Purgatory Gardens

by Peter Lefcourt

  Oh. My. God. Could this really be happening? Sammy and Didier actually trying to kill each other? Over her? How awful! And then, like Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady, she did a one-eighty. How delightful!

  Two men felt passionate enough about her to try to kill each other. She had to admit that it was pretty titillating. It was like some gothic romance novel, with rivals fighting a duel at dawn over the attentions of a beautiful woman. A damaged beautiful woman.

  Okay, calm down. Maybe Evelyn Duboff was wrong; maybe they both decided they needed a new patio deck at more or less the same time. They had both come into some money and were going to spend it upgrading their property. Right. So why did Sammy ask her to co-sign the contract if he had come into money? And why would Didier put money into his patio when his gallery was having trouble keeping the doors open?

  Okay, they were trying to kill each other. But not over her. There was some sort of feud between them, some business deal that went wrong, or some back story that she didn’t know about. She just happened to be in the middle; the innocent bystander who became collateral damage. She wasn’t a femme fatale so much as a damsel in distress.

  Well, Marcy Gray didn’t do damsels in distress. And she wasn’t about to start now. Damaged women were her meal ticket, and she would go with that. It made sense. They were trying to kill each other. Over her. Why not?

  Tuuli and Majda’s cat ate a piece of poisoned pizza that had been ordered by Didier, and a bomb had gone up under Sammy’s car at Vons. As far as she was concerned, there had never been a satisfactory explanation for either of those two incidents. And now there appeared to be one, far-fetched as it might be.

  The whole thing felt like a cop show plot. Reflexively, she looked up at the screen, and there was Jerry Orbach, questioning some perp in the pea-green interrogation room at the stationhouse. She imagined Sammy and Didier sitting side by side, in handcuffs, as Jerry worked them over.

  You expect me to buy this poisoned pizza and Taliban bullshit?

  And then, before they could answer, they cut to an extreme close-up of a woman in smeared eye makeup, lighting a cigarette. Her hair was disheveled, her eyes milky and distant from drugs and alcohol. And then the voice, dripping with pain and regret, said, “You think you have it all figured out, don’t you?”

  God, she looked awful. They at least could have done something with her hair. Okay, she was playing a pill freak, but she could have gotten it together enough to make it to the beauty parlor.

  It was a show she had done over twenty years ago, in the early days of Law and Order. A couple of days’ work at scale plus ten, and then a nice flow of residuals for years after. Now it was coming back to haunt her. For a moment, she thought she had hallucinated the whole thing, but as they widened to a full shot of her with Sam Waterston in a three-walled set in Long Island City, she remembered the job. They had flown her first-class and put her up at the Hilton. Those were the days.

  Her performance, as usual, transcended the cheesy dialogue. There was depth and subtext in her line readings. You could hear the whole history of drugs, cigarettes, and bad men in her voice. She watched the show, transfixed in nostalgia, until her character, high on Vicodin, walked in front of a taxi on Sixth Avenue and that was that. Another damaged woman meeting her fate.

  It seemed, if anything, prophetic. Was she glimpsing the future, reflected in the past? Was she to become a victim of the men herself, caught in the line of fire between Sammy and Didier?

  She wondered if there would be a taxi with her name on it roaring down 111 as she crossed from the Movie Colony Hotel to her car, baking in the sun across the street, the glove compartment full of melting Zoloft. At the very least, she deserved a better death scene.

  She clicked off the TV. Sometime in the next six months, she’d be getting a residual check for a dollar-twenty. If she was lucky. She ought to make a collage of all the miniscule checks she was getting and hang it in the bathroom. This was Hollywood’s parting gift to her—bupkis.

  In the meantime, she had to figure out what to do. She hadn’t a clue.

  Janet called her back the next day, just before noon. Marcy was still in bed, unable to muster the fortitude to get up. This was clearly the onset of a monstro depression; if the Zoloft didn’t kick in soon, it would be two weeks in bed.

