He waved to one of the waiters, who brought over a tray that was jingling with tall, trumpet-shaped champagne flutes. In each glass danced six or seven tiny wild strawberries, and the rims were sparkling with sugar.
“Hey … doesn’t this look gorgeous?” said Bonnie. “I never thought of putting strawberries in champagne. Not that me and Duke can stretch to champagne very often. Well, when I say very often, I mean ever. Duke dropped a pickle in his beer once, but that was more by way of an accident.”
Kyle Lennox steered Bonnie outside, to a white cast-iron seat by the pool, where Gus Hanson was talking to six or seven giggly young girls with shining blond hair and long, suntanned legs. Gus Hanson had curly dark hair, a Roman nose, and a white silk shirt that was open to his navel. He wore thong sandals and no socks.
“Gus … this is the lady I was telling you about, the one who’s going to be cleaning up the Marrin house.”
Gus Hanson took off his gold-lensed sunglasses and grinned up at her. “Hi … great you could come. Kyle just won’t stop talking about you. He says he can’t believe that you do what you do.”
“Well,” said Bonnie, uncomfortably, “somebody has to do it. It’s a service.”
“You never think about it, though. You never think what happens after somebody goes crazy and kills their whole family. You never think that somebody has to mop it up.”
“Is that what you do?” asked one of the long-legged blond girls, wrinkling up her tiny retroussé nose.
“Sure, that’s what I do. I clean up after any kind of trauma. Like I say, it’s a service.”
“You’ve been in the Marrin house?” asked Gus Hanson.
“Of course. I have to give an estimate.”
“I mean, what’s it like in there? The room where they died?”
“It’s burned, that’s all. There’s not much to see.”
“The kid was stuck to the door,” put in Kyle Lennox. “Can you imagine that? He was burning like a fucking torch, and he was trying to get out of the door, but he, like, melted to the paintwork.”
“Holy shit,” said Gus. “Can you actually see that in there? Like where he was stuck to the door?”
Bonnie was feeling hot and overdressed. She could feel perspiration sliding down her back into her waistband. She took a sip of champagne, but all the sugar stuck to her upper lip and gave her a white mustache. Kyle Lennox said, “Here,” and used a linen napkin to brush it off, a gesture that was both intimate and deeply embarrassing. It made her feel like a child.
At that moment, a short, portly man came around the pool, his bald head shining like a dented brass doorknob, his eyes hidden behind black, thick-framed sunglasses. He was wearing a multicolored striped shirt, all reds and greens and yellows, and a loose pair of green linen pants. “Bonnie,” said Kyle Lennox. “This is my producer, Gene Ballard. Gene, this is Bonnie.”
Gene Ballard held out a chubby little hand, more like a pig’s trotter than a hand, thick with lumpy gold rings. He smelled overpoweringly of Fahrenheit aftershave. “It’s an amazing pleasure to meet you, my dear. Kyle has a talent for collecting all the most interesting people. You know who came to his last little get-together? Tasha Malova, that transvestite who got himself involved with the police commissioner. You should have seen him. Her. It, whatever. Beautiful, and I mean drop-dead stunning. But six-foot-three with a voice like a fucking foghorn, and a blue miniskirt right up to its ass.” He gave a thick, phlegmy bellow of laughter and turned around to everybody standing by the pool to make sure that they were laughing, too.
Gus Hanson said, “Hey, Bonnie, is there anything you’ve ever refused to do, because it was so totally disgusting?”
“How about you?” Bonnie retorted. “Is there anything that you’ve ever refused to do?”
“Well, sure. I refused to pose for Playgirl.”
“You refused to pose for Playgirl?”
“Absolutely.” Gus Hanson pouted. “I want my image to be more about my work than the sex appeal or whatever. I mean, if it’s a sex scene, of course I’m not going to have my shirt and tie on. But it’s the whole point of focusing on the talent rather than the fromage.”
“So,” said Gene Ballard, taking hold of Bonnie by the elbow, “how does a pretty lady like you get into work like cleaning up corpses?”
