Fortune’s Daughter
A Novel
Alice Hoffman
PART ONE
IT WAS EARTHQUAKE WEATHER and everyone knew it. As the temperature hovered near one hundred degrees the days melted together until it was no longer possible to tell the difference between a Thursday and a Friday. Coyotes in the canyons panicked; they followed the scent of chlorine into backyards, and some of them drowned in swimming pools edged with blue Italian tiles. In Hollywood the tap water bubbled as it came out of the faucets; ice cubes dissolved in the palm of your hand. It was a time when everything you once suspected might go wrong suddenly did. For miles in every direction people just snapped. Lovers quarreled in bedrooms and parking lots, money was stolen, knives were pulled, friendships that had lasted a lifetime were destroyed with one harsh word. Those few people who were able to sleep were haunted by nightmares; those with insomnia drank cups of coffee and swore they smelled something sweet burning, as if a torch had been put to a grove of lemon trees sometime in the night.
It wasn’t uncommon to have hallucinations in weather like this, and Rae Perry, who had never had a vision in her life, began to see things on the empty sidewalk whenever she took the bus home from work: a high-heeled shoe left at a crosswalk, a wild dog on the corner of La Brea, a black garden snake winding its way through traffic. Hollywood Boulevard seemed to move in waves. And at home, the white stucco walls in Rae’s apartment shifted as if they were made of sand. It wasn’t just the heat that was affecting everyone, it was the strange quality of the air. Every breath you took seemed dangerous, as if it might be your last. Even in the air-conditioned office where she worked for an independent producer named Freddy Contina, Rae found she had to take several deep breaths before typing a letter or answering the phone. Toward the end of the day the light coming in through the windows was a sulky amber color that made you see double. It was the season for headaches, and rashes, and double-crosses, and more and more often Rae Perry put her head down on her desk at work and began to wonder why she had ever left Boston.
But after she’d gotten home, and had sat for half an hour or more in a bathtub of cool water, Rae knew exactly why she had run away two weeks before her eighteenth birthday. As soon as she heard the Oldsmobile pull up, she ran to get dressed and open the front door. Sometimes she swore she was under Jessup’s spell. He didn’t even have to snap his fingers to get her to jump. All he had to do was look at her. Even in this weather Jessup seemed different from everyone else, as if he were above the heat. He had the kind of blue eyes that were transparent, and so pale that his mother had thought they were bad luck. For several summers she had kept Jessup out of the sun entirely, for fear his eyes would be bleached even lighter. But as soon as you touched Jessup you knew how deceiving his appearance was. He might have looked cool, but his skin radiated heat, and it got so that Rae had begun to wait for him to fall asleep so that she could climb out of bed and sleep alone on the wooden floor.
Since the time they’d run away from Boston, Rae had been afraid that one day Jessup would change his mind and ask her to leave. And the truth was something had been happening to him ever since they came to California. He actually went so far as to get an application to the Business School at U.C.L.A., though he never filled out the forms. He continually grilled Rae about Freddy Contina and even had her steal one of Freddy’s résumés—Rae found him studying it one night when he thought she was still in the shower. It was as if the ghost of some ambition had suddenly appeared to Jessup. He had begun to want things, and it just wasn’t like him.
In the past, Jessup’s main ambition had been to keep moving. In seven years they had lived in five states. As soon as Rae began to feel comfortable somewhere, Jessup started to talk about moving to a place where there were more options. He never mentioned a new job or more money, just these unnamed options—as if the whole world would open to him as soon as they put a few more miles on the Oldsmobile.
Whenever Jessup reached for his stack of road maps, Rae had to remind herself that it wasn’t her he was tired of, just the place they were in. This time there had been no maps and no talk of options, and yet Jessup’s restlessness was so strong it had begun to affect Rae’s dreams. At night she dreamed of earthquakes: glass shattered and spilled over the boulevards, the ground pitched and split open, the sky became a sheet of needles. When she awoke from one of these nightmares, Rae had to hold tight to Jessup or else, she was certain, she’d spin right out of the room.
