Deal to Die For (8 page)

Chapter 12

“Hey kiddo!”

The voice in Paige’s ear seemed impossibly bright, entirely out of kilter with the dream she’d been having. She’d been standing in the middle of a misted field, the soft grass about her filled with rabbits, hundreds of them, it seemed, all of them sitting up on their haunches like dogs, begging for little Milk-Bones she was tossing from the newsboy’s sack she wore, no sound but the sigh of an unseen breeze.

She struggled groggily with the bedcovers, the rabbits vanishing, the field vanishing, the phone sliding away in the tangle. She didn’t remember hearing the phone, didn’t remember picking up, though the room still seemed to vibrate with the ring. She swallowed and tried to blink her eyes into focus, though there wasn’t much point in it—the room was still pitch-black. When she was sure she could speak, she groped about the bed until she found the receiver.

“Marvin?” Her head felt like it was stuffed with batting. She’d felt such peace in her dream. And now this. “What time is it, Marvin?”

“Must be about seven on your coast,” he said.

Seven
, she thought. She’d come back from the hospital, taken a couple of Xanax around five. No wonder she felt so out of it.

“Why are you calling me at 4:00
A.M.
, Marvin?”

There was a pause on the other end. “Sweetheart, I don’t know what time it is in Florida, but it’s four in the afternoon out here.
Friday
afternoon,” he added.

She swung her legs over the edge of the bed, rubbed at her throbbing temples, vaguely aware of the burning of her bladder and an ache in the small of her back. “Just a minute,” she said, dropping the phone on the bed.

She fumbled her way to the curtains, drew the fabric back. The room was fairly high up, with a view to the north—or so it seemed—the inky expanse of ocean on her right, the lights of the city off to the left. It was dark outside, all right, but there seemed to be a lot of traffic on the streets for 7:00
A.M.
And there was no sign of the sun coming up over the Atlantic, just a deep red band out there to the west.

She thought about it. Rises in the east, sets in the west. Right. She stood there until she had comprehended it, knew for certain that she had slept fourteen hours straight, then made her way slowly into the bathroom. She sat, relieved herself, stood, found a cold cloth for her face. Then she remembered, and went back to the phone.

“I’m sorry, Marvin,” she said when she’d found the receiver again. “You were right.”

“You okay, kiddo?” Marvin’s voice seemed extraordinarily clear, as if he might be calling from the next room.

“I’m fine,” she said. She snapped on the bedside light, stared down at her feet. She knew that she was having a telephone conversation, but it seemed impossible to concentrate. Her feet, for instance, seemed far more interesting.

They really were the oddest-looking appendages, she thought. And then realized she had begun to speak.

“My mother died, Marvin.” Her voice sounded hollow in her own ears. Cruel to say it just like that, wasn’t it? But what was the choice?

“Oh, shit,” Marvin said. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry, kiddo.”

She listened to the empty silence on the line. She wanted to say something in response, but what?

“When did it happen?” Marvin asked finally.

She paused, making sure she could do this. “This morning,” she said, dully. “Early this morning.”

“This morning,” he said. “Jesus. I’m sorry, kiddo. It’s awful.” Another pause. “I wish I could be there for you.”

“It’s okay, Marvin,” she said. “It wasn’t like we didn’t expect it.” She finished the water she’d left on the nightstand. Warm. Vaguely sulfurous. She wriggled her toes. No doubt about it:
her
feet. Dark green carpet, odd white feet. She tried to reclaim her dream, but all she could see was the carpet, flecked with lint, and those terrible, blue-veined feet.

“I got there in time to see her before she went,” Paige said, letting her breath out in a sigh. “I got to say good-bye.”

“Oh, sweetie,” Marvin said. “This is tough. Just really tough.”

“It
was
tough,” she said, feeling her head begin to nod. Though every fiber in her being rebelled against it, she felt herself being reclaimed by the reality of her life. Toes, feet, legs. She was going to have to accept it. She was absolutely who she was.

“But you know what, Marvin?” she said, hearing a note of gaiety in her voice. But it couldn’t be gaiety. More like hysteria, about to erupt. “Her dying, that was bad, but that wasn’t even the worst thing.”

