Deadly Anniversaries

by Marcia Muller

  But all Dawn wanted was to get away from the hotel, to find a place without fans or industry people. It was perverse of her to suggest they go back to St. Mary’s Street, the place that had been the center of that brief time of her life. At the end of each week, while most of the cast and crew rushed back to LA, she, Corinne, and Mickey Junior would drive out to play around in the bluebells, and then at night come down here and—what had M.J. called it? Whoop it up. Let’s go whoop it up.

  When Dawn had spotted the sign for Casa Contigo, she’d expected a mechanical bull, line dancing, men in cowboy hats, but the music had been varied and raucous. Charlie Sexton, the Texas Tornados, Johnny Reno and the Sax Maniacs. A band called The Perpetrators with a tall, gangly man on harmonica. Mexican bands driven by the unexpected engine of an accordion.

  They call it conjunto music, M.J. had told her. It means ‘together.’ And he reached for her hand under the table. When Dawn said it had to be a secret, the two of them “hooking up again,” he had agreed readily. It was hotter that way, and M.J. liked whatever was hottest. Of course, Corinne wasn’t fooled for a minute, but that didn’t matter. In fact, it helped.

  Corinne watches Dawn lift the glass to her lips. Dawn can sense her every twitch, every instinct. She’s trying to see if Dawn’s hands shake. She’s wondering if Dawn has staked out this place, made an agreement with the bartender to sneak her true Bloodies, not this watered-down version.

  “It must be hard,” Corinne says, “being back here.”

  Improvisation has never been Dawn’s strong suit, but she knows the character she’s playing right now. “There are some bad memories, yes. But it was an accident. Remember, Corinne? It was an accident.”

  THEN

  The first bar Dawn found—the first one open at two in the afternoon anyway—was called Casa Contigo. “Home with you,” Corinne had translated for Dawn when they had stopped out front—an attempt to impress her with what little she’d retained from her two years of high school Spanish.

  Dawn, however, insisted on calling it Casa Contagion—a name that became funnier and funnier with each Bloody Mary. Two Bloodies. Dawn had said it before Corinne could order the Diet Coke she’d planned on, before she could even get adjusted to the darkness of the place—completely windowless, what little light there was flickering out of the electric votive candles on the tables and one sad string of party lights behind the bar, shaped like chilies. Never trust a bar with no windows. Someone had said that to Corinne once—she couldn’t remember who.

  “Just one,” she had said when her first Bloody had arrived, the celery stick jutting weakly out of it, like a surrender flag.

  Dawn laughed, her laughter magical, musical. “There’s no such thing as just one Bloody Mary.”

  She was right. At some point, Corinne started measuring time in Bloody Marys, but that had been at around three or five of them ago and now she wasn’t measuring anymore. It must be dark out by now. Sometime around Bloody Mary #6, Dawn switched to something clear—straight vodka, maybe?—but Corinne stuck to the original plan.

  Corinne was laughing now, so hard that tears were spilling down her cheeks and her breath was coming out in fitful snorts. Dawn had just told her about a one-nighter she’d had with “the smart one” from a boy band Corinne used to love in junior high.

  “I am telling you the complete truth,” Dawn was saying. “A tentacle, coming right out the side. I had no idea what he expected me to do with that.”

  Corinne fell over onto one side, her face smacking the sticky banquette seat Dawn had so graciously offered, taking the hard chair for herself.

  “Are you okay?” Dawn said.

  Corinne had to catch her breath before she could respond, and even then it was just a “Yeah, yeah fine” floating out of her slack mouth as she pushed herself up to sitting, Dawn smiling at her from across the small table, perfectly composed, chili lights glimmering behind her like a backdrop.

  “This is fun,” Dawn said. “You’re fun.” Her face blurred in and out of focus and her features in the dim light softened into Millie’s.

  “You’ve got the best fucking hair,” Corinne said.

