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  His grandmother, a knee-bending churchgoer, used to say that one day to the Lord was a thousand years, but one day with Margot knocking it back was becoming like two thousand, and Jake couldn’t wait to wish her adios. As soon as they got off this freaking ship. If not before.

  He supposed there was no explaining addiction. It was in the blood, or it wasn’t. His parents both drank, his father in particular, but he had dodged the genetic bullet so far; he didn’t really like the taste of booze, anyway. There was that to be thankful for. Otherwise, hanging around Margot all day … Well, you could say she drove people to drink. He had seen it happen a lot, out in Hollywood.

  Now, apparently made giddy by his flattery, she was pirouetting her way out the door of the cabin, showing off for his benefit, and demanding to know if she looked all right. Which he had told her ten times now. She looked like she couldn’t breathe in that dress, but he supposed breathing wasn’t the point, and it certainly wasn’t worth the bitter recrimination he would face for pointing out that she looked like she was trying out for the Mae West role in Diamond Lil.

  Convincing Romero to put her in his next movie was the actual point, and a dull point it was—worn smooth by repeated use. Jake knew the parts in Attilius quite well—hell, he’d slept with the screenwriter—and he did not recall a part in the script for a woman of Margot’s abilities. Actually, unlike most of the dreck Romero churned out, this movie had some decent dialogue, and Margot was not exactly known for being able to wring the best out of a line. In her prime, her looks had kept people from noticing she couldn’t act her way out of a burning theater. Nowadays, her lack of talent was the only thing people did notice.

  The movie in question was set in the time of the Roman Empire, when there were fewer women of fifty-eight, anyway, he supposed. Wouldn’t they all have died in childbirth well before then? Margot’s argument was not that there were lots of noblewomen of a certain age running about the Palatine Hill, but that she could easily play the part of an actress thirty years younger. It was ludicrous.

  Jake, watching as she resumed her primping in a compact mirror, already touching up her makeup—come on, already; now they really were going to be late—thought how this night marked a new beginning for him, a possible reboot to his own career. For Jake was keeping a secret, and an explosive one it was bound to be: Romero had offered him the part of a young gladiator. A youngish gladiator, anyway. A seasoned gladiator looking forward to retirement from the arena. A speaking part, no less. “Fratres! With me!” Fratres meant brothers; he’d looked it up. The script was in English, of course, but with some Latin phrases sprinkled throughout for verisimilitude. He had been practicing his lines—words—out on the deck throughout most of the voyage from France. Romero had told him his decision not long after they’d cast off, headed for the coast of England.

  “I wouldn’t,” Romero had said, “say anything to Margot about this just yet.” A pause, as he plainly weighed how much more he should say. Then he finished with a lame, “If I were you.”

  This had been Jake’s first clue that Margot probably wasn’t getting a part in the film, although there had never been a big chance of that. Not for the first time, Jake wondered what he and Margot were doing on board the ship, anyway, as guests of the famous director. It wasn’t as if people weren’t standing in line to get on board—it was a world-class yacht, nearly new, with everything to offer in the way of luxurious accommodation. Emboldened by the legendary director’s trust in him, and by his remarkable generosity in offering him the part, Jake had said with suitable humility, “I really would like to thank you for including me on this trip. I promise, I won’t let you down.”

  The director had looked at him with something like compassion. Or perhaps it had been closer to weary resignation. He had had a lifetime, after all, of dealing with hopeful stars, young and old. It probably got tiresome. All those little egos, all made of glass.

  The two men had been sitting side by side in deck chairs watching the sun set, trying to capture the last of the weak May sunlight. Jake had been drinking a club soda and Romero sipping a double whiskey. Both of them were wrapped in blankets and fleece, but still, it was one of the nicest days they’d had at sea. The women, made of sterner stuff than the men, had spent part of the day by the pool, flaunting the smallest bikinis the law allowed. Jake felt sure it wasn’t modesty that prevented them from ditching the tops, but necessity. It was much too cold to go completely topless.

