The Lioness(13)

“She’s worried about impalas and giraffes?” he teased her in response.

“She’s been told there are coyotes out there.”

“Pretty sure coyotes eat meat. Rats, right? And squirrels. And cats and dogs.”

“They do,” she agreed, but then she surprised him by adding, “Technically, they’re omnivores. Coyotes, that is. They eat plants, too. Not a lot. But some grasses and leaves. They also might be drawn to her place by the garbage.”

“How in the world do you know that coyotes are omnivores?”

“You think I’m just a pretty face.”

“Not true,” he said, and was about to add more, but she cut him off.

“Yes, you do. And it’s fine. It’s better to have a pretty face than not. But I know lots of obscure facts. My brain seems to retain knowledge I don’t need like one of those great big computers you hear about.”

He smiled at her, a little taken aback by her confidence. In the space of thirty seconds, she had revealed that she thought she was pretty (which she was) and that she thought she was smart (which he hadn’t known until this trip, but was becoming more and more aware of daily).

“That’s a good talent to have when memorizing lines, I suppose.”

“It’s even more helpful when figuring out a character. I do a lot of homework. I have to.”

“Why?” He knew that some actors did far more research than others. Some did absolutely none, other than learning lines. He had one client who had asked him two days before he was due on the set to play Aaron Burr whether he thought a duel in early America was even remotely possible and why the screenwriters had made up a character like Burr in the first place. He wanted to know whether Reggie thought it might be okay to suggest a better name than Burr.

They were starting to walk again, following their guide. He noticed that they were never so far from the camp that they couldn’t see the tents and the lorries, but they were moving in the shape of a protractor, a great half moon. Muema was pointing out a few dozen wildebeest that were grazing, seven or eight zebras intermingled with them. Some of the animals looked up from the grass, but most were oblivious to the humans. They couldn’t care less that these intrusive animals that walked on two legs were watching them dine.

“I want to be a smart actress,” Carmen answered. “I have to be. Let’s face it, I’m not Katie.”

He nodded. He considered lying to her and saying something polite about how talented she was, because she was indeed an immensely gifted actress. But he also understood what she was getting at. Katie Barstow was who she was not simply because she could act and the camera loved her (though both were true), but because she had an indefinable but almost corporeal specialness, the quintessence of dreams: a quality that transcended her beauty and her brains. It was an aura: she was damaged. You could sense it, you could feel it, you could see it. She had always been the most interesting person on the stage—that one person in the crowd you had to watch—and now she was invariably the most interesting person on the screen.

“Katie is a once in a generation talent,” he agreed. “But you—”

“I make a good living as pretty sidekicks and bookish things that happen to fill out a sweater nicely, thank you very much,” she told him.

“And a corset,” her husband, Felix, added, referring to her role as a Russian aristocrat in a 1962 film about the last Russian czar. He put his little camera back in his pants pocket.

“Precisely,” she agreed. “But you know what?”

Reggie waited.

“I was also the only person on that set who could name all of Nicholas and Alexandra’s children.”

“I could name one: Anastasia.”

“There were actors in the cast who couldn’t have named even her.”

“I probably represent some,” he said, chuckling.

“Perhaps.”

“I hope you know you’re a gem, Carmen. You really are. You have so many fans in this world—and in my firm.”

“I do know that. Thank you. And I appreciate all that all of you do for me. Jean Cummings is great.”

Jean was Carmen’s publicist. “She takes good care of you?”

“She does.” The ranger with the gun suddenly was beside them, and instantly Carmen was looking around. Did the ranger suppose one of the wildebeest was about to charge? Did Carmen? There seemed no chance of that to Reggie. The ranger grinned: they weren’t in danger. He simply happened to be walking near them right now. Reggie recalled that the fellow had said earlier that he was from Kilimanjaro.

“Have you ever climbed Kilimanjaro?” Reggie asked him. He presumed the answer would be yes. He was just making small talk.

“No. I tried, but I got sick at around eighteen thousand feet. Too much altitude,” the young man said.

“Eighteen thousand feet? You were so close!” said the actress. “You were only thirteen hundred feet from the summit! That’s heartbreaking!”

The ranger was tall and slender, and Reggie supposed he was even younger than he looked. He might not even be twenty. “Reaching the summit? Wasn’t worth dying.” He was smiling.

Reggie turned toward Carmen. “You know the height of Kilimanjaro?”

“I told you: I know lots of things I’ll never need. You watch. By the end of this safari, you’re going to think I’m wasting my time as an actress.”