Picture Perfect Part 11

He had been supportive and considerate, probably because she hadn't started shrieking accusations to the press the minute she'd laid eyes on him at the police station. Not that she ever would do such a thing; Alex should have understood that much. She didn't mean to hurt him- she had never wanted to-she only wanted to protect herself. She'd never thought that the two were mutually exclusive.

However, Alex did, so he had found her. But the life he had spread before her like a winning hand was not what it had seemed. She'd live in Alex's magnificent castles, smile into his smoky eyes while the cameras flashed, spend the hollow parts of the night blossoming under his touch, and still, it could happen again.

In the past, even Alex's promises hadn't prevented a reoccurrence.

She didn't have a choice. She wished he could see that as clearly as she did.

He would be coming into the bedroom any minute to pack for the Friday night red-eye flight, but she was not going to Scotland. Ca.s.sie stood up, grabbing an old canvas tote bag with the name of a public television station written across it. She threw as many pieces of clothing as she could inside and then grabbed a handful of underwear and shoved it into the gaps. She pulled a baseball cap scrawled with the name of Alex's production company low on her head and she walked out the door of the bedroom.

It was not a prison, at least not in the usual sense of the word, so the people Ca.s.sie pa.s.sed on the way out did not think of stopping her and asking where she was going. She walked by the pool and the maze and the flower gardens. She went out a back gate of the scrolled iron fence and cut across a neighbor's lush yard, trespa.s.sing until she came to a street.

She walked faster and faster, wary of being followed. After a while, she started to run. Her footsteps grew heavier, but she forced herself to keep going. And hours later, when she thought she was safe, she sank to her knees, and she made herself remember.

1989-1993 P ETRELS, hearty Arctic birds, live on the highest parts of the cliffs. From their proud perches they can swoop down on the birds that are not nearly as overweening, calling out songs of their magnificence which carry over the freezing seas.

Once, there lived a petrel who was so arrogant he could not find a mate among his flock. He decided that he would marry a human, and conjured a spell to give himself the form of a man. He sewed together the thickest sealskins to make a stunning parka, and he preened until he was remarkably handsome. Of course, his eyes were still the eyes of a petrel, so he made himself dark gla.s.ses to finish his disguise, and looking like this, he set his kayak into the water to find a wife. At the same time, a widower lived on a quiet sh.o.r.e with his daughter Sedna, a girl so beautiful that word of her form and features spread far beyond the tribe. Many men came to woo her, but Sedna would not marry. None of their pleas could break through her pride to reach her heart. One day a handsome man arrived in a splendid sealskin parka. He did not drag his kayak onto the beach, but hovered at the edge of the breaking waves and called to Sedna. He started to sing to her. "Come, love," he chanted, "to the land of the birds, where you will never be hungry, where you will rest on soft bear skins, where you will have feathers to clothe you and ivory necklaces, where your lamps will always be full of oil and your pot full of meat."

The song wrapped itself around Sedna's soul and drew her closer to the kayak. She sailed with the stranger over the sea, away from her home and her father. For a while she was happy. The petrel made their home on a rocky cliff and caught fish for her daily, and Sedna was so enchanted with her husband that she never thought to truly look around her. But one day the petrel's gla.s.ses slipped off his nose and Sedna looked into his eyes. She glanced away and saw a home built not of thick pelts but of rotting fish skins. She slept not on a bear skin but on the tough hide of a walrus. She felt the icy needles of the ocean spray and knew she had married a man who was not what she had thought he was. Sedna cried with grief, and although the petrel loved her, he could not stop her tears. A year pa.s.sed, and Sedna's father came to visit. When he reached the cliff where she lived, the petrel was out hunting for fish, and Sedna begged her father to take her back home. They ran back down to his kayak and set out into the sea. They had not been paddling long when the petrel came back to his nest. He shouted for Sedna, but his cry of pain was swallowed by the howl of wind and sea. Other petrels found him and told him where Sedna was. He spread his arms, his wingspan blotting out the sun, and flew toward the boat that held Sedna and her father. As he watched them paddle even more furiously, the petrel grew angry. He beat his wings into the wind, creating currents, forcing a surge of icy waves. A storm raged up at his cries, and the sea became so frenzied the boat rocked from side to side. Sedna's father realized the bird was so powerful that even the ocean was furious at the loss of the petrel's wife. He knew that to save himself, he had to sacrifice his daughter.

