Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

  "Why?"

  "Don't be coy," she said, a little sternly. "Or I'll beat you."

  "I might not like that."

  "Oh, you would."

  "Really . . ." he said, with just a touch of anxiety in his voice. He could not imagine having that thing, her Terror, give him pleasure, however expertly it was wielded.

  "It can be gentle, if I want it to be."

  "That?" he said. "Gentle?"

  "Oh yes." She made a scooping motion with her free hand. "If I have a man's sex in my palm, here." He got an instant and uncannily sharp picture of what she had in mind. Her victim on all fours, and that scooping motion of hers; the taking up of his cock and balls, ready for her. Completely vulnerable; completely humiliated. He'd never let a woman do anything like that to him, however much she promised it was to give him pleasure.

  "I can see you're not convinced," she said, "even when I don't have your face to look at. So you'll just have to take it on trust. I could touch men with this and they'd shoot like sixteen-year-olds. Even Valentino."

  "Valentino?"

  "And he was queer."

  "Rudolph Valentino?"

  "Yes. You didn't know he was that way?"

  "No, it's just. . . he's been dead a long time."

  "Yes, it was sad to lose him so quickly," she said.

  She obviously had no difficulty agreeing with him about how long the Great Lover had been deceased, even though it made nonsense of her story.

  "We had a great party for him, out on the lawn, two weeks after he'd been taken from us." She turned away from him and laid the switch back on the mantelpiece. "I know you don't believe a word of what I've told you. You've done the mathematics, and none of it's remotely possible." She leaned on the mantelpiece, her chin on the heel of her hand. "What have you decided? That I'm some kind of trespasser? A little sexually deranged but essentially harmless?"

  "I suppose something like that."

  "Hmm." She mused on this for a moment. Then she said: "You'll change your mind, eventually. But there's no hurry. I've waited a long time for this."

  "This?"

  "You. Us."

  She left the thought there to puzzle him a moment, then she turned, the dusting of melancholy that had crept into her voice over the course of the last few exchanges brushed away. She was bright again; gleaming with harmless trouble-making.

  "Have you ever done it with a man?"

  "Oh, Jesus."

  "So you have!"

  He was caught. There was no use denying it.

  "Only . . . twice. Or three times."

  "You can't remember."

  "Okay, three times."

  "Was it good?"

  "I'll never do it again, so I guess that's your answer."

  "Why are you so sure?"

  "There's some things you can be that sure of," he said. Then, a little less confidently, "Aren't there?"

  "Even men who aren't queer imagine other men sometimes. Yes?"

  "Well . . ."

  "Perhaps you're the exception to the rule. Perhaps you're the one the Canyon isn't going to touch." She started to walk back toward him. "But don't be too certain. It takes the pleasure out of things. Maybe you should let a woman take charge for a while."

  "Are we talking about sex?"

  "Valentino swore he only liked men, but as soon as I took charge . . ."

  "Don't tell me. He was like a naughty schoolboy."

  "No. Like a baby." Her hand went to her breast, and she squeezed it, catching the nipple in the groove between her thumb and forefinger, as though to proffer it for Todd to suckle.

  He knew it wasn't smart to show too much emotion to the woman. If there was some genuine streak of derangement in her, it would only empower her more. But he couldn't help himself. He took half a step backward, aware that the trenches of his mouth were suddenly running with spit at the thought of her nipple in his mouth.

  "You shouldn't let your mind get between you and what your body wants," she said. She took her hand from her breast. The nipple stood hard beneath the light fabric.

  "I know what my body wants."

  "Really?" she said, sounding genuinely surprised at the claim. "You know what it wants deep down? All the way down to the very darkest place?"

  He didn't reply.

  She reached out and took gentle hold of his hand. Her fingers were cold and dry; his were clammy.

  "What are you afraid of?" she said. "Not me, surely."

  "I'm not afraid," he said.

  "Then come to me," she told him, softly. "I'll find out what you want." He let her draw him closer to her; let her hands move up over his chest toward his face.

  "You're a big man," she murmured.