  “What’s up?” Janet greeted her, with her usual lack of bedside manner.

  “It would have been nice if you’d called last night,” Marcy said, in her mawkish teenage-girl voice.

  “You said as soon as possible. This is as soon as possible.”

  “You must be very busy.”

  “It’s the high season for mental health. What’s going on?”

  Marcy took a beat, for dramatic effect. When you had a key line to deliver, you never wanted to rush it. That way they couldn’t cut away from you in the editing room and put the line over someone else.

  “The two guys I’m involved with? They’re trying to kill each other.”

  There was a long moment of silence. If they were face-to-face, Janet would simply have nodded. On the phone, the silence was disconcerting.

  “Did you hear what I said?”

  “Uh-huh. The two men are trying to kill each other.”

  “Isn’t that crazy?”

  “If they go through with it.”

  “They’ve hired a hit man.”

  “I see . . .”

  “You see?” Marcy said, trying unsuccessfully to contain the sarcasm in her voice. “And don’t say I’m in the fucking Catbird Seat.”

  “Marcy, let’s not act out, okay?”

  It was moments like this that Marcy contemplated putting a contract out on Janet. Was it still considered transference if you didn’t want to sleep with your therapist, but wanted to kill her instead?

  “It’s the weirdest thing,” she went on. “I should be freaked, and I’m not. I mean, I’m freaked, but I’m also kind of, you know, turned on.”

  “How? Like sexually?”

  “No, I’m too depressed to think about sex. It’s more like this romantic thing about men fighting over you. I mean, that’s kind of a turn-on, isn’t it?”

  “If you’re twenty-one.”

  Typical of Janet—raining on her parade. Even if she was right, she could be a little more understanding.

  “Okay, I get it,” Marcy sighed. “It’s not a good thing that these guys are doing this. But still . . .”

  Still what? There was no still. She’d been over and over it in her mind ever since Evelyn Duboff had told her. They weren’t living in the Middle Ages with knights jousting to win the hearts of fair maidens. This was a couple of retired suitors trying to poison each other’s pizzas and blow up cars. This was Purgatory Gardens, not The Romance of the Rose. And yet . . .

  Janet didn’t do and yet. One of her mantras was, “Fantasy is a nice place to visit, but you don’t want to live there.”

  “I’m just wondering if . . . if I did anything to encourage them. Am I to blame here?”

  There was an audible sigh. Marcy recognized the language. It was Janet’s way of telling her that she was building a bullshit castle. If they had been in her office, the therapist might have even looked at her watch to let Marcy know that they weren’t going down that road.

  “Listen, Marcy, you have enough guilt going in your life without taking it on over something like this. Even if you wiggled your ass in front of them and led them on, it doesn’t justify going to the extremes that you tell me these guys are going to. This is not just aberrant behavior. This is criminal behavior. In fact, this is moving into the area that could obligate me to notify the authorities.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “You bet. Impending behavior that could imperil lives is not protected by patient-client privilege. I could lose my license if one of these guys pulls the trigger and they find out that I knew it was possible.”

  “Who would tell them?”

  “You could.”

  “Why would I
do that?”

  “Marcy, I don’t know why you would do that, but you could. In some sort of post-transference anger, you could do that and rationalize it some way. And I don’t want to expose myself to that liability. So we’re not going to be able to continue this conversation.”

  “What? You’re cutting me loose?”

  “I have to. Unless you call the police and tell them. Then we can proceed, but I spent too much time and money getting this license, and I’m not about to put that in jeopardy.”

  “That’s it?”

  “We can talk about other things—your career, your parents, your marriages . . .”

  “Let’s not forget my weight!”

  “Okay, Marcy, I’m going to have to wrap this up.”

  “Just like that?”

  “I’ve got a number of other calls to return. Merry Christmas.”

  It was a soft click, at least. Unlike Artie Reman’s hard clicks. It always felt to her like her agent was already on the next call before he’d finished with hers.

