Bonita Avenue (55 page)

Ralph went over to the washbasins and laid a brown leather case on the plank. He grabbed my penis, pulled me toward him, his lips pursed and eyes closed. I gave him a kiss. Only then did he unsnap the case and bring out brushes, eyeliner pencils, and little oval make-up boxes.

“But is it a serious role?”

“
Soder
bergh?” she said with an uncharacteristic edge. “Of
course
it’s a serious role. I’ve read the screenplay, it’s subtle.” She picked up Kristin’s script between thumb and index finger and dangled it in the air. “Not as subtle as this, naturally,” she said with a snicker.

The set teemed like an anthill, everyone was moving—everyone except Bobbi. From the hall I could see her kneeling crosswise on a bed that looked as if Oliver Twist had to sleep on the
floor tonight. Vince was tying Bobbi up with a length of thickly twined rope. Her wrists were bound tightly behind her back, the rope wound around her upper body, cutting into her breasts, which hung out of her puffy red blouse. She was wearing cute embroidered canvas peep-toes with huge cork wedges, linen ribbons crisscrossing up her calves. Her fragile wrists were pulled upward by a cord that ran to a ring in the ceiling.

Two cameramen and a photographer circled around the Oliver Twist bed. Kristin studied a bird’s-eye view of the set on a laptop. Clint, a guy whose card read “floor assistant,” crouched on the far side of the bed, where Bobbi’s head hung awkwardly over the edge of the mattress. He joked with her some, and occasionally poured a swig of his Red Bull into her mouth.

Vince was completely engrossed in his first job. Despite the chill in the ballroom he was sweating profusely, flooding the beaches on his Hawaiian shirt. With the speed of a catamaran sailor, he brought the rope around Bobbi’s left knee, which rested, like the right one, at the long edge of the bed; he tossed it around the outer left bedpost, threaded it back and pulled it tight, tying it deftly in a sea scout knot. Bobbi’s buttocks glowed like the head of a sphinx in the glaring floodlights. With his back to me: Rusty, monitoring the goings-on in his new office.

No one noticed me. I stood half in the brick doorframe, about twenty yards from Bobbi and Vince, a distance that seemed to fold in on itself, leaving me a total outsider with regard to the bed tableau. Something—perhaps I was hoping for a message from Boudewijn, or maybe it was Bobbi’s last comment, which struck me as arrogant, a tad too much disdain for my taste—kept me utterly detached and unexcited. As much as I tried to get caught up in the moment—I impatiently slapped my legs with the whip Q had given me, trying desperately to work myself into the state
of mind needed to perform my duties on that iron-framed bed in a few moments—as much as I tried to concentrate on Bobbi, my brain marched on, a paradox whirling in my head, two contradictory thoughts twisting my consciousness from my body like a wing nut. On the one hand this fort was like a Faraday cage: I was totally blocked from external signals, off the radar, non-existent to my ex and even my son, whose phone calls and messages bounced off the shield. And on the other hand, Bobbi Red lay there waiting for me; like it or not, my thoughts X-rayed her impending fame, which did not yet exist but soon would, a fame whose exact form and scope were still uncertain. The idea that the ingenue who stood at my bathroom sink on Sunset washing her anonymous little ass would become Soderbergh’s new muse, that in six months she’d be traipsing down the red carpet in Berlin with that man, and who knows, might wind up in the Kodak Theater with a gilded statue in her hands—from now on,
any
thing was possible—made my head spin. The movie would probably disappear into the DVD circuit, I comforted myself, and Bobbi into obscurity; no, it would almost certainly bomb, she would be panned, written off, laughed out of town. But something told me it was going to be a very different story. This was going to be her big break. She’d emerge as a star the likes of which Hollywood hadn’t seen in a long time. Bobbi would become a radioactive twenty-first-century Mae West, a Nicole Kidman that exploded in your face.

Kristin spotted me and signaled. “Joy—three minutes.”

Just say it
did
happen, I thought as I walked into the ballroom to the hollow click of my heels, what did that mean for the scene we were about to shoot?
Her
role was clear: this would become a piece of Bobbi footage that contributed to her cinematographic double whammy, a film clip that everyone would want to see, maybe just to satisfy a basic lust, but maybe more to make a study of Bobbi
Red, that strange, beautiful geisha whom no one knew how to take. Bobbi turned the brick Barracks into a glasshouse, Bobbi threw open the curtains, Bobbi lifted the manhole cover off the gutter, and then the outside world would see … 
Mike’s mother?

