A waiter came up and Frank ordered a Harar beer. It was sweeter and stronger than domestic beer, but it was served with a dish of hot chilies and pickles and spicy nuts so he barely tasted it. Lizzie stuck with her usual Polish vodka, straight up and straight out of the freezer compartment.
‘You’ve had more than your fair share of romances, haven’t you?’ Frank remarked.
‘Uh-oh. That sounds as if you’re looking for advice.’
‘Not really. More like clarification.’
‘Go on.’
‘I was wondering if you’ve ever had an affair with somebody you knew nothing about. I’m not talking about a one-night stand here, I’m talking about an ongoing relationship that looks as if it could get serious.’
Lizzie took out a Marlboro and lit it. ‘I once had an affair with a man who told me that he did all of Marilyn Monroe’s lighting. Biff, his name was, can you believe it? Biff Brennan. “Miss Monroe, she doesn’t trust anybody else with her lights but me.” It turned out that he cleaned her windows.’
Frank shook his head. ‘I’m not kidding, Lizzie. After Danny died I met this girl and we started this incredibly intense affair. Intense physically, that is. And mentally, too, as far as she allows it to go. Her first name’s Astrid, but she won’t tell me her second name, or where she lives, or what she does for a living, or anything about her family. In the beginning it didn’t bother me, because I thought that she was just a way of taking my mind off Danny and escaping from Margot and all of those death stares that Margot kept giving me.’
‘But now you’re really beginning to care about this girl, and so it does bother you?’
Frank ran his hand through his hair. ‘Badly. More than I ever thought possible.’
The waiter returned. Lizzie ordered yemisir wat. ‘Red lentil stew. It tastes disgusting but I can’t resist the name.’ Frank went for alitcha fit-fit, a kind of pungent lamb casserole, and injera bread to mop it up with.
‘Maybe she’s married, this girl,’ Lizzie suggested, breathing smoke out of her nostrils.
‘I’m pretty sure she isn’t.’ He told her all about Astrid’s bruises, and her cigarette burns, and about his visit to Charles Lasser’s office. Lizzie crowed with delight when he told her that he had called Charles Lasser a sadist.
‘Why didn’t you ask me to come along? You’re such a killjoy! I have at least a thousand names I’d like to call Charles Lasser. Fundament Features, for a start.’
‘I just want him to stop beating up on her. Well, to tell you the truth, I want him to stop seeing her altogether.’
Lizzie coughed and crushed out her cigarette. ‘I’m sorry, Frank, but it sounds to me like you’re on a hiding to nothing. You’re a nice guy, an incredibly nice guy, but from what you’ve told me, this girl gets off on power and money and men who treat her bad. I used to be like that, when I was younger. My first husband used to smack me around but I always came crawling back. It was lack of confidence, partly, but it was also this ridiculous belief that if a guy hurts you, that means he still cares about you. It had a lot to do with sex, too. Having my hair pulled, that used to give me orgasms. Nowadays, if a guy pulls my hair, the only thing that comes off is my wig.’
‘So what do you think I ought to do?’
Lizzie reached across the table with her claw-like hand, encrusted with rings. ‘Talking from experience, Frank, I’d enjoy it while it lasts.’
Their food arrived, aromatic and very hot, and because Injera gave their customers no forks, they tore off large pieces of bread to eat it with.
‘What do you think?’ asked Lizzie with her mouth full. ‘Indescribable, isn’t it? I can’t decide if I love it or hate it.’
They talked about Pigs for a while. Frank didn’t feel that it was worth their while to write any more, not while the show was suspended, but Lizzie said, ‘It’s a living thing . . . Dusty and Henry are living, breathing people.’ She said they ought to develop a romantic relationship between Dusty and Libby, and that Henry should start taking slide guitar lessons from an old blues picker called Muddy Puddle, who was born the month after Muddy Waters when it wasn’t raining so hard.
‘I had a friend who received spirit messages from Louis Armstrong,’ said Lizzie. ‘He used to give her recipes for chicken gumbo.’
‘Do you believe in any of that?’ asked Frank, cautiously. ‘Talking to the spirits, that kind of thing?’
