Читать книгу David's War - Herbert Kastle - Страница 6

Carrie smiled broadly when Mr Howars’ girlfriend, Vanessa Brooks, walked into the office.

Vanessa said, ‘Hey, howya doing?’ and complimented Carrie on her new nail polish and her bulky sweater. They talked cosmetics and clothes for a while, Vanessa rapping just like a schoolgirl with her ‘swell’ and ‘you’re putting me on!’, but Carrie knew how smooth she could talk when she wanted to, how well she did lines of all kinds in movies and TV shows.

Carrie really dug Vanessa, who was a knock-out for an older woman – over thirty – and wore the greatest clothes, like the pale brown, tweedy skirt-suit she was wearing now with pink-striped, man-style shirt and slouchy-brimmed, dark brown hat. Her shoes were always spikes (snakeskin today) and helped her look real tall, as did her long legs, though she was only five five, she’d confessed. She had reddish-brown hair, naturally curly, which Carrie admired. She had a wasp waist, which Carrie envied, and which made her breasts look even bigger than they were. She had great posture, a great walk, and Mr Howars’s black friend Teddy, bartender at Thomasine’s, said she could be elected the Girl Most Men Want To Walk Behind.

She was also a good actress with a hot career. Carrie would settle for where Vanessa was at, professionally, when she reached her thirties. And while Mr Howars was no John Travolta, Carrie might consider settling for where Vanessa was at romantically, too, because, if you could forget his age, Mr Howars wasn’t bad in the looks department. And he was loaded in the bread department. Most important of all was what he could do for an actress he dated.

He must have done plenty for Vanessa, at least before she got rolling. Now she was independent of any man’s help; she’d been in two TV shows this year that Carrie knew of. She was bound to land a continuing part, a lead part, in a new series sooner or later.

‘Where’s your Christmas tree?’ Vanessa asked, looking around the office. ‘It’s the eleventh. You should have one up and decorated by now. What will Mr Howars’s clients think?’

‘I asked him and he said he’d order one. That was a week ago. He must’ve forgotten.’

‘I’ll remind him. Tell him I’m here, will you?’

Carrie said, ‘Sure thing,’ and lifted the phone.

Vanessa always spent a few minutes with Dave’s secretary, a nice kid with ideas of getting into acting. But Carrie didn’t have a clue as to where it was at. Of course she could learn, just as Vanessa had. Learn to use the looks God had given her . . . or God and the plastic surgeon. Learn to act by going to a good school; Vanessa had suggested Estelle Harmon’s.

But first, Carrie had to learn to walk the tightrope between poverty and prostitution that most women serious about acting knew instinctively. Working as a secretary for two years here was death on an acting career. Eight hours a day, five days a week? How could she find the time necessary to hound the agents, the casting directors, the producers and directors and men who backed the films? How could she find time to go to the parties where these people gathered; to display herself and pitch and scramble and claw for whatever advantage might offer itself? How could she go on the time-consuming and nearly hopeless cattle calls where dozens of women gathered for one or two jobs; to whatever auditions the trade papers listed; to wherever the possibility of employment might be? How could she spend as much time with a man who had the power to employ her, or get her employed, as it took? To do whatever she thought necessary to reach the single most important goal of her life – the chance to use the skills she’d developed, the spark she just might have been born with?

Carrie put down the phone. ‘He’s on a long distance call. He’ll buzz when he’s off.’

Vanessa nodded, and Carrie looked at her as if something were wrong. Vanessa said, ‘What is it, hon?’

‘Uh . . . is Mr Howars okay? I mean, is he feeling all right?’

Vanessa played a little game with these secretaries. In all the offices she visited, and Dave’s was no exception, she cultivated friendships, invested a little time, and the pay-off was having a sympathetic – at least, not an antagonistic – contact and source of information.

