Picture Perfect Read online

  I was used to being sent to desolate locations without knowing a soul, but here I was out of my element. It seemed everywhere I placed my foot I got it tangled in some cord, and I had run right into a man carrying a profusion of wigs and tweed caps, knocking him to the ground. "Oh my God," I said, "let me help you." But he had just given me a dirty look, gathered his things, and rushed away.

  I walked up to a woman who sat on a high canvas chair labeledSCRIPT. "Excuse me," I said. "I'm looking for the director."

  She sighed, but she didn't look up from the open loose-leaf binder she held in her lap. "You and me both, babe," she said. She scribbled a note with a red pencil, and then yelled out someone's name, waving him over with her hand.

  I bobbed and weaved past people with walkie-talkies looped into their belts. Lying across a table was a pile of scripts. "'In His Image,'" I read aloud, running my fingers over the Warner Brothers insignia at the bottom.

  "Can I help you?" A harried-looking man stood in front of me, tapping his foot. He snatched the script out of my hand.

  "I'm looking for Bernie Roth," I said. "The director."

  The man sneered at me. "Like I don't know who he is?" He snapped his fingers as two brawny men walked by carrying a heavy black rope. "Hey--hey, where are you going with that? I told you it was supposed to gobehind the tent."

  "Wait," I said as he scurried after the rope, "Bernie Roth?"

  "In a minute," he stalled. He yelled after the two men carrying the rope. "Behindthe tent!"

  I slung my knapsack onto the table and pulled a khaki baseball cap onto my head. If Mohammed can't get to the mountain, I figured, I'd just wait for the mountain to come to Mohammed. Sooner or later, someone was going to try to locate me. I sat down with my back against a tall tree, and hugged my knees to my chest.

  I tried to think about Alex Rivers. I knew what he looked like, of course--he was on the cover of a magazine every month, or so it seemed. He was, in a word, stunning. His brown hair was shot with gold; his jaw was square and marked by the cleft of his chin. He had a full, generous mouth that always looked as if he was holding back a secret. And his eyes, his claim to fame, were remarkable. They were the split-silver of an empty mirror, and like a mirror, when you looked into them even in a publicity photo, you could swear you were seeing your soul.

  I supposed it wouldn't be a hardship to face him every day.

  I was surprised at the quiet. No cameras were rolling, no one was waving frantically and calling "Action," no one was even saying anything that resembled a line. A fine red dust covered all the photographic equipment, as if it hadn't been used recently at all. No wonder it took twelve weeks to make a two-hour film.

  The set, from what I could see, was in three parts. The first section was the actual excavation site of Olduvai Gorge, looking not much different from the UCLA site a half-mile away. The second area was a series of tents, and in front of one of them was an actress I had seen before but couldn't name. She was wearing khaki shorts and a Kalahari bush jacket, and I decided that my first piece of technical advice would be to tell the costume designer that theNational Geographic look was nowhere near as realistic as a comfortable old T-shirt.

  The third set was on a raised platform, designed to look like the inside of a tent. There was a cot and a collection of artfully arranged empty cartons, a low trestle table. On a shelf was a patterned china bowl and pitcher, and I couldn't help laughing out loud. China?

  After a few minutes a girl came to sit beside me. "Shit, it's hot," she said. She smiled, the first real smile I'd seen since I arrived. "Who are you here with?"

  "Just me," I said, taken aback by the question, as if I were supposed to bring a date. "I'm the technical advisor on anthropology."

  "Wow," the girl breathed. "You mean you do this for aliving ?"

  I smiled at her. "I thought it was supposed to be the other way around. You know, me being impressed because you're in the movies."

  "Oh, I'm not really in them," she said. "I'm Janet's assistant." She pointed to the woman in the Kalahari bush jacket who was scanning a script. "My name's LeAnne."

  I introduced myself and shook her hand, and then gestured toward the milling crowd. "How come no one's doing anything?" I asked.

  LeAnne laughed, getting to her feet. "It's the business," she said. "A lot of hurry up and wait. Come on, I'll bet you don't know where the oasis is."

  When she started to walk away I followed her. Inside a long, low tent was a feast. My eyes ran from one end of the table to the other, taking in sweating pitchers of mango juice and lemonade, piles of bananas and kiwis, finger sandwiches filled with chicken salad and something that looked like sliced egg, covered platters of coleslaw and sesame noodles. "Is this lunch?" I asked.

  LeAnne shook her head. "Mr. Rivers likes knowing there's something to eat between takes. He arranges the whole thing, or actually, Jennifer does. She does for him what I do for Janet. If you think this is something, wait till you see the layout at lunch. Yesterday we had king crab. Can you believe that? King crab, inAfrica ."

  I hesitantly took a banana, peeling it back and walking out of the tent into the hot sun. I lifted up my face, shielding my eyes. "What is this movie about?"

  LeAnne was shocked that no one had told me. It was a sort of science fiction film; Alex Rivers was playing an anthropologist who unearths a partial skeleton that seems, at first sight, to predate anything ever found before. But when he gets the bones carbon-dated, he finds they come from the 1960s. Then he notices that the chemical makeup of the bones isn't quite what it should be, even if it had been an ancestral skeleton. Turns out it's an alien, and that of course makes him wonder about the origins of man in the first place.

  I nodded politely when LeAnne finished. Not something I would go see, but it would probably sell tickets.

  I followed her back to a small knot of people, all of whom I was introduced to and whose names I promptly forgot. Most of the crew were sitting on the ground now. LeAnne started talking to another woman about the condition of the bathroom facilities on location, and I leaned back against a tall canvas chair.

  It was just like the one the script woman had been sitting on, only this one saidALEX RIVERS across its back. Still, it was empty, and Alex Rivers didn't appear to be around, so I climbed into it.

  LeAnne gasped and grabbed my wrist. "Get off that," she said.

  Startled, I jumped down, forming a cloud of dust that had everyone on the ground coughing. "It's just a chair," I said. "No one was sitting there."

  "It's Mr. Rivers's chair." I stared at her, waiting for the explanation. "No one sits in Mr. Rivers's chair."

  For God's sake. This was going to be worse than I had anticipated. I tried to convince myself that three hundred and fifty dollars per day was more than enough compensation for explaining the rudiments of collecting bone fragments to a man who thought china pitchers belonged in an off-site camp and who was so full of himself that only his own precious bottom could touch his canvas chair.

  I knew something was about to happen by the shiver that ran through the air almost as quickly as the whispers spread. The crew started to stand, brushing off their shorts and returning to their respective positions on the set. Three men climbed up the dolly to the camera; the sound technician pressed his hand to one headphoned ear and rewound a portion of tape.

  The man who had run after the rope called out for a woman named Suki. "Female standin," he yelled. "Suki, we need you for lighting." A woman who was not Janet the actress wandered toward the tents, and immediately a series of lights were set up around her and shifted into position.

  I stared directly into one bright white beam, which was why I didn't see him until he almost walked on top of me. Alex Rivers threw his jacket onto the chair I had dared to sit upon, not noticing me any more than he seemed to notice the air around him. He was talking quietly with someone I assumed was Bernie Roth, since he looked nearly as important and wasn't paying attention to anyone either.

  Alex