“They found out about Debra Rocks,” Solly explained. “Perverts must’ve combed the porn shops.”
“The part sucked, anyway,” Debbie said coldly. “They wanted me to play a slut.” She popped open her clutch purse. Her hand slid in and came out with a small gold box. Then she pulled out a straw. Her hands were shaking, and a sheen of sweat glistened on her face. “I don’t need the bastards,” she said. “I don’t need any of ’em!” She started to slide the lid of the gold box open.
John had had enough. There was no way in Heaven or Hell that he could sit beside her and watch her snort up that crap again. His hand flashed out, grabbed the box away from her. Before she could move, John opened his door and flung it out. There was a puff of white on the roadside, and then they had left it behind. Debbie stared at him openmouthed. “You’re killing yourself with that stuff,” he said, his face aflame with anger. “I don’t want you to—”
“You bastard!” she screamed, and attacked him.
It wasn’t a halfhearted attack. It was a clawing, shrieking, frenzied attack that drove John against the door and made Solly swerve the car and shout, “Hey! Cut the crap!” But Debbie was listening to no one now but her inner demons. She swung her fingers at Lucky’s eyes, grabbed his hair, and banged his head against the doorframe. She clutched at his throat, dug her nails in, hammered at his face and head with her fist, all the time screaming and cursing. Solly kept jerking the wheel, looking back over his shoulder to make sure the wild bitch didn’t jump his ass too; the Cadillac lurched drunkenly down Olive Avenue.
She punched John on the side of the face, a glancing blow, and that was it. He grabbed her wrist, shoved her back with his other hand, and threw his body on top of her, forcing her down against the seat. Her knees pounded at his ribs, but he got those down and then she reached up for his eyes, her face twisted with fury. He dodged just before he lost his vision, and she grabbed his collar and started trying to bang his head against the roof. “Stop it!” he shouted, gripping her wrists. “Debbie, stop it!”
He didn’t know exactly when it happened. But suddenly her arms were around his neck, trying to pull his mouth down on hers, and her body was hot and thrashing and the lips in her tormented, lust-puffed face moaned, “Hurt me, Lucky. Hurt me, hurt me, I want you to hurt me…”
John recoiled, breaking her grip. She sat up, reaching for him, saying, “Hurt me, hurt me.”
“I don’t want to hurt you!” he said. “I love you!”
And there it was, spilled out like a glassful of forbidden wine.
Her hands stopped short of clawing his suit jacket off. Her face was frozen between a sneer and a moan. It stayed that way for a second or two—and then he saw her lower lip tremble, and a single tear streaked down her left cheek.
“You…should’ve been with me,” she whispered brokenheartedly. “Why weren’t you with me?”
The tears came then, and she sobbed as if someone had delivered a brutal blow to her stomach. She reached for him, a drowning figure reaching for a life-ring, and he put his arms around her and pulled her close. She wedged her head against his neck, and her tears soaked his collar.
“Hanky?” Solly offered one over the seat, but it had green flecks on it and John said, “No. Thanks anyway.”
He put the handkerchief away. “Lucky, where you want me to drive to? I mean, it’s a big place.”
“I don’t care,” John answered. “Just somewhere pretty.”
As Debbie continued to sob, her hands clutching at John’s shoulders and her body bowed in defeat, John did what he had been unable to in the confessional. He gently stroked her hair, hugged her body tightly against his, squeezed his eyes shut as her sobs racked his own body. Finally, her despair quietened if not exhausted, she lay silently beside him, her head on his shoulder, and stared at the world through swollen eyes. John took off his paisley tie and offered that to her as a handkerchief, but she didn’t move to accept it.
“Malibu comin’ up!” Solly told them, and his exuberance clued John that the man might have started out as a tour-bus driver.
John had never seen Malibu before, but he’d heard a great deal about it. The late-afternoon light, however, didn’t reveal what he’d expected. The beaches of Malibu were gray, and the houses looked to John simply like oversize weather-beaten shacks. Debbie perked up a little bit, lifted her head, and said, “I used to live there,” pointing to a dreary beach shack, one of what looked like hundreds jammed together on the continent’s edge. Then Debbie lay back against him again, drained by memories.
