“It’s my story.” Eve’s eyes sliced like twin green scythes. Julia felt the keen edge and refused to dodge.
“Yes, it is. And by your own choice, it’s mine too.” She had her teeth into it now, her jaws snapped tight, like a wolf’s over a fleshy bone. Her will rose up to tangle with Eve’s, muscles flexed. Nerves smoldered like bright embers in her stomach. “If you want someone who’ll bow when you pull the strings, we’ll stop this now. I’ll go back to Connecticut and we’ll let our lawyers hash it out.” She started to rise.
“Sit down.” Eve’s voice quivered with temper. “Sit down, dammit. You made your point.”
With an acknowledging nod, Julia settled again. Surreptitiously she slipped a hand into her pocket and thumbed free a Tums from its roll. “I’d prefer to make yours, but that won’t be possible if you block me whenever I touch on something that discomfits you.”
Eve was silent a moment, silent while temper faded into grudging respect. “I’ve lived a long time,” she said at length. “I’m used to doing things my own way. We’ll see, Julia, we’ll see if we can find a way to merge your way with mine.”
“Fair enough.” She slipped the tablet onto her tongue, hoping that it and the small victory would soothe her jittery stomach.
Eve lifted the glass to her lips, sipped, and prepared to open a long-locked and rusted door. “Tell me what you know.”
“It was simple enough to check out the fact that Dorothy Travers was Kincade’s second wife, whom he divorced only months before marrying you. I couldn’t quite place her at first, but I’ve remembered she made a dozen or so Bs in the fifties. Gothics and horror films mostly, until she dropped out of sight. I can only assume now, to work for you.”
“Nothing’s quite as straight-lined as that.” Though it continued to irritate that she hadn’t stated the connection first, Eve shrugged and expanded. “She came to work for me a few months after Tony and I finalized our divorce. That would be, Christ, over thirty years ago. You find that strange?”
“That two women could have a lasting and close relationship for three decades after being in love with the same man?” Tension was crowded aside by interest. “I suppose I do.”
“Love?” Eve smiled as she stretched luxuriously. She always felt luxurious after a session with Fritz. Purged, pumped, and primed. “Oh, Travers may have loved him briefly. But Tony and I married for mutual lust and ambition. An entirely different thing. He was rather gorgeous in those days. A big, strapping man, and more than a little wicked. When he directed me in Separate Lives, his marriage was falling apart.”
“He and Travers had a child who died.”
Eve hesitated, then sipped her drink. Perhaps Julia had pushed her into a corner, but there was only one way to tell the story. Her way. “The loss of the child destroyed the foundation of their marriage. Travers couldn’t, wouldn’t forget. Tony was determined to. He’d always been completely self-absorbed. It was part of his charm. I didn’t know all the details when we began to see each other. It—our affair and resulting marriage— was a minor scandal at the time.”
Julia had already made a note to look up back issues of Photoplay and the Hollywood Reporter.
“Travers wasn’t a big enough star to warrant a lot of sympathy or outrage. You find that arrogant,” Eve observed. “It’s simply truthful. That small triangle took up some space in a few columns, then was forgotten. People took it much more personally when Taylor scooped Eddie Fisher up from under Debbie Reynolds.” Finding that amusing, she tapped out her cigarette. “Actually I may or may not have been the straw that broke the back of their marriage.”
“I’ll ask Travers.”
“I’m sure you will.” She made a fluid gesture with her hands, then settled again. “It’s unlikely she’ll speak to you, but go right ahead. For the moment, it might be helpful if I started at the beginning, my beginning with Tony. As I said, he was a very attractive man, dangerously so. I had a great deal of respect for him as a director.”
“You met when you made Separate Lives?”
“Oh, we’d run into each other before—as people do in this small ship of fools. But a movie set, Julia, is a tiny, intimate world, divorced from reality. No, immune to it.” She smiled to herself. “Fantasy, however difficult the work, is its own addiction. Which is why so many of us delude ourselves into believing we’ve fallen desperately in love with another character in that shiny bubble—for the length of time it takes to create a film.”
“You didn’t fall for your costar,” Julia said. “But your director.”
