He dragged the back of his hand across his watering eyes and wiped it on his bare chest.
Chapter Six
Ru knelt in the back of the auditorium, adjusting a seam in Beverly’s costume. One of his seamstresses followed his directions and pinned the garment tighter at the waist. “She’s a temptress. We want to see the war between her sadness and sexuality displayed on her body.” The seamstress looked at him like he’d left the planet and calmly tightened the seam.
On the stage, Polonius instructed Ophelia to appear to be reading a book so she’d have a reason to be found alone by Hamlet. Polonius hid, Ophelia slipped into a nook with her book, and on came Gray. Hard to say “on came Hamlet.” The shiny charisma that lit up a billion movie screens simply wouldn’t suppress itself to the character. Gray spoke the lines, but all you could see was a movie star reciting Hamlet. Ru glanced at Beverly, who stared at her shoes in embarrassment. Despite his fame and wealth, the cast wanted Gray to succeed, not fail. After all, it was their play too. Jesus, Ru wanted to hide.
Ru waved a hand at the gown. “You know what to do, Estrella, right?”
“Yes, Señor Ru.” Her dark eyes said I was doing this before you were born, sonny.
Ru hurried back to the costume department. He leaned over the big pattern-making table. What possessed Gray to set himself up for failure like this? He was brilliant at being Gray Anson. The best. No one like him. Hamlet? No so much. Despite the glimmer of understanding of the character he’d shown that first time Ru met him, in a word, he stunk. Ru wanted to die for him.
He walked into the small room where they kept materials and finishings. Sorting buttons always soothed him. When he’d hidden from the gangbangers in his neighborhood as a kid, he used to sneak into his mother’s closet and comb through her sewing basket, carefully arranging the buttons by colors and the spools of thread by hue and size. Now he ran his fingers through a plastic box of shirt buttons.
The snick of the door closing in the costume department stopped him. “Who’s there?” He walked to the door into the big room and peeked inside. Gray stood with his back to the entrance like he wanted to keep the world out. Good plan. “Hi.”
Gray looked startled. “Oh, hi. Sorry. Didn’t hear you.”
“I’m sneaky.”
For a second he seemed confused, then forced a smile. “Right.”
“You’re not scheduled for your fitting until tomorrow. They’re not quite done with the sewing.”
He stared at his feet. “Oh. I see.” God, the great man looked lost.
“This is a nice quiet place to hide out for a while, though.”
Gray sighed, walked over to the table, and flopped in a chair.
Ru turned toward a pile of cloth samples and pretended to be busy. “So how do you think it’s going?”
He snorted. “You were out there, right?”
Ru nodded but didn’t turn.
“You’re a smart guy. You know I’m sucking ass.”
That would be fun to see. Ru turned toward him and crossed his arms over his chest. “Why do you think you’re having so much trouble?”
He shrugged, then looked up at Ru as though to see if he cared. “I’m not really an actor. I mean, I’ve got little training. I made one film and it hit big. It’s been a roller coaster ever since.” He flicked a spool of thread across the table. “I work with a coach and try to take classes, but fuck. I film sixteen hours a day pretty much the whole year. I haven’t had a whole day off in months.”
“Jesus, you don’t make it sound very glamorous.”
“Trust me, it’s not. I took this fucking part out of the worst kind of hubris. Believing my own damned PR. Now I get the karma of that. The whole world will know I’m a fraud.”
“Fuck if you’re a fraud!”
Gray looked up with wide eyes.
“I’ve been watching your films for years. Okay, we ain’t talkin’ Tennessee Williams here, but what you do is wildly entertaining, commanding, gripping, and nobody does it better.”
“Shit, man, that’s the nicest thing anyone ever said to me.”
“You don’t have to fail at this either. I’ll admit you’re not looking good right now.” He grinned to soften the criticism. “But you can get it. You just need to find the reality in all those fancy words.”
“How am I going to do that? I really am trying.”
“Don’t you have a coach?”
“Yeah, but she’s used to working with real actors. She talks over my head.”
Ru sat opposite Gray. “Think about it. This dude is blabbing about killing himself. Haven’t you ever thought of doing that? Like, either killing yourself to make all the shit and pain stop, or maybe killing yourself to keep from killing someone else.”
Silence.
Ru looked up at Gray, who stared at him with an open mouth. Suddenly he nodded. “Hell yes, I have. That makes sense to me.”
“That’s what he’s doing. He’s just saying how much easier it is to off yourself than to suffer the slings and arrows of all the idiots and their lies and demands. But if you kill yourself, are you giving up—what? Like heaven, or enlightenment? See, Hamlet probably kind of believed in God, but even if you don’t, you could kill yourself and be missing out on something really good that life has waiting. So it’s a tough one.”
Gray flopped back in his chair. “How do you know this shit?”
Ru stared at his perfect manicure. “Been there and done that, darling.”
“Jesus.” He blew out breath like a horse. “So will you help me?”
“Me? How?”
“Run me through lines, tell me when I suck. Most of all, tell me what the shit means in the real world.”
Oh Jesus, oh Jesus. Like somebody just offered an addict his drug of choice. He took a breath. Don’t forget, this dude is a nearly married man, and they call that masochism. “God, I’d love to, but I have two collections to finish designing.”
“What if I helped?”
Ru grinned. “You sew?”
“No, but I sure as fuck know a lot of people who do from the costumers on my films. I could get a bunch of great sewing people who could take your drawings and turn them into clothes. You’d be hands-free, baby. Then you could help me. Does that work?”
“There are people a lot more qualified than I am to help you.”
“No, actually, there aren’t. You just explained that damned soliloquy better in a few minutes than anyone else has in days and weeks. If you’re willing, I’ll do anything I can to get your help.”
Welcome to S&M world. He smiled. “Okay, I’ll do it.”
“Man, that’s the best thing I’ve heard this week.” Gray tipped so far back on his chair he should have fallen on his ass, but apparently gravity did not apply to superstars. He flopped forward with a crash of chair legs. “When can we start? Now?”
“Uh, no. I have to go to my day job.”
“Tonight?”
Oh Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. “Okay, tonight.”
“Is your place okay? I’ll bring dinner.” He stopped and got that different Gray expression. The unsure one. “Uh, maybe you have a, uh, boyfriend or something who isn’t going to want me there. We could work at my hotel. It’s nice.”