The Lioness(18)

Nevertheless, some of the Michigan papers republished some of the press photos from Tender Madness while he was on location, one that was decidedly steamy, and the vibe on the set grew tense. The threats were more vile than usual, more disgusting, and they involved castration. Whoever was mailing the studio had also discovered the Detroit hotel where the cast was staying and left telephone messages with the clerks at the front desk that were as coarse as the letters that MGM was receiving. But, as always, whoever was behind the threats was as cowardly as they were hateful, and never showed themselves.

Still, Terrance was glad that he had gone stag to Katie’s wedding. He’d almost brought Felicia, but he feared that would only reignite a romance, and that wasn’t fair to her. He liked her, but he didn’t love her. There was, obviously, a chasm-like difference between the two feelings. The problem was that they were so damn good together: at restaurants, in bed, at the bowling alley in Crenshaw a couple blocks from the high school where she was an English teacher. He constantly had to remind himself that loving someone’s company a couple of days or nights a week was just not the same as loving someone so much that you wanted that company all the time and felt a little unmoored when you were going to be away from them for any real length of time. He knew that she loved him that way, and that wasn’t actorly narcissism. Moreover, she wanted children, and, at least right now, he didn’t. What if he did bring her to Katie’s wedding and whoever was sending him the threats chose that Saturday to try something violent? What if she were injured (or worse) because he’d brought her along as arm candy? Horrifying. Horrifying and despicable.

At one point at the wedding, when he was standing near the bar sipping a Manhattan (minus the cherry), the bartender uncorked another bottle of champagne with a great pop, and a couple of the drunken guests clapped. A tiny, pretty woman with white-blond hair in cherubic curls, an actress whose name escaped him, extended her champagne flute like a street urchin, imploring the bartender for more. Terrance turned away and gazed at the dance floor, and realized that he was one of the only guests between the ages of twenty and seventy who was still sober. Certainly, the dancers were feeling no pain. Even Glenda Stepanov, the toxic witch who somehow had birthed a lovely creature like Katie Stepanov, was tipsy: she kicked aside her heels as she was twirled around the floor by Katie’s agent, Peter Merrick. And Terrance felt, as he did often, at once absolutely invisible and an awkward, flagrant outsider.



* * *



.?.?.

“You don’t sound like you’re from around here,” Terrance said to the guy behind him with the pistol and the rifle hanging off his shoulder. It was a trial balloon, an attempt at conversation. It couldn’t hurt to remind their captors that the five Americans in the Land Rover were human beings, too. At least that’s what he was thinking when he turned around and opened his mouth. Now that he’d heard his voice, he thought how being human didn’t necessarily help in the United States, and it probably wasn’t an especially compelling reason to keep someone alive here in the Serengeti. Nevertheless, when the guard just glared at him and said nothing, Terrance decided to press: “My name is Terrance. I’m guessing you don’t want to tell me yours, but I’m Terrance.”

“Stop talking,” he said in that accent, and then he leaned forward and placed the pistol against the side of Terrance’s skull. He continued slowly, enunciating carefully, though his accent never wavered. “Say one more word and your brains will be on the back of the seat ahead of you.”

He felt Katie’s fingers on his forearm, pressing hard into the skin. He got the message. He put up his hands in a sign of surrender, his heart thumping hard now in his chest, and the fellow pulled back the gun. He looked satisfied.

Outside the vehicle, no more than fifty yards away, Terrance saw a dozen elephants grazing, and one giant with great tusks looked up at the vehicle, no doubt trying to decide whether it represented a danger. Well, Terrance thought, not to you, old friend. Not to you.





CHAPTER EIGHT


    Felix Demeter





Our inside sources tell us that Oscar-winning director Rex Demeter is no fan of his son Felix’s latest film. “He thinks he’s Ben Hecht, he thinks he’s Billy Wilder. He’s not. At least not yet. He thinks because I’m his old man he automatically has some writing chops,” Rex was overheard saying while holding court and savoring the lobster bisque at Fred and Wally’s on Wilshire.

—Movie Star Confidential, July 1962



Felix tried to stop shaking, but he couldn’t. He could feel the blood in his head, in his temples; he guessed he could feel it everywhere. He was hot and he was humiliated, but none of that mattered quite as much as the fact he was terrified and his body was trembling. Two of the men who had thrust them into the second Land Rover were in the vehicle with them, one driving and one in the back with a couple of guns. He had the taste of his vomit in his mouth, and there was a tendril still staining his shirt that he had tried and failed to swipe to the floor, and while it might not in fact have been stinking up the whole rig, he sure as hell could smell it. He supposed that Carmen could too. She was gently holding his hand and stroking it, but she couldn’t look at him—or she wouldn’t look at him—and he couldn’t blame her. But he hadn’t been able to help himself. He just hadn’t. He had seen people killed. Shot. There were those rangers. There was poor Juma. And maybe Charlie Patton. God, he had thought they were about to kill him (and he thought they still might).