| Subject: Empty Reflections Part four |
Author:
Karen
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Date Posted: 13:04:02 08/22/08 Fri
In reply to:
Karen
's message, "Empty Reflections-Prologue" on 14:52:42 08/05/08 Tue
A/N: Back to the other side now. Bear with me this is going to start getting messy real soon. A few people have asked what I based the imaginary TV show on. For those of you old enough to remember it’s basically an updated version of the old western ‘Have Gun Will Travel’ with a tiny bit of ‘Mission Impossible’ thrown in. Except for the background and the fantasy element it injects, it’s not important. Just another empty reflection.
Empty Reflections
Part Four
Chesapeake Grand Hotel
Baltimore MD
August 2004
Thursday 2110
It had been a brutal day of filming and tomorrow would be worse. They’d wrapped work at the estate today, with the filming of a fight, and a running gun battle followed by the beginning of their chase scene. Tomorrow they would film the final scene, a highly choreographed boat chase into Baltimore Harbor. It was a one-chance shot, and all private boating and traffic on several surrounding streets had been cordoned off. It was a tricky and dangerous stunt, and they couldn’t afford any mistakes. The entire scene was too costly for a retake, and any mishap could kill, or seriously injure him.
There was no way to use a stand-in for the scene with the camera boat mimicking their course only twenty feet away. He would have to stand up and steer the boat, pretending to fire his fake gun at the escaping adversary. At the last moment, he would turn his boat to ram the other, then tuck and roll into the water. The script called for the two boats to explode on impact concluding his mission. The scene would underscore the ‘Elimination’ part of the show’s name.
Once in the water, he would need to dive under the burning watercraft and swim to shore, where Number Two would pick him up and whisk them away to their imaginary plane. Divers in the water would film his escape and be there to render assistance if he got into trouble. And that was just the fantasy part of this job.
After filming concluded Friday, he would need to find the strength for another five-hour fan party. In the event he survived the scene unscathed, he would have very little time to get back to the hotel and clean up before the gathering started with an open fan meeting at six-thirty. Smiling laughing, signing autographs, posing for photographs with fans, and flirting with Gretchen, they would go through the studio-imposed ritual.
The public appearances were always useful in feeding the rumors of their long-term affair, but they were very hard on his nerves. He was also painfully aware of the toll this little charade took on Polly. It was very likely the most difficult acting job he’d ever had. The ironic truth was that Gretchen hated his guts, and he felt much the same about her.
At least in his weakest moment he hadn’t fallen under her spell. Her well know agenda was to shred the heart and soul of every man who warmed to her. Knowing this, many men found it a challenge to be the one to capture her heart. So far, none had succeeded. However, her antics in the press kept the eye of publicity away from Michael’s private life, and whenever Gretchen developed a new love interest the studio’s publicists would release a statement that she and Michael had a spat. Her little affairs never lasted long and soon all was ‘cozy’ once again. Or so it looked to the outside world.
After the open fan session, he’d have to rush back upstairs and change into black tie to attend the formal banquet arranged for invited guests. The limited party of one hundred people would entertain the regular crewmembers, and the producer’s friends, as well as a few network executives and naturally a small core of their most ardent followers. The celebration had been conceived after their first year as a way to thank their most loyal and active fans, those who had supported them in many different countries from the beginning. And, as always, there would be the two fans who’d won tickets through the online sweepstakes.
Polly, had gone up to the suite while he signed a few more autographs in the lobby. Taking the elevator to the twenty-fifth floor, he walked through the front door to their rooms, shedding the two off-duty police officers hired to ‘protect’ him. It occurred to him that given the production company’s history, the men might actually be there to keep him under surveillance.
“What a bloody awful day, Pol,” he reached for her, wondering why she hadn’t changed clothes. She moved deftly out of reach, gesturing towards the dining area where a hotel waiter was setting up their meal. The server was either oblivious to the brief touch, or the man’s bank account would be $10,000 heavier in the morning, and the tabloids would have another first hand report of Morgan’s alleged affair with his ‘male’ Personal Assistant.