  They both started at a loud metallic ringing. It took Corinne a few moments to recognize her portable phone, McNally Stark’s phone, actually, a sleek little Motorola. She had been so proud when Dick McNally gave her that phone that she had tried to ignore his hand on her ass.

  “The cops?” Dawn said.

  Corinne nodded solemnly, all the laughter wrung out of her. She took what she hoped was a sobering breath, lifted the phone from its cradle and pulled out the antenna, willing the words not to slur. “McNally Stark, Corinne speaking.”

  Dick McNally’s voice was like a bucket of ice over her head. “Are you high?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I just got a call from the editor of Movieline. What the fuck, Corinne? You have one simple job and that’s to take her to the fucking interview, and you can’t even do that? What the—”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. McNally. I... Um... Dawn had some things she needed to attend to.”

  “I’m so fucking close to firing you right now.”

  “What’s he saying?” Dawn said.

  Corinne waved her off. “I’ll call the editor myself. I—”

  Dawn grabbed the phone from her. “Dick?” she said. “Yeah. It’s me. You say one more word to this girl other than, ‘Sorry,’ and I’ll pull my business so fast it’ll make your brain spin. Yeah? Well I don’t care about my image. How’s that? And you know what else I don’t care about? Telling your wife why my last personal assistant quit.”

  Corinne felt her eyes widen.

  “Great. Now hang up. And don’t call her again.” Dawn handed her back the phone. “How about another round?”

  “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you, Dawn.”

  Dawn waved at the bartender. She held up two fingers, and just as she did it, the door opened, bright light spilling into the bar, hurting Corinne’s eyes. It was earlier than she had thought.

  “We’ve got so much time ahead of us.” Dawn said it as though she was reading her mind.

  Maybe she can, Corinne thought. Maybe she is.

  Their driver took them to the resort where they would stay during filming. It wasn’t more than twenty miles from downtown, but it looked more like that other Texas, the one Hollywood had re-created in Utah, Pasadena, soundstages, you name it, and actually felt more familiar. After all, Corinne had never been to San Antonio before today, but she’d seen a lot of Westerns.

  Corinne had a room in the hotel proper, while Dawn and the other stars would be staying in the resort’s bungalows—casitas, the staff called them, adding to that John Wayne flavor.

  A bellhop in boots and a cowboy hat was piling Dawn’s four pieces of luggage on his cart when a silver-haired man walked into the lobby.

  Dawn looked up at him, her face breaking into a bright smile. “Mr. Sinclair!” she said. “I’m sorry I missed the Movieline presser. My flight was late.”

  “Not a big deal. You know the drill. Same ole, same ole. Any message for your fans.”

  Dawn asked if he wanted to have a drink, shocking Corinne; Dawn couldn’t weigh more than 110 pounds; she’d had a dozen drinks and had been sipping from a tallboy on the drive up. Yet she hardly seemed affected at all by their afternoon, whereas all Corinne wanted to do was to take a preemptive handful of Tylenol and crawl into bed.

  “Maybe later, darling. I’m not young like you, you know.” He winked.

  As he turned to leave the lobby, Corinne had a flash of déjà vu, but it was only from a film she’d seen him in—one of her dad’s favorites.

  “Mr. Sinclair,” Dawn said, before he reached the door.

  “Yes?”

  “Is M.J. here yet?”

  He nodded. “Should I let him know you’ve arrived?” />
  She smiled brightly. It didn’t quite reach her eyes. “You better,” she said.

  NOW

  The second day of Alamo City Comic Con, Dawn has a panel. It’s not the biggest ballroom, but it’s the second biggest and it’s almost full. She can’t remember the topic—Something Pioneers Something Future—but the topics never matter at these conventions unless you’re Making News. It’s been a long time since Dawn made news. She’s here to charm more people into coming to her signing line. She flips her hair, does her patented scream, really more a yelp.

  About midway through, she sees Corinne come in, take a seat in the back row, and it’s like she drops a stitch in the discussion. By the time she picks the thread up again, it’s as if the whole conversation has unraveled. The audience is asking questions now.

