by Nancy Bush
She’d been on her way home, she remembered with a start, as if it were a long-forgotten memory instead of a recent plan. Home to John.
Only, John wasn’t there, for her.
Pain seized her in a sharp, relentless grip. Turning her face to her shoulder, she squeezed her eyes closed, fighting back tumultuous emotions that threatened to explode from within.
At length a long shudder swept her body and some of the pain eased. Reluctantly, she pulled herself from the bathwater, towel-dried, and fell into bed, naked.
Much later she awoke, jerking bolt upright in bed to a room black as pitch, a scream issuing from her throat. Her heart thundered in her chest. Her skin was drenched in sweat. Her lungs felt tied down by steel bands.
Frozen with fear she counted the seconds, nerves jangling, senses searching through the blackness, seeking out danger. For the space of a full minute she was completely lost; she had no idea where she was or if, in fact, she was alone.
Gradually, she realized the illumination at the end of the room was from a faint crack in the curtains that covered the full length of the wall. Climbing off the bed, she was somewhat disconcerted to realize she wore no pajamas. Cold by nature, she always wore something to bed. More than one lover had commented on her prudish behavior—after all, she, Denise Scott, was known for being a hot ride in the sack.
How little men know . . .
She padded across the carpet toward the sliver of light, her toes digging into its luxurious thickness. She was somewhere nice, at least. Better than some sleazy motel.
Banging her shin on a low table, Denise bit off a stream of vituperative fury before throwing back the curtains.
It was night. Deep night. The illumination came from floodlights trained on a fountain in the center of a hexagonal desert garden bounded on all six sides by separate buildings.
“Desert Paradise,” she remembered with a rush of relief, pulling the memory out with almost painful effort. She was at the Desert Paradise Hotel in Scottsdale.
Opening the glass door, she stepped onto the balcony, encountering a coolish night. The soft breeze felt good against her bare skin, and she closed her eyes and drank of the sweet, dry air, savoring a rare moment of perfect harmony and solitude.
It was at times like these that Denise felt like she’d been sleepwalking for eons. This then was reality, and it was such a welcome change. One moment she would be lost in a virtual haze, the next—wham!—something woke her up. The trigger could be anything. A certain smell. A snatch of music. A sudden inexplicable feeling of déjà vu that sent her to happier times.
But it didn’t happen near enough. Less and less she opened her eyes to this incredible sensation of being truly alive and free. So she stood on the balcony in utter nudity and didn’t give a rat’s ass if the whole compound woke up to see.
Carolyn’s Mercedes.
Groaning, Denise realized she’d basically stolen the woman’s car. She was lucky she wasn’t being hauled in right now for grand theft auto. Wouldn’t that be a hoot: HOLLYWOOD ACTRESS STEALS MERCEDES FROM FRIEND.
Yeah, a real yuck a minute.
She was going to have to call Carolyn and explain, though what explanation she could give was anybody’s guess.
Second, she had to call Dinah.
Denise grimaced. Poor Dinah. She’d really done her dirty. She’d left her in John’s house—although technically that house belonged to her!—without a word of warning. Not that John would bother her. The misogynistic devil was deep into production of Borrowed Time according to Leo, and Denise knew it would take a tsunami large enough to drown the state of California to pry John away from his film now.
But she needed to come clean. Now, while she was in total control, without those increasingly frequent and terrifying delusions to screw up everything.
Your delusions are of your own making.
Hunching her shoulders, Denise slipped back inside the room, feeling her way to the edge of the bed. Well, maybe they were and maybe they weren’t. At this point, she didn’t really care. She just wanted them to stop.
Oh, Dinah, help me.
Denise had promised she would call. She’d sworn she would let Dinah know where she was staying. She’d vowed that her sister would only need to house-sit for six weeks.
What did you hope to prove?
Glancing around, Denise read the digital clock on the opposite nightstand—2:30 A.M.
Her hand scrambled along the wall for a light switch. Encountering nothing, she fumbled for the bedside lamp. Her fingers began to tremble. Why did she suddenly feel so panicky?
