The ceremony had started with the full studio orchestra’s rendition of Quincy Jones’s haunting love theme for The Baobab Tree, and all eyes were fixed on Alyssia del Mar as she hurried toward the dais. She had lost considerable weight, but her new black silk Galanos was bloused to disguise this, and her pallor was hidden by several hours of effort on the part of her makeup artist.
“Can you believe it? The cunt even shows up late for this,” snarled a Hearst columnist, not bothering to lower her voice.
The “stillbirth” might have attracted sympathy for Alyssia among her die-hard fans, but Barry’s much-quoted article had fanned a general animosity toward her. To the media, and therefore to all of America, she had become the tardy star whose shenanigans had turned Hap Cordiner’s final film into a nightmare.
Alyssia climbed three of the plank steps, then halted, faced by a solid phalanx of staring Cordiners. A wave of vertigo passed through her as she realized there was no chair for her.
Maxim gazed coldly down. It was no accident she didn’t have a place, this woman who had somehow ensnared his brother. (Later Maxim would be ashamed of his vindictiveness, but at this moment he was relishing Alyssia’s public humiliation.)
Beth cleared her throat delicately, wondering if she ought to relieve the hideous awkwardness by smiling, but Irving took her hand, and she decided this was a reminder of the power that Alyssia had over them. Jonathon, she thought, and stared fixedly at an overblown rose.
PD was grateful he was no longer forced to fake cordiality. Two months ago Alyssia had called to inform him that she had given up her career, maybe permanently. She was therefore no longer represented by the PD Zaffarano Agency.
To combat the dizziness, Alyssia dug her recently manicured nails into her palms. Just find another seat—don’t think about it—you might have an attack. . . . She turned toward the central aisle. She didn’t recognize Richard Burton as he stepped by her to the podium. A stuntman in the second row stood to give her his place, but she didn’t see him, or the gaffer farther back who offered her the same courtesy. Somehow managing to impersonate the del Mar strut, she got to the last row, where a few seats remained.
“How short is the time of man,” the amplified Burton voice was intoning. “We’ve come here to honor one of our best and brightest, felled long before his time by his own unquenchable generosity. . . .”
Alyssia, forcing an actress’s semblance of control, saw and heard nothing of the eulogies.
In a way she was grateful not to be on the dais. Everyone would be staring at her. She had not been out in public since she had left Dr. Fauchery’s place.
Plon had argued with Barry that she ought to be transferred to a nearby psychiatric hospital where he was on the staff, but Barry, apologetic and filled with empathy after they had signed the baby over to Beth and Irving, had understood how she felt. She would rather submit to physical torture or a lifetime of illness than those drugs. Juanita at her side, she had flown immediately home to Beverly Hills, where her body supplied its own opiate, depression. She moved like a somnambulist through her days.
Her mind stumbled to attention as the mourners on the dais noisily turned their chairs around to face the screen. The sound stage darkened and the opening credits showed over a big-game hunt.
Every scene prompted memories. This had been shot when they were happy; this when they were shattered apart.
Watching the seduction episode in the stable, she felt a peculiar prickling sensation travel down her spine, as if somebody behind were peering intently at her. She continued to watch the screen, but her concentration was gone. The pins and needles sense of uneasiness grew stronger.
After several minutes she could no longer prevent herself from turning. In the darkness she made out the figure of a man standing about twenty feet behind her. She couldn’t tell much about him except that he was tall, and unlike the formally clad audience, wore jeans and a pale windbreaker. She decided it must be embarrassment at not having the proper clothes that had kept him from taking one of the folding chairs. Then she tried to turn back to the film. She was powerless to look away from him.
As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she saw he was bearded. The scene with the electric storm was playing now, and in the special effects department’s most hectic burst of lightning, she could see him quite clearly.
His beard was considerably darker than his streaked blond hair, and the eyes staring at her were deep-set. Her heart beat rapidly, and with clear recognition she understood she was looking at Hap. An older, bearded Hap.
