Later on, I found myself thinking about the time that Katharine felt bold enough to declare her independent life. I had been plying her with my jealous questions, revealing my fears to her about my suspicions of her affair with my brother. Katharine sat up in the bed that night, started staring at me accusingly.
“Why would I do that? And if I did, why should that be an issue between us?”
“What are you telling me?”
“I’m telling you that I’m tired of your possessiveness.”
“It’s you that makes me that way.”
“No, it isn’t! You were born that way. You’re just like my father.”
“And what was wrong with your father?”
“He just swallowed his pain and continued to take the crap from her.”
“What crap was that?”
Then Katharine got out of bed and left the room. She came back with two drinks. Apparently, she thought I would need one.
I didn’t know why she told me about Michel, not at first. But soon, as she described her mother’s behaviour in her marriage, I began to understand.
“He was a coward and I grew to despise him,” Katharine said.
“Why not show a little compassion,” I asked.
“Because he was my father, he should have been the man of the house, in control of my mother’s adventures.”
So Katharine wanted me to run roughshod over her, stop her from getting out of hand, from becoming the slut that her own mother had become.
Then Katharine looked down into her drink. She wouldn’t move. She would only let her teardrops fall into her martini. I remember putting down my drink and moving forward to her, taking her arm.
Katharine pushed me away. “I don’t want your sympathy. Your
compassion has always made me sick. I want you to act like a man.”
“What does that mean,” I asked her.
“It means that I want you to take control of your life, to stop putting up with my behaviour. You shouldn’t be comforting me.”
GHOST PAINTINGS
The shoot was canceled for the day. Billy had to make some important script changes. After my morning’s meditation, I went to the gallery.
“Good morning,” I said in a voice so calm and unhurried that I retrieved a warm and welcoming smile from Sabrina.
“Good morning back to you, stranger.”
I looked around. The displays for the show were almost complete. “I don’t see Margaret.”
“She’s not coming in today.”
“What a coincidence. I don’t plan on working today either. There’s no shoot.”
I touched Sabrina’s cheek and she smiled mischievously.
“Why don’t we go back to my office?”
“You have a business to run.”
“It’s slow,” I said.
“Not that slow,” Sabrina informed me. “You’ve got some kind of canvas delivered from Tahiti.”
“Tahiti? Did you open it?”
“I didn’t think I had that right.”
“You have every right,” I said, taking her hand and leading her back into my office. The package sitting on my desk was an obvious canvas, one that was without a frame. I unwrapped the package and was chilled to the core.
“Who delivered this?”
“UPS.”
It was a painting by Michel; it could be no one else. I knew the brush strokes, the colors, the cool attitude, and the upper class arrogance. The painting was of Michel’s yacht. There was blood dripping off the deck and into Bora Bora Bay. Someone was trying to tell me that they knew I was the killer. Immediately, I hid the painting behind some other canvases.
Sabrina was shocked. “Blackmail,” she said. She crossed the room, picked up the painting. “You should really give this to the police!”
“Are you insane? Don’t you realize what that will mean?”
Sabrina was taken aback, frightened of me. I had a mean streak coming out. I felt like a lion that had been cornered. I could see myself being arrested. I couldn’t have that. “You mustn’t tell a soul,” I insisted.
“No, of course not.”
“And I’ve got to find out who sent this.” I took the wrapping paper and looked up the nearest UPS office.
“Let me go with you.”
“No,” I insisted, “We need to keep the gallery open. How would it look if I reacted frantically to receiving this? If we both rushed off to find out who sent it?”
“You’re right,” Sabrina said.
I hesitated for a moment, wanting to grab Sabrina, to hold her close to me so I wouldn’t have to think of what this painting meant. I wanted to escape with her, to leave everything behind, even the movie.
On my way to UPS, I wondered who could have sent it. Who was a good enough artist to duplicate Michel’s style so accurately?
I pulled into the parking lot and went inside the building. I was pushy, wanting to be waited on right away. Someone helped me, probably just to get rid of me.
“I just received this parcel,” I told the clerk. “I need to know who sent it.”
He looked at the return address that was minus a name. Then, he disappeared. It seemed to be taking him a long time. Was he calling the police? Would I see that damned Frenchman again? Would DeColette come wandering in the office seeing that I took the bait, that I was frantic to silence the witness to the murder that I must have committed?
The clerk returned, telling me that it was sent by someone named Hitu. Hitu, the Bora Bora native – how did he get his hand on this painting? And more importantly, who gave it to him to send to me? I returned to my car. That’s when I saw DeColette walking across the street. He pretended not to see me. He refused to look my way. And there was someone with him, an accomplice to his set-up. I knew then that it was the police who were trying to trap me.
I drove slowly back to the office and my mind started pouring out images as I drove. I could see the yacht and the blood again. All of Michel’s paintings were in the hands of people walking down Wilshire Boulevard. The murder had come back to me.
