Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

  "Why don't you step out where I can see you?" he suggested.

  This time he got an answer.

  "I will . . ." she told him. "In a minute."

  "Who are you?"

  "My name's Katya."

  "How did you get in here?"

  "Through the door, like everybody else," she said. Her tone was one of gentle amusement. It would have annoyed Todd if there hadn't also been a certain sweetness there. He was curious to see what she looked like. But the more he pressed her, he thought, the more she'd resist. So he kept the conversation off the subject, and casually wandered across the immaculately laid and polished floor as he talked.

  "It must have been hard to find me," he said.

  "Not at all," she said. "I heard you were coming from Jerry."

  "You know Jerry?"

  "Oh, yes. We go way back. He used to come up here when he was a child. You made a good choice with him, Todd. He keeps secrets."

  "Really? I always thought he was a bit of a gossip."

  "It depends if it's important or not. He never mentioned me to you, did he?"

  "No."

  "You see? Oh yes, and he's dying. I suppose he didn't mention that either."

  "No he didn't."

  "Well he is. He has cancer. Inoperable."

  "He never said a thing," Todd said, thinking not only of Jerry but of sick, silent Dempsey.

  "Well why would he? To you of all people. He idolizes you."

  Her familiarity with Jerry, and her knowledge of his sickness, only added to the puzzle of her presence.

  "Did he send you up here?" Todd said.

  "No, silly," the woman replied. "He sent you. I've been here all the time."

  "You have? Where?"

  "Oh, I mostly stay in the guest-house."

  She spoke so confidently, he almost believed her. But then surely if she were occupying the guest-house, Brahms would have warned Maxine? He knew how important Todd's security was. Why would he let Maxine see the property, and not mention the fact that there was somebody else living in the Canyon?

  He was about halfway across the room now, and he could see his visitor's outline in the darkness. Her voice had not misled him. She was a young woman; elegantly dressed in a long, silver gown, highlighted with sinuous designs in gold thread. It shimmered, as though it possessed a subtle life of its own.

  "How long have you been staying here?" he said to her.

  "A lot longer than you," she replied.

  "Really?"

  "Well, of course. When I first met Jerry, I'd been here . . . twenty, twenty-five years."

  This was an absurd invention, of course. Even without seeing her clearly, it was obvious to him that she was less than thirty; probably considerably less.

  "But you said Jerry was a boy when you met him?" Todd said, thinking he'd quickly catch the woman in her lie.

  "He was."

  "So you can't have known him . . ."

  "I know it doesn't seem very likely. But things are different here in the Canyon. You'll see. If you stay, that is. And I hope you will."

  "You mean buy the house?"

  "No. I mean stay."

  "Why would I do that?" he said.

  There was a moment's pause; then, finally, she stepped into the light. "Because I want you to," she replied.

  It was a moment from a movie; timed to perfection. The pause, the move, the line.

  And the face, that was from a movie too, in its luxury, in its perfection. Her eyes were large and luminous, green flecked with lilac. Their brightness was enhanced by the darkness of her eyeshadow, and the thickness of her lashes. Neither her nose nor her mouth was delicate; her lips were full, her chin robust, her cheekbones high; almost Slavic. Her hair was black, and fell straight down, framing her face. She wore plenty of jewelry, and it was all exquisite. One necklace lay tightly in the valley of her throat, another—much, much looser—fell between her breasts. Her earrings were gold; her bracelets—several on each wrist—all elaborately wrought. Yet she carried all this effortlessly, as though she'd been wearing a queen's ransom in jewelry all her life.

  "I'm sure you could find plenty of company besides me," Todd said.

  "I'm sure I could," she replied. "But I don't want plenty of company. I want you."

  Todd was totally bewildered now. No part of this puzzle fitted with any other. The woman looked so poised, so exquisite, but she spoke nonsense. She didn't know him. She hadn't chosen him. He'd come up here of his own free will, to hide himself away. Yet she seemed to insinuate that he was here at her behest, and that somehow she intended to make him stay. It was all pure invention.

