Honey Moon (38 page)

She shifted her weight to avoid the corner of his belt buckle where it was digging into her waist and remembered that she had interrupted him. "So what did you hear about Eric?"

"Oh, yeah. Apparently he tried to straighten out a curve on Mulholland last night. He was driving drunk, the stupid son of a bitch."

"I hope he's all right."

"I guess it was pretty serious. Some broken bones; I don't know what all.

Luckily, no one else was involved."

"It's hard to feel a lot of sympathy for him, isn't it? He just won an Oscar. He's rich and successful, at

the top of his career. And he's got two little girls. How could he be so self-indulgent?"

"Remember that he grew up with lots of money. I doubt he ever had to work too hard for anything. People like that don't have a lot of depth to them."

"It's funny, though, how somebody who's so obviously shallow can turn in the performances he does. Sometimes when I watch one of his films, he makes me shiver."

"That doesn't have anything to do with his performance. It's your leftover sexual attraction to him."

She laughed and threw herself against him, toppling him back against the couch so that he bumped his head on the wall.

"Damn little hellcat," he murmured against her mouth.

She pulled his shirttail from his jeans. "How much time do we have before you need to be back on the set?"

"Not much."

"Doesn't matter." The snap on his jeans gave way beneath her fingers. "You've been so quick on the trigger lately that I'm sure we can manage."

He reached back to close the open set of blinds on the motor home window.

"Are you casting aspersions on my staying power?"

"I absolutely am."

His hands slid beneath her sweater and unfastened her bra. He brushed his thumbs over her nipples. "If you wouldn't wiggle around so much and make all those moaning sounds in my ear, I might last longer."

"I do not moan. I—" She moaned. "Oh, that's not fair. You know I'm sensitive there."

"And about a hundred other places."

Within minutes, he had located half a dozen of them.

Their lovemaking was filled with laughter and passion. As sometimes happened when they were finished and Honey lay against his chest, she could feel tears welling in her eyes.

Thank you for giving him to me, God. Thank you so much.

* * *

Dash locked the door of the motor home behind him when he left. She opened the blinds so she could watch him walk away with that rolling, bowlegged gait she loved. Her very own cowboy husband. If she could only convince him to let her have a baby, she'd never ask for anything else again.

The view from the window was grim and depressing. The production vehicles and motor homes were grouped together in what had once been the parking lot for the abandoned light-bulb factory across the street, where the crew was gathered to film today's scenes. The factory's brick walls held spray-painted obscenities and gang messages. As always happened on location, a small crowd had formed to watch the actors: kids truant from school, people who had wandered out from the local shops, an assortment of vagrants. A street vendor was even selling ice cream bars.

Still, she didn't let the festive atmosphere delude her. For once, Dash was right to be cautious; this was a dangerous neighborhood. When they'd gotten out of their car that morning, she'd seen a broken hypodermic needle lying in a weedy hole in the asphalt.

She turned away from the window and walked over to the table where she was working on the paper for her lit class. She regarded the notes she had made without enthusiasm. She was twenty-five years old, too old to be going to school. Maybe that was why she was having so much difficulty getting started on this paper. Since she had no specific career goal in mind, she took classes more to fill time than for any other reason. All she wanted from life was to be Dash Coogan's wife, the mother of his child, and to play Janie Jones for the rest of her life. But if she told Dash school had begun to seem pointless, she knew exactly what he would say.

"Damn right it is. Give that underworked agent of yours a phone call and get your cute little butt back

to work in front of the cameras where you belong."

Dash persisted in believing that she was a great actress despite the fact that she'd only played one part. She wished he were right and her talent was genuine instead of a gimmick. Not even to him would she confess how much she missed acting.

Occasionally when he was away from the ranch, she read scenes from plays aloud: everything from Shakespeare to Neil Simon and Beth Henley. But it was always a disaster. She sounded phony and stilted, Eke an actor in a junior high play, and any fantasies she had about going back in front of the cameras quickly dissolved. In the past five years she'd lived through a humiliating amount of abuse from the press and the public. The only thing they hadn't been able to take away from her were her performances as Janie Jones, and she wouldn't let anything tarnish that.

