He was somewhere else, actually. He was looking for his mother and his father. Their ghosts, he knew, would not miss an opportunity as grand as this.
He was losing it big time, wasn't he? Yes, this was Rio all over again. It had all the makings of a disaster. He realized that he still hadn't learned how to live with defeat.
A Caputo public relations flack came running into the restaurant around eleven-thirty. Everyone looked up. This was the moment they had been waiting for.
“A hit!” he shouted, waving a copy of the New York Times. “A serious rave. Well, close enough.”
He handed the paper, already folded to the Entertainment Section, to his boss, then stood in the crowd which had gathered around Caputo to hear the producer/director read the important review aloud.
“Michael Lenox Caputo, that master of blockbusters, who alone among our current crop of directors can still produce an engrossing, even enthralling, entertainment, has surpassed himself with Primrose, sure to be one of this season's biggest box-office successes. …”
A cheer went up from the guests, especially the studio executives. A small band hired for the party played “Hail to the Chief.” Caputo read on silently as the noise continued, then, when the room was once again quiet, flung the paper aside.
“Modesty forbids me from reading more,” he said. “You'll all have your copies in the morning. Meanwhile, let's have a celebratory drink! Let's have several drinks! We've earned it tonight.”
Waiters served expensive champagne. The paper, which had landed on a table near the entrance, went unheeded by everyone except Will, who picked it up with a casual air, and began to read, wondering why Caputo had not gone on.
He found his own name almost immediately:
Caputo is wonderfully served by his female star, Suzanne Purcell, who radiates innocence and sensuality in equal measures and, in her love scenes, manages to be both nineteen (which in real life she is not) and a woman comfortable with her sexual appetite. Her male counterpart, however, the former sports star Will Shepherd, is patently more comfortable on a soccer pitch than the beautifully photographed plains of Texas. He treats her as though she were some luscious morsel, no more important than a slice of New York cheesecake, or maybe even Texas cheesecake. Both stars look great without their shirts, but when Mr. Shepherd is actually called upon to act, whatever emotion is generated by the raw sex disintegrates into a pout, a forced smile, or glycerine tears applied by a makeup man, but not produced by the heart. Mr. Shepherd seems not to have much of one. He should not have been so hasty about giving up his athletic career.
Will read no further. He turned toward the guests. He was feeling crazed and frantic, absolutely wild.
He looked around the room, searching desperately for Maggie. She was standing by Caputo's side, smiling at something the director said. Well, fuck her.
She was supposed to be my salvation, my soul mate. That's what her songs promised.
But she told me I was wonderful in the film.
She lied to me, goddamn her.
Bitch!
He hurled the paper down, and disappeared into the night. He feared that he was going mad, or maybe that he was already there. He needed to hear the cheers of the crowd, to feel that kind of absolute love, but there was nothing for him here.
Will turned onto Seventh Avenue and he started to jog. Soon he was running at almost full speed. And still there was no cheering, no love anywhere in sight.
The werewolf of New York, he thought.
CHAPTER 69
WILL HAD BEEN missing for two days, and I felt as though my heart had stopped.
Winnie Lawrence and I looked for him frantically, checking local and New York hospitals and police stations, calling everybody at the party with whom he might have left. The kids were in a panic too.
No one had a clue as to where Will might have gone. I remembered stories he'd told me about Rio—his disappointment. Something had happened down there that had changed him.
I had read the Times movie review, of course, as soon as Will had left the room—read it with horror and anger as I realized what it would do to him, how it would hurt. I'd been there myself. I'd suffered through mean-spirited reviews, some deserved, some not.
Another high-profile failure. So many failures in his own eyes.
I knew about that feeling too. I wanted to be there for him. But where was he? How could I help if I couldn't find Will?
On the third day I called Barry again, and asked him to come to the house. “I feel a little out of control,” I told him once he arrived. “I think I should be doing something more, but I can't think what it might be.”