I pulled the bottle of Provenance out of my pocket and swallowed four. I had to kill the psychotic episode enveloping me. But it didn’t work that time, at least not fully. I still had memories that frightened me. I thought about the buried murder weapon. How they could never link me to the killing. Then, in the rear view mirror, therewas a black sedan with two men in the front seat. All the way back to the office, I thought it was DeColette and his partner. They’d arrest me as soon as I got out of the car.
I started driving past the gallery and the car followed. I turned up Ocean Avenue, then onto San Vicente and 7th street. I was on my way to Salka’s old house. I felt as if it would give me haven. And I was right for as I drove down Mabery Road, I had lost the car following me.
I parked in front of Salka’s house and began to think. There was a rumble of crashing waves, a distant rumble. But it didn’t sound like the nearby beach. It sounded like the waves beyond the Bora Bora lagoon. I was no longer on Mabery road. I was back in the lagoon, in front of the Bora Bora Hotel, watching the sailboat from the perspective of the ghost painting that was delivered to me that morning. It was mid-afternoon but there was nobody there, not even the Hotel guests. I was all alone in my vision, trapped with Michel’s murder.
I found a spot to sit down, under a palm tree, hoping that a coconut would fall on my head or maybe afraid that one already had. I began to forget about DeColette and my images of Sabrina were transformed themselves into images of Margaret.
Years ago, before leaving France, Margaret had enabled me to make a few more representation agreements. She added Modigliani and Chagall to the list of artists I would show.
When we returned to Los Angeles and Margaret held court in my gallery, or “our gallery” as she put it, the purveyors of the wealthy frequented the showcase – peers of Margaret who were loaded and agreeable to whatever prices were set on the art works.
And then back in the
present, back on Mabery Road, I looked at Salka’s old house - a moment of nostalgia passed over me, some thoughts of when I first met Katharine there. The pain inspired me to leave and get back to my present problem.
Back at Potala, Sabrina had just made a sale. She was wrapping up the artwork and putting it into a box. She examined the customer’s credentials, got the information on his bank account. Then, she picked up the phone to verify the funds. I wandered over to them, introduced myself, told the man that he’d made a good investment, that the artist was someone young and with great promise, that he wouldn’t be sorry.
Sabrina put down the phone and the sale was finalized. The client could take delivery of the work immediately. I led him out of the gallery. When I came back, Sabrina asked, “What happened at UPS?”
“The painting was sent by a man named Hitu.”
“Do you know him?”
“He was one of Katharine’s lovers, a native from an ancient tribe in Bora Bora.”
“When’s the last time you received a work from Tahiti?”
“Not since 1939.”
“Could Michel have painted this before he died?”
“Not a chance. Look at it; he’s murdered in the painting. Michel wasn’t psychic.”
BACK FROM THE DEAD
On the set, the next morning, we were working on the scene where Gillis confronts Norma after the suicide attempt that followed Gillis’s outburst of anger at the New Year’s Eve party. He had left for his friend’s, Artie Green, but returned the moment he got word that Norma had cut her wrists with his razors.
Gillis entered her bedroom. Norma lay on her sailboat bed. Gillis stood at the foot of the bed with a look of guilt and dismay as he took off her shoes.
“Go away,” Norma says. Gillis held her shoes, then walked off and threw them on a settee. He turned around. “What kind of a silly thing was that to do?”
“Falling in love with you that was the idiotic thing.”
“Sure would have made attractive headlines, ‘Great Star Kills Herself for Unknown Writer.’”
“Great Stars have great pride,” Norma responded with constrained anger, then puts her bandaged arm over her eyes. “Go away. Go to that girl of yours.”
“Look, I was making that up because I thought the whole thing was a mistake. I didn’t want to hurt you. You’d been good to me. You’re the only person in this stinking town that has been good to me.”
“Why don’t you just say thank you and go? Go! Go!”
“Not unless you promise to act like a sensible human being.”
Norma tilted her head on the pillow. “I’ll do it again. I’ll do it again.” Then slowly but with a plea for Gillis’s pity: “I’ll do it again.”
Gillis approached Norma in bed.
As she cried and Gillis returned to the settee, the strains of “Auld Lang Syne” were heard from downstairs. Norma clasped her hands and continued to cry on her bed. Gillis stood up and approached Norma with determination. He sat down on the bed, removed Norma’s arms from her face and tenderly said “Happy New Year, Norma.”
Slowly, Norma opened her eyes and turned to Gillis to say “Happy New Year, darling.” She reached out with her clinging claw like hands and pulled him to her lips.
That night, I had dinner with Billy and Margaret. They talked about the old days, the days in the early thirties when Margaret’s husband was still alive and Billy was exercising his manhood about town.
Margaret first met Billy because of his terrific art collection. She had heard from friends what this MGM writer had acquired with only small investments and she was impressed. Margaret was much younger then, more successful with her seductions.
They spoke not about their liaison but about the art they collected together, about their plans to start a gallery of their own or, rather, about Margaret’s plans to start a gallery. Billy was her consultant. He was her husband’s friend and Margaret’s consultant between the sheets when her husband was out making real estate deals.