With an aggravated sigh, he turned quickly away, strode down the short hall to the master bedroom, and strait into the bathroom. Stripping off his sweaty clothing, he walked directly into the warm shower she had prepared for him. Hmmm, just the right temperature. He stood there for several minutes letting the water beat on him before soaping down and rinsing quickly. In less than ten minutes, he was back in the main room headed for the dining table. Polly walked beside him, now changed into a pretty silk robe.
He loved it when she dressed in feminine clothing. He rarely broached the subject of her ‘assumed identity’ anymore. To keep peace between them he mostly left it alone. She still became so agitated whenever he brought it up. They’d been part of each other since they were small children. Once he’d hoped it was just a passing concern, that she would come around in time, but after all these years she still felt inadequate to publicly appear as the wife of a popular, international star. No matter how he reassured her, she refused to budge.
It was a consequence of whatever oddities were introduced into his gene pool over the centuries that people in his family were tall and well built, with wavy dark hair and blue eyes. He was possessed of enough vanity to admit to being better looking than average.
Conversely, her family’s gene pool didn’t appear to have changed significantly since the first Britons settled the Isle. As a result, she was short, and compact, in build.
With a body type that could have easily turned plump, she worked out regularly to keep every stray ounce of fat at bay. As a result, she maintained a tight athletic figure. She had eyes the most beautiful shade of warm honey, ringed with thick dark lashes, and wild, curly red/brown hair that felt like tangled silk in his fingers. To his utter delight, she had retained that well-defined, pouty little mouth of her childhood.
However, her nose was a bit too large for her face, and had a faint but noticeable hook, possibly the contribution of some errant Roman soldier in a time long ago . If she had asked to have it surgically altered, he would have agreed in a heartbeat. There was nothing he would deny her, but she had never brought the subject up and it didn’t particularly bother him. She was his Polly, and that’s all that mattered. The woman inside was far more important than the shell, and he needed her desperately.
As they walked to the dinner table, he reached his hand to take hers. “I love you, you know,” he told her looking into the eyes he adored.
“I know, Michael,” she answered, and so she did.
His one peccadillo five years ago notwithstanding, she knew and understood. He’d been overwhelmed by his newfound fame and the attentions he’d never before found as a stage star or even as an actor in British TV. When this new role required extensive international travel, she had remained in Kent with their daughter. Four months into the overseas shooting schedule, he had called her in desperation. He had lost control of who he was and it frightened him. At that time, his basic nature still retained a large part of the naïve shepherds son from Yorkshire.
British actors simply weren’t besieged by the attentions showered on someone with international fame. The overt attentions of a younger, more worldly woman, had led him astray in his loneliness. Two weeks after his call ‘Paul Stanley’ arrived with ‘his’ daughter Daphne, and a newly hired Governess. Michael had wept his sorrow against her lap, begging her forgiveness. After nearly five years Polly remained certain he would never stray again.
Pulling her close, he kissed her in a way that no amount of acting could conjure. He recalled the first time he’d ever dared to kiss her beautiful mouth. He had been fourteen and Polly thirteen. The emotions his actions had aroused left him frightened and breathless. It was two years before he took the courage to do it again, but he’d never touched her more intimately until after their marriage. He found to this day that she still had the same effect on him as that first kiss.
“Would you two take it to your room,” their fifteen-year-old daughter’s voice cut in. She rolled her eyes as they seated themselves at the dinner table. A typical, yet atypical teenager, Daphne Stanley enjoyed these private moments with her parents. She was sorely confused why her mother had to dress like a man in public, and why she had to address her father as Mr. Morgan and her mother as Dad, but she tried to make a game of it. It bothered her deeply though, and her mother had never truly explained.
Also unexplained were the times she and her Mum watched the telly together that showed her father escorting that horrible Gretchen Deerslayer to public events. Daphne always noted tears in her mother’s eyes, though Polly hastened to remind her it was part of the ‘game’. Her standard answer was simply that they were part of show business and they each had a role to play. Then she would take her pills and go to sleep for a while.