  That Delphine, who led the yoga classes, was really something, he thought. (Too bad Margot had picked up on that; he’d have to be more careful.) So was the baroness, but that lady was too much an icy Hitchcockian blonde for his taste. Besides, she was married, and that came with its own drama. Little Tina was hot, but she was spoken for by Romero, so hands off. Definitely, hands off, if for that reason alone. And of course the hottest number of them all was pregnant. He couldn’t remember her name—was it Belinda? She had some unspecified role to play in keeping the ship afloat. But, so much for that game. Who’s your daddy? Not me.

  “It’s only one line,” said Romero. “If you screw it up, we’ll dub someone else’s voice in.”

  “Oh.” That had taken some of the stuffing out of him. “I mean, well, thanks. I know you and Margot go way back, so inviting me was … a special concession, like.”

  Romero had sighed. “We go way back, all right, but I’ll tell you the truth: you were invited along to keep her out of my hair. She’s pestered me to death about getting a part in Attilius. I knew that probably wasn’t going to happen, but I thought a free trip on a yacht might pacify her. That was stupid of me. It just encouraged her lunacy.”

  “I’m afraid you’re right about that,” said Jake. “It did.”

  “So, you understand, there will be a teary storm if she knows you’ve got a part, however small.”

  “There are no small parts,” said Jake, stubbornly. Great. Now he sounded like Norma Desmond: I am big. It’s the pictures that got small.

  Worse, he sounded like Margot.

  “Whatever,” said Romero. “Just, if you know what’s good for you, and what’s good for everyone on board, just keep quiet about the sodding movie, okay? I’ll probably officially announce some of the casting in a few days, just to get ahead of the media, but until then…”

  “Mum’s the word. Got it.”

  Chapter 3

  TAKE TWO

  Romero Farnier, the director who had brought so many historical dramas into the world, had a poor sense of his own personal history. Years of “work” with a psychiatrist—if you can call lying on a couch and talking about your earliest memories work, which he did not—had made clear to him only that he seemed to have very few lasting memories. His life had sped by, unobserved and unrecorded, leaving no imprint on his brain. It was like a tape that once used had been erased, or written over with the next episode. He wasn’t sure this was a problem but the shrink seemed to think it might be. Of course, the woman billed $350 an hour; she had to find something wrong to justify her existence. It was like taking a perfectly good car to a mechanic—they would find something to fix if you claimed it was “making a funny noise.”

  He stared out over the water, remembering. Some days as he drove to the doctor’s stark, modern building overlooking Rodeo Drive he felt he should just make something up to keep her happy. A playdate in kindergarten gone wrong—something involving matches or plastic knives, perhaps. Being accidently locked in a closet as a child and left to die. A dramatic bout with measles or whooping cough. But the fact was, he’d had a perfectly happy childhood, at least the parts of it he could remember, and he didn’t want to besmirch his parents’ memories, they should rest in peace, by pretending otherwise.

  So his sessions with the shrink, you had to wonder: Why did he even bother? Well, his last wife seemed to think he needed help. All his wives had suggested something along those lines, come to think of it. He was an egomaniac; he couldn’t see beyond his own nose; his happy childho
od had to be a lie—why else would he go into show business but because of some deeply buried secret he wanted to explore on film? People, including reviewers, seemed to regard his movies as offering insight into his subconscious, but they were wrong. His films were entertainment for the masses, pure and simple. Scratch the surface, you’d only get more surface.

  But all his friends had been seeing a psychiatrist for years, so Romero thought he’d give it a shot. Only his daughter seemed to think he was okay. But she was making some bad choices on her own these days, so what did she know? Forty and mostly still living at home, and the guy she was seeing now was another loser. Frances had her mother’s good looks, so why she would choose this guy was inexplicable to him. A lot of the men she took up with were no-talent actors just using her to get to her father. Why Frances couldn’t see through them from the start was a mystery. She was just so damned vulnerable. Romero thought maybe if he got his head shrunk it would help shrink hers, too. Or something.

