"I"ll think about it." She stooped for the pan.
He reached it before she did. "I won"t give you time to think. There"ll be a car here for you tomorrow at noon."
He handed her the pan.
She took it reluctantly.
We had dug Valerie Lone up from under uncounted strata of self-pity and anonymity, from a kind of grave she had chosen for herself for reasons I was beginning to understand. As we went back inside the diner, I had The Thought for the first time: The Thought: What if we ain"t doing her no favors?
And the voice of Donald Duck came back at me from the Clown Town of my thoughts: With friends like you, Handy, she may not need any enemies.
Screw you, Duck.
2.
The screen flickered, and Valerie Lone, twenty years younger, wearing the pageboy and padded shoulders of the Forties, swept into the room. Cary Grant looked up from the microscope with his special genteel exasperation, and asked her precisely where she had been. Valerie Lone, the coiffed blonde hair carefully smoothed, removed her gloves and sat on the laboratory counter. She crossed her legs. She was wearing ankle-strap wedgies.
"I think the legs are still d.a.m.ned good, Arthur," Fred Handy said. Cigar smoke rose up in the projection room. Arthur Crewes did not answer. He was busy watching the past.
Full hips, small b.r.e.a.s.t.s, blonde; a loveliness that was never wispy like a Jean Arthur, never chill like a Joan Crawford, never cultured like a Greer Garson. If Valerie Lone had been identifiable with anyone else working in her era, it would have been with Ann Sheridan. And the comparison was by no means invidious. There was the same forceful womanliness in her manner; a wise kid who knew the score. Dynamic. Yet there was a quality of availability in the way she arched her eyebrows, the way she held her hands and neck. Sensuality mixed with reality. What had broken that spine of self-control, turned it into the fragile wariness Handy had sensed? He studied the film as the story unreeled, but there was none of that showing in the Valerie Lone of twenty years before.
As the deep, silken voice faded from the screen, Arthur Crewes reached to the console beside his contour chair, and punched a series of b.u.t.tons. The projection light cut off from the booth behind them, the room lights went up, and the chair tilted forward. The producer got up and left the room, with Handy behind him, waiting for comments. They had spent close to eight hours running old prints of Valerie Lone"s biggest hits.
Arthur Crewes"s home centered around the projection room. As his life centered around the film industry. Through the door, and into the living room, opulent beneath fumed and waxed, shadowed oak beams far above them; the two men did not speak. The living room was immense, only slightly smaller than a basketball court in one corner where Crewes now settled into a deep armchair, before a roaring walk-in fireplace. The rest of the living room was empty and quiet; one could hear the fall of dust. It had been a merry house many times in the past, and would be again, but at the moment, far down below the vaulting ceiling, their voices rising like echoes in a mountain pa.s.s, Arthur Crewes spoke to his publicist.
"Fred, I want the full treatment. I want her seen everywhere by everyone. I want her name as big as it ever was."
Handy pursed his lips, even as he nodded. "That takes money, Arthur. We"re pushing the publicity budget now."
Crewes lit a cigar. "This is above-the-line expense. Keep it a separate record, and I"ll take care of it out of my pocket. I want it all itemized for the IRS, but don"t spare the cost."
"Do you know how much you"re getting into here?"
"It doesn"t matter. Whatever it is, however much you need, come and ask, and you"ll get it. But I want a real job done for that money, Fred."
Handy stared at him for a long moment.
"You"ll get mileage out of Valerie Lone"s comeback, Arthur. No doubt about it. But I have to tell you right now it isn"t going to be anything near commensurate with what you"ll be spending. It isn"t that kind of appeal."
Crewes drew deeply on the cigar, sent a thin streamer of blue smoke toward the darkness above them. "I"m not concerned about the value to the picture. It"s going to be a good property, it can take care of itself. This is something else."
Handy looked puzzled. "Why?"
Crewes did not answer. Finally, he asked, "Is she settled in at the Beverly Hills?"
Handy rose to leave. "Best bungalow in the joint. You should have seen the reception they gave her."
"That"s the kind of reception I want everywhere for her, Fred. A lot of bowing and sc.r.a.ping for the old queen."
Handy nodded, walked toward the foyer. Across the room, forcing him to raise his voice to reach Crewes, still lost in the dimness of the living room, the fireplace casting spastic shadows of blood and night on the walls, Fred Handy said, "Why the extra horsepower, Arthur? I get nervous when I"m told to spend freely."
Smoke rose from the chair where Arthur Crewes was hidden. "Good night, Fred."
Handy stood for a moment; then, troubled, he let himself out. The living room was silent for a long while, only the faint crackling of the logs on the fire breaking the stillness. Then Arthur Crewes reached to the sidetable and lifted the telephone receiver from its cradle. He punched out a number.
"Miss Valerie Lone"s bungalow, please ... yes, I know what time it is. This is Arthur Crewes calling ... thank you."
There was a pause, then sound from the other end.
"h.e.l.lo, Miss Lone? Arthur Crewes. Yes, thank you. Sorry if I disturbed you ... oh, really? I rather thought you might be awake. I had the feeling you might be a little uneasy, first night back and all."
