Touch (1987) (17 page)

Howard Hart had to think about that a minute; he had to try to picture it.

As he did, Bill Hill said, "Queen for a night. The chance to see your ratings shoot up from fourth place to first. It wouldn't hurt you, would it?"

"What do you know about ratings?"

"Nothing. But I read in the TV column in the paper you're about to get canceled if your audience doesn't pick up."

"What if the guy doesn't produce?" Howard Hart said.

"What if you had Neil Diamond on and all of a sudden he couldn't sing a note?" Bill Hill said. "This is what Juvie does, he performs miracles. If you'd rather watch him on another network, let me know right now." Bill Hill started to get up.

"Let's say I agree," Howard Hart said, thoughtful, as though he were still undecided.

"Then you hand me one of your standard contracts," Bill Hill said, "stating you'll pay me one million and forty thousand dollars for the delivery of Juvenal the miracle worker."

Howard Hart threw his head back and laughed and laughed, then shook his head and pretended to wipe tears from his eyes.

Bill Hill waited until he was through.

He said, "You got a whole bunch of commercials on your two-hour show. I counted thirty-one times including the station breaks, and I understand the network sells its time for about a hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars a minute. That's a lot of money. I want a million forty thousand of it."

"You don't know what you're talking about," Howard Hart said. "It isn't that simple."

"Then it's up to you to make it simple," Bill Hill said, "so I can understand it. We won't get into residuals on reruns, I'll talk to my lawyer and let you know what kind of a cut we want. But as it stands now, I sign for a million forty thousand or you don't get your miracle worker. Somebody else does. Or, if you try to tamper with Juvie or reach him except through me, the deal is automatically off and you're out. You want him or not?"

"What's the forty thousand for?" Howard Hart said.

"Waiting in the lobby while you read the paper. A thousand dollars a minute."

"Well--" Howard Hart sighed. "It's gonna take a few days."

"That's all I'm giving you," Bill Hill said. "Signed by Friday or no deal."

He walked out, certain of getting his contract. The secret, he'd tell Lynn, was knowing how to talk to big shots. Give them the same shit they gave everybody else.

Something else happened that Tuesday, August 16, 1977. Elvis Presley died.

Chapter
19

" 'STOP IT,' shrieked a grandmother in a wheat-colored pantsuit. 'I can't take any more.' The radio clicked off but her weeping didn't stop."

Bill Hill sat on the couch reading aloud from the paper.

"It says he was laid out in a simple white tuxedo with a silver tie."

Lynn was in the kitchen. She said, through the counter opening, "I read Harmony House sold out his albums, three hundred and fifty of 'em, by ten-fifteen yesterday morning."

It was 2:35 P.M. now, Thursday.

Lynn was trying to act natural: in the kitchen cutting up celery and carrot sticks, opening a bag of corn chips and putting some in a bowl . . . finishing what she had been doing when she heard the door buzz and jumped, then had gone in to buzz the downstairs door and waited, and must have looked surprised when she saw it was Bill Hill. ("No, I'm not mad at you. No, nothing's wrong. . . . Yes, as a matter of fact, I am expecting somebody. . . . None of your business, if you don't mind." With a snippy tone that didn't even sound like her. Then, trying to be nice, "You want to sit down for a minute?") Bill Hill had been sitting in there at least fifteen minutes now and it was almost twenty to three.

" 'Michele Leone, thirty-two, of East Detroit, called the White House and urged President Carter to decree a national day of mourning.' "

He wasn't dumb, Lynn was thinking. If he knew somebody was coming and she didn't want him here-- But he kept reading to her.

"Here's one. ' "I got goose pimples," said Jane Freels of Livonia. "I felt numb. But I didn't cry till I played 'Love Me Tender' and heard his voice. My little girl, Shannon, stared at me like she was frightened and kept saying, 'What's wrong, mummy?' " ' "

Just tell him to leave, that's all.

" ' "I was talking to my other married girl friends today and they said nobody feels like doing anything. They're just numb. We just watch TV waiting to see if they're going to show anything about him. We just can't get over this." ' "

I can't either, Lynn thought, if he doesn't get the hell out of here. Doesn't call or anything, just walks in--

" ' "He was the king of rock and roll," Jane concluded, with tears in her blue eyes. "He started it all. He made us what we are today." ' Is that a tribute," Bill Hill said, "or is that a tribute? You imagine the money they're gonna make on his records and stuff? They're selling Elvis Presley memorial T-shirts, pennants--the guy that's making them says, 'I know he would've liked them.' "

"Too bad you're not down there." Lynn put the carrots and celery in the refrigerator, looked around the kitchen, and came out to the living room.

Bill Hill was saying, well, things were happening up here, too. "For us, anyway, you and I. But you better sit down if I'm gonna tell you about it, because you're not gonna believe it at first and when you do you're liable to faint."

"You didn't bring a hat, did you?"

"You're cute," Bill Hill said. "Call whoever it is and tell him you're busy. Jesus, I hope it isn't the guy with the hair on Channel Seven. You got more class than that."

"You mind if we don't discuss my personal affairs?" With the snippy tone again that she didn't like. It was hard to keep her voice natural.

"If you want to be that way," Bill Hill said. He watched her walk over to the sliding glass door and look out at the fairway, then turn, restless, gather up the newspapers from the coffee table, then not know what to do with them. "If you don't want to be partners again--"

"We were never partners before."

"--and together find success and happiness, not to mention a whole lot of money."

"Leave him alone," Lynn said. "That's all I've got time to say to you right now. Leave the poor guy alone and let him do what he wants."