  Her fingers were at his neck now. Whatever she was promising about discovering his desires, he knew what she wanted; she wanted to see his face. And though there was a part of his mind that resisted the idea, there was a greater part that wanted her to see him, for better or worse. He let her hands go up to his jawline; let her fingers rest on the adhesive tape that held the mask of gauze against his wound.

  "May I . . . ?" she asked him.

  "Is this what you came here to do?"

  She made a small, totally ambiguous smile. Then she pulled at the tape. It came away with a gentle tug. He felt the gauze loosen. He stared down into her face, wondering—in this long moment before it was done and beyond saving—if she would reject him when she saw the scars and the swelling. A scene from that same silent horror movie he'd seen in his mind's eye many times since Burrows had done his brutal work flickered in his head: Katya as the appalled heroine, reeling away in disgust at what her curiosity had uncovered. He the monster, enraged at her revulsion and murderous in his self-contempt.

  It was too late to stop it now. She was pulling at the gauze, coaxing it away from the hurts it concealed.

  He felt the cool air upon his wounds, and cooler still, her scrutiny. The gauze dropped to the floor between them. He stood there before her, more naked than he'd ever been in his life—even in nightmares of nakedness, more naked—awaiting judgment.

  She wasn't horrified. She wasn't screaming, wasn't flinching. She simply looked at him, without any interpretable expression on her face.

  "Well?" he said.

  "He made a mess of you, no doubt about that. But it's healing. And if my opinion is worth anything to you, I'd say you're going to be fine. Better than fine."

  She took a moment to assess him further. To trace the line of his jaw, the curve of his temple.

  "But it's never going to be perfect," she said.

  His stomach lurched. Here was the heart of it: the bitter part nobody had wanted to admit to him; not even himself. He was spoiled. Perhaps just a little, but a little was all it would take to shake him from his high perch. His precious face, his golden face, the beauty that had made him the idol of millions, had been irreparably damaged.

  "I know," Katya said, "you're thinking your life won't be worth living. But that's just not true."

  "How the hell do you know?" he said, smarting from the truth, angered by her honesty.

  "Because I knew all the great stars, in the silent days. And believe me, the smart ones—when they weren't making the money any longer—just shrugged and said okay, I've had my time."

  "What did they do then?"

  "Listen to yourself! There's life after fame. Sure, it'll take some getting used to, but people have perfectly good lives—"

  "I don't want a perfectly good life. I want the life I had."

  "Well you can't have it," she said, very simply.

  It was a long time since somebody had told Todd Pickett that he couldn't have something, and he didn't like it. He took hold of her wrists and pulled her hands away from his face. A quick fury had risen in him. He wanted to strike at her, knock her stupid words out of her mouth.

  "You know, you are crazy," he said.

  "Didn't I tell you?" she said, making no attempt to touch him again. "Some nights I'm so crazy I
'm ready to hang myself. But I don't. You know why? I made this hell for myself, so it's up to me to live in it, isn't it?"

  He didn't respond to her; he was still in a filthy rage about what she'd said.

  "Do you understand what I'm saying?"

  "I think I've had it with your advice for the night," he said, "so why don't you just go back wherever you came from—"

  In mid-sentence he heard Marco calling.

  "Boss? Are you okay? Where the hell are you?"

  He looked toward the door, half-expecting to see Marco already standing there. He wasn't. Todd then looked back at Katya, or whoever the hell she was. The woman was retreating from him, shaking her head as if to say: don't tell.

  "It's okay!" he yelled to Marco.

  "Where are you?"

  "I'm fine. Go make me a drink. I'll meet you in the kitchen!"

  Katya had already retreated to the far end of the room, where the shadows from which she had originally emerged were enclosing her.

  "Wait!" Todd said, his fury not yet completely abated.

  He wanted to make sure the woman didn't leave thinking she would be allowed to come back, come stalking him while he slept, damn her. But she had turned her back on him now, ignoring his instruction. So he went after her.