“Oh, I don’t clean up the remains. We call them remains. The coroner’s department cleans up the remains. I just clean the trauma scene after the remains are removed. Curtains, carpets, stuff like that. It’s just like being a regular cleaner, only obviously it’s more specialized.”
He nodded at her. She wished his sunglasses weren’t quite so black. It was as if he didn’t have any eyes.
“How long does it take you to film one episode of The Wild and the Wayward?” she asked him. “I mean, do you have to do lots of takes, or do you run through it all in one go?”
“But you have seen corpses?”
“Yes, well, of course I’ve seen corpses. But I don’t get to see too many.”
“What’s the most gruesome one you ever saw?”
Bonnie was aware now that everybody was watching her, everybody was listening to her. The samba band had suddenly finished playing “Positively Fourth Street,” with a chung-chung-chung flourish of guitars, and now there was only the laughing and the shouting from inside the house.
“I, uh, it’s difficult for me to say. Everybody’s passing is a tragedy.”
Gene Ballard put his arm around Bonnie’s waist and began rhythmically but discreetly to squeeze the spare tire that bulged above her waistband.
“You, um, ever see anybody with their head missing, anything like that?”
“I’ve seen a woman with her head missing, yes. That was in Culver City, about a year ago.”
“How did it happen? I mean, how did she lose her head?”
“Her husband attacked her with a machete. He just went on chopping and chopping till he chopped her head clear off.”
There was a horrified titter from one of the girls. Gene Ballard said, “When you saw her, this woman, where was she?”
“In the bedroom. A lot of these things happen in the bedroom. Late at night, you know, people get tired and drunk, or maybe they’re stoned.”
“A lot of blood, I’ll bet?”
“Oh, yes.” Bonnie tried to move herself away from his rhythmically squeezing fingers, but she couldn’t. Gus, on the cast-iron seat, casually propped his foot on the table in front of him and leaned back grinning. Kyle Lennox looked around at all of his friends as if to say, What did I tell you? Is this a character, or what?
“When you saw this woman, what? Was she wearing anything, or was she naked?”
“She was”—dry cough—“she was in the nude.”
“So she was lying on the bed naked with no head? Lying on her back?”
“Listen, I don’t really like to go into the details.”
“Were her legs open, or were they closed?”
Bonnie reached behind her and firmly pushed his arm away. “Like I say, Mr. Ballard, every passing is a tragedy, and it’s very personal to the people involved. I don’t do this work because I’m some kind of voyeur.”
“Hey, don’t take offense! I’m not suggesting you’re any kind of voyeur. I’m just interested to know what your work is all about. Come on, all of us here, we only deal in fiction, in stories. The only blood we ever get to see comes from special effects. But what you deal in, that’s real life.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“So that was the worst you ever saw? The woman with a body but no head? Didn’t you ever see a woman with a head but no body?”
Gus Hanson shouted with laughter. Kyle Lennox clapped. Bonnie said, “You’re going to have to excuse me,” and put her champagne glass down on the table. Gus swung his foot around too quickly and knocked it over so that it smashed on the marble flooring, and the wild strawberries rolled away.
“I’m sorry,” Bonnie flustered. “That was an accident, rea
lly. Tell me how much it cost, and I’ll buy you a new one.”
Kyle Lennox smiled and shook his head. “It’s Waterford crystal and it probably cost over a hundred and fifty dollars, but—come on, Bonnie, forget it.”
Bonnie said, “I’m sorry,” again and pushed her way back through the living room. One or two of the shrieking throng glanced at her in momentary curiosity, but then she was back out through the front door and on the street again. The two pimply car jockeys said, “Hey, going already?”
“I made a mistake,” said Bonnie. She was trying to stop her voice from shaking. “Wrong party.” She started to walk back along Lincoln Boulevard, the heels of her sandals clacking on the sidewalk.
“Bonnie!” called out Kyle Lennox. “Bonnie, come back here!”
She didn’t turn around. She just wanted to keep on walking until she reached her truck and never think about Kyle Lennox or The Wild and the Wayward ever again. She cursed herself for her vanity. Why did she think that Kyle Lennox had invited her? Because she was beautiful, or wealthy, or famous, or smart? How could she have walked into a TV star’s party wearing a ruffled blouse that made her look like a waitress in a roadside diner and a pair of pants with all of her fat bulging over? And a vinyl handbag, with a purple Lycra swimsuit in it?
