Coldheart Canyon

PART THREE. A DARKER TIME

ONE

For four months, in the summer of his seventeenth year, Todd had worked at the Sunset Home for the Elderly on the outskirts of Orlando, where he'd got a job through his Uncle Frank, who worked as an accountant for Sunset Homes Incorporated. The place was little more than a repository for the nearly-dead; working there had been the most depressing experience of his young life. Most of his duties did not involve the patients -- he had no training as a nurse, nor intended to get any. But the care of one of the older occupants, a man by the name of Duncan McFarlane, was given over to him because McFarlane was prone to unruliness when he was being bathed by the female nurses. McFarlane was no great trouble to Todd. He was just a sour sonofabitch who wasn't going to make anybody's life one jot easier if he could possibly avoid it. The ritual of giving a bed-bath to his patient was Todd's particular horror; the sight of his own body awoke a profound self-disgust in the old man. Asking around, Todd had discovered that McFarlane had been an athlete in his prime. But now -- at the age of eighty-three -- there was no trace of the strength or the beauty his body had once possessed. He was a pallid sack of shit and resentment, revolted by the sight of himself.

Look at me, he would say when Todd uncovered him, Christ, look at me, Christ, look at me. Every time it was the same murmured horror. Look at me, Christ, look at me.

To this day, the image of McFarlane's nakedness remained with Todd in all its grotesque particulars. The little beard of dirty white hair that hung from the old man's scrotum; the constellation of heavy, dark warts above his left nipple; the wrinkled folds of pale, spotted flesh that hung under his arms. Todd felt guilty about his disgust, and kept it to himself, until one day it had been the subject of discussion in the day-room, and he'd discovered that his feelings were shared, especially by the male members of the nursing staff. The female nurses seemed to have more compassion, perhaps; or were simply indifferent to the facts of creeping senility. But the other men on the staff -- there were four of them besides Todd -- were afterwards constantly remarking on the foulness of their charges. One of the quartet -- a black guy from New Orleans called Austin Harper -- was particularly eloquent on the subject.

"I ain't endin' up like any o' these ol' fucks," he remarked on more than one occasion, "I'd blow my fuckin' brains out 'fore I'd sink that fuckin' low."

"It won't happen," Todd had said.

"How'd you reckon that, white boy?" Austin had said. He'd patted Todd on his backside; which he took every possible opportunity to do.

"When we're as old as these folks there'll be ways to fix it," Todd replied.

"You mean we'll live forever? Bullshit. I don't buy any of that science-fiction crap, boy."

"I'm not saying we'll live forever. But they'll have figured out what gives us wrinkles, and they'll have a way to smooth them out."

"Will they now? So you's goin' to be all smoothed out, is you?"

"I sure as hell am."

"You'll still die, but you'll die all smoothed out an' pretty?" He tapped Todd's ass appreciatively again.

"Will you quit doin' that?" Todd said.

"I'll quit when you quit wavin' it in my nose." Austin laughed, and slapped Todd's ass a third time, a stinging swat.

"Anyways," Todd said, "I don't give a shit what you think. I'm going to die pretty."

The phrase had lingered. To die pretty; that was the grand ambition. To die pretty, and not find yourself like poor old Duncan McFarlane, looking down at his own nakedness and saying, over and over: Oh Christ, look at me. Oh Christ, look at me. Oh Christ ...

Two months after Todd had left Florida to go to Los Angeles for a screen-test, he'd got a scrawled note from Austin Harper, who -- given that it was more or less certain that they'd never see one another again, figured it was okay for Todd to know that if Austin had had a chance he would have plowed Todd's ass 'all the way to Key West and back.'

"And then you'd be all smoothed out, baby," Harper had written.

"Oh, and by the way," he'd added, "That old fuck McFarlane died a week ago. Tried to give himself a bath in the middle of the night. Drowned himself in three inches of water. That's what I call a damn fool thing to do."

"Stay smooth, m'man. You're going to do great. I know it. Just remember to thank me when they gives you an Oscar."

TWO

"Kiddo?"

Todd was floating in a blind black place, his body untethered. He couldn't even feel it.

"Kiddo? Can you hear me?"

Despite the darkness all around, it was a comfortable place to be in. There were no predators here in this no-man's-land. There were no sharks circling, wanting ten-percent of his flesh. Todd felt pleasantly removed from everything. Except for that voice calling him.

"Kiddo? If you can hear me, move your finger."

It was a trick, he knew. It was a way to get him to go back to the world where once he'd lived and breathed and been unhappy. But he didn't want to go. It was too brittle that place; brittle and bright. He wanted to stay where he was, here in the darkness, floating and floating.

"Kiddo ... it's Donnie."

Donnie?

Wait, that couldn't be right. His older brother, Donnie? They hadn't talked in months. Why would he be here, trying to seduce him out of his comfortable hideaway? But then, if not Donnie, then who? Nobody else ever called him Kiddo.

Todd felt a dim murmur of anxiety. Donnie lived in Texas, for God's sake. What was he doing here?

"Talk to me, Kiddo."

Very reluctantly, Todd forced himself to reply to the summons, though when he finally coaxed his lips to shape it the sound he made was as remote as the moon.

"Donnie?"

