Belinda

by Anne Rice

  But through it all I was learning, I was determined to make it on my own. And part of what I needed was some sense of who I had been before. It was for that reason that I went to the second-hand magazines stores and bought back issues of magazines with stories in them about Mother. I got the videotapes of her old movies at the same time. And then the real piece of luck, finding an ad in a video magazine that said they could get you any movie, even one not released in the States. I sent off for Final Score and I got it. But, you know, I never had a machine to see these tapes. But it didn’t matter. I had them. I had part of my past with me, even if I did tear off all the labels so nobody else would ever guess.

  And one of the things that came clear to me was that the girls on the street were very different from the boys. The girls went nowhere. They got pregnant, on drugs, maybe even became prostitutes. They were often fools for the guys they met. They’d cook and scrub for some broke rock musician and then get thrown in the street. But the boys were a little more smart. They got taken nice places by the gay men they hustled. The gay men kind of romanticized them. The boys could actually use these meetings to move up and out of the world of the street.

  Well, I puzzled over this a lot. How did the streets wear out girls, while boys passed through them? Why did girls lose, while boys won? Of course, not all the boys were smart. They lived hand to mouth, too, and kidded themselves about the glamour of their adventures, but they had a kind of freedom that women just never seem to have.

  Whatever the case, I decided to behave like one of the boys. To look upon myself as somebody pretty mysterious and special and expect other people to be interested, that kind of thing.

  And I found out something else, too. If I put aside my street clothes and punk makeup and wore a Catholic school uniform—and you could get the skirts second-hand on Haight Street—I was really treated quite well wherever I went. I mean, sometimes I had to go to the big hotels. I had to splurge on breakfast at the Stanford Court or the Fairmont. I had to be around the places I’d left. I didn’t do anything except eat a good meal and read Variety as I drank my coffee, but I felt good doing that, just sitting there in the restaurant off the lobby and feeling safe. I always wore the Catholic school clothes when I did this. I wore them when I went strolling through the big stores. Somebody’s daughter, that was my disguise.

  Then one afternoon I opened the paper and there was your picture and an ad for the big book party downtown. Now even without Ollie talking about Crimson Mardi Gras I probably would have noticed it. I’d read all your books when I was a child.

  But there was the added thing of reading Crimson Mardi Gras and finding all the old picture books in the Fire Island house. I was really curious. I wanted to see you. And I decided to play it the way a gay boy would have played it, to just go there and make eye contact, as they were always doing it, you know, cruise.

  When I saw how handsome you were and how you kept flirting with me, I decided to take this a step further. I heard them talking about the party at the Saint Francis. I bought a book and went ahead to wait for you there.

  Of course, you know exactly what happened. But let me tell you that it was one of the strangest experiences I had ever had since I left home. You were like some storybook prince to me, real strong but gentle, a kind of mad lover who painted beautiful pictures, and your house full of toys, well, it bordered on the outright insane.

  Hard to analyze and perhaps it is too soon to try. I think you were the most independent person I had ever come across. Nothing touched you, except you wanted me to touch you, that was clear from the start. And as I said before, you were the first older man I had ever made love to. I’d never come across that kind of patience before.

  And whereas everybody I had ever known had used their good looks, you didn’t even know you were a handsome man. Your clothes didn’t fit. Your hair was always messed up. Later on, it was fun transforming you, making you buy new suits and decent jackets and sweaters. Getting you measured for those suits. And you know what happened. You didn’t care at all, but you looked terrific. Everybody noticed you when we went out together.

  But I’m jumping ahead. The first couple of nights I fell in love with you. I called Daddy from a phone booth in San Francisco and I told him about you, and I knew everything was going to be OK.

  But it might have all died that day you showed me the first Belinda paintings and told me that they would never be seen by anyone, that it would wreck your career. I just went crazy when you told me that. You remember. And I really meant to run away from you then, and maybe it would have been better for you if I had. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand what you’d said about never showing the pictures. It was just too much like what had happened with Final Score.

