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It begins as it will end, with arrows and flame.
It's opening night and the cast and crew of Medea are drifting in and out of Helen's dressing room, flushed and drunk on their success. Helen, swathed in her favourite scarlet silk robe, is sitting at her vanity and fielding her journalists and admirers. “I'm so glad, yes, thank you so much,” she says with her prettiest smile as she's handed another armful of roses. The room is already awash with flowers, and she looks at the card: it's from her husband, out of the city for his uncle's funeral. The funeral that was three days ago. A cross forms between her fair brows for a moment, and then she remembers herself, tosses her head and folds the card and tucks it underneath the others on her table. “Another of my swains,” she says airily, and the men around her laugh.
She sees, out of the corner of her eye, someone new shove their way into the room. Paris Something-or-Other. A talent scout for his father's studio. Agamemnon had pointed him out to her in the audience before the start of the show as they stood in the shadows of the wings, warned her to stay away: Remember you're under contract, Helen. I have too much invested in you. His teeth bared, more snarl than smile behind his beard. I'm not stupid, Helen had said indignantly. Now, as she chatters away, Helen tries to dredge up what she's heard of Paris: his silver tongue, his nimble fingers. He is a beautiful creature; those stories, at least, are true. She meets Paris's eyes and, involuntarily, she curls her hand over her heart: it pangs.
His gaze is steady on hers as he lifts a glass of champagne to his mouth, and Helen's face heats as her eyes drop to his lush-cut lips, and she thinks, oh, I am lost.
She looks away sharply, focuses again on whatever the reviewer from the Times is telling her. She smooths one golden curl away behind her ear as she feels her cheeks blaze hotter with some feeling she can't yet name. Her eyes flick over to Paris again, and he is smiling, still staring. Her face is scrubbed free of her stage makeup, and she is unaccountably self-conscious before him like this, laid bare and girlish.
Her sister pushes through the crowd, leading her husband by the hand. “We must be off,” Clytaemnestra says, bending to kiss Helen on the cheek with a whiff of powder and too-strong Femme de Rochas. Agamemnon pulls his wife to his side, arm curled around her waist, and Helen smiles at them both as Clytaemnestra adds, “I'm so proud, darling. You were positively splendid.”
“As were the takings,” Agamemnon says. Gloats. He gives Paris, who has yet to speak or be spoken to, a stern look.“You'd better not be thinking of poaching my best actress, son. I've heard all about your tricks.”
So have they all; everyone laughs but Paris. He has drifted closer to her, standing just at her shoulder, edging out the rest of the star-struck gaggle. He smiles politely at Agamemnon and says smoothly, “I'd never dream of it, sir.”
It doesn't ring true, and Helen wonders if she is the only one who can see the threat in the narrowing lines of Agamemnon's face. “Heavens,” she lies, putting a hand on her manager's wrist, “we all know I'm too much of a snob to leave the stage for cinema.” She gives a dramatic little shudder.
They laugh again on her cue, but Agamemnon cuts the laughter off abruptly, holding the door wide. “All right, everyone. Leave the lady be. She has a show tomorrow night.”
“And even Helen needs her beauty sleep,” Clytaemnestra teases, pulling her furs closer.
Her sister's voice is light, but Helen knows better, can hear the sharp note beneath it. “Oh, don't be silly, you all don't have to leave,” she protests, but her crowd of admirers are firmly ushered out behind Agamemnon and Clytaemnestra.
All but one. Paris has managed to linger, holding the door to keep it from closing.
Helen turns back to her vanity, catching her hands together on its cluttered surface. Her knuckles are white and her fingers still bared of Menelaus's rings from the play. Paris's presence burns at her back as the noise in hall fades. She makes a decision, lifts her chin and tips her head to show him her profile stark against the glaring bulbs of her mirror.
“So,” she says. “Have you come to woo me away?”
He grins. It is a gorgeous, dangerous grin, she sees from the corner of her eye. “What do you think?”