“He'll come back,” Barry said. “He has something good to come back to. Don't forget that.”
“You always overestimate me, and underestimate Will. He could have killed himself, Barry. I'm really afraid for him. His father committed suicide.”
“People like Will don't,” Barry said. “He knows what he's doing.”
“How can you say that? You don't know Will. You don't know how hard he takes things.”
Barry shrugged. He didn't believe it. In a way, neither did I. I thought that Will would come back. He loved me, and he loved the kids. He had to come back.
“I fantasize finding him in a ditch somewhere. Just because the police haven't found him—”
“They haven't because he doesn't want to be found. I understand how terrible this is for you, but you're overreacting, Maggie. He's probably on the bender of benders. He'll come back when it's over.”
Would he? I was afraid that maybe I didn't know everything about Will. I hadn't been with him in Rio. Who had? What furies drove him then? Which were driving him now? Perhaps he wasn't telling me the truth.
And how could he just disappear?
I saw a picture in my mind—Will and Allie riding Fleas across the lot in back of our house. He had to come back. It was inconceivable that he wouldn't.
CHAPTER 70
AND EVENTUALLY, HE did.
I was awakened by a familiar hand touching my cheek, then lightly stroking my hair. Will was in the bedroom! I knew his touch so well. My heart jumped. Terror came over me.
“Will!” I finally managed to whisper, my mouth dry with fear.
I pushed his hand away and twisted myself out of bed. I faced him with a fury that had grown all the time he was away, and now was at its height.
“Where have you been? Why didn't you call us? Oh God, Will. You think you can just come back like this?”
There was something in his eyes that night—something so different, so strange. It was subtle, but I picked up on it. He didn't look like himself.
He was dressed in unwrinkled black slacks and a black T-shirt. His hair was casual, the windblown look. His jaw was covered with a day or two's light growth.
He smiled at me the way I'm sure he did at every woman in his life who had been angry at him, and whose forgiveness he needed. I wanted to scream at him, lash out at him with my fists.
“I've been in London. I went to visit my aunt. She's like a second mother to me. Only she wasn't there, off on holiday with Aunt Eleanor, so I came home.”
Yes. Of course. To another mother. To me.
“I'm sorry, Maggie, I shouldn't have done it, definitely should have called. You can't imagine how upset I was at that dreadful premiere. You have no idea what goes through my mind.”
No, I didn't, I couldn't, I didn't want to, but I tried to be patient, and to understand. Maybe, I tried too hard.
CHAPTER 71
WILL HAD BEGUN to wear two-hundred-dollar dark glasses almost all the time now—at night and inside the house. He called it his “film star phase.”
He used any and every excuse to be out of the house. In truth, he was afraid to be around Maggie and the kids. Maybe he didn't love them anymore, couldn't feel what he wanted to, but he didn't want to hurt them either.
He didn't want to hurt them.
He drove his new Mercedes convertib
le into New York one obnoxiously sunny afternoon. He felt hollow, as though there were absolutely nothing inside him. He'd spoken to his brother that morning, but of course Palmer wasn't any help. Palmer didn't want to have anything to do with him anymore.
He wanted to end it all—maybe in a spectacular car crash. He pushed the Cabriolet to over a hundred on the narrow, winding Saw Mill. He was much too skillful a driver to crash though; his reflexes were perfect. Or maybe he didn't really want to die—just yet.
Why the hell should he want to die?
Primrose was fucking soaring at the box office. The absurd movie had made it to number one, and had stayed there for weeks. Even more absurd, he was being touted as the next Eastwood, or Harrison Ford. What a goddamn idiocy. Hollywood made him ill with its amateurish reading of public tastes.
In a single week, he'd gotten over a hundred loathsome scripts to read. He'd finally selected another best-seller, a powerful psychological thriller called Wind-chimes. He'd negotiated a contract for four million up front.
