Stars Screaming

by John Kaye

  The stoplight turned green on Hollywood Boulevard and Burk drove north to Yucca and turned left. At the corner of Argyle and Franklin he found a parking space behind a U-Haul that was filled with furniture.

  An old man in a wrinkled black suit was maneuvering a shopping cart up the sidewalk, groaning with each step. On his head was an oversized fedora that nearly covered his ears. As he shuffled by the Mustang, he gave Burk a false smile and Burk smiled back, noticing for the first time the small wooden sign that was stuck in the ice plant in front of the Argyle Manor. It said APARTMENTS FOR RENT—1 AND 2 BEDROOMS.

  Burk lit a cigarette and looked off, down the street. He wondered what the chances were that Bonnie’s old apartment was available. He thought, if it was, it might be a neat place to hide out, to be alone with his thoughts; not a place to eat or sleep, he’d still use the hotel for that, but a place where he could read or maybe try to begin a new project, a secret place.

  The more he thought about this idea the more he could feel something move inside him, a building need to be inside that room, to have his name taped over the mail slot downstairs.

  The gray light outside was growing dimmer and Burk started to feel drowsy. In his half-sleep a memory returned, bringing with it a feeling of helplessness.

  Bonnie is standing at the door of her apartment on the morning she left, her face tilted to one side. Outside, the sun is climbing ominously over the neighboring rooftops. “Don’t worry, Ray,” she says, in a voice that is strong and confident. “I’m not going far. I’ll be back. I promise.”

  The building’s owner was a tall, very lean woman in her seventies. Her large eyes were dark and beautiful, and she was wearing a long black evening dress that grazed the top of her black suede pumps. She said her name was Lillian Ohrtman.

  “I’m staying here temporarily, until I find a new manager,” she told Burk outside the half-open door to her apartment. “Norman Swain, my former manager, died last Saturday of cirrhosis of the liver and other complications due to alcoholism. What kind of work do you do, Mr. . . . ?”

  “Burk. I’m a writer.”

  “How delightful. Books? Plays? Films?”

  “Films.”

  “My second husband was a film writer. Perhaps you may have heard of him. His name was Lionel Lewis.”

  “Wasn’t he blacklisted?”

  “Yes, he was,” she said, ignoring the phone that started to ring in her living room. “Are you interested in renting an apartment, Mr. Burk?”

  Burk felt his body tense. “Is nine available?”

  The phone rang for a third time before a man picked up and said hello. Lillian Ohrtman said, “Have you lived here before?”

  Burk shook his head, but his eyes moved up to the second floor. “No. But someone I knew once did.”

  A young man with wet lips and dark floppy bangs came to the door. He was dressed in a black tuxedo with a maroon cummerbund. “That was Drew,” he said in a cold voice. “I told him we would pick him up in twenty minutes.”

  “This is my son, Mark,” Lillian Ohrtman said to Burk, but neither man stuck out his hand. “We’re on our way to the Hollywood Bowl. André Previn is conducting a program of Broadway show tunes. But first we’re going to have a picnic on the grass with Mark’s friend Drew.”

  “He’s my lover, not my friend,” Mark said with exaggerated dignity. “Why do you refer to him as my friend? You know I hate that.”

  “Well, then, he’s my friend,” she said with a little laugh, but still keeping her eyes on Burk. “Last week Drew and Mark and I saw Harry Belafonte at the Greek Theatre. We had a lovely time. The night was so clear we could count all the stars in the sky. I despise weather like this,” she said, frowning. “Don’t you, Mr. Burk?”

  “It’s okay once in awhile. For a change.”

  Mark rolled his eyes. “Oh, Mother, will you stop? He doesn’t want to talk about the stupid weather. He wants to rent an apartment.” He turned and walked back inside, leaving Burk and Lillian Ohrtman alone on the front steps.

  In the window of the apartment next door Burk could see a woman dressed in a white bathrobe. Pink rollers were in her hair, and the stub end of an unfiltered cigarette dangled from her lower lip as she pushed a vacuum across the rug. When she caught Burk staring at her, she stopped and looked back at him with her hands on her hips.