Her lashes lowered, hooding her eyes as she took herself back. “It was a difficult movie, very dark, very draining. The story of a doomed marriage, betrayal, adultery, and emotional breakdown. We’d spent all day on the scene where my character had finally acknowledged her husband’s infidelity and is contemplating suicide. I was to strip down to a black lace slip, carefully paint my lips, dab on perfume. Turn on the radio to dance, alone. Open a bottle of champagne and drink, in candlelight, while I swallow one sleeping pill after another.”
“I remember the scene,” Julia murmured. In the brightly lit room smelling of sweat and perfumed oils, it played vividly through her mind. “It was terrifying, tragic.”
“Tony wanted excitement, almost an exaltation along with despair. Take after take, he was never satisfied. It felt as though my emotions were being ripped out, raw and bleeding, then ground to dust. Hour after hour, that same scene. After I looked at the rushes, I saw that he’d gotten exactly what he’d wanted from me. The exhaustion, the rage, the misery, and that light that comes in the eyes from hatred.”
She smiled then, in triumph. It had been, and was still, one of her finest moments onscreen. “When we wrapped, I went to my dressing room. My hands were shaking. Shit, my soul was shaking. He came in after me, locked the door. God, I remember how he looked, standing there, his eyes burning into mine. I screamed and wept, spewed out enough venom to kill ten men. When he grabbed me, I struck him. And I drew blood. He ripped my robe. I scratched and bit. He pulled me to the floor, tearing that black lace slip to shreds, still never, never saying a word. Good Jesus, we came together like a pair of wild dogs.”
Julia had to swallow. “He raped you.”
“No. It would be easier to lie and say he did, but by the time we landed on the floor of the dressing room I was more than willing. I was manic. If I hadn’t been willing, he would have raped me. There was something incredibly exciting in knowing that. Perverted,” she added as she lit another cigarette, “but damned arousing. Our relationship was twisted, right from the start. But for the first three years of our marriage, it was the best sex I’ve ever had. It was almost always violent, almost always on the edge of something unspeakable.”
Laughing a little, she rose to fix herself another drink. “Well, after my five years of marriage to Tony, nothing, no one, will shock me again. I had considered myself quite knowledgeable….” Lips pursed, Eve poured champagne to within a breath of the rim, then poured a glass of the same for Julia. “It’s lowering to admit I went into that marriage as innocent as a lamb. He was a connoisseur of the deviant, of things that weren’t even spoken of back then. Oral sex, anal sex, bondage, S and M, voyeurism. Tony had a closetful of wicked little toys. I found some of them amusing, some of them revolting, and some of them erotic. Then there were the drugs.”
Eve sipped enough of the drink to keep the wine from lapping over the glass as she walked. Julia took the second glass when it was offered. Right here, right now, it didn’t seem so odd to drink champagne before lunch.
“Tony was way ahead of his time on drugs. He enjoyed hallucinogenics. I dabbled in them myself, but they never held much appeal for me. But in all things Tony was a glutton, and he overused. Food, drink, drugs, sex. Wives.”
This memory was ripping at her, Julia realized, and discovered she wanted to protect. They’d had their war of wills, but she disliked when victory caused pain. “Eve, we don’t have to go into a
ll this now.”
Making the effort, Eve shrugged off the tension, lowering herself into a chair as lithely as a cat curling on a rug. “How do you go into a pool of cold water, Julia? Inch by inch or all at once.”
A smile fluttered over her lips, into her eyes. “Headfirst.”
“Good.” Eve took another sip, wanting a clean taste in her throat before she dived. “The beginning of the end was the night he locked me to the bed. Velvet handcuffs. Nothing we hadn’t done before, enjoyed before. Shocked?”
Julia couldn’t image what it would be like—to be that helpless, to put herself totally in the hands of another. Was bondage synonymous with trust? Nor could she imagine a woman like Eve willing to subjugate herself. Still, she shrugged. “I’m not a prude.”
“Of course you are. That’s one of the things I like best about you. Under all that sophistication beats the heart of a puritan. Don’t be annoyed,” Eve said with a dismissive wave. “It’s refreshing.”