She knew this was a hallucination.
But the queer part was that the hallucination didn’t seem beyond the range of normalcy.
She started to rise from her chair.
Then he was gone.
Replacing him was a dark outline that she identified as one of the large tubbed ficus trees that propmen had set around to decorate the barren reaches of Stage 8.
She knew it was impossible to will a phantasm into being, yet a thought jittered through her.
Maybe if I wait, then look back, I’ll see him again.
She fidgeted with her black silk skirt, then, after an unbearably long half minute, turned her head. The tree remained a tree. She pushed aside her chair and ran unevenly to the red lights that spelled EXIT.
65
“Of course it sounds crazy!” Alyssia said for the dozenth time. “But I’m telling you I saw Hap.”
“The movie,” Juanita said uneasily. “You told me how every part of it reminded you of him.”
Alyssia dropped the earrings she had worn to the memorial in the jewelry box, then jerked them out again, her fingers agitatedly flattening the long onyx and diamond strands on the marble dressing table ledge. Juanita, hanging up the black outfit, watched covertly. The past couple of months she’d been worried silly by her sister’s long silences and torpor, but this burst of frenzied activity and spate of words was far worse, almost as bad as when the medicines at the maternity clinic had turned the poor kid into a zombie. Once again Juanita was fearing for Alyssia’s sanity.
Alyssia went into the bathroom, poking a cotton ball into a jar of eye-makeup remover, then dropping the saturated wad. “He’d lost his tan and grown a beard.”
“Alice,” Juanita said gently, “he’s dead.”
“I’m aware he wasn’t at the studio! I’m aware I didn’t actually see him. But, Nita, don’t you understand—it was a sign.”
“A sign of what?”
“That he’s alive.”
“You spent hours with that doctor in Africa. He told you everything about the accident and the funeral.”
Alyssia yanked out a Kleenex. “Remember how Momma sometimes had premonitions and they turned out to be true?”
Juanita mumbled, “I never believed her when she got like that.”
“And you don’t believe me, either, do you?” Alyssia said belligerently. “Well, I once had a dream that happened. It was in Mendocino—just before Diller died. I dreamed Mr. Cordiner showed up. And he arrived there the next day!”
“A coincidence.”
“Oh, must you be so damn sensible! Maybe she did have the gift. Maybe I inherited it! Loads of highly intelligent people believe in extrasensory perception.”
“Alice, calm down.”
“All right,” Alyssia said. “You’re above that kind of cuckoo stuff. But I’m going to look into it!”
“Look into what?”
“Whether he’s alive, of course!”
“How?”
Alyssia slumped down at the dressing table, abruptly devoid of her benzedrine energy. “I don’t know,” she sighed. “I’ll have to figure it out.”
• • •
Alyssia found John Ivanovich’s number in the Beverly Hills Yellow Pages. There was a surprisingly long list of names under Private Investigators, but her selection was made easy by the third line of his ad: Agents Stationed Worldwide.
The following morning at ten promptly, as th
ey had agreed, Ivanovich came to the house. Alyssia, who had been dressed and waiting since before nine, answered the front doorbell herself. Ivanovich, a leathery, hollow-cheeked middle-aged man, gave her the old up and down, then hastily averted his eyes as the area around his protuberant adam’s apple turned brick color. His embarrassment was typical of men who had ravished her in their fantasies. She offered him coffee, and over the first cup he confessed in his wheezing, asthmatic voice that he was a fan.
“From way back when. I saw all of your French movies,” he said. “How may I be of service to you, Miss del Mar?”
Assuming a businesslike tone, she inquired, “Are your investigations confidential?”
“More so than dealing with a doctor or lawyer,” he reassured her.
She nodded. “I want Harvard Cordiner’s death investigated.” Having rehearsed in front of her bathroom mirror, the sentence came out with a low-key matter of factness.
