“But it doesn’t. It’s just the same. Even when they’re being nice to me I know it’s just because they feel like they have to be. Especially now. At least my mother understood that. She never bought any of their bullshit. Which is probably why she did what she did.”
Juliette felt a great weariness creep over her, but she asked the question she could see Mercy wanted asked. “What? What did she do?”
“Oh, didn’t you hear? I was right; it was Joseph’s, um, DNA in Lloyd’s room. But apparently there was spermicide mixed into it.”
Juliette gave her a blank look.
“From a condom? Jesus, didn’t you ever see Presumed Innocent?” Mercy asked. “It was my mother’s favorite movie, which is why I know it was her idea. She staged the whole autoeroticism; Joseph was just an unwitting . . . donor.”
“So your mother slept with him and used . . . That’s just disgusting.”
Mercy shrugged. “The things we do for love, or money. Or both. She didn’t want the movie to be shut down, either. Or maybe she just didn’t want the press to find out that Lloyd was using because she knew everyone would blame me. Or maybe she gave him the drugs. Who knows? Either way, Carson is fucked because the insurance company won’t pay until there’s a ‘thorough investigation,’ and Bill Becker is furious. So”—Mercy allowed herself a small spiteful smile—“some good has come of it.”
“Do you ever miss your parents?” Mercy asked suddenly. “Even after what they did?”
Juliette blinked as her mind caught up with Mercy’s words. “Yes,” she said, and when she said it, she realized it was true. “Here. I miss them here. I think that’s why I stayed away for so long.”
Mercy nodded, but then someone called, “Places,” and soon the word was ringing all over the set. “I have to go,” Mercy said, getting up, slow and unsteady as an old woman. “I really miss my mother, Juliette,” she said softly, as if it were a secret. “And I’m pretty sure it’s my fault she’s dead. Gabe says it isn’t, but I think he’s wrong. He’s not right about everything. But you know that already.” And with a small sad smile, Mercy trailed away.
“Usher left his bag but I couldn’t do the switch or have a look because Mercy was practically sitting on it the whole time,” Juliette told Devlin while they hitched a ride back to the villa on a golf cart. “And anyway, I couldn’t really think about that because you will not believe what is going on.” Quickly she caught him up on the events. “Mercy is falling apart, I mean honestly falling apart. And frankly I don’t blame her. You should talk to her,” she said, suddenly inspired. “She loves you. Seriously. Maybe she’ll tell you what’s really going on.”
“You seemed to need me in another capacity,” he said, gripping the side of his seat with great alarm as the cart bumped its way along the makeshift road. “Is this safe, do you think?”
“Did you play catch up with the lovely Carson? Was she as big a bitch when you first met her? Or is that Bill Becker’s doing?”
“Now, now, J.,” he admonished. “She’s just ambitious and in a very difficult situation.”
“God, you sound just like O’Connor. With whom, I believe, her affections are currently occupied.”
Devlin registered her bitter tone with raised eyebrows and she had the presence of mind to blush.
“Right, sorry. Anyway,” she continued, quickly changing the subject, “I know Usher’s bag must be full of something; when I hefted it, it was way too heavy for what I could see in there, which isn’t much. I should be able to make an easy switch if you can manage to keep him occupied.”
“That seems to be my sole duty in life these days, keeping people occupied.” His words were accompanied by a keen glance that filled Juliette with alarm.
“Oh, Dev,” she said, “you honestly don’t think . . .”
“Leave it, J.,” he said lightly, as he detached himself from the golf cart, which had now stopped. “That’s a conversation for a different time. And it’s certainly not as if I weren’t enjoying myself. Though I cannot believe,” he added, flexing his knees, “that this is the preferred method of transportation for people in the film industry. The dust alone . . .” He surveyed the fine silt of white that now covered his pants, before flashing her a smile. “But you let me know when you need another . . . distraction. Now I’m curious as to what’s in that bag as well.”
