Picture Perfect Page 14

  Someday.

  But I had this sense that if Connor could come back to life, he would be disgusted with me. He'd want me to do the things we used to talk about: live on Tahiti for a couple of months, take up bonsai or rock climbing.

  I tried to push Connor out of my mind in preparation for my meeting with Archibald Custer. He was standing in the open doorway of his office, monolithic, as if he expected to conjure whomever he wanted to see by the sheer force of his position. He was argumentative, pigheaded, and sexist. I didn't much like him, but I knew how to play by his rules.

  "Ah, Miss Barrett," he said. He spoke by holding a transmitter to a box built into his throat, his own vocal cords having been severed due to throat cancer a few years back. The undergraduates thought he was creepy, and I had to agree. Except for his height, he always reminded me a little of the sketches done ofHomo habilis , and I had to applaud him for choosing such a form-fitting profession.

  He didn't like me either, not only because I happened to be female and young, but also because I was a physical anthropologist. He was a cultural anthropologist--made his name by squatting right down with the Y nomamo years ago. There had always been a friendly rivalry between the two camps of anthropology, but I couldn't forgive him for what he'd done after I'd defended my dissertation. I had written a piece about whether violence was innate or learned, an age-old debate between physical and cultural anthropologists. The popular belief tended toward a cultural approach, saying that although aggression was innate, planned aggression--such as war--was brought about by the pressure of living in societies, not by our evolutionary history. I argued back, saying that this might be true, but society itself wouldn't have come about unless the territorial nature bred into our genes required man to make rules.

  All in all, it was a decent rebuttal to the cultural anthropologists, and this had Custer fuming. My first year as a lecturer he'd assigned me to courses that all ranked under cultural anthropology, and when I complained and asked to go on a field site, he had simply raised his eyebrows and said he thought it might do me some good to become more well-rounded.

  Now he waved me into his office and motioned me toward the chair that faced his tremendous desk. He was grinning, goddamn him, as he started to speak. "I'm sorry to tell you--"

  I jumped up from the chair, unable to hear any more. "Then don't tell me at all," I said, smiling tightly. "I assume I've been passed over, thank you very much, and I'll just save you the trouble." I took a step toward the door.

  "Miss Barrett."

  I stopped with my hand on the doorknob and turned.

  "Sit down."

  I slipped into the chair again, wondering how many points this had set me back in Custer's mind.

  "You'll be on an unusual assignment this first quarter," he continued. "Indeed, you're always pining away about going on location."

  I leaned forward in the chair. Were they starting some new field class during the fall semester? My mind raced through the possible sites: Kenya, Sudan, the Isles of Scilly. Would I be heading the group, or working with someone else?

  "Now, I'm afraid the associate professorship isn't going to be a possibility this term," Custer said. "Instead, we've recommended you for a sabbatical."

  I tightened my fingers around the armrests of the chair. I hadn'tapplied for a sabbatical. "If you'll excuse me, Archibald, I have to say in my own defense that for the past three years--"

  "You've been exemplary. Yes, I know. We all do. But sometimes"--he winced here--"sometimes that just isn't enough."

  Tell me about it, I thought.

  "We've chosen you to reopen the old UCLA site at Olduvai Gorge. Get it ready for a freshman field expedition," Custer said, sitting back in his chair.

  I set my jaw. They wanted me to be a gofer--to set up for a class I wasn't worthy enough to teach. It was a job any graduate student could do. It was not what I had worked so hard for, what I had written my dissertation for. It was not what I had planned as a step up on the steady climb of my career. "Surely I'm not the best-trained person for this job," I hedged.

  Custer shrugged. "You're the only faculty member who hasn't been...scheduled...for classes next semester," he said.

  I listened to the words he spoke, but clearly heard the truth. He was telling me I was the only one who was expendable.

  LESS THAN THIRTY-SIX HOURS LATER, I WAS IN TANZANIA, SITTING under the cool linen shade of a makeshift awning on the tiny piece of Olduvai Gorge that UCLA had requisitioned for its field classes. I was still angry at being banished, but I hadn't argued with Custer. It would have been a mistake. After all, I'd have to come back in ten weeks and beg for a teaching assignment.

