CHAPTER FOURTEEN
ALEX tried to time his arrivals at LAX so that they fell in the thin hours of the night, two or three a.m., when only the die-hard reporters hounded the gate and the baggage claim area. The day we were to leave Kenya, where we’d flown for a honeymoon, Alex woke me by laying his palm against my cheek. “Cassie, che`re,” he said, kissing me into consciousness. “Cassie.”
I sat up, noticing the neatly stacked piles of clothing, the precise line organization of Alex’s shoes and toiletries, all waiting at attention to be transferred into a suitcase. Never in my life had I packed as well as Alex could, and this sort of surprised me, because I had figured there were three or four servants at his beck and call who’d do his packing for him. I rubbed my hand over my eyes. “Is it time to go?” I asked.
“In a minute.” He stared out the window at the fading moon, which outlined the Ngong hills in silver. “I have to tell you something,” Alex said.
My whole body stiffened. This was what I had been waiting for, wasn’t it? The punch line, the realization that I had been living some kind of lie. Surprise, he was going to say, those vows were a farce. The priest who performed the ceremony was an actor. I looked away, not willing to let Alex know I had been expecting his words all along.
“No matter what, when we get back I want you to understand something.” He took my hand and pressed it against his chest, where his heart beat strong and slow. “This is me. I may say things and act different from any way you’ve ever seen me act before, but that’s because I have to be what people expect me to be. It’s not real.” He gently touched his lips to mine. “This is real.”
Stunned, I couldn’t say anything at first. Alex’s eyes turned the color of rain. His mouth tightened, so slightly that someone who did not know him as well as I did might never have noticed. Under my palm, his heart began to race.
He was scared. He thought that I’d come home, see him for what he really was, and leave. He had no intention of letting me go; he was simply afraid that I’d want to.
But then Alex couldn’t know that the last time I had been in L.A., the days had run together, one indistinguishable from another. He couldn’t know that my skin seemed to hum when he touched me; that I had never thought I was beautiful until I saw myself through his eyes.
He didn’t know, as I did, that I was the antidote to his pain; that he soothed me like a healer’s balm. I smiled and offered the comfort I had believed I would be needing. “You’ll see,” I said. “Everything’s going to be fine.”
ALEX TUCKED ME UNDER HIS ARM, AND I TURNED MY FACE IN TO HIS chest, but even closing my eyes couldn’t block out the sight of over sixty people jostling each other at the airport security gate to touch Alex’s sleeve and to scream questions and snap photographs of the newly married couple. I breathed deeply, smelling the soap from the inn in Kenya and the warm spice that came from Alex’s skin, and when I dug my fingers into his side he hugged me a little tighter. “Ten more minutes,” he whispered, brushing his lips over the top of my head. “Ten more minutes and I’ll have you safe in a car.”
I took a deep breath and straightened, intending to at least act the way I thought Alex Rivers’s wife should act: cool and unflappable, not some wilting flower. But by turning out of Alex’s shielding arm, I was giving the reporters their first full glimpse of my face. Bulbs exploded until all I could see were spots, dancing across my black field of vision, and Alex had to stop or risk my falling down.
“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 anchored 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 God?” 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 anticipation 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 association with Alex, I would have to travel back roads, wear dark glasses, 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 damn 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, Cassandra Barrett Rivers.”
The cameras flashed, but this time I was ready for them. I smiled, not quite knowing what constituted 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 hello 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 breasts 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, Cassie.
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. “God, 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 fucking 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 association, 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 stitched 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 AN 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 embarrassed.
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.