A snatch of the nightmare that had woken her came back. A hand clapped over her mouth. Foul breath on her face. A sense of drowning.
“God . . .” She shivered violently as her fingers encountered the switch at the base of the lamp.
The room charged into blinding light, made more so by the mirrored wall behind the bed. Biting off an aborted scream, Denise realized the reflection was hers—and the chilling sight of it sent thoughts of calling Dinah and Carolyn right out of her head.
She wasn’t Denise. She was an older, tarnished woman with worn-out eyes and shaking limbs. A broken spirit. A bloodless ghost. Dead already. Beaten, spiritually and physically, by a monster.
She was her mother.
Stop lying there like a piece of meat. Get out of bed!
For a vivid instant she saw her stepfather standing over her resting mother, his shoulders tense and wide, his big hands itching to slap her around. Then he did hit her, she remembered, all the while belittling her. He’d done his damnedest to kill her. He’d finally succeeded, too. She’d slipped away to some other place one night and never came back.
Denise recalled her face. Unearthly still and pale as porcelain. Removed from life’s painful blows. At peace, just like all the preachers and ministers and priests and rabbis predicted. Her mother finally found peace.
Shivering, Denise pulled herself back from that precipice. She couldn’t think about Mama without falling. That’s what it was. Falling into a pit, or hyperspace, or endless night. That’s what it felt like, and Denise had learned she’d best avoid thinking about any part of the past if she wanted to hang on to the last shreds of her own sanity.
She had to think hard to remember Carolyn’s number, but to her relief she managed to come up with it. Putting the call through, Denise realized it was 4:30 A.M. in Houston. Bad idea to call this early. She almost hung up but decided that a hang-up in the dead of night would probably scare Carolyn worse. To her amusement, she got the answering machine.
“Carolyn, it’s Denise. I borrowed your car. I’ll be back in Houston tomorrow . . .” Or the next day, she thought, wincing. She wasn’t sure how long it would take or when she’d actually find the energy to drive all the way back. What was wrong with her? How had she thought she could just drive home to L.A. and expect John to be waiting there with open arms? “Sorry,” she added lamely. “See you soon.”
She found herself unable to recall Dinah’s cell number before she remembered Dinah was at the Malibu house. Shaking her head in frustration, Denise asked herself how she could be so sharp about some things—like Carolyn’s number that she’d only dialed once or twice—and be so dull about others.
It was all part and parcel of her screwed-up brain. She had a fabulous mind for trivia. An almost photographic memory. When it came to learning lines, no one was her equal. She had it down upon one read-through. It was easy. Dead easy. And acting out those fantasies even easier.
She was made for Hollywood. A blond beauty with oodles of talent and an unformed inner self, which made it easy to slide down the chute to sex, drugs, and ultimate destruction. One of her shrinks had used that phrase, somewhere along the line.
But then, sleeping with the myriad of shits who ran the entertainment industry, from her first agent to her last director, hadn’t been as easy. Contrary to popular belief, Denise was pretty sure she had a low sex drive.
Try that on f
or size, Dr. Stone. Your sex-crazed patient is really bored of the whole damn thing! Hey, a good fantasy can take the place of all that silly panting and thrusting any day.
Derek Sather. The director of Cosmos. Her latest, and possibly last, picture. Lean and good-looking, and certain of his attractions, Derek had come on to Denise during contract negotiations, making it clear she owed him some favors of a very personal nature. He had a way of whispering guttural non-sequitur sex-talk in her ear when no one was around, which Denise had found more amusing than titillating.
“Big cock, sweetheart,” he’d moaned against her earlobe. “Big, big cock.”
You’re an asshole.
“Creamin’ yet, baby? Doin’ it for me?”
You’re a persistent asshole.
“Chewin’ gum, baby. Got sweet juices to fill you up with.”
You’re an inventive, persistent asshole.
She was a big name. She could have said no. But then he would have made her life hell during production in a thousand little ways. And by this time John had washed his hands of her. If they spoke at all, it was to hammer out the details of their divorce, and even that was mostly done through their lawyers.
