The Woman in the Castello, page 9
It was just a story, and likely it wasn’t even true. Still, I glanced away, focusing instead on the movie cameras that had been set up. I introduced myself to the camera operators and the grip, hoping my voice wouldn’t crack from nerves, and then Herman Meyerson arrived, holding a cup of coffee and two pastries on a paper plate.
My stomach growled. I had completely forgotten to eat.
“I brought an extra,” Mr. Meyerson said amicably, and I blushed. I must have been staring. He held out the paper plate, and I gratefully plucked up a cornetto, which was similar to a croissant. “Actresses always forget to eat before their first scene of the picture. I come prepared.”
I laughed. “I don’t want to mess up my face.”
“We have Aurelia on standby.”
That was true. Aurelia, a twentysomething Italian woman with a short bob and coral lipstick who had attended to me earlier, joined us outside. She wore an apron full of the tools of her trade and wielded a makeup brush in one fist like a spear. So I accepted the cornetto gratefully, and when I finished, Aurelia fixed my lips.
“So I’m not the first actress to be preoccupied before her first take, then?” I asked, lightly.
Mr. Meyerson smiled fondly at me. “Don’t worry. Right now, all you need to do is stare out at the lake and look thoughtful and beautiful. It won’t be hard. Look how gorgeous you are.”
There was nothing remotely lecherous about the way he said it; it was more fatherly, and I was flattered. “Thank you.”
“Follow me, and I’ll show you just where to stand.”
I placed my hands on the stone wall where he showed me, and forced myself to look back out at the lake. The sun had risen and painted the sky orange. We were above the fog line at the castle, but mist rose off the water below. I tried to look dreamy and romantic. Yet the thought of those waterlogged corpses pushed its way forward in my mind once again.
“Not quite like that. You look frightened. There will be plenty of time for that later.” Mr. Meyerson chuckled. “You are thinking of the handsome American man who you’ve only known for a few short days, but who has already found his way into your heart. You’re envisioning a future with him.”
I allowed my muscles to relax. On the edge of my vision, I saw Paul arrive.
“There. Just like that. That’s perfect. Hold still.”
Mr. Meyerson retreated, and one of the camera operators moved nearer to me to capture my profile.
And then everything seemed to happen in quick succession: Paul calling out “last looks,” Aurelia coming forward to fix a strand of hair that had blown into my face, Paul yelling “lock it down” and “roll camera.” Finally, Mr. Meyerson’s authoritative rumble declared “action.”
I stared at the lake. I pictured Terrence Leopold wooing me, but for some reason, what I heard in my mind was Paul’s calm voice as he called the roll. I stood there for at least a full minute, holding my expression, studying the flat turquoise water.
“Cut!”
Mr. Meyerson walked over and touched my elbow. “That was marvelous. Now let’s do it again.”
* * *
When Terrence Leopold arrived on set, my first thought was that he should have listened to Mrs. Leskowitz’s advice on the suit. I supposed a more classic American style of the type you might see on Madison Avenue wasn’t avant-garde enough for a fashion icon like Terrence. He still looked splendid, in a slim-fit three-buttoned gray number and skinny tie, but it was much more of a British mod look and not as fitting for his character.
“All right, I’m here,” he said. He was fifteen minutes late for his call time, but no one commented on it.
“Good.” Mr. Meyerson rubbed his hands together. “You’re going to walk to here and stop short when you see Bianca. You’re going to look at her like you’ve never seen a vision so beautiful. It shouldn’t be hard. After we get that shot, Silvia, you’re going to turn around slowly, very slowly, elegant and sensuous. And you’ll look happy to see him, but also a bit anxious. You have a lot on your mind.”
Well, that should all come easily enough, I thought.
But Terrence surprised me. “Look, before we start. Are we sure you’ve cast her right? I mean you’re saying she’s supposed to be this goddess, but let’s be honest here, she’s not exactly Lucrezia Fileppi.”
