Picture Perfect Part 28

Ramo' n took one side of the runway and Will took the other. There was a dimming of lights, a flurry of thick percussed music, and then the first model appeared.

Her headdress was made of carnations and spelled out the year 1993.

You could see how hard it was for her simply to walk. Behind her, on a huge screen, were the gap-toothed grins of bald children on horses; sickly adolescents floating in inner tubes.

A woman, the emcee, sauntered up beside Will, handing him a shopping bag stuffed with tiny wrapped packages. "Here's your goody bag," she trilled. She beamed up at the stage. "I keep hoping that next year I'll be chosen. As a mannequin, you know." A second model appeared on the runway. She was singing "Hooray for Hollywood," and the violets growing out of her hair were fashioned into a Panavision camera, with an ivy-woven roll of film sprocketing over her shoulders.

Will thought about Ca.s.sie. He wondered if she had gone to functions like this with Alex; if she had felt as out of place as he did. Quietly, under the hum of the music, he unwrapped three of the little presents.

A bottle of designer perfume, a pair of aviator sungla.s.ses, edible ma.s.sage oil.

Across the way, Ramo' n was clapping to the beat. Will glanced around at the faces bobbing over the satin gowns and the tight-necked tuxedos. They had been pulled and tucked and sculpted and shaped, primped and posed and colored. They were artfully wrapped packages without any of the messy tape showing; they were working unnaturally hard to look natural.

They looked like everyone else in L.A.

In that quick clarity which comes once or twice during one's life, Will understood that he was not supposed to be here at all. He remembered his days on the tribal police, where he'd arrested deadbeat husbands and confiscated six-packs from teenagers, all the while thinking there was more to life than that. And maybe there was-but he wasn't any closer to finding it now than he had been in South Dakota.

He was so busy watching the audience that he didn't know what hit him. But the fourth model had caught her heel on a divot in the runway and had inadvertently swung her head, loosening the pins and the glue that secured a fountain of flowers to her scalp. Will was buried in a heap of tea roses and tiger lilies, huge hothouse poppies, stephanotis.

He slipped on the shimmering petals and fell backward on the floor.

A crew of doctors who staffed the Southern California ranch rushed up from their table to make sure that he was all right, but not before the model herself, leaning over in mortification, pitched from the high runway on top of Will. She was sprawled across him, a fiftysomething grand dame with tears of failure in her eyes and a dress cut too low.

"Ma'am," Will said politely, "are you all right?"

The woman sniffed delicately, and then seemed to notice him. She smiled seductively, stretching the skin of her face-lifted cheeks to its limit. "Well, h.e.l.lo there," she said, deliberately slipping her thigh between his legs.

And that was how Will knew he'd be going home.

THREE-TWO-ONE-WHITE. THE FILM PROJECTING INTO ALEX'S private screening room ran through to the end, leaving him to stare at absolutely nothing. He pushed a b.u.t.ton on his remote control and sighed as the room sank blessedly into black. Better this way; easier.

He picked up the bottle of J&B sitting next to him and tilted it up, only to remember it was empty. He'd finished it sometime during Act III of Macbeth, when he had realized that the critics were right: the movie was horrible. They wouldn't even be able to give away video copies to high school English teachers.

He had wrapped up production several weeks ago; this was the first complete version of the film. And he couldn't blame the problems on the rough editing; he knew he should have cut his losses months before.

But in Hollywood, that meant admitting failure, and no producer with an eye on the future could afford the stigma. So he'd plodded through the filming, praying it would turn out better than it had felt scene-byscene.

It seemed, these days, no one was listening to Alex's prayers.

He rubbed his eyes, which constantly burned. "Everyone has a flop,"

he said out loud, trying the words on for size. He was overdue for one anyway. You couldn't romance success for ten years without also courting disaster.

Of course, not everyone's life fell apart at the same time as his career.

He closed his eyes and rested his head on the back of the chair. He was eight years old again, sitting outside at Deveraux's, waiting for his father to finish his card game. It was oppressively hot, but that was nothing new. All the windows at Beau's were open, and he could hear the clink of beer gla.s.ses being set down on the rough wood tables; the slap and giggle of the redheaded waitress when Beau pinched her; the cracking claws of crawfish as people cleaned their plates. A lively zydeco wafted from the inside speakers through the Spanish moss that curled around Alex's head.