“Look, Paige, are you okay? You sound a little funny.”

“I’m fine,” she said. “You want to know what the worst thing is or not, Marvin?”

“I’m here, kiddo. Talk to me.” His earnest, I’ll-do-anything-for-you voice. Good old Marvin.

“She wasn’t my mother,” Paige heard herself saying. She hesitated, feeling giddy, as if she were swept along by a rush from the drugs. But that had been a long time ago. And it had been just two Xanax, hadn’t it?

“It’s what my dear sister told me, anyway. They hadn’t even taken my mother out of the room, Marvin. And there she was, telling me I’d been adopted.”

Her own sister saying those things, hissing at her, following her out into the hallway, impossible, of course, but of course it explained so much.

“You see,” she told Marvin, “My mother couldn’t have any children, or so she thought, so they adopted me. And four years later, Barbara came along. What do you think of that, Marvin?” It sounded positively logical. And her voice echoed
Blithe Spirit
in her ears.
I could play any part
, she thought.
Any part at all
.

Only hissing, crackling noises at the other end of the line. Three thousand miles of amazement whispering back at her.

“Jesus God,” Marvin said finally. “Is it true?”

“So my sister says,” Paige answered. “Or should I still call her that?” She took a deep, shuddering breath. Though she had not smoked a cigarette in more than fifteen years, she longed for one now.

She pulled her hair back in one hand, stared at herself in the mirrored wall. She noted that she’d gone to sleep without wearing anything, something she rarely did. Breasts, belly, pubic hair. There’d been men who’d found these things attractive. Now she felt like a stranger in her own body. “So why were you calling me, anyway, Marvin?”

Another major hesitation. Actors
used
these moments, she thought. Civilians gave themselves away.

“Just calling,” he said. “To check in, see how you were doing.”

“Marvin,” she said. “Don’t bullshit me. This is not the time.”

“You’re not as tough as you try to be,” he said quietly.

“It’s the Brits, isn’t it?” she said.

“Paige…”

“I know, being the kind of people they are, it tore them up, having to tell you.”

“The deal’s not dead yet, Paige.”

She couldn’t hold back her laughter. Not really laughter, of course. A harsher, more bitter sound than that.

“You know how these things go,” he said. “They brought a new partner in…” He trailed off. “Tomorrow it could turn around again. They’ll be begging.”

“It’s okay, Marvin,” she said, glancing in the mirror again. Who was the woman there, wild-eyed and naked, squatting on a rumpled bed? “I’m doing fine down here.”

“It’s lousy timing, I know,” he said. “And this thing with your sister. It sounds pretty strange to me…”

She laughed again. “That makes two of us, Marvin.”

“I think you need to get right back out here after the funeral,” he said. “Get your feet on solid ground,” he said. “We’ll talk. We’ll get you together with the new people…”

“I’m going to take some time away, Marvin,” she said. She was up and off the bed now, the phone set in her other hand, while she traced the cord to its source. “I think I’m going to need that.”

“Sure,” he said. “I’ve still got the place in the desert. A couple of weeks out there, you’ll be raring to go.”

“
Away
, Marvin,” she repeated. “I’m going to be away for a while. But I’d like to feel I could call you. If I had to, I mean.” She’d found it now, a little plastic plate hidden behind the night-stand, the cord snaking in there, snugged by a plastic clip.

“Paige,” he said. “I don’t like the sound of this…”

“I’ll call you, Marvin,” she said. “I’ll call you when I can, okay?”

Her hand followed the cord down behind the stand until her fingers found the clip. Marvin was still talking, his voice imploring, his words wafting out into the ether. Good old Marvin. Dear Marvin. She tugged once, then twice, at the cord, and finally she was on her own.

Chapter 13

“I heard from Paige today,” Mahler said. He was at the sideboard of the sitting room, pouring a scotch. He was about to settle for half a tumbler, then added a little more. End of a trying week, he deserved something extra.