  I'd tried to convince myself that this little sojourn would be better than I expected. After all, Olduvai Gorge had been Louis Leakey's first site in East Africa. Maybe I'd hit it big too: discover the missing link, or something else that would set my colleagues on their collective ears and change the current outlook on human evolution. The odds were against it, but I was still young and there were millions of years of history left to unearth.

  However, the scouting I'd done in the morning had convinced me that like the other anthropologists who scoured the site for decades after Leakey's discoveries, I wasn't going to turn up anything new. I had no idea how I was going to keep myself busy for ten weeks. Setting up the site for the field class meant pinpointing the spots where an excavation would be likely to yield fossils, but it seemed the class could dig in the basement of Fowler Hall and have just as much luck as they would here.

  As the sun climbed higher, I walked casually across the site, rummaging in my big straw bag for the book I'd begun to read on the plane. I glanced up, making sure that I was alone before I pulled it out.

  Ridiculous. My heart was pounding, as if I were about to be discovered with a gram of cocaine. It was only a dime-store romance novel, my one vice. I didn't smoke, I rarely drank, I'd never done drugs, but I was completely addicted to those stupid books on whose covers an overripe woman lounged in the arms of a drifter. I was so embarrassed that I wrapped them in brown parcel paper, like I used to do with textbooks in elementary school. I would read them on public buses and on the benches outside at UCLA, pretending they were anthropological treatises or Pulitzer Prize-winning fiction.

  I couldn't help myself. I knew the psychological explanation for this had something to do with what was lacking in my own life, but I told myself it didn't matter. I had started a few years ago after my roommate, Ophelia, had posed for a book cover in the arms of some glorious man. I had read that first paperback, and then I couldn't stop. There was solace in knowing that never in any tribe or any ancient race had people existed like this. It made me feel, well, more normal.

  But that didn't keep me from hoping, I suppose. Still, if a romance novel was going to spring to life, it would be with someone like Ophelia in its title role. She was beautiful and statuesque and sexy--not simple and practical, like me. It would have been nice to be the kind of woman for whom wars were started, but I was not holding my breath. To date, no knight was wearing my colors, no adventurers had come to find me across time and distance. Then again, I lived by choice in L.A., where beautiful women were the norm, not the exception. On the other hand, in these books there was no plastic surgery, no concealing cosmetics, no step aerobics classes. I thought of Helen of Troy, of Petrarch's Laura, and I wondered if they really had looked so different from me.

  "Excuse me," a voice said. "Your tent is in my viewfinder."

  I started at the unfamiliar sound and instinctively buried the paperback in the soft red sand. My head snapped up to see two men, their faces silhouetted against the high sun. "Pardon me?" I said, coming to my feet.

  The men were clearly not natives; their foreheads were sunburnt and peeling and they hadn't the good sense to be wearing hats. "My viewfinder," the taller man said. "You're going to have to move."

  I bristled. "I'm afraid you're wrong," I said. "This site belongs to the University o
f California."

  The man threw up his hands, disgusted, and turned his back on me.

  The second man held out his hand. "I'm George Farley," he said. "I'm an A.D." He gestured over his shoulder. "Edward here is our D.P."

  I smiled at him warily.A.D., D.P. "Cassandra Barrett," I said, hoping this was the appropriate response.

  George waved an arm toward the sweep of the gorge. "We're filming a movie here, and when Edward was doing long-range pans today, he kept getting your tent. You see, we were under the impression we'd be the only ones here this time of year."

  A movie? How they had gotten permission to film in Tanzania was mind-boggling, but I could see that the already excavated sites on the edge of the Serengeti plain would save the production costs of bulldozing their own. "Well," I said, "I'm sorry to disappoint you. But I'm working here too."

  "Tell her to take the tent down, then."

  The cinematographer--theD.P. --had not even bothered to turn around when he spoke, and my hands clenched at my sides. "I'm afraid I can't," I said, biting off each word. "It's too hot to work without an awning."

  "Work?" The cinematographer pivoted, and slowly smiled. George Farley's eyes burned like a man who's discovered gold. "You're an anthropologist?"

  Against my better judgment, I nodded.

