Picture Perfect Read online

Will didn't. He figured it was still police business, so what the hell. "I'm sorry," Alex said to her. "I didn't mean to jump at you. This was in no way your fault." He cleared his throat, starting to say something else, but then just shook his head and repeated his first words. "I'm sorry."

  He kissed her very lightly. When they moved apart Cassie was staring up at Alex like he'd invented the sun.

  Cassie glanced at Will as Alex steered her out of the restaurant, but she didn't risk a smile. Will understood. He followed them out the front door, watching as a path parted magically through the crowd. He listened to Alex call out goodbyes to people he knew as if nothing had happened.

  You don't borrow trouble.

  Cassie was watching him out the rear side window as their Range Rover pulled away; Will was sure of that. He had let her go a second time, but he knew there would be another chance. His grandmother had taught him there was no such thing as coincidence.There are millions of people in the world , she had told him,and the spirits will see that most of them, you never have to meet. But there are one or two you are tied to, and the spirits will cross you back and forth, threading so many knots until they catch and you finally get it right.

  Ramon came outside to stand beside him. "Unbelievable," he said. "Some poor asshole does that, and he's booked and held on bail. Alex Rivers gets pissed and the whole fucking world stops for him."

  Will turned to his partner. "What time is it?"

  "Almost eleven."

  He had an hour before he went off duty. "Cover for me," Will said, and without offering an explanation he started to jog down Sunset. He ran for miles until he came to St. Sebastian's. The heavy doors were locked, but he stepped behind the church into the familiar cemetery. This time he did not pray to the Christian God, who had been too slow to act, but to his grandmother's spirits. In the distance he heard thunder. "Please," he whispered. "Help her."

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  "HOW could you do this to me?"

  The woman's voice shrieked through the receiver, startling Cassie. She let the phone drop between her pillow and Alex's, muffling the scream somewhat, but not enough to keep Cassie from wondering what exactly shehad done.

  Her eyes felt like sand had been ground into them. She rubbed her lids, but that only made it worse. Although Alex had apologized at Le Dome, when they came home to the apartment last night, he hadn't been speaking to Cassie. He made it patently clear, removing his clothes in silence, locking himself in the bathroom to shower. By the time he'd slipped into bed, Cassie had shut the lights and curled on her side, wanting to cry. But sometime in the middle of the night, Alex had reached for her, his unconscious carrying through what his conscious mind refused to do. He held her tight against him, an embrace that ran the ragged edge of pain.

  "Michaela." Alex's hand groped over Cassie's shoulder in an effort to find the telephone. "Michaela, shut up."

  Cassie rolled over to face Alex, who was coming awake by degrees. He held the receiver to his ear, and his mouth was drawn in a tight line, bisected by a thin red cut that ran to the cleft of his chin. Near his right eye was a bruise shaped like a tiny penguin, and covering his ribs was a string of black-and-blue welts. Amazingly, he smiled. "To tell you the truth," he said into the phone, "that was thelast thing on my mind."

  He turned onto his side, closed his eyes, and shook his head. "Of course," he murmured. "Don't I always do what you want?" With a wicked grin, he let the receiver fall back against the pillow and reached his hand toward Cassie. His palm skimmed her breast. Cassie stared at the telephone. She could hear the woman chattering in high rippling notes that reminded her of a xylophone, or maybe parakeets.

  Alex had put last night aside as easily as he might have closed the cover of a well-read book. The fight at Le Dome, the accusations afterward, the dismissal in the quiet of their own bedroom--all this he'd either forgotten or classified as trivial enough to pass over. This, Cassie marveled, was a talent. Imagine: A world without grudges. A world free of guilt. A world where you weren't condemned for the consequences of your actions.

  She had spent half the night trying to pinpoint what exactly had made Alex angry at her, so she was more than willing to start with a clean slate. She reached for Alex, trailing her hand down his side and over his hip.

  Suddenly he rolled away from her, grabbing the phone and motioning for Cassie to find him a pen. She rummaged in her nightstand and found a grubby pencil and a receipt for something that cost $22.49. Alex flipped the receipt over and began to scribble across it. "Mmm. Yes. I'll be there. Yeah, you too."