Principal shooting was set to start that very day with the famed British director Tony Scott. It was going to be another hit movie, everyone was sure of it. It had all the “ingredients.”
Well, Will was sure it was going to be another piece of commercial garbage. He knew what was good, and what wasn't. He knew when he was fooling the world, and that it would catch up with him sooner or later.
He couldn't stand the fucking reviews—because they were true, his critics were right. He was dog shit on a stick.
He couldn't stand it anymore.
He couldn't bear being Will Shepherd: the barely living legend, the ex-football great, “the incredible Hunk,” “Mr. Maggie Bradford.”
As he entered New York City and saw the road signs for Broadway and 242d Street, Will floored it and took the convertible to over a hundred again.
Traffic was thick, and he swerved from lane to lane as other drivers angrily honked their horns.
I don't want to be Will Shepherd anymore, he was thinking as he maneuvered the car with one hand, then one finger, then look, ma, no hands.
I don't want to live like this.
I can't.
Was that what my father was thinking when he first went underwater?
CHAPTER 72
HE WAS GOING underwater. Down, down, down. The water was cool and dark. It wasn't so bad to drown.
It was as “Will Shepherd” that he began the early evening at the Red Lion Inn in Greenwich Village. As Shepherd he consumed seven Scotches, neat; as Shepherd he was now playing out, for an audience of mostly inebriated admirers, his greatest triumph in a Manchester United uniform.
Since he was buying drinks all around, the audience was with him, hanging on every word.
“Will, Will,” one of them chanted. An Englishman. A genuine fan, probably.
“The Blond Arrow!” Will shouted back, his voice thick with irony that none of them seemed to appreciate.
“The Blond Bum,” another voice called out from the back of the barroom crowd.
Will stopped in the middle of his story. It was just some punk wearing black leather and black jeans, acting the macho man. He glared at the asshole, thinking Eurotrash, thinking let's get it on.
The punk made his way through the crowd. There were two friends with him. Will saw tattoos on their arms: falcons or eagles.
“A stinking bum,” the punk repeated, now facing Will as the spectators stepped back. His accent sounded German.
“A pansy,” one of the friends added. “A British fag.” Definitely German.
Anger, which had struggled for days to escape, now roared from Will's mouth. A string of curses exploded.
The Euro-trash punk stepped forward, beckoning to Will. “Come get me, bum,” he said. “Come get me, you has-been.”
Where he got the chain he held, Will couldn't imagine. It really didn't matter. He charged the German anyway.
The Blond Arrow charged blindly. He wanted a fight; and fight would do.
He got out of the Red Lion with only cuts and bruises. Nothing important. Nothing fatal.
He remembered that he was supposed to be on a movie set. Well, fuck that. This was a better psychological thriller anyway.
Now came a series of white explosions in the shadows of an abandoned storage warehouse just off Hudson Street. A gang was beating up on him; he didn't know why. Could it have been something I said, mates? He was aware only of the intense pain of their kicks—to the head, to the stomach and groin, to the ribs—of the relentless agony each hard blow produced in his brain. Punishment, he thought as he was falling to the pavement.
Fair and just punishment for his crimes, his sins, his entire life.
His arms and legs were pinioned. He couldn't move a muscle. His face was smashed down onto the gritty concrete of the sidewalk. His nose was leaking blood. Then his legs were lifted off the ground like meat on a hook.
And he was really pounded. He was battered, kicked, butted, until he was sure that every bone in his body had been broken. Strangely, he welcomed the physical pain. It told him that he was alive, right?
His entire world was suddenly spinning out of control. It was all bright liquid red. Will felt he was falling, pitching forward into a black hole.
He was being left to die on the New York streets, wasn't he?
It wasn't so terrible, really.
He was just following in the footsteps of his father. He'd always known it would end like this.
Will Shepherd found dead in the street.
Strange, weird—his last thought, his final image was of the dog he'd killed years ago. He had loved that dog.