  So there it was: She had just been fired by her shrink. Fuck you, and Merry Christmas.

  Could it get any worse?

  It did. But not right away. The situation was making her both anxious and claustrophobic. A double whammy. She recognized the symptoms. Zoloft wouldn’t touch them.

  In the past, she would go for a long drive in an effort to combat the claustrophobia. Once, in the midst of a serious depression caused by her missing out on a series role that would have given her five years of well-paying work, she drove all the way to San Luis Obispo without stopping until she got pulled over by a highway patrol officer for doing eighty. She broke down in tears, trying to explain to the impassive face behind the Ray Bans that she had lost five years of work because of menstrual cramps that had fucked up her network callback. Her performance was so moving that the cop didn’t write her a ticket.

  Driving fast crystallized her thoughts. It helped her breathe. So Marcy gassed up the car and headed north. Whenever she did this, she let herself believe that she wasn’t going to stop, that she would continue going north, all the way to Canada, if she had to, to outrun her problems.

  This time she kept the car below eighty, not trusting her ability to cry her way out of a speeding ticket. Or flirt her way out of it, for that matter. Twenty years ago, all she had to do was look at a man the right way, purse her lips, and let her eyes go soft focus. But Marcy had enough self-awareness to appreciate that those days were gone—certainly with California Highway Patrol officers.

  Back in the seventies, she had done an episode of ChiPs, in which she’d played a damaged motorcycle babe who had a fling with Erik Estrada. The last residual check she’d received for it was three cents. Literally. She had put it in the birdcage and let her parakeet shit on it.

  Marcy was past LAX before she was able to focus. Okay. She was not going to go to the police. That much she was sure of. She was temperamentally unsuited for the role of witness for the prosecution. She couldn’t play it, not even with a great director. And even if she could, what would it accomplish? After they were both shipped off to Victorville, she’d be all alone again—bereft, penniless, unprotected. Months away from being a bag lady.

  By the time she was approaching Santa Barbara, she was convinced that she ought to do nothing and just let the whole thing play out. Whichever one of them got the other one would be her guy. She’d surrender to him, living with the knowledge of what he had done to get her, never confronting him. And she would secretly revel in her realization that a duel had been fought over her.

  She continued north to Pismo Beach. She parked and got out of the car. Kicking off her shoes, she walked across the sand and sat on a dune looking out at the Pacific. The beach was deserted in the chilly, damp December air.

  Staring at the limp waves, falling over one another in a slow cascade of foam, she realized that, flattering as it may have been, she wouldn’t be able to live with a killer. Part of her would always be aware of what the man had done to another man she’d had feelings for. No, she wasn’t going to be able to let a man touch her whose finger—directly or indirectly—had pulled a trigger. There were limits to her self-delusion.

  No. She would get Sammy and Didier to call it off. She would conduct an intervention. Just the three of them. She would confront them with their behavior and demand that they stop the madness. This has gone far enough. Look at yourselves. Seven-year-olds fighting in the schoolyard. Grow up!

  For dramatic effect, she would do it on Christmas Eve. She would invite both of them to midnight mass, and then afterward, when their hearts were full of love, she’d conduct the intervention. Peace on Earth, goodwill to men.

  XII

  DIDIER

  The communal sauna was an amenity at Paradise Gardens that Didier tended to avoid, not being fond of perspiring in public or having to listen to one of the geriatric occupants with leathery skin chatter about their health problems. But he thought that the dry heat might soothe his nerves and allow him to think clearly.

  Wearing only a pair of bathing trunks that highlighted his burgeoning middle, he sat, waiting for the sweat to begin dripping, hoping for an inspiration. He needed one. He was running out of both money and time. If the Italian wasn’t out of the way soon, Didier might have to take matters into his own hands.