  He threw the pencil across the room and sighed, making the little piece of paper flutter to the edge of the bed. Cassie sat up and reached for it. "L.A. County Hospital?" she read. "Twelve-fifteen, seventh floor?"

  Alex covered his eyes and ran his hand down his face. "Seems that Liz Smith's column starts off with a mention of my...disagreement last night with Nick LaRue." He sat up and walked naked to the window, cantilevering the shade so that the first pink sunlight sliced across his back in parallel lines. "Michaela's having a fit, because youdon't attract bad press a month before the Oscars. She's trying to counterbalance the public's impression by throwing some good PR my way. God only knows how she did it at six in the morning, but she's arranged some photo opportunity that involves me and the leukemia patients in the pediatric ward of the hospital."

  Alex walked around the perimeter of the bed to sit beside Cassie. She reached up, touching the bruise on his face. "Does it hurt?"

  He shook his head. "Not as much as leaving you alone for lunch will." He looked down, drawing a series of circles on the sheet that covered her thigh. "Cassie," he said, "I want to apologize again. I don't mean to--you know I'm not--" He balled his hand into a fist. "Hell, sometimes I just explode."

  Cassie held his face between her palms and kissed him gently on the mouth, so that she wouldn't hurt him. "I know," she said. She felt something thick swelling up inside of her that caught at the back of her throat, and it took several seconds to realize it was not love but simply relief.

  When there was a knock at the door, Alex pulled on a pair of boxer shorts. He opened it to reveal a small, stout woman who looked very familiar to Cassie, although that might have just been her features, because she looked like everyone's grandmother. She had thin brown hair pulled into a knot, eyes the color of old wood, a smile as sad as the rain.

  "I heard the telephone ring, Mr. Rivers, so I figure maybe this is an early day for you,si ?" She deftly moved the lamp to the far side of Alex's nightstand and set down the tray she had been carrying. TheL.A. Times , coffee, apple muffins, and something rolled in powdered sugar that smelled like heaven.

  Mrs. Alvarez. The name echoed through Cassie's head, until she whispered it aloud. "Mrs. Alvarez?" She sat up so quickly the sheet fell away to her waist. This was the Mrs. Alvarez who kept the apartment when they were living at the house. Who had more pictures of Jesus in her room than of her own three sons. Who had taught Cassie to make flan and who once, when Alex was away on location, had held Cassie in the dark in this very bed while a nightmare slipped out the window. "Mrs. Alvarez," she repeated breathlessly, immensely proud of herself.

  Alex laughed and sat down beside Cassie, wrapping the sheet around her again. "Congratulations," Alex said to Mrs. Alvarez. "With one funnel cake, you managed to do what two days of living with me couldn't."

  Mrs. Alvarez blushed, the color spreading from her high collar like a stain."No es verdad," she said. "Mrs. Rivers, you want I help you pack today?"

  Cassie turned toward Alex. She wondered how Mrs. Alvarez had known to come back this morning. She herself had forgotten about Scotland. "It's up to you," Alex said. "Although I think you're going to want to take heavier clothes than what you've got here. I'll have John swing by to pick you up around three, and we'll go over to the house. The flight doesn't leave till nine tonight; it's a redeye."

  Mrs. Alvarez wrinkled her forehead as she spread a napkin over Cassie's lap, so wh
ite she couldn't see its edges against the bedsheet. The housekeeper poured two cups of coffee and added cream to one, handing it to Alex. "Well," she said, "you yell if you change your mind." Smiling at Cassie, she backed her way out of the room.

  Alex fed Cassie a piece of muffin and kissed her hard on the lips. "So," he said. "The prodigal memory returns."

  "In fits and starts," Cassie admitted. "Who knows? By the time we get to the house, I may even be able to find my own way to the bedroom."

  Alex skimmed the front page of the Friday paper and then handed it to her. "I'm going to take a run down the beach," he said, reaching under the covers to find her leg. "Feel free to stay in bed until I get back."

  She pretended to read the national news while Alex was stretching his hamstrings, but the minute he closed the door behind him, she flipped to Liz Smith's column.TA -BOO-BOO, the subheading announced.Alex Rivers and Nick LaRue, who play, in this recent release, inseparable buddies, proved to the patrons of Le Dome last night that what you see on screen is only an act. According to a reliable source, these two came to blows over Rivers's wife, Cassandra. When it comes Oscar night, will everyone be thinking of Rivers's nominated performance in The Story of His Life,or of his celebrated right hook?