"Well, howdy. I must say it's good to have you back in the land of the livin'." He felt a hand laid on his arm. The sensation, like Donnie's voice, and his own, felt distant and dulled.

"You had us a bit stirred up for a while there."

"Why's ... it ... so dark in here?" Todd said. "Will you have someone turn on the lights?"

"Everything's going to be okay, buddy."

"Donnie. Please. Turn on the lights."

"They are on, Kiddo. It's just you've got some bandages over your face. That's all it is. You're going to be just fine."

Bandages on his face.

Now it all started to come back to him. His last memories. He'd been going under Burrows's knife for the big operation.

The last thing he remembered was Burrows telling him to count backwards from ten. Burrows had been smiling reassuringly at him, and as Todd counted-had thought: I wonder how much work he's had done on that face of his? The nose for sure. And all the lines gone from around his eyes --

"Are you counting, Todd?" Burrows had said.

"Ten. Nine. Eight -- "

There hadn't been a seven. Not that Todd could remember. The drugs had swept him off to their own empty version of La-La land.

But now he was back from that dreamless place, and Donnie was here at his bedside, all the way from Texas. Why? And why the bandages over his eyes? Burrows hadn't said anything about bandages.

"My mouth's so dry," Todd whispered.

"No problemo, buddy," Donnie replied gently. "I'll get the nurse in here."

"I'll have a vodka ... straight up."

Donnie chuckled. "I'll see what I can do."

Todd heard him get up and go to the door, and call for a nurse. His consciousness wavered, and he felt himself slipping back into the void from which he'd just been brought by Donnie's voice. The prospect of that lush darkness didn't seem quite as comforting as it had a few moments before. He started to panic, scrambling to keep hold of the world, at least until he knew what had happened to him.

He called out to Donnie: "Where are you? Donnie? Are you there?"

Footsteps came hurriedly back in his direction.

"I'm still here, Kiddo." Donnie's voice was tender. Todd couldn't remember ever hearing such tenderness in it before now.

"Burrows didn't tell me it'd be like this," Todd said.

"There's nothing to get worked up about," Donnie replied.

Even in his semi-drugged state, Todd knew a lie when he heard one.

"You're not a very good actor," he said.

"Runs in the family," Donnie quipped, and squeezed Todd's arm again. "Just kidding."

"Yeah ... yeah ... " Todd said. As he spoke a spasm of pain ran from the bridge of his nose and spread across his face in both directions. He was suddenly in excruciating agony. "Jesus," he gasped. "Jesus. Make it stop!"

He felt Donnie's reassuring hand go from his arm; heard his brother crossing to the door again, yelling as he went, his voice suddenly shrill with fear: "Will somebody get in here. Right now! Christ!"

Todd's panic, momentarily soothed by his brother's voice, started to rise up in him again. He raised his hand to his face. The bandages were tight and smooth, like a visor over his head, searing him in. He started to hyperventilate. He was going to die in here, if he didn't get this smothering stuff off his face. He began to claw at the bandages. He needed air. Right now!

Air, for Christ's sake, air --

"Mr. Pickett, don't do that! Please!"

The nurse caught hold of Todd's hands, but the panic and the pain made him strong and she couldn't prevent him from digging his fingers beneath the bandages and pulling.

There were flashes of light in his head, but he knew it wasn't the light of the outside world he was seeing. His brain was overloading; fear was leaping like lightning across his skull. His blood roared in his ears. His body thrashed around in the bed as though he was in the grip of a seizure.

"All right, nurse. I've got him now."

Suddenly, there were hands around his wrists. Somebody stronger than the nurse was gently but insistently pulling his fingers away from his face. Then a voice came to find him through the sound of his own sobs.

"Todd? This is Doctor Burrows. Everything is fine. But please calm down. Let me explain what's going on. There's nothing to worry about." He spoke like a hypnotist, the cadence of his sentences even, his voice completely calm. And while he went on speaking, repeating the same information -- that everything was fine, all Todd had to do was breathe deeply, deeply -- he held Todd's arms against the bed.

After a few moments, the bright bursts of light began to become less frequent. The din of blood began to recede. So, by degrees, did the waves of panic.

"There," Doctor Burrows said, when the worst of it was over. "You see? Everything's fine and dandy. Now why don't we get you a fresh pillow? Nurse Karyn? Would you please get Mr. Pickett a nice fresh pillow?"

Oh so gently, Burrows raised the upper half of Todd's body off the bed, talking to him all the while: the same calming monologue. All the strength to resist, indeed all need to do so, had gone out of Todd. All he could do was abandon himself to Burrows' care.

Finally he said: "What's ... wrong ... with me?"

"First let's get you comfortable," Burrows replied. "Then we'll talk it all through."

Todd felt the motion of the nurse as she slipped the fresh pillow into place behind him. Then, with the same tenderness as he used to lift him up, Burrows carefully lowered Todd back down upon the pillow.

"There. Isn't that better?" Burrows said, finally letting his patient go. Todd felt a pang of separation, like a child who'd been abruptly deserted. "I'm going to let you rest for a while," Burrows went on. "And when you've slept, we'll talk properly."

"No ... " Todd said.

"Your brother Don's here with you."

"I'm here, Todd."

