Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

  "Maybe we should go back and find Mister Zeffer? He could come with you. I realize there was some bad blood between you—"

  "Zeffer's dead, Jerry. I lost my temper with him, and—"

  "You killed him?"

  "No. I left him in the Devil's Country. Wounded by one of the hunters."

  "Lord."

  Jerry brought the car to a halt. He stared out of the window, horrified. "What would you like me to do?" he said after a while. "If you can't go on without him, I mean."

  "Take no notice of me," Katya said, after a short period of reflection. "I'm just feeling sorry for myself. Of course I can go on. What other choice do I have?" She took another moment to study the passing world. "It's just that it's been a long time since I was out in the real world."

  "This isn't the real world, it's LA."

  She saw the joke in that. They laughed together over the remark, and when their laughter had settled into smiles, he got the car going again, down the hill. At some unidentified point between the place where her faith had almost failed her and Sunset Boulevard, they crossed the boundary of Coldheart Canyon.

  Their destination was already decided, of course, so there wasn't much reason to talk as they went. Jerry left Katya to her musings. He knew his Hollywood history well enough to be sure that she would be astonished by what she was seeing. In her time Sunset Boulevard had been little more than a dirt track once it got east of what was now Doheny. There'd been no Century City back then, of course, no four-lane highways clogged with sleek vehicles. Just shacks and orange groves and dirt.

  "I've been thinking," Katya said, somewhere around Sepulveda.

  "About what?"

  "Me and my wickedness."

  "Your what? Your wickedness?"

  "Yes, my wickedness. I don't know why it came into my mind, but it did. If I think about the women I've played in all my really important pictures, they were all wicked women. Poisonous. Adulterers. One who kills her own child. Really unforgivable women."

  "But don't most actors prefer to play bad characters? Isn't it more fun?"

  "Oh it is. And I had a lot to inspire me."

  "Inspire you?"

  "As a child, I saw wickedness with my own eyes. It had its hands on me. Worse, it possessed me." Her voice grew cold and dark. "My mother ran a whorehouse, did I ever tell you that? And when I was ten or so, she just decided one night it was time to make me available to the customers."

  "Jesus."

  "That's what I said to myself. Every night, I said: Jesus, please help me. Jesus, please come and take me away from this wicked woman. Take me to Heaven. But he never came. I had to run away. Three times I ran away and my brothers found me and dragged me back. Once she let them have me, as a reward for finding me."

  "Your own brothers?"

  "Five of them."

  "Christ."

  "Anyway, I succeeded in escaping her eventually, and when you're a thirteen-year-old, and you're out in the world on your own, you see a lot thirteen-year-olds shouldn't have to see."

  "I'm sure you did."

  "So I put all that I saw into those women. That's why people believed in them. I was playing them for real." She fumbled at the inside of the door. "Is there some way to open this window?"

  "Oh yes. It's right there. A little black button. Push it down."

  She pushed and opened the window a crack. "That's better," she said.

  "You can have it all the way down."

  "No, this is fine. I'll take it in stages, I think."

  "Yes, of course."

  "Going back to the pictures, I wonder if you'd do me a favor, when we get back to the house?"

  "Of course. What?"

  "In my bedroom in the guest-house there are six or seven posters from those early films of mine. I've had them up there for so long, all around the bed, I think it's time I got rid of them. Will you burn them for me?"

  "Are you sure you want them burned? They're worth a fortune."

  "Then take them for yourself. Put them up for auction. And the bed. You want the bed too?"

  "There isn't room for it in my apartment, but if you want me to get rid of it for you—"

  "Yes, please."

  "No problem."

  "If you make some money from it, then spend it. Enjoy it."

  "Thank you."

  "No, it's me who should be thanking you. You've been a great comfort to me."

  "May I ask you why?"

  "Why what?"

  "Why are you getting rid of all that stuff now?"