  Still she didn't look crazy; anything but. She looked, in fact, as though she'd just stepped out of her limo at the Pavilion and was about to walk down the red carpet to a roar of adulation from the crowd. He wouldn't have minded being beside her, either, if she had been taking that walk. They would have made quite a couple.

  "You haven't looked around the house very much," she said.

  "How do you know?"

  "Oh ... I have eyes everywhere," she teased. "If you'd been in some of the rooms in this house, I'd know about it, believe me."

  "I don't find any of this very comforting," he said. "I don't like people spying on me."

  "I wasn't spying," she said, her tone going from pleasing to fierce in a heartbeat.

  "Well what would you call it?"

  "I'd call it being a good hostess. Making sure your guest is comfortable."

  "I don't understand."

  "No," she said, more softly now, "you don't. But you will. When we've had a chance to spend some time with one another you'll see what's really going on here."

  "And what's that?"

  She half-turned from him, as though she might leave, which was the last thing he wanted her to do. "You know, maybe we'd be better leaving this for another night," she said.

  "No," he said hurriedly.

  She halted, but didn't turn back.

  "I'm sorry," he said. They were rare words from his mouth.

  "Truly?" she said. Still she didn't turn. He found himself longing to feel her gaze on him, as though—absurd as this was—she might go some way to filling the void in him.

  "Please," he said. "I'm truly sorry."

  "All right," she said, apparently placated. She looked back at him. "You're forgiven. For now."

  "So tell me what I've missed. In the house."

  "Oh, all that can wait."

  "At least give me a clue."

  "Have you been downstairs? I mean all the way down to the bottom?"

  "No."

  "Then don't," she said, lowering her head and looking up at him with a veiled gaze. "I'll take you there myself."

  "Take me now," he said, thinking it would be a good opportunity to find out how real all her claims were.

  "No, not tonight."

  "Why not?"

  "It's Oscar Night."

  "So?"

  "So it's got you all stirred up. Look at you. You think you can drink the pain away? It doesn't work. Everyone here's tried that at some point or other—"

  "Everyone?"

  "In the Canyon. There are a lot of people here who are feeling exactly like you tonight."

  "And how's that?"

  "Oh, just wishing they'd had a few prizes for their efforts."

  "Well they don't give Oscars to actors like me."

  "Why not?"

  "I guess they don't think I'm very good."

  "And what do you think?"

  He mused on this for a moment. Then he said: "Most of the time I'm just being me, I guess."

  "That's a performance," Katya said. "People think it's easy. But it's not. Being yourself . . . that's hard."

  It was strange to hear it put that way, but she was right. It wasn't easy, playing yourself. If you let your attention drop for a moment, there was nothing there for the camera to look at. Nothing behind the eyes. He'd seen it, in his own performances and in those of others: mom
ents when the concentration lapsed for a few seconds and the unforgiving lens revealed a vast vapidity.

  "I know how it hurts," she said, "not to be appreciated."

  "I get a lot of other stuff, you know."

  "The other stuff being money."

  "Yes. And celebrity."

  "And half the time you think: it doesn't matter, anyway. They're all ignoramuses at the Academy, voting for their friends. What do you want from them? But you're not really convinced. In your heart you want their worthless little statues. You want them to tell you they know how much you work to be perfect."

  He was astonished at this. She had articulated what he'd felt on a decade of Oscar Nights; an absurd mixture of contempt and envy. It was as though she were reading his mind.

  "How did you figure all that out?"

  "Because I've felt the same things. You want them to love you, but you hate yourself for wanting it. Their love isn't worth anything, and you know it."

  "But you still want it."

  "You still want it."

  "Damn."

  "Meaning yes?"

  "Yes. That's it. You got me."