She abandons her tableau and turns to face him full on. He is stunning from a distance, still more stunning up close. A face made to be writ large across a screen in startlingly keen detail. Like hers.
But: “Come now, boy,” she says. “Why would I leave for Hollywood, when I have New York at my feet?” Helen is half-playful, half-serious when she asks, gesturing to the ocean of flowers and gifts, “What do you have to you offer me, that could make me abandon all of this?”
Slowly, deliberately, he comes closer, bends over her, his touch light on her shoulder. She can smell him. The long lean lines of his body press into hers as he whispers into her ear, “Immortality.” His breath stirs her hair, electrifies her spine.
In the mirror she sees that she is wide-eyed with hunger.
They are on a plane for Los Angeles before dawn.
“I'm not promising anything, mind,” Helen tells Paris as they walk out of the airport. She is wearing her darkest sunglasses, a white scarf knotted loosely over her hair; he guides her to the waiting car with one gentle hand in the small of her back. “Just a friendly business visit.”
“Whatever you want to tell yourself,” Paris says. She shoots him a glance behind her glasses as she slides into the back seat, and his face is amused as he closes the door after her. When he comes around the other side and climbs in, he tells the driver to head to Troy Studios.
She looks at him. “See?” he says. “Business. Pure business.”
What he hadn't told her is that the family estate is on studio property; she lifts her sunglasses and squints against the morning sunlight when they arrive, scrutinising the house. No: house is not the right word for it. His father's home is vast and sprawling and Mediterranean, all white stucco walls and cobbled stone walkways, a slice of the old world in the new. When they pass through the front doors Paris leads her through the main courtyard, the mosaic tiles underfoot shining beautifully blue under the glare of the sun.
She is introduced that day to the dizzying array of Paris's relatives who work with the studio as editors and producers and marketers. She meets the sixth brother of his lounging by the pool; after introductions are made, she whispers in Paris's ear, “How many siblings do you have, anyway?”
He doesn't answer, just smiles and puts his hand around her waist to steer her back inside.
California is dizzingly beautiful, dizzingly busy. By the time the afternoon begins to fade, they have yet to talk about introducing Helen to the screen; it seems to be an unspoken given, that she will sign with them. But she finds she doesn't mind, she is kept so busy and laughing by Paris's family. She thinks of the rain and quiet gloom of New York and wonders why she wanted to badly to make her career there in the first place. The family all eventually drifts together on a terrace in a grove of trees for drinks before dinner. At a brief glance, Helen counts that there are dozens of them; how on earth do they keep track of each other? And then the patriarch emerges at last: Priam, his current wife on his arm, his beard white and neat. He welcomes her warmly, kissing her on either cheek, and says, “Your beauty precedes you, my dear; my son has spent a fortune this year on flights out east to watch you perform." Helen blinks, and he raises his glass. “We're very pleased to hear you're willing to join our enclave. A celebration!”
“I'm afraid she hasn't signed yet, Father,” Paris says, but with humour.
“Ah. A seduction, then,” Priam says, grinning. Hecuba puts her hand over his and whispers, “Behave.”
Helen doesn't know what to say; instead, she tells him, “Really, I don't intend to impose on you for long,” shaking her golden curls. “Good heavens, I haven't even taken a change of clothes with me—”
“And don't you have a show to get back to?” Hector, Paris's eldest brother, smiles at her. He is not as beautiful as his brother, but he is certainly commanding, and his eyes are sharp and knowing as he says, “I read the reviews this morning. They were wonderful. I'm sure you're eager to finish your run...?”
“Oh, but my understudy won't mind covering a show or two,” Helen says with a light laugh. “The things they do to get some time under the spotlight, honestly—she'll be grateful.”
She does not answer his question. Hector, she thinks, realises this.
Hector's wife, Andromache, has one hand resting on the swelling curve of her stomach. Helen notices this and freezes; the image of her own little daughter Hermione curled up in bed back in New York comes to her mind unbidden, the hasty kiss she'd given her before leaving for the show—God, she hadn't stopped in before leaving for the airport with Paris, hadn't even said goodbye.