Solly kept driving, as the red sun began to sink. The beach had eroded, and cracks had winnowed across the highway. Finally Solly slowed, turned the Cadillac, and headed back to L.A. “That’s the beach,” Solly said. “Where to next, chief?”
Debbie spoke up: “Forest Lawn.” Solly laughed uneasily. “That’s a cemetery.”
“I know it’s a cemetery, numb nuts.” Her voice was still weak, but it was regaining power. “Take me there.”
“Okay, okay. You don’t have to be rude.” And Solly drove toward her destination.
17
BY THE TIME THEY reached the particular plot Debbie guided Solly to in the huge expanse of Forest Lawn Cemetery, the sun had sunk low. The orange light had faded to purple, and now edged into blue.
Debbie said, “Stop here,” and she got out and walked through the headstones and ornate markers to the grave she sought. She stood over it, just staring down, and didn’t move when John reached her. He saw a name on a little bronze plate in the ground: Lynn Phillips. John saw also that she’d died in mid-August of this last summer, and she’d been twenty-three years old.
“Lynn was my roommate for a while,” Debbie explained. “We were best friends. I mean…we didn’t have sex or anything. We were like sisters. Pals.” She sighed, a pained sound. “I helped her pick out her name: Cheri Dane. Know why? ‘Cause she was hooked on cherry Danishes. She used to go out to the Farmers Market and bring back a sackload. So we really had a laugh over that name, because we knew all across America guys were turned on by a girl named after a cherry Danish.” She smiled faintly, but it didn’t stick.
“What happened to her? Drugs?”
“No!” Debbie looked sharply at him. “Cheri was clean! Well…she was gettin’ that way. No, somebody got into her apartment, over in Santa Monica. Whoever it was…tied her up and drowned her in her bathtub.” She shrugged, but it was to hide a shudder. “The cops never found out who it was. I don’t think they looked too hard. You know what they call us? Freak fodder. I’m beginnin’ to believe it.”
“Why is that?”
“Oh…another friend of mine hit the dirt last week.” It was said with false bravado and masked a core of hurt. “Janey McCullough. And the real gut-clencher is that we all had a hit together Super Slick. At least, it was a hit in the business. It played everywhere, and did six high figures in videotape. Not that we saw very many of the bucks. I mean, somebody’s gettin’ rich, but it’s sure not us.” She stared down at the marker. “Lynn, how many times did I tell you? If you don’t know the face, don’t let ’em into your place. Hell, she would’ve given the devil a thousand bucks and waited for change.” Debbie saw a bouquet of fresh flowers on another grave a few yards away; she went to it, picked some of the flowers out of the vase, and sprinkled them around Lynn’s marker. “There you go, babe,” Debbie said. “Let’s get you pretty.”
John glanced at his wristwatch. “We’d better go, maybe grab a sandwich somewhere before we catch our plane.”
Debbie walked away from the grave, and then she abruptly stopped again. She looked around, to all points of the compass. “It’s the blue world now,” she said in a hushed and respectful voice.
“What?” He hadn’t fully understood her.
“The blue world,” she repeated. “Listen.” She put her finger to her lips.
He did. The cemetery was an oasis of silence. Dying light flared on the towers of buildings off in the haze
, but cool blue shadows had pooled around the headstones and monuments, and even the air itself had turned to indigo. A solitary car moved along one of the cemetery’s streets, and the twilight breeze stirred a palm tree’s fronds.
“See?” Debbie said quietly. “When everything turns blue, and the whole world seems to be holdin’ its breath. That’s the blue world. My grandmomma and me used to sit out on the porch in the twilight, and we’d rock in the glider and she’d sing me these songs her momma sang to her a long time before. Songs like that don’t change; just people’s voices do.” She turned her face and smiled, and John saw she was looking to the southeast.
“Grandmomma said the blue world was the entrance to the night, but it wasn’t anything to fear. Oh, no! She said the blue world came back again, at dawn, and then it was the way out of the night. She said…the blue world was God’s way of sayin’ there would always be a new day.” Debbie looked at him and gave a bitter grimace. “I was raised a Baptist. Isn’t that a big damned hoot?”
John didn’t hoot; he didn’t speak either. He just let her go on, and watched her face as she drifted back into time.