A flush crept up my neck. He’d only said exactly what I’d thought myself, but hearing my deepest insecurities confirmed by one of my icons mortified me more than I could describe. I wished the lake would flood and swallow me up. His brazenness in insulting me so openly astounded me.
“I’m quite sure.” Mr. Meyerson’s words were clipped and hard, his Swiss-German accent more pronounced than before. “Stand there.”
Mr. Meyerson’s defense of me mollified me the tiniest degree. Terrence was a big enough star that it wasn’t out of the question for them to recast me at his request. I couldn’t bear to look at him after his comment, so instead I took in the dizzying view of the gardens tumbling into the lake. Standing so close to the edge only unsettled me further, reminding me of the precariousness of my position, and I inched away from it.
My eyes drifted toward Paul, who was staring at Terrence in open disgust. As the fixer, I would have expected him to be willing to do whatever it took to keep Terrence happy, but his amicable cowboy smile was nowhere in sight, and he was gripping his megaphone like he meant to throw it. He’d helped cast me, so perhaps Terrence’s criticism felt personal.
“Final checks,” Paul said, and I went back to contemplating the gardens and the lake and my uncertain future. Just like Bianca. When I turned to face Terrence, I didn’t have to try to act like I had a lot on my mind. And I had to give Terrence credit: he must truly be a terrific performer, because he looked at me exactly like the goddess he thought I wasn’t.
His casual cruelty had rattled me. I’d spent my entire childhood scabby-kneed and awkward, and his words had reduced me in an instant to that lonely, sad girl sneaking into the movie theater in San Diego. But that wasn’t what bothered me. I wasn’t even particularly vain, for an actress. It was that he’d meant to hurt me, to put me down. But I couldn’t let it get to me. I was a professional, damn it.
It only took a few takes to get through the first shot. The next shot would require dialogue, and even worse, kissing. Despite my best efforts, I was still so upset that I didn’t trust myself to speak. So I did what I always did when my emotions got the better of me: I closed my eyes and thought of Lulu’s rosebud mouth and her chubby little hands, and remembered how it made me feel when she buried her face in my shoulder.
By the time Mr. Meyerson took us through the blocking, I’d calmed down. In the next shot, Bernard would confess his feelings for Bianca, and I relished the idea of Terrence groveling before me.
Mr. Meyerson called “action,” and Terrence sidled up beside me at the terrace wall, so close I could feel the heat of his body beside mine.
“I thought I might find you here. It’s a favorite place of yours, isn’t it? Thinking about her again, aren’t you?”
Terrence’s American accent was still Mid-Atlantic posh, his words precise and cultivated. Funny to think how I’d been fantasizing about a real-life romance with him, about how I’d kiss him and touch my finger to the cleft in his chin in the crepuscular light. It was a relief there’d be no on-set shenanigans between us, now. It was true I hadn’t been with a man since Lulu’s father, but if Terrence hadn’t been rude, I might have been at risk of tumbling into an ill-considered affair.
That was the last thing I needed. I didn’t know why I was drawn to unkind men.
“I’ve been having nightmares about her every night. Awful nightmares. Even now, I can sense her, like she’s lurking inside me. I’m frightened, Bernard.” I met Terrence’s warm brown eyes and allowed him to take my hand in his.
“I won’t let anything happen to you. I’m crazy about you, Bianca. Head over heels. So long as I’m here, the witch won’t touch a hair on your head.”
I pulled my hand away. “But you’re not going to be here much longer. Oh, Bernard. I need to get away from this awful place.”
“Then come with me.” He cupped my face with his palm. His skin was soft.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I want you to marry me, and leave this haunted pile of rocks behind once and for all.”
And then, before I had a moment to catch my breath, he wrapped his arms tight around me and kissed me, long and slow. He was a fantastic kisser, the best I’d ever encountered.
Thank God he’d insulted me.
“Cut. Let’s do it again.”
“Hang on a moment.” Terrence released me so suddenly I stumbled backward. I reached out to catch myself on the stone wall and scraped my fingers. Terrence rubbed a sleeve across his mouth. “Can’t you get her to show a bit more expression this time? Her face is so blank. When she does her lines, it reminds me of a dying fish flapping its mouth.”