Rusty had just pulled the Maybach away from the Barracks when Bo’s texts and voice mail messages appeared on my phone, one by one.
Cut it out
, a voice in my head snarled,
leaving Boudewijn was absolutely the right move
. The three of us sat on the backseat: me behind Rusty, who despite his manic edge still drove like an old lady, Bobbi in the middle, and Vince on her right, Kristin up front in the passenger seat talking loudly. No post-shoot downer here; the mood, as usual, was congenial and relaxed. We were on our way to Coldwater to catch the end of two other sessions.
Leaving was the best thing you ever did
. Bobbi slid her slender fingers between mine and pressed up against me, maybe just to be as far as possible from Vince.

I would have died of boredom. Before Mike was born, Boudewijn and I were at least
both
unhappy in San Francisco. Those months of wandering aimlessly around our new city, wounded and homesick, seeking each other out for comfort and companionship. Misery loves company. But after Mike came, Boudewijn was suddenly contented, he read out loud to Mike (about the only times I heard him speak), enjoyed his hobbies (the only outings we had were long, statewide car trips, sometimes even as far as Nevada, which invariably ended in the barn of some farmer in slippers who pulled a blanket off a half-dilapidated jukebox), and picked fights. Conflicts here, conflicts there, after two years with Boudewijn Stol I couldn’t hear the word “conflict” without breaking into a rash. When I’d get home from Silicon Valley in the evening, he’d already be sitting
in his satin pajamas, typing scathing complaint e-mails. To his co-directors at the Golden Gate Park Golf Club, to the personnel at Mike’s nursery school, to his partners at McKinsey, to the divorce lawyer on whom he’d sicced another lawyer. The only person he didn’t fire electronic grenades at from his trench was me.

“F-ing call ASAP” was the first text message I opened. A new jolt of panic shot through me. Mike go-carted a lot recently. Or maybe it had to do with money. Had I missed a payment? No way was I going to call San Francisco from the backseat of this car: I was too chicken, too hung-up, too inhibited, scared to death that Rusty might yank the phone out of my hand and jabber something into it, the kind of thing he’d been jabbering for half an hour already, things he meant as compliments (and, in a sense, were) but would get me barred from parental custody once and for all.

“
Feck
, Joy, you are one hard woman,” Rusty exclaimed right after the shoot. He called my performance “fascinating,” almost alarming. He was briefly worried about the bloodred welts on Bobbi’s thighs, hopefully they’d heal before she had to strip for Soderbergh. I was wise enough not to let on how I’d mustered up the requisite sadism; that Bobbi-doll with her cheek resting on my shoulder might not have even understood. What it boiled down to was that I had succeeded in hating Meryl Dryzak for who she was. Out of
envy
for who she was. I had mobilized all the jealousy in me to hate her for her ambition, her flair and pluck, and the unapologetic way she went out and became, at age eighteen, exactly what she wanted to be, without pretense, without cowardly, costive
shame
: this is me, take it or leave it. And look where it got her. And, moreover, look where being just the opposite had got
me
. My half-assed spinelessness had cost me dearly, but I was still leading a double life, I still had everything to hide. I let the
New York Times
interview me, but without a photo. Try explaining that to Bobbi.

(I hadn’t explained a thing to Boudewijn either. I just buggered off and tendered the fake excuses later by phone. After two and a half comfy years up in our Russian Hill eagle’s nest, the little one tucked under his down covers, I simply up and left.)

His second text hit me like a bullet. “Aaron Bever called us. WTF?!” I jerked my hand out of Bobbi’s and clapped it to my mouth. Startled, she looked up.

“You OK, honey?”

“Yeah, sure,” I stammered. “Sorry … something just occurred to me.”

“What, hon?” She kissed my shoulder and felt for my hand.

“I think I’ve … uh, left my back door open.” Was Aaron in America? Was he on his way to Boudewijn and Mike?

“Prob’ly not,” Bobbi said. “And anyway, if they loot your place, you can always come stay with me.” She let her head sink back onto my shoulder. I looked out of the window: on the horizon you could see Watts Towers, two black pointy hats made of junk and old iron. I dialed my voice mail and pressed the phone as hard as possible against my far ear. Why on earth did I trade in my family for this bunch? You and your intuition, so much for all those McKinsey decision-making models.

Boudewijn spoke to me—in Dutch, the only person who still did—via my provider’s voice mail chip. I had to do my best to understand what he said, what with Vince in the background discussing his moving plans with Rusty and Kristin. “Joni,” Boudewijn’s voice said, “this is not good. Bever got Mike on the line.”