"I want to talk now." Todd said, "Not later. Now. Donnie! Make him stay."

"It's okay, Kiddo," Donnie said with just the right edge of threat, "Doctor B.'s not goin' anywhere. Answer his question, Doc."

"Well, first things first," Burrows said. "There's absolutely nothing wrong with your eyes, if that's what you're worried about. We just have to keep the dressings in place around your eye-sockets."

"You didn't tell me I'd be waking up in the dark," Todd said.

"No ... " Burrows replied. "That's because the procedure didn't go quite as we planned. But every operation is a little different, as you'll remember I explained to you. I'm sorry I wasn't here when you woke ... "

Now that he was calmer, Todd began to recall some of the things about Burrows that had irritated him. One of them was that voice of his: that fake basso profundo that was a practiced attempt to conceal his queeniness, and to match his voice to the heroic proportions of his body. An artificial body, of course. The man was a walking advertisement for his craft. He was fifty-five at least, but he had the skin of a baby, the arms and the chest of a body-builder and the wasp-waist of a showgirl.

"Just tell me the truth," Todd said to him. "Did something go wrong? I'm a big boy. I can take it."

There was a pin-drop silence. Todd waited. Finally, Burrows said: "We had a few minor complications with your procedure, that's all. I've explained it all to your brother Donald. There's nothing -- absolutely nothing -- for you to be concerned about. It's just going to take a little more time than we'd -- "

"What kind of complications?"

"We don't need to go into that now, Todd."

"Yes, we do," Todd said. "It's my face, for fuck's sake. Tell me what's going on. And don't screw around with me. I don't like it."

"Tell him, Doc," Donnie said, quietly but firmly.

Todd heard Burrows sigh. Then that studied voice again: "You'll remember that during the preparation evaluation I did warn you that on occasion there were reactions to chemical peels which could not be predicted. And I'm afraid that's what happened in your case. You've had an extreme, and as I say completely unpredictable allergic response to the peel. I don't believe for one moment there's going to be any significant damage in the long term. You're a healthy young man. We're going to see some swift epidermal regeneration -- "

"What the fuck's that?"

"Your skin's gonna grow back," Donnie replied, his Texan drawl turning the remark into a piece of cold comedy.

"What do you mean?" Todd said.

"The effect of the procedure we use -- as I explained in our evaluation, and is fully described in the literature I gave you -- "

"I didn't read it," Todd said. "I trusted you."

" -- the procedures we use may be likened to a very controlled chemical burn, which produces changes in the dermis and the epidermis. Damaged or blemished skin is removed, and after forty-eight hours at the most, new, healthy skin is naturally generated, which has pleasing characteristics. The client regains a youthful -- "

This time it was Donnie who interrupted Burrows' molassic flow. "Tell him the rest," Donnie said, his voice thick with anger. "If you don't tell him, I will," Donnie went on. He didn't give Burrows a chance to make the choice. "You've been out of it since you had the operation, Kiddo. In a coma. For three days. That's why they sent for me. They were getting worried. I tried to have you moved to a proper hospital, but that bitch of a manager -- Maxine, is it? -- she wouldn't let me. She said you'd want to stay here. Said she was afraid the press would find out if you were transferred."

"We're perfectly capable of looking after Mr. Pickett here," Burrows said. "There isn't a hospital in California that could give him better care."

"Yeah, well, maybe," Donnie said. "Seems to me he'd still be better off in Cedar Sinai."

"I really resent the implication -- " Burrows began.

"Will you just shut the fuck up?" Donnie said wearily. "I don't give a monkey's ass what you resent. All I care about is getting my brother properly fixed up and out of here."

"And as I say -- "

"Yeah. As you say. Tell you what, why don't you and Nurse Karyn there step out for a few minutes and let me have a private word with my brother?"

Burrows didn't attempt any further self-justification, and Todd knew why. He could imagine Donnie's expression in perfect detail: both brothers got colour in their faces when they were riled up; and a cold eye. Burrows duly retreated, which was the wisest thing he could have done.

"I want to get you out of here, Kiddo," Donnie said as soon as they had gone. "I don't trust these people as far as I could throw 'em. They're full of shit."

"I need to talk to Maxine before we do anything."

"What the fuck for? I don't trust her anymore than I trust these sons of bitches."

There was a long silence. Todd knew what was coming next; so he just waited for it.

"Just so you know," Donnie said, "You've done some damn-fool things in your life, but this whole deal is the stupidest idea I ever heard. Getting yourself a fuckin' face-lift? What kinda thing is that? Christ. Does Momma know about this?"

"No. I put you down as next of kin. I thought you'd understand."

"Well I can't say I do. It's a mess. It's a goddam mess. And I've got to go back to Texas tomorrow."

"Why so soon?"

"Because I've got a court appearance at eight o'clock on Thursday morning. Linda's tryin' to take away my weekends with Donnie Junior, and if I'm not in court her lawyer's going to get the judge to rule against me. I've been up before him a couple of times, and he doesn't like me. So, I'm going to have to love you and leave you, which I don't much like doin'. I guess I could call Momma and -- "

"No! No, Donnie, please. I don't want her here." Todd reached out blind; caught hold of Donnie's arm. "I'll be okay. You don't have to worry about me. I'll be just fine."