I gasped. “What the hell is your problem?”
“There. That’s more like it. Try to show that kind of passion in the next take. But love and not hate, of course.”
Hot blood rushed into my cheeks. “There’s no reason to treat me this way. What do you have against me, exactly?”
“Look, love. I really want this picture to do well. I have an ex-wife in Kensington who’s counting on it. And I’m not sure you’re good enough. So try to be better. For both our sakes.”
Aurelia came over just then to touch me up. “He’s a pig. Most of the famous ones are,” she whispered as she sponged something over my skin.
“Thank you.”
She winked at me before heading back to her spot.
Mr. Meyerson walked over and stood between us, like a father mediating a fight between squabbling children. “Silvia, that was an excellent first take. On the next one, make your features even more exaggerated. Everything must be more exaggerated on camera. Terrence, leave the directing to me. I don’t expect to have to say it again.”
Just then, one of the big canister movie lights popped loudly, its bulbs sparking and dying. The light itself teetered forward on its spindly stand, and I barely had the presence of mind to jump out of the way before it came to a dramatic crash beside me, shards of glass littering the stone. I screeched. It was a big, hulking thing, and if it had hit me, I’d have been seriously injured. Maybe even killed.
“What the hell, Carlo?” Paul shouted. Carlo was the gaffer, responsible for everything to do with lighting on the picture, a jovial mustached man who had struck me as a consummate professional. He looked shaken, his usual cheer gone.
“The sandbags were all in place around the base when I checked last night. I checked, I swear I checked. It shouldn’t have fallen. I’m so sorry, Paul. Silvia.”
“So what do you think happened?” Paul spoke more sharply than I’d ever heard before. His eyes sparked like the lights.
“Maybe someone bumped the sandbags out of position. And the stones on the terrace are uneven.” He didn’t sound convinced. The idea flashed across my mind briefly that perhaps someone moved the sandbags on purpose. After Terrence’s cutting remarks, what happened felt personal, as if someone didn’t want me on this picture. But of course that was absurd—paranoid. The timing couldn’t have been planned so precisely. The light could have fallen near any one of us.
Everyone stared at the canister in shock, and no one spoke for a minute as we all processed the danger we’d just escaped. Finally Mr. Meyerson called out, “Everyone break for thirty,” before walking over to me and placing a hand protectively on my arm. “Are you all right, dear?”
I nodded, not able to find my voice. I knew it was probably just a freak accident. But I couldn’t help but think that the castle was making some kind of point. A haunted pile of rocks, Terrence’s character had called it, and it fit.
Carlo approached me somberly, wringing his hands, and apologized again, before heading to inspect the long extension cords snaking from the lighting setup to the castle door. He muttered under his breath about the wiring in the castle being a disaster.
I never even fully understood why we needed lights for outdoor shoots—something to do with backlighting or shadows—but apparently, we couldn’t do without them, and Carlo worked fast to clear the broken light and haul in a new one.
We had to do far more takes than we should have, after that, and I knew it was hardly my best performance.
When we finally wrapped, I was still rattled. Not only that, my neck was sore, my lips were chafed, and my ego was critically wounded.
Everything about the shoot struck me as a bad omen.
And I never, ever wanted to kiss Terrence Leopold again.
CHAPTER 11
After I’d changed into comfortable clothes and scraped the last of the makeup off of my face, I went in search of my aunt’s bedroom. I hadn’t seen her since her tantrum in the kitchen two days ago, and I didn’t know if she’d gone on her trip already or if her reclusiveness had led her to hide away. It was hard to imagine her behind the wheel of a car. It seemed too modern, and she struck me as much a part of the castle as the suit of armor and the waterlogged cherubs.
And the ghosts.
She belonged to it; she belonged to a different time.
So I went to see for myself if she was still lurking about.
I had a better understanding of the layout of the castle by now, and went through the first floor room by room. The sky was pitch black outside, and the west side of the castle didn’t even have functioning electricity, so I stumbled through the gallery. It seemed longer than I remembered. I would have touched one of the walls to help me feel my way forward, but I was scared of spiders.