Bobbi was still holding my hand; as I squeezed it I felt her eyes bore into me. “Have they cleaned you out?” she asked.

“Do you know anything about this?” Boudewijn continued. “He managed to wangle your address in L.A. out of Mike. What’s Bever up to? Call me, damn it.”

Before he lies down in the extra-firm twin bed, Sigerius reaches into his laptop bag for the CD-ROM with the website photos. He finds the disc he managed to fool himself with last spring in Shanghai; fighting back melancholy and self-censorship, and with a sour taste in his mouth, he selects five images and e-mails them to Tineke, as per their agreement to the Hotmail address he once opened for them but which they never use.

The next morning there is consternation at his department about an editorial on last weekend’s political talk show. He had missed it; the columnist held forth on a controversial education plan for which he was called—they’ve wasted no time, have they—a
turncoat
: he is about to implement a policy which as rector he vigorously opposed. This is true. He and his spokesman formulate a strategy; afterward, alone in his office, he phones MeesPierson, his private bank, where his call is taken with the customary discretion. Saying the amount out loud (“Michael, listen, I need 100,000 tomorrow, cash”) sounds definitely shady, as though he’s ordered a shipment of explosives from Kandahar to blow up the Prime Minister’s residence. He chooses a branch in The Hague where he can pick up the bills early tomorrow morning. “I’m afraid I have to ask a few intrusive questions,” the fellow says.

“Because?”

“The law, Mr. Sigerius. I have to regard your withdrawal as an
‘exotic’ transaction.” Apparently there is a form that has to be sent to a national data bank. He asks if he can call back tomorrow, he has to go now.

After he returns from an obligatory dinner with the Culture Council, Sigerius gets a phone call from Janis. He’s uneasy: it’s not about those pictures, is it? First they discuss the TV editorial (a number of newspapers have followed up on it), and then she tells him that she and Tineke will be going to Val-d’Isère a week early; they are at the farmhouse and plan to leave first thing in the morning. Not with the Audi, but in her own car, the skis are already up on the roof rack, does he mind driving down alone? “I’ll have to grin and bear it,” he says.

After they’ve hung up he’s almost sorry it wasn’t about the pictures. He likes Janis’s straightforwardness. He’s curious what she would have to say about it, just as he wonders what she would think of the blackmail he’s about to succumb to. In bed he recalls the serious talks they’ve had: you could count them on the fingers of just one hand, but they were always, how would you put it,
clarifying
. Janis is a girl who can lie sprawled on the sofa watching the Tour de France for hours on end, and just before the finale switch off the TV and ask: “Hey Dad, why’d you marry that Margriet, anyway?” It was a rainy Sunday afternoon, they were home alone; she barraged him with questions, and by the time he was through with his reconstruction of that disastrous marriage it was too late to go to their favorite Chinese take-out.

With Janis’s voice still resonating in his head he tosses and turns for hours under a too-thin blanket, barraging
himself
with questions,
her
questions: but why have a
child
, Dad, why have a child with that woman? Sleep? Forget it, his restlessness disguises itself
as a dream, and in his agitation the images are relentless; they are linked together like a chain that begins with 100 grand hush money and ends at that marriage he’d been conned into. How did he manage to get himself into such a mess? He tries to block out the memories, but there’s no holding them back: there she is, Margriet Wijn, her raven-black hair put up like one of The Supremes, her eyes always slightly hazy.
What did you see in her, Dad?
Of course he retaliates, don’t give me such a hard time, young lady, I was twenty-four, damn it, what the hell did
I
know. They’d married him off, that’s what it boiled down to, his sister-in-law married him off.
Right, Dad, blame somebody else
. She was right—why did she always have to be right?
Your sister-in-law married you off? Go on, I’m listening
. All he wants is to sleep, but his memory gives his younger daughter what she wants, no, it wakes the dead; instead of sinking into blackness himself, he dredges up old ghosts. He’d just left to spend six months in Japan when his father died suddenly—while hanging a lamp, Janis, your grandfather (well, my father) came crashing off an end table, heart attack, a bolt of amperes straight through his heart. Months later he arrived back in Delft (having missed the funeral, of course) to find that the Trompetsteeg 14 had been confiscated by his brother Fred and his wife, a pair of late-twenty-somethings who’d installed themselves in the barely cooled-off living room acting like they were his parents. He and that Mieke get under each other’s skin, she’d send him to the bathroom with a bucket and rag, “You shower too often and too long, Siem, once a week is plenty, and from now on take your judo suit to the Laundromat—right, Fred?”