"All right. I hear you. I won't call Momma. Besides, the worst's over. I'm sure that's right. But listen to me, you get yourself the hell out of here and go to a proper hospital."

"I don't want the press finding out about this. If Maxine thinks -- "

"Have you heard a fuckin' word I said?" Donnie said, his voice getting louder. "I don't trust that bitch. She's out for herself. That's all she cares about. Her piece of the action."

"Don't start shouting."

"Well, what the fuck do you expect? I've been sitting here for seventy-two hours straight wondering how I was going to tell Mom that you died having plastic fucking surgery on your fucking face -- " He paused for a breath. "Christ, if Dad was alive ... he'd be so damned ashamed."

"Okay, Donnie. I get the message. I'm a fuck-up."

"You're surrounded by so many ass-kissers, you're not getting good advice. It makes me wanna puke. I mean, these people. They're all puttin on some show -- tellin' me this, tellin' me that -- and meanwhile you're lying there at death's door."

"And will they give you a straight answer? Will they fuck!" He paused to draw sufficient breath to launch in afresh. "What happened to you, Kiddo? Ten years ago you would have laughed your butt off at the thought of getting a face-lift."

Todd let go of Donnie's arm. He drew a deep, sorrowful breath. "It's hard to explain," he said. "But I got to stay on top of the heap somehow. Younger guys keep coming along ... "

"So let 'em. Why do you need to stay on top? Why not walk away from it? You've had a good run, for Christ's sake. You've had it all, I'd say. All and more. I mean fuck! What more do you want? Why do this to yourself?"

"Because I like the life, Donnie. I like the fame. I like the money."

Donnie snorted. "How much more money do you damn well need? You've got more than you can spend if you -- "

"Don't tell me what I've got and I haven't got. You don't know what it costs to live. Houses and taxes." He stopped his defense; took a different track. "Anyhow, I don't hear you complaining -- "

"Wait -- " Donnie said, knowing what was coming. But Todd wasn't about to be stopped.

" -- when I send you money."

"Don't start that."

"Why not? You sit there tellin' me what a fuck-up I am, but you never said no to the cash when you needed it. Which is all the time. Who paid your last legal bills, Donnie? And the mortgage on the house so you could start over with Linda, for the third time or fourth time or whatever it was? Who paid for that mistake?"

He let the question hang there, unanswered. Eventually, very quietly, Donnie said: "This is so fucked. I came here -- "

" -- to see whether I was dead or alive."

" -- to look after you."

"You never cared before," Todd said, with painful bluntness. "Well did you? All these years, when have you ever come out here and spent time with me?"

"I was never welcome."

"You were always welcome. You just never came because you were too fucking jealous. Why don't you admit it? At least once, between us, say it: you were so fucking jealous you couldn't stand the idea of coming out here."

"You know what? I don't need to hear this," Donnie said.

"You should have heard it years ago."

"I'm outta here."

"Go on. You did your gloating. Now you can go home and tell everyone what an asshole your brother is."

"I'm not going to do that." Donnie said. "You're still my brother, whatever you do. But I can't help you if you surround yourself -- "

" -- with ass-kissers. Yeah. You said that."

Todd heard Donnie get up and cross to the door, dragging his feet as he always had.

"What are you doing?" Todd said.

"I'm leaving. Like I said I would. You're going to be fine. That faggot Burrows will take very good care of you."

"Don't I get a hug or something?"

"Another time. When I like you better," Donnie said.

"And when the hell will that be?" Todd yelled after him.

But all he got by way of reply was the echo of his own voice off the opposite wall.

THREE

Maxine turned up a little after seven, and after a few perfunctory expressions of relief that Todd was 'back from the dead', as she indelicately put it, quickly moved on to the news she was here to debate.

"Somebody in this place has a big mouth," she said. "I got a call from the editor of the Enquirer this afternoon, asking if it was true that you'd been admitted to a private hospital. I told him absolutely not; this was a lie, garbage etc. etc. And I said that if he published that you were in hospital or anything vaguely resembling that, we'd sue him and his wretched rag. Ten seconds later I've got Peter Bart calling from Variety, asking the same damn question. And while I'm on with Peter, trying not to tell him an out-and-out lie 'cause he has a nose for bullshit, I have a call from People on the other line, asking the same question. Coincidence? I don't think so."

Todd moaned behind his mask of bandages.

"I've told Burrows we have to move you," Maxine went on.

"Wait, Donnie said yesterday you told him that you wanted me to stay here."

"That was before I got the calls. Now it's just a matter of time before some photographer finds his way in here."

"Shit. Shit. Shit."

"That would make a nice little picture, wouldn't it?" Maxine said, just in case Todd hadn't already got a snap-shot in his mind's eye. "You lying in bed with your face all bandaged up."

"Wait!" Todd said, "They'd never be able to prove it was me."

"The point is: it is you, Todd. Whoever's put out the word about your being here is working in this building. They've probably got access to your records, your charts -- "

Todd felt a spasm of the same panic that had seized him when he'd first woken up. The horror of being trapped. This time he governed it, determined not to let Maxine see him losing control.

"So when are you getting me out of here?" he said.

