Picture Perfect Page 6

  She sat down on a chair and let Connor hold the pack to the curve of her neck. It wasn't like Connor hadn't seen this before--he kneweverything about her--but even the first time, he had just offered his help and kept quiet. He hadn't looked at her with those moon eyes that she knew meant pity.

  Ice water ran down the hollow between Cassie's shoulder blades, and in spite of Connor's first aid, a headache was beginning to kick through her. She stared out the window at the floating dock, which looked so far away she could hardly believe she had been there minutes before. Cassie sighed. The problem with absolutely perfect summer days was that they were bright bull's-eye targets for something to go outright wrong.

  SHE WOKE UP TO THE COOL STING OF ALOE BEING RUBBED ALONG her calves. "You're going to pay for this later," Alex said. "You're so red it hurts me to look at you."

  Cassie jerked her leg away and tried to roll over, feeling uncomfortable with the intimate slip of Alex's palms over her own skin. She winced at the pain when she tried to bend her knee. "I didn't mean to fall asleep."

  Alex glanced at his watch. "I didn't mean to let you sleep for six hours, either," he said. "After Herb left, I sort of got tied up on the phone."

  Cassie sat up and shifted degrees away from Alex. She watched the sun cut a ribbon across the ocean. An older woman came strolling down the beach with two weimaraners. "Alex!" she called, waving. "Cassie! Are you feeling all right?"

  Alex smiled at her. "She's fine," he yelled. "Have a nice walk, Ella."

  "Ella?" Cassie murmured. "Ella Whittaker?" Her eyes widened, trying to catch a glimpse of the statuesque woman who, fifty years back, had been a pinup girl and a screen legend. "The Ella Whittaker who starred in--"

  "The Ella Whittaker who lives two doors down," Alex said, grinning. "God, you've got to get your memory back soon, or you're going to scour the Colony asking for autographs."

  For several minutes he did not speak, and Cassie could feel the quiet settle around them. She wanted to say something to Alex, anything, but she didn't know what sorts of things they talked about.

  As she turned toward the violet line of the horizon, Alex's voice curled over her, light as silk. "Iwas going to tell you about UCLA. God, I never would havemet you if you weren't working there, so I owe them a lot. I really didn't do it deliberately. I just forgot." He reached for her hand and brought it to his lips. His eyes were the sloe-black of smoke. "Forgive me?"

  He's acting. The thought rushed through Cassie's mind so violently she pulled her hand free and turned away, shaking.How do I know when he's acting ?

  "Cassie?"

  She blinked at him, held in his gaze, and by bits and degrees she softened. She couldn't think about UCLA, about who was wrong and who was right, not just now. He was hypnotizing her; she knew this as well as she knew that she had been made for him, as well as she knew that any doubts she had about Alex would mirror her own faulty judgment.

  Cassie began to hear and feel the unexpected: a tangle of sweet Mexican violins, a wet wind from an everglade, the song of one hundred hearts beating. She thought to run, some instinct telling her this was the beginning of the end, but she could no sooner move than turn back time. The world as she knew it was falling away, and the only place left for her to go was toward Alex.

  "Forgive me?" he repeated.

  Cassie heard the sound of her own voice, heard the words she couldn't remember thinking. "Of course," she said. "Don't I always?"

  A wave rolled over Cassie's ankles, frigid and authentic. The magic broke, and then it was just the two of them, she and Alex, and that was starting to seem all right. "I came prepared with a bribe," Alex said. "I made it myself." He was smiling at her, and she smiled back hesitantly, thinking,He understands. He knows he has me in the palm of his hand . He pulled up the front of his shirt to reveal a neatly wrapped square package tucked into the waist of his jeans. "Here."

  Cassie reached for the tinfoil, trying not to look at the smooth, sculptured muscles of his chest. She unwrapped it. "You made me Rice Krispies Marshmallow Treats? Are they my favorite?"

  "No," Alex laughed. "In fact, you hate marshmallows, but it's the only thing I know how to cook and I thought forsure you'd remember that and take pity on me." He tugged it out of her hand and took a bite. "I grew up on these," he said, his mouth full.