He threw Sedna into the frigid water. She sputtered and splashed, her skin blue with the cold. She managed to grab at the side of the boat tightly with her fingers, but her father, terrified by the thunderous beating of the petrel's wings above his head, hit at her hands with the kayak paddle. Sedna's fingertips broke off and fell into the sea, where they turned into whales and dove away. Resur- facing, Sedna caught hold of the gunwhale again, but her father struck out a second time. The middle digits of her fingers shattered like ice and fell into the water to become the seals. One more time she managed to reach the boat, but her father batted at her hands until the third joints broke off and became walruses, and Sedna sank heavy to the bottom of the sea. Sedna became a mighty spirit who controls the sea creatures that were born of her fingers. Sometimes she whips together storms and crashes kayaks against the rocks. Sometimes she causes famines by luring the seals away from the hunters. Never does she break the surface of the water, where she might again encounter the petrel.

-Eskimo Indian legend

CHAPTER TEN.

I'M going to tell you the truth.

But the story starts long before I'd ever met you, long before anyone had ever heard of Alex Rivers. It begins on the day that Connor Murtaugh moved into the house next door-the same day I went home to dinner and told my mother that when I grew up, I planned to be a boy.

I was five years old, a prim and proper little girl in training to be a southern lady. The fact that we lived in Maine hadn't kept my mother from schooling me to become the finest Georgia peach. I could read a little, and out of necessity I could even cook simple things like soup and grilled cheese and, of course, strong black coffee. I had mastered the art of tossing my hair over my shoulder and lowering my lashes to get what I wanted. I smiled without showing my teeth. Most adults found me charming, but I had no friends my own age. Bringing them home to play was unthinkable, you see, which made most of the kids in school think I was strange or stuck-up. And then Connor's family moved from an apartment across the lake to the house beside mine.

I spent that first day helping him carry boxes and lamps, answering his questions about my birth date, my most hated food, and where you could find fat worms for bait. He overwhelmed me, and for the first time I began to see there was more to living than keeping your knees pressed together when you sat on a chair, and brushing your hair one hundred strokes each night. So I traded my Mary Janes for an old pair of Connor's sneakers that fit when I jammed rolled-up socks into the toes. I learned the fine arts of sprinkling salt on slugs to dry them out and skidding belly-first across mud puddles.

I credit Connor for many reasons in my decision to become an anthropologist, but especially because he was the first person to show me how wonderful the earth feels when you squeeze it through your fingers.

These days my hands are almost always dirty, and although Connor has been dead for seventeen years, he's still on my mind.

I don't believe in UFOs, or reincarnation, or ghosts, but I do believe in Connor. All I can say is that from time to time, I feel him. He shows up whenever things are going wrong. I think it is probably my fault that he never got to fly off to heaven, or wherever old souls go, since he spent his childhood taking care of me and apparently still feels compelled to do so.

So, you see, I was expecting him that hot Monday in August when I was pacing the halls of the anthropology department, waiting to hear about tenure. I had been an a.s.sistant professor at UCLA for two years now, after having received my B.S., M.A., and Ph.D. there. I wanted tenure. People who had been there less time than I had made a.s.sociate prof. I had finally threatened Archibald Custer, the head of the department, with a bald-faced lie about alternative options at an eastern college. I wasn't really expecting to receive tenure, because at twenty-seven I was still younger than even the adjunct profs and the lecturers. But it wasn't my fault it had taken them longer to get to the same place I was. I was proud of the fact that I had decided thirteen years earlier what I was going to do with my life, and then stuck fast to my original plan.