She settled at the table to work, but she couldn't seem to concentrate. Instead, she found herself thinking about her last phone conversation with Chantal. As usual, Chantal had wanted money, this time so she and Gordon could take a cruise.

"You know I can't afford that," Honey had said. "I don't have a source of income now, and I've been telling you for the past year that I can't keep up the payments on your house much longer. Instead of cruises, you need to start thinking about finding some place less expensive to live."

"Don't start nagging me, Honey," Chantal had replied. "I can't take any more pressure now. Me and Gordon have both been under a lot of stress these last six months, ever since those doctors told me

about my fallopian tubes and all. It's hard facing the fact that I can't ever have a baby."

Chantal had said the one thing guaranteed to win Honey's sympathy, and she had immediately softened. "Chantal, I'm sorry about that. You know I am.

Maybe I should send you to another doctor. Maybe—"

"No more doctors." Chantal had said. "They've all told me the same thing, and I can't stand any more of those examinations. Besides, Honey, if you can find the money to pay all those doctor bills, I don't see why you can't come up with enough for a cruise."

Last night when Honey had mentioned the conversation to Dash as the two of them were getting ready for bed, he'd started badgering her again.

"Chantal's just using you. To tell the truth, I think she's more relieved than sorry that she can't get pregnant. She's too lazy to have a baby. Don't you realize that by making Gordon and Chantal so dependent on you, you've robbed them of the chance to become productive people? I know you always think you know what's best for everybody else in the world, but that's not necessarily true."

She'd slapped down her hairbrush and glared at him. "You don't understand, Dash. It's not in Chantal's nature to be productive."

"It's in anybody's nature if they're hungry enough. And what about Gordon?

He's got two arms and two legs. He's perfectly capable of carrying his own weight."

"But you don't understand how it was when I first came to L.A. Gordon threatened to take Chantal away from me. She was all I had, and I couldn't let that happen."

"He was manipulating you, is what he was doing."

"That may be, but I can hardly turn my back on Chantal now that Sophie's gone. It's been three years since Sophie died, and she still hasn't gotten over it."

"If you ask me, you've mourned your Aunt Sophie a lot longer than Chantal ever did."

"That's a dirt-rotten thing to say."

He'd begun noisily brushing his teeth, effectively shutting off further conversation. She'd stomped into the bathroom and closed the door, not wanting to admit even to herself that he was at least partially right. Sophie's death seemed to have hit her harder than Chantal. But it had been so unnecessary, so lacking in dignity. Her aunt had choked on the wing bone in some store-bought fried chicken Gordon had heated up in the microwave.

At least Buck Ochs was gone. Sophie hadn't even been cold in her grave before he'd brought home a hooker. To Gordon's credit, he'd thrown Buck out, and the last Honey had heard, Sophie's former husband had gone to work in a park near Fresno.

She pushed away thoughts of her family and forced herself to get to work on her paper. Two hours later, with her notes organized and the first few pages written, she rose to pour herself a fresh mug of coffee. As she glanced through the back window, she saw Dash walking across the narrow, dirty street toward the motor home.

Once again, her heart gave that silly hop-skip. She looked at her watch and saw that it was nearly four o'clock. Maybe he was done for the day and they could go home early. With a smile, she set down her coffee, unlocked the door, and stepped outside.

The late afternoon was hot and humid, more like July in South Carolina than May in southern California. The vans and trucks surrounding her were jammed so close together that the air couldn't circulate, and everything smelled of gasoline and exhaust fumes. As Dash crossed from the street into the parking lot, she waved at him.

He lifted his arm to wave back, but halfway up, his hand stalled. He was close enough that she could see him frown. Just then, she heard the muffled sound of a woman's cry. She turned sharply.

Off to her right, two of the larger motor homes were parked parallel to each other, forming a narrow,

dark tunnel less than five feet across. She saw a flash of movement toward the rear of the vehicles and took a quick step forward.