‘Certainly I do. My mother died when I was only six, and my father remarried. I didn’t like my stepmother at all, even though – when I look back at it – she tried very hard to be kind to me. So every night before I went to sleep I used to have long conversations with my dead mother, telling her what I was doing at school, and how much I wanted her to come back.’
One of the smiling waiters came up to their table and said, ‘You finish, sir?’
Frank looked down at his alitcha fit-fit. He felt that he had eaten quite a lot of it, but it looked as if there were twice as much in his bowl as when he had started. ‘Yes, I have, thanks. Very good. Very filling.’ The waiter cleared the table, still smiling. Frank was sorely tempted to ask him what was so goddamned funny.
Lizzie lit another cigarette. ‘One day I went to school and I started my period in the middle of a math lesson. My skirt was stained and you can imagine how embarrassed I was. That night I lay in bed and cried and told my mother all about it. I turned over and went to sleep for a while but then I felt somebody touching my shoulder. I opened my eyes and there was my mother, standing over me. I could smell her perfume. I could feel her warmth. She seemed as real to me then . . . well, as you do now.
‘She said, “Don’t cry, Lizzie. You’re a woman now, like me.” And then she said, “Look under my dressing table . . . nobody knows that it’s there.” Then she simply vanished. At first I was sure that I had been dreaming. But the next morning I went into my stepmother’s dressing room and looked under the dressing table, and there it was.’
She reached down inside her frilly blouse and produced a pendant. It was a silver mermaid, set with turquoises. ‘It was hers,’ said Lizzie. ‘It had been missing ever since she died, and my father had looked everywhere for it. Only my mother could have known where it was, so to me that was proof that she really had come to see me that night, and that I hadn’t been dreaming, after all.’
‘Have you ever seen her again?’
‘Once, at my father’s funeral. I might have been mistaken, because she was standing in the shadow of some trees, but I had a very strong feeling that it was her. I’ve heard her voice, though, several times, especially when I’ve been stressed or unhappy, which usually happens whenever I get married.’ She paused, puffed smoke. ‘In other words, every couple of years.’
Frank gave Lizzie a ride back to her cottage off Clearwater Canyon. As he opened the car door for her, she said, ‘Remember what I said, Frank. Live for the moment. Enjoy it while you can. Look at me, whenever I met a man I thought, this is the one, this is for ever. But there’s no such thing as forever, Frank, and tomorrow never brings what you expect it to bring, so it’s not worth making plans.’
‘Remind me to call you next time I’m feeling really depressed.’
Lizzie gave him a kiss on the cheek, and then another. ‘You’ll be OK,’ she told him. ‘I’ll do the cards for you tonight, just to make sure.’
‘If it’s bad news, I don’t want to know.’
He climbed back into his car and waved goodbye to her. It was then that his cellphone rang, and it was John Berenger, and he was so angry that he could scarcely speak.
‘Do you know how close I came to being canned? I have a family to support, Frank, in case you’d forgotten! I just want to tell you this: don’t ever call me again, ever, even if you have the greatest idea since The Simpsons.’
‘John, I’m sorry. I needed to talk to Lasser and I couldn’t think of any other way.’
‘Why didn’t you just send him a poison-pen letter, for Christ’s sake, like everybody else?’
Twenty-One
Frank had just taken a shower when he heard a knock at the door. He wrapped a towel around himself and went to open it. It was Astrid, wearing a bright-pink sleeveless dress and bright-pink lipstick to match, and her hair was all frisky with gel.
‘Aren’t you pleased to see me?’ she said. She took off her wraparound sunglasses. Her bruises had faded to yellow and lilac, and her eyes were far less swollen, although she still had a slightly foxy look about her.
‘Of course. Come on in.’
She came into the living room and sat down in the last triangle of sunlight. He stood watching her and said nothing at all. ‘Well?’ she asked him. ‘What’s happened? Cat got your tongue?’
‘No, everything’s fine. How about a drink?’
She frowned at him. ‘Something’s wrong, isn’t it? You don’t like my hair like this.’
‘Your hair’s fine.’
‘What, then? You don’t like my lipstick?’
‘Your lipstick’s fine, too.’