I was leaning against the water cooler that stood outside the departmental secretary's office when I felt the light pressure on my spine that I knew meant Connor was watching. If he was here, I reasoned, the news couldn't be good. "They're going to pa.s.s me over," I whispered.

There-I had said it, and as I admitted to my lack of success, the words fell to the floor in front of me, heavy and sluggish like failure always is.

"I hate being affiliated with a university," I said quietly, running my hand down the wall.

It was not the truth. I hated the political bulls.h.i.t, but I fully embraced the money and the grants. I loved the way the red tape magically disappeared when I tried to open an excavation in another country. And I knew that in a week I'd forgive Custer, and all the people who received promotions. I'd forgive the whole board that voted me down. This year, I'd have to figure out what it was that I was doing wrong, and work a little harder.

"You know what I wish," I said, "I wish the good things in life weren't all cl.u.s.tered together when you were little."

They weren't, for most people. When was the last time I'd walked across the campus barefoot? Or missed a cla.s.s because I had overslept?

When was the last time I had gotten dead drunk or awakened in a stranger's bed or come up short of cash at the supermarket?

Never. I didn't let myself live on the edge, although I didn't really think I was missing anything. Spontaneity made me uncomfortable.

My single-mindedness was what was going to get me a promotion.

Someday.

But I had this sense that if Connor could come back to life, he would be disgusted with me. He'd want me to do the things we used to talk about: live on Tahiti for a couple of months, take up bonsai or rock climbing.

I tried to push Connor out of my mind in preparation for my meeting with Archibald Custer. He was standing in the open doorway of his office, monolithic, as if he expected to conjure whomever he wanted to see by the sheer force of his position. He was argumentative, pigheaded, and s.e.xist. I didn't much like him, but I knew how to play by his rules.

"Ah, Miss Barrett," he said. He spoke by holding a transmitter to a box built into his throat, his own vocal cords having been severed due to throat cancer a few years back. The undergraduates thought he was creepy, and I had to agree. Except for his height, he always reminded me a little of the sketches done of h.o.m.o habilis, and I had to applaud him for choosing such a form-fitting profession.

He didn't like me either, not only because I happened to be female and young, but also because I was a physical anthropologist. He was a cultural anthropologist-made his name by squatting right down with the Yanomamo years ago. There had always been a friendly rivalry between the two camps of anthropology, but I couldn't forgive him for what he'd done after I'd defended my dissertation. I had written a piece about whether violence was innate or learned, an age-old debate between physical and cultural anthropologists. The popular belief tended toward a cultural approach, saying that although aggression was innate, planned aggression-such as war-was brought about by the pressure of living in societies, not by our evolutionary history. I argued back, saying that this might be true, but society itself wouldn't have come about unless the territorial nature bred into our genes required man to make rules.

All in all, it was a decent reb.u.t.tal to the cultural anthropologists, and this had Custer fuming. My first year as a lecturer he'd a.s.signed me to courses that all ranked under cultural anthropology, and when I complained and asked to go on a field site, he had simply raised his eyebrows and said he thought it might do me some good to become more well-rounded.

Now he waved me into his office and motioned me toward the chair that faced his tremendous desk. He was grinning, G.o.dd.a.m.n him, as he started to speak. "I'm sorry to tell you-"

I jumped up from the chair, unable to hear any more. "Then don't tell me at all," I said, smiling tightly. "I a.s.sume I've been pa.s.sed over, thank you very much, and I'll just save you the trouble." I took a step toward the door.

"Miss Barrett."

I stopped with my hand on the doork.n.o.b and turned.

"Sit down."

I slipped into the chair again, wondering how many points this had set me back in Custer's mind.

"You'll be on an unusual a.s.signment this first quarter," he continued.

"Indeed, you're always pining away about going on location."