  Burk dropped his eyes and Lillian Ohrtman said, “Once, in the summer of 1931, when I was living in Venice, there were forty-two straight days of overcast skies. Roger Armstrong, my first husband and Mark’s father, ran a ride at the pier. Of course, the attendance was way down and we almost starved. I was studying painting at UCLA, but I had to quit and become a saleslady at the May Company. I was terrible at selling, and ultimately I was fired. Things became so desperate that I entered one of those dance marathons. A movie was finally made about those contests.”

  “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?”

  “Yes. That’s it. A wonderful film,” Lillian Ohrtman said, the color rising in her cheeks. “The Fonda girl was superb and so was Gig Young. What a ladies’ man he was! For a short time he went out with an actress friend of mine. Her name was Lucille Vickers. Metro had her under contract until she was blinded by a klieg light during Apache Warpath, her first film. A terrible accident.”

  Mark reappeared on the front steps. He was holding a full-length mink coat and a small black purse. After he slipped the coat over his mother’s shoulders, she said, “Number nine is vacant. If you would like to rent it, it will be two hundred and fifty dollars per month, plus a fifty-dollar security deposit.”

  Once more, Burk glanced at the apartment next door. The woman in the white bathrobe was gone, but a small lapdog was standing on the back of the couch with his paws moving up and down on the window, scratching the glass. “Can I write you a check?” Burk asked.

  “Can’t this wait until morning?” Mark said, his breath smelling of rum as he swung his face toward Burk. “I told Drew to be waiting in front of his apartment. He’ll be freezing cold.”

  Lillian Ohrtman opened her purse and took out a ring of keys. She slipped off one key and took hold of Burk’s arm and moved him toward the sidewalk. “We’re going to hear songs from Showboat,” she said, pressing the key into his palm. “And Oklahoma and Porgy and Bess. We’re going to have a glorious evening.” Lillian Ohrtman turned and smiled at her son. “Well, my boy, are you coming or not?”

  “Are we bringing him too?”

  “No, of course not,” she said, and to Burk she said, “Spend the night if you like. The apartment is clean, and there are fresh linens in the closet.”

  They shook hands and Burk said, “I’ll give you a check tomorrow. Is that all right?”

  “It certainly is.”

  Bonnie’s apartment was just as small and dingy as Burk remembered. The only changes were in the kitchen, where a new refrigerator hummed softly and the faded yellow walls were now covered with wallpaper that was vertically patterned with pink and yellow roses. Next to the sink was a jar of instant coffee and a painted ceramic cup with ducks parading around the circumference.

  As he waited for the water to boil, Burk stripped off his clothes and began to masturbate standing up in the center of the living room. Exciting himself was difficult in this joyless atmosphere, and as he rocked back and forth, jerking himself violently, his elbow caught the lamp next to the window, toppling it to the floor. The bulb shattered, sending shards of glass across the room, and seconds later, when he came, a cat began to meow on the landing outside his door.

  Burk used the soles of his feet to rub his semen into the rug; then he carefully swept up the glass with a whisk broom he found underneath the sink. For the next few minutes he lingered in the kitchen over his coffee, listening to a radio that was playing in a distant apartment. The song, “Back in My Arms Again” by the Supremes, was one of those tunes Burk and Sandra had heard over and over on their trip across the country in 1964.

  Burk shook his head to erase
Sandra’s face from his mind. Then he looked back into the living room and saw his bunched-up clothes sitting in a pile. Marlboro cigarettes from a pack in his shirt had spilled on the floor, and the blue-striped tip of one sneaker was peeking out from underneath the couch.

  Two years earlier, on the day they met, Bonnie was standing where he was now, leaning back against the kitchen counter with her blouse open, grinning slyly, a breast balanced in each hand while Burk sucked on the hardening nipples.

  “Tell me about my tits,” she asked him.

  “They’re great.”

  “Great? That’s very descriptive. Are you sure you’re a writer?”

  “They’re full and soft and—”

  “Bigger than you expected.”

  “As a matter of fact, they are.”

  “Everyone tells me that.”

  “Everyone.”

  “Guys.”

  “Guys you’ve fucked.”

  Bonnie looked down and smiled. “If they saw my tits, yes, I probably let them fuck me. Are you jealous?” By now Burk was on his knees. Bonnie’s skirt and panties were down and his tongue was between her legs. “Wait,” Bonnie said, her body sinking slowly to the floor. “You don’t have to answer that right this second.”