  "Ah," Edward sighed. "There is a God."

  George led me back beneath my linen awning. "You're a UCLA anthropologist? You're here on an excavation?"

  "Believe me," I said, "this isn't exactly an excavation site." I explained the program at the university; the various field sites used around Africa to teach excavation hands-on.

  "So you're not really working," George pressed. "You might have some...free time."

  "I might," I said.

  "Three hundred dollars a day," George said. "Yours, if you'll agree to be a technical advisor on the movie."

  It was more than I made at UCLA; it was certainly enticing. Without knowing a thing about the movie, I thought of how tempting it would be to actuallyprofit from Custer's enforced sabbatical. I thought of the satisfaction I would get from screwing Custer in a way that didn't jeopardize my future at the university.

  When I did not say anything, George jumped forward to fill the silence. "It's a film about an anthropologist, and the star, Alex Rivers, insists that we get him the real McCoy so he can learn about excavation firsthand."

  "Insists?" Edward interrupted, smirking. "Demands."

  I raised an eyebrow. "Don't you have one already?" I said. "Seems to me you'd have thought of that before you came all the way out here."

  George cleared his throat. "You're right, and we did, but he had to leave unexpectedly about a week ago."

  "In the middle of the night," Edward added, under his breath. "Probably by force."

  George gave him a dark look. "Alex isn't as bad as all that," he said, turning back to me. "We wired the States but it would take time we don't have to find someone and you...well, you--"

  "I've dropped into your viewfinder," I said lightly.

  "Three hundred and fifty," George said. "And a room at the lodge in town."

  It wasn't ethical; it wasn't something Archibald Custer would condone. It would mean spending all my free time babysitting a spoiled movie star who'd already fired someone, instead of poking through the site for my own research. I opened my mouth, prepared to decline their offer graciously, when I thought of Connor.Don't you ever wonder what you're missing?

  "Well," I said, smiling brilliantly, "when do we start?"

  GEORGE HAD LEFT ME WITH AN IMPROVISED CONTRACT SCRIBBLED ON the rear flap of the romance novel I'd been reading, and almost immediately I'd taken down my awning and driven into town to call Ophelia. Me, on a movie set with Alex Rivers. Personally, I wasn't expecting much from a celebrity--living in L.A. had shown me how shallow and egocentric their worlds were--but I knew Ophelia would consider this a tremendous stroke of good fortune. She devoured the trade journals, always knowing what producer had hooked up with what director and what star; she stared like a groupie when we walked past movies that were being shot on the streets of L.A. I could imagine what her reaction would be--she'd die, or at least she'd say she was going to, because that was her answer for most things, from winning a part as an extra on a TV commercial to running out of lettuce when making a salad.

  Ophelia Fox had been my roommate since we'd been thrown together by a computer our freshman year at UCLA. Back then, she'd had the unfortunate name of Olivera Frug, and she'd still been a B-cup and a blonde. I sort of anchored Ophelia to the real world, and in return, well, I suppose she made me laugh.

  I also knew more about Ophelia than anyone else did. When I stayed at UCLA during my first Christmas break because there was nothing for me in Maine, I was surprised to see Ophelia was staying too. In her usual flip manner, she told everyone it was a way to work on her tan. But on Christmas Eve we got drunk on a bottle of Glenfiddich, and when Ophelia thought I had fallen asleep she began to talk. She spoke of the stepfather who had been feeling her up since she was twelve. She spoke of the smell of his aftershave. She spoke of the insomnia she cultivated so that she would be able to hear the slightest breach of her bedroom door. When the sun came up we did not unwrap presents, but instead shyly treasured this gift of each other.

  We were unlikely friends, but we were inseparable. When Ophelia began to remake herself in a different image, I stood by her. After all, I understood what she was trying so hard to disguise. She bought herself breast implants as a graduation gift and legally changed her name; and while I started work on my master's, she threw herself into the task of finding us an apartment close enough to the studios for her and to UCLA for me. It was a small place, but the rent was low, and we'd been there now for almost seven years.

  "Go ahead," the operator said.

  "Ophelia?"

  I heard her let her breath out in a rush. "Thank God you called," she said, as if I were a half-mile away. "I'm having a crisis."