‘Then what?’
Frank took a breath. ‘I talked to Charles Lasser. I told him to stop beating up on you.’
Astrid slowly covered her mouth with her hand. She didn’t speak but her eyes said, oh, my God.
Frank said, ‘I know you told me to keep out of your life. I know you told me to mind my own business. But so long as you and I are lovers . . . come on, Astrid, you are my business. I care for you. I love you. I can’t just stand by and let that bastard hit you and burn you and treat you like shit.’ There was a very long silence. Eventually, Frank said, ‘I can’t, Astrid, and that’s all there is to it. Even if you tell me that you and I are finished.’
‘You really told Charles Lasser to stop hitting me?’
Frank nodded.
Astrid stood up, and came over to him, and draped her arms around his shoulders. ‘I can’t believe it. What did he say?’
‘What do you think he said? He told me that he didn’t have any idea what I was talking about.’
‘He denied it?’
‘Are you kidding? He denied that you even existed.’
‘So what did you say?’
‘I warned him to stay away from you, that’s all.’
Astrid scanned his face with those washed-out eyes as if she were trying to commit every detail to memory, as if she might never see him again. ‘Do you think you scared him?’
‘What? I very much doubt it. But I warned him that if he touches you again, I’ll come after him. And, by God, Astrid, I will.’
‘So what did he say to that?’
‘He said that if I ever mentioned his name again he’d sue my ass off.’
Astrid tugged at the towel around his waist. It loosened and dropped to the floor. She took hold of his penis and rubbed it up and down. ‘So long as he doesn’t sue your cock off, I don’t mind.’
Later, he opened his eyes and found her staring at him, very closely.
‘What?’ he asked her.
She stroked his eyebrows, and then licked her fingertip and stuck them up into devilish points. ‘I think you’re incredibly brave.’
‘I’m not brave. I never have been. But I don’t believe in giving in to men like Charles Lasser.’
She started to tweak his hair into points, too. ‘I’m making you into a demon.’ He caught hold of her hand to stop her, but he scratched his wrist on her ring.
‘Hey, that’s sharp.’
She spread her fingers so that he could admire it. It sparkled intensely green in the lamplight. ‘Emerald,’ she said. ‘My father gave it to me for my sixteenth birthday.’
‘It’s real? I wondered about that when I first saw it. He must be pretty generous, your dad.’
‘Not really. He never gave a bent cent to anybody without wanting something in return.’
‘So what did you give him, in return for that?’
Astrid gave a non-committal shrug. ‘Emerald’s my birthstone. It’s a saint’s stone, too.’
‘A saint’s stone? What does that mean?’
‘Twelve saints have their own special jewels, didn’t you know that? St Nevile’s is sapphire, St Peter’s is jasper. Emerald, that’s St John the Evangelist. All twelve jewels together were called the Stones of Fire and they used to belong to Lucifer. But Lucifer misbehaved and so God took them away and buried them in the walls of Jerusalem. If you have a whole set of twelve, they say that you can call on the angels to help you.’
‘I could use an angel right now.’
She kissed his nose. ‘Has it occurred to you, Mr Bell, that you have one already?’
He didn’t answer her, but looked her in the eyes. She was so close that he could hardly focus.
After more than a minute, she said, ‘What?’
‘I know I don’t own you. I know that what you do when you walk out of here is entirely your own business, and that it shouldn’t concern me. But you and Charles Lasser? I can’t get my head round it.’
‘I thought Charles Lasser denied that I existed.’
‘Somebody hurt you. If it wasn’t him, then who was it?’
Astrid said nothing. After a while, she turned over and closed her eyes, and pretended that she was sleeping. Frank watched her, and couldn’t help thinking about Charles Lasser, bulky and coarse, with his Neanderthal forehead and his deep-sunken eyes. For the first time in his life, he actually felt like killing somebody. It was a frightening feeling – frightening but surprisingly exciting. He dreamed that he was driving after Charles Lasser in a subterranean parking structure, determined to run him down.