  In her bedroom later, Burk told Bonnie the truth when she’d asked him if he’d ever cheated on his wife. “Well, you have now,” she said, and laughed loudly. “Freddie cheated on me all the time. But cheating is the wrong word, because he didn’t hide it. More than once I came home and caught him giving it to some tramp he’d picked up. In our bed, no less.”

  Burk said, “I’m surprised you didn’t kill him.”

  “If I’d loved him I might have.”

  Daylight had vanished by the time Burk finished putting on his clothes. For several minutes he sat tense and alert on the couch, chain smoking Marlboros in the dark, listening to the clanging of pots and pans in the apartment below. From the same apartment he heard a woman sobbing loudly, a desperate sound that was followed by the howl of a dog.

  Burk put out his cigarette and moved to the window. Outside, the leaves were darker than the sky, and down below, on Argyle, a boy of ten or eleven was bouncing a tennis ball underneath a streetlamp. His light-colored hair and his faded, ill-fitting clothes reminded Burk of Ricky Furlong and those late summer nights when they played ball in the street in front of their houses.

  “How come Gene never plays ball with us anymore?” Ricky asked Burk one evening.

  “He’s older. He’s got other things to do.”

  “Is he mad ‘cause I’m better than he is?”

  “You’re not that much better.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  But it was true: Ricky was the best. At twelve he could already throw a fastball so hard that Burk would feel the sting in his palm all through the following day.

  In time the boy on the street was approached by a large, ungainly woman wearing a gray sweater and shapeless gray trousers. She carried two shopping bags under her arms and looked out of breath. They stood close for awhile, chatting, the boy staring down at his feet. Then the woman abruptly turned and looked up at Burk with a scolding smile.

  Burk took a step backward and the phone rang, taking him by surprise. In the shock of the moment he picked up the handset. “Hello?”

  “Steve?” A man’s voice, thick and tentative.

  “I’m sorry,” Burk said, “Steve doesn’t live here.”

  “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Burk heard a disappointed sound. “Is this Duke?”

  “No.”

  “I need to get a message to Steve. Or Duke. Either one. It’s important.”

  Burk said, “I can’t help you.”

  “Listen, schmuck,” the man said, his voice flaring with anger, “don’t fuck with me.”

  Burk counted to five, silently; then he said, “Steve moved.”

  “Okay, I get it,” the man rasped. “He moved in with Duke, right? And that broad from Tulsa. What’s her name? Wanda or Ruby or something. Not Tulsa, Lubbock. Piece of truck-stop trash from the Panhandle. Fingering her was like putting your hand in a horse’s mouth. Goddamn Lake Erie between her legs.”

  “I gotta get off,” Burk said, and he heard the man moan softly. “If I see Steve, who should I say called?”

  “Tony,” the man said in a half whisper. “Tell him Tony. He can find me at the Spotlight Bar, on the corner of Selma and Cahuenga. Tell him to bring Wanda and her wet pussy.”

  Burk hung up the phone, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. Sweat trickled down his ribs, and his insides were wrenched into a knot. He quickly lit another cigarette and kept the match burning while he checked his watch: 9:26. On what day? Tuesday? Wednesday? Thursday? Wednesday, that’s right. Louie arrives on Saturday. And Sunday night they will be on a plane back to Berkeley together. Home. Fuck this place. I’m gone.

  The phone rang again and Burk seized the receiver, saying, “Listen to me, Tony! Okay? I just rented this apartment and the phone was left on by mistake. I don’t know Steve or Duke or this slut from Lubbock. I don’t know you or anyone else from the neighborhood. I drive, Tony. That’s what I do. And I rarely talk to people. Are you listening to me, Tony? Huh?”

  There was a long, intense silence on the other end of the line. Then, in a concerned voice, Lillian Ohrtman said, “Are you all right, Mr. Burk?”

  “Mrs. Ohrtman?”

  “Yes, it’s me,” she said, her voice rising over the applause building in the background. “I’m at the Bowl, in the manager’s office. I was worried. I’d forgotten that the electricity was off. I didn’t want you sitting in the dark. Is that what you’ve been doing?”