She pushes that out of her mind. What sense would there have been, in waking her up, in disrupting her life? Hermione will be well, at home with her nanny and her friends and everything she knows. It is better for her this way. And anyway, Helen will be home soon enough—
She averts her gaze from Andromache's serenely happy face.
“Shall we discuss your options?” Helen jerks her attention back to Paris. He has been watching her, she realises. He tips his head in the direction of the door. “My father's office. We can talk more privately about—business.”
His voice hesitates over that last word, and Helen smothers a smile.
They slip back into the house together, and no one but Hector notices; the family are all busy drinking and squabbling with one another. Priam's office is a massive space, cluttered with desks and shelves and overflowing filing cabinets. Do they all work out of this one room? They were apparently busy with edits today; a film reel has been left playing, thrown up against the back wall, some sword-and-sandals feature on jittery loop.
Paris says, shutting down the projector, “There are a whole heap of scripts that have just been waiting for an actress like you, Helen. We wouldn't put you on features like this, of course...” He begins rifling through papers on the biggest desk, by the window.
“Why not?” Helen says, swallowing the last of her cocktail. “They bring in money.”
Paris shakes his head ruefully, digging up one folder and flipping through it. “There's some genuinely beautiful art being done in cinema, you know; I wish you wouldn't think so little of what we do here,” he says. He pulls out a sheaf of papers. “Here. Take a look at this.”
He already has a contract drawn up, her name written in a glaring bold hand. She thinks she should find this presumptuous; she finds that she is nothing but flattered, and full of admiration for his tenacity.
She puts it out of her mind. “You really do want me, don't you,” she says. She perches on a free chair, tilting her head quizzically. “Is this normally how you go after a talent?”
“Oh, Helen," Paris says. "Can you really think so?” Her heart pounds. He looks at her for a long moment, then shakes his head, dismissing it. “Tell me. What is it about theatre that you find so difficult to leave behind?”
The theatre. Ah. On the opposite coast, the curtain is nearly ready to go up; they must be going mad without her. She very pointedly did not tell them in her note where she was headed, what she was planning. They will call her reckless, they will call her selfish—
She cannot think of that now. Helen circles the rim of her empty glass with her forefinger. “Oh, I don't know how to articulate what it feels like,” she says slowly.“The communion. The immediacy of it. The closed circle of actor and audience.”
“And you in control of it all,” he says; she dips her head in acknowledgement. “But it's so fleeting.”
“Well, yes,” Helen says, “but that makes it all the more precious, don't you think?”
“But is it enough?”
She finds she has no answer.
Paris leans forward, takes her hand in his. “Helen,” he says. His eyes are very serious. “If you let me put you on the screen, I will make that feeling last forever. I will make you live forever.”
That great yawning chasm of hunger opens up again in the pit of her stomach, and Helen wonders if a person can choke from sheer longing.
Paris tugs at her skirt suddenly. “Wait,” he says, pulling her to her feet. “Before you decide. I need to show you the view.”
She follows him upstairs, through a maze of bedrooms (mercifully empty, his legion of siblings still lingering over drinks) and into his suite. It is airy and full of light, curtains lifting white and translucent in the breeze. Her eyes go first to his bed, which is so massive and conspicuous it makes her cheeks pink, but no: “The balcony?” Helen says, confused, as he takes her through the door. “But one of your brothers told me we can't see the ocean from here.”
“This is even better, I promise,” Paris says. He leads her to the railing and she clutches at him and says, “Oh—“
“You've already conquered New York,” Paris says. He sweeps his arm out over the studio backlot, a sea of sound stages and sets lit gold by the afternoon sun.“Your new kingdom awaits, my lady.”
Yes. Hers, ripe for the taking. For the winning. Helen turns to look at him, heart hammering wild, but before she can speak Paris leans in to kiss her. When he pulls back she realises that she doesn't have to say anything: his eyes know it all. She takes his hand and together, they smile.