"I've got a car coming at five tomorrow morning. I've told Burrows I want the security in this place tripled 'til you leave. We'll take you to the beach house in Malibu until we find somewhere more practical."

"I can't go home?" Todd said, knowing even as he floated the idea that it was out of the question. That would be the first place the journalists and the paparazzi would come looking for him.

"Maybe we should fly you out of state when you're feeling a little better. I'll call John; see if I can get him to fly you up to Montana."

"I don't want to go to Montana."

"You'd be a lot more secure up there than here. We could arrange for round-the-clock nursing -- "

"I said no. I don't want to be that far away from everything."

"All right, we'll find some place here in the city. What about your new lady-friend? Miss Bosch? She's going to be asking questions too. What do you want me to tell her?"

"She's gone. She's shooting something in the Cayman Islands."

"She was fired," Maxine said. "'Creative differences' apparently. The director wanted her to show her tits and she said no. Though God knows some of her runway work has left little to the imagination. I don't know why she's got coy all of a sudden. Anyway, she wants to talk to you. What do I say?"

"Anything you like."

"So you don't want her in on this?"

"Fuck no. I don't want anybody to know."

"Okay. It's going to be difficult, but okay. I've got to go. Do you want me to send a nurse in to give you something to help you sleep?"

"Yeah ... "

"We'll find a place for you, until you mend. I'll ask Jerry Brahms. He knows the city back to front. All we need's a little hideaway. It needn't be fancy."

"Just make sure he doesn't get wind of what's going on," Todd said. "Jerry talks."

"Give me a little credit," Maxine replied. "I'll see you tomorrow morning. You get some sleep. And don't worry, nobody's going to find out where you are or what's happened. I'll kill 'em first."

"Promise."

"With my bare hands."

So saying, she was out of the room, leaving Todd alone and in the dark.

Donnie was right, of course. This was undoubtedly the stupidest thing he had ever done. But there was no going back on it. Life, like a movie, only made sense running in one direction. What could he do but go with the flow, and hope to hell there was a happy ending waiting for him in the last reel?

A storm moved in off the Pacific in the middle of the night; the seventh storm of that winter, and the worst. Over the next forty-eight hours it would dump several inches of rain along the coast from Monterey to San Diego, creating a catalogue of minor disasters. Storm-drains overflowed and turned the streets of Santa Barbara into white-water rivers; two citizens and seven street-people were swept away and drowned. Power-lines were brought down by the furious winds, the most badly struck area being Orange County, where a number of communities remained without power for the next three days. Along the Pacific Coast Highway, where the wildfires of the previous autumn had stripped the hillsides of vegetation, the naked earth, no longer knitted together by roots, turned into mud and slid down onto the road. There were countless accidents; fourteen people perished, including a family of seven Mexicans, who'd only been in the promised land four hours, having skipped over the border illegally. All burned up together, trapped in their overturned truck. In the Pacific Palisades, the deluge carried away several million dollar homes; in Topanga Canyon, the same.

Of course all this made the business of getting Todd from the hospital to Maxine's beach-house both more lengthy and frustrating than it would have been otherwise, but it may have helped to keep the endeavor secret. Certainly there were no photographers at the hospital door when they left; nor anybody waiting for them in the vicinity of the beach-house. But that didn't mean they were out of danger. Calls to Maxine's offices inquiring about Todd's condition had multiplied exponentially, and they were now coming in from further afield -- several from Japan, where Gallows had just opened-as the rumors spread. One of the German reporters had even had the temerity to suggest that Todd was undergoing plastic surgery.

"I gave him hell. Fucking Kraut."

"Aren't you German on your mother's side?"

"He's still a fucking Kraut."

Todd was sitting in the back of Maxine's Mercedes, with Nurse Karyn -- who had been thoroughly investigated by Maxine and judged reliable -- at his side. The nurse was a woman of few words: but those she chose to utter usually carried some punch.

"I don't see why y'all give a damn. I mean, what does it matter if somebody gets wind of it? He just got a chemical peel and a few nips and tucks. What's the big deal?"

"It's not something Todd's fans need to know about," Maxine replied. "They've got a certain idea of who Todd is."

"So they'd think it wasn't too masculine?" Nurse Karyn said.

"Shall we just move on from this?" Maxine said, catching Nurse Karyn's gaze in the driving mirror, and shaking her head to indicate that the conversation -- or at least this portion of it -- was at an end. Todd, of course, saw none of this. He was still bandaged blind. "How are you doing, Todd?" Maxine said.

"Wondering how soon -- "

"Soon," Maxine said. "Soon. Oh, by the way, I had a word with Jerry Brahms, and told him exactly what we needed. Two hours later he came back to me, said he had the perfect house for you. I'm going to see it with him tomorrow"

"Did he tell you where it was?"

"Somewhere up in the hills. Apparently, it was a place he used to go and play when he was a kid. I guess this is in the forties. He says it's completely secluded. Nobody's going to come bothering you."

"He's full of shit. They have fucking bus tours up in the hills. Every other house has somebody famous living in it."

"That's what I told him. But he swore this house was ideal. Nobody even knows about the canyon it's in. That's what he said. So we'll see. If it isn't any good for you, I'll keep looking."