"You ain't got nothin' left to bet 'cept your kid," Alex heard, "and he ain't worth the s.h.i.t on your shoes."

He stood up and climbed the low branches of the tree that stood closest to Deveraux's, wetting his bare feet with the muck of the swamp and stretching across a low-lying limb. His father must have lost again, maybe even used up more than just the money he'd gotten from his haul of crawfish. "Spot me, Lucien," his father said. "I'm good for it."

From behind his father, he saw Beau shake his head slightly at Lucien, but the big bald man just crossed his arms over his chest and laughed. "You gonna lose again, cher," he said, "but don' let it be said I ain't a good sport." He dug a roll of bills out of his chest pocket and thrust a handful at Alex's father. But before Andrew Riveaux could take the cash, Lucien pulled it just out of reach. "Wait a minute," he said.

"Seems to me if I'm gonna pay you, you ought to wh.o.r.e for me."

With the entire restaurant laughing, Andrew Riveaux stood up and wiggled his a.s.s around the card table. He sashayed and pouted and acted like a floozy until Lucien took pity on him and handed him the money. Alex's face had been pressed against the windowsill the whole time. He felt his gorge rise and even so, he couldn't bring himself to look away.

Alex's eyes snapped open. He stood up and drew wide the curtains, turned on every single light in the little projection room. Then he picked up the portable phone and dialed directory a.s.sistance in Maine.

He put through a call to Benjamin Barrett.

"h.e.l.lo?"

Alex swallowed. "Mr. Barrett?"

"Ayuh?"

"My name is Alex Rivers. Ca.s.sie's husband." There was a long, indrawn breath, and then silence, which Alex decided to use to his advantage. "I've heard what you've been saying, and I wanted to, well, apologize for using you as an excuse a few months ago."

"You don't know where my daughter is, do you?"

Brief anger welled up in Alex at this paternalistic display, since in the three years he'd been married to Ca.s.sie the man had never visited, never invited them to Maine, never even called to say h.e.l.lo. "No," he said, keeping his voice level. "But I'm trying." He rubbed his hand down his face. "You don't know how hard I'm trying."

"WHAT I DON'T UNDERSTAND," Ca.s.sIE SAID, STARING AT THE GOSSIP column Will had brought her, "is why my father would lie and admit he's seen me. I mean, it makes perfect sense for Alex to do it since people are going to ask, but my father has nothing to lose."

"Except you," Will pointed out. "You don't know how ugly that whole thing got; what people were accusing Alex of. Collusion. Murder.

Even you-one magazine said you had a European prince as a lover, and you'd run off with him to the jungles of Africa or something."

Ca.s.sie laughed, rubbing her hand over her growing stomach. "Oh, right."

Will didn't tell her what he wanted to, which was that she was beautiful, even bloated out of shape with Alex Rivers's child. "It occurred to me that maybe Alex paid off your father," he said. Ca.s.sie immediately shook her head. "He wouldn't do that." Her face brightened. "He probably thought I'd hear what the papers were saying about me, and he wouldn't want me to be hurt. He'd tell my father that, and my father would retract whatever he said for my sake." She beamed at Will. "You see?"

He didn't see, but he still could not make Ca.s.sie understand that.

"The funny thing is that out of all the stories flying around Hollywood about you two, no one's come up with the truth."

Ca.s.sie began to dig a pebble out of the ground. "That's because no one wants to believe it," she said.

They were sitting outside the frame of a sweat lodge, inside which a Sioux wedding was taking place. Will had been back for a week now, having broken his lease in L.A. He told Ca.s.sie he wasn't planning on staying in Pine Ridge, but he wouldn't go back to L.A., either. He figured he'd wait until the baby was born, and then when Ca.s.sie left, he'd go too.

He only sometimes let himself think that Ca.s.sie would come with him.

He'd returned in time to see his old betrayed friend Horace get married. He had long ago made his peace, but it surprised him to find out that Horace had never left the reservation. In fact the woman he was marrying was a fullblood Sioux.

Horace had met Ca.s.sie in town at the feed and grain, which he now managed. She had been buying food for Wheezer, and she needed him to carry it out to the truck, where Wheezer was jumping around in the flatbed. "I know that dog," Horace had said, and that's how they'd figured out they both knew Will.

Horace and Glenda were sitting inside the sweat lodge with Joseph Stands in Sun, the medicine man. No one else but the best man was around-the guests would come later for the civil ceremony-but Horace had specifically invited Ca.s.sie and Will. Will had been asked to keep the hot coals going on the vision hill so the stones would be ready when Joseph pa.s.sed them inside the canvas flap.