I managed, though. I also inspected the library in the south wing and a ramshackle music room in the east wing. The walls here were covered in beautiful, faded red and green frescoes framed by ornamental molding, and the floor was mosaic tile instead of terra-cotta. Entire segments of the mosaics had been removed, revealing powdery white plaster beneath, and the dust in the air was so thick that I sneezed.
After passing through the dining room, I found myself back at the northeast tower and bumped into one of the production assistants, Roberto.
“Do you know where Gabriella Conti’s bedroom is?” I asked, sweetly. I could spend all day trying to find it. Luckily, he knew. It turned out the entire top floor of the northeast tower, right above the room where I stayed, was dedicated to her bedroom suite.
By the time I finished climbing the steep, spiral stone stairs, I was out of breath. It seemed terribly inconvenient to have to climb those stairs every day, but at least it explained her slim figure.
I opened the stairwell door and stepped into darkness. I groped along the plaster wall until I found a switch panel with a knob. I turned it, and several chandeliers blazed to life. I would have knocked if I’d realized there was no hallway of any kind; I’d stepped right into a remarkable, enormous round room, with a massive four-poster canopy bed, a tufted chaise lounge, a dressmaker’s dummy, several huge overlapping oriental rugs, and racks upon racks of clothes skirting the perimeter. The walls were hung with paintings, but they were colorful and abstract, nothing at all like the dark old-fashioned oil works I’d seen elsewhere in the castle. The overall effect was fabulously bohemian and eccentric. It couldn’t have been anyone’s room but hers.
She was nowhere in sight. I frowned. She was an odd one, but the fact that she’d sneaked off for her vacation without saying a word to me stung a little.
I should have left, but I didn’t. Instead, I walked over to inspect the racks of clothes, which were stuffed to bursting. I pawed through them, admiring the rich colors and couture styles. There were psychedelic Pucci prints and Simonetta evening gowns, as well as sheath dresses that I wondered if she’d sewn herself. Under one rack, I found several dusty pieces of leather luggage. Of course, she could have had other suitcases, but it struck me that the room didn’t bear any of the usual signs of packing. No clothes seemed to be missing, and there were no empty hangers askew. Some sewing patterns and a copy of Italian Vogue were strewn on a wooden marble-topped vanity, where I also found her makeup kit. That was strange. I couldn’t imagine her leaving it behind.
Perhaps she hadn’t left, and I’d just missed her. She could be in the great hall, getting a late dinner. I did a final sweep of the room, in case there was a hidden door or something like that, but there wasn’t—just the plastered-over stone of the tower walls.
As I stepped around to the other side of her bed, I tripped over something low to the ground and cried out. My toe throbbed. I looked down and saw that it had been an antique wooden cradle, with faded red, green, and gold paint.
The sight of it gave me the chills. The cradle certainly looked like it could be a few hundred years old, and Gabriella had said the nursery that the ghost haunted had been in this tower. What on earth would have possessed her to turn it into her bedroom?
Of course, the cradle could have been Gabriella’s. She and her husband had been childless, but perhaps they’d once had other plans. The thought made me sad for her, and I pitied her all over again, for being alone for so many years.
The room was colder than the rest of the castle, and I rubbed my arms. Suddenly it felt a bit creepy rather than arty and offbeat. The dressmaker’s dummy cast a human-like shadow on the wall, and I headed straight for the stairs.
I was relieved to return to the great hall, which still had a handful of cast and crew hanging about, laughing over paper cups of wine. I was grateful for the presence of other people. I spied Richard and Lucrezia in conversation and went over and tapped Richard’s shoulder.
“Do you know if my aunt went to the resort already? I never got a chance to speak to her after her little episode the other day.”
Richard, usually serious, looked particularly somber, and even Lucrezia looked perturbed, as if I’d interrupted an important conversation. “Yeah, she did. She split.”
I thought of the pile of suitcases in her room, the makeup askew on her vanity. “How do you know?”