Later that afternoon, Burrows came out to the beach-house to change Todd's dressings. It was a surreal ritual for all concerned: Todd semi-recumbent on the deco sofa in the large window overlooking the beach, Maxine sitting at a distance, nursing an early vodka stinger, Burrows -- his confidence tentatively back in place after the prickly exchanges of the previous day -- chatting about the rain and the mud-slides while he delicately removed the bandages.

"Now the area around your eyes is going to be a little gummed up," he warned Todd, "so don't try and open your eyes until I've done some cleaning."

Todd said nothing. He was just listening to the boom of his heart in his head, and outside, the boom of the storm-stirred waves. They were out of step with one another.

"I wonder," Burrows said to Maxine, "if you'd mind closing the blinds a little way? I don't want it to be too bright in here when I uncover Todd's eyes."

Todd heard Maxine crossing to the window; then the mechanical hum of the electric blinds as they were lowered.

"I think that'll be far enough," Burrows said. A click, and the hum stopped. "Now, let's see how things look Hold very still, Todd, please."

Todd held his breath as the dressing which the bandages had kept in place was gently teased away from his face. It felt as though a layer of his skin was coming away along with the gauze. He heard a little intake of breath from Maxine. "What?" he murmured.

"It's okay," Burrows said softly. "Please hold still. This is a very delicate procedure. By the way, when I put the new dressing on, I'll be leaving holes for your eyes, so you'll be able to ... very still, please ... good, good ... so you'll be able to see."

"Maxine ... ?"

"Please, Todd. Don't move a muscle."

"I want her to tell me what it looks like."

"She can't see yet, Todd."

Burrows said something to his nurse, half under his breath. Todd didn't catch the words. But he heard the gauze, which had now been stripped from his face completely, dropped with a wet plop into a receptacle. He imagined it soaked with his blood, shreds of his skin stuck to it. His stomach turned.

"I want to puke," he said.

"Shall I stop for a moment?" Burrows asked.

"No. Just get it over and done with."

"Right. Well then I'm going to start cleaning you up," Burrows said. "Then we'll see how you're healing. I must say, it's looking very good so far."

"I want Maxine to take a look."

"In a minute," Burrows said. "Just let me -- "

"Now," Todd said, nausea fueling his impatience. He raised his hand blindly and pushed at Burrows. The man moved aside. "Maxine?" Todd said.

"I'm here."

Todd beckoned in the direction of Maxine's voice. "Come and look at me, will you? I want you to tell me what I look like."

He heard Maxine's heels on the polished wood floor.

"Hurry." Her step quickened. Now she was close by him. "Well?" he said.

"To be honest, it's hard to tell till he -- "

"Christ! I knew it! I fucking knew it! He fucked me up!"

"Wait, wait," Maxine said. "Calm down. A lot of it's just the ointments he put on you. Let him clean it off before we get hysterical." Todd reached out to her. She caught hold of his hand. "It's going to be okay," she said, though her grip was clammy. "Just be patient. Why can't men be patient?"

"You're not patient," he reminded her.

"Just let him work, Todd."

"But you're not. Admit it."

"All right. I'm not patient."

Burrows set to work again, meticulously swabbing around Todd's eyes, cleaning his gummed lashes. The stink of cleaning fluid was sharp in his nostrils, his sinuses ran, and his eyes, when he finally opened them, were awash.

"Welcome back," Maxine said, unknitting her fingers from his, as though a little embarrassed by the intimacy. It took a couple of minutes for Todd's sight to clear, and another two for his eyes to become accustomed to the dimmed light in the room. But part by part, face by face, the world came back to him. The large, half-blinded window, and the rain-lashed deck beyond it. The expensive ease of the room; the Indian rug, the leather furniture, the Calder mobile, in yellow, red and black, which hung below the sky-light. Burrows' knitted brow, and fixed, nervous smile. The nurse, a pretty blonde woman. And finally Maxine, her face ashen. Burrows moved away, like a portrait painter stepping back from a canvas to check the effect he'd achieved.

"I want to see," Todd said to him.

"Give yourself a minute," Maxine said. "Are you still feeling sick?"

"Why? Is it going to make me heave?"

"No," she said. He almost believed her. "You just look a little puffy, that's all. And a little raw. It's not so bad."

"You used to be such a good liar."

"Really," she insisted. "It's not so bad."

"So let me look." Everyone in the room remained still. "Will somebody get me a mirror? Okay -- " He started to push himself up out of the chair. "I'll get one myself."

"Stay where you are," Maxine said. "If you really want to see. Nurse? What's your name?"

"Karyn."

"Go up into the bedroom, and you'll find a little hand mirror there on the vanity. Bring it down."

It seemed to Todd the girl took an eternity to fetch the mirror. While they waited, Burrows stared out at the rain. Maxine went to refresh her stinger.

Finally, the girl returned. Her eyes were on Burrows, not on Todd.

"Tell her to give it to me," Todd said.

"Go on," Burrows said.

The nurse put the mirror into Todd's hand. He took a deep breath, and looked at himself.

