The day after the graduation party dawned like any other working day for Faye and Ward. The kids could sleep it off until noon, but they had to be at the studio by nine. Their next movie would be starting soon and the two of them had mountains of work on their desks. It always seemed to require so much discipline to go on, to work, no matter how tired they were, especially when Faye was actually directing the film. Then she was always at the studio before six o'clock, often before the actors were there. But she had to be there, to breathe the air, to get the feel of it. In fact, while they were shooting, it was always difficult to force herself to go home, and sometimes she did not. Sometimes she slept in a dressing room, eating, sleeping, and thinking the script, making it become almost a part of her, until she knew every character as though she had been born in their skin in another life. It was what made her so demanding of the actors who worked for her, but she taught them a kind of discipline they never forgot, and most of the actors in Hollywood talked of Faye Thayer with awe. Her kind of talent was a gift, and she was so much happier than when she had been acting herself. This was the fulfillment she had been looking for, and Ward loved seeing that light in her eye, that light that came only when she was thinking of her work. It made him a little jealous sometimes because he liked what he did, but not with the same determination, the same fire, as what she seemed to feel. She breathed her very soul into her work. And he was thinking of that now. In a few weeks he was going to lose her to their new film, but they both thought it was the best one they had ever done. They were both extremely excited about it, and more than once Faye had said how sorry she was that Abe Abramson was no longer alive. He would have loved this film. But he had died years before. He had lived long enough to see their success, to see her win the second Oscar of her life, this one for directing. But he had died after that, and she still missed him sometimes, as she did now. And she lay back against the seat, looking at Ward and thinking of the night before.
“I'm glad the kids had a good time.”
“So did I.” He smiled at her, but he was painfully hung over, and these days that was rare. He often wondered how he used to drink as much as he did. He couldn't take it anymore, without paying a tremendous price for it. Youth … he smiled to himself … a lot of things changed when you added a few years and gray hair … and other things did not. In spite of the hangover, he and Faye had made love that morning after he got out of the shower. That always got his day off to a good start, and he gently put a hand on her thigh now. “You still drive me wild, you know …”
She blushed faintly and looked pleased. She was still in love with him. Had been for nineteen years, longer if you counted the time they had met in Guadalcanal in '43 … that would make it twenty-one…. “It's mutual, you know.”
“That's good.” He looked pensive as he pulled into the MGM parking lot. The guard at the gate had smiled and waved them in. You could set your clocks by those two, he thought to himself … nice people … with nice kids … and they worked hard. You had to hand it to them. “Maybe we should put a communicating door between our offices, and a lock on my door.”
“Sounds good to me,” she whispered in his ear, and then playfully nipped his neck before sliding out. “What have you got going today, love?”
“Not a hell of a lot. I think almost everything is squared away. What about you?”
“I'm meeting with three of the stars,” she told him who, “I feel like I need to do a lot of talking to all of them before we start, so that everyone's prepared. So that they all know where we're going with this thing.” It was the most challenging movie she'd done. It was about four soldiers during the second world war, and it wasn't a pretty film in that sense. It was brutal and painful and tore your guts out, and most studio heads would have assigned a male director to it, but Dore Schary still trusted her, and she wasn't going to let him down. Or Ward. It hadn't been easy for Ward to raise the money for this film, in spite of their names. But people were afraid that no one would want to see a depressing film. After the assassination of John Kennedy the year before, everybody wanted comic relief, not serious film, but both Ward and Faye had agreed from the start, when they read the script, this was it. It was a brilliant film, the screenplay was magnificent, as the original book had been, and Faye was determined to do right by it. Ward knew she would, but he also knew how nervous she was.
“It's going to be okay, you know.” He smiled at her just outside her office door. They both knew it would be, but he also knew that she needed reassurance from him, and he knew that even more certainly as she answered him.
“I'm scared to death.”
