Chapter 28
Keeping quiet
Logan Rush in hit-and-run!
Demented pensioner hits Logan Rush, condition stable
Tightwad Logan Rush makes his dates pay for lunch!
Logan Rush killed in car accident!
Logan shrugs when I tell him about the outrageous headlines early on Tuesday morning while we wait to start filming a romantic scene with Britney on soundstage three.
“Logan, Logan! We need to rehearse the scene,” Britney calls from where she sits on a large leather sofa on the dressed set. A dimly lit lamp and a vase of lilies grace a side table. High bookshelves stacked with fake books stand behind the couch, and a blood-red Persian carpet covers the floor. The contrast between the warm, luxurious feel of the set and the jungle of wires, lights, cameras, and hubbub of action that begins where the carpet ends, is stark — almost surreal.
“I’ll be right there,” Logan tells Britney. With his back to her, he gives me one of his lazy smiles. “Don’t worry, sugar — as Mark Twain said, reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”
“It’s ridiculous. Will you look at this!” I pass him my phone so he can see the tributes pouring in on the Twitter feed. Today’s top trending topic is #RIPLoganRush.
“Places, please. I’m looking at you, Logan,” the assistant director calls.
“Logan!” Britney is starting to sound petulant.
“At least I’d be free and have some peace then,” Logan says, his expression something between humour and longing.
“Um, yes, but you’d also be dead!” I say.
“Ah, good point. Maybe I could just fake it and disappear.” He ambles off to join Britney, who flashes her Hollywood whites at him in a sparkling smile.
“Cilla would track you down,” I call after him.
“Did someone say my name?” Cilla has arrived.
She comes to stand next to me, plucking one of her pet dragons off her shoulder. She cradles the critter under its belly and strokes its back as if it’s a cuddly kitten.
“Yeah, me,” I say. “I was just pointing out to Logan that I don’t see the retake of scene thirty-one, his new rewritten version of it, on the schedule for Wednesday’s shooting.”
Cilla stares at me in disapproval, her eyes glittering like the reptile’s.
“You still haven’t learned to shut up. Dear.”
“No, I admit I am still struggling with that.”
“Here, speak to him.” She thrusts the pet dragon into my surprised hands, where it squirms, digging its sharp little claws into my skin. “I don’t want to hear anything you have to say and neither, I think, does anyone else.”
Mouth twisted in an evil smile, she turns to survey her two leads on the set. Britney is nestled in Logan’s arms on the sofa, and they’re cuddling. He strokes her hair, and she kisses the base of his throat.
My stomach clenches painfully. They’re just practising for the scene, I tell myself. It’s just acting.
But it looks very real.
Logan whispers into Britney’s ear and they giggle intimately. She caresses his arms and shoulders, and I’m suddenly — viciously — jealous. Not just of her hands on my man, but of the freedom she has to touch him openly, when I have to keep my hands firmly in my pockets. When I have to watch my every word and guard my every look.
I can’t bear to stay and watch once they start filming the scene — it’s one in which they kiss passionately. I’d rather be outside, even if it is raining, so I palm the repulsive reptile off on Polyp and head out. I walk around the lot for a bit, tidy Logan’s room, and worry about that letter again. I wish I’d never read the damn thing.
When I return to the soundstage in time for the lunch break, I stay outside, leaning up against the warehouse wall, studying the pillowy grey clouds overhead, and enjoying the feel of the soft, cool rain on my face.
Our day in the sunny vineyards — laughing, kissing, talking freely — now feels far away and long ago.
Time is running out fast. In two and a half weeks, on the twenty-first of December, filming in Cape Town will wrap so that the US contingent of the cast and crew can be back stateside well in time for Christmas with their families. The week before that, the Syrenka will arrive in Cape Town, and depart two days later. I want to be on it. But I also want to be with Logan.
I know he wants me to join him in L.A., but as what? He’s made no promises about our relationship. What if I go to the opposite end of the world only to discover I’ve merely been a passing fling for him? He can have his pick of any woman on the planet — why would he possibly want me? Every ounce of logic says our relationship won’t, can’t, last.