  “Here it goes again,” I thought. “I am poison, poison!” And yet the rage in me, the rage against everything was tearing me apart.

  But you know what happened, the murder on Page Street and my calling you and then we were together again, and it was like Marty all over again, because I knew I loved you and I wasn’t going to leave you, and whatever you did with the paintings, well, that was your decision, or so I kept telling myself.

  And I was so happy just to be with you, to be loved by you, that it seemed nothing else mattered in the world.

  I called Dad collect from your house, and this time I told him who you were and gave him the number, though I warned him not to use it because you were always there. And Dad was real happy with what was happening.

  It turned out he knew your wife Celia, the one who works in New York City; she had come into G.G.’s often, and he got her talking about you, and when I called him the next time, he said you were very much OK from what Celia had said. Celia said the marriage “failed” because you were always working. You wouldn’t do anything but paint. Well, that was fine by me.

  But meantime things were not going well at all for Dad. He had not gone back to Ollie. He was sleeping on a couch in the salon instead. Even the night of the Tony Awards, when Dolly Rose walked off with everything, Dad would not go back when Ollie called.

  And these lawyer types were bothering him. They kept insisting I was in New York and Dad knew where. Then strange things had started to happen. The rumor went round that one of Dad’s hairdressers was sick with AIDS.

  Now you know what AIDS is—you can’t get it through casual contact. But it’s scary, and people are just crazy on the subject. Well Dad had a whole slew of cancellations. Even Blair Sackwell called to tell him about the rumors. And Blair had helped to quash the whole thing.

  But Dad was optimistic. He was winning the fight. He had made his move, as he called it, the day before with the lawyers who had come to the salon again. “Look, if she’s really missing, we should call the police in on this,” he had said right in front of them, and then he had reached for the phone. He had even asked the operator to connect him with the police department before one of these lawyers took the receiver and hung it up. “I am telling you,” Dad said to them, “if I see you again and you still haven’t found her, I am calling the police without fail.”

  I had to laugh hearing Dad do this tough talk. But it was a terrible thing to think of him up against these unpleasant men. But Dad kept insisting he was happy:

  “It’s chess, I’m telling you, Belinda, you just have to make the right move at the right time. And Belinda, the best part is this, they don’t have the faintest idea where you really are.”

  Now when I made these collect calls to G.G., when I gave him your number, it never occurred to me in a million years that anyone would find that number on the record of Dad’s calls. But that is exactly what happened. And they traced me in this fashion directly to your house.

  And in July, after we had been together for almost six weeks, Marty appeared on Castro Street, walking straight towards me in front of the Walgreen’s drugstore, and asked me to come with him in his car.

  I was shocked out. I nearly lost it. What if you had come along right then?
/>   But within seconds we were speeding away downtown to the United Theatricals suite at the Hyatt Regency, the very one where Mother was later to meet you.

  Well, Marty was trembling and throwing an Italian opera scene before we ever got there. But I was not prepared for his immediately trying to put the make on me as soon as the door of the suite closed. I had to fight him off and I mean fight. But Marty is not mean. Truly he is not. And when he realized that I would not go to bed with him, he kind of came apart Marty-style, as he had done so many times at the Chateau Marmont and in Beverly Hills, and he told me everything that had been going on.

  Things had been terrible after I left, what with Uncle Daryl insisting on hiring his own detectives to find me and Marty pursuing his investigation on his own. Mom had been crazy with guilt in the weeks that followed, telling him on the one hand not to look for me, then waking up screaming that she knew I was in danger, that I was hurt.

  Trish and Jill had come back, and they had to be let in on the secret that I was missing, and they were real hard to control. Jill was for calling the police, and she was angry with Bonnie. As for Daryl, he blamed everything on me and had laid the legal groundwork to have me committed to a mental institution in Texas as soon as I was found.