  A door opened in the darkness ahead of him, and he felt a wave of night-air, cool and fragrant, come in against his face. He hadn't known that there was a door to the outside of the house at the far end of the Casino, but she was out through it in a heartbeat (he saw her silhouette as she flitted away along a starlit path), and by the time he reached the door she was gone, leaving the shrubs she'd brushed as she ran shaking.

  He stepped over the threshold, and looked around, attempting to orient himself. The path Katya had taken led up the hill, winding as it went. Back to the guest-house, no doubt. That was where the crazy lady was in residence. She'd made herself a nice little nest in the guest-house. Well, that was easily fixed. He'd just send Marco up there tomorrow to evict her.

  "Boss?"

  He walked back into the Casino and stared down at the expanse of floor where she'd had him picturing her making love. He'd believed her, too; a little. At least his dick had.

  Marco was at the other end of the room.

  "What the hell's going on?" he said.

  Todd was about to tell him there and then—about to send him up the hill to oust the trespasser—but Marco was bending down to gingerly pick something up from the ground. It was Todd's discarded bandages.

  "You took 'em off," he said.

  "Yeah."

  The rage he'd felt started to seep out of him now, as he remembered the tender way she'd looked at him. Not judging him, simply looking.

  "What happened, Boss?"

  "I found another door," he said rather lamely.

  "Was there somebody here?" Marco said.

  "I don't know," he said. "Maybe. I was just wandering around, and I came down here . . ."

  "The door was open?"

  "No, no," Todd said. He closed the door with a solid slam. "I just tried it and it was unlocked."

  "It needs a new lock then," Marco said, his tone uncertain, as though he was suspicious of what he was being told, but playing along.

  "Yes, it needs a new lock."

  "Okay."

  They stood for a moment at opposite ends of the room, in silence.

  "Are you all right?" Marco said after a pause.

  "Yeah. I'm fine."

  "You know pills 'n' liquor'll be the death of you."

  "I'm hopin'," Todd replied, his joviality as forced as Marco's.

  "Okay. If you say you're okay, you're okay."

  "I'm okay."

  Marco proffered the bandages. "What do you want me to do with these?"

  "What do you think?" Todd said, getting back into the normal rhythm of their exchanges now. The door was closed. The woman and the path and the nodding shrubs were out of sight. Whatever she'd said, he could forget, at least for tonight. "Burn them. Where's that drink? I'm going to celebrate."

  "What are you celebrating?"

  "Me losing those damn bandages. I looked like God knows what."

  "Burrows might want you to keep 'em on."

  "Fuck Burrows. If I want to take the bandages off, it's my choice."

  "It's your face."

  "Yeah," Todd said, staring again at the ground where the crazy woman had claimed she'd lain, imagining her there. "It's my face."

  TWO

  Maxine came up to the house the following afternoon to tell Todd about the Oscar festivities, reporting it all—the ceremony itself, then the par-ties—with a fine disregard for his tenderness. Several times he almost stopped her and told her he didn't want to hear any more, but the dregs of curiosity silenced him. He still wanted to know who'd won and who'd lost.

  There'd been the usual upsets, of course, the usual grateful tears from the usual surprised ingénues, all but swooning away with gratitude. This year, there'd even been fisticuffs: an argument had developed in the parking lot at Spago's between Quincy Martinaro, a young, fast-talking filmmaker who'd made two movies, been lionized, and turned into a legendary ego all in the space of fifteen months, and Vincent Dinny, a vicious writer for Vanity Fair who'd recently profiled Martinaro most unflatteringly. Not that Dinny was a paragon himself. He was a waspish, embittered man in his late sixties, who—having failed in his ascent of the Hollywood aristocracy—had turned to writing about the town's underbelly. Nobody could have given a toss for his pieces had they not carried a certain sting of truth. The piece on Martinaro, for instance, had mentioned a certain taste for heroin; which was indeed the man's vice of choice.

  "So who won?" Todd wanted to know.

  "Quincy broke two fingers when he fell against his car, and Dinny got a bloody nose. So I don't know who won. It's all so ridiculous. Acting like children."