He listened to the voice at the other end. And did not smile. Then he said, "I just wanted to call and tell you not to be afraid. Everything will be fine. There"s nothing to be afraid of. Nothing at all."
His eyes became light, and light fled down the wires to see her at the other end. In the elegant bungalow, still sitting in the dark. Through a window, moonlight lay like a patina of dull gold across the room, tinting even the depressions in the sofa pillows where a thousand random bottoms had rested, a vaguely yellow ocher.
Valerie Lone. Alone.
Misted by a fine down of Beverly Hills moonlight--the great gaffer in the sky working behind an amber gel keylighting her with a senior, getting fill light from four broads and four juniors, working the light outside in the great celestial cyclorama with a dozen sky-pans, and catching her just right with a pair of inky-d.i.n.ks, scrims, gauzes. and cutters--displaying her in a gown of powdered moth-wing dust. Valerie Lone, off-camera, trapped by the lens of G.o.d, and the electric eyes of Arthur Crewes. But still in XTREME CLOSEUP.
She thanked him, seeming bewildered by his kindness. "Is there anything you need?" he asked.
He had to ask her to repeat her answer, she had spoken so softly. But the answer was nothing, and he said good night, and was about to hang up when she called him.
To Crewes it was a sound from farther away than the Beverly Hills Hotel. It was a sound that came by way of a Country of Mildew. From a land where oily things moved out of darkness. From a place where the only position was hunched safely into oneself with hands about knees, chin tucked down, hands wrapped tightly so that if the eyes with their just-born-bird membranes should open, through the film could be seen the relaxed fingers. It was a sound from a country where there was no hiding place.
After a moment he answered, shaken by her frightened sound. "Yes, I"m here."
Now he could not see her, even with eyes of electricity.
For Valerie Lone sat on the edge of the bed in her bungalow, not bathed in moth-wing dust, but lighted harshly by every lamp and overhead in the bungalow. She could not turn out those lights. She was petrified with fear. A nameless fear that had no origin and had no definition. It was merely there with her; a palpable presence.
And something else was in the room with her.
"They ..."
She stopped. She knew Crewes was straining at the other end of the line to hear what followed.
"They sent your champagne."
Crewes smiled to himself. She was touched.
Valerie Lone did not smile, was incapable of a smile, was by no means touched. The bottle loomed huge across the room on the gla.s.s-topped table. "Thank you. It was. Very. Kind. Of. You."
Slowly, because of the way she had told him the champagne had arrived, Crewes asked, "Are you all right?"
"I"m frightened."
"There"s nothing to be frightened about. We"re all on your team, you know that ..."
"I"m frightened of the champagne ... it"s been so long."
Crewes did not understand. He said so.
"I"m afraid to drink it."
Then he understood.
He didn"t know what to say. For the first time in many years he felt pity for someone. He was fully conversant with affection, and hatred, and envy, and admiration and even stripped-to-the-bone l.u.s.t. But pity was something he somehow hadn"t had to deal with, for a long time. His ex-wife and the boy, they were the last, and that had been eight years before. He didn"t know what to say.
"I"m afraid, isn"t that silly? I"m afraid I"ll like it too much again. I"ve managed to forget what it tastes like. But if I open it, and taste it, and remember . . I"m afraid ..."
He said, "Would you like me to drive over?"
She hesitated, pulling her wits about her. "No. No, I"ll be all right. I"m just being silly. I"ll talk to you tomorrow." Then, hastily: "You"ll call tomorrow?"
"Yes, of course. Sure I will. I"ll call first thing in the morning, and you"ll come down to the Studio. I"m sure there are all sorts of people you"ll want to get reacquainted with."
Silence, then, softly: "Yes. I"m just being silly. It"s very lonely here."
"Well, then. I"ll call in the morning."
"Lonely ... hmmm? Oh, yes! Thank you. Good night, Mr. Crewes."
"Arthur. That"s first on the list. Arthur."
"Arthur. Thank you. Good night."
"Good night, Miss Lone."
He hung up, still hearing the same voice he had heard in darkened theaters rich with the smell of popcorn (in the days before they started putting faintly rancid b.u.t.ter on it) and the taste of Luden"s Menthol Cough Drops. The same deep, silken voice that he had just this moment past heard break, ever so slightly, with fear.
Darkness rose up around him.
Light flooded Valerie Lone. The lights she would keep burning all night, because out there was darkness and it was so lonely in here. She stared across the room at the bottle of champagne, sitting high in its silver ice bucket, chipped base of ice melting to frigid water beneath it.
Then she stood and took a drinking gla.s.s from the tray on the bureau, ignoring the champagne gla.s.ses that had come with the bottle. She walked across the room to the bathroom and went inside, without turning on the light. She filled the water gla.s.s from the tap, letting the cold faucet run for a long moment. Then she stood in the doorway of the bathroom, drinking the water, staring at the bottle of champagne, that bottle of champagne.
Then slowly, she went to it and pulled the loosened plastic cork from the mouth of the bottle. She poured half a gla.s.s.
She sipped it slowly.