  “Dawn?” prompts the person who’s roaming the hall with the microphone. “She asked about the tragedy on the set of Comanche County.”

  “Well, yes it was—tragic.”

  Whispers, rustling. Great, soon there will be rumors that she’s drinking again. Dawn surveys the room and does the only thing she can: she bursts into tears.

  No one could cry on cue like Dawn Darling.

  “I’m sorry—it’s still so hard. Such a young life, wasted. And his father was never the same. Understandably. It was a good movie—or would have been, if we could have finished it. But no one had the heart to do it without Mr. Sinclair and he was wrecked, just wrecked. An accident like that—”

  The woman who asked the question is not done. “I have it on good authority—good authority—that it might have been a suicide. Or a drug overdose. He was very experienced with guns—”

  Dawn studies the woman through her damp lashes. Does she really know something? She remembers Corinne bustling about. Close the perimeter, she kept saying. We have to close the perimeter. Dawn had almost burst into hysterical laughter, but Corinne was right as usual.

  But even a closed perimeter has people inside it. The resort staff as anxious as Corinne that it be reported in the most benign way possible. A justice of the peace, who ruled it an accidental shooting death. Dawn had known that justices of the peace married people. She hadn’t known they could pronounce people dead, too.

  Could this be Sophia, twenty-five years later and as many pounds heavier? No, Sophia’s slinky body was the kind that got mean as it aged, dry and brittle. Like a snake’s. All these years, Sophia has never tried to get in touch with Dawn. Still, she worries.

  In the back of the room, Corinne motions for the microphone and asks: “Vampires, zombies—what do the panelists think will be the next big breakout character in supernatural stories?”

  Even from here, Dawn can almost see Corinne’s antennae twitch.

  THEN

  The good news was that Dawn insisted Corinne stay in San Antonio.

  The bad news was that meant keeping up with Dawn and Mickey Sinclair Junior when he arrived.

  Dawn and Mickey Junior—he made it clear that he preferred M.J.—had met on the set of MoonWatch, where he had a small part as a lustful alien who appeared to be a handsome Earth boy, but was really a many-tentacled monster in search of a mate. He claimed now that he was the one who pushed his father to cast Dawn in Runaway, her breakout film. “She was young, but I could see her potential.”

  His own career had fizzled out while Dawn’s soared. He was almost too good-looking, his face more like his French model mother’s. So his father found him some kind of work on whatever picture he was making, tried to coax directors into throwing him a line or two.

  But M.J. said he didn’t care about acting. He wanted to party. If he could act as well as he could hold his liquor and his drugs, Corinne thought, he’d have a bigger career than his father’s.

  When the weekends came and others (including Mick Senior) flew back to LA, M.J. persuaded Dawn to stay behind. (Corinne had to stay; she was on call.) “Let’s go to St. Mary’s Street and whoop it up,” he said. Corinne had hoped for an Urban Cowboy experience, but apparently that was out of date, even in Texas.

  On this particular Saturday night, they had gone back to Dawn’s discovery, Casa Contagion. Corinne was the designated driver, or supposed to be since the rental car was in her name, but she could barely keep her eyes open by 1:00 a.m. while M.J. wanted to keep going, to someplace he swore never closed.

  “The night is young,” M.J. said. “And I like ’em young.”

  He was staring hungrily at a dark-haired woman in white pants. Pretty enough, but not prettier than Dawn, and certainly not that much younger. Yet Dawn glared at M.J., eyes narrowed with hate—until she realized Corinne was watching her.

  “You go home,” she said to Corinne. “You don’t need to babysit us.”

  “But the car—”

  “Oh, I bet M.J.’s new friend has a car.”

  He was already across the room, chatting up the girl in the white pants.

  Corinne was grateful to have the night off, although she realized on the drive home that she was less sober than she should be. How did Dawn outdrink her five-to-one and stay so centered? And never a trace of a hangover when she had to work. Corinne fell into bed, grateful for the chance to sleep as long as she liked.