This dinner was just three days before the show opening. All the invitations had been sent and answered. We were going to have a large crowd; another infusion of cash would come into my life, maybe to spend on a crew of attorneys to defend myself over Michel’s death.
After Billy and I left Margaret’s house that night, I learned more about their tempestuous affair. The time that he prevented Margaret from shooting Judy, she started begging him not to turn her into the police. He acquiesced. He didn’t want Margaret’s husband to find out about their affair. But Margaret kept calling Billy and he kept refusing to see her.
Until the night that Margaret cut her wrists and refused to act reasonably until Billy restarted their love affair. He saw her for a few months until he could interest his lover in staying alive without him, interest her into devoting herself to her society affairs and her husband’s entertainment of his clients. She had Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks to distract her. She had her continuing accumulation of new art, she found reason to live without Billy.
“Margaret’s as fatale as the femmes come,” Billy warned me when he dropped me off at my house.
He drove off and I went inside, only to discover that the Provenance was no longer working. My darkened home had a light coming from the bedroom. I walked into it and saw a collection of my recent paintings floating over my bed and glowing brightly. Each one of them was recently removed from the exhibit by Margaret.
The next day, I entered Potala to find Margaret leaning over Sabrina, delivering invective to her. It was about my paintings, how they couldn’t be in the show at all.
“Do you want to ruin this exhibit, this show that I’ve spent so much time on?”
“No one’s ruining the exhibit,” I said, interrupting Margaret.
“Well, there he is – the abstract expressionist, the man who can’t contain his feelings.” Then, looking at Sabrina, “The great artist who keeps himself together with drugs and designing little leeches.”
Sabrina shoved Margaret against the wall. “My only design will be your casket.”
“Oh,” Margaret laughed condescendingly, “the delicate nymph has a tongue.”
“And an arm,” Sabrina said as she was getting ready to hit Margaret.”
I grabbed Sabrina’s arm. “Forget it,” I told her, “We just won’t have the show.”
“After all these arrangements, after the response we’ve been getting? Do you want to commit suicide just so that you can lounge between her thighs?”
I hit Margaret. She stepped back. “What are you doing? You need this show.”
“I don’t need the show,” I told her, “I have a job and I’m beginning to have a life.”
“Some life, falling into the arms of a slut. Maybe that’s what’s giving you all these, these mental episodes of yours. You’re being poisoned by a worthless hussy.”
“Margaret!”
“Don’t start. We have to remain civil. If you closed this show down, it would ruin you in this business and you know it.” Margaret grabbed her coat and hat. “I can be civil as hell. I come from a background where I was taught to do the right thing. And now,” she said wryly, “I’ll leave you to your method of preparing for something real.” And looking at Sabrina, she said, “by letting your house bitch soil your gallery and your life.”
Margaret left Potala, with her sense of dignity intact and a mind planning revenge.
Sabrina was shocked. She looked at me with anger and hurt.
“Do you want me to cancel the show,” I asked.
“No, I don’t want you to cancel the show. I want you to cancel her. Maybe there’s another boat filled with paintings down in Bora Bora. Maybe you could dig up your weapon again and introduce it to her skull.”
I held Sabrina but she pushed me away. “I don’t want you to hold me now. I’m a cheap slut, remember?” Sabrina kept her distance from me but soon her eyes were welling up with tears.
Finally, she let me embrace her. Then, Sabrin
a left the carefully prepared gallery and went home. I was alone with the show that was supposed to provide me with a nice nest egg.
I sat down and within minutes, the gallery was closing in on me. A Matisse came off the wall and floated in the air before me. It was a line drawing of his flowers that had decided to confront me. I wanted to slash it up but, instead, I grabbed the frame and rehung it. Then, I turned around to look at the exhibit, waiting for another painting to assault me. I sat down and had a drink but no matter how much I drank, the paintings stayed where they were hung. They wanted the show also, I supposed.
Then, I took leave of my restful works of art, said goodnight to the guard and walked outside. Much to my surprise and delight, I found Sabrina waiting for me. I walked over to her and she didn’t have a word to say. She didn’t need to. She was in this for the long haul and wasn’t about to be put off by a disgruntled middle-aged drama queen.
“Are you all right,” she asked after we stood there looking at each other for several moments. Sabrina had a Sicilian temperament, one that wasn’t likely to be put off by a woman like Margaret. Yet, at the same time, there was a staid innocence about Sabrina’s character that reminded me of the UCLA students going to their classes, the ones I watched as I was waiting in my car for one of my appointments with my psychiatrist. Those lucky kids never knew the War as adults just kept children steeped in misinformation, children cloistered in their peaceful environments. And that made it easy for them to summarize suffering in scholarly words without ever having felt it themselves.
Sabrina and I went back inside. We embraced each other for a long time, then I gave her a gentle kiss and bid her goodnight.
The next day, we were shooting at Norma’s house. She and Gillis were at the pool. Max, who had just dodged a phone call from Betty Schaefer, was talking to Norma.
“Wait a minute,” she tells him, “I want you to get out the car. You’re to take the script over to Paramount and deliver it to Mr. DeMille in person.
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