Kyle Lennox ran a little way after her, but then he gave a dismissive wave of his hand and turned back to his get-together. Bonnie turned the corner just as a traffic cop was tucking a parking ticket under the windshield of her truck.
In the Dark that Night
Bonnie’s eyes welled with scalding-hot tears, and she curled herself up tightly, as tight as she could, in an effort to comfort herself. She didn’t want to cry, but the pain in her throat was too great, and she couldn’t stop herself from letting out a rasping honk of misery.
She let out another honk, and then another, and then she started to sob so bitterly that she could hardly breathe.
Duke sat up in bed. “What the fuck are you laughing at?”
She tried to catch her breath, but she couldn’t.
“It’s two-thirty in the morning. What’s so fucking funny?”
“I’m not laughing,” she said, wiping her face on the sheet. “I’m crying.”
“You’re crying?” There was a long, exasperated silence. “What are you crying for?”
“I don’t know, Duke. I guess I must have had a sad dream.”
“You had a sad dream? You had a sad dream so you have to make a noise like a whale?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, well do me a favor and go back to sleep. And for God’s sake, don’t have any dreams about being happy.”
Bonnie wiped her eyes with her fingers and sniffed. “No, Duke. I won’t do that.”
Pasadena, Where the Grass is Greener
“Phil, this is Bonnie. Bonnie, this is Phil Cafagna, head of purchasing for Pacific Pharmacy.”
A silvery-haired man in a silvery three-piece suit kissed Bonnie’s hand and said, “Charmed. I always said that Ralph had exceptional taste.”
“Bonnie’s been doing some really excellent work for us, Phil. Helped to boost our turnover by over six percent this year.”
“Well, I can see why.” Phil smiled. He was deeply tanned, with glittery blue eyes, and he vaguely reminded Bonnie of Blake Carrington in Dynasty. His hair appeared to be ruffled up into two demonic horns, and on closer inspection Bonnie realized that it was a hairpiece.
“I’ll catch you later, Bonnie.” Phil winked at her and walked away across the hotel lobby.
Ralph said, sotto voce, “You need to watch yourself with that guy. He gives wolves a bad name.”
“He’s not much of an advertisement for toupees, either.”
Ralph pressed his finger to his lips. “If Phil Cafagna likes what he sees, he can turn our whole business around. Pacific Pharmacy has two-hundred-eighty outlets, under different names, all the way from Eureka to San Diego.”
“So long as that doesn’t mean I have to run my hands through his rug.”
Bonnie and Ralph were standing in line in the blue-carpeted lobby of the Ramada Inn on East Colorado Boulevard, in Pasadena. The lobby was already crowded with buyers and salespeople from dozens of different stores and pharmacies, and there was an overwhelming smell of heavy-duty perfume. Bonnie was wearing her pink waxed-cotton suit, but compared with the rest of the cosmetics representatives, she felt distinctly underdressed and under made-up. Ralph had bought himself a natty new sports coat and fastened an orchid in his lapel, but the cuffs of his pants were still swinging an inch above his Gucci loafers.
“Okay, here’s how it goes. Our main presentation is at seven … then there’s cocktails and general mingling, with six separate demonstrations and a special Moist-Your-Eyes promotion. We can run through it as soon as we’ve checked in.”
“Ralph … I want to thank you for giving me another chance.”
“Don’t be stupid. I shouldn’t have fired you in the first place. You have a family, after all.”
“Well, it’s kind of a family.”
“Still having problems with Duke?”
“How do you know about that?”
“We work in a small company, Bonnie. There isn’t much I don’t know. Especially when it affects somebody I really care about.”
“Yes, well. Things will work themselves out.”