His brown eyes narrowed. “Then you suspect foul play?”
She rose, walking away from him toward the window. Turning, she said, “I’d like you to find out all you can about the accident.”
“Nobody else has opened this up, not his family nor the studio—yesterday they put on a big memorial for him. Miss del Mar, is it clear in your own mind why you’re doing this?”
“Yes, of course.” I saw a vision . . .
“Some years back you and he lived together.”
“What’s that got to do with your job?”
“I haven’t taken it yet,” he said. “You have to understand, Miss del Mar, that all of our clients have a reason. And usually the reason is spelled C-A-S-H. At least ninety percent of our work is tracking down ex-husbands who aren’t paying property settlements or who’ve skipped out on the child support.”
“And that’s all?”
“Occasionally we’re called in on other things, of course. We find missing assets, missing wives, missing kids and teenagers, missing witnesses. Sometimes we debug houses and offices. One thing I can tell you, though. Since I started this agency in 1954, we’ve never been asked to investigate somebody who’s dead and buried.”
“I think he might be alive.”
Ivanovich’s expression was keenly alert. “Do you have any evidence?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Then why?”
“It doesn’t make any rational sense. And I certainly can understand why you wouldn’t want this case,” she said in a drained voice. “But, John—I do appreciate your coming up to the house.” She used his first name to ameliorate the waste of his working morning.
He stared at her, his sunken face taking on softness. “You understand the investigation’ll be expensive?” he asked. “And that the chances of success are what you might call nil?”
“But you’ll try?”
“I’m a fan,” he said, shrugging.
She gave him a dazzling smile of relief. “Thank you.”
Taking out his pad, he said crisply, “It’ll save my time and your money if you give me all the information you have about Cordiner’s life, his family, his business associates.”
“How does any of that affect what happened in Africa?”
“If it wasn’t an accident,” he said, “everything’s important.”
• • •
That same afternoon the scent of Arpège joined with the motes of dusting powder in heady sweetness as Alyssia readied herself to meet with the droning-voiced business manager who for years had handled all of her financial transactions from paying the monthly bills to investing in tax shelters. Barry was flying in from France in a couple of days and she was to lay the groundwork for their property settlement, a task that he, by inclination and educational background, should have taken on.
“Alice?” Juanita pushed open the door. “That Maxim’s here.”
Alyssia snatched up the bath sheet, saronging it around herself as if Maxim, arbiter of yesterday’s public humiliation on Stage 8, were witness to her glowing nudity. “What does he want?”
“He didn’t say. Shall I tell him you’re sick?”
Alyssia, although tempted by Juanita’s suggestion, feared that a no-show might be construed as a sign that she had been weakened by the ugly contretemps. “No, tell him I’ll be right out.”
She piled on a palette of cosmetics. With a final dry brush over her mascara, she scrutinized herself. You’re even more spectacular without all the gunk, Hap had often said. Maybe. But she couldn’t face Maxim without her Alyssia del Mar mask.
It was nearly an hour before she made her entrance into the living room.
When Maxim had looked down on her from the dais yesterday she had been too emotionally unstrung to note his appearance. Now she realized how terrible he looked. He was pale, new lines were cut deeply into his face and he was far too thin.
After their muted greeting, he said, “I suppose you’re wondering why I dropped by?”
“It crossed my mind, yes.”
“To offer various apologies,” he said.
“Apologies?”
“For one thing I was hardly a gentleman when you came to the condo to tell me about Hap.”
She anticipated a twisted smile. But his expression remained somberly sincere. She had never comprehended which way Maxim’s pendulum would swing. Take it at face value, she told herself.
“It’s okay, Maxim,” she said.
“And I should’ve gotten in touch after the baby.”
Her mind filled with her last sight of her son, his mouth open in a yawn, his thin newborn arms and legs protruding from the hand-stitched yellow crepe de chine sacque that was part of his layette. “A lot of people didn’t,” she said in a level voice.