  Marty kept insisting to all of them that it was a big mix-up, nothing had happened between him and me, Mom had imagined it. If we hadn’t all gone off half-cocked before he came back from the hospital, everything would have been OK. But the three Texans, as he called them, all believed Mom’s version that I had tried to seduce Marty, though Trish and Jill were very worried about me and really thought the police should be called.

  It was hell, Marty said, hell, hell, hell. But the worst part was that Mom had now convinced herself that Marty was keeping me somewhere. He had tried to reason with her about it, but it was useless. She was sure I was in LA and Marty and I were still carrying on.

  Last week her delusions had really gone into high gear. While he was in New York, checking out my connections with G.G., Mom had decided he was really with me. She had written a note telling Daryl everything and then slashed her wrists, nearly bleeding to death before she was found.

  Fortunately Jill got the note and destroyed it. And Marty had been able to talk to Mother and get her trust back. But it was getting harder and harder to keep on an even keel. If he left her for an hour, she was convinced he was with me. Even this trip to San Francisco was risky. Trish believed him, so did Jill, and they accepted it when he said he was going on with the search. As for Daryl he could not be sure.

  Of course, Marty had been frantic with worry about me. He’d been on pins and needles while his men checked out this artist guy, as he called you, and made sure I was truly OK.

  “But the bottom line is, you have to come back, Belinda, you have to kiss this guy good-bye and come back to LA with me now. She’s drowning, Belinda. And there are other problems down there as well. Susan Jeremiah’s gone to Switzerland to locate you. She is really breathing down everybody’s neck. Honey, I know how you feel about me, I know that. And I know you never meant for all this to happen, but, good Christ, Belinda, the lady’s going to off herself, damn it. There is only one way out.”

  Now it was my turn for Italian opera. And the first thing I screamed was:

  “How could you try to ruin G.G.? How could you start these rumors about his salon in New York?”

  He was immediately innocent. He hadn’t done that, no he hadn’t. If anybody did that, it was Uncle Daryl, blah, blah, blah. Then he said he’d stop the rumors. He would see to it personally, he would kill all that. Especially, of course, if I would come back.

  “Why the hell can’t you leave me alone!” I said. “How can you tell me I have to come back and let my uncle Daryl lock me up? Do you hear yourself?. What you’re saying—that I have to come back for her sake and your sake, my God!”

  Calm down, please, he said. He had a plan and I had to listen to him. He would have Trish and Jill meet us at the airport, and we would go back to the house together, and then he would lay down the law that there would be no mental institution in Texas or convent in Switzerland or whatever the hell it was. I was free to do what I pleased. I could go on location with Susan in Europe, just the way I had wanted before. Setting me and Susan up with a television film, that was no problem, Susan had something in the works now, well, change it, one call to Ash Levine and he could do that. I mean, what the hell were we talking about here, for Crissakes, wasn’t he the goddamn producer and director of “Champagne Flight”? Bonnie worked for him. He’d pull rank.

  “You’re losing your mind, Marty,” I said. “Mom is the show and you know it. And what makes you think you could stop Uncle Daryl? For years he’s bought land all over Dallas and Fort Worth with Mom’s money. He’s not scared of you and United Theatricals. And why would Mom let me go off to do what I want with Susan when Susan works for you?”

  He stood up. He was breathing fire, like I’d seen him a hundred times at the studio, pointing to the speaker phone on his desk. Only this time he was pointing at me.

  “Belinda, trust me! I will get you in and out, I am telling you. But things cannot go on as they are right now.” I got up to go.

  Then he softened, he was the quick change artist. “Don’t you see, honey, I will muscle this thing through. The tension’s at the breaking point down there. And I am going to relieve it when I bring you back alive and OK. You can have whatever you want, a little apartment in Westwood, anything. I will take care of it, I will do it, honey I am telling you—”

  “Marty, I am staying in San Francisco. I am where I want to be. And if you don’t leave G.G. alone, so help me God, I’ll do something, I don’t know what but “I never finished.