There was a moment, as his eyes fixed on his reflection, when reality fluttered, and he thought: none of this is real. Not the room, nor the people in it, nor the rain outside, nor the face in the mirror. Especially not the face in the mirror. It was a figment, fluttering and fluttering and --

"Jesus ... " he said, like Duncan McFarlane, "look at me -- "

The strength in his hand failed him, and the mirror dropped to the ground. It fell face down. The nurse stooped to pick it up, but he said: "No. Leave it."

She stepped away from him, and he caught a look of fear in her eyes. What was she afraid of? His voice, was it? Or his face? God help him if it was his face.

"Somebody open the blinds," he said. "Let's get some light in here. It's not a fucking funeral."

Maxine went to the switch, and flipped it. The mechanism hummed; the blind rose, showing him an expanse of rain-soaked deck, some furniture; and beyond the deck the beach. One solitary jogger -- probably some famous fool like himself, determined to preserve his beauty even in the pouring rain-was trudging along the shore, followed by two bodyguards. Todd got up from his chair and went to the window. Then, despite the presence of strangers, he lay his hand against the cold glass and began to weep.

FOUR

Burrows had brought both painkillers and tranquilizers that Todd supplemented with a large order from Jerome Bunny, a ratty little Englishman who'd been his supplier of illicit pharmaceuticals for the last four years. Under their influence, Todd spent the next twenty-four hours in a semi-somnambulant state.

The rain was unrelenting. He sat in front of Maxine's immense television screen and watched a succession of images of other people's pain -- houses gone, families divided -- dreamily wondering if any of them would exchange their misery for his. Every now and then a memory of the visage he'd seen in the mirror -- vaguely resembling somebody he'd known, but horribly wounded, filled with pus and blood -- would swim up before him, and he'd take another pill, or two or three, and wash it down with a shot of single malt, and wait for the opiates to drive the horror off a little distance.

The new dressings Burrows had put on, though as promised they indeed left his eyes uncovered, were still oppressive, and more than once Todd's hands went up to his face unbidden, and would have ripped the bandages off had he not governed himself in time. He felt grotesque, like something from a late-night horror movie, his face -- which had been his glory -- become some horrible secret, festering away beneath the bandages. He asked Maxine what movie it was -- some Rock Hudson weepie -- in which a man was covered up this way. She didn't know.

"And stop thinking about yourself for a while," she said. "Think about something else."

Easily said; the trouble was thinking about himself came naturally to him. In fact, it had become second-nature to him over the years to put all other considerations out of sight: to care only about Todd Pickett, and (on occasion) Dempsey Not to have done so would have meant a diminution of his power in the world. After all, he'd been playing a game which only the truly self-obsessed had a chance of victory. All others were bound to fall by the wayside. Now, when it would have been healthier to direct his attention elsewhere, he'd simply lost the knack. And he had no dog by his side to love him for being the boss, whatever the hell he looked like.

Late in the day Maxine came back from her visit to the Hideaway, as she had now dubbed it, with some good news. The house in the hills was just as Jerry Brahms had advertised.

"It's the only house in the canyon," she said. "Which canyon?"

"I don't even think it's got a name."

"They've all got names, for God's sake."

"All I can tell you is that it's somewhere between Coldwater and Laurel. To be perfectly honest I got a little lost following Jerry up there. He drives like the Devil. And you know my sense of geography."

"Who does the house belong to?"

"Right now it's practically empty. There's some old stuff in there -- looks like it goes back to the fifties, maybe earlier -- but nothing you'd want to use. I'll have Marco choose some furniture from the Bel Air house and move it over. Get you comfortable. But really it's ideal for what we need right now. By the way, Ms. Bosch has been calling my office. She got quite pushy with Sawyer. She's absolutely certain you're in Hawaii screwing some starlet."

"If that's what she wants to think."

"You don't care?"

"Not right now."

"You're certain you don't want to see her?"

"Christ. See her? No, Maxine. I do not want to see her."

"She was pretty upset."

"That's because she wanted a part in Warrior, and she thought I'd get it for her."

"Okay. End of discussion. If she calls again -- ?"

"Tell her she's right. I'm in Hawaii fucking the ass off anyone you care to name. Manipulative little bitch."

"So here," Maxine said. She proffered an envelope.

"What's this?"

"They're the pictures I took of the Hideaway."

He took the envelope. "It'll be fine," he said before he'd even looked at the photographs.

"You might be there for a few weeks. I want you to be comfortable."

Todd pulled out the photographs.

"They're not the best, I'm afraid," Maxine said. "It's one of those throwaway cameras. And it was raining. But you get the idea."

"It looks big."

"According to Jerry they used to call them dream palaces. All the rich stars had them. It's hokey, but it's got a lot of atmosphere. There's a huge master-bedroom with a view straight down the canyon. You can see Century City; probably the ocean on a clear day. And the living room's as big as a ballroom. Whoever built it put a lot of love into it. All the moldings, the door-handles, everything is top of the line. Of course it gets campy. There's a fresco on the ceiling of the turret. All these faces leaning over looking down at you. Famous movie stars, Jerry said. I didn't recognize any of 'em but I guess they were from silent movies." She paused, waiting for judgment. Todd just keep looking at the pictures. "Well?" Maxine finally said. "Too Old Hollywood for you?"

"No. It's fine. Anyway, isn't that what I am now?"

"What?"

"Old Hollywood."