  Shaking, Cassie turned the page. She closed her eyes but could not clear from her mind the anger that had seared through Alex last night.

  Nothing Nick LaRue said had caused the fight. Cassie knew that as well as she knew Alex, she supposed. Anyone else would have had an argument, or issued a tight, quiet threat, but Alex had been pushed over the edge. There had been something running hot in his system that had fanned the tiniest spark into a conflagration. It wasn't Cassie herself--he'd said so, and he seemed to be happy with her that morning. Maybe it had to do with the pressure of the Academy Awards. Maybe it was being away fromMacbeth .

  She glanced down at the newspaper and noticed that she had folded the paper to the Friday movie listings section. She scanned the ads forTaboo , teasers that matched the billboard she'd seen on the night Will found her. She saw that the Westwood Community Center was offering a one-day Alex Rivers film festival as part of their tribute to the Academy Award nominees.

  Smiling, Cassie ran her finger over the listings. A trio of Alex's movies, starting at nine o'clock in the morning. They'd be showingAntony and Cleopatra , the Shakespeare film that had proved his range, and one of the first movies he'd made after they were married.Desperado , a revisionist Western that had been his first film. And alsoThe Story of His Life , the family drama for which Alex had received three Oscar nominations.

  Cassie glanced at her watch. She had two hours to get to Westwood. She jumped out of bed and took a quick shower, pulled on jeans and the sweatshirt Alex had worn yesterday. She found John in the kitchen with Mrs. Alvarez and asked if he'd be able to drive her, and they practically collided with Alex on their way out the door. "Where are you off to?" he panted, sweat running down the sides of his neck.

  "I'll see you at three," Cassie said, throwing him her widest smile and slipping past him before he had a chance to ask more.

  She settled into the back seat of the Range Rover, giddy as a teenager. Closing her eyes, she buried her face into the overlong arms of Alex's sweatshirt, breathing Malibu, sandalwood, him.

  THE WESTWOOD COMMUNITY CENTER WAS NOTHING MORE THAN A recreation hall for senior citizens, who made up the lion's share of the early-morning audience for the Alex Rivers Film Festival. Cloaked in the anonymity of an outsider, Cassie moved through the knots of elderly women in the lobby. "Like Gary Cooper," one woman said. "He can do anything on screen."

  She smiled, realizing she had experienced something no one else in the room had. She wanted to stand spread-eagled on the black and white linoleum tiles and scream,I am Alex Rivers's wife. I live with him. I eat breakfast with him. He's real to me .

  When they started to let people into the amphitheater, Cassie held back and counted the number of fans Alex had here in Westwood. She imagined herself laughing with him later, telling him about the lady with the muffin-shaped hair who carried an autographed eight-by-ten of him and stuck it to the seat beside her, and about the old man who had yelled at the admissions booth, "Alexwho ?"

  She sat in the back row, where she could watch and listen to everyone else.Desperado , the Western that everyone in Hollywood had predicted would be a dismal failure, was the first movie to be shown. Cassie hadn't known Alex when he made the film, and actually, it hadn't been Alex's movie. The lead actress had top billing--Ava Milan. She played a woman who'd been taken prisoner as a child by a group of renegade Indians, and who had grown up with the nomadic tribe, found a husband and a decent life. Alex was her brother, who had seen his entire family shot and grew up swearing vengeance. The whole movie spiraled to a climax in which Alex found his sister in the Indian camp and went on a rash of senseless shooting, killing most of the village and Ava's character's husband in the process. After a chilling soliloquy where she told her brother the life he'd just taken from her was better than anything she could have hoped for as a white woman in 1890, she slit her own throat in front of him.

  The critics had gone wild. Westerns were not in at the time, but Native Americans were.Desperado was the first movie to portray them as individuals, not as a faceless enemy. Alex Rivers, twenty-four, moved ahead of a pack of current young actors to become a standout, and his character, Abraham Burrows, became the first in a long line of complex, flawed heroes.