I leaned forward in the chair. Were they starting some new field cla.s.s during the fall semester? My mind raced through the possible sites: Kenya, Sudan, the Isles of Scilly. Would I be heading the group, or working with someone else?

"Now, I'm afraid the a.s.sociate professorship isn't going to be a possibility this term," Custer said. "Instead, we've recommended you for a sabbatical."

I tightened my fingers around the armrests of the chair. I hadn't applied for a sabbatical. "If you'll excuse me, Archibald, I have to say in my own defense that for the past three years-"

"You've been exemplary. Yes, I know. We all do. But sometimes"- he winced here-"sometimes that just isn't enough."

Tell me about it, I thought.

"We've chosen you to reopen the old UCLA site at Olduvai Gorge.

Get it ready for a freshman field expedition," Custer said, sitting back in his chair.

I set my jaw. They wanted me to be a gofer-to set up for a cla.s.s I wasn't worthy enough to teach. It was a job any graduate student could do. It was not what I had worked so hard for, what I had written my dissertation for. It was not what I had planned as a step up on the steady climb of my career. "Surely I'm not the best-trained person for this job,"

I hedged.

Custer shrugged. "You're the only faculty member who hasn't been . . . scheduled . . . for cla.s.ses next semester," he said.

I listened to the words he spoke, but clearly heard the truth. He was telling me I was the only one who was expendable.

LESS THAN THIRTY-SIX HOURS LATER, I WAS IN TANZANIA, SITTING under the cool linen shade of a makeshift awning on the tiny piece of Olduvai Gorge that UCLA had requisitioned for its field cla.s.ses. I was still angry at being banished, but I hadn't argued with Custer. It would have been a mistake. After all, I'd have to come back in ten weeks and beg for a teaching a.s.signment.

I'd tried to convince myself that this little sojourn would be better than I expected. After all, Olduvai Gorge had been Louis Leakey's first site in East Africa. Maybe I'd hit it big too: discover the missing link, or something else that would set my colleagues on their collective ears and change the current outlook on human evolution. The odds were against it, but I was still young and there were millions of years of history left to unearth.

However, the scouting I'd done in the morning had convinced me that like the other anthropologists who scoured the site for decades after Leakey's discoveries, I wasn't going to turn up anything new. I had no idea how I was going to keep myself busy for ten weeks. Setting up the site for the field cla.s.s meant pinpointing the spots where an excavation would be likely to yield fossils, but it seemed the cla.s.s could dig in the bas.e.m.e.nt of Fowler Hall and have just as much luck as they would here.

As the sun climbed higher, I walked casually across the site, rummaging in my big straw bag for the book I'd begun to read on the plane. I glanced up, making sure that I was alone before I pulled it out.

Ridiculous. My heart was pounding, as if I were about to be discovered with a gram of cocaine. It was only a dime-store romance novel, my one vice. I didn't smoke, I rarely drank, I'd never done drugs, but I was completely addicted to those stupid books on whose covers an overripe woman lounged in the arms of a drifter. I was so embarra.s.sed that I wrapped them in brown parcel paper, like I used to do with textbooks in elementary school. I would read them on public buses and on the benches outside at UCLA, pretending they were anthropological treatises or Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction.

I couldn't help myself. I knew the psychological explanation for this had something to do with what was lacking in my own life, but I told myself it didn't matter. I had started a few years ago after my roommate, Ophelia, had posed for a book cover in the arms of some glorious man.

I had read that first paperback, and then I couldn't stop. There was solace in knowing that never in any tribe or any ancient race had people existed like this. It made me feel, well, more normal.