The next morning, on the seven o’clock news, Commissioner Campbell announced that Dar Tariki Tariqat had contacted the police department to express their ‘anger, dissatisfaction and sore disappointment.’ They were ‘outraged’ that the major networks were still showing ‘profane’ television series, in spite of the fact that The Wild and the Willing had been replaced by reruns of Highway to Heaven, and that most of the daytime soaps had given way to cartoons and wildlife programs. In the media, a certain gallows humor was beginning to emerge. Los Angeles Times reporter Walter Makepeace remarked that ‘the only distinction between watching early episodes of The Waltons and being blown up by 250 lbs of TNT is that watching early episodes of The Waltons is a far more prolonged and agonizing way to go.’
Dar Tariki Tariqat said ‘it is obvious to us that the entertainment industries have no intention of changing their evil ways or atoning for their blasphemies. Therefore we will start our campaign of bombing as promised on the stroke of twelve noon today. This will be the first of eleven bombs to be detonated once every twenty-four hours, or until we are satisfied that the entertainment industry has seen the wrongfulness of the path which it seems so wickedly determined to follow.’
‘Did you hear that?’ Frank asked Astrid. ‘I don’t know where you’re going today – OK, OK, and I’m not going to ask. But like they used to say on Hill Street Blues, let’s be careful out there.’
‘I’m not going to Star-TV, if that’s what you’re worried about. Or Charles Lasser’s house.’
‘Just as well. My feeling is that Star-TV is next on the list.’
He poured out two mugs of coffee and they sat at the kitchen counter together, drinking it, their eyes fixed on each other. Frank wondered what she was thinking, but her expression gave nothing away.
‘It is essential that you report any suspicious behavior by any individuals,’ said Commissioner Campbell. ‘Also, please dial nine-one-one if you’re concerned about any vehicles that may be parked in unusual locations, or any vehicles being driven in a manner that for any reason at all attracts your attention. Your calls will be treated with the utmost seriousness, so please, no hoaxers. In the coming hours, many hundreds of lives could depend on your vigilance.’
‘It’s frightening, isn’t it?’ said Astrid.
‘Yes. But you still won’t tell me where you’re going today?’
She reached out and touched his han
d. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll be safe.’
‘Nobody’s safe.’
‘You don’t think so? I’m invulnerable, Frank. Nobody can hurt me.’
At ten twenty A.M., feeling bored, Frank decided to drive over to Fox. Lizzie had given him fresh enthusiasm for Pigs when she described Dusty and Henry as ‘living, breathing people.’ He had roughed out three or four new story lines and he wanted to find out what Mo and Lizzie thought about them. He had decided that the show needed more pathos, more tears. Maybe Dusty’s grandma could be told by her doctor that she was suffering from a life-threatening illness. If anything was guaranteed to bring a lump to the audience’s throat, it was a young boy’s gradual realization that no matter how much he loved her, his grandma wasn’t going to live forever.
When he tried to open the office door, he found that he could only push it six inches before it stuck.
‘Daphne?’ he said, putting his head around it. Daphne was on her hands and knees, surrounded by mountains of files and dog-eared scripts and photographs. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Bell! I didn’t know you were coming into the office today.’
‘I was pining for you, Daphne. I couldn’t stay away a minute longer.’
She shifted a stack of folders away from the door. ‘I’m sorry about all this mess. Mr Cohen said that since I didn’t have anything else to do, I should sort out the filing cabinet.’
Frank squeezed his way in. As he stepped over the heaps of papers, he caught sight of a glossy black and white publicity photograph of the three of them – him and Mo and Lizzie – taken when Pigs first went on air. He stooped down to pick it up.
At the same time, Mo came out of the next room, a cigar in his mouth, patting the pockets of his vest in the time-honored gesture of a man looking for a light.
‘Look at us,’ said Frank. ‘I never realized that we used to be so young.’
Mo frowned at the photograph and said, ‘I never realized that I used to be so handsome.’
‘That’s me. You’re the ugly one standing on the right.’
Mo picked a book of matches from Daphne’s desk and lit his cigar. ‘So that’s it? You came all the way into the office today just to make me feel grotesque? You could have made me feel equally bad by email. Hey, Daphne, who wrote Forty Years as a Lion-Tamer?’
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