  After the Italian’s car went up at the supermarket, Didier had assumed it had been a foiled attempt on the part of the contract killers he had hired. Then the story about the Taliban double agent emerged, and he wondered if that wasn’t some cover story to explain that Sammy Dee was not an assassination target, but an innocent bystander, a canard put out by Acme to cover their tracks.

  Didier’s attempts to contact Acme had resulted in nothing but a printed Christmas card and a couple of Mexicans to redo his patio. Up until then, he had forgotten that Sammy Dee had had his patio redone in November. And that realization started him along a new train of thought. Was this just a coincidence? Or . . . ?

  It was equally plausible, n’est-ce pas, that Sammy wanted him out of the way for the same reason that Didier wanted the Italian gone, to give him carte blanche with Marcy Gray.

  What did she know? He couldn’t believe that she knew that either or both of them were trying to kill the other one over her. If she did, she would certainly try to stop it. Of course. Bien sûr . . .

  And then, as the sweat began to flow, another thought occurred to him: Maybe Marcy did know. Maybe she was secretly thrilled that two men would go to such extremes to win her. Maybe she would look at the victor as the man who had fought a duel to capture her affections.

  Well, if that were the case, then Didier would just have to make sure he won. There was no second place. Qui ose gagne! He would take care of business and claim his prize, then carry her away with him on his white horse, leaving Sammy Dee spinning his Porsche wheels in the dust.

  He closed his eyes and envisaged Marcy and him at a café on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, sipping chilled rosé and eating perfectly sautéed prawns as the sirocco drifted in off the Mediterranean. After a barefoot walk on the beach, they would go up to their suite at The Negresco and make love until the sky lightened and they woke in each other’s arms, inhaling the sweet perfume of their bodies . . .

  “Have a drink, Deedeeyay.”

  Didier looked up and saw Chris and Edie sitting just below him, proffering an open bottle of tequila. So lost had he been in his reverie that he hadn’t heard the two swingers enter the sauna.

  They were both naked. Unfortunately. Edie, her artificial breasts fighting gravity in the wet heat, gave him one of her lecherous smiles and said, “Why don’t you slip out of that bathing suit, big boy?”

  “I was just leaving,” he murmured as he climbed over her spread-eagled body and, closing his eyes, beat a hasty retreat.

  Christmas had never been much of a holiday for Didier Onyekachukwu. He barely knew it existed before the Jesuits got to him, and then, as far as he was concern
ed, it amounted only to extra choir practice to learn the Christmas carols instead of afternoon recreation on the soccer field. And the endless retelling of the story of the birth of Jesus with the manger and the wise men and the frankincense and myrrh. The fathers didn’t feel it necessary to explain how, if Mary was a virgin, she was able to produce Jesus.

  Since leaving Africa, his feelings about Christmas hadn’t changed much. In France, it wasn’t a particularly good time of the year for the drug business. His clients made resolutions to stop using—resolutions that would be broken by the middle of January, but for a couple of weeks around the holiday, things were dead.

  And, with the exception of the weather, December in Palm Springs wasn’t much better. There was an artificial gaiety in the air, the hanging of plastic wreaths on the doors, the fake tree with tinsel in the multi-purpose room, the endless carols in the stores. And the need to put cash in envelopes and give them to the mailman, the femme de ménage, and to anyone else whose goodwill you depended upon.

  This year, however, he was in the middle of a deadly ménage à trois that was playing out, one way or the other, as Christmas approached. It was very possible that either he or the Italian would be dead by New Year’s. So when Marcy Gray called on the 24th and invited him to attend midnight mass with her and Sammy Dee, Didier almost said no. And then he quickly thought better of it. Having to get through the evening with a man who might be trying to kill him was preferable to leaving him alone with her.

  The evening was to start out with a drink at Marcy’s. Which meant that there would probably be an exchange of presents. He couldn’t give her another “authentic” African artifact. He’d already given her a Yoruba tribal mask and a Benin bronze, both manufactured in the Coachella Valley.