Naked in LA (19 page)

“That’s so off base, it’s not even funny.”

“I never said I was an expert. Hell, it’s the first time I ever got in this deep, so what would I know? I’ll pour us another drink.”

“It doesn’t make sense to be afraid of being happy. It’s in the Constitution. The right to pursue happiness is in the Constitution, it’s sanctioned by George Washington himself.”

“Actually I think it was written by Jefferson and John Adams.”

“Why would anyone be afraid of being happy?”

“I don’t know. How old were you when your mother died?”

“What are you now, my shrink?”

“I’m just saying.” He got up and went to the kitchen. I heard him dropping ice into our glasses. He brought back our drinks, laid the cold glass on my bare stomach and made me scream. Then he knelt down and licked the condensation and the dry salt off my skin.

“You smell like the sea.”

“And I’m about as wet as the Pacific Ocean, if you care to check,” I whispered.

He lifted up my hips, slipped off my bikini bottoms and smiled up at me from between my thighs. He sipped his drink, and I gasped at the shock of his cold tongue between my legs. “Let me see if I can make you happy for a while,” he said. “It is your inalienable right, after all.”

The blue TV screen flickered in the corner, dark shadows going to war in the jungles. Just then it all seemed so very far away. I closed my eyes and shut them out.

Chapter 26

We drove north up to Big Sur. We parked the car down a sandy track and walked hand in hand through a limestone tunnel in the ridgeline. Once, they shipped tan bark out of there and there were still cable joists and bolts rusted into the rocks. The beach was protected from the Pacific winds by the arms of giant bluffs that curled around the bay. You could hear the steady beat of the breakers but the cove itself was flat and cobalt blue.

Seals basked on the rocks at the point.

We grabbed our towels and ran down to the water. We swam out to the headland and found a shallow tide pool, protected by the rocks.

If there was a day when I felt the most free, this was it. I could do anything and anything was possible. The water was clear and cool, I had a handsome man beside me and a career ahead of me. There was no Ray Charles song on the radio to torment me.

We sat in each other’s arms in the water, our eyes closed and our faces turned to the sun. The only sound was the cry of the gulls overhead.

“We won’t be able to do this too much longer,” he said. “There’ll be photographers and crazed fans chasing you everywhere.”

I laughed.

“I’m serious,” he said. “If you want fame, you’ll get it. But it has its downside.”

“Without you I wouldn’t be here,” I said. “I don’t just mean the lucky breaks, I mean getting out of Havana.”

“Imagine if I’d left you there. You’d be running the local People’s Gossip Committee and performing plays warning about the evils of capitalist America. Maybe you would have grown a beard as well.”

I pretended to cuff him and he caught my arm and pulled me towards him. He kissed me and his arms went around me and he tried to slip off my bikini bottoms.

“Don’t,” I said, pulling away. “Not here!”

“No one can see us.” He lifted me up and sat me on his lap.

“How can you be so hard when the water’s so cold?”

“It’s the effect you have on me.”

“Wait till we get home.”

“I can’t.” He already had my bikini bottoms down around my knees.

Then I heard laughter and saw a group of surfers heading down the beach. I pulled away and slid them back on. “They can see us,” I said.

“They’d need a U2 spy plane to see anything from there,” he said. “Anyway, so what if they could? The newspapers would love it. You could be scandalous like Marilyn. It would be good for your career.”

“You’re crazy,” I said, and splashed him and swam back to the beach. “Anyway,” I shouted back at him, “if I wanted scandal I’d get a younger man, someone who could keep up with me!”

“I can keep up with you just fine!”

“I’m twenty-two, you’re an old guy of forty.”

“I’m thirty-seven!”

“Maybe I should get myself a stud!”

“You’ve had no complaints so far.”

“Yeah but a year or two and I’ll have worn you out. A girl has to think about her future!”

Even though he gave me a head start we reached the beach at the same time and I started to run through the shallows, laughing. He chased me and tackled me and brought me down in the sand. I was still laughing when he rolled on top of me and kissed me again.

I’d never been so happy.

“I love you,” he said.

I stopped laughing and pushed him away. I got up and ran back up the beach and grabbed my towel. “We should be getting back,” I said.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“I mean it, princess. I want you to move your things over to my place.”

“Wow. That isn’t quite the romantic proposal I was waiting for.”

“Well I’ve never actually said that to a woman before. It’s a big step for me.”

“Am I supposed to be impressed?”

“What is it you want from me?”

“I want to be married. I want a ring! That’s what I want.”

“Well, I just don’t know if I’m the marrying kind.”