Memories stirred.
And a dark shape fled off across hills in the Country of Mildew.
3.
Handy drove up the twisting road into the Hollywood Hills. The call he had received an hour before was one he would never have expected. He had not heard from Huck Barkin in over two years. Haskell Barkin, the tall. Haskell Barkin, the tanned. Haskell Barkin, the handsome. Haskell Barkin, the amoral. The last time Fred had seen Huck, he was busily making a precarious living hustling wealthy widows with kids. His was a specialized con: he got next to the kids--Huck was one of the more accomplished surf-b.u.ms extant--even as he seduced the mother, and before the family attorney knew what was happening, the pitons and grapnels and tongs had been sunk in deep, through the mouth and out the other side, and friendly, good-looking, rangy Huck Barkin was living in the house, driving the Imperial, ordering McCormick"s bourbon from the liquor store, eating like Quantrill"s Raiders, and clipping bucks like the Russians were in Pomona.
There had been one who had tried to saturate herself with barbiturates when Huck had said, "a bientot."
There had been one who had called in her battery of attorneys in an attempt to have him make rest.i.tution, but she had been informed Huck Barkin was one of those rare, seldom "judgment-proof" people.
There had been one who had gone away to New Mexico, where it was warm, and no one would see her drinking.
There had been one who had bought a tiny gun, but had never used it on him.
There had been one who had already had the gun, and she had used it. But not on Huck Barkin.
Fearsome, in his strangeness; without ethic. Animal.
He was one of the more unpleasant Hollywood creeps Handy had met in the nine Hollywood years. Yet there was an unctuous charm about the man; it sat well on him, if the observers weren"t the most perceptive. Handy chuckled, remembering the one and only time he had seen Barkin shot down. By a woman. (And how seldom any woman can really put down a man, with such thoroughness that there is no comeback, no room to rationalize that it wasn"t such a great zinger, with the full certainty that the target has been utterly destroyed, and nothing is left but to slink away. He remembered.) It had been at a party thrown by CBS, to honor the star of their new ninety-minute Western series. Big party. Century City Hotel. All the silkies were there, all the sleek, well-fed types who went without eating a full day to make it worthwhile at the barbecue and buffet. Barkin had somehow been invited. Or crashed. No one ever questioned his appearance at these things; black mohair suit is ticket enough in a scene where recognition is predicated on the uniform of the day.
He had sidled into a conversational group composed of Handy and his own Julie, Spencer Lichtman the agent and two very expensive call girls--all pale silver hair and exquisite faces; hundred and a half per night girls; the kind a man could talk to afterward, learn something from, probably with Masters earned in photochemistry or piezoelectricity; nothing even remotely cheap or brittle about them; master craftsmen in a specialized field--and Barkin had unstrapped his Haskellesque charm. The girls had sensed at once that he was one of the leeches, hardly one of the cruisable meal tickets with wherewithal. They had been courteous, but chill. Barkin had gone from unctuous to rank in three giant steps, without saying, "May I?"
Finally, in desperation, he had leaned in close to the taller of the two silver G.o.ddesses, and murmured (loud enough for all in the group to overhear) with a Richard Widmark thinness: "How would you like me down in your panties?"
Silence for a beat, then the silver G.o.ddess turned to him with eyes of anthracite, and across the chill polar wastes came her reply. "I have one a.s.shole down there now ... what would I want with you?"
Handy chuckled again, smugly, remembering the look on Barkin as he had broken down into his component parts, re-formed as a puddle of strawberry jam sliding down one of the walls, and oozed out of the scene, not to return that night.
Yet there was a roguish good humor about the big blond beach-b.u.m that most people took at face value; only if Huck"s back was put to the wall did the facade of affability drop away to reveal the granite foundation of amorality. The man was intent on sliding through life with as little effort as possible.
Handy had spotted him for what he was almost immediately upon meeting him, but for a few months Huck had been an amusing adjunct to Handy"s new life in the film colony. They had not been in touch for three years. Yet this morning the call had come from Barkin. Using Arthur Crewes"s name. He had asked Handy to come to see him, and given him an address in the Hollywood Hills.
Now, as he tooled the Impala around another snakeback curve, the top of the mountain came into view, and Handy saw the house. As it was the only house, dominating the flat, he a.s.sumed it was the address Barkin had given him, and he marveled. It was a gigantic circle of a structure, a flattened spool of sandblasted gray rock whose waist was composed entirely of curved panels of dark-smoked gla.s.s. Barkin could never have afforded an Orwellian feast of a home like this.
Handy drove up the flaring spiral driveway and parked beside the front door: an ebony slab with a rhodium-plated k.n.o.b as big as an Impala headlight.
The grounds were incredibly well-tailored, sloping down all sides of the mountain to vanish over the next flat. Bonsai trees pruned in their abstracted Zen artfulness, bougainvillea rampant across one entire outcropping, banks of flowers, dichondra everywhere, ivy.
Then Handy realized the house was turning. To catch the sun. Through a gla.s.s roof. The front door was edging past him toward the west. He walked up to it, and looked for a doorbell. There was none.