  He was screaming again. He didn’t want to hurt me, the last thing in the world he wanted to do was hurt me, but I just could not turn my back on what was going on.

  I was just staring at him. And I realized what I should have realized the first time I laid eyes on him on Castro Street. I no longer loved him, and, more than that, I was no longer really in sympathy with him. And though I understood what was happening, I knew that I could not change it. I knew that as surely as I knew the world was round.

  Imagine me back in LA and Mother accusing me again of living with Marty, imagine. Imagine Uncle Daryl getting doctors to just take me away. I didn’t know what the laws were in Texas. But I knew the legal jargon I heard on the streets of New York and California. I was a minor in danger of living an immoral and dissolute life. I was a minor beyond the supervision of an adult. And the evidence went way way back.

  “No, Marty,” I said. “I love Mom. But something happened between us the day after the shooting, something you’d never understand. I’m not coming down there to see her or talk to her, or Uncle Daryl either. And if you want to know the frank truth, nothing could get me away from San Francisco right now. Not even Susan. Marty, you’ve got to handle this on your own.”

  He looked at me and I saw him toughen. I saw him get street mean. And then he made his move, as Dad had done with the lawyers in New York.

  “Belinda, if you don’t do it, I’ll have the police pick you up at Jeremy Walker’s house on Seventeenth Street, and I will have him arrested on every, applicable morals charge in this state. He’ll do time for the rest of his life, Belinda. I mean it, I don’t want to hurt you, honey, but you either come with me now or Walker goes to jail tonight.”

  And now I made my move with no time to think it through.

  “You do that, Marty, and you’re making the worst mistake of your entire career. Because not only will I tell the police that you pursued me, seduced me, and molested me repeatedly, I will tell the press as well. I will tell them that Mom knew it, that Mom was jealous, that Mom tried to shoot me and never reported me missing, and I am talking everybody now, Marty, from the National Enquirer to The New York Times. I will fill them in on Mom’s drugs, on her neglect of me, and your being in cahoots with it. Believe me, Marty, I
will bring you all down. And let me tell you something else, Marty. You do not have one shred of evidence that I ever went to bed with Jeremy Walker, not one shred. But I will testify in a court of law about the times I slept with you.”

  He was staring at me, trying to be tough, really trying, but I could see the hurt inside him, and I couldn’t stand it. It was almost as bad as the fight with Mom.

  “Belinda, how can you say these things?” he asked. And he really meant it. I know. Because I felt the same way that time with Mom.

  “Marty, you are threatening us! Me and Jeremy! And G.G.!” I screamed at him. “Marty, leave us alone.”

  “Daryl’s going to find you, honey!” he said. “Don’t you see, I’m giving you what Daryl won’t give you! I’m giving you a choice.”

  “We’ll see about that, Marty. Daryl isn’t going to hurt Mom, of that you can be sure. You may find this hard to believe with all your wheeling and dealing, but Daryl loves Mom the way you never have.”

  Then I tried to split out of there right then. But he was not going to let that happen, and the scene that followed was a terrible thing. I mean, we had been lovers, me and this man. And we were shouting and crying and he was trying to hold me and I was fighting him and then I did get out and I ran all the way down all the flights of steps in the Hyatt and out onto Market Street.

  But, you know, Jeremy, I was terrified. And all I could think was, Belinda, you have done it again! You are dragging Jeremy into the muck and mire with you, just as you dragged G.G. and Ollie Boon. And you don’t know what these people will do.

  It was that night I begged you to go to Carmel. And I begged you to go down to New Orleans and open up your mother’s house again. I wanted to run to the ends of the earth with you.

  We drove to Carmel at midnight, as I remember. And all the way I kept looking in the side mirror, trying to see if somebody was following us.

  Next day I called Daddy from a phone booth on Ocean Avenue, using quarters of my own, instead of calling collect, so there would be no record of the call, and I told Dad how Marty had traced me through the collect calls to him.