  "Because everything's changed for me. That woman I used to be has gone. So are all the things she stood for."

  "They were just films."

  "They were more than that. They were my memories. And now's the time to let go of them. I want to start over with Todd."

  Jerry drew a deep breath to reply to this, but then thought better of it and kept his silence. Katya was acutely aware of every nuance in her immediate locality, however; even this.

  "Say what's on your mind," she said.

  "It's none of my business."

  "Say it anyway. Go on."

  "Well I just hope you're not relying too much on Todd Pickett. You know he's not all that reliable. None of them are, these younger guys. They're all talk."

  "He's different."

  "I hope so."

  "We can't ever know why things happen between two people. But when it feels right, you have to go with your instincts."

  "If he's so right for you, why did he run out on you?"

  "That was my fault, not his. I showed him some things which were more than he was ready to see. I won't make that mistake again. And then he had some woman with him, Tammy Somebody-or-Other, who was just trying to steal him away. Do you know her?"

  "Tammy? No. I don't know a Tammy. Oh wait. I do. I had a call from the police in Sacramento. She went missing."

  "And they called you? Why?"

  "Because I know Todd. Apparently, this Tammy woman runs his fan club."

  Katya started to laugh.

  "That's all she is to him?" she said.

  "Apparently."

  "She runs his fan club?"

  "That's my understanding."

  "So there's no romance between them?"

  "No. I don't even think they really know one another."

  "Well, that solves that."

  "It does and it doesn't," Jerry said cautiously. "She still persuaded him to go with her."

  "Then it's up to me to persuade him to come home," Katya purred. She pressed her window button, and kept it down until the window was entirely open. Jerry caught a glimpse of her in the mirror. The last of her caution and her fear had evaporated. She was luxuriating in the warm wind against her face; eyes closed, hair shining.

  "How much farther?" she asked him, without opening her eyes.

  "Another ten minutes."

  "I can smell the ocean."

  "Well, we're at Fourth Street. Four blocks over, there's the beach."

  "I love the sea."

  "Todd has a yacht, did you know that? It's docked in San Diego."

  "You see? Perfect." She opened her eyes, catching Jerry's gaze in the mirror, demanding a response from him.

  "Yes, it's perfect," he said.

  She smiled. "Thank you," she said.

  "For what?"

  "For everything. Bringing me here. Listening to me, indulging me. When things have settled down and Todd and I have made the Canyon a more civilized place, we're going to start inviting people over, just a few special friends, to share the beauty of the place. You never saw the house at its best. But you will. It is magnificent."

  "Oh I'm sure."

  "And that's how it's going to be again, after tonight."

  "Magnificent?"

  "Magnificent."

  EIGHT

  This was Tammy's Cinderella moment: her dream come true. All right, perhaps all the details weren't perfect. She could have looked a little more glamorous, and she would have liked to los
e another twenty-five pounds. And they could have been coming in through the front door instead of slipping in at the side to avoid the photographers. But she was happy to take what fate was giving her: and fate was giving her a chance to walk into an A-list party on the arm of Todd Pickett.

  Everywhere she looked there were famous faces, famous smiles, famous gazes, famous figures swathed in gowns by famous designers, famous fools making jokes that had everyone in their circle breathless with laughter, famous power-brokers telling tales of how they'd made a million in a minute, and the less famous wives of these power-brokers listening with their lids half-closed because if they had a buck for every time they'd heard these tired old tales they'd be able to divorce their deadweights of husbands.

  And hanging on the arms of the famous (much as she was hanging on Todd's arm) were younger men and women who watched their companions with the kind of eyes Tammy was reserving for the hors d'oeuvres. There was appetite in those eyes. One day, those gazes seem to say, I will have all that you have. I will own cars and yachts and palaces and houses. I will have a small vineyard in Tuscany and a large ranch in Big Sky Country. There will be no door that will be closed to me; no ear that will not attend to my concerns. When I drop my purse, somebody will pick it up for me. When my car is empty of gas, it will be miraculously filled (and the ashtrays emptied). If the drink in my hand is getting low, it will be replenished without my requesting it. When I am hungry, somebody will make food that will be so exquisitely shaped that every mouthful will be like a little meal unto itself.