Now she used her relationship with Carrie to draw her out. And with sinking heart heard the story of Dave manhandling Johan Jitzler because of a stupid joke. Jitzler was, as Dave himself had said, critical to the packaging of his latest film, Coast to Coast, and Vanessa had a stake in that film. Dave said she stood a good chance of landing the main supporting role of the worn-out go-go dancer. Vanessa thought the part had been written for her – maybe at Dave’s directions to the scriptwriter – though she hadn’t asked for favours for several years.

Not that she didn’t need favours. Kids like Carrie thought she had it made because they’d seen her on the tube doing the female lead in a ‘Quincy’ and a guest-star role in a ‘Mash’. But that was over a period of nine months and there’d been nothing but promises, promises otherwise. She’d never earned more than ten thousand at her acting in any one year, which was where walking that tightrope between poverty and prostitution came in; Dave’s picking up the big repair bill on her ageing Jaguar, for example.

She listened to Carrie express amazement that Dave could have become violent. She agreed it was ‘unbelievable’ . . . but it wasn’t. Dave had been having bad moments lately – bursts of temper, and more importantly to their relationship, a lack of desire. He’d been a bull for six years, and now he was fading fast.

She said, ‘He’s just a little overworked. Doctor Brooks will give him some of her special medication.’ They giggled together, and the phone buzzed.

Carrie said, ‘You can go in now.’

Vanessa opened the door. ‘Dave bunny! Three interminable days and nights apart!’ She came to the desk, smiling. The smile was natural, unplanned, sprang from the true affection she felt for this protective lover, this helpful friend, this good man whom she trusted beyond any man she had ever known. She glanced playfully at his black leather couch. ‘Is it illegal for the woman to use the casting couch?’

He smiled, but it wasn’t convincing. ‘I’m starving. Let’s not go home. Let’s go right across the street to Thomasine’s.’

She said, ‘Of course, I wouldn’t want you suffering from malnutrition,’ but now she was forcing the lines and the smile. Because home was where the bed was. ‘We can get together tonight, can’t we?’

When he hesitated, she turned away, waving an arm. ‘No importante, querida. Some other time.’ Force-feeding a man your love was disaster.

He cleared his throat in a nervous way. ‘Maybe we need a few weeks’ vacation from each other. Maybe until after New Year’s.’

She said, ‘We might as well be married,’ laughed heartily, and walked out the door. She felt like a fool for feeling like crying.

In David’s opinion, Thomasine’s was a mediocre restaurant with a great bar. What made the bar great was his old friend Teddy Bear, actually Teddy Brown. Teddy was in the tradition of the mythic film bartender who dispensed alcohol and wisdom at the same time. Teddy also dispensed charm to the ladies and landed a goodly percentage of them.

A black Adonis, he called himself, except that he was sixty-one and no Harry Belafonte. His upper front teeth, lost while protecting a dancer from a drunk when he’d tended bar in a nude club, came out for ‘cleaning, spare-rib gummin’, and cunnilingus.’ He seemed short at five eight because of a strong, stocky build, was just a shade off deep black in complexion, and had receding bushy hair and an evil-looking, drooping, Fu Manchu moustache.

He had told David that his father and brothers were ‘still in the pimping trade, back home.’ In his cups, he’d also said that his mother had been ‘the best little whore who ever rolled a redneck hot for black ass.’ She’d died in her late forties ‘in bed with a teenaged black dude. The doctor said heart attack. The black dude said too many orgasms.’

The restaurant named for her belonged to Teddy and a silent partner, who David guessed was Mafia. Teddy simply said the purchase price had been offered for favours owed him, which he’d finally called in after the beating in the nude club convinced him he was ‘too old to be independent’.

Teddy didn’t work his daily shift at the bar just for the money; his cut of the successful restaurant’s profits was considerable. His reasons were mainly social and psychological. ‘All those white chicks wanting to try what Momma and Poppa would die if they knew baby had tried. All those chicks itching for the most forbidden of all fruit. Which is why I score more with cracker chicks than with the Easterners and hip native locals. Gives hope for the world, don’t it?’ And there would sound a very evil cackle of laughter.