Rhonda sat unmoving in her chair. He couldn’t see her face from where he stood, but he knew she would have shown no reaction. He could have told her anything: the Academy had voted her an honorary Oscar, Rodney King had used his settlement to buy the house next door, she’d have sat there like a cigar-store Indian.

He took a healthy sip of the single-malt whiskey, made a face. Something his new partner had told him about, hundred and twenty bucks a bottle, engraved picture of quail and country houses on the label, tasted like battery acid. He poured it down the bar sink, reached for the Dewar’s. He dropped in a couple of fresh cubes and filled the glass without hesitation this time, came around to sit in the chair opposite her.

Nice little fire, wifey with her afghan over her lap, papa bear in a cozy chair with his end-of-the-week drink. Pretty picture. Except wifey had turned to stone.

He took a drink of the Dewar’s, grunted his satisfaction. Something around here still worked.

Rhonda had her thousand-mile gaze pointed in the direction of the mantelpiece, her eyes as clear and crystal blue as the day they’d met. Eyes you could spot across a room, or an airplane hangar, for that matter. Eyes that would bore into you until you’d have to look away, if you had any bullshit on your agenda, that is. There’d never been anything hidden in Rhonda’s agenda, that was for sure. He’d appreciated that. The same thing that drove most men in this business batty, he’d loved about her from the first minute. And why not. You spend every waking hour dealing with people who make Richard Nixon seem forthright, it was a tonic to come home to Rhonda. Or had been.

He had another slug of the scotch. Keep yourself off the hootch all week, didn’t it taste good when you finally gave in. He glanced at her, shook his head, sat back in the leather chair with a sigh. To tell the truth, even healthy, Rhonda probably wouldn’t mind if Rodney King were her next-door neighbor. And she’d have to be dragged kicking and screaming to pick up any Oscar. Popularity contests, she would grumble every year. Or any time one of the special lifetime statuettes was given out, “pity awards.”

“You’re a case, Rhonda.” He smiled. “A real case.” He lifted his glass.

“I was talking about Paige,” he continued after a moment. “She called to tell me things were okay, she’s holding up just fine. It was a blessing her mother went so quick, all that.” He noticed the quiver at Rhonda’s hand, the slightest movement, like some feathery aftershock that touched only her. The first time it had happened, everyone had taken it as a sign of hope, that she was tuned in, trying to communicate. But the doctors had set him straight: just a nervous tic, they assured him. A galvanic response to some transitory quirk of body chemistry. Remember those frogs from high school biology? Still, what could it hurt to talk to her, treat her as if she could comprehend? Who could say she didn’t, after all?

“The upside is, it’s given her and her sister a chance to reconnect. Be girls together. Talk. That part’s going so well, she’s going to stay a few more days.”

He turned to her, shaking his head. “It’s a shame, isn’t it? Takes a tragedy to make you appreciate what’s really important.” He made a waving motion with his hand, sent a little wave of his drink onto the carpet. “Family. Tradition. Roots.”

He glanced up at the array of pictures above the hearth. “Something we’re in short supply of out here, huh?” He gave a humorless laugh. “Nothing rooted deep enough in the whole state of California,” he said, “that won’t slide right into the Pacific when the big one comes. That’s our problem, when you think about it.”

He was about to settle back in his chair when he noticed that a thin line of spittle had inched from the corner of Rhonda’s lips. He took a Kleenex from the box on the table between them, dabbed it away. “So out here you just have to do your work, play the game, count your beans at the end of the week, see how you’re doing.”

He sucked up one of the cubes from the glass, crunched on it. “But we’re doing okay, Rhonda. Okay in that regard. Big doings, in fact. Deal of a lifetime. We’ll be set.” He looked up from the fire. “It’s going to take everything I’ve got to get this thing off the ground—everything
we’ve
got, in fact—but it’ll pay off in the end, you don’t have to worry about that.”

He swung his gaze away from her vacant stare. “And don’t worry about Paige. I have people keeping an eye on her down there.”

He sat quietly for a moment, then checked his watch. “Medicine time, kiddo.” He put his drink down, opened a drawer in the table. He withdrew a syringe, a med bottle, flicked the needle cap away with his thumbnail, stabbed through the seal, loaded up. Something one of her attendants could have done, of course, but what the hey, he could shoulder some of the burden, couldn’t he?