  The phone erupted at 5:00 a.m., apparently uninformed of her plans. She started to let it go, then remembered that the cost of staying here in San Antonio was that she was always on call. She put the receiver to her aching head, but there was nothing but the bleat of a dial tone. It took her a few moments of utter confusion to realize that it wasn’t the hotel phone ringing. It was the McNally Stark cell phone.

  Corinne stumbled out of bed with her eyes half-closed, following the sound to the corner of the room, stubbing her toe on her suitcase. Pain shot through her. “Hello?” she yelped.

  “Hello.” It was a woman’s voice, smoky/scratchy like Demi Moore’s. “Is this Corey?”

  “Corinne.”

  “Whatever. I wanted to call the police, but Dawn told me to call this number so I’m calling.”

  “Dawn? The police?”

  “Yep.”

  “Why?”

  “Probably best you jus’, like, come over here?”

  “Where is ‘here’?”

  “The...what are they called? Casita.”

  “Dawn’s casita?”

  A muttered conversation. “No, the other one. The guy’s.”

  Corinne swallowed, her throat closing in on itself. She longed for water, and when she spoke, her voice was scratchy and unfamiliar, a pale imitation of the caller’s. “Who am I talking to?”

  “Sophia,” she said. As though that was supposed to mean something. And then she hung up. She didn’t even give Corinne a last name.

  THEN

  Corinne noticed Dawn first. The door to the casita was unlocked, and when she stepped into the living room, her eyes went right to her, curled up in the corner of the room clutching her legs, small as a child, blond hair draped over her knees.

  “Dawn?” Corinne said. And then she saw the dead body.

  Corinne opened her mouth, but no sound came out.

  Dawn let out a whimper.

  Corinne took a few deep breaths, her eyes on what was left of his head. “What...” she said. “What...”

  Dawn looked up, her cheeks red and glistening. “I was in the other room and he... I heard him say something about Russian roulette and he... Oh God...”

  “Who is this?”

  “Mickey.”

  “Who?”

  “M.J.”

  Jesus, no. Oh God no. Not Mick Sinclair’s son. “Are you serious?”

  “Does it look like I’m joking?” Dawn’s voice pitched up, like a frightened child’s. And then she started to cry.

  In Corinne’s mind, a switch went off—as though she were outside of herself, viewing the whole scene from th
e scope of a camera. “Oh my God,” she whispered. The words ran through her head, but she didn’t say them out loud. It was bad enough to be thinking them, but still. Still. It was why she was here, wasn’t it? She was the fixer—that was her purpose. To fix the optics.

  Dawn Darling. Molly from MoonWatch. America’s interstellar sweetheart, Corinne’s very first and most important client curled up in the fetal position in the corner of the sleaziest crime scene imaginable. The beer cans on the floor. The empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s. The condom wrappers. The smeared, full-length mirror at the center of the room dusted with the remnants of a cocaine binge. The optics.

  “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “You can go to the bathroom in your—your casita.”

  “I need to wash my face.”

  “Look, Dawn. We need to get you away from this place as quickly as—”

  “Did you fucking hear me?”

  Corinne stared at her. The dead calm of her features. Her voice smooth and steady, despite the tears on her cheeks.

  Without another word, Dawn stood up, turned, and left the room.

  Hysteria. She’s traumatized. Who wouldn’t be traumatized after seeing something like that? That was it. Trauma. Hysteria. And yet—

  Corinne moved closer to the body, the dank, coppery smell of it. The ruined, bloody face. M.J. Handsome M.J.... Russian roulette. Jesus.

  The gun in his open palm. A revolver. Black dust on his fingers. Russian roulette. Corinne thought of Dawn’s hands.

  Of Dawn in the bathroom, washing them clean.

  THEN

  It wasn’t until they were back in Dawn’s casita, optics averted, that Corinne was able to breathe again, to think. And what she thought of was not the dead body on the floor, not her client either, though she was well and truly a murderer. It was not even her own reaction to what she’d seen, the person she had become. No: what she thought was what a fixer would think.