  I grinned. "You're always having a crisis," I pointed out. "What's the problem today?"

  "I'm supposed to meet my therapist at four o'clock, you know?" Ophelia had been seeing someone to enhance her self-assertiveness ever since she had decided the sessions with the psychic weren't working. "Right now I'm seeing him twice a week, and I'd really like to cut back to once, but I don't know how to tell him that."

  I didn't want to laugh, I didn't mean to, but the sound leaked out. I covered it with a cough.

  "Maybe I just won't go," she sighed. "I'll tell him Thursday." She was quiet for a moment, and then seemed to remember where I was. "And how's Africa?" she dutifully asked.

  Ophelia did not understand my attraction to anthropology--to her it was a glorified way of getting filthy--but she knew how much it meant to me. "It's much more interesting than I expected," I said. "I'm moonlighting."

  "As a safari guide?"

  "As a technical advisor on Alex Rivers's new movie."

  I heard a crash in the background. "Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod," Ophelia said. "Howdid this happen?"

  Relating the entire story to Ophelia brought back my original doubts. "I know I'm going to regret this," I said. "If it wasn't for the money--and for a chance to screw UCLA--I wouldn't be doing it." I grimaced. "I bet he won't even want to get his hands dirty." I let my breath out slowly, mulling over the consequences of a hasty decision. I didn't like Custer, but I could avoid him when I was at the university. I wasn't going to like Alex Rivers, but I had committed myself to being his shadow for ten hours a day.

  "I'm sending you clothes," Ophelia announced. "My black sleeveless dress and the pink satin bra and--"

  "Ophelia," I interrupted, "I'm his technical advisor, not his mistress."

  "Still," Ophelia countered, "you never know. Just sign for the damn package and you can stuff it into your bag and forget about it." She took a shaky breath. "I can't believe this. I just can't believe this. Iknew I should have majored in anthropology." Her voice tumbled over
her words, racing with excitement. "God, Cass," she said."Alex Rivers!"

  I smiled. If I even wore that bra within twenty yards of Alex Rivers, Ophelia would probably frame it when I got home. "He's just a person," I reminded her.

  "Yeah," Ophelia said. "A person who makes four million per film and has the entire female population casting him in their fantasies at night."

  I thought about this: Alex Rivers had not been in any of my fantasies, but then again most of my dreams had to do with chipping away at piles of dirt and finding men who'd lived millions of years ago. I tried to remember which of his films I had seen. I must have gone to them with Ophelia, because she was really the only person I spent my free time with, and she usually forced me to see the latest box office hit. Vaguely I rememberedDesperado , some Western made when we were in college, andLight and Shadows , which had been one of the token Vietnam coming-of-age pictures of 1987. There were a few action films whose titles I couldn't remember, and then the last one I'd seen, about six months ago, that love story.Applewild . I'd forgotten about that one. It had surprised me, because I'd never seen Alex Rivers cast as a romantic hero, and he had made me believe in him.

  The film's message had stayed with me the whole drive home: Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. I wondered if it was really true. Love, to my knowledge, was nothing more than a planned seduction. In college, I had lost my virginity to a fraternity boy, just because I wanted to know what it was like. There hadn't been any great ache around my heart, or a connection of the spirits. There was the speeding of my blood, the mix of our hot breath, and the simplicity of sex.

  There had not been many others, but I didn't think I was missing much. Most of the time I was too busy to notice. I would have liked kids, one day, but I would only create a child with someone I really cared about, and to this date the only person I had ever even imagined falling in love with was Connor.

  "I have to go," I said. "This is costing a fortune."

  "Call me Thursday after you meet him."

  "Ophelia--"

  "Thursday."

  I closed my eyes. "We'll see," I said. "No promises."

  I HAD NEVER SEEN SO MANY PEOPLE WHO WERE PAID TO DO NOTHING. People sat on the ground, on folding canvas chairs, on boulders. There were cranes set up with tremendous cameras, and wires leading everywhere. A man wearing headphones sat in front of a portable sound system colored with knobs and levers. Everyone was talking, George and Edward were nowhere to be found, and no one seemed to be in charge.