He held the syringe between his teeth, turned Rhonda’s arm in one hand, chafed the dry flesh inside her elbow with the other. He found an unscarred spot—a blessing, given the number of times she’d been stuck—jabbed, shot, tossed the works into the special disposal bag they were supposed to use—no needles washing up on the beaches anymore, thank you very much—all of it done in less than a minute. At first he’d been squeamish, but it was a daily routine: one does what one has to do.

He picked up his drink when it was over, saluted her. “You’re a trooper, Rhonda.” He noticed the needle guard on the carpet, bent, and tossed it into the can. Not a can, really, but something fashioned from an elephant’s foot. She’d brought it back from Africa, in the pre-endangered species days, before the whales and the owls had become their friends. Rhonda had wanted to get rid of the thing, but he’d held fast. He wondered if it might still bother her.

He glanced up at her. “Paige said she sends her love, sweetheart. Kiss-kiss.” He made smooching motions with his lips as he stood. He brushed her cheek with the back of his hand as he started away.

“I’m going to hit the shower,” he said. “There’s a screening at the Directors’ Guild tonight. Some remastered print, tribute to Gregg Toland. Bobby Wise, the ghost of Orson Welles, they’ll all ask about you.” He nailed the last of the scotch in his glass, glanced at the sideboard, decided against another. There was a picture on one side of the alcove, an old publicity still, Rhonda on the set—something vaguely borderlands seedy—with the big man himself. Orson, smiling and handsome, before he’d started to bloat, Joseph Cotten looking stern in the background, Rhonda spilling plenty of cleavage from an off-the-shoulder Carmen Miranda getup.

“I ever tell you about the last time I saw Orson?” he asked absently. “It was a party the winery he worked for got up out in the desert, at the Annenbergs. He was immense by then, took two guys to lower him into a chair, two more to get him up.” He shook his head, smiling at the memory, his head swimming a bit with the scotch. “Sonny Bono, who wasn’t the mayor yet, comes over to shake hands, Orson reaches up, grabs hold, then he loses his balance and falls back, all the time still holding on to Sonny. Looked like some kung fu movie,” he said, laughing. “Threw the little shit clear over the couch.”

He put his empty glass down, wiped a tear from his eye. He glanced over at Rhonda’s deadpan profile.
Jesus
, he thought.
You couldn’t get a laugh out of something like that, what was the point of living
?

“I’ll have Wesley look in on you,” he said finally, and went out.

***

He found her in the dressing room off the bedroom. She was bent over, rooting around in the small refrigerator they’d installed there, sorting through the trays of medications, vials of this and that, several bottles of Pellegrino, a Pilsner Urquell, a can of Slim-Fast. Her white dress had risen high enough to expose the tops of her hose, the snaps of a garter belt.

“Is that a nurse thing?” he said after a moment.

She started, banging her head on the edge of the refrigerator. She stood up, rubbing the top of her head as she stood. “I’m a physical therapist, remember?”

He liked the pout of her lips. “I didn’t know anyone still wore garter belts, that’s all.”

She rolled her eyes. “Another turn-on,” she said. “I’ll tell them to make a note on your chart.”

He moved closer, hooked his finger inside the front of her crisply starched dress. “God,” he said. “There’s just something about women in uniform.”

She smiled, rolled her hips into him, made little wriggling motions with her shoulders that helped ease his work with the buttons. “Probably that they tend to be women,” she said. She was moving on him now, the hem of her dress riding toward her hips, her breath quickening.
Get to a certain station in life
, he thought,
so many things were simpler
.

He struggled with the last button, then gave up and yanked it free. “The sound of ripping cloth,” he said. “That’s not bad either.”

“You’re an animal, Marvin,” she said, her voice flat. Another twist of her shoulders and she was out of her bra, a wisp of wire and lace.

“It looks like Victoria’s Secret in here,” he said.

She had her hands on him now. She leaned back, her hips levered against the tiny refrigerator. “Exactly like that,” she said. Her breath was coming in gasps.

