Picture Perfect Part 18

"When did you get married, Alex?" "What's she got that no one else has?" "Does she know about you and Marti LeDoux?"

I blinked. "Marti LeDoux?" I murmured, smiling.

Alex groaned. "Don't even ask," he said.

My eyesight came back into focus just in time to see one reporter straining at the velvet rope that held him back. He pointed to my stomach. "Should we be expecting a little Rivers in the near future?"

Alex moved so fast that even the cameras couldn't catch him lunging at the reporter and grabbing hold of his shirt collar. I stretched out my hand toward Alex, trying to give the reporter the benefit of the doubt for what might have been a completely innocuous question. But before I could say anything to Alex, a mountain of flesh pushed past me, trailing a cloud of heavy floral perfume and a riot of teased red hair.

The woman pulled Alex away from the reporter and anch.o.r.ed him to her side with her arm around his waist, then came to stand beside me and put her arm around me as well. "Play nice with the other boys, Alex," she murmured, "or you won't be playing at all."

Alex's eyes burned at her, but he managed to smile for the curious crowd. "I thought you were going to send out a press release, Michaela,"

he said through clenched teeth. "Not invitations."

The woman rolled her eyes. "Is it my fault you're a bigger draw than G.o.d?" She winked at me. "Since Alex doesn't seem to be doing the honors, I'm Michaela Snow. I handle Alex's public relations. Though from what you've seen, you probably know that Alex does not relate very well to the public." She turned her attention back to Alex. "And for your information, I did send out your release-but you've got to admit that America's most sought-after bachelor marrying an anthropologist, of all things, is bound to stir up some interest. The tabloids have been having a field day with you-John's got them in the car in case you want a laugh." She looked at me. "According to the Star, you are a Martian queen who's zapped Alex with an extraterrestrial love warp." She pushed Alex a few feet away. "Go on," she said. "The sooner you do it, the sooner it's over."

I watched Alex walk toward the reporters and the cameras, and heard the whir of tape being set into motion in antic.i.p.ation of a Big Announcement. Michaela put her arm around my shoulders. "You'll get used to it," she said.

I doubted it. I didn't understand why these people had gotten up in the middle of the night to take notes and ask questions about something that wasn't any of their business. I suddenly wished I were back in my dusty office at UCLA, where I could sit for days without a student interrupting or a phone ringing, and where I was just one of many. I was shocked at the idea that just by a.s.sociation with Alex, I would have to travel back roads, wear dark gla.s.ses, and let someone else fill my prescriptions. I could have Alex for the rest of my life, but my life wouldn't be the way it had been, and that was the price I was going to pay.

Alex was making love to the cameras. He looked just the way he looked when we were in bed; he turned the same sloe-eyed gaze and lazy smile on the black lenses and shutters that faced him. "Hottest d.a.m.n place I've ever been," Alex was saying, in response to a question about Tanzania. He glanced at me, letting his stare run the entire length of my body until I blushed. "Of course, some days were hotter than others."

"Let us meet her, Alex," someone called. And another voice: "Are you legally married?"

Alex laughed, starting to walk toward me. "Well, the ceremony wasn't conducted by a Zulu chief, if that's what you mean. You're going to have to take my word on this, since the marriage certificate's already been forwarded to my lawyer for safekeeping." He took my hand and gave a quick squeeze. "May I introduce my wife, Ca.s.sandra Barrett Rivers."

The cameras flashed, but this time I was ready for them. I smiled, not quite knowing what const.i.tuted etiquette at a three a.m. makeshift press conference. Questions started rolling toward me, the words tangling up with each other: "How did you meet?" "Were you a fan of his?" "Is he a good lover?"

Alex lowered his head to mine. "I'm going to kiss you now," he said.

"Turn your head to the right."

Startled, wondering why he was giving me directions for something that up to this point had been natural for us, I stared at him. "Why?"

I said.

Alex smiled, pretending to nuzzle my ear. "Because that way I'm up-camera," he said. "The PR's more important for me than for you."

He turned me so that the cameras had the best view of our profiles, his hands locked on my upper arms. "This is your last photo opportunity," he said to the crowd. "You forget I'm still on my honeymoon."

He bent toward me, and I watched his lips silently form two words before touching mine. Be brave.

I closed my eyes and pretended not to hear the clapping, instead letting my arms creep up around Alex's neck and holding him tight against me. When he broke away from me, I blinked, wondering when he had lifted me off the ground, when his leg had slipped between mine.