“And I thought it was insulting.”
“Not at all. Shall I warn you, young Julia, that when a woman tumbles to a man sexually, really tumbles, she will do things that would make her tremble with shame in the light of day? Even as she pants to do them again.” She sat back regally, cupping the glass in both hands. “But enough womanly wisdom—you’ll find out for yourself. If you’re lucky.”
If she was lucky, Julia thought, her life would go on just as it was. “You were telling me about Anthony Kincade.”
“Yes, I was. He liked, ah, I suppose we’ll call them costumes. That night he wore a black leather loincloth and a silk mask. He was putting on weight by that time, so a bit of the effect was lost. He lit candles, black ones. And incense. Then rubbed oil over my body until it was glistening and throbbing. He did things to me, wonderful things, stopping just short of giving me release. And when I was half mad for him—Christ, for anyone—he got up and opened the door. He let in a young boy.”
Eve paused to drink. When she spoke again, her voice was cold and flat. “He couldn’t have been more than sixteen, seventeen. I remember swearing at Tony, threatening, even pleading while he undressed that child. While he touched him with those wickedly clever hands. I discovered that even after nearly four years of being married to a man like Tony, I was still innocent in some things, still capable of being appalled. Because I couldn’t stand to watch what they were doing to each other, I closed my eyes. Then Tony brought the boy to me and told him to do what he wanted, while he watched. I realized that the boy was far less innocent than I. He used me in every possible way a woman can be used. While the boy was still in me, Tony knelt behind him, and …” Her hand wasn’t steady as she lifted her cigarette, but her voice was curt. “And we had a three-way fuck. It went on for hours, with them endlessly switching positions. I stopped swearing, pleading, crying, and started planning. After the boy left and Tony let me go, I waited until he fell asleep. I went downstairs and got the biggest carving knife I could find. When Tony woke up, I was holding his cock in one hand, the knife in the other. I told him if he ever touched me again, I would castrate him, that we were going to get a quick, quiet divorce and that he was going to agree to give me the house all its contents as well as the Rolls, the Jag, and the little hideaway we’d bought in the mountains. If he didn’t agree, I was going to whack him off right then and there like he’d never been whacked off before.” Remembering the way he’d looked, the way he’d babbled made her smile. Until she glanced over at Julia.
“There’s no need for tears,” she said quietly as they streamed down Julia’s cheeks. “I got my payment.”
“There is no payment for that.” Her voice was husky with a rage she could only imagine. Her eyes shone with it. “There couldn’t be.”
“Maybe not. But seeing it in print, at least there’ll be revenge. I’ve waited for it long enough.”
“Why?” Julia brushed tears away with the back of her hand. “Why did you wait?”
“The truth?” Eve sighed and finished off her drink. Her head was beginning to throb, and she bitterly resented it. “Shame. I was ashamed that I had been used that way, humiliated that way.”
“You’d been used. You had nothing to be ashamed of.”
The long black lashes fluttered down. It was the first time she had spoken of that night—not the first time she’d relived it, but the only time she hadn’t relived it alone. It hurt still; she hadn’t known it could. Nor had she known how cooling, how healing unconditional compassion could be.
“Julia.” The lashes lifted again, and beneath them her eyes were dry. “Do you really believe there’s no shame in being used?”
Faced with that, Julia could only shake her head. She, too, had been used. Not so hideously, not so horribly, but she understood that shame could nip at the heels like a dog for years. And years. “I don’t know how you stopped yourself from using the knife, or using the story.”
“Survival,” Eve said simply. “At that point of my life I didn’t want the story to come out any more than Tony did. Then there was Travers. I went to see her a few weeks after the divorce, after I’d discovered several reels of film Tony had hidden. Not only of him and me in various sexual stunts, but of him and other men, of him and two very young girls. It made me realize that my entire marriage had been a sickness. I think I went to her to prove to myself that someone else had been fooled, taken in, seduced. She was living alone in a little apartment downtown. The money Tony was ordered to pay her every month barely covered the rent after her other expenses. Those other expenses being the institutional care for her son.”
“Her son?”