But that didn't keep me from hoping, I suppose. Still, if a romance novel was going to spring to life, it would be with someone like Ophelia in its t.i.tle role. She was beautiful and statuesque and s.e.xy-not simple and practical, like me. It would have been nice to be the kind of woman for whom wars were started, but I was not holding my breath. To date, no knight was wearing my colors, no adventurers had come to find me across time and distance. Then again, I lived by choice in L.A., where beautiful women were the norm, not the exception. On the other hand, in these books there was no plastic surgery, no concealing cosmetics, no step aerobics cla.s.ses. I thought of Helen of Troy, of Petrarch's Laura, and I wondered if they really had looked so different from me.

"Excuse me," a voice said. "Your tent is in my viewfinder."

I started at the unfamiliar sound and instinctively buried the paperback in the soft red sand. My head snapped up to see two men, their faces silhouetted against the high sun. "Pardon me?" I said, coming to my feet.

The men were clearly not natives; their foreheads were sunburnt and peeling and they hadn't the good sense to be wearing hats. "My viewfinder," the taller man said. "You're going to have to move."

I bristled. "I'm afraid you're wrong," I said. "This site belongs to the University of California."

The man threw up his hands, disgusted, and turned his back on me.

The second man held out his hand. "I'm George Farley," he said.

"I'm an A.D." He gestured over his shoulder. "Edward here is our D.P."

I smiled at him warily. A.D., D.P. "Ca.s.sandra Barrett," I said, hoping this was the appropriate response.

George waved an arm toward the sweep of the gorge. "We're filming a movie here, and when Edward was doing long-range pans today, he kept getting your tent. You see, we were under the impression we'd be the only ones here this time of year."

A movie? How they had gotten permission to film in Tanzania was mind-boggling, but I could see that the already excavated sites on the edge of the Serengeti plain would save the production costs of bulldozing their own. "Well," I said, "I'm sorry to disappoint you. But I'm working here too."

"Tell her to take the tent down, then."

The cinematographer-the D.P. -had not even bothered to turn around when he spoke, and my hands clenched at my sides. "I'm afraid I can't," I said, biting off each word. "It's too hot to work without an awning."

"Work?" The cinematographer pivoted, and slowly smiled. George Farley's eyes burned like a man who's discovered gold. "You're an anthropologist?"

Against my better judgment, I nodded.

"Ah," Edward sighed. "There is a G.o.d."

George led me back beneath my linen awning. "You're a UCLA anthropologist? You're here on an excavation?"

"Believe me," I said, "this isn't exactly an excavation site." I explained the program at the university; the various field sites used around Africa to teach excavation hands-on.

"So you're not really working," George pressed. "You might have some . . . free time."

"I might," I said.

"Three hundred dollars a day," George said. "Yours, if you'll agree to be a technical advisor on the movie."

It was more than I made at UCLA; it was certainly enticing. Without knowing a thing about the movie, I thought of how tempting it would be to actually profit from Custer's enforced sabbatical. I thought of the satisfaction I would get from s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g Custer in a way that didn't jeopardize my future at the university.

When I did not say anything, George jumped forward to fill the silence. "It's a film about an anthropologist, and the star, Alex Rivers, insists that we get him the real McCoy so he can learn about excavation firsthand."

"Insists?" Edward interrupted, smirking. "Demands."

I raised an eyebrow. "Don't you have one already?" I said. "Seems to me you'd have thought of that before you came all the way out here."

George cleared his throat. "You're right, and we did, but he had to leave unexpectedly about a week ago."

"In the middle of the night," Edward added, under his breath. "Probably by force."

George gave him a dark look. "Alex isn't as bad as all that," he said, turning back to me. "We wired the States but it would take time we don't have to find someone and you . . . well, you-"

"I've dropped into your viewfinder," I said lightly.

"Three hundred and fifty," George said. "And a room at the lodge in town."

It wasn't ethical; it wasn't something Archibald Custer would condone. It would mean spending all my free time babysitting a spoiled movie star who'd already fired someone, instead of poking through the site for my own research. I opened my mouth, prepared to decline their offer graciously, when I thought of Connor. Don't you ever wonder what you're missing?

"Well," I said, smiling brilliantly, "when do we start?"