"Beautiful," he whispered, pulling me away from the reporters.

"Hepburn couldn't have done it better."

Speechless, I turned from him. Did he think I was acting?

Michaela rattled off a list of things that apparently needed Alex's attention and couldn't wait even until morning. I moved woodenly at Alex's side, carrying my big striped bag in front of me like a shield.

The reporters picked up their shoulder bags and their coats, dragging along cameramen and photographers in their wake. It seemed to me that the entire airport had cleared out now that Alex had given the word to leave. We moved through the quiet halls behind Michaela, toward an exit, to the car that would take me to a home I had never seen.

It was only because Michaela was twice as wide as most people that I didn't immediately notice the figure directly in our path. Ophelia stood perfectly straight, unwilling to give an inch, her eyes locked not on me but on the celebrity at my side.

I had not called to tell her I was getting married, because I felt guilty about having a ceremony that she would not be able to attend. So I had wired her after the wedding, apologizing for having to tell her after the fact. As I scribbled out the note for the Western Union man, I had imagined her eyes going wide, her lips breaking into the perfect curve of a smile. I had wanted to tell her that I'd worn her black dress the first night I had dinner with Alex; that he'd removed the lacy bra she'd loaned me. Instead I'd settled for the ambiguous: HAVE MARRIED ALEX RIVERS STOP HOME NOVEMBER 14 STOP BE HAPPY FOR ME.

I had expected Ophelia to live up to the stories I'd told Alex about her and do something outrageous when she first met him. Knowing her, I thought she might wrap her arms and legs around him and kiss him senseless, figuring it would be her only chance. She might beg him to get her a meeting with his agent at CAA, or grovel until he gave her a bit part in one of his movies. When it came to things like that, I had told Alex, Ophelia had no shame.

But Ophelia stood very quietly, not even saying h.e.l.lo to me. She stared at Alex, not with the pure hero worship I'd expected but as if she was sizing him up. My face flamed with pride-here was the first person to question if Alex Rivers was good enough for me, instead of the other way around.

I broke away from Alex and ran to Ophelia, hugging her tightly. "I am so glad to see you," I said, grasping her hands. Ophelia, struck dumb, was still staring at Alex. I smiled-one day, when she knew Alex as my husband and not as a celebrity, we'd look back on this and laugh.

But as she continued to stand there, silent, I realized there was some current running between Alex and Ophelia that charged the air around me and made me afraid to move. In the ten years I'd known Ophelia, I had never seen her like this. I searched for a hint of the woman who'd lost her job as an office temp by stripping off her blouse and xeroxing her b.r.e.a.s.t.s on a co-worker's dare; the woman who had painted a bikini on her body with ketchup and worn it to a casting call in hopes of shocking a director into a role in a Hunt's commercial. The Ophelia I'd lived with did not know the meaning of the word "sedate," had never been cowed by anyone in her life.

Ophelia dragged her eyes to my neck, and I knew what was keeping her quiet. Underneath the carefully painted base makeup she'd seen what none of the reporters had-the fading sallow fingers that still ringed my throat. Unwilling for her to get the wrong idea, I pulled Alex closer. "This is Alex Rivers," I said softly. "Alex, Ophelia Fox, my roommate."

Alex turned the full force of his smile on Ophelia. "Former roommate," he clarified, holding out his hand to shake. Ophelia coolly pressed her palm against his and then turned to me, whispering so that only I could hear. "Not if I have anything to say about it," she murmured.

SHE DIDN'T MENTION THE BRUISES. SHE DIDN'T NEED TO. THE TRUTH was that she'd been harboring doubts before our plane even landed, and she had her case prepared. Her argument was simple: Ophelia thought Alex was setting me up for some kind of terrible fall, or why else would he have insisted on marrying me so quickly in the middle of nowhere, instead of having a big Hollywood wedding everyone would remember for years? "And," she hissed as we left Alex and John at the baggage claim area, "I saw that kiss for the cameras. He upstaged you, Ca.s.sie.

Everyone knows the woman gets to face the cameras."

I laughed then. Of all the people watching, Ophelia was probably the only one who had noticed. "What about all those stars who run off to Vegas?" I pointed out. "G.o.d, look at how many reporters showed up at three in the morning just to see what I looked like-can you imagine trying to have a private little wedding here?"

