She stood up and wrapped the beach towel around her waist. He was still smiling. Indulgent eyes dancing in the crags of his cheeks.

"I trust you have enjoyed yourself?"

"Yes, I have. Thank you, Mr. Crouch."

"Call me Ozzie."

The wind was cooler now. They were high up, half a mile or so above sea level at least. Meredith could see Florence from where she stood. Village roads lined by ancient fieldstone and cypress trees looped down the foothills and joined in the city. Thousands of orange-tiled rooftops and Medici-era battlements surrounded the great orb of the Duomo, its roof gleaming pinkish in the afternoon light. It looked close enough to touch, even though Meredith knew it was actually a half-hour's drive away.

"Recognize it?"

"Florence?"

"The view."

It was not a question that demanded an answer. Meredith shook her head.

"It's the same one they used in A Room with a View. The director was an old friend of mine. I let him shoot a few exteriors from here. After the film came out they issued a new edition of the book and came up and photographed it again for the dust jacket. I'll show it to you one day."

The breeze came up. Meredith shivered. Ozzie slipped off his robe, revealing more of himself than she was entirely comfortable seeing, and threw it over a chair. She could sense the other guests around the pool stirring from their prostrate positions and taking notice of what was going on behind the potted lemon tree.

"I was just about to take my afternoon swim," said Ozzie. "Why don't you go back to your room and get changed for dinner and then meet me in the library around five? I have something I want to show you." He checked his wrist.w.a.tch, a stainless steel mariner's model with more switches and dials and gauges than a submarine control panel.

"How did you know who I was?"

"I recognized you from the photographs."

"What photographs?"

"The ones your mother sent. When you were a little thing. Irma and I were once great friends, you know."

"She mentioned something."

"I've always taken an interest in your progress. And now I finally get the chance to meet you as an adult. I understand you were working on my latest film in London."

Meredith dragged her bare toes across the edge of a large pink flagstone. "That didn't exactly work out."

That grin again. Like a hungry cat. For a moment she was afraid he might actually open his mouth and lick his chops.

"Do not worry, my dear. It was all for the best. I'd never let a good script girl go to waste. You are..." He hesitated, waved a finger around and let it fall to his chin with a professorial tap. "Far too important to the process."

Meredith gave a skeptical snort. "It's a craft. At best."

"Yes," said Osmond. "And there are too few craftspeople in our industry today. Too many auteurs, not enough craftspeople. Too much creativity, not enough continuity."

Osmond patted her cheek and strode off toward the diving board to take his afternoon swim.

16.

Osmond and Meredith met in the library at the appointed time. He bowed slightly when she entered and offered a Bellini. A finger moved over his lips. Then he walked over to one of the bookcases and pulled it aside with a magician's flourish. Where the shelf had once stood was a small door, flat to the wall, with an arched top. He took a candle from the top of the piano and lit it. Without breaking the silence, he opened a troll-size door and led Meredith down a long hallway, a tunnel really, with a crumbly clay floor and ceilings so low even a tall child would have had to stoop to get through.

"The monks built this place in the seventeenth century as an escape route," Osmond began in the solemn tone of a tour guide. "They never were attacked, although one of the subsequent owners, a French countess, was bludgeoned to death by her cook and left to die here. And of course the n.a.z.is occupied the place during the war. G.o.d knows what nastiness they got up to."

At the end of the tunnel was a bolted doorway. A line of white light glowed in the s.p.a.ce between the floor and the crooked wooden slats. Osmond handed Meredith the candle and withdrew a long rusted iron key from his pocket. He opened the door and Meredith stumbled behind him into the early evening glow. She inhaled as though she had not drawn breath for several minutes.

"Mmm," said Osmond, raising his hand to the twilight. "Shame we're not shooting today."

The garden was gloriously ill-tended, an open expanse contained by high stone walls and spilling over with roses in full bloom, their fleshy petals spread and vulgar with scent. Jasmine and ivy vines made stealthy progress over everything that was not alive or asleep, twining themselves over a birdbath, a sundial and a crumbling marble bench, even climbing up the warty trunks of a clutch of ancient trees. In the corner a fountain burbled, glugging bilious water from the mouth of a cement stag. The animal looked about to dash, frozen mid-leap and vomiting swamp water. Lily pads floated on the surface of the small pond. Beneath the surface Meredith saw a metallic flash. Goldfish.

"Welcome to my movie set," Osmond said with deliberate ostentation. "Come." He led her down the path, under a wrought-iron arch and behind a rosebush that looked and smelled like a rich lady's cheek. There, hidden to the uninitiated eye, was a crumbly stone outbuilding.

Osmond took another key from his pocket and winked. "Step into my trailer."