  Cassie slipped low in her seat as the screened names rolled over the red dust of the Western set. ALEX RIVERS. A chill ran from her collarbone to her fingertips. The first moment Alex stepped onto the screen, she drew in her breath. He looked so young, and his eyes were lighter than they seemed now. He stood with his feet apart, his hands fisted at his sides, and he let out a yell that shook the red-curtained walls. Not even a word, just a syllable that made his presence undeniable.

  It struck her how much her perception of Alex had changed in just a few days. When he had come for her at the police station, she had seen him as he was on screen: ten feet tall and unapproachable. But she knew better now. Cassie smiled. She'd have a hell of a time convincing even one other person in this theater of the truth, but Alex Rivers was just like anyone else.

  WILL WAS WAITING FOR A FURNITURE DELIVERY. HE'D HAD IT WITH using his mattress as a dining room, living room, and general all-purpose recreation area. He had bought stuff at the first place he'd seen, a little store with decent prices that let him pay on monthly installments.

  The furniture van came just when they said it would, at ten o'clock. Two big men brought each piece to the door and said, "Where's it go?" When they got to the living room, Will kicked the extra boxes out of the way. He disconnected his brand-new television and VCR and waited for the movers to bring in the teakwood entertainment center. He'd bought that just because of its name: entertainment center. Kind of sounded like you were having a party in your house, even when you were alone.

  The VCR was an impulse buy. He just didn't see how he could live in the movie capital of the world and not have one. He didn't know how to set the clock and he'd be damned if he was going to thumb through the manual to figure it out, so it had been flashing 12:00 for twenty-four hours now. It was his day off, Friday, and when these guys finished bringing in the furniture he was going to do the following things in this order: eat a bowl of cereal at his new kitchen table, flop down belly-first on his new bed, sprawl across his couch and flip on the TV with the remote, and then watch a movie.

  It was past noon by the time he walked down to the convenience store to rent something. He wasn't looking for anything in particular. The Korean proprietor told him his first two choices were out, and then held up a beaten red box. "You try this," he said. "You like it."

  Desperado. Will couldn't help but laugh. It was a film from the early eighties, and it co-starred Alex Rivers. "Shit," he said, pulling a five from his pocket. "I'll try it." If Rivers was as young as he figured from th
e dates on the box, he probably wasn't very good, and after last night, Will felt like getting a laugh at his expense.

  Will bought a bag of natural popcorn and walked home. He sat down on the new couch and started the movie with his remote, fast-forwarding through the warnings and the previews. When Alex Rivers first came onto the screen and let out a howl like a Sioux war cry, Will snorted and tossed a handful of popcorn at the TV.

  He did not know what the movie was about, but he remembered all the controversy that had surrounded it. It was written up in a lot of tribal papers, opinions that had split down the middle: complaints for its inaccuracies, praise for its portrayal of Native American family life and the hiring of Indian actors. Will watched it long enough to see the actress who played Alex Rivers's sister marry some strapping Mandan brave. She was small and blond, and her face was very close to the one Will had seen at night as an adolescent, when he tossed under sheets in his grandfather's house.

  "Fuck this," Will said. He hit the little red button on his remote, getting great satisfaction out of seeing Alex Rivers's image wiggle and black out as the tape ejected from his VCR. He sat up, spilling the popcorn into the cushions of the couch. "They don't know a thing," he muttered. "They make these shitty movies and they don't have a clue."

  Will switched off the TV, too, staring at the screen for a moment until the snow stopped dancing in front of his eyes. He looked at the video box lying on the floor on its side. Then he walked to the two boxes he'd moved out of the way for the delivery. Prying open the top one, he rummaged through the newspaper Cassie had tried to pack between the artifacts he'd so carelessly thrown inside.

  He pulled out the medicine bundle that had belonged to his great-great-grandfather, who--like his grandfather--had dreamed of the elk, and that's what the pouch was made of. Will fingered the fringes; the skin of the bag itself. Elk Dreamers had been highly revered among the Sioux. People turned to them when they were looking for the person they should love.

  Will had known a guy in the reservation's police department who had married a white woman, moved to Pine Ridge town, coached his kid's Little League team. Like all cops, he carried a piece, but he also carried a medicine bundle. In 1993, believe it or not, he wore the thing every day looped right around his holster. He said it brought him luck, and the one day his daughter borrowed it for show-and-tell he'd been shot in the arm by a drug addict.