Ophelia jabbed her finger at my chest. "My point exactly," she said, leaving me to figure out the faulty logic. Exasperated, she rolled her eyes. "It shouldn't have been a private little wedding," she said. "It should have been a media blitz. Every woman in this country wants to know who Alex Rivers married. So why does he hold a ceremony in the f.u.c.king Amazon and then sneak into the airport in the middle of the night like he doesn't want anyone to see you?"

"Maybe because he loves me?" I countered. "The last thing on earth I would have wanted was a huge wedding on a studio's back lot."

Ophelia shook her head. "But that's not the way it's done, not in Hollywood. There's something wrong here." She glanced up at me from beneath lowered lashes, and suddenly I understood just what Ophelia felt was wrong: In the natural order of the movie industry, Alex Rivers should have been matched with a woman who was stunning and ostentatious and larger than life; a woman who would never have agreed to a quiet ceremony; a woman who understood intuitively that a kiss was also a photo opportunity. Alex Rivers should have married someone like Ophelia herself.

I had never had anything Ophelia wanted before. When we went out, she had been the one to turn heads, the one to make people whisper behind their hands. If anything, I had been the foil to her beauty.

But as we waited for Alex and John to bring out the baggage, I could see Ophelia's eyes darting around to the few other cars and limos, hoping to spot someone who recognized a celebrity's chauffeured car and who, by a.s.sociation, was watching her. It was probably the first time she hadn't been the center of attention when she was out with me, and the bottom line was that now, she never would be.

I had misread Ophelia's reaction to Alex. She was measuring him up, yes, and the traces of bruises on my neck had thrown her off, but her original objection to him had been his choice of mates. Ophelia didn't intentionally mean to slight me-she hadn't thought that far into it. She just could not understand why someone who had his pick of brightly colored macaws would choose, instead, a simple wren.

My hands clenched at my sides. It seemed my whole world had been reversed. Ophelia, whom I'd considered my best friend, was jealously carping about my marriage. Alex, whom I'd expected to be a shallow, conceited megalomaniac, had protected me, bared his secrets, and st.i.tched himself so neatly into the weave of my heart that letting him go would mean unraveling myself.

As if my thoughts had evoked him, he stepped into the rosy outside light with John, each of them carrying a suitcase. Immediately Alex scanned the limousine island. His eyes reached mine, and the muscles at his shoulders seemed to relax. He had been looking for me.

I kept my eyes on Alex while I answered Ophelia. "This isn't wrong,"

I said quietly. "And he's not what you're expecting." I glanced back at her to gauge her reaction. "We have a lot in common," I added, but that's all I would say, because I wouldn't break Alex's trust.

"I hope so," Ophelia said. She stretched out her hand to brush the vanishing spots on my neck that she knew I could not discuss. "Because you've just moved into a whole different world, and he's the only person you know there."

ALEX'S HOUSE IN BEL-AIR SPRAWLED OVER TWELVE GATED ACRES AND looked exactly like the plantations I'd sketched in my mind when my mother used to tell me about her childhood in the South. It was nearly five in the morning when we arrived, and I stirred from Alex's shoulder as the car made its way down the long gravel driveway, wishing that my mother had seen where I ended up.

It was not the type of house most actors kept in L.A. Modesty had replaced the grandeur of the Golden Age of Hollywood, simply because it bought the celebrities a measure of solitude. But Alex, who had grown up in a trailer park, would want something like this. My throat tightened as I realized that Alex, who so valued his privacy, was willing to trade it all for the opulence he'd missed as a child. I wondered briefly if it worked for him; if cultivating this image for the public erased the memories.

Although it was early, there was a steady hum of activity around the house. A gardener was clipping at a hedge that ran the length of the left side of the house, and a thin stream of smoke arched from one of the small white buildings out back. "What do you think?" Alex said.

I drew in my breath. "It's magnificent," I said. I had never seen a residence like this in my life; and I realized that I would do everything in my power to keep Alex from seeing the tiny apartment I'd lived in with Ophelia, simply so I wouldn't feel embarra.s.sed.

Alex helped me out of the car. "I'll give you the grand tour later,"

he said. "I imagine you'd like nothing better now than a soft mattress."

I grinned at the very thought of it: Alex and I tangled under the sheets in a bed that was wider than just one of us. I followed him up the marble steps, smiling as John held the door open for us. "Here you go, Mrs. Rivers," he said, and I blushed.

Alex brushed past John and propelled me up a glorious, winding staircase that could have been a set for Gone With the Wind. "I'll introduce you to everyone else later," he said. "They're dying to meet you."