However, the explanation that had satisfied Daphne at eleven had disintegrated under her quickly acquired teenage sophistication, and over time, she decided upon another reason. She didn’t like the photos that showed her father out at special events with his nasty little bleached blond co-star. Her huge green eyes and heart shaped face, gave her the appearance of a lost kitten, but in Daphne’s opinion, the woman was like a boa constrictor, surrounding crushing, and destroying everyone around her. It should be her mother who dressed up in beautiful gowns and accompanied her father to these events. Her parents needed to be protected from people who would harm them. The more the child worried about it the more she was convinced she had a solution figured out, and she was working to do something about it.
“Well, darling, what did you do today?” Michael interrupted her reverie to inquire of his beautiful daughter. The cells that had so rapidly divided to create this enchanting creature had obviously chosen quickly and well from the available gene pool. She possessed her mother’s eyes and mouth, but she’d inherited his bone structure and height. Her hair was burnished gold with only a hint of her mother’s red. It lay about her shoulders in deep thick waves that framed her face and defied control.
“Channah took me to the aquarium in the harbor. It was boring watching fish swim about, but not nearly as boring as watching you redo a scene a hundred times,” she grimaced. Whether her expression was for the fish, the stultifying boredom of filmmaking, or the vegetables her mother heaped on her plate they couldn’t tell.
Channah Newell, had been hired as governess to keep Daphne current on her lessons. However, she was also charged with keeping the child safe as Michael’s fame soared. Her presence, and the deception of Daphne’s parentage, combined to allow the girl some semblance of freedom.
The offspring of an Englishman who worked for a defense contractor, and an Israeli woman who was his counterpart, Channah had delayed her enlistment in the Israeli Army until immediately after she’d finished college in England. Trained for covert missions and espionage in the Israeli version of Special Forces, her duties were to act as part governess and part bodyguard. She was young enough to entertain the teenager, but experienced enough to protect her. No one questioned too closely, why she wasn’t still in Israel.
“You know you could have gone to school in France this year if you’d wanted. It would have given you an opportunity to polish your French,” he reminded her.
“Oh, swell, and be locked up in some stupid ancient school with a bunch of skanky girls wearing those dorky uniforms,” Daphne made a face.
“Skanky? Wherever did you hear that word?” her mother inquired.
“Everyone says it, Mum,” the girl shrugged.
“I see,” Polly replied. “Well don’t get too fond of it because you can’t keep it, and while you’re at it you will forget ‘dorky’ as well, it sounds prejudicial and superior,” she cautioned her daughter.
“Yes, Ma’am.” Daphne’s response was more surly than obedient.
In every country, the child had come into contact with new customs or quirks of language. They had taken to watching these acquisitions carefully and screening for those she was allowed to adopt. Daphne was a natural linguist like her father and it took both of their efforts to police all the colloquialisms she picked up.
Fortunately, even though she was fifteen she usually displayed a particularly sunny disposition. Rarely, she would fall victim to the odd adolescent disturbance. When that happened she would harass the company’s makeup artist until he rinsed her hair to a jet black, ironed it straight, and allowed her to play among the makeup pots.
Occasionally, in her darkest moods, she would apply artificial tattoos or some of the glued on facial piercing jewelry. When she was satisfied with her dark look she would dress in one of ‘Paul Stanley’s’ or Channah Newells’s black outfits, and stalk around that way for a day or two amidst waves of a great dismal aura. But the moods were usually short lived, and suddenly as they’d come, she would return to her normal sunny self. Her parents largely ignored this odd, infrequent behavior, deciding she would soon right herself.
With their limited time together as a family, Michael never missed a chance to share his daughter’s experiences. Evenings alone were the only opportunity to interact as a normal family until the filming hiatus when they would spend four months at their estate in Kent.
“Was that all you did today? Just went to the aquarium?” Michael probed further.
“No,” Daphne sighed. “We went to Washington to some dumb museum,” she told him with the drama of a bored teenager.
“The Smithsonian?”
“I guess. Channah said I needed to learn more about dinosaurs, but it was so totally boring. So I snuck away when she wasn’t looking and went across the Mall to the one that had airplanes. I met a nice boy there and we went to play in this really awesome flight simulator. It took her an hour to find me.” Daphne giggled at her game.
“I don’t think that was very wise,” her mother rebuked. There was little point in getting upset, it obviously hadn’t become an incident, but she’d have a sharp talk with her daughter later. “And when did airplanes become such a passion that you felt you had to disobey Channah to look at them?”
