worry, I’d never tell anybody. Hey, how about a pizza? Doesn’t a possible date movie call for a real pizza?”

“I could eat two. After a bad movie I have to have a chocolate soda, after a good movie I yearn for a pizza, I don’t know why, but it never fails. It must be something in my blood chemistry. Maybe I should become a professional movie critic?”

“You’d gain a ton. Let’s get out of here.”

Zach automatically ordered the pizza with extra pepperoni, extra cheese, extra sauce, and triple anchovies, no green pepper, black olives on the side, two beers. Gigi listened demurely, thinking that some things are never forgotten, pizza preferences high among them.

When it arrived, he carefully completed the imperfect separation of the slices with a knife and handed her a slice, presenting her with its outside edge. Gigi folded the sides of the slice together, took two medium-sized bites out of the inside point, and handed it back to Zach, who ate the rest of it, first giving her another slice. They were so hungry that, except for groans of satisfaction, they didn’t speak until they’d finished the pizza and ordered another. Halfway through the second pizza, Gigi stopped.

“I don’t think I can eat any more. My mouth wants to but my stomach can’t.”

“Come on, how can you be finished already? Points, what are points? Now, edges fill you up, they’re nourishing, but points … there’s nothing to them.”

She was so small, he fretted, she looked too thin, she needed fattening up. All her mascara had disappeared during the screening and she looked so young—it was criminal to run around looking less than sixteen when you were so adorable that no man could look at you without indecent thoughts. He should speak strictly to her about that, but he didn’t dare. She took poorly to criticism, he knew that only too well.

“The points are the juiciest part, that’s where all the good stuff clumps up,” Gigi explained patiently.

“You never appreciated the edges,” Zach said, shaking his head in disapproval.

“You never appreciated the points,” Gigi retorted.

“You never even
tried
to like the edges,” Zach insisted.

“I refuse to argue with you about something that gets me what I want,” Gigi said, “and gets you what you want.”

“Okay, but you’re wrong,” Zach said stubbornly.

“Right.”

“Right? You mean you agree that you’re wrong?” Zach asked in disbelief.

“No, I don’t agree, I just don’t think it’s worth having this particular discussion ever again.” Gigi’s eyes were alight with a special kind of mischief that no one who knew her could see without a sinking feeling. Zach, still eating, missed it.

“That leaves us with a big problem,” Zach said reluctantly, as he finished the pizza and realized that Gigi hadn’t added a single word to her last sentence. “What else are we going to talk about?”