Inside, the building was filled to the rafters with film equipment, some of it state-of-the-art, some of it vintage, and everything in between. There were four cameras, a Steadicam holder, two dollies and a pile of slates. High canvas folding chairs were stacked up against the wall in a row beside a mahogany makeup vanity, salon chair and lighted mirror. Meredith saw standing lights, smoke machines and fans. In the corner stood a huge metal contraption she took to be a generator, and beyond that, Osmond indicated a door leading to a private editing suite. A rack of costumes lined the back wall. Silk dresses and men's summer suits dangled askew from satin-covered hangers. The place even had the carnival smell of a film set. Meredith turned to Osmond, astonished.

"What do you do here?"

"I make my movie."

"But where's your cast and crew?"

"You've met most of them already. Reno, the butler, he's my leading man, as well as my director of photography. And my first a.s.sistant. And Marcella, the woman who served your dinner, plays opposite him. She is my muse, an old-fashioned star. Knows how to find her light without being told. She's also the wardrobe stylist, the dolly grip, the second AD and the focus puller."

"So who operates the camera?"

"I do, of course. All proper directors do."

"And what about sound?"

"No need. It isn't a talkie."

Meredith snorted. "You. Osmond Crouch. Hollywood big shot. Purveyor of box-office-record-breaking commercial entertainment. In the twenty-first century. Are making a silent film?"

"What is wrong with that?" His tone was wounded.

"I'm just surprised."

"You are?"

"Obviously."

"Obviously what?" He shut the door behind him. The room got darker. There was a defensive glint in his eye. "I don't see that there is anything obvious about it."

"No, no, of course not." Meredith said this in what she hoped was a rea.s.suring tone. "That's just the thing. It's unusual. I mean it's cool. Very...ahead of the curve." She watched his shoulders, which had become pugilistically hunched, lower themselves an inch or so. "How long have you been working on it?"

"Including script development?" Osmond looked at his watch. "About fifteen years."

Meredith coughed to stop herself from smiling.

"And how long have you been shooting?"

"Let's see." Osmond walked over to the director's chair, reached into the canvas storage bag hanging off the back. He flipped open the binder and read from a dog-eared hunk of papers held together loosely by a dried-out elastic band that was about to break.

"Monday will be day eight hundred and forty-four."

"So you've been shooting for how many years, then?"

"Off and on, about twelve." The elastic band snapped and papers swirled to the floor. Osmond bent over to gather them and clutched his lower back on the way up. Restless tendons twitched in his jaw. "Ever since I moved here. The film was really why I bought Vogrie in the first place."

"What's it about?"

"What?"

"The movie."

"A man and a woman in love. And other things. The essential themes. s.e.x. Death. The primordial, pagan cycle of the seasons."

"And how many days do you have left?"

"In the shoot? G.o.d knows. We're a bit behind schedule actually."

"So eight hundred and forty-four days of...how many?"

Osmond grinned sheepishly and shrugged. "Of thirty. It was originally supposed to be a thirty-day shoot but we got a bit waylaid."

"I see."

He moved toward a window and pulled aside a curtain. Dust tore through the room. He pulled a rag from his pocket and began polishing the lens of one of the cameras. When he was finished he walked around and peered through the eyepiece. Meredith couldn't imagine what he saw. The room was dark and the camera hung its head.

"You think I'm mad," he said after a while.

Meredith decided to skip the question. "How do you know my mother?"

He took his eye away from the camera and faced her. "We were never in love, if that's what you're asking."

"I wasn't."

"Well, now you know."

"No, I don't. I don't know because n.o.body ever tells me anything."

"Perhaps that's because you don't ask."

"Maybe so. But I'm asking now. What's going on? Why did you give me a job? Why am I even here in the first place?"

"Meredith," he said, lifting her hand. "I want to be nothing but perfectly honest with you. Complete honesty is the only thing I aspire to anymore, both in my life and in my work." He motioned around the room. "I have known your mother for many years. We met before you were born. We see very little of each other now, but the fact is, I see very little of anyone anymore. I have chosen to live apart from the world. I speak to my line producers and the people who work for me in Los Angeles and in London. Occasionally I am forced to endure a conference call with some illiterate executive or other. The rest of the time I spend on Avalon."

His grip on her tightened. She was torn between the idea of ripping herself away and acquiescing.

"Suffice to say I have known your mother for part of her life, but I have known you for all of yours. Even if you can't remember me, I was around."

Meredith stepped back. "What do you mean, 'around'?"

"In a metaphysical sense. I was with you. I wondered. I worried."

Meredith wanted to bring the moment to its crisis. "What exactly are you trying to say?"

Osmond smiled. Confrontation appeared to relax him. "What I'm trying to say exactly, my dear, is would you consider staying on at Vogrie for a few weeks to a.s.sist me in the making of Avalon? I am sure it will not surprise you to hear there are a few continuity problems that need to be worked out. On an eight-hundred-day shoot it is to be expected."

So he could make fun of himself after all.

"You'll be paid scale of course. Or better. And the accommodations are not so terrible."

Meredith looked around at the equipment. All of the mechanical contraptions and digitalized devices she had taken for granted all her working life sitting, ominous, expectant. She shook her head and laughed. Ozzie extended his hand and she took it in hers and squeezed once, firmly. It was then that she noticed the ring on his baby finger. The design of a scorpion etched in jade.

