ROBBINS Harold - The Carpetbaggers

"Action!"

Everything happened exactly as before until the moment Rina looked into the camera. She stared into it for a moment. Unwinking. Dry eyes. Then, suddenly, she stepped aside.

"Cut!" Dunbar called. He started out onto the stage again.

"I’m sorry, Claude," Rina said. "I just can't. We'd better use make-up."

"Make-up!" the eager assistant director yelled. "Bring the tears!"

Norman nodded. There was no use wasting money. On screen, nobody could tell the difference. Besides, the phony tears photographed even better – they rolled down the cheeks like oiled ball bearings.

Dunbar turned. "No make-up!"

"No make-up!" his assistant echoed loudly. "Hold the tears!"

Dunbar looked at Rina. "This is the last scene of the picture," he said. "Two men are dead because of you and all I want is one lousy little tear. Not because you feel sorry for them or for yourself. It's just to let me know that somewhere inside you, you still have a soul. Not much, just enough to show you're a woman, not an animal. Understand?"

Rina nodded.

"O.K., then," he said quietly. "Let's take it from the top." He walked back to his place beside the camera. He bent slightly forward, peering intensely as Rina came out the door. She looked down at the men, then up as the camera began to dolly in close. "Now!" Dunbar's voice was almost a whisper. "Cry!"

Rina stared into the approaching camera. Nothing happened.

"Cut!" Dunbar yelled. He strode angrily into the scene. "What the fuck kind of a woman are you?" he screamed at her.

"Please, Claude," she begged.

He stared at her coldly. "For five months we were making this picture. I've worked day and night, for only one reason. You wanted to prove you were an actress. Well, I've done all I could. I'm not going to destroy the integrity of this picture in the last scene because of your inadequacy. You want to be an actress – well, prove it! Act!"

He turned his back on her and walked away. Norman covered his face with his hands. Ten thousand dollars a day this was costing him. He should have known better.

"Action!"

He opened his fingers and peered through them at the scene. This time, he could hear Dunbar speaking to Rina in a low voice.

"That's right, that's right, now you walk out. You look down and see them. First at Paul, then at Joseph. You see the gun in Joseph's hand and you know what has happened. Now you begin to look up. You're thinking, they're dead. Maybe you didn't love them but you lived with them, you used them. Maybe for a moment one of them brings back a piece of your memory – the memory you lost and never recovered. But for a fraction of a second, the veil lifts. And it's your father, or your brother, or maybe the child you never had, lying there in the sand at your feet. The tears start up in your eyes."

Slowly Norman's hands slipped away from his face. He held his breath as he moved toward the side away from the camera, which blocked his view. Rina was crying. Real tears.

Dunbar was still whispering. "The tears have come but the veil has dropped again and you can't remember why you are crying. The tears stop and your eyes are dry. Now you turn and look out into the desert. Out there in the lonely sand someone is waiting, someone with your memory. You will find that person out there. Then you'll really know who you are. You begin to walk out into the desert… slowly… slowly… slowly."

Dunbar's voice faded as Rina began to walk away, even the proud, straight shape of her back calling for pity. Norman looked around him. The crew were staring at Rina. They had forgotten everything on the set except her. He felt a moisture in his eyes. The damn scene had even got to him.

"Cut!" Dunbar's voice was a hoarse, triumphant shout. "Print it!" He slumped back into his chair, exhausted.

The stage turned into bedlam, with everybody applauding. Even the hard-bitten veterans of the crew were grinning. Norman ran out onto the stage. He grabbed Rina's hand excitedly. "You were wonderful, baby!" he said. "Magnificent!"

Rina looked at him. For a moment, it seemed as if she were far away, then her eyes cleared. She looked toward Dunbar, seated in his chair, surrounded by the camera crew and his assistants, then back at Norman. "Do you really think so?"

"Would I say it if I didn't mean it, baby?" he replied, smiling. "You know me better than that. Now, you take a good couple of weeks' rest. I got Scheherazade all set to go."

She turned away from him and watched Dunbar, who was approaching them slowly, the lines of exhaustion showing clearly on his thin, forty-year-old face. "Thank you," she said, taking Dunbar's hand.

He smiled wearily. "You're a great actress, Miss Marlowe," he said, formal once again, now that their work was over. "It was a privilege working with you."

Rina stared at him for a moment, a new vitality flowing into her. "You're out on your feet," she said, concern in her voice.

"I'll be all right with some rest," he said quickly. "I don't think I've slept a night through since the picture began."

"We'll soon fix that," Rina said confidently. "Ilene."

From somewhere in the crowd, Ilene suddenly appeared. "Call James and have him prepare the guest room for Mr. Dunbar."

"But, Miss Marlowe," the director protested. "I can't put you to all that trouble!"

"Do you think I'd let you go back to that empty hotel room the way you're feeling?" Rina demanded.

"But I promised Mother I'd call her the moment the picture was finished."

"You can call her there." Rina laughed. "We do have telephones, really."

Norman clapped Dunbar on the shoulder. "You do like Rina says, Dunbar. You can use the rest. You still got ten weeks of editing in front of you. But don't worry, you got a great picture here. I wouldn't be surprised if you both get Academy Awards!"

Norman didn't believe it when he said it, but that was exactly the way it turned out.

Nelia Dunbar, sixty-three years old and strong as the proverbial rock, crossed the room and looked down at her son. "That horrible creature," she said quietly.

She slipped into the seat beside her son and took his head on her shoulder. Absently she stroked his forehead. "I was wondering how long it would take you to see her in her true light," she said. "I told you not to marry her."

Claude didn't answer. There was no need to. There was a familiar safety in his mother's arms. There always had been. Even when he was a child and had come running home from school when the boys ganged up on him. His mother knew him. He didn't have to tell her when he was troubled. Instinctively she had moved out to California after his marriage to Rina.

He had never been very strong, always frail and thin, and the intense nervousness of his creative spurts left him drained and exhausted. At times like that, his mother would see to it that he took to his bed – for weeks on end, sometimes. She would serve him his meals, bring him the newspapers, read to him from the books they both loved.

Often he felt that these were the happiest moments of his life. Here in the gentle pastels of the room his mother had decorated for him, he felt warm and comfortable and at ease. Everything he wanted was at his fingertips. The dirtiness and petty meanness of the world were safely locked away outside the walls of that room.

His father had never been more than a vague nebulous shadow. He could scarcely remember him, for he had died when Claude was only five. His father's death had caused scarcely a noticeable ripple in the course of their lives, for they were left well off. They weren't wealthy but never was there want.

"You go back to the house and get what few things you need," his mother said. "You can spend the night here. In the morning, we'll see about a divorce."