The Glamorex evening went even better than Bonnie had expected. All of the products had been filmed at well-known soap-opera locations, and each had a passionate, panting soap opera-style script that told a woman how she could use My Mystery eye shadow to make herself look like a millionairess or Angel Glitter body lotion to win over the hunk of her dreams. Young girls in glittering sequin minidresses performed a funky dance routine at the Insomnia coffee house from The Bold and the Beautiful to show off the new range of Disco Nights nail polish. Two sophisticated couples dined at The Colonnade Room from The Young and the Restless to promote Loving Embrace hairspray.
After the video presentation, waiters brought round sparkling wine and canapés. Two professional beauticians, twin sisters, demonstrated all of Glamorex’s new lines. Ralph privately called them The Lobotomized Barbies. Phil Cafagna came up to Bonnie after she had given her spiel about Moist-Your-Eyes and raised his glass to her.
“You’re quite a commercial asset, Bonnie. Ralph’s a lucky man.”
“He’s a good boss, Mr. Cafagna.”
“Oh, call me Phil, for Christ’s sake. How about a glass of wine?”
He lifted a glass from a passing tray and handed it to her. “Let’s drink to something,” he said. “Here’s to the real face that hides behind the painted mask.”
Bonnie wasn’t sure what he meant, but she clinked glasses with him anyhow.
“How about you, Bonnie?” he asked. “What’s your face really like, when you’re not selling Glamorex cosmetics? What kinda person are you?”
“I’m a wife and a mother.”
“I didn’t mean that. Being a wife and a mother defines your relationship with other people. That doesn’t tell me what kind of a person you are.”
“I’m not so sure that I know what kind of person I am. A good one, I hope. Somebody who looks after other people when they need me the most.”
“I’m sure you do. You strike me as a deeply caring woman. But you also strike me as a woman who’s never had the opportunity to break free and be herself.”
Bonnie gave him a little shake of her head to indicate that she didn’t really understand what he was talking about.
He took hold of her arm and walked her toward the French windows. Outside the night was breezy and warm, and Bonnie could hear music playing from the ballroom.
“I work with women all day, every day, and I think I know something about them,” said Phil. “These days, they have their careers and they have their independence and they can do pretty much anything they like. But do you know something? They’re still trapped. Everybody’s trapped, until they can find someb
ody to set them free. That’s what you need, Bonnie. You need somebody to give you the key and let you out.”
They strolled along the covered cloisters, with the overhanging creeper rustling softly. The band was playing a syrupy version of Lyle Lovett’s song “Nobody Knows Me,” and for the first time in years, Bonnie felt peaceful and relaxed and even romantic.
“How about another glass of wine?” Phil suggested.
“I don’t think so. We have an early breakfast tomorrow. Then we have to be getting back to L.A.”
Phil stopped and looked her straight in the eye. “You’re a great-looking woman, Bonnie. You’ve got everything going for you. It really disturbs me to see a woman like you in so much pain.”
“I’m not in pain, Phil. I’m an ordinary workingwoman like every other ordinary workingwoman.”
“You think so? I know pain. I can feel pain a mile off.”
Bonnie shrugged. “I can’t say that I don’t have problems.”
“Your husband never sees you for what you are.”
“To be frank with you, Phil, I don’t think he sees me at all.”
“Your kids give you nothing but trouble.”
“Kid. We only have one—Ray, he’s seventeen. But what can you expect? All kids are trouble when they’re growing up.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Do? What do you expect me to do? I’m going to go home tomorrow just like always.”
“Supposing I said don’t.”
“I have to go home, Phil. What else would I do?”
“You could spend the rest of the week with me. We could go sailing off Catalina Island. We could walk on the seashore and eat lobster dinners and drink champagne.”
Bonnie smiled and shook her head.
“I’ll tell you something, Bonnie,” said Phil. “A lot of people think that I’m some kind of Casanova, picking up women and taking them to bed and then going on to the next. But the fact of the matter is that I can’t stand to see women who never get the chance to be themselves. Their husbands don’t allow them to break free because they’ll be too demanding; and their employers don’t allow them to break free because they might ask for what they really deserve. So on they go, year after year, until one day they realize that practically their whole life has passed them by, and they’ve lost their looks, and all they’ve got to look forward to is old age. That’s a prison sentence, in my book.
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