Another tiny pane of lace that seemed to dissolve at his touch, then he was driving himself against her, hearing the crashing of glass from inside the refrigerator. “Wesley,” he managed, one hand grasping a coat hook, another braced against the wall, “have you ever thought about acting?”

She was matching his rhythm, a little song coming from somewhere deep in her throat, more like a growl, in fact. “All the time, Marvin,” she said. “All the time.”

He liked that. He meant to check the expression on her face, but it was a fleeting thought. Besides, he could picture it. Tough girl. Bored to tears. But she had her arms around him. In fact, she had everything around him. “Just say the word,” he told her. He was breathing hard enough for several people.

Somewhere glass was shattering, shelves of it crashing into ruin.
He
was ruined, of course. Utterly, morally bereft.

He bared his teeth, drove himself deeper.

And what she said was, “Now.”

***

“Do you have any idea, the size of the porno industry in this country?”

“In inches?”

He glanced over at her, her face illuminated by the silent flicker of the big-screen TV. It was late, she’d tucked Rhonda into bed hours ago, they’d been eating some Chinese food he’d dug out of the refrigerator. She glanced down, flicked a pearl of rice off one of her breasts. The picture of boredom. Absolute, total insouciance. But just get her started. The combination drove him crazy.

“In dollars,” he said. “American dollars.”

She turned to him. “Is this your way of getting it up again?”

He brushed the remark away. “Say somebody was to walk up and offer you every frigging McDonald’s franchise in the U.S.”

She shrugged. “If it were Saks, I might get excited.”

He waved the air with a chopstick, a professor with his pointer. “Throw Saks in, too. Plus Citicorp, and every airline ticket sold in a year from every carrier there is.”

“I know this is leading somewhere,” she said.

“You go to acting class, right?”

She shrugged, turned away.

“Come on,” he said. “Admit it. You’ve been angling to be discovered from the first day you showed up here.”

She gave him a sour look. “I’m happy being a physical therapist. I just do acting to express myself.”

“Sure.” He nodded with satisfaction. “So you’ll comprehend this figure. Total gross of the motion picture business last year was five point one billion.”

She sighed and turned her eyes to the television screen, where a Japanese couple writhed about a swaybacked double bed. He’d switched the singsongy Cantonese dialogue off but the subtitles were clear, one set in classical Chinese ideographs, another in English: “
Ooooooo…feel good…feel good
!”

“Does that count the six thousand I spent on lessons?”

“Maybe,” he said. “The record industry does about twice that. Legitimate publishing is about eighteen billion.”

“No wonder she went batshit, she had to listen to this in bed all the time.”

He rolled over on his elbow, stared at her in profile. “Porn is worth nineteen billion dollars, sweetheart, and that’s just what the bean counters know about. Some say it’s more like forty billion a year.”

She glanced down at him. “Jesus. This kind of talk
does
turn you on.”

“Last question,” he said.

She was up, reaching over him for something on the bed tray. “Shoot,” she said, her voice muffled.

“What’s the population of the United States?”

She found what she was after, worked her way on down the bed. “We didn’t have geography in therapist school, Marvin.”

She was crouched over him now, fussing with some tiny packet in her hand. Surely she wasn’t bothering with a condom, not after all they’d been through.

“Population of China, then. Take a guess.”

“A lot,” she said. She was smearing something on him, something cool and wet and slick. “Line them up four abreast, start marching them into the ocean, they’ll never stop coming.” She turned, grinned. “I saw it in that Ripley’s Believe It or Not place, down on the Boulevard.”

“One point three billion,” he said, suppressing a groan. Whatever had started off feeling cool was turning warm with the steady motion of her hands. “Five times the population of the U.S. You want the upside of doing business in China, multiply those figures I gave you by five.”

“Would I find that number on a stress monitor?” Her voice went one way, what she was doing another.

“If it reads out in green,” he managed. It was true, he’d had a point to make, but things were getting out of control. He was digging his heels into the bedclothes.

“Oooooo,” she said, mocking the wretched dialogue on the screen. “Feel
really
good!”