Before they had come to Cerreta, Juliette and Devlin had visited the Siena cobbler. After finding the secret pocket in Angie’s purse, Juliette was convinced the cobbler was also a drug dealer. Certainly he had the sexy undercurrent of danger down pat. But when they had presented themselves as friends in need of a fix, he had seemed legitimately baffled. “You are with the movie stars, yes?” he asked. “The ones who were staying at the Coronet?” When they replied that they were, he had simply smiled and shrugged. “You should talk to your friends, then,” he said. “I cannot help you.” Juliette attempted to press him in Italian, but Devlin had told her to “leave it.” The cobbler had, however, provided her, at great cost, with a bag similar to Usher’s. Juliette’s plan was to switch the two long enough to give Usher’s bag a thorough once-over.
“It all seems so insane,” Juliette said now. “I mean, do we really think Usher was giving Angie drugs to give to Mercy? Why? To keep her coming back to Resurrection? That doesn’t make any sense. None of this makes any sense.” They had arrived at Casa Padua and she threw herself into a chair on the front porch. “I keep thinking that maybe it is just as simple as Mercy being a drug addict and lying about everything, the way drug addicts do.”
“I’d buy that. Except Angie is actually dead,” Devlin pointed out, sitting down beside her. “As is Lloyd.”
Juliette shrugged. “Well, Lloyd OD’ing and Joseph or Joseph and Angie or just Angie trying to make it look like autoeroticism is enough weirdness for any set. Maybe Angie just fell. The police didn’t seem to see anything that would make them think otherwise.”
“Perhaps,” Devlin said.
“I mean, do you think Mercy could have killed her mother?” Juliette asked. “Gabe said she was with him all night. Although as far as Gabe is concerned,” she said to herself, “it would have been justifiable homicide. Still, I don’t think he would lie. He’s very big on telling the truth. It’s one of his major faults.”
Devlin was silent, seemingly engrossed in the sight of a black cat picking her way along the roof of the fattoria, where, in one geranium-framed doorway, a young man sat strumming a guitar; against the golden weathered stone, he could have belonged to virtually any century. “Extraordinary,” Devlin said, breathing deep the sun-warmed scent of rosemary and lavender and some sweet flower that joined them when the breeze blew by. “Just extraordinary.”
“I wonder what will happen if the insurance company doesn’t pay for that time lost after Lloyd’s death,” Juliette mused. “I’m actually amazed Bill Becker isn’t here in person teaching Carson the meaning of running a production.”
“That,” Devlin said, pulling himself out of his reverie, “is the last thing anyone needs. But you know, J., for all the extraordinary interruptions, it does appear that the movie is getting made, and from what you’ve said, it sounds like it could actually be good.”
“I know, it’s weird. The worse things get, the better Mercy is. She’s giving O’Connor a run for his money.”
“It’s good for him,” Devlin said. “He’s been coasting for the past few years—Bluebird was god-awful—and he’s spent the last six months feeling nice and sorry for himself. Not to mention occupying way too much of your precious time.”
“You’re the one who installed him at the Pinnacle while he was having chemo,” Juliette said. “You’re the one who told me to keep him preoccupied and comfortable.”
“Each word you utter is a lance in my heart,” he said with mock drama. “I remember all too well the circumstances that created your intimacy.” He paused for a moment and Juliette remembered the strange and unsettling events that had drawn
all three of them together—Josh’s death, Michael’s illness, Oscar season—all of which had sent Juliette running for Tuscany. She was smiling to herself at the irony of it all—here they all were again—and so deep in memory that she missed Devlin’s next words.
“What?”
“I said, do you love him?”
Her smile vanished; Devlin was looking at her with nothing more than mild curiosity, as if he had asked her if she happened to know the time. Considering the course of recent events, Juliette found that mildly insulting—she had imagined he would be more than slightly concerned about her feelings for O’Connor. But that was the problem with Devlin; he was so damn sensible about everything, so calm and matter-of-fact. For a moment or two during the previous night, Juliette had imagined he had felt, as she had, carried away. But here he was, asking the obvious question, perfectly prepared, it would seem, for either answer.