“The child Tony insisted that the world believe was dead. His name is Tommy. He’s seriously retarded, an imperfection Tony refused to accept. He prefers to consider the child dead.”
“All these years?” A new kind of rage worked in Julia now, had her pushing up out of the chair, striding to one of the windows where the air might be cleaner. “He turned his back on his son, kept it turned all these years?”
“He isn’t the first or last to do that, is he?”
Julia turned back. She recognized the sympathy, the understanding, and automatically closed off. “That choice was mine as well, and I wasn’t married to Brandon’s father. Travers was married to Tommy’s.”
“Yes, she was—and Tony already had two perfectly healthy and perfectly spoiled children by his first wife. He chose not to acknowledge a child with flaws.”
“You should have sliced his balls off.”
“Ah, well.” Eve smiled again, pleased to see anger rather than unhappiness. “My chance for that is lost, at least literally.”
“Tell me about Travers’s son.”
“Tommy’s nearly forty. He’s incontinent, can’t dress himself or feed himself. He wasn’t expected to live to adulthood, but then, it’s his mind, not his body.”
“How could she have said her own son was dead?”
“Don’t condemn her, Julia.” Eve’s voice had gentled. “She suffered. Travers agreed to Tony’s demands because she was afraid of what he might do to the child. And because she blames herself for Tommy’s condition. She’s convinced the, let’s say, unhealthy sexual practices under which the boy was conceived are to blame for his retardation. Nonsense, of course, but she believes it. Maybe she needs to. In any case, she refused what she considered charity, but agreed to work for me. She’s done so for more than three decades, and I’ve kept her secret.”
No, Julia thought, she didn’t condemn her. She understood too well the choices a woman alone had to make. “You’ve kept it until now.”
“Until now.”
“Why do you want this made public?”
Eve settled back in her chair. “There’s nothing Tony can do to the boy, or to Travers. I’ve seen to that. My marriage to him is part of my life, and I’ve decided to share that life—without lies, Julia.”
“If he becomes aware of what you’ve told me, of the possibility of it being published, he’
ll try to stop you.” “I stopped being afraid of Tony a lifetime ago.” “Is he capable of violence?”
Eve moved her shoulders. “Everyone’s capable of violence.”
Saying nothing, Julia reached into her briefcase and brought out the pair of notes. She handed them to Eve. On reading them, Eve paled a little. Then her eyes darkened and lifted.
“Where did you get these?”
“One was left on the front stoop of the guest house. The other was slipped into my bag sometime last night.”
“I’ll take care of it.” She pushed them into the pocket of her robe. “If you receive more, give them to me.”
Slowly, Julia shook her head. “Not good enough. They were meant for me, Eve, so I’m entitled to some answers. Am I to consider them threats?”
“I’d consider them more pitiful warnings issued by a coward.”
“Who could have left one on the stoop?”
“That’s something I have every intention of finding out.”
“All right.” Julia had to respect the tone, and the gleam in Eve’s eyes. “Tell me this. Is there anyone besides Anthony Kincade who would be unnerved enough about this biography to write these notes?”
Now Eve smiled. “Oh, my dear Julia. There are indeed.”
Eve didn’t often think of Tony, and that period of her life when she had enslaved herself to the darker side of sex. It had been, after all, only five years out of her sixty-seven. She had certainly made other mistakes, done other deeds, enjoyed other pleasures. It was the book, the project she had instigated, that had her reviewing her life in segments. Like pieces of film in an editing room. But with this drama she wasn’t about to let any clips end up on the cutting-room floor.
All of it, she thought as she downed medication with mineral water. Every scene, every take. Damn the consequences.
She rubbed the center of her forehead where the pain seemed to gather tonight like a bunched fist. She had time, enough time. She would make sure of it. Julia could be trusted to do the job—had to be trusted. Closing her eyes a moment, Eve willed the medication to kick in and gloss over the worst of the pain.
Julia…. Concentrating on the other woman eased her as much as the drugs she took in secret. Julia was competent, quick-witted, packed with integrity. And compassion. Eve still wasn’t certain how she felt about seeing those tears. She hadn’t expected empathy,