“Isn’t it time you grew up, Reyes?” I turned away and started walking back up the beach.

“Can’t we just leave things as they are?”

“Sure we can, if that’s what you want.” I stubbed my toe on a rock. It hurt like hell but I didn’t even break stride, I didn’t want to spoil my dramatic exit. When I got to the car the sand was burning my feet and the leather upholstery was too hot to sit on. He took his time following, of course, so I burned my feet as well.

I didn’t say a word about it.

We didn’t say much on the drive back down the Pacific Highway. My head just kept going over and over it. Move in with him, Magdalena, what harm is it going to do? You practically live there now. He told you he loved you, isn’t that what you always wanted to hear from him?

Yes, but if I move in with him, what am I going to do the day he moves out? If I stay just a little bit apart from him at least I’m still in control of everything. I’ll still have my own place and he won’t be able to hurt me because it won’t be forever, it’ll just be for fun.

I started rehearsing what I needed to say to him in my head.
“I love you too, Reyes, but you scare the hell out of me. You’re everything I ever wanted, and while I was dreaming about you chasing me it was all okay because everything was in the future and the future is something you can put off till tomorrow.

But if I let myself love you, now, today, I mean really love you, and then one day you leave and don’t ever come back, I’m totally screwed. I love you too damn much already, so I’m going to keep you at arm’s length.

So don’t tell me you love me and don’t ask me to move in. Let’s just stay over here in the land of “maybe” a little longer because I know one day you’re going to break my heart.”

By the time I had my speech all worked out, he had already retreated too far for me to reach him. I couldn’t make myself say any of those things, so I didn’t say anything at all.

The sky had clouded over by the time we got back and it was starting to get cool. Anyway, I had scripts to read. I told him I had to head back into Westwood.

As I drove away I knew I should have felt sad, but instead I just felt relieved. I was back in control. I had been a little too happy, dangerously happy. It seemed Reyes was right about me all along. When Jefferson and Adams put together their Constitution they must have been thinking of someone other than me.

When I got home I turned on the television for the news. Soviet ships steaming towards Cuba had been turned back by Kennedy’s blockade. The news anchor said that if they had not turned around Kennedy had given orders to sink them. While we had been making love on the beach, the world had been teetering on the edge of war.

Chapter 27

Two weeks later I drove out to Reyes” place, as the sun set over the valley. I had the radio on, I heard the newsreader say something about Cuba: the missile crisis was over--the Russians had backed down. I wasn’t sure how to feel about it. I guessed there was no choice, but it meant Kennedy wouldn’t invade Cuba now and risk upsetting the Russians after he’d worked so hard to avert a world war.

I guessed I’d never go back home now.

It was the last day of filming
Wings of Eagles
, it was late and I was tired and anxious. I’d seen the rushes of that day’s work and I wasn’t sure if my performance had been strong enough. It was hard trying to steal a scene from Steve McQueen.

It would be months before the movie was released, and I still didn’t know how many of my scenes the director would cut.
Dios mio
, I had pinned everything on this. If I got good reviews I could get my own picture next year; if it bombed, there was a chance my entire career could go south with it. I just wanted a drink, perhaps a swim, then to sit and talk it over with Reyes. Somehow he always calmed me down and put things in perspective.

I found him in the bedroom, packing.

“What’s going on?”

“I just got a call. I have to get a flight to Miami tonight.”

“Tonight? Just like that?”

“That’s the way it is in this business.”

“What business, Reyes? What the hell is it you are going to Miami to do?”

He zipped the holdall and threw it on the bed. “You know I can’t talk about that. Where are you going?”

“I need a drink.”

“You need to get me to the airport.”

“Get a cab.”

The bottle clinked on the glass as I poured two fingers of rum into a glass with some ice. My hands were shaking. He stood framed in the doorway and stared at me. “What the hell is your problem, princess?”

“You, you are my problem. How long is it going to be this time, Reyes? A week? Four months? A year?”

“I don’t know.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Same as you did last time. Drive my car all over town, have lunch at Chasen’s, be a big movie star.”

“I’m not a big movie star. I’m a twenty-two-year-old sex bomb who doesn’t appreciate being left behind on her own.”

“You knew what my life was like before you got involved with me. This is my life, princess.”

“You’ve only just got back from your last mysterious adventure.”

“It’s my work, it’s not a holiday.” I watched him dial the number for a cab. He wasn’t bluffing. I slammed my glass on the counter, walked over and snatched the phone out of his hand. “I’m sorry, I’m just tired. I’ll drive you.”

He slung the holdall over his shoulder. “Good. Let’s go then.”