It sounded now as David helped Vanessa onto a bar stool and seated himself between her and a very heavy woman who had raised her enormous rump to lean over the bar and whisper in Teddy’s ear.

‘Well, maybe,’ Teddy said, rocking back on his alligator-boot heels, cackling again. His establishment may have been in the Valley, but it was among Studio City’s best, drew a large showbiz clientele, and matched anything in the Basin for style and decor . . . as did Teddy himself. Like David, he wore Beverly Hills’ finest, but from hipper shops like Dernier Cri and Le Fancy Pants. (The Lebanese woman who owned Le Fancy Pants was addicted to cocaine and Teddy Bear, and gave him whatever he wanted.) Even behind the bar, as befit a top-grade restaurateur, Teddy wore the best: an exquisitely tailored double-breasted black jacket, pleated grey trousers, pale grey silk shirt and matching handkerchief, and those five-hundred-dollar Gucci boots. The only concession he made to his job was going tieless. ‘Maybe, maybe,’ he repeated, still cackling, ‘if you promise not to hurt me.’

The heavy woman smiled uncertainly. She was in her late thirties and had silver-blonde hair fluffed about a round, pretty face. She kept her eyes glued to Teddy, and he said, ‘Let me work now, lady, and I’ll get back to you.’ His voice had changed, thickened subtly in a way that David recognized. The fat woman had kindled a flame.

David became aware that Vanessa had moved her stool closer to his and was climbing back on again. He glanced past her. A large, florid man in expensive cowboy attire, including feathered J.R. hat, jerked his eyes away from her and began examining his glass. Teddy then stepped over and murmured to the man. Vanessa was looking in the opposite direction, down the crowded bar past David and the other bartender, smiling brightly, waving to a woman at the far end. Which, David knew, was her way of detaching herself from an unpleasant situation. Happened all the time to her.

The florid man said to Teddy, voice rising, ‘See here, fellow, I don’t have to take that kind of . . .’

Teddy interrupted, voice steely thin. ‘We all appreciate a knock-out chick. No one blames you for looking, even trying for a phone number when her escort’s in the john. But you’re a grabber and I want you out of here.’

‘Do you know who you’re talking to?’ The man’s ruddy face was turning pale, his hands were clenching into big fists.

Vanessa began to say something placating to Teddy. Teddy reached under the bar. The man got off his stool and hurried out the street door.

Teddy grinned and came up with a stuffed animal – one of the teddy bears that were his trade mark; that he gave to women who caught his fancy. He said, ‘You want the usual brandy, Duvid’l? Or would you like to try Teddy Bear’s Holiday Spirits? Would you believe hot mulled wine? Electric Egg Nog – no, not acid but a blend of rum, brandy and vodka for a real kick in the head. And my own St Louis Special – a Christmas Zombie with lots of red liqueurs and a small wreath.’

Vanessa said, ‘You always make such a fuss about Christmas, Teddy! I’ll try the mulled wine.’

David said, ‘Martell.’ And with more passion than he’d planned, ‘How the hell do you stay so cheerful?’

Teddy replied blandly, ‘Try killing someone you hate.’

Vanessa laughed, accepting it as a joke.

But David was chilled as if his friend had looked directly into his soul.

Teddy went away. Vanessa said, ‘You forgot to get a Christmas tree for the office.’

David nodded, wanting to talk to Teddy, to question him about that last remark. His dream . . . the woman on the train . . . throwing her to death . . .

Teddy was back with their order. David said, ‘Let’s get together for dinner.’

Teddy was looking at him, appraising him. They had often served each other as listeners and advisers during the ten years of their friendship. They had served each other in more practical ways as well, David as banker during Teddy’s lean and occasionally dangerous times before the opening of Thomasine’s four years ago; Teddy as contact to the demi-mondes of the Sunset Strip who had filled David’s needs during his own lean (emotionally) and dangerous times.

Teddy said, ‘You got it.’ He began to turn away, then stopped. ‘Vanessa, you taking care of my main man here?’