Even if I risk the wrath of my parents and the uncertainty of a relationship with Logan, I don’t know what I would do for a career in L.A. any more than here. Will I just continue to trail around after him from set to set, watching him kiss Britney Vaux, all the while doing nothing that matters with my life?
Something about that seems like a betrayal of myself.
Captain Murphy is holding a berth open for me on the Syrenka. “If you don’t take it, we’ll put out the word and somebody else will. I’ve been doing this for fifteen years, and I’ve learned that it always works out somehow.”
A gentle touch on my arm interrupts my troubled thoughts. Logan leans against the wall next to me. His arms are folded across his chest, but the fingers of the hand underneath caress my arm where other eyes can’t see.
“You shouldn’t be standing in the rain like this — you’ll catch a cold.”
I stare down at my sweater. I’m pretty much soaked through.
“Better out here than in there.” I jerk my chin back at the soundstage.
“Sorry about that,” he says softly, staring straight ahead. “It’s just acting. It’s part of the job.”
“I know that. But I didn’t want to watch.”
After a while, he asks, “Still up for watching the scene I wrote?”
“Has Cilla put it into the schedule now?”
“Yeah. When I confronted her, she said the omission was just an administrative error. She’s put it for tomorrow afternoon. We’ll film scene sixty-five at the docks, as scheduled, then my scene at the same location afterwards.”
“I’ll be there, but I’m taking this afternoon off, if that’s okay with you,” I say.
I have no desire to hang about while he films the rest of the lovemaking scene with Britney all afternoon.
“Sure — it’s a closed set, anyway. Britney insists on it for those scenes.”
“Oh, I somehow don’t think she’d mind me watching.”
“Are you okay? You seem … upset.”
“I need to do some thinking.” I push off from the wall. “See you tomorrow.”
“Hey,” he says as I start to walk off. “There’s a cast dinner tomorrow night, at the hotel, for Britney’s birthday. Will you join us?”
“As your date?”
“If you’re ready to go public, Romy, then so am I. But once the story’s out, there’s no going back.”
“Fine,” I say grumpily. “I’ll be there. As your not-date.”
My crabby mood lifts the next afternoon as Becka and I stand together, watching Logan act the section he rewrote. In the scene, Chase Falconer passionately begs a bunch of poor fishermen to stop the practice of finning sharks. He speaks of understanding their hardship, but warns them of a greater poverty — a poverty of the soul, a poverty that follows in the wake of killing their mother the earth, a poverty which will leave us all orphans to empty oceans and sterile fields.
The new dialogue is beautiful, poignant, almost musical in its rhythm. And Logan’s acting is incredible. He disappears into the character so completely that I forget who I’m watching, forget that these are lines in a script, that this is all make-believe.
When he finishes speaking, there’s a long moment of stillness before someone yells, “Cut.” Then everyone — cast, crew and extras — break into applause.
“He was actually crying — did you see the one perfect man-tear?” Becka says, clearly impressed. In a whisper, she adds, “And he didn’t even use a cry-stick! Britney always has to.”
I’m choked up myself. My voice is a little croaky when I tell Logan afterwards, “You can act!”
“Um, yeah. It is my job.”
His hand strays as if to tuck a strand of my hair behind my ear, then falls. We’re not alone.
“No, I mean you can really act.”
He grins at that.
I already knew that Logan was a good actor, but I hadn’t, until today, known exactly how good. He’s astonishingly — bewilderingly — good. Suddenly I get it. This is his craft and his passion. This is what he needs to do. There’s no way I could ever ask him to give this up, even if it would make it easier for us to build a real relationship. Losing this would damage and diminish him. And the world would be the poorer without his gift, especially if he’s able to do better, more complex projects.
The selfish and the loving parts inside of me are at war.
I want to yell, “Run away! Give it up. Get a normal job — something where we can stay together and go public.”
I need to urge, “Go for it, live your dream. Be the best damn actor you can be!”
And another part of me urges me to put myself first. “Letting your life revolve around a guy is crazy-stupid. If you sacrifice your own dreams, you’ll regret it forever.”
Perhaps my throat can’t decide what I want to say and settles for a choked, confused silence, because by the time the cast dinner rolls around that night, I have full-on laryngitis.