  In fact, the food was drawing her attention about as much as the famous faces. She'd never seen such exquisite little confections, and each one had a description, proffered by its server, much of which was so remote from Tammy's experience she didn't understand it. Slices of rare marinated this on slices of smoked that, drizzled with—

  Oh what the hell? She'd take two. No, make that three. It was only finger-food, for God's sake, and she was hungry.

  To wash it all down she'd accepted a Bellini from a dazzling waiter as soon as she'd stepped inside, and it tasted so sweet and harmless she downed two-thirds of her glass before she realized how potent it was. In truth, however, it would scarcely have mattered if she'd downed five Bellinis and fallen flat on her face. She was invisible as far as these people were concerned. The glacial beauties and their handsome swains, the deal-makers and the word-splitters, none of them wanted to concede her ragged presence in their gilded midst: so they simply looked the other way. Once or twice she caught the tail of a mystified glance laid upon her, but these were from amateurs at the game. To the true professionals—which is to say most of the people in this assembly—she was simply a non-presence. She could have been standing right in their line of vision and somehow their gaze would have slid off her and around her; anything to avoid seeing her.

  She caught tight hold of Todd's hand. So much for the Cinderella fantasy. It was a nightmare.

  Much to her delight Todd clutched her hand in return. His palm was pouring sweat.

  "They're all looking at me," he said, leaning close to her.

  "No, they're not."

  "Hi, Todd."

  "Hi, Jodie. Good to—see that? They say hi then they move on. She's gone already. Hi, Steven! When are you—? Too late. He's off. It's fucking uncanny."

  "Where's Maxine?"

  "I haven't seen her yet. She's probably out back. She likes to sit and hold court at these things. She says only hostesses circulate."

  "And she's not the hostess?"

  "Fuck, no. These aren't her guests. They're her supplicants."

  Tammy had seen some attractive-looking hors d'oeuvres sailing by. "I'll have one of those," she said, tapping the waiter on the shoulder. "If you don't ask in this place," she explained, as she took three, "you don't get."

  "Are they good?"

  "What do I know? They're filling a hole. Very slowly. Doesn't anybody have any appetite around here?"

  "Not publicly."

  To get to the back of the house he had led her into a larger room, which—despite the fact that it was packed with guests—was almost as hushed as a library. A few people looked round at Todd—a few even attempted tentative smiles—but nobody made any move to break off their whispered exchanges and approach him, for which Tammy was grateful. The density of famous faces was much the same in here as it had been next door. This really was the crème de la crème: the people who could get a studio to spend several million dollars developing a script by simply hinting that they might be in it when it was finished; the names above the title that audiences knew so well they only used an actor's given name when they were talking about the show: Bruce and Julia and Brad and Tom and all the rest. Next year, some portion of the crowd would have slipped onto the B-list, after a dud or two. But tonight they were at the top of their game; famous among the famous. Tonight there wasn't an agency in the city that wouldn't have signed them on the spot; or a late-night talk-show that wouldn't have bumped Einstein, Van Gogh and the Pope to have them on. They were American royalty, the way that Pickford and Fairbanks had been royalty in the early years. Yes, there were more crowns now; more thrones. But there were also more fans, in every corner of the world, men and women ready to fawn and obsess. In short, none of these were people who hurt for want of admiration. They had a surfeit of it, the way the rest of the world had a surfeit of credit-card debt.

  It was harder, in this more densely-populated space, for people not to concede the presence of Todd, who took hold of several unoffered hands and grabbed a couple of shoulders as he crossed the room, determined that nobody would get away with pretending they hadn't seen him. And when a fragment of conversation did spring up, as it occasionally did, Todd very rapidly (and rather gallantly) made certain that Tammy was introduced into the exchange.