"I think they're coming out," Ca.s.sie whispered. She was trying not to admit it to herself, but she was entranced. This was the closest she'd come to a Lakota ritual. The physical anthropologist in her scorned her interest; the cultural anthropologist she'd buried deep inside her whispered that she should take notes; but the woman in her had only seen two people very much in love enter the sweat lodge to seal their vows.

Will had pa.s.sed the last four stones to Joseph twenty minutes ago; they had watched the steam hiss out the edges of the seamed canvas. The flap opened, and Joseph stood up, old and bent and utterly naked. He smiled at Will and walked down the path that led to a little stream.

Glenda was next, and then Horace. Neither of them seemed to care that they were wearing nothing except necklaces strung of bright ribbons, each signifying a different issue in marriage-their relationship to each other, to G.o.d, to the planet, to children, to society. "Hey," Will called, grinning. "Aren't you going to kiss the bride?"

But Horace just smacked Glenda on the bottom and raced her to the stream. Their ribbons flashed like rainbows over the water.

Beside Will, Ca.s.sie sniffled. He turned her chin so that she was facing him. "You're crying?" he said.

Ca.s.sie shrugged. "I can't help it. I cry at everything these days." She stared into the open flap of the sweat lodge, still pouring steam. "That's the way a wedding ceremony ought to be done," she said. "It's for you and him and n.o.body else. And there's nothing you can hide." She struggled to her knees, then rolled to her feet, pressing her hand to the small of her back. "I would have liked to get married like that," she said softly.

In the distance, Glenda laughed, her voice wrapped delicately around her new husband's. Will stood up next to Ca.s.sie and stared where she stared, trying to see what she was seeing. "Okay," he said lightly, "when?"

Ca.s.sie turned to him and smiled. "Oh, I don't know. Next Tuesday.

And then we'll wire the papers so they really have some dirt on me."

Will didn't say anything, not even when Ca.s.sie slipped her hand into his and began to pull him down to the bank of the stream. "Ta ya yah' ye'lo," she said haltingly. I'm glad you came.

And although he couldn't force the words past his lips, he knew he was too.

TO THE DAY, IT HAD BEEN FOUR FULL MONTHS SINCE Ca.s.sIE HAD disappeared, three months and six days since she had called. Alex sat on the veranda outside the bedroom, nursing another drink, trying not to feel sorry for himself.

He had a routine by now, one that involved running through a list of memories he had of Ca.s.sie so that she'd become almost real: Ca.s.sie bent over a moldering bone in the single light of her laboratory; Ca.s.sie making fun of a producer's Elvis swagger, or of an actress's habit of cracking her anorexic knuckles; Ca.s.sie's hair spilled over her shoulders as his mouth traced a path down her stomach; and yes, the one he forced himself to remember-Ca.s.sie curled into herself at his feet, bleeding and beaten and still reaching out to soothe him.

He'd made himself a vow. He'd do anything to get her back. He'd go see a shrink. He'd join a therapy group. h.e.l.l, he'd even do an exclusive baring his soul to Entertainment Tonight. His reputation couldn't become much more shredded than it already had, and any backlash he'd suffer from coming clean still wouldn't compare to the pain Ca.s.sie had taken over the years. He told himself this every time he lifted his drink to his lips, but of course, it was an empty toast. The person who most needed to hear it was still gone.

There was a knock at the bedroom door, and Alex growled. He wasn't in the mood for any of the staff. They asked him things he didn't give a flying f.u.c.k about anymore, like what he wanted for dinner and whether his appointment with Mr. Silver was still standing. "Get away,"

he yelled. "I'm working."

"Like h.e.l.l you are," came a woman's voice, and then a heavy highheeled footstep. Alex leaned his head against the back of the wicker chair and closed his eyes, wishing he hadn't recognized the voice. "In fact, I probably get more work than you do these days."

Ophelia stepped in front of him, smart in a tailored beige linen suit and a wide hat that was more suited to Ascot than L.A. She bent down and pulled the gla.s.s out of Alex's hand, ran her fingers over the light growth of beard on his chin. "You look terrible, Alex," she said, "although I imagine these days you don't have many visitors."

"Ophelia," Alex sighed, "what the h.e.l.l do you want from me?"