She had been waiting so long for something to go wrong between them that it took a while before she realized that it already had. Each Sunday they went to the beach at Santa Monica, and as they drove along Sunset Boulevard Jessup’s mood always grew worse. By the time they reached Beverly Hills it was impossible to talk to him. The funny thing was, it was Jessup who always insisted they take the same route. He claimed to hate the palm trees and the huge estates, but every Sunday he pointed them out as if seeing them for the first time.
“This is truly disgusting,” he would say as they neared the same pink stucco chalet. “Who in their right mind would turn their house into such a fucking eyesore.”
“Then when you have a house paint it white,” Rae finally told him, and she knew as soon as she opened her mouth that it was the wrong thing to say.
“Do you have something to say about the fact that I don’t own my own house?” Jessup said.
Rae looked straight ahead. “No.”
“You think I’m a failure or something—is that what you’re thinking?”
“Jessup, I didn’t say one goddamned thing,” Rae told him.
“You said paint it white. I heard you.”
“Well, paint it whatever the hell color you want to.” Rae was practically in tears. “Do whatever you want.”
“I will,” Jessup said. “I certainly will.”
After that Rae had taken to riding with her head out the window of the car. She told Jessup it was because she loved the scent of jasmine in Beverly Hills, but really it was because Jessup’s anger was heating up the car until the plastic upholstery just about burned you alive.
On the last Sunday in August they probably should have known enough to stay home. The temperature had risen above one hundred and there was a trace of sulfur in the air. When they pulled into the parking lot at Santa Monica, the asphalt beneath the tires turned to molasses. Jessup wasn’t talking as they walked down to the beach; and when Rae spread out the blanket she wondered if there could possibly be another woman, someone he told all his secrets to, because he certainly wasn’t telling Rae a thing. She watched him as she tucked her red hair under a straw hat, then rubbed sunscreen on her arms and legs. The water was so blue that it hurt your eyes, but Jessup stared straight at it. He wore a black T-shirt and jeans, and a pair of boots Rae had bought for him years ago. Everything around them shimmered with heat; every sound echoed. If you closed your eyes you could almost imagine that the cars on Route 1 were only inches away, or that the girls who cried out as they dove into the cold waves were close enough to touch.
Rae was flat on her back and nearly asleep when Jessup finally spoke.
“Guess how many Rolls-Royces I counted?” he said suddenly.
Rae had to crane her neck to look up at him; she kept one hand on her straw hat.
“Go ahead,” Jessup urged. “Guess.”
Rae shrugged her shoulders. She could barely tell a Ford from a Toyota these days.
“Two?”
“Eighteen,” Jessup said triumphantly. “Eighteen fucking Rolls-Royces between Hollywood and Santa Monica.”
For some reason that number frightened Rae. In the parking lot, their blue Oldsmobile baked in the sun. In the seven years they’d had the car they hadn’t put a scr
atch on it. In fact, it had been one of the reasons Jessup had wanted to come to California in the first place. A car could last forever in Los Angeles, he had told Rae. No snow, no salt, no rust.
“I don’t care about Rolls-Royces,” Rae said. “I’d rather have our car any day.”
She could see the muscles in Jessup’s jaw tighten.
“God, Rae,” he said to her. “Sometimes I swear you get stupider all the time.”
He left her there on the blanket, just like that. Rae propped herself up on one elbow and watched him walk down to the water. He stood at the shoreline, looking far out into the Pacific, as if he were the only one on the beach able to see the cloudy edge of China. Rae was concentrating so hard, trying to figure out what was wrong, that she forgot to turn onto her stomach so she wouldn’t burn. By the time they got home, Rae’s fair skin had burned to nearly the same shade of red as her hair, and that night Jessup had the perfect excuse not to come near her.