  "You don't need to do that," Tammy said, after the third such occasion.

  "Yes, I do," Todd replied. "These sonsabitches think they can look the other way and pretend you don't exist. Well fuck 'em. I've starred in movies with some of these assholes. Movies you paid your seven bucks to see. And they were mostly shit pictures. So I figure they owe you a seven-buck handshake."

  She laughed out loud, thoroughly entertained by his heretical talk. Whatever happened after this, she thought (and no fairy-tale lasted forever), she'd at least have this extraordinary memory to treasure: walking arm-in-arm with the only man she'd ever really loved through a crowd of fools, knowing that even if they didn't look at her they still knew she was there. And when she'd gone she'd be somebody they'd never be able to figure out, which suited her just fine. Let them wonder. It would give them something to do when they were studying their reflections in the morning.

  "There's Maxine," Todd said. "Didn't I say she'd be holding court?"

  It was a couple of years since Tammy had seen Maxine Frizelle in the flesh. In that time she had projected upon the woman an aura of power which in truth she didn't possess. She was smaller and more fretful-looking than Tammy remembered: the way she was perched in a high-backed chair, her bare feet off the ground, was presumably designed to give off the aura of childlike vulnerability, but in fact suggested just its opposite. The pose looked awkward and artificial; her gaze was woozy rather than happy, and her smile completely false.

  Todd let go of Tammy's hand.

  "Are you doing this on your own from here?" she said to him.

  "I think I ought to."

  Tammy shrugged. "Whatever you want."

  "I mean, it's going to be difficult."

  "Yeah . . ." she said, the observation given credence by the frigid stare they were getting from the patio.

  "She's seen you," Tammy said.

  She smiled in Maxine's direction. The woman was getting up off her chair, her expression more bemused than angry. She leaned over and whispered something to the young man at her side. He nodded in response, and left the patio, heading indoors and weaving his way through the party-goers toward Tammy and Todd.

>   Tammy grabbed hold of Todd's hand again. "You know what?" she said.

  "What?"

  "I was wrong. We're going to do this together."

  NINE

  Out on the street, Katya let the valet open the car door for her, her eyes fixed on the house into which she was about to make an entrance. A hundred thoughts were crowding into her head at the same time, all demanding attention. Would anybody recognize her? Jerry had told her many times her films remained widely seen and appreciated, so it was inevitable somebody was going to figure out who she was. On the other hand it had been the style in those days to slather your face in makeup, so perhaps nobody would think to associate her with the high style of those movies. Nor, of course, would anybody assume that the Katya Lupi of The Sorrows of Frederick or Nefertiti could possibly resemble the young woman she still seemed to be. So again, perhaps her fears were groundless. And if somebody did recognize her, against all the odds, then she'd swiftly find some witty riposte about the brilliance of modern science, and let them wonder. If she sent a few admirers off shaking their heads, mystified by her untouched beauty, would that be such a bad thing?

  She had nothing to fear from these people.

  She was beautiful. And beauty was the only certain weapon against a brutal mind or a stupid world. Why should that power have deserted her?

  She looked around, subduing a little burst of panic, to find that Jerry was not at her side.

  "I'm here," he said, sauntering over from a very handsome and now well-tipped valet. "I've been getting the scoop. Todd arrived a few minutes ago."

  Her face blossomed. "He's here?"

  "He's here."

  She was suddenly like a little child. "I knew this was going to work!" she said. "I knew! I knew!" Then, just as suddenly, a doubt: "Is that woman with him?"

  "Tammy Lauper? Yes she is."

  "I want you to separate them."

  "Just like that?"

  "Yes," she said, deadly serious. "Do whatever you have to do. I just want you to part them, so that I can talk to Todd on his own. As soon as I get a chance to do that, the three of us can be out of here."