She flushed and looked into her pewter mug. ‘When he lets me.’

The fat woman said, ‘Excuse me for interrupting, but could I have another Rob Roy?’

Teddy said, ‘You can have anything you want, lady.’

She’d obviously been drinking for a while. ‘I want a Teddy Bear to cuddle. A live one.’

Teddy leaned close. ‘Be nice. Write your name, your phone number, on the napkin.’ He drew a ballpoint pen from his breast pocket. ‘Then either go into the restaurant or leave.’

‘Don’t be angry . . .’

He leaned closer. ‘I’m not angry, big momma. I’m sizzling for you.’ He gave her the teddy bear.

She was smiling, biting her lip, flushed with pleasure when she finished writing on the napkin and handed it to him. ‘Forget the fresh drink,’ she said, opening her purse.

Teddy said, ‘Forget the tab,’ and watched as she clutched the bear and walked to the door, her huge rump rolling. ‘Must be jelly,’ he sang softly, and went to serve his customers.

‘He can do better than that,’ Vanessa said, ‘even if she is white.’

David didn’t bother explaining. It should have been obvious that Teddy sipped from many cups. He said, ‘Let’s take our drinks to the dining room.’

She touched his arm. ‘Hon, you didn’t mean that about not seeing each other until after New Year’s? What about our plans? The parties?’

He got off the stool. He remembered Teddy quoting an African writer: To be happy, one must live easy inside his own skin. His skin felt tight as a drum’s. He didn’t think he had ever lived easy inside it.

‘We’ll see,’ he said. ‘Maybe New Year’s Eve. Colleen does expect us.’

She got off her stool and walked with him. ‘What about Christmas? We have the studio party on the twenty-second. And Christmas Eve, Dave!’

His head hurt. He had to get home early tonight; had to sleep a peaceful eight hours.

‘We’ve never been apart on Christmas . . .’

‘Fuck Christmas!’ he exploded. ‘I’m a Jew, dammit!’

The maître de at the dining room archway turned to stare. A couple waiting for a table also turned. David didn’t know whether they’d heard his words or simply his raging tone, but he decided this lunch was over.

He walked to the street door, pausing at the bar to drain his glass. Vanessa followed him outside, face pale. ‘I know you’re a Jew. What I didn’t know was that it meant anything to you. You never spoke about going to temple or, you know, about feeling Jewish.’

‘You’re right,’ he said, and took her hand. It was icy cold despite the warm afternoon sun. ‘Forgive me.’ They had always treated each other with kindness, with consideration and affection. Six years of such civility and physical closeness counted for something. ‘Come to the house tonight.’

She nodded. Tears trickled from her eyes, and he felt terrible.

He also felt worried about tonight.

Teddy phoned Roberta Alden, the big momma, at three thirty. Her voice shook as she gave him directions. Twenty minutes later, at her North Hollywood home, everything else she had shook as he plunged wildly between her thick white thighs.

Afterwards, he put his head on her bulging belly and closed his eyes. And thought of Montecassino. Not that he’d had a fat woman there and not that anything here reminded him of that place of explosions, shrieks, cordite stench, human cowardice and inhuman courage. It was just that he’d been thinking of it for years now, more and more often lately. Thinking not only of the corpse-covered slopes leading to the German stronghold, but of Lieutenant Borden, ex-highschool athlete, freshman enlistee from Texas A & M, who had come to the portable kitchen where li’l black Teddy was working and said he was empowered to ‘raise a few fightin’ men from this miserable mongrel ratpack’; said it grinning as if in jest, and said it with contempt and hatred. Later, he had humiliated Teddy in a brief weapons refresher course behind the field kitchen, using some of the Southern racist shit of the day: ‘C’mon boy, let a little light into that African bone head of yourn,’ and on and on. And at last Teddy had answered back, saying that if Borden hadn’t been wearing bars he’d have been chewing on a ‘boy’s African fist.’ So Borden took off the bars and beat the hell out of l’il black Teddy.