The following Sunday, Rae didn’t dare ask Jessup to go to the beach. The heat was worse than ever, and people with respiratory problems were warned not to go outdoors. Jessup spent most of the day Simonizing the Oldsmobile; he tied a red bandanna over his mouth to filter the air, and took off his T-shirt. At noon, when Rae brought him a beer, Jessup seemed less upset; he stopped working long enough to pull down his bandanna and kiss her. That night Jessup insisted that they go out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant where the air conditioner was turned up so high you could actually feel brave enough to order the extra-hot chili. Rae wore a lavender-colored cotton dress and silver earrings. It seemed more important than ever before that Jessup notice how good she looked, and while he never actually said anything, he did reach across the table to take her hand.
In the dark booth of the restaurant, Rae managed to convince herself that the trouble between them was over. But when they got home, Jessup ignored her. He went into the kitchen, and, without bothering to turn on the light, he sat there and stared out the window. Rae wondered if it was just that Monday was so close. Jessup worked for several studios—he picked people up at the airport, he messengered film, he delivered platters of shrimp cocktail and pastrami up to the executives’ offices whenever there was something to celebrate. On his tax returns Jessup listed himself as a driver, but whenever someone asked what he did, Jessup would smile and say, “I’m a slave.”
At the beginning of the heat wave, when he’d first started to act so peculiar, Rae had made the mistake of asking Jessup how his day had been.
“How was my day?” Jessup had mimicked in a too sweet voice. “Well, I spent most of my time picking up an order of cocaine that cost more than I’ve earned in my entire lifetime. That’s how my day was. If you want me to continue, I’ll be glad to tell you about my week.”
She hadn’t wanted to know any more. But when they got home from the restaurant no one had to tell her that Jessup was feeling cheated. He sat by the kitchen window and gave the parked Oldsmobile a murderous look. It was then Rae knew he was still thinking about Rolls-Royces, and that thinking about them was just about driving him crazy.
The worst part was that Rae couldn’t think of a single thing she could do to make him happy. On Monday morning she got up early, so she could bring him breakfast in bed. The heat was still pushing down as she boiled water for coffee and switched the radio on to a low volume. Listeners were calling in to a talk show that followed the news, each with a way to predict the next quake. As Rae poured water through the coffee filter, she knew she shouldn’t be listening to a program about earthquakes—she was so suggestible lately that she could already feel the buildings crumbling around her. But she was hypnotized by the heat, and by the scent of coffee, and as she put some bread in the toaster she continued to listen as a caller insisted that if birds were tracked by radar, entire cities could be saved. It was a well-known fact that birds always left an area long before any catastrophe. Rae found herself drawn to the window; at least there was still a line of blue jays on the telephone wire.
She took out the frying pan and heated some butter, but when she cracked two eggs into the pan she found blood spots in both yolks. Rae panicked and immediately poured the eggs down the drain, then washed out the pan with hot water and soap. But even after she had started over again with two fresh eggs, Rae kept thinking about the spots of blood. She actually had to sit down and drink a glass of ice water and tell herself that anybody could have brought those eggs home from the market—they just happened to have been in the carton she chose.
She watched the clock, afraid to wake Jessup. Although how he could sleep in this heat was beyond her. Other people tossed and turned, but Jessup lay perfectly still beneath a thin cotton quilt. Finally, Rae set out his breakfast on a white tray, then poured two cups of coffee. What was the worst that could happen? Freddy could fire her. Los Angeles could be devastated. Jessup could whisper that he’d found someone new.
“Why is it you people stay in California?” a long-distance caller from Nevada asked on the radio. “Don’t you know that birds can’t save you? Don’t you know that by staying all you’re doing is tempting fate?”
Rae climbed back into bed with a cup of coffee in either hand.
“Don’t move,” she warned Jessup.
Jessup opened one eye and reached for his coffee. Rae put her cup on the night table, then went back into the kitchen. By the time she had returned with the tray, Jessup had finished his coffee and had lit a cigarette. As Jessup tapped ashes into his empty coffee cup, Rae stood by the foot of the bed. There was one thing she knew for sure: Jessup had quit smoking two years ago, when they lived in Texas.
“You don’t actually expect me to eat that, do you?” Jessup asked when he saw his breakfast.
“You’re smoking a cigarette,” Rae said.