"You just said it, 'the poor guy,' " Bill Hill said. "For him to be poor and left alone is not only dumb, it's a sin; because when you're gifted and you don't take advantage of the gift and use it, you know what that's like? It's like an insult to Almighty God, telling Him you don't want the gift. 'Keep it, Lord, I want to be left alone and hide out in some monastery or alcohol center.' "

"Bill, leave. Okay?"

He got up, studying her with a relaxed, confident expression, straightening his tan trousers and short-sleeved safari jacket.

He said, "You look nice, you know it? You ought to dress up more."

"I'm not dressed up."

"Those are good-looking slacks, nice fit--nice starched white blouse. You ought to throw those cutoffs and that Bob Marley T-shirt away. And take Waylon down, get a nice painting."

"Bill?"

"I'm going. Have a nice time with your boyfriend."

* * *

Lynn's two-bedroom-with-balcony apartment was on the second floor of a four-unit tan brick building that was less than ten years old. In the mile-square complex of the Somerset Park Apartments--with its curving streets, sweeping lawns, its golf course, tennis courts, swimming pools--all the buildings were two stories, beige, tan, or gray, cleanly styled with sort of mansard roofs. The front door of each building was always locked. A visitor pushed the button opposite one of the four names and the front door was buzzed open from inside the apartment.

At ten after three, Lynn heard the sound and jumped--again, even though she was expecting it--as anxious, excited, as she had ever been in her life.

She buzzed the door and went out into the hall to wait, facing the stairway, the wrought-iron railing, the cathedral window that rose from the landing--the turn in the stairway--all the way up to the ceiling. The sun was streaming in through the window. It was quiet. It was perfect.

Juvenal came up the stairs, smiling. Not looking around, smiling right at her.

Chapter
20

"HOW'D YOU GET HERE?"

"They let me use a car."

"You found it all right?"

"Sure. I was here before."

"But I drove. You know, unless you were paying attention--"

"I remembered."

"Well, you look good."

"So do you."

"I was surprised when you called--"

"I had to get out of there. All the people coming to see me, even Time magazine and Newsweek, I couldn't believe it. It got so the news people were taking over the coffee shop." Juvenal paused, waited, looking at her. "That's not the reason I came though."

"I know," Lynn said.

"I came because I wanted to see you. In fact--do you want to know the truth?"

"Tell me."

"I was dying to see you."

She wasn't sure who moved first. Her arms went around his body and his arms gathered her in close, around her shoulders; she could feel his hands on her back. They held each other very tightly, standing in the hall, the sun coming in. They had reached this point almost immediately, after only brief moments of looking at each other, making opening remarks, barely able to wait, because they both knew and felt it and didn't have to hint or fool around or be coy about it. They both knew. They wanted to hold each other as tightly as they could and that's what they were doing. For the moment there was nothing else.

"I was dying too," Lynn said.

"I couldn't wait. I couldn't get out of there fast enough."

"Let's go inside, okay?"

He said, "Just a second."

She raised her face. His face was there, eyes looking into eyes, to see the person in there. They began kissing each other's mouths, moving their heads and sliding gently and getting the soft fit, trying to get inside and be lost in each other. Was it possible?

They held and kissed again, without moving, standing in the living room.

They held and kissed on the cranberry couch with Waylon above them and the newspaper accounts of Elvis on the coffee table . . . Lynn a young girl again kissing, necking--no, it wasn't necking, it was kissing and feeling it as though for the first time, kissing for kissing, not to lead to something else, though it was going to, she knew. There were things she wanted to say to him but didn't want to speak now unless she could whisper very, very quietly and not interrupt the mood or the silence. For a moment, a split moment, she saw herself alone again, after, and was afraid.

He said to her, very close but looking at her, both of them low on the couch, half sitting, half lying, he said that he loved her. He said, "I love you," in a way she had never heard before in her life. "I love you."

Lynn said, "I love you." And then tried it again, "I love you. Either way, it's true. Any way you can say it. But I wasn't prepared. I mean I knew I loved you, but I wasn't prepared to say it. I don't want to talk yet."

He said, "Boy, it's good."

She said, "I want to feel you. I'm dying to. Can I feel you?"

He said, "I want to feel you. I want to see you."

She put her hand on his groin, on the tight, hard bleached denim. "I feel you. There you are, right there. Part of you."

He put his hand on her breast. "I feel you."

"You felt me before."

"No, I wasn't feeling you then."

"I know you weren't."

"I'm feeling you now. You feel so good. That's you, isn't it?"

Her hand moved up to unbutton the buttons of his shirt and slid into the opening, her fingers brushing his side that had bled, moving up to his chest. "I love your body. I saw your body and I loved it and now I love it more."

He said, again, "I want to see you. Where are you?"

"I'm here."

He unbuttoned her blouse and opened it.

"You said my breasts were okay."

They were smiling at each other.

"Your breasts are beautiful. Your breasts are the most beautiful things I've ever seen. They're not things, but I can't think of a good word. The most beautiful breasts I've ever seen--no, because that's not right."

She was looking at him with a question, a doubt, hesitant.

He said, "Don't think. Don't talk now."

She said, "I love you so much. But I don't want you to feel--you know, after, that I'm making you do something."

He said, "What I feel, I feel good. Listen, do you want me to tell you exactly how I feel, if I can, how much I love you and how I feel when I'm with you?" He was brushing her face with his mouth. "Do you want to talk about what we're doing or do you want to just be here and that's all, because I think it's enough. I can say I've never said this before to anyone. I have no practice, no moves . . . let's take our clothes off . . . do you say that or do you just take them off or do you say something romantic first? . . . No, don't tell me, because what difference does it make . . . if you've never done this before you think, well, there's only one way to do it, not several ways. How many ways can you take off your clothes? You can tell me that."