CHAPTER 73
THIS HAD TO BE a nightmare. It couldn't be anything else. I wasn't really awake, was I?
The Manhattan police came to my home around midnight. They broke the news politely, but their good manners and tact couldn't ease any of the pain. I had to sit down immediately. I thought I was going to pass out or maybe be sick. I was in a state of shock.
I finally was able to call Winnie Lawrence. He lived close by. The two of us went to St. Vincent's Hospital in New York.
I was permitted to see Will only briefly—he was sleeping, heavily sedated, his face swathed in heavy bandages. He looked horrible.
I felt as though I were in a dream. Whatever was happening, couldn't be. What had happened to the man I had married, the person I loved? This badly beaten person couldn't be Will!
We were approached by Detective Nicolo, the police officer who had come to Bedford with the news. I didn't want to talk to anyone, to see anyone.
“He's pretty beaten up, but it looks worse than it is,” said Nicolo. “The doctors say it'll be a couple of weeks before he can get out of the hospital. I'm sorry, Mrs. Bradford. We don't know how it happened. Or who did it. No witnesses have come forward.”
“He was supposed to start shooting a film yesterday,” Winnie Lawrence said.
“Good luck.” The detective smiled wryly. “If the part is Rocky V, he might be able to manage it okay.”
“Jesus!” Winnie said, and headed for a pay phone.
Detective Nicolo turned to me. He looked like Al Pacino, only with a larger hooked nose. His white hair was slicked back. “Do you have any idea why he might have been attacked, Mrs. Bradford? Do you know if he was with anyone last night?”
I shook my head. “I'm sorry. I don't, detective. I'm not myself right now. Sorry, sorry.” I fought back tears.
Nicolo clucked and nodded sympathetically. “He wasn't home with you last night then?”
“I expected him. He didn't show up.”
What was the detective implying? Why am I protecting Will? I wondered. Because he's my husband, and I love him.
“It'll be hard to find the men who beat him up.” Nicolo had taken out a black notebook; now he put it away. “If Mr. Shepherd can't describe them, there's not much we can do. I'll come back here as soon as he's able to talk. I'll stay in touch with you.”
&n
bsp; He shook my hand and left, telling me to call him if I had any information. An agitated Winnie joined me in the waiting room.
“They're going to replace Will,” he said. “They say they can't afford to wait until he recovers from this. Whatever the hell happened to him?”
I shrugged, feeling numb and cold all over. It was neither good news nor bad. A frightening thought crossed my mind. I didn't know who my husband was.
“He'll be devastated about the film,” Winnie said.
“I don't know, Winnie.” I felt a wave of sadness, an overlay on my fatigue. “I think maybe he'll be relieved.”
CHAPTER 74
I DROVE BACK to Bedford with Winnie Lawrence. Our nursemaid, Mrs. Leigh, was there with the kids. Fortunately, everyone was still sleeping when I got home.
I didn't want to explain about Will; I wasn't sure that I could explain, that I understood.
I loved Will, but maybe he'd fooled me; maybe he was a good actor when he wanted to be. I had thought I could help him, that I was helping him. My mother had made the same mistake with my father. Oh God, I didn't know what to think. I wanted to go up into the attic—and just write songs again.
I sat in the den, staring out onto the grounds. The morning sun was up and birds were chirping everywhere. But unpleasant images were flying inside my head—bad ones. I remembered a movie with Julia Roberts called Sleeping with the Enemy. I felt as though I were in it, or maybe this was Gaslight. Or maybe I was dreaming. Please. Let this be a dream.
I don't know who my husband is, I kept thinking. Is that possible? Is that what's happening? What is Will doing to himself? What is he doing to all of us?
Allie wandered into the den and found me there. I did my best to act as though nothing were the matter.
“I've been waiting, waiting, waiting for you to get up and come see me,” I said to him. I patted my lap for him to come sit. He ran to me and jumped into my arms.