“I haven’t thought about that for…it seems like forever,” she said. “The blue world. Maybe… I just stopped lookin’. I don’t know.” She walked to a monument, leaned against it, and traced her fingers over the carved white marble. “It’s strange, huh? People live and die every day, and you never know a thing about ’em. Everybody just goes on about their business, like a big boilin’ pot. I mean…we’re all in it together, aren’t we?” She gazed at Lucky, her eyes glittering in the blue half-light, and then she looked away. Her fingers tightened on the marble. “I’ve gotta get out of this,” she said. “I’ve gotta…figure things out. Somethin’ went wrong. It went wrong, and I don’t know where it went wrong.” She lowered her head, and John heard her choking on a sob. It was the same sound of a lost, crying child that he’d heard in the confessional, and his heart yearned to give her peace. He started toward her, to rest his hand on her shoulder and tell her his name was not Lucky but John Lancaster, and that he was a Catholic priest.
“Don’t touch me,” she said as he reached out. “Okay? Don’t touch me just yet.”
John stopped. He pulled his hand back, and the moment spun away like a dead leaf.
“I’m sorry.” She reached out and grasped his fingers. “I’m a bitch sometimes.” She examined his face and touched a place on his left cheek that made him wince. “I bruised you,” she said. “Hell, maybe I ought to get into foxy boxin’ and oil-wrestlin’, huh?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“Listen… I’m not mad at you. I knew me gettin’ that part was a real long shot. It wasn’t you that screwed me up. You’re still my Lucky, right? Soul mates?”
“Right,” John said.
She nodded. “Believe it.” She paused, staring toward the grave of her friend. The blue world was passing now, and night’s edge was coming over the horizon. “Come on,” she said, and tugged him toward Solly’s car. “I’ll buy you a burger.”
At eight-forty-six their jet was taking off from LAX. It turned above the hazy fire of the metropolis and arrowed north.
By ten o’clock they were leaving San Francisco International, heading along the Bayshore Freeway in Joey Sinclair’s white Rolls-Royce.
Sinclair lit a cigar, and the flame painted his face. His eyes glared at John for a moment; then his attention drifted to Debbie. “Solly called me after you left L.A.,” he said in a subdued voice. “That Solly.” He shook his head and puffed blue smoke. “You put him up to bat, and he can’t hit nothing but foul balls.”
“It wasn’t Solly’s fault,” Debbie told him. She had her sunglasses back on, staring at the red circle of Uncle Joey’s cigar. “They found out, that’s all.”
“Yeah.” Sinclair sat without moving for a long time, his eyes half-closed and the cigar’s fire glowing and waning. The lights of San Francisco gleamed ahead. John saw Sinclair’s hand slip to Debbie’s knee, and the older man patted it gently. “Don’t worry, baby. You’re a star. I snap my fingers, you’ve got a flick opening in three hundred theaters. What more could you want?”
She didn’t answer. Her dark glasses caught a spark of neon, and John saw her stare at her hands, clenched into fists in her lap.
“Chuck? See our friends upstairs, please,” Sinclair told his son when they’d parked in front of Debbie’s building. A light rain was falling, the street like black glass. Debbie got out, but as John started to, Sinclair’s hand closed on his sleeve. “Hey, Lucky,” the man said quietly and forcefully. John had no choice but to pause. “You queer?” Sinclair asked.
“No.”
“You got AIDS?”
“No.”
“Good, ’cause Debra likes you. I can tell. She gets hot for a guy, it shows on her face. You ever done any film work?”
“No,” John said, his throat dry.
“Doesn’t matter. How about this deal: you and Debra in a movie together? It’d just be a bit part for you, but we’d do some photo spreads and get ’em in the glossies like Chic and High Society. Then we’d let it leak that you two are fucking each other in real life.” He removed the cigar. “See the beauty of it?”
John could do nothing but just stand and stare at him, his mouth partly open, as waves of disgust crashed through him.
“Yeah, 1 thought you might go for that idea. You think about it and let Uncle Joey know.” He released John’s sleeve. “I want the suit back, but you keep the money,” Sinclair said. “Call it a down payment, right?” He laughed and shut the door, and a little stinking whiff of cigar smoke floated past John’s nostrils before the rain shredded it.