So...
So she’d slept with Derek and learned that his sex-talk was the best part of the experience. With Derek it was more slam, bam, thank you, ma’am. Not exactly the trip to Kinksville he’d promised.
Still, for that section of time while Cosmos was being filmed, she’d made herself believe it was Derek who could offer her the “secret to happiness”—that mythical state for which she was on a perpetual quest.
Abruptly, Denise’s mood darkened. She recognized it as the beginning of the end for this period of precious reality. The edges of her brain grew fuzzy and unclear.
Hurrying to finish her tasks, she called the Malibu house and prayed Dinah was spending an evening in and would answer the house phone.
“Hello?” John answered, sounding wide awake and mean as a badger.
Denise bit back a cry. John? John at the house?
She hung up and leaped to her feet. John was there? With Dinah?
Denise switched off the light and collapsed back down on the bed. She curled into a fetal position and dragged the bedspread over her cold limbs. Dinah and John. John and Dinah. What did it mean? What did it mean?
You are truly paranoid, she reminded herself. Truly paranoid. Biting down savagely into her lower lip, her stomach hot with fear, she slowly fell into uneasy slumber and thankful oblivion.
The club was dark and noisy and permeated with some scent Hayley couldn’t identify and was pretty sure she didn’t want to. Standing at the bar, she tried hard not to stare at the U-shaped runway in the center of the room, which was flanked by tables teeming with men. Ugly men who made even uglier gestures. Ugly thoughts. Ugly needs.
But what could she expect in a place dominated by hookers, pimps, and the various low-level dregs of society?
The runway was studded with five translucent plastic poles filled with red fluid. The poles ran from floor to ceiling and within the fluid, silver glitter twisted, floated, and shimmered beneath the hot lights. Attached to each pole were some of the most well-built young women in history—thanks to good old plastic-surgery-miracle-grow—and they were gyrating and panting and sliding on the poles in a way that was euphemistically called “dancing” on the exterior marquee.
Occasionally, one of the men would grab at one of the women and he would be summarily yanked to his feet by a huge, totally bald, black man and tossed out the door. No wheedling or begging could get the bouncer to change his mind. Screw up once and you were out.
The bouncer was the only thing about the place that made Hayley feel safe.
“So, whad’ya think?” Mrs. Carver asked for the seventeenth time.
“I’ve seen worse.” Hayley smiled ironically. “And I’ve seen better.”
“Well, don’t tell Danny. He might get his feelings hurt.”
“Who’s Danny?”
Mrs. Carver, whose first name had turned out to be Gloria, pointed to the sharply dressed, around thirty-year-old man behind the bar. Danny sported a small black mustache and a face that was carved in granite. He gave Hayley the creeps for reasons she couldn’t quite explain and didn’t want to analyze too closely.
“So what’s next?” she asked.
Gloria Carver sucked on her teeth, a gesture that meant she was giving the situation hard thought, or so Hayley had determined after several hours in the older woman’s company.
They’d walked and strutted and stood around on Hollywood Boulevard, talking and flirting and generally trying to scare up business. It had nearly sent Hayley into an adrenaline overdose. Her emotions running rampant, a jet stream of hormones that made her limbs shake, her eyes tear, and her heart beat quadruple time. It was a testament to her ability as an actress that she’d managed to hide the effects of her fear behind a stone facade, but she felt drained and exhausted from the effort. And the evening had only just begun.
“Come on,” Gloria ordered, jerking her head toward the back of the club.
Hayley followed, her legs wobbly and uncoordinated. She was in peril and she knew it.
But Tonja had gotten her a copy of Blackbird. Hayley had read it thirteen times; she already knew the part of Isabella by heart. It was tailor-made for Hayley Scott. It was perfect. God, so perfect.
But it had “Big Star” written all over it. The role of a lifetime for whomever landed it, and no one as savvy as John Callahan would waste it on an unknown, even if that unknown had a famous sister who just happened to be his ex-wife. Especially if that famous sister were his ex-wife.