“Alyssia, I was not only sorry when I heard, but also un peu guilty. On location I worked you like a sled dog.”
“The umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby’s neck, strangling her.” The cause for stillbirth in the press release given out by Dr. Fauchery, who was bound by kindness to keep her secret. (Plon, with his silly little goatee, was bound by his Hippocratic oath, and the Alsatian nun by her religious vows.)
“I’m sorry,” Maxim repeated. “And as for the memorial yesterday, the cold truth is that Hap’s death has hit me hard.” His eyes squeezed shut and he bent his head into his hands. “Jesus, Alyssia—this even beats when Diller died.”
Her pity welled, and she wanted to offer consolation, but it seemed to her that she would dishonor their mutual grief by making the conventional sympathy remarks. Then her mind ran a film of that tall, bearded figure in the windbreaker. She certainly couldn’t offer Maxim the thin hope that had penetrated her own darkness. If she told him about the apparition—and her investigation—he would conclude that she was a certifiable loony.
• • •
Two days later, after Barry cleared customs at LAX, he took a taxi to Beth’s house.
She immediately led him upstairs. “To meet Jonathon,” she said.
No nurses this time round. She cared for her adopted son herself, redecorating her pretty office, which led off the master bedroom, into an equally charming nursery. The crib was custom made to resemble a sporty red racing car. Jonathon, in a blue tee shirt and matching diaper cover, lay fingering his toes.
“It’s remarkable,” Barry said. “The resemblance to you.”
She said briskly, “Yes, a good match.”
He glanced at her and nodded. “Those Swiss agencies.”
Beth extended the child. “Go to Uncle Barry.”
Jonathon snuggled briefly in his arms, then grabbed for Barry’s nose, chortling. Barry gave a happy, embarrassed little smile. How wise he had been, ensuring this child had a good, stable home. “Hey, Jonathon Jonathon Telethon.”
“It’s time for his juice,” Beth said, taking back the baby.
The phone rang in her bedroom.
“Darn,” she said.
Barry followed her through the connecting door.
Settling Jonatho
n, who could not yet wiggle across his crib, in the exact center of her oversized mattress, she picked up the phone. After a moment she said, “Yes, this is she.”
At the response, Beth’s arms pressed stiffly against her sides. “Yes, I know who you are.”
After a long half minute, she said, “Wait a moment, I’ll find out.”
Holding the phone against her Liberty-flowered cotton skirt, she whispered, “It’s Lang. He knows you’re here. He wants to see us.”
“Now?” Barry whispered back.
“Tomorrow morning. At PD’s offices. Can you make it?”
Barry shivered at the thought of being with Lang. But he knew absolutely that he could not face PD. He would never forget playing his Ansafone to hear his cousin’s recorded fury upon reading a bootlegged manuscript of The New Yorker piece: You motherfucking writer, how could you sell that garbage? About me, I don’t care. But to condemn poor Dad, who was only good and generous to you, as Mafioso by linking his name with Bart Lanzoni’s! And to write all that crap about Hap—what a shitty way to get back at him for balling Alyssia! Now Lang’s really got it in for him—are you happy, rat-ass? You’re a talentless pigfart, Barry, and you always were. I’d never have represented you if you weren’t Beth’s brother! You’re no longer my client, you’re my enemy, do you hear me, motherfucker? My enemy! By the time the article was duly published Hap was dead, and the rest of the clan, including Maxim, had responded with a cold wall of silence.
Beth was watching him, worry in her eyes. “Barry, we must go,” she whispered. “With Lang there’s no choice.”
As she took the phone from her hip to accept, they both could hear the buzzing. Lang had hung up.
Beth reached for the baby, clutching him close.
“How did he know I’m here?” Barry asked. “Why does he want to see us?”
“He didn’t say.” Beth’s voice shook.
Jonathon let out a restive wail, either announcing his hunger or protesting the tightness of his mother’s arms.
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