A thin, swarthy-faced man wearing a ripped red T-shirt and shiny black pants was dragging a young Hispanic woman into the confined space. Horrified, Honey watched as the man rammed the woman against the side of the larger vehicle and made a grab for the purse she held clamped in her arms. The woman screamed, hunching her shoulders to protect the purse at the same time she struggled to free herself from him.

The woman and her assailant were less than thirty feet away, and, instinctively, Honey began to rush forward, but before she could go far, she heard the thud of running feet behind her. Dash shot past,

giving her a hard shove in the center of her back that sent her sprawling.

She gasped as her bare knees scraped on the asphalt and the heels of her hands slid over the rough surface. The pain was sharp, but not as sharp as the sense of dread that swept through her. She jerked her head back up.

From the ground she could see it all. She could see the pattern of bright yellow flowers on the skirt of the woman's dress, hear her cries for help as she foolishly clung to her purse.

Dash stood not far from the point where Honey lay, his back to her, legs braced. Her heart pounding,

she opened her mouth to yell at him to be careful, not to play the hero, not to—

"Let her go!" Dash called out.

Time hung suspended, so that the most insignificant details would be forever etched in her mind with grotesque clarity. The veins of cracked asphalt that led to her husband's boots, the raveling hanging from the hem of his jeans. She felt the hot sun beating down on her back, smelled the asphalt, saw the long shadow cast by his tall frame. Dominating it all was the wild, drug-crazed expression in the eyes of the woman's assailant as he stood at the end of that dark tunnel formed by the production vehicles and spun to face Dash.

In one grotesque motion, the man snatched a snub-nosed pistol from the waistband of his shiny black pants and raised it. A horrible scream spilled from her throat as she watched the wild-eyed addict fire two shots.

Dash twisted and crumpled to the ground in a slow, awkward movement. A cloying gray fog enveloped her, making everything seem unreal. In the narrow tunnel the woman fell, too, a bright yellow blur, as the addict shoved her down and ran away, the purse lying forgotten at her side.

Dash's arm lay over the cracked pavement. Honey saw his bare wrist, the broad back of his hand. Sobbing like a wounded animal, she began to crawl toward him on her hands and her bloody, scraped knees. Through the gray fog, she told herself that everything would be all right. Just seconds ago she had waved at him. None of this was real because nothing this ghastly could happen without warning. Not so quickly, not without an omen.

She was barely aware of the shouts of the crew members as they came running from the other side of the street. She saw only her husband's fingers clawing at the asphalt.

She struggled to her knees beside him, her body shaking with wrenching sobs.

"Dash!"

"Honey ... I'm .. ."

Gripping his arms, she turned him so that his head and one shoulder were resting in her lap. A big stain was spreading over his chest like a sunburst. She remembered that he'd had a wound like this in one of his films, but she couldn't think which one it was.

She cupped his cheeks and whispered on a sob, "You can get up now. Please, Dash . . . Please, get

up . . ."

His eyelids flickered, and his mouth began to work. "Honey . . ." He whispered her name on a horrible wheeze.

"Don't talk. Please, God, don't talk . .."

His eyes locked with hers. They were full of love and bleak with pain. "I knew ... I'd ... break . . .

your . . . heart," he gasped.

And then his outspread hand went limp.

Inhuman, wrenching sounds slipped from her throat. The asphalt was so black, his blood so red. His

eyes stared up at her, open but unseeing.

One of the crew members touched her, but she shook him off.

She cradled her husband's head in her lap, stroked his cheek while she rocked and whispered to him. "You're going ... to be fine. You're all right. . . My darling . . . My own .. . cowboy."

His warm blood seeped through her skirt, making her thighs sticky. She continued to rock him. "I love you, my darling. I'll. . . love you . . . forever."

Her teeth were chattering and her body convulsing with shivers. "Nothing bad can happen. Not a thing. You're the hero. The hero never. . ."

She pressed kisses to his forehead, the ends of her hair dipping in his blood, tasting the blood in her mouth, muttering that he wouldn't die. She would die instead of him. She would take his place. God would understand. The writers would fix everything. She stroked his hair. Kissed his lips.