Teddy had planned to kill him with a hand grenade on the slopes before the ancient Italian monastery . . . though it was more fantasy than hard plan. Whether he could actually have done the job became academic when the Germans did it for him, in the first few moments of the reserve company’s assault.

But instead of gratification he had felt anguish on learning his enemy had escaped him. As he felt anguish now, lying on the warm pillow of flesh, a fine mist of sweat between his cheek and Roberta’s stomach, mouth twisting in self-contempt. Because anguish or not, he suspected he would never have fragged his man.

Driving back to Thomasine’s, he wondered at his pain. All right, so he hadn’t killed his enemy. So he could never kill his enemy.

But Montecassino and Borden were thirty-seven years ago. No one suffers over something that far back. And he hadn’t begun tormenting himself until four, maybe five years ago, about the time he’d opened Thomasine’s.

Had anything happened then; anything that had torn open that old wound?

His mind closed down on the subject, causing him to concentrate on the traffic and on a cute chicana waiting at a bus stop. Because there was something very ugly waiting to wound Teddy Bear; wound him more deeply than he could tolerate.

Vincent said he’d brought her to his apartment because he was a gourmet cook. ‘Wait, Rita, you’ll see.’

She knew what she would see, but last night had been so long, so empty, and there were four more such nights to fill before she met David and could revive her hope, that she hadn’t insisted they go to a restaurant as he had promised. Besides, his voice was good; almost as soft and strong as David Howars’ and Daddy’s.

His meal was basic: broiled steak, baked potatoes, and California burgundy, but she was hungry and ate well. And he sat close beside her and touched her hand as often as he could and she liked hand touching and holding.

They moved to the living-room couch for coffee. He smoked, which she didn’t like.

Still, she had decided before coming here she would spend the night with him. This was their third date and he was nice enough looking, vigorous enough for a man of sixty, she estimated, perhaps a year or two older. What he wasn’t, she now discovered, was very clever about seducing her.

She tried several times to stop his talk. His talk disturbed her, it was so blatantly a device to get her into bed. She was always amazed at how men of mature years, who should have learned better, continued to say the same stupid things, the same obvious lies, as the men of her youth.

‘I’ve been looking for a serious romance,’ he said, leaning forward to stub out his cigarette in an ashtray on the coffee table. He straightened, turning so as to come around facing her, and took her in his arms. When he kissed her, she was repelled by the taste and smell of tobacco. Then he squeezed her breast and pushed his tongue into her mouth.

She began to feel a little heat. His hand went to her knee, then under her skirt. Good, good, because he had stopped talking.

He reached her crotch and she wanted to place her hand on the bulge in his trousers. But she had never been able to do that without the man moving her hand for her.

He began talking again. ‘When a man and a woman feel for each other, sweetheart, they don’t have to wait a long time to . . . consummate, you understand?’

What sort of an idiot did he think she was? What sort of idiot species did he think women were?

‘Your intelligence, your beauty . . .’ He was rising, drawing her up with him, babbling on. ‘. . . will turn my bedroom into a flowery bridal chamber . . .’

They were in a short hallway when she pulled free and turned back. ‘Would you drive me home?’

He stood there, staring, as she opened the front closet and got into her lightweight-wool short coat. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked.

‘I have to get up very early for a pre-class tennis game.’

‘The hell you do!’ It was a shout, and she shrank within herself.

‘Rita . . .’ He waved his hands. ‘I’m sorry. Don’t just rush away.’

His voice was calmer, and he had waved hands, not fists. She said, carefully, ‘I wasn’t rushing away, Vincent. I was asking you to drive me home. Though it’s close enough to walk . . .’

‘Nonsense.’ He had her arm and was drawing her to the kitchen. ‘We’ll have a liqueur. Or a cream sherry. Then I’ll drive you.’

‘Well, perhaps a sherry.’

But in the kitchen he suddenly grabbed her, one hand clutching her bottom, and panted in her ear, ‘It could be love . . . a lifetime . . . we’re both so alone . . .’