“Golly, Rae, that’s what I like about you,” Jessup drawled. “You’re so observant.”
There had been a time when Rae had made it her business to find out everything she could about Jessup. Of course, that was when the really important things were whether or not Jessup liked long hair, or if he preferred her to wear blue or green. When Rae was fourteen she taped a photograph of Jessup to her closet door so that she could memorize his face. This was one of the reasons Rae’s mother, Carolyn, had decided to move the family out to Newton. It was one thing for Rae to moon over him when she was still in junior high, and quite another to continue this infatuation now that Jessup had graduated, and she was about to go into high school herself. They hadn’t even told Rae until a week before the moving van was set to arrive. She locked herself in the bathroom and refused to come out.
“I’m not leaving Jessup,” she told her mother through the locked door.
“Oh, yes you are,” Carolyn had said. “And years from now you’ll thank me.”
“Oh, please,” Rae said.
“It’s not just that I don’t like him,” Carolyn said. “It’s that he’s dangerous.”
Something in her mother’s tone made Rae curious. She turned the lock and opened the door.
“Please believe me,” Carolyn said, “because I know about dangerous men.”
For Rae that was the limit. Her father was a lawyer who was home so rarely that Rae was actually surprised whenever she ran into him in the kitchen or the living room. Was he her mother’s “dangerous man”?
“You can’t tell me anything,” Rae informed her mother. “You don’t even know Jessup.”
Once they had moved to Newton, Rae continued to see Jessup even more than before. Her friends found him threatening or mean, and they dropped away from her. It was just the two of them, and even Jessup’s mother had to telephone Rae whenever she wanted to locate her son.
Rae had always been sure that if she knew anyone in this world it was Jessup, but now his suddenly starting to smoke again spooked her. Immediately, she had the sense that this was only one of the things he kept hidden from her.
“I’ll tell you something else,” Jessup said, as he lit anoth
er cigarette. “I don’t eat breakfast any more—you should know that.”
Rae tried to remember—hadn’t they had pancakes only a few days ago?
“You have to watch out for things like breakfast when you get old,” Jessup told Rae. “Otherwise you wake up one day and there you are—fat and over the hill.”
Jessup still wore the same blue jeans he had worn when he was eighteen years old, but he was turning thirty this year, and the only thing that bothered him more than turning thirty was realizing that he cared about his age.
“I wish you would stop talking about getting old,” Rae said. “It’s ridiculous.”
She was about to go into the kitchen and get Jessup a second cup of coffee, when he reached over and pulled her down on top of him.
“It’s just a joke to you,” he whispered. “You’ve got five more years. You’ve got time. I’m the one who has to hurry.”
Jessup kissed her, and Rae wrapped her arms around him. Other women who had kissed only one man in their entire lifetimes might think they were missing something, but Rae certainly wasn’t one of them. Instead, she found herself pitying women who had to settle for anything less.
“Wait a minute,” Jessup told her.
Jessup walked down the hallway to the kitchen, and when he returned he was carrying a blue-and-white mixing bowl. As soon as Rae saw that the bowl was filled with ice cubes, she sat up in bed. He did have a mean streak sometimes, and the first thing Rae expected was that he’d dump the ice on her as a way of letting her know it was time for her to get up and get dressed for work.
“Oh, no you don’t,” she told him.
Jessup held the bowl of ice and grinned.
“I mean it,” Rae said.
“You don’t trust me any more,” Jessup said. “And if you don’t trust me, I don’t see the point in staying together.”
Maybe he meant it, maybe he was having doubts—Rae pulled Jessup back down on the bed. She closed her eyes and forgot about the ice. But later, when they were making love and Rae was so hot she couldn’t stand it any more, Jessup reached for the mixing bowl. He took an ice cube in each hand and then traced the ice along Rae’s skin. Nothing had ever seemed as delicious and cold, and Rae begged him not to stop. But there was something in the way Jessup made love to her that felt desperate; and what made Rae shiver wasn’t the ice, it was noticing that, as he held her, he was looking at the front door.
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