“Dunno,” Daphne shrugged. “I guess it just seemed better than dinosaurs. What I really wanted was to go to Annapolis. I heard they have the Naval Academy there. One of the writers told me the town is full of good-looking sailors in uniform.”
“Which writer? I’ll have him fired for putting such ideas in your head,” her fathers protective instincts rose alarmingly.
“It was a she, not a he, and she doesn’t work for you guys any more anyway.”
“Have you made plans for tomorrow? Maybe you could drive to Mount Vernon,” her mother diverted the confrontation.
“Ah, yes, Mount Vernon. That sounds like quite a lovely idea. I hear it’s very nice, although nothing like our own stately homes,” Michael quickly followed Polly’s lead.
“You kidding, Pops? I wouldn’t miss that boat chase for the world. I’m going to have a front row seat. Maybe I can talk Jimmy into taking me on the camera boat.”
“No!” Polly exploded.
At the same time Michael instructed, “You will do no such thing, young lady. Polly, make sure Channah keeps her well away from the area. Have them book a table at one of those restaurants overlooking the harbor if she insists on watching.”
It was a dangerous stunt and he didn’t want his daughter too close if anything went wrong. He knew perfectly well the filming would not penetrate the harbor far enough for Daphne to see anything.
“I won’t be able to see a thing from there,” Daphne whined knowingly.
“Channah can take you to buy a good strong pair of field glasses in the morning, while they wrap up at the estate, and do a run through. There’s a Discovery store in the shopping mall down the street.” Polly turned to address her husband. “I’ll talk to Channah later about calling for a reservation.”
“By the way, where is she?” he asked. Channah was treated as part of the family and she usually dined with them.
“She said she had to check the layout of the room for the party tomorrow night,” Daphne explained.
“Why? That’s what they’re paying the security company to do.”
“Don’t know, she said she just wanted to make sure everything was okay,” the young girl shrugged ingenuously.
“Hmmmph,” Morgan responded, then turned to his wife with a suggestion. “I think you should go with them in the morning. Make a day of it. Buy Daphne a new dress for the party, maybe something for yourself as well.”
“Not a chance, Michael,” she protested. “Channah can take her shopping for anything she wants, but there’s no reason to waste money buying me a dress. I won’t wear it,” she shut the argument down. “Besides, I’m the one who will be in that camera boat, and if you aren’t out of that water ten seconds after you go in, I’m coming in after you.”
“Polly, please, I’ll be fine.”
“I pray that’s true, but it’s a dangerous stunt, dear, perhaps the most dangerous you’ve ever attempted. I refuse to be any further away than that,” she insisted.
“Fine, it’s easy to see which side of the family Daphne inherited her temperament from,” he commented wryly.
She just smiled at him. She’d won the round, there was no sense continuing the fight. “Finish your dinner you need to get your rest. I want you one hundred percent tomorrow.”
“What about tonight?” he gave her a suggestive look.
“No, not tonight. You won’t be getting enough rest as it is. You need to be in top form for that chase. We’ll resume tomorrow night after the party if you’re not too tired, sweetheart, I promise.”
“You guys do realize I’m old enough to know what you’re talking about don’t you?” Daphne interrupted with a sly grin.
“Actually, I can’t imagine where you might have gained that information,” her father’s tone was typically stuffy dad.
“Oh, let me see, maybe following a film crew all over the world for the last five years,” she pointed out to him.
“I guess we’ll just have to be a little more circumspect, Michael,” his wife suggested primly.
“Either that or we must send our daughter to that boarding school in France. Perhaps it would be best to lock her up away from all these temptations,” her father responded, at least partially serious.
“Not fair, Pops. Anyway since I already know this stuff its not like you can erase my memory,” the girl argued.
“Daphne has a point, Michael,” Polly pointed out.
“You’re quite correct as usual, my dear,” he sighed his surrender, then flashed her his heartbreaking smile. The one that made women all over the world weak in the knees.
Daphne hid her relief behind a triumphant grin. There was no way she could leave them alone, not now, it would be too dangerous.
End part four
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