Still . . . not an actress in this town would be as qualified, rehearsed, and prepared with actual life experiences as Hayley would.
If she could just make it through this night . . .
She sashayed behind Gloria Carver, teetering only slightly on her black platforms. She’d actually picked up her red spandex skirt and stretchy black lace tank top at a costume store—an inside joke only she could appreciate. She’d thought about a straight black wig but had changed her mind at the last minute. Instead she’d darkened her light brown hair with temporary black dye, its flat, matte tone adding a Goth element to her look.
And hey . . . she fit into her surroundings seamlessly. Another hooker on patrol. Oh, baby, lookin’ for something tasty?
A line straight out of Blackbird. Did she dare use it?
The back hallway stank of cigarettes and the scent of burning grass; no one was paying much attention to the law around here. Hayley wrinkled her nose. She’d taken one toke from a friend’s joint during those misty high school years and had coughed herself into a vomiting fit. So much for drug abuse. She hadn’t fared any better with alcohol; the sour smell of beer was revolting and wine left her with a three-day headache. Forget hard alcohol altogether. Apart from the sexy bottles, it all tasted the same: bad.
She was the virgin’s virgin—and she was about to change all that in one fell swoop.
With a quivering heart, Hayley followed Gloria into a low-ceilinged room at the end of the hall. Three men waited inside. All standing, facing the door as they entered. Chairs and tables were scattered around. It looked more like a meeting room than the set of an assignation.
“What gives?” she murmured to Gloria.
“Shhhh.”
Hayley subsided into silence at her sharp hiss, concentrating instead on her own galloping heart and quavering knees. Eye on the prize, she reminded herself harshly. Eye on the prize. No matter what the means, the end would be justified.
“Over at Keith’s,” one of the men told Gloria, not even glancing at Hayley.
“She okay?” another asked, ignoring Hayley even while he discussed her.
Gloria shrugged.
“Keith wants her,” the third man put in.
Panic seized Hayley. This was it. This was really it!
“Okay.” Gloria turned around and Hay
ley quickly followed after her.
“Who’s Keith?” she demanded as they headed back to the club’s main floor.
“The man of the hour, sugar. The man of the hour.”
She followed after Gloria, past the women making love to the red poles, outside to the street and a black, late-model sedan. Hayley slid into the backseat next to Gloria. The driver was a heavyset man who shifted the car into gear the instant the door closed behind them. The air was suffocatingly close. Gloria’s cheap perfume nauseated Hayley. She cracked open a window for air and turned her attention to the passing neon lights and traffic.
Eye on the prize.
“Keith’s” was a nondescript apartment complex turned condominium. The driver pulled into an empty handicapped spot and put the car in park. Hayley looked at Gloria who signaled for her to get out of the car.
As soon as they were standing on the asphalt, the black sedan pulled away.
“You ready?” Gloria asked, her red lips glowing strangely blue in the cast from the nearby streetlight. She was smiling, completely aware of Hayley’s doubts.
“Lead the way.”
They walked into a breezeway that smelled of mildew and grime. Gloria punched the button for the elevator. “Let me do the talking. One word outta your mouth, and they’ll know you ain’t real.”
“I’ll be quiet.”
“They’re gonna want you to perform, sweet-cakes. Don’t think nothing else.”
“I know.”
“I don’t think you’ve got the balls.”
Hayley bit down on the inside of her cheek as they stepped into the empty elevator. The doors thunked shut and with a belated jerk, the car lurched upward.
They walked in tense silence down the fourth floor hallway and Gloria stopped in front of a forest green door. She knocked lightly, twice.
Almost instantly the door opened. Gray smoke billowed out like welcoming fog. Gloria stepped inside and Hayley followed, hovering close.
The place was furnished like a refuge for low-life lounge lizards. A fake zebra-skin rug lay in front of a black Naugahyde couch. Framed posters of cheap prints featuring women’s lips and body parts adorned the walls. The paraphernalia on the beat-up, wooden, coffee table, whose veneer was scorched from cigarettes and smattered with coffee rings, must have been purchased straight out of Drug User’s Weekly.