“Jesus,” she said. “I don’t know. Is that why you flew all the way to Italy? You could have just emailed. What kind of question is that anyway?”
She spoke angrily to keep her voice from shaking. It wasn’t as if she had expected, or wanted, a declaration of love from Devlin. Women were simply guests in his life; treated graciously for the short duration of their stays, then forgotten. Still, having him look at her as if this were all just a matter of idle curiosity was genuinely upsetting. She had no idea what the previous night had meant, but certainly it meant something. At least it had to her.
“Do you want some wine?” she asked abruptly, then stood and disappeared into the house.
“Here,” she said, tossing him a copy of the Little Book as she reappeared, carrying two very full glasses. “Busy your mind with the Steve Usher path to recovery instead. Just don’t let him see that. It’s Lloyd’s copy and Mercy doesn’t want him getting his money-grubbing paws on it.”
“I’ll save it for my bedtime reading,” Devlin said, slipping it into his jacket pocket. “Location to be determined later.” When Juliette choked, he slapped her on the back. “Oh, look,” he said, “the circus has come to town.”
And indeed, up the drive and into the courtyard came a procession of golf carts and small trucks, disgorging all manner of crew members, who immediately began unloading lights and impossibly large coils of wire and setting up for a scene outside the tower.
Chapter Thirteen
MANY THINGS WERE MADE clear in the following hours. Michael arrived at the villa and walked by Juliette without a word, only to send her a note from the depths of his trailer saying: Point taken. Now what? Carson invited Devlin to join her in a tour “of the site” as if Cerreta had been conceived of and built for her personal use, and just as Juliette was spluttering her outrage, a PA came panting up to tell her that Mercy needed to see her right away in her trailer.
“Off you go, now, J.,” Devlin said, taking Carson’s arm and following her lead toward the olive grove. “Can’t keep the star waiting.”
“Now I understand why you made such a big deal out of taking my mother’s purse,” Mercy said, tossing the bag at Juliette as she entered the trailer. “I see you helped yourself. I hope you enjoyed it.” Leaning toward her, she turned over Juliette’s arm, exposing the pale underside where the imprint of Devlin’s fingers was still very clear. “My, my, my. Looks like you did. Is he as good as everyone says he is? He never would give it up for me, said I was too young.”
Moving through her trailer, Mercy did not appear angry by her discovery, but she did not appear particularly sober, either. A bottle of vodka stood open on her dressing table beside two long fat lines of cocaine—apparently what Juliette had discovered did not represent the whole stash. Juliette sighed.
“I flushed it,” Juliette said. “It’s not my thing anymore. And I was hoping it wasn’t yours, either.”
Mercy hoovered one line, then the other, then took a gulp of vodka. Juliette winced. She could almost taste the stinging sweet chemical paste in the back of her throat. Mercy’s eyes brightened and she sat up straight.
“Lovely,” she said. “It’s a night shoot. Up in the tower. My nun’s a little trippy because she’s in love with the artist so she feels like she’s cheating on God. Actually cheating, like God is her lover. What?” she said, catching sight of Juliette’s disappointed face.
“You have no idea how much time I have spent wondering how you were getting hold of that stuff,” she said. “I’d even convinced myself someone was slipping you drugs secretly because you kept telling me, and everyone, that you weren’t doing drugs anymore.”
“I’m not,” Mercy said earnestly. “Seriously. None of the fun stuff, no Oxy, no meth, and just enough of this. This is just . . . medicine. God, do you think I could get through the schedule we have here, do you think I could do what they’re asking me to do, without some sort of help? Even Mother understood that.”
“And she was giving it to you? All along?”
“Well, she was giving me cocaine. That was the thing. She wanted me to use this but not that, a certain amount and no more. Just like she wanted me to sleep with Michael but not Lloyd, and to make this film but not the one I wanted to do, which was this really cool indie about a werewolf. But when Becker called, Mother had me on a plane like the next day. It will be interesting to see,” Mercy added with marked dispassion, “what exactly I do now that she’s dead.”