She shoved him hard and sent him stumbling backward. ‘Act your age,’ she said and turned to leave. She would walk or take a cab.

He was grabbing her again, from the back this time, fumbling for her breasts, saying things, ugly things about her being a ‘cock-teasing bitch’ and he would act his age, all right, ‘and so will you!’ His voice raged and she tried to conquer fear by telling herself that if she simply persisted in going toward the door, this small stout man with almost no hair would give up. After all, how many sixty-year-old rapists were there?

The thought and her extreme nervousness made her laugh shrilly, even as she fought to free herself from the arms encircling her body.

The laugh was a mistake. ‘Cunt!’ he shouted, and spun her around and flung her back toward the sink.

And now his hands were fists and he was raging and advancing on her, and she choked on her terror and was unable to say she would stay the night if only he wouldn’t rage at her, wouldn’t hit her. And why did men act this way with her anyway? Why did these things happen to her, she who had loved Daddy and Will?

She turned her back on him and bent over the sink, unable to face the fearsome sight. And saw the dishes where he had hurriedly placed them, the scraps of meat still there and the forks and the steak knives . . .

The terror was too much. He would begin hitting her soon.

She turned, raising the knife, and hacked down at his chest. She felt the blade scrape bone before sliding in up to the haft. She also felt hot liquid spray her knuckles.

She cried out.

He also cried out, a strangling, choking sound.

He was staring down at the knife sticking into the lower centre of his chest and at the brilliant red stain spreading rapidly over his white shirt. He shook his head and stumbled backward. She jerked the knife out and followed, stabbing and sobbing, feeling the hot liquid spray her face. She slashed too high once and sliced open his cheek and said, ‘No, no!’

But it was always that way with knives and, while she was sickened, she wasn’t surprised as she had been the first time. It was a butcher’s shop with knives and if she’d had a choice, if it didn’t always happen so fast, if she had been able to plan it, she would have used something else, anything else. How the TV shows irritated her with their bloodless stabbings, shootings, beatings! Bad for the children to think it was so neat, so easy . . .

She almost tripped over him when he collapsed, first into a sitting position, then onto his left side. His arms and legs moved convulsively, briefly, and were still.

There was a puddle of blood on the floor, growing larger by the second. She turned to the sink and ran the water until it was hot. She washed her hands and face; washed the knife thoroughly; washed the other dishes and utensils.

She dried everything, found where they belonged and put them away, holding them with the towel. She remembered the coffee cups in the living room, and soon they too were washed and put away.

She stepped carefully up to Vincent, avoiding the puddle of blood, and bent and fingered his neck, trying to find a pulse in the carotid artery as she taught her first-aid class; then tried the right wrist. Nothing.

She went to the little toilet off the entry hall and checked herself in the mirror. Her cheek was faintly stained, as if with rouge. She washed thoroughly and returned to the kitchen and dried herself with the dish towel, which she planned to take with her.

She thought about what she might have touched. She wiped everything she could think of with the dish towel, including doorknobs. She tried to remember what else she should worry about, from the Agatha Christie mysteries she had once been addicted to. But that was when she’d been married. Since then she had not enjoyed murder mysteries. On the other hand, since then she had become far more experienced in murder than Miss Marple . . . which brought a wan smile to her lips.

She went to the living room and fluffed up the couch cushions and wiped the coffee table with the dish towel. Still holding the towel, she went to the front door, opened it a crack and looked out. She stepped into the hall, closed the door, wiped the knob and put the towel in her coat pocket.

Later, at home, she felt that the long walk had done her good, had relaxed her. She piled her clothes, including pantyhose and shoes, in the centre of the kitchen so as not to forget to take them to a trash bin behind a shopping centre far from the one she used. She hated to lose the coat, and the shoes were almost new, but traces of blood could have splattered onto them. For that same reason she showered, scrubbing herself, soaping her hair three times.

In bed at last, she was amazed that she was so calm, so free of guilt or fear. It was increasingly this way, each time it happened.