  “Part of the time, yes.”

  “There are some candles in the cupboard over the sink. On the left.”

  “I was just on my way out,” Burk said.

  “Oh, you’re not,” Lillian Ohrtman said, sounding disappointed as the orchestra began to play “Everything’s Coming Up Roses,” Ethel Merman’s show-stopping number from the Broadway show Gypsy. "Are you all right?” she asked once more.

  Burk stood up. The phone cord was wrapped around his foot, and he kicked it away. “I don’t know,” he said weakly. For an instant, in the air around his face, he could smell the unmistakable odor of Bonnie’s perfume and the minty taste of her breath.

  “If it gets too chilly, there’s an extra blanket in the closet next to the bathroom.”

  “I can’t spend the night.”

  “Where would you go?”

  “I have a place.”

  There was a brief silence, then Lillian Ohrtman said, “Mary Martin performed tonight, as a surprise guest. She sang, ‘I Won’t Ever Grow Up’ from Peter Pan. I thought Mark and Drew were going to die.”

  Burk said, “Someone named Tony called for a Steve somebody.”

  “Pay no attention.”

  “But—”

  “Steve Caudabeck did not pay his rent,” Lillian Ohrtman said in a clipped voice. “That’s why he was evicted, plain and simple. If Norman Swain was not so ill he would’ve been gone weeks ago. I’m sorry, Mr. Burk, but I have no sympathy for deadbeats.”

  “I’ll pay my rent,” Burk said defensively.

  “Of course you will,” she assured him. “You’re a fine young man. Writers are wonderful tenants.”

  “But I won’t be here all the time.”

  “That’s up to you. Now I must get back to my seat,” she said, in a more genial tone. “Mark will be concerned. I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Not long after Lillian Ohrtman clicked off, Burk heard a car door slam, followed closely by the sound of footsteps moving swiftly up the stairway to the second floor. A woman’s shadow passed by the curtains and Burk whispered Bonnie’s name, forgetting for the briefest of moments that she was no longer alive.

  Three police cars were parked
in front of the Beverly Hills Hotel when Burk drove up at 2 A.M. “Crumpler was arrested. He beat the shit out of the room service waiter,” Eddie Bascom told Burk as they rode up together on the elevator. Eddie’s eyes blinked rapidly as he spoke, and he nervously began to clench and unclench his fist.

  “Was he hurt bad?”

  “The homo? Crumpler fractured his cheekbone,” Eddie said, looking pleased. “The story’s all over town. It made the eleven o’clock news but they botched it. It’s gonna be the lead in Joyce Haber’s column on Friday. She’ll get it right,” he said, winking, an admission that his job at the hotel included selling gossip as well as cocaine. The elevator opened and Burk stepped into the hallway. “Ciao, baby.”

  Burk examined the phone message slips he was holding. Maria Selene had called three times, at 4:35 P.M. and twice between eleven and eleven-thirty, when, Burk guessed, she’d heard about Crumpler’s arrest. There was also a message from Timmy, with Louie’s flight information, and one from Gene. None from Loretta.

  As he approached Crumpler’s room, Burk heard a voice say, “We can’t do anything about the assault. That’s a done deal. The fag’s already filed charges. The rest of the stuff can be finessed.”

  Crumpler’s door was cracked a few inches, and Burk could see Jerome Sanford leaning against the fireplace. His beefy face sagged with fatigue, but even at this late hour he was dressed immaculately, in a style that some young executives at Paramount had begun to imitate: gray flannel slacks and a dark blue blazer worn over a light or dark blue polo shirt left unbuttoned at the throat. The edge of the bed hid the lower part of his legs, but Burk assumed that his sockless feet were snug inside his brown suede moccasins.

  Burk had met Sanford only once, for drinks at Musso & Frank a few days after Paramount purchased his screenplay. That evening Sanford wore khakis and a light pink button-down shirt with the cuffs folded above his elbows. He ordered back-to-back extra-dry martinis, straight up, and with a low, intense voice he confided to Burk that he’d recently separated from his second wife, Ruthie Galan, a young actress who was a regular on Eden Valley, a nighttime soap that was NBC’s answer to Peyton Place.