What, I thought, have they been told? But before I could say anything, Alex opened the door to an oval sitting room that smelled of fresh wind and lemons. He crossed the room and closed a large bay window, letting lace curtains flutter to rest. "This is the bedroom," he said.

I looked around. "Don't you have a bed?"

Alex laughed, pointing out a door that I hadn't noticed, blended between the blue and white stripes of the wallpaper. "Through there."

It was the largest bed I had ever seen, stepped onto a miniature platform and pillowed by a big down comforter. I sat on the edge of it, testing, and then I opened up the bag I'd been carrying since we first left Kenya and took out the things I always carried with me on planes: my toothbrush, my toiletry kit, another T-shirt. Wrapped inside the T-shirt was the bottle of snow Alex had brought me in Tanzania, something I didn't want to risk being broken in the baggage compartment. I set it on the maple dresser beside Alex's brush and a tall pile of photocopied screenplays.

Alex wrapped his arms around me from behind and pulled my shirt over my head. "Welcome home," he said.

I turned in his embrace. "Thanks." I let him unzip my linen trousers and pull off my shoes, tuck me under the covers. I pressed my arms down into the forgiving comforter, waiting for Alex to come to bed.

He turned and started out the door to the sitting room, and I bolted upright. "Where are you going?" I said, my voice jumping at the ends in panic.

Alex smiled. "I don't think I can go back to sleep," he said. "I'm just going to get some work done downstairs. I'll be here when you get up."

I thought of how I wanted him to stay with me, to make this unfamiliar room a comfortable place. I ran my hands below the sheets to the spot where he should have been. I imagined the late-morning sun in Kenya, and the way we could remain in bed for hours there without the real world creeping through the thin crack beneath the door. But what was I supposed to say to Alex? I'm afraid of being alone in this house. I don't know anyone here. I need to see you by my side, so that I understand where I fit in. Or the deeper truth: I don't recognize myself. I don't even recognize you. The door shut quietly behind Alex, leaving me lost. I told myself to stop acting like a fool, and I fixed my gaze on the jar of snow on the dresser, the only thing in this house so far that I could say was mine.

The sun spilled through the French doors of the bedroom like a spreading fire, an accusation. So, I thought, this is how it begins.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

"FINLAND."

"Denmark."

Alex skimmed his fingers over my ribs. "You already used Denmark."

I caught his hands and pressed them against me. "Dominican Republic, then."

Alex shook his head. "I already said that. You might as well admit it, you've lost. There are only two countries beginning with D."

I raised my eyebrows. "Is that true?" I asked. We had been playing Geography on a lazy Thursday afternoon, and just for the challenge, we had limited ourselves to naming countries. "Prove it."

Alex laughed. "Gladly. But you get the map."

I pretended to move, but Alex kept his arm around me, indicating he wasn't about to let me go. He was lying on a hunter-green striped chaise, and I was between his legs, propped against his chest. I stared at the sun as it brightened the edges of a cloud it was hiding behind.

"Do you memorize atlases in your spare time?" I teased, already knowing the answer: Alex had learned geography as a child, self-taught, by speaking the exotic names of places he'd rather have been.

Alex kissed the top of my head, and as if the events were connected, the sun stepped out from its shade. "I'm a man of rare talents and sensibilities," he said dryly, and I wondered if he knew how true that really was.

You see, in spite of what I've already told you about our arrival in L.A., all my misgivings about Alex had faded. In the week we'd been home, he hadn't gone back to work right away, leaving me to fend for myself. Instead, we had skinny-dipped in the pool, played tag in the lush boxwood hedge maze, and danced barefoot, without music, on the veranda outside the bedroom. After dinner, Alex dismissed the staff and he made love to me in a different room each night: on the mahogany desk in the library, the Persian rug in the parlor, the white wicker rocker on the screened-in back porch. This way, he said, you won't be able to go anywhere without thinking of me. In return, I took him to UCLA, to my office, and showed him my work-in-progress at the lab, a reconstructed Australopithecene femur. I introduced him to Archibald Custer, and Alex indicated he might be inclined to give the department a sizable donation if they upgraded their tenured teaching faculty. This suggestion-which we hadn't discussed-made me uncomfortable. I was offered an a.s.sociate professorship and a fine pick of January courses, which I never would have accepted if Alex hadn't asked me to, as a favor. You've changed my life, he'd said. Let me change yours. Alex spent so much time at my side-introducing me to his agent, his employees, his friends-that at one point I asked if I was going to have to support us. Not that that was a real problem. Ophelia had been right-Alex made between four and six million dollars per film, and most of the money was rolled into his own production company, Pontchartrain Productions, for tax purposes. He paid himself a salary, but there was so much left over that even the third of his income that was spread out to various charities topped seven figures every year.