Vanessa felt his penis going soft in her mouth, and told herself it didn’t mean that he felt less for her. Personal problems. Business problems. Perhaps health problems. He’d lashed out at Jitzler, hadn’t he? He’d even lashed out at Christmas! So this was just another symptom of a general problem.

He said, ‘I’m sorry.’

She began to lie down beside him, but he got up and went to the chair for his robe.

‘Can’t we talk about it?’ she asked.

He walked to the bathroom. ‘What’s there to say?’

He didn’t even sound upset, as he had when it happened the first time, four or five months ago.

She put on her shoes and followed him. He enjoyed seeing her naked in high heels; used to make her walk and dance round the house that way.

He was urinating and said, ‘A little privacy, please.’ He had never been shy with her before, nor she with him.

But now she reddened as if she had walked in on a stranger, and went to the bathroom off the study. When she returned to the master bedroom, he was almost dressed.

She couldn’t believe he had turned off so completely! She walked toward him, seeing herself in the mirrored closet doors, big breasts bouncing, rear end rolling, pubic hair trimmed close in a neat dark triangle . . . and knowing how men reacted and how he had reacted, she was excited by her own image.

His voice weary, he said, ‘What is this? Show time?’

She began dressing quickly, not looking at herself, feeling nothing for herself because the man in the room felt nothing for her. And the man in the room had been the man in her life.

He left the room.

She fought back the tears. She checked the digital clock on the nightstand. Not quite eight. Still time to call Rob Cerjak and ask if his invitation was open. He was going into production with a mystery pilot for NBC and had offered to let her read for a ‘strong supporting role that could develop into a continuing part’. But there was a definite string attached.

She used the phone on the nightstand, spoke to him, and they were on for nine. She went down the hallway to the front door, and saw that the kitchen light was on. She hesitated, then walked in. Dave was sitting at the table in his suit, shirt and tie, as if waiting for the party to begin. Just sitting there, hands folded in his lap.

She was suddenly filled with pity. Why, she didn’t know. He had everything this town could give, including his pick of women. He had simply tired of her.

But looking at him, she felt it went much deeper than that and was afraid for him.

‘Dave, I’m going now.’

‘Drive carefully,’ he said, as always.

‘Why don’t you relax? Have a few drinks? Get out of that suit?’

He was looking down at himself. ‘I didn’t realize I’d put it on again.’ He leaned back, unfolding his hands, crossing his legs. He was wearing highly shined black dress shoes. ‘I believe it’s a classic childhood tie-in. When I was a kid in Brooklyn, my clothes were worn hand-me-downs. I did have a dress suit, blue serge, stiff and heavy, for funerals, weddings, bar mitzvahs. I’d gotten it for my own bar mitzvah, and then was forced to wear it for years, altered, growing as I grew. I hated it. So now I wear suits, good ones, whenever . . .’

He stopped and she realized she’d glanced at her watch. ‘I have an appointment,’ she muttered guiltily.

‘Yes. Don’t keep Rob waiting.’

She said, ‘Oh Dave, bunny,’ voice breaking.

He again folded his hands in his lap. ‘Let’s not be dramatic. I can’t get it up for you. The end.’

She turned and walked out of the house. The end.

She got in her car and drove down the winding canyon road towards the city. She was crying. She wanted to turn around and go back to him and say, ‘Forget the sex’ and ‘I’ll stay with you forever.’

She reached Sunset Boulevard and turned west. Rob was waiting. A good guy, ethical in his way. He would help her forget her hurt.

She came into the quiet, the order, the lushness and richness of Beverly Hills. She came into the town that epitomized showbiz success. She turned onto Elevado and pulled up before Rob Cerjak’s home and told herself that he had more projects, more money, was more important in the industry than Dave.

But her career didn’t help her this time.

The first thing she did when Rob let her in was to ask if she could use a phone. ‘A private phone, please.’

He showed her to a little powder room. She shut the door and dialled Dave’s number. It rang and rang, but he didn’t answer.