  Cassie turned to him, her eyes gleaming. "Alex," she said. "Where did I grow up?"Maine . She knew even before he spoke the word what the answer would be. "And who was Connor?"

  Alex's eyes widened, so she could see the ring of gold around the edge of his irises. "Your best friend. How do you--did you remember all this?"

  She grinned, excited. "I was dreaming the whole time I was asleep," she said. "I remembered a lot of things. Moosehead Lake, and Connor, and...and my mother. Do we ever go there? Do I talk to my parents a lot?"

  Alex swallowed. "Your mom's dead, and, well, when I first met you, you told me the reason you went to college in California was to get as far away from Maine as you possibly could."

  Cassie nodded, as if she had expected this. She wondered how much Alex knew about her parents. She wondered if she'd ever been brave enough to tell him. "Where are your parents?"

  Alex rolled away from her, turning to face the ocean. She watched his profile set, and she had a sudden memory--this was the way he looked minutes before he filmed a scene, when his own personality drained away and was replaced by the character he was playing. "They're in New Orleans," Alex said. "We don't see much of them, either." He rubbed his palm against the back of his neck and closed his eyes. Cassie wondered what he was seeing, what made him curl into himself. To her surprise, a sharp ache stung her chest, and she knew right away she had felt it so that he wouldn't have to. When Alex looked up at her, old ghosts still shifted in his eyes. "You really don't remember me, do you?" he said quietly.

  He was inches away but she could feel the line of heat between them as if they were touching. Cassie put her arms around him, shivering as she took in more of his pain. "No," she said. "I don't."

  THEY MADE POPCORN IN THE MICROWAVE FOR DINNER AND watched a Monty Python rerun on TV. They played War with a deck of cards they found buried in the broom closet. With a pillowcase draped on his head for a wimple, Alex performed Lady Macbeth's "Out, damned spot!" speech, curtsying low when Cassie laughed and clapped. Her eyes were shining when he jumped down from the cleared coffee table he'd used as a stage. She did not know Alex, but she liked him. Surely that was more than most marriages survived on.

  Alex pulled her to her feet. "Tired?"

  Cassie nodded, letting him slip his arm around her waist. As they walked down the stairs to the bedroom, she wondered what the sleeping arrangements would be. They were married, so he could sleep anywhere he pleased; but she'd really only had one day to get reacquainted with him, and she supposed he might chivalrously offer to stay in a guest bedroom for the night. She wondered if she wanted him to.

  At the door to the master bedroom, Alex stopped walking. Cassie stepped away from him, her arms pressed to her sides. She could not bring herself to look at Alex, whose questions, even in the silence, seemed to fill the hallway.

  He tipped her chin up and kissed her gently. "Good night," he said, and then he turned toward a guest room a few doors down.

  Cassie watched him for a moment, then walked into the bedroom and closed the door. She pulled her shirt over her head and stepped out of her shorts, tossing them on the four-poster bed en route to the bathroom. Stripping off her underwear, she stood in front of the mirrors that lined an entire wall beside the sink. She cupped her hands over her breasts and frowned at the small swell of her stomach. She couldn't imagine what had attracted Alex Rivers.

  She picked up the bottles and jars that dotted the countertop--facial creams and exfoliating scrubs and clear astringents that seemed to belong in equal proportion to Alex and herself. She had already brushed her hair and washed her face when she realized there was no toothpaste. There were two toothbrushes--one green, one
blue--and she didn't know which one was hers, either.

  She checked in the cabinets that were recessed into the walls, but all she could find were pale peach towels and two thick terry cloth bathrobes. She wrapped one around herself, rubbing her hands down the heavy brushed cotton. Maybe Alex had toothpaste inhis bathroom, and surely he'd want his toothbrush.

  She didn't know which room he had gone into, and she was about to knock on random doors when she heard him speaking a little farther down the hall. "Life's but a walking shadow." The door was ajar, and in the reflection of the bathroom mirror she saw Alex standing over the sink, his eyes hollow. "A poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage," he murmured, his voice no louder than a whisper. "And then is heard no more."