  The thought of ambitious actors led him round to thinking of Jake Larsson. It seemed to Romero that he had ended up promising Jake a role in Attilius, although he hadn’t intended to. He supposed it wouldn’t hurt, although Jake was getting a bit long in the tooth to play a gladiator. Maybe he could play one of the younger senators striding around Palatine Hill in a toga. He had the legs for it.

  Yes, some kind of reward seemed to be in order for keeping Margot out of his hair. Margot, and he remembered this well—oh, did he remember it!—was one of those women who had constantly to be entertained, and if anything showed signs of slowing, well, she’d create her own drama. Lovely she was, or lovely she once had been, but a man soon came to the realization that having her in the house was like adopting a cougar and hoping to tame it. He had mentioned her once to the shrink, trying to explain that this particular breakup had not been his fault, but Dr. Nancy wanted to go on and on about why he had chosen someone as unstable as Margot to begin with. What was she, crazy? Had the good doctor seen the photos of Margot in her prime? A man would have to be insane not to have wanted Margot.

  She’d been about the same age as he—well, she was still about the same age as he—but back then, it had meant he’d practically have jumped off a cliff if she’d asked him to. He was just a kid, basically, and stupid when it came to women, but he knew from the start she was going to be something. He was honest enough with himself that he knew he saw her as a way up and out, which was why he’d stuck with her longer than he should have. If from the outside it looked as if he’d dumped her once she’d given him a leg up, well—too bad. You try living with Margot Browne.

  Funny, though, how the clock could spin round and it was midnight all over again. His current romance with Tina Calvert was showing much the same signs of wear as that long-ago daily tango with Margot. Oddly enough, Tina even reminded him a bit of Margot, and not in a good way. Not physically, of course—Tina was a small thing, a tiny dancer of a girl, and Margot had always been voluptuous. Not big, except where it counted. No, it was a matter of personality, for want of a better word. The business attracted the look-at-me types, of course it did. But these two put the rest in the shade. Twenty-four-seven, Look at ME.

  It was probably time to find a part for Tina in a movie filming on location somewhere “in a galaxy far, far away.” He had always found Thailand or Australia to be ideal for the purpose, and he knew lots of casting people happy to trade in a favor or two. He’d found over the years that was much the safest way to ease himself out of a relationship, and he only wished it had been available to him when Margot was busy making his life a misery. Make them think it was their idea to split up—that was always best. It saved face all round, because everyone knew you’d have to be crazy to want to break up with Romero Farnier.

  Dr. Nancy called it part of his passive-aggressive nature, and it was one of those things she seemed to think was a problem. But Romero? He thought it was the smart way to get through life.

  He’d had nowhere near the clout to get rid of a troublesome actress, not back then.

  Now? Now he could hire whomever he wanted, to do whatever he wanted. He had the power.

  It was rather a thrilling thought.

  Chapter 4

  TINY DANCER

  The trouble with being on a yacht, Tina Calvert had decided, was that the salt air made you hungry all the time and jogging wasn’t really practical—there wasn’t quite enough space to run around freely. Besides, the deck was slippy half the time.

  So after days of binge-scarfing out of pure boredom, you were in danger of having to be forklifted off the effing ship once it finally docked somewhere. She had weighed less than one hundred pounds since she was in her late teens and she was determined to keep it that way. Of course, what’s-her-name—Delphine, the fitness guru or whatever—held daily yoga sessions but it wasn’t the same, was it? Tina would choose Pilates any day—less B.S., more workout.

  Considering it was a ship that had everything else, including a wine cellar and even a teensy movie theater, it was downright odd there was no fitness center, not even so much as a treadmill.

  Generally, Tina liked to burn up extra calories with vigorous sessions of sex but Romero was about a thousand years older than she was and it really wasn’t working out—so to speak. She would never tell anyone that, of course, because just being in the company of such a famous guy was fantastic for her career, but, like, on a personal level? Meh. She might as well adopt a cat or something for all the affection or anything else she got from Romero. She didn’t even have a diamond necklace or something, like, tangible to show for her trouble. And here he was reputed to be such a ladies’ man. Well, back in the day, maybe.