Up in Debbie’s apartment, Chuck looked at John as he came through the door and said, “Off. The duds. Now.” John started to walk back to the bathroom, but Chuck caught his arm. “You deaf, Luckv? Take ’em off. I gotta go.”
John stripped off his borrowed suit, and in another moment he was standing in his underwear and socks. Chuck put the clothes back on their hanger and called, “I’m gone, Debra! See you tomorrow, babe!” He went out the door, and it thunked shut behind him.
“Tomorrow?” John heard water running in the bathroom. He walked in and found her vigorously brushing her teeth, stripped down to her hose, panties, and bra. “What’s tomorrow?”
“Working day,” she said, her mouth full of green foam. She spat into the sink. “We’re shootin’ in Chinatown. Want to go with me, kinda hang out?”
“No.” He steadied himself against the bathroom door. Unicorn was in his sandbox, listening like a flat sphinx. “I’ve got to get dressed and go—”
“No!” Debbie said suddenly, her eyes widening. She spat the rest of the toothpaste foam out. “Lucky, no! You’re gonna stay the night with me, aren’t you?”
“I can’t. Really. My…uh…other girlfriend—”
“Screw your other girlfriend!” she said. “I mean…don’t screw her. Lucky, I need you to be with me tonight. I don’t want to be alone. Okay?”
“Debbie… I…”
“I’ve got fresh sheets,” she told him. “Look. Let me show you.” She took his hand and pulled him into the bedroom before he could brace his legs to resist. The bed was made—one of the tasks she’d done when she’d been zipping around this morning—and now she threw back the spread to show him the crisp pale blue sheets. “I put these on ’cause I kinda thought they went with your eyes and, you know, we could celebrate.”
“I don’t think there’s much to celebrate.”
“Yes there is!” She paused, thinking. “Our plane didn’t crash.”
He laughed in spite of himself, and she put her arms around him and held tightly. “If you don’t want to fu…if you don’t want to, like, be disloyal to your girlfriend, I can understand that. I don’t like it, but I understand it. Just come to bed with me and hold me, Lucky.” Her hands gripped into his shoulders. “Okay? Just hold me?”
“Okay,” Joh
n said, and this time nothing in him screamed that it was wrong.
He got into bed, still wearing his underwear, and she slid in beside him with her hose, bra, and panties on. “This’ll be like a pajama party, huh?” she asked him excitedly. He put his head on the pillow, and her head with its long black hair found his shoulder. Then she twisted her body around to face him, her hands stroking his chest. “We must’ve met in another life,” she said. “That’s why I feel so good around you. Maybe we were lovers in ancient Egypt, huh? I want to do you, Lucky.”
“What?”
“I want to do you.” She touched his left earlobe. “You know. I want to pierce your ear for you.”
“No, thanks.”
“It’ll be sexy! Come on, let me! I’ll put ice on it to get it numb, and—”
“No!”
“Either you let me pierce your ear,” she said defiantly, “or I’m gonna go to my cookie jar and have a white taste.”
He looked at her, she wasn’t fooling. Oh, my dear Lord…! he moaned inwardly. He closed his eyes. Opened them again. She was still waiting for his answer. “Will it hurt?” he asked.
“Sure. That’s what it’s all about.” Then she smacked him on the stomach. “No, dummy! The ice deadens your earlobe, and I’ll burn the needle before I use it.” She got up and hurried to the kitchen, where John could hear her scooping ice into a plastic bowl. He looked down at the floor. Unicorn had scuttled beside the bed and settled himself into a corner; the damned crab looked as if it were smiling in expectation of quite a spectacle.
Debbie returned with the bowl of ice, a cold wet cloth, and a needle. She lit a match and held it under the needle’s tip as John pressed two pieces of ice on either side of his lobe. Then she straddled his chest. “Okay, turn your head this way. You feel that?” She pinched his earlobe, and he said, “Yes. No. Wait. No, I didn’t feel it.”
“Good. Hold still, now, this’ll just take a sec.” She leaned forward, the needle ready.
He remembered a dentist saying that to him, just before the pain almost blasted his molars out.