  Stunned, Cassie clutched the toothbrushes in her hand and leaned against the doorframe to see a little better. This was not Alex. He had transformed himself into a man beaten, a man who saw his life for what it would become--a flash in someone else's memory, then something forgotten.

  Cassie fought back the urge to push the door open and wrap her own hope tight around him. She did not know this new stranger, she knew him even less than she knew Alex, but she understood that she had come to help.

  She thought about what Alex had said at the police station, the terror in his voice:You don't know what it was like to lose you . And she began to see that the famous Alex Rivers came undone just as easily as the next person.

  Cassie took one step forward and Alex opened his eyes, seeing her reflection. He was Alex again, and smiling, but in the darker gradients of his eyes she could see the terror and the numbness of Macbeth. She wondered if he had always been like that, if every character became a tiny part of him. She knew that actors, in some part, had to draw and embellish on their own experience, and the thought of so much despair buried somewhere in Alex wrenched her. "Where do you get it? All that pain?"

  He stared at her, shaken by her second sight. "From myself."

  She moved first, or maybe he did, but then he was holding her and opening the tie of the robe, running his hands up and down her sides. The toothbrushes fell to the floor and Cassie wound her fingers in his hair, burying her face in the hollow of his shoulder. She inched her hands down his back as if she were feeding a seam, bunching the fabric of his shirt until her hands burned the skin at his waist.

  He kissed hungrily, bumping them against walls and doorframes as he pushed his way back toward the master bedroom. Cassie fell against the bed, and he pulled apart the sides of her heavy robe, pinning her arms while the moon danced over her skin. His tongue traced the bend of her jaw, the curves below her breasts, the white lines of her thighs.

  Cassie opened her eyes, dazed by the image of his body over hers. Alex pressed his lips to her stomach. "Beautiful," he said.

  He's acting.

  As it had earlier that day, the thought came out of nowhere, and when it took root in her mind she began to struggle. But Alex's weight was on her, pressing. He cradled her face in his hands and kissed her so honestly she thought she would shatter. And then she remembered the spell he had woven between them that afternoon; the emptiness that had opened like a raw wound in her own stomach when she heard him speak as Macbeth.

  The moment they came together, Cassie understood why they belonged to each other. He filled her, and she took away his scars. Cassie wrapped her arms around Alex's neck, surprised by the tears that leaked from the edges of her eyes. She turned her face to the open window, breathing in the sweet mix of herself and Alex and endless ocean.

  She was drifting off to sleep when Alex's voice slipped over her. "You don't have to get your memory back, Cass. I know who you are."

  "Oh?" she said, smiling. She drew Alex's arm around her. "Who am I?"

  She felt Alex's peace curl against her like a benediction. He pulled her back against his front, into the place where she just fit. "You're my other half," he said.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  IN another time and place, Will Flying Horse would have been a Dreamer.

  He was eleven when his eyes opened in the middle of the night, seeing and not seeing at the same time. It was summertime, and outside the cicadas sang in the quiet of the half moon. But Will's head screamed with the thunder, and when his grandparents rushed to the side of his bed, they could see violent blue bolts of lightning reflected in his pupils. Cyrus Flying Horse reached across the glowing blanket of his grandson's bed to grasp his wife's hand. "Wakan," he murmured. "Sacred."

  Although many things had changed for the Sioux over the years, certain habits died hard. Cyrus was a man who had been born on a reservation, who had seen the development of television and automobiles, and who, a month later, would watch a man walk on the moon. But he also remembered the things his father had told him about the Sioux who had visions. To dream of the thunder was powerful. If the dream was ignored, one could be struck dead by lightning.

  Which was why, one morning in 1969, Will Flying Horse's grandfather took him to see the shaman, Joseph Stands in Sun, about becoming a Dreamer.

  Joseph Stands in Sun was older than the earth, or so it was rumored. He sat outside with Cyrus and Will on a long, low bench that ran the entire length of his log cabin. As he spoke, he whittled, and Will watched the wood as it first took the shape of a dog, then an eagle, then a beautiful girl, changing with every brush of the shaman's hands. "In the days of my grandfather," Joseph said, "a boy like you would search for a vision when he was ready to be treated like a man. And if he dreamed of the thunder, he would become aHeyoka. " Joseph peered down at Will, and for the first time Will noticed that the man's eyes were different from any other eyes he'd ever seen. There were no irises at all. Just black, fathomless pupils. "Do you know this, boy?"