That night at dinner Meredith felt perked up. She was seated several spots down the table from Ozzie and to the left of Tony, who admitted to her he had sneaked in before the bell and changed the place cards to be next to her for the second night in a row. Meredith didn't mind, however, as Ozzie didn't talk much at his own dinner table, preferring instead to sit at its head wearing a beneficent smile and attacking his plate as he absorbed the chatter of his guests.

Many of the partygoers from the night before had left, but a dozen or so remained. Despite her impressive short-term memory, Meredith had given up trying to recall all of their names and had instead come up with pet names for them according to the stories they had told her or what she had heard from Tony. They included the Swiss ex-junkie-model-turned-society-wife, the ancient Italian lady of vaguely n.o.ble birth (Medici? Borghese?) with distressed leather skin, the American war correspondent, the Swedish twin actors, a silent English couple and the complaining Mexican heiress. Throughout the soup Tony would indicate each one using military code. ("American war correspondent. Three o'clock. Word is he faked his own hostage-taking to get away from his wife. An extremely trying woman.") Dinner was plain but the service was not. Meredith had never witnessed anything like it. After the guests were seated, Reno and Marcella appeared to pour Chianti from bottles in baskets. Then they came round with silver platters offering each guest a choice of reheated pizza slices, presumably the remains of lunch. Meredith had skipped the midday meal, opting to sweat off her hangover instead. It worked. She felt much better, but terribly hungry. When Marcella stood beside her with the platter, Meredith indicated the two largest slices available, which Marcella, a whippet of a woman, picked up with a pair of filigreed silver tongs and plopped unceremoniously on the plate. Meredith was not sure but thought she heard her utter the word "porca" under her breath as she moved down the table.

"Another bitter actress-turned-servant," Tony stage-whispered into her neck.

Meredith bit her lip and thwacked him hard on the leg without raising her arm from under the table.

Unabashed, Tony persisted. "I'll tell you what she needs to do. She needs to go back to theatre school and learn how to act like a servant."

Meredith released an embarra.s.sing snort, and the complaining Mexican heiress across the table fixed them with a haughty look. She glared at Tony to stop it, which only pushed him further. The pizza on Tony's plate was wilted and cold, but Meredith took a piece anyway. She had finished both of her slices in a few enthusiastic bites and was too afraid to ask Marcella for more.

"Go ahead," said Tony. "Have your fill, my greasy little porca. I'm not eating."

Meredith made a face and bit into the cold little sliver. She wondered if Tony was on something. He ate little, and couldn't-or at least made no effort to-stop talking.

Whatever drug he was on, it certainly didn't interfere with his ability to consume wine. Meredith watched him swill most of a jug himself throughout dinner, aggressively offering to pour her more every few minutes or so, and expressing frustration at the slow consumption rate of his companions. For Tony it was not enough that people drink at the same time as he did, he demanded they also drink at the same pace. "It's like running a race while lapping your fellow compet.i.tors. You end up running a marathon while they manage nothing more than a fifty-metre sprint," he complained.

Meredith accepted his pours to be polite. Twice over the course of dinner she went to the bathroom and dumped her wine down the sink.

As the supper moved into a dessert of peaches and gelato, Meredith gazed around the table wondering if the future father of her baby was present without her knowing it. She measured every male face with the critical expertise of a Grand National jockey examining a stable of thoroughbreds. If you were going to choose the father of your child for any reason other than love, didn't you owe it to yourself to be as selective as possible? Apart from Tony (whom Meredith had already ruled out as a charming little weasel) the men at the table were disappointingly geriatric. She felt it would be a miracle if any of their sperm still had aquatic motility-although, she reminded herself crisply, Saul Bellow and Clint Eastwood had fathered babies in their seventies. The fact that women and men were on completely different clocks was the reason she was here in the first place. Like a French matron at a fruit stand, Meredith looked without touching. She checked features for evenness, muscle groups for signs of deterioration, and shoulders for signs of spinal curvature. On the whole she was disappointed. Meredith moved from man to man until she came to Ozzie, on whom she lingered.

For a bulldoggish man in his early old age, he was, Meredith noticed, almost daintily elegant. He sat dissecting a white peach with a spoon, smiling at some private joke. She looked away for what she judged to be an appropriate amount of time and then let her gaze slide back to Ozzie. Something about his hands-the way they moved, flicking with purpose while the rest of him remained perfectly still. He sliced the fruit three ways using a technique she had never seen before, and then spread the peach with his thumbs and plucked out the seed. Setting the pit down on the small china saucer before him, Ozzie raised a shiny sliver of fruit to his mouth with a spoon. Then he paused and looked up directly into Meredith's eyes. He seemed to have been aware of her gaze the entire time. His expression showed no self-consciousness-only an amused curiosity.

She felt like a naughty child caught out and tried to shrug off the moment, but when she looked back, Ozzie caught her again. He pulled on his mustache and winked. She giggled, and Tony swiveled around in his chair.