So he’d gone out. So she was worrying about nothing.

She and Rob had a drink, then went to bed. He was a powerfully built man, a good ten years younger than Dave, and he made up for all the action she’d missed in the past months. Not that it worked for her, but it almost did, and she knew it eventually would.

He didn’t feed her any bullshit, but he did hold her afterwards, did say, ‘I enjoyed the hell out of you,’ did want her to spend the night. ‘Just to sleep together, babe.’ She felt his liking for her and was comforted by it. But it wasn’t time for that yet.

She dressed and went downstairs, leaving him dozing in bed. She used the phone in the powder room to call Dave.

Still no answer and she wondered if he was out with a new woman, one for whom he could ‘get it up’.

She asked herself what difference it could possibly make. The end.

It did make a difference. It hurt like hell. She wanted to find him, scream at him, threaten him, beg him on her knees. She wanted to tell him what she called ‘the Impossible Secret’ and make him pity her (though she didn’t pity herself, didn’t accept the doctors’ diagnosis), and make him love her again. ‘Please, please . . .’

She heard her voice wailing in the car and couldn’t believe it.

She raged at his giving her that bullshit about childhood hardship to explain why he was wearing his suit and sitting there as if waiting for the party to begin.

Because he was waiting for the party to begin, the bastard! Waiting for her to leave so he could go to one of the young whores who called themselves starlets and would do anything to get next to a producer.

As she had done.

But logic and fairness couldn’t help her now. She was raging and hurting in a way she had thought never to experience again. Like Billy had raged and hurt when she’d said she was going to divorce him and work full time at an acting career. Like Drew had wept and threatened when she’d dumped him and his coke-snorting and vodka-belting and fast slide from reasonably good TV director to simply awful derelict. As other men would have suffered over her had she allowed it to go that far.

Six years with Dave had allowed it to go that far . . . for her.

And Vanessa Brooks was Mary Bjorn again, back in San Diego and fifteen, and madly in love with Steve Franklin, who read so much and knew so much and looked so fantastic on the basketball court even though he was only second string. Mary Bjorn, who had been so hurt at sixteen when he stopped seeing her that by seventeen she was married to Bill Dinunzio, the mechanic who worked on her father’s car – and divorced at not quite nineteen. And in Hollywood to become Vanessa Brooks and never allow herself the folly of romantic hurt again, telling herself it was stardom and money and fame that counted, nothing else . . . including ‘the Impossible Secret’, which she kept secret even from her own mind and which couldn’t be true because it was a full year now and she was still fine, wasn’t she?

She drove over Laurel Canyon to Studio City and her apartment in the complex near the Hollywood Freeway. She showered and brushed her teeth and opened the convertible couch and lay down. But she was still thinking of Dave, raging at Dave.

He couldn’t get away with it!

David sat at the kitchen table. It was late and the phone had rung four times in the past few hours. He hadn’t bothered answering. He was reading yesterday’s Times, the story about the California Nazi groups. He had kept the paper in his case and read it twice tonight. He wished there had been more information about the group so near, in the San Joaquin town of Bethills, a father and two sons, ‘the nucleus,’ they claimed, ‘of a state-wide organization.’ But the reporter said he hadn’t seen more than a few neighbours at the meeting.

No pictures, no descriptions, just a sparse paragraph about what the reporter obviously considered a curiosity, a near-joke. And David wanted to know everything about them, felt it was vital he know everything about these people who were only five or six hours away and who admitted – no, proclaimed – that they wanted to destroy him.

He had called Teddy at Thomasine’s and asked him what he knew about American Nazi publications. Teddy had said, ‘I have a friend who collects such shit, just to know who’s out to get him.’ David had wanted to say, ‘Exactly,’ but Teddy had sounded sarcastic and amused, so instead David asked him to bring along whatever he could borrow from his friend ‘to dinner tomorrow, Canter’s, for kosher deli, all you can eat’. Teddy had said, ‘Oy vay, baby,’ and it was set for seven.