  She was at her dressing table in the cabin she shared with him, looking down at her hands and pondering her fate. The nail polish—wasn’t it just a little too peachy-orangey to go with her coloring? Redheads had to be so careful about that sort of thing. With a sigh, she twisted the top off a bottle of polish remover, pulled a cotton ball from her makeup kit, and went to work. She would just have time to apply the tomato-red polish and have it dry before for dinner. Romero was on deck, doing something vaguely nautical, giving her room to get dressed. It was easier for men, wasn’t it? He just threw on a cravat and a jacket and announced he was ready to party. While she—

  Dammit. The red wasn’t working, either, not with the violet-blue dress. It needed something more purplish, but this was all she had. The minute they landed or docked or whatever it was you called it in Podunk Village, she would see if they had something like a manicurist. Probably in one of the big hotels—you could just see those huge old buildings, ranged above the harbor—they would have a salon. Her hair could use a trim, too, and some dark gold highlights, but she would die rather than entrust her hair to anyone outside of New York. Just, like, die. With the screen test coming up back home—no way could she risk it. It would be nothing less than career suicide. There was a reason Phillipe could get away with the insane amounts he charged.

  However—and she was stilled for a moment by the thought—there was Maurice. Technically, he was quasi-retired and it would be a sort of busman’s holiday for him but certainly, as he was right here on board with nothing to do, and she was so famous, or soon to be—well, surely, this would not be an imposition. Not that she cared overmuch if it was an imposition. It was, looked at the right way, like doing him a favor. Maurice was close in age to Romero, and certainly, she was doing Romero a favor to be seen hanging on his arm. It would be sort of the same deal with Maurice.

  Good old Maurice. He was not exactly a has-been but he had been a stylist for Margot Browne, for God’s sake, and if that didn’t date a person, what would? Margot had to be edging close to sixty, and it was sort of a wonder she could still breathe, much less tag along on this trip pestering the hell out of Romero and generally getting in the way. She, Tina, would never understand why Romero had not just put his foot down in the first place, but Romero could be such a softie.

 
The unintended pun made her smile, and, catching a glimpse of herself in the mirror, Tina was struck again by her own loveliness. She stopped to gaze raptly at the almond-shaped eyes, the polished arch of brow, the adorably clefted chin. Yes, why pretend? She was spectacular and she knew it. And she knew how to work it to her advantage. Her confidence in her looks had carried her this far and it would carry her over the top, yes it would.

  As to talent, well, look how far Margot Browne, the old has-been, had got without having any talent to speak of. Tina knew she needed a few acting lessons, but really, the money might be better spent on an orthodontist for invisible braces to wear when she was not on camera. That one tooth in the front crossed just a bit. Romero claimed it was part of her appeal—that winsome, crooked smile—but really, perfection, when it was just within reach, was so much better. So why not go for it?

  She waited for her nails to dry, thinking how much more pleasant this voyage would have been without Margot. She was always there somehow, trailing her scarves and shawls, hanging about the deck and then lunging at Romero the second she spotted him. She wanted so desperately to be in this film of his and anybody—anybody—could have told her that was never going to happen. At least she had the sense not to wear a bathing suit, so everyone was spared the sight. She’d sit by the pool wrapped to the eyeballs, claiming she was allergic to sunlight, which fooled absolutely no one.

  That boyfriend of hers, or whatever he was. That Jake person. Her boy toy? It really was hard to say what was going on there. They acted more like mother and son. Looked it, too. Anyway, there was potential there, if it was true that sexuality was something that existed on, like, a scale. He was amazing, with his dark, smoldering looks, just as amazing as she was, and if Romero didn’t shape up, well, Jake would do nicely as a place to land while she thought through her next move. Jake didn’t have anything like Romero’s stature, of course, but the only thing that mattered was that she not be photographed alone at the Oscars or somewhere like that, only to appear later in People or Us, mooching around the edges of the red carpet like some loo-ser who couldn’t get a date. Stars sometimes brought along some old geezer from their family—the fans ate that stuff up, particularly when men brought their moms—but no one had ever seen Tina’s family and that was not about to change now. She had shaken the dust of Texas off her boots a long time ago, and there was no going back.