  It felt good, for once, to be understood. Not the usual nodding, what-ever-you-say-Mister-Pickett bullshit, but some genuine comprehension of the mess inside him. Which made the mystery of its source all the stranger. One minute she was telling him lies (how could she possibly have known Brahms as a child?), the next she was seeing into his soul.

  "If you really do own this house," he said, "why don't you live in it?"

  "Because there are too many memories here," she said simply. "Good and bad. I walk in here and"—she smiled, though the smile was thin—"it's filled with ghosts."

  "So why not move away?"

  "Out of Coldheart Canyon? I can't."

  "Are you going to tell me why?"

  "Another time. This is a bad time to tell that story." She passed her delicate hand over her face, and for a moment, as the veil of her fingers covered her features, he saw her retreat from her beauty, as though for a moment the performance of selfhood was too much for her.

  "You ask me a question," he suggested.

  Her hand dropped away. The light shone out of her face again.

  "You swear you'll answer me truthfully if I do?"

  "Sure."

  "Swear."

  "I said so."

  "Does it hurt behind the bandages?"

  "Oh."

  "You said you'd answer me."

  "I know. And I will. It's uncomfortable, I'll tell you that. But it doesn't really hurt anymore. Not like it used to. I just wish I'd never messed with this. I mean, why couldn't I be happy the way I was?"

  "Because nobody is. We're always looking for something we haven't got. If we weren't, we wouldn't be human."

  "Is that why you came spying on me?" he said, matching her mischief with some of his own. "Looking for something you haven't got?"

  "I'm sorry. It was rude of me: watching you, I mean. Spying. You've as much right to your privacy as I have to mine. And it's hard to protect yourself sometimes. You don't know who's a friend and who's not. That can make you crazy." Her eyes flashed, and the playfulness was back. "Then again, sometimes it's good to be crazy."

  "Yes?"

  "Oh sure. Sometimes it's the only thing keeps you sane."

  "You're obviously talking from experience."

  "Of getting crazy once in a while? Sure. I'm talking from intimate experience."

  "Care to give me an example?"

  "You don't want to know. Really you don't. Some of the things I've done in this very room . . ."

  "Tell me."

  "I wouldn't know where to begin."

  Her gaze flitted off around the room, as though she were looking for some cue for her memories. If it was an act, it was a very good one. In fact this whole performance was looking better and better.

  Finally, she said: "We used to play poker here. Sometimes roulette."

  "Marco and I figured that out."

  "Sometimes," she said, her gaze returning to him, "I was the prize."

  "You?"

  "Me."

  "I don't think I understand."

  "You understand perfectly well."

  "You'd give yourself to the winner?"

  "See? You understood. I didn't do it every night. I'm not that much of a slut." She was smiling as she spoke, lapping up his disbelief. She began to walk toward him, slowly, matching her approach to the rhythm of her words. "But on the nights when you need to be crazy—"

  "What did you give them? A kiss!"

  "Pah! A kiss! As if I'd be satisfied with so little. No! Down on the floor in front of the losers, that's what I'd give them. Like dogs, if we felt like it."

  The way she stared at the ground as she spoke, it was clear she was remembering something very specific. The subtlest of motions went through her, as though her body were recalling the sensation of pressing back against a man; to take him, all of him, inside her.

  "Supposing somebody won that you didn't like?"

  "There was no such man. Not here, in my house. They were all gods. Beautiful men, every single one. Some of them were crude at first. But I taught them." She was watching Todd closely as she spoke, measuring his response. "You like hearing this?"

  He nodded. It wasn't quite the way he'd expected this conversation to go, but yes, he liked her confessions. He was glad his pants were baggy, now that she was so close to him, or she'd have seen for herself how much he liked them.

  "So let me be sure I got this right. The winner would fuck you, right here on the ground—"

  "Not on the bare boards. There used to be carpets. Beautiful Persian carpets. And there were silk cushions, red ones, which I kept in a heap over there. I like to make love among cushions. It's like being held in somebody's hand, isn't it?" She opened her cupped hand in front to demonstrate the comfort of it. "In God's hand."