I was rich. Back in Tanzania, Alex had refused my offer of a prenuptial agreement, saying that he meant this marriage to be for life. I now owned half of a ranch in Colorado; half of a Monet, a Kandinsky, and two van Goghs; half of a hand-carved cherry dining room set that seated thirty and cost more than my undergraduate education. But even the most beautiful furniture in the world couldn't keep me from missing my old red leather wing chair, the first piece I'd bought in California; or from picturing the Salvation Army bureau Ophelia had bought me for Christmas one year, and then painted with peace symbols and daisy chains. My old furniture was worth nothing, did not fit in this house; but when the Goodwill trucks came to pick it up, I cried.

Yet I loved being with Alex so much that for the first time in years I wasn't looking forward to the upcoming term at UCLA; I saw it instead as something that was going to take me away from him. Still, this kind of life took a little getting used to. I had come to expect the reverent whisper of Elizabeth, the maid, as I walked down the hall to find Alex in the morning; I had become accustomed to writing down that I needed avocados and Neutrogena soap from the market and just leaving the list with Alex's secretary. When a hack reporter snuck onto the grounds and I opened the bathroom curtains to find a camera lens staring back at me, I didn't even scream. I calmly told Alex, as if it were something I faced daily, and watched while he called the police.

But we didn't go out. Alex said it was for my own good, that we should let the novelty of the marriage die down a little before facing the public again. He told me, smiling, that he wanted me all to himself.

But the more time I spent in my gilded cage, the more I thought of Ophelia's words at the airport. And I knew that no matter how much of a fairy tale I was living now, I wouldn't really be happy until I could build a bridge from the life I had lived in Westwood to this new one in Bel-Air.

Alex had dipped his toe into the edge of the pool and was trying to write my name in script. "C," he said. "A-S-S . . ." He frowned and looked up at me. "How come you don't like Ca.s.sandra?"

I shrugged. "I never said I didn't like it," I clarified. "It's what my mother tried to call me until my father convinced her it was far too much name for a little girl. And then in seventh grade we did this Greek mythology unit, and my teacher made me look up my name." I recited the facts to Alex as I had that day in front of the cla.s.s: Ca.s.sandra was the beautiful daughter of King Priam and Hecuba. She was given the power of prophecy by Apollo, but when he fell in love with her and she didn't return his attentions, he cursed her so that no one would believe what she foresaw, even though it was the truth.

At twelve, I had liked the fact that Ca.s.sandra was beautiful enough to make Apollo fall in love with her, but the way she was forced to live out her life had turned me cold. Stripped of her credibility, she'd become a slave, and then was murdered. "After we did that unit," I said, "I told all the teachers I wanted to be called Ca.s.sie, and everyone else just followed."

Alex lifted me up and twisted me so that we were lying face-to-face.

"Lucky for you, Ca.s.sandra," he murmured, "that you tend to return my attentions."

His breath settled into the curve of my neck, and I slid my hands under the band of his bathing suit, shaping myself to his heat. Alex gripped the back of my head and pulled me closer, shifting me off balance until we rolled as a tangled unit off the chaise and onto the gra.s.s beside the pool.

"Well," a voice said. "And here I thought I'd come at an inopportune time."

I pushed away from Alex and brushed the hair out of my face, straightening to see Ophelia, her arm held by John in a death grip. Her hair was a flyaway mess, her shorts had been torn across her bottom, and every few seconds she tugged her shoulder away from John as if she found him completely distasteful.

John looked at me, and then slid his gaze toward Alex. "She told Juarez at the gate that she was a friend of Mrs. Rivers, but she wouldn't let us call up to the house, so we sent her away. And then she's picked up on the monitor climbing over the east fence."

"Speaking of which," Ophelia said to Alex, "I'll send you the bill for these shorts." She turned to me. "And shame on you for not giving me the pa.s.sword of the day."

"Ophelia," I said, shaking my head. "Why didn't you just give your name at the front gate?"

All the fight and bl.u.s.ter drained out of Ophelia, puddling in front of her feet. "I wanted to surprise you," she said miserably. "If I'd let them call you and tell you I was coming, it wouldn't have been a surprise."