Ophelia sank down in front of Alex so that they were exactly at eye level. They stared at each other, neither willing to break away. "Let's just say it's in our best interests for me to come to bury the hatchet,"

she said. "It's been four months and Ca.s.sie still hasn't gotten in touch with me or with you-"

Before he could remember to act, Alex turned his face away.

"Holy s.h.i.t," Ophelia said, her mouth dropping open. "You've heard from her."

Alex shook his head and began to cover his mistake with a run of words.

"Alex," Ophelia interrupted, "give me a break." She stood up and slapped a pair of white gloves against her thigh. "I came over here to join forces, but you've already found Ca.s.sie." She peered at him. "So why aren't you with her?"

"She wouldn't tell me where she was," Alex admitted. "Just that she was all right. And that she'll call when she wants to come home."

"And you've been trying to track her since then?" She c.o.c.ked her head. "Of course you have. If you weren't preoccupied with Ca.s.sie, you might have actually noticed that your entire career is shot to h.e.l.l." She laughed; a bright, clarinet sound. "She really called you. Well. Maybe I wasn't giving credit where credit was due. I may not like you very much, but Ca.s.sie seems to. Still. So I'm willing to take it on faith that you honestly care about her too."

Alex lowered his eyes. "Jesus Christ," he muttered. "Make your point."

Ophelia knelt beside Alex and plucked the gla.s.s from his hand. "My point is this," she said coolly. "You don't deserve Ca.s.sie, but apparently she hasn't run away for good. And Ca.s.sie most certainly doesn't deserve to see you like this when she walks back through the front door." She emptied the highball onto the wide wooden planks of the veranda and pulled Alex up, dragging him into the bedroom to the mirror that hung over his dresser. She stood behind him while he glanced at his bloodshot eyes and sallow skin, while he breathed in the sour smells of bourbon and self-pity that perfumed his clothes. "Alex," Ophelia said, clasping his shoulders and forcing him to stand taller, "this is your lucky day."

WILL SAT IN THE DARK CORNER OF JOSEPH STANDS IN SUN'S LODGE, wondering where an eighty-seven-year-old medicine man could be this late at night. He had been here for over an hour; he wasn't even quite sure why, but he wanted to talk to the old man and he knew it had to be soon.

There were beautiful beaded artifacts hung on the walls, and a long stretch of deerskin with a mural about the slaughter of some Chippewa by a Sioux hunting party. There were bundles of curled dry tobacco and sage tied to the hinges of the door. A star quilt, one Joseph used for healing ceremonies, was draped over an Adirondack rocking chair.

That's where Will was sitting now, holding the Big Twisted Flute that Joseph had carved sometime before Will was even born. It was a knotted tube of cedar, long and thick, painted with the image of a horse. It had the ability to give a young man power over a young woman, and Will remembered Joseph telling him the story of how he had seduced his own wife. "I dreamed of the music," Joseph had said, "that came from her soul. And when she heard it she left her parents'

lodge and followed the melody until she realized she was only following me."

Will ran his fingers over the air holes of the flute, the mouthpiece.

He touched it to his lips and blew once, making a sound like an unmilked cow. Then he rocked back and forth, tapping the flute against his wrist, watching the moon slide through the cracks in Joseph's front door.

He recalled a dream that began with thunder. He was in the middle of a storm, the rain lashing his bare shoulders and his back, and he was screaming for the doe to move. He knew that the lightning was coming, that it was going to hit the spot where she stood, but she was perfectly still, as if she didn't even know it was raining. She was the most stunning creature Will had ever seen, with a high curved back and chains of dandelions around her stepped ankles. A road opened up before him; he saw that he could walk to where the doe stood, or move off to the right where there was no rain at all. It was so easy to just turn and leave, and he didn't want to be flooded by the rain.

He started toward the doe. He shouted, pushing her with his fists, and finally she bolted down the other path into the sun. Will tried to follow, but at that moment the lightning that he had known was coming split down his back, searing him with fire and breaking his bones.

He fell to the ground, amazed that there could be this much pain in the world, and he knew that he had saved her.

It stopped raining, and he lifted his head-the only part of him he could still move-to find the doe standing over him, nuzzling the palm of his hand. Then the doe was gone and Ca.s.sie was there, touching him, healing; and safe, because of him.

Will looked up when the door swung open. Joseph Stands in Sun pulled off his jacket and sat down on the edge of a picnic bench. He waited for Will to say something.