  She lifted the bed of her palm in front of his eyes, and then, without warning, she reached out and touched his face. He felt nothing through the bandages, but he had the illusion that her hand was like a balm upon his cheek, cooling his raw flesh.

  "Does that hurt?"

  "No."

  "Do you want me to go on telling you?"

  "Yes, please."

  "You want to hear what I did . . ."

  ". . . on the cushions. Yes. But first, I want to know—"

  "Who?"

  "No, not who. Why?"

  "Why? Lord in Heaven, why would I fuck? Because I loved it! It gave me pleasure." She leaned closer to him, still stroking his cheek. He could smell her throat on the breath she exhaled. The air, for all its invisibility, was somehow enriched by its transport into her and out again. He envied the men who'd taken similar liberties. In and out; in and out. Wonderful.

  "I love to have a man's weight bearing down on me," she went on. "To be pinned, like a butterfly. Open. And then, when he thinks he's got you completely under his thumb, roll him over and ride him." She laughed. "I wish I could see the expression on your face."

  "It's not pretty under there." He paused, a chilling thought on his lips.

  "The answer's no," she said.

  "The answer to what?"

  "Have I spied on you while your bandages were being changed? No I haven't."

  "Good." He took a deep breath, wanting to direct the conversation away from talk of what was behind his mask. "Go back to the game," he said.

  "Where was I?"

  "Riding the lucky sonofabitch."

  "Horses. Dogs. Monkeys. Men make good animals. Women too sometimes."

  "Women got to play?"

  "Not in here. I'm very old-fashioned about things like that. In Romania a woman never played cards."

  "Romania. That's where you're from?"

  "Yes. A little village called Ravbac, where I don't think any woman had ever had pleasure with a man."

  "Is that why you left?"

  "One of many reasons. I ran away when I was barely twelve.
Came to this country when I was fifteen. Made my first picture a year later."

  "What was it called?"

  "I don't want to talk about it. It's forgotten."

  "So finish telling me—"

  "—about riding the men. What else is there to say? It was the best game in the world. Especially for an exhibitionist, like myself. You too."

  "What about me?"

  "You've done it in front of people. Surely. Don't tell me you haven't. I won't believe you."

  What the hell? This woman had him all figured out. Pinned. Like a butterfly. There didn't seem to be much purpose in denying it.

  "Yes, I've had a few public moments at private parties."

  "Are you good?"

  "It depends on the girl."

  She smiled. "I think you'd be wonderful, with the right audience," she said.

  Her hand dropped from his cheek, and she started to walk back across the room, weaving between imaginary obstacles as she picked up her erotic tale.

  "Some nights, I would simply walk naked among the tables while the men played. They weren't allowed to look at me. If they looked, I would thrash them. And I mean thrash. I had a whip for that. I still have it. The Teroarea. The Terror. So . . . that was one of the rules. No looking at the prize, no matter what it did to tempt them." She laughed. "You can imagine, I had a hundred ways. Once I had a little bell, hooked through the hood of my clitoris. Tinkling as I walked. Somebody looked, I remember. And oh they suffered."

  She was at the mantelpiece now, reaching up and under the fireplace, and took a long, silver-handled switch from its hiding place. She tested it on the air, and it whined like a vengeful mosquito. "This is the Teroarea. I had it made by a man in Paris, who specialized in such things. My name is chased into the handle." She passed her thumb over the letters: "Katya Lupescu, it says. Actually it says more. It says: 'This is her instrument, to make fools suffer.' I regret having that written there, really."

  "Why?"

  "Because a man who takes pleasure in being given pain is not a fool. He's simply following his instincts. Where's the foolishness in that?"

  "You're big on pleasure," Todd said.

  She didn't seem to understand what he meant; she cocked her head, puzzled.

  "You talk about it a lot."

  "Twice I've mentioned it," she said. "But it's been in my mind a little more than that."