“Where was she getting it?” Juliette asked, because after all this time, she really wanted to know.
Mercy shrugged, took another sip of vodka. Juliette had to admit the girl looked much better, more lively and present, than she had down at the abbey, but keeping up with the starlet’s many moods was giving Juliette a headache. “I don’t know. I never asked her. It’s just there, you know, like the Twizzlers and the bottled water. But just enough for work, not nearly enough for fun. Maybe”—she giggled—“it’s in my contract.”
“Then why bother to go to rehab?” Juliette asked. “Why bother sitting there listening to Gabe for hours? Why come to me? Why bring this entire movie, with all its attendent shit, here, where it doesn’t belong?” Her voice was rising in volume and pitch. “Why all the help-me-please bullshit?”
Mercy lit a cigarette and surveyed Juliette perplexedly.
“I went into rehab because Mother said you have to go into rehab once in a while or people will think you don’t care. And I do want to get well. I just have to get through this movie first. I’m totally kicking O’Connor’s ass,” she added, her eyes sparkling with pride. “I mean, I was really scared of acting with him, he’s so amazing, do you remember the blind guy in Anthem or the mobster in Crescenta Valley? I thought he’d wipe the floor with me, but he’s reaching, I can see him reaching. And that’s pretty incredible, because when he reaches, man, no one can touch him. You missed the stuff he shot this morning, but it was unbelievable—I was ready to throw myself off a tower for him for real by the time he was done.”
She lit a new cigarette off the old one and smashed the butt into the twist-top off the vodka bottle. “I think it’s going to be an unbelievably good movie, if Golonski doesn’t wreck it in the edit. Don’t you?”
She seemed so happy now; manic, yes, chemically stimulated, yes—but still it was the best Juliette had seen her since Angie’s death. It was as if that young woman who moped beneath the trees earlier today had been banished. For a moment, Juliette envied her, remembered what a rush coke was, good coke especially, which was the only kind Mercy Talbot would have. The first time Juliette had tried it was after her parents’ death. Her roommate had given it to her to help her pull herself together in time for exams. When she felt that first gorgeous bloom of energy and euphoria hit her brain, Juliette had wondered why everyone in the world didn’t use the stuff every day, why it wasn’t sold at the post office or the grocery store. Surely this was one of mankind’s greatest achievements, one that would benefit every living soul on the planet.
It took her a year to discover why this was not the case, and by that time it was
too late. She had dropped out of school, hooked up with drug dealers, and moved in with Gabe, who was on his own downward spiral. Looking at Mercy, Juliette marveled that the actress had been able to pull it off for so long. Mercy had had her low points—the accidents, the fire—but no one could argue with her productivity. And here she was, her sometime-lover dead, her mother dead, on a set where 90 percent of the people wished her nothing but ill, with a costar who had ambivalent feelings about her at best, and still Mercy was giving everyone exactly what they wanted, and more. Mercy could see so many things with startling clarity, even as she continued to tell herself the most painfully obvious lie of them all.
“You’re something, Mercy Talbot,” Juliette said aloud with a sincere and admiring laugh. A wish coursed through her to be ten years younger and not so certain that real life required moderation and nothing stronger than the occasional martini. She would have liked to have sat here with Mercy Talbot, safe in her trailer with no one allowed in unless she said so, drinking and smoking and fortifying herself with sudden bits of stardust, talking about love and sex, men and bosses, even mothers and death. The things people outside Hollywood talked about, the things normal people talked about. For a moment she was tempted. How bad would it be, after all these years? Was it that much different than the bruising, muscle-straining, mind-altering sex she’d had with Devlin? What was so terrible about a little judicious self-medication in a painful world?
Unfortunately, Juliette knew that the price was too high. Look at poor Lloyd Watson; one way or another his need for relief had cost him his life. Look at Mercy herself, who couldn’t get well despite all the best intentions and the aid of every recovery group known to man. Which begged a question Juliette thought she had answered: If Usher wasn’t the one supplying Mercy with the drugs, why on earth was she keeping him around? A question Juliette now asked.
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