  Will nodded; it was all his grandfather had talked about on the walk over to the shaman's cabin. A hundred years earlier, the Heyokas had been tribal clowns, men who were expected to behave strangely. Some moved only backward, some spoke in a different tongue. They dressed in rags and slept without blankets in the winter, wrapped themselves in thick buffalo skins in the summer. They would dip their hands in boiling water and pull them out unscarred, proving they were more powerful than other men. Sometimes they received a vision from the spirits, warning of danger or another's death. As Heyokas, they had the power to prevent it; but because they were Heyokas, they'd receive nothing for themselves in return for their efforts. Will had listened patiently to his grandfather, and the whole time he kept thinking he was damned glad it was 1969.

  "Well," said Joseph Stands in Sun, "you cannot be a Heyoka; this is the twentieth century. But you will have your thunder dream."

  Three nights later, Will sat naked in a sweat lodge across from Joseph Stands in Sun. He had seen the lodges before; sometimes teenagers built them and smoked peyote in the cramped, curved quarters, getting high enough to run bareassed through the fields and dive into freezing streams. But Will himself had never been inside one. From time to time Joseph poked at the glowing stones that were used to create heat. Mostly he sang and chanted, syllables that swelled and burst like bottle rockets inches before Will's eyes.

  As dawn was sneaking across the plain, Joseph took Will to the top of a flat butte. Will would rather have been anywhere else than on a rock ledge, naked, but he knew better than to disgrace his grandfather or Joseph Stands in Sun. Respect your elders: it was the way he'd been taught. Shaking, Will did as he had been told. He faced the sun with his arms outstretched, keeping perfectly still and trying to ignore the grass that whispered around Joseph's legs as he walked away. He stood for hours until the sun began to sink again, and then his legs gave out beneath him. He curled onto his side and began to cry. He felt the butte tremble, the sky melt.

  On the second day, an eagle flew over his head from the east. Will watched it circle, moving so slowly that for entire minutes it seemed to be suspended just an arm's length away. "Help me," he whispered, and the eagle flew through him. "You have chosen a life that is difficult," it crie
d, and then it disappeared.

  It might have been hours that passed; it might have been days. Will was so hungry and faint he had to force air in and out of his lungs. In the moments his mind was clear, he cursed his grandfather for believing in this kind of crap; he cursed himself for being so easily led. He thought of school baseball tryouts that past spring, of thePlayboy he had hidden under his mattress, of the tingling smell of his mother's Pond's cold cream. He thought of anything that seemed leagues apart from the Sioux way of life.

  We are coming, we are coming. The words whistled over the plain, wrapping themselves around Will's neck and drawing him to his feet. Directly overhead was a dark, roiling cloud. Exhausted, starving, delirious, he threw back his head and opened his arms, willing a sacrifice.

  When the thunder began in his head, he realized he was no longer on the ground. High above, and peering down, Will saw the girl. She was small and thin and she was running in a snowstorm. From time to time the blizzard winds would sweep around her, blocking her from Will's view. He thought she was running away from someone or something, but then he saw her stop. She stood at the heart of the storm, arms outstretched. All the time, she had been trying to find the center.

  "Help her," Will said, and he heard the words echoed a hundred times around him. He was standing on the ground again. He knew he would remember none of this. He knew that even as a man, this would be the nightmare that tugged at his consciousness in the heavy minutes after waking.

  When the sky shattered and the rain came, Will screamed into the wind. Eyes wide, he watched lightning crack the night in two, splitting his world into equal halves that rocked, broken shells, at his feet.

  EVEN THE SUN LOVED ALEX. CASSIE TOUCHED HER FINGERS TO HIS jaw, mesmerized by the fact that the one sliver of morning light in the bedroom had managed to fall directly over his sleeping form. His skin was dark, shadowed by beard, marked just below his chin with a tiny curved scar. Cassie tried to remember how he had hurt himself. She watched his eyes shift beneath his lids and wondered if he was dreaming of her.