  "Did you actually see them fighting?"

  "No, but I saw Dinny afterward. Blood all over his shirt." There was a pause. "I think he knows something."

  "What?"

  "He was quite civilized about it. You know how he is. Shriveled-up little prick. He just said to me: I hear Todd's had some medical problems, and now you've got him under lock and key. And I just looked at him. Said nothing. But he knows."

  "This is so fucked."

  "I don't know how we deal with it, frankly. Sooner or later, he's going to suggest a piece to Vanity Fair, and they're going to jump on it."

  "So fucked," Todd said, more quietly. "What the hell did I do to deserve this?"

  Maxine let the question go. Then she said, "Oh, by the way, do you remember Tammy Lauper?"

  "No."

  "She runs the Fan Club."

  "Oh yeah."

  "Fat."

  "Is she fat?"

  "She's practically obese."

  "Did she come to the office?"

  "No; I got a call from the police in Sacramento, asking if we'd seen her. She's gone missing."

  "And they think I might have absconded with her?"

  "I don't know what they think. The point is, you haven't seen her up here?"

  "Nope."

  "Maybe over in Bel Air?"

  "I haven't been over in Bel Air. Ask Marco."

  "Yeah, well I said I'd ask you and I asked."

  Todd went to the living-room window, and gazed out at the Bird of Paradise trees that grew close to the house. They hadn't been trimmed in many years, and were top-heavy with flowers and rotted foliage, their immensity blocking his view of the opposite hill. But it didn't take much of an effort of imagination to bring the Canyon into his mind's eye. The palm-trees that lined the opposite ridge; the pathways and the secret groves; the empty swimming pool, the empty koi-pond; the statues, standing in the long grass. He was suddenly seized by an overwhelming desire to be out there in the warm sunshine, away from Maxine and her brittle gossip.

  "I gotta go," he said to Maxine.

  "Go where?"

  "I just gotta go,"
he said, heading for the door.

  "Wait," Maxine said. "We haven't finished business."

  "Can't it wait?"

  "No, I'm afraid this part can't."

  Todd made an impatient sigh, and turned back to her. "What is it?"

  "I've been doing some thinking over the last few days. About our working relationship."

  "What about it?"

  "Well, to put it bluntly, I think it's time we parted company."

  Todd didn't say anything. He just looked at Maxine with an expression of utter incomprehension on his face, as though she'd just spoken to him in a foreign language. Then, after perhaps ten seconds, he returned his gaze to the Birds of Paradise.

  "You don't know how wearying it gets," Maxine went on. "Waking up thinking about whether everything's okay with Todd, and going to sleep thinking the same damn thing. Not having a minute in a day when I'm not worrying about you. I just can't do it anymore. It's as simple as that. It's making me ill. I've got high blood pressure, high cholesterol—"

  "I've made you a lot of money over the years," Todd broke in to observe.

  "And I've taken care of you. It's been a very successful partnership. You made me rich. I made you famous."

  "You didn't make me famous."

  "Well, if I didn't I'd like to know who the hell did."

  "Me," Todd replied, raising the volume of his voice just a fraction. "It's me people came to see. It's me they loved. I made myself famous."

  "Don't kid yourself," Maxine said, her voice a stone.

  There was a long silence. The wind brushed the leaves of the Bird of Paradise trees together, like the blades of plastic swords being brushed together.

  "Wait," Todd said. "I know what this is about. You've got a new boy. That's it, isn't it? You're fucking some kid, and—"

  "I'm not fucking anybody, Todd."

  "You fucked me."

  "Twice. A long time ago. I wouldn't do it today."

  "Well just for the record neither would I."

  Maxine looked at him coldly. "That's it. I've said what I needed to say."

  She went to the door. Todd called after her. "Why do it to me now? Why wait till I'm so fucking tired I can hardly think straight!" His voice continued to get louder, creeping up word on word, syllable on syllable. "And then screw me up like this?"

  "Don't worry, I'll find somebody else to look after you. I'll train them. You'll be taken good care of. It's not like I'm walking out on you."