FIVE

Jerry Brahms had been a child-actor in the late thirties, but his career hadn't lasted into puberty. He'd been at his 'most picturesque', as he like to put it, at the age of nine or ten, after which it had all been downhill. Todd had always thought of Brahms as being slightly ridiculous: with his overly-coifed silver hair, his mock-English diction, and his unforgiving bitchiness about the profession to which he'd once aspired.

But Jerry knew his Hollywood, there was no doubt of that. He lived and breathed the place: its scandals, its triumphs. He was most informed about the Golden Age of Tinseltown, which coincided, naturally enough, with the years of his employment. In matters relating to this period his knowledge was encyclopedic, as he'd proved three years before, when Todd had been looking for a new house. Jerry had volunteered his services as a location scout, and after a week or two had taken Todd and Maxine on a grand tour of properties he thought might be suitable. Todd had not wanted to go; he found Jerry's chatter grating. But Maxine had insisted. "He'll be heartbroken if you don't go," she'd said, "You know how he idolizes you. Besides, he might have found something you like."

So Todd had gone along; and it had turned out to be quite a trip. Jerry had organized the tour as though he was entertaining royalty (which perhaps, as far as he was concerned, he was). He'd hired a stretch, supplied a champagne-and-caviar hamper from Greenblatt's in case they wanted to picnic along the way, and a map of the city, on which he'd meticulously marked their route. They went down to the Colony in Malibu, they wound their way through Bel Air and Beverly Hills; they looked at Hancock Park and Brentwood, their route plotted by Jerry so that he could show off his knowledge of where the luminaries of Hollywood had lived and died. They passed by Falcon Lair on Bella Drive, which Valentino had built at the height of his fame. They went to the Benedict Canyon Drive home where Harold Lloyd had spent much of his life, and past Jayne Mansfield's Pink Palace, which was as gaudy as ever, and the house where Marilyn and DiMaggio had briefly lived in wedded bliss. They visited homes occupied, at one time or another, by John Barrymore ("It still smells of liquor," Jerry had remarked), Ronald Coleman, Hearst's widow, Marion Davies, Clara Bow, Lucille Ball and Mae West. Not all the houses were for sale, nor open for inspection; in some cases Jerry's research had simply turned up a property close by, or one that resembled the house in which some luminary had lived. Other properties were located in areas that had become shadows of their glamorous selves, but Jerry didn't seem to care, or perhaps even notice. The fact that stars whose faces had become legendary -- whose names evoked lives of elegance and luxury -- had lived in these homes blinded him to the fact that there was often decay around them. They were like sacred sites, and he a pilgrim. Todd had found the tenderness with which he talked about these places, and about the people who'd once occupied them, curiously touching.

Four or five times during the trip Jerry had directed the driver to a certain spot, invited Maxine and Todd to get out of the limo in order to show them a certain view, then presented them with a photograph taken on precisely the same spot sixty or seventy years before, when many of the places they visited had been little more than an expanse of cactus and sand. It had been an education for Todd. He hadn't realized until then how recent Los Angeles was, nor how tenuous its existence was. The greenery was as artificial as the stucco walls and the colonial facades. The city was one enormous back-lot, fake and fragile. If the water ever ceased to pump then this verdant world, with its palaces and its swooning falls of bougainvillea, would pass away.

As it turned out, Todd hadn't ended up buying any of the properties Jerry had shown them that day, which was probably for the best. He finally decided to stay in his house in Bel Air, but substantially remodel it. It didn't matter, Jerry had said, apparently reserving his opinion on whether Todd would join the pantheon of guests, nobody legendary had ever lived there.

Once Todd had said yes to the house in the hills, it took a day to get the move to the Hideaway properly organized; a day which left Todd spent sitting at the window of the Malibu House, staring at the pale reflection of his bandaged face in the rain-spattered glass. Technically, the pain-killers Burrows had given him should have left him without any discomfort whatsoever, but for some reason, even when supplemented by some of Bunny's specials -- not a minute of that day passed without his being acutely aware of the pressure of the gauze and the bandages on his face. He morbidly wondered if perhaps he wouldn't be left with this residue of feeling for the rest of his life; he'd heard of people who'd had certain operations who were made much worse by the surgeon's knife, and indeed were never the same again. The thought terrified him: that he'd done something completely irreversible. But there was no use in regretting it. All he could do now was hope to God that this unavoidable complication, as Burrow's insisted it was, would be quickly cured, and he'd have his face back intact. He wasn't even hoping for improvement at this point. Just the old, familiar Todd Pickett face would do fine; creases, laugh-lines and all.

In the early evening Marco came to pick Todd up, having spent the morning moving some essentials over to the new house. Todd went with him in the sedan, Maxine and Jerry followed on.

"I got lost twice this morning," Marco said, "going back and forth from the old house to the new one. I don't know why the hell it happened, but twice I got all turned round and found myself back onto Sunset again."

"Weird," Todd said.

"There are no street signs up there."

"No?"

"There aren't many houses, either, which is what I like. No neighbours. No tour buses. No fans climbing over the walls."

"Dempsey used to get them!"

"Oh yes, old Dempsey was great. Remember that German? Huge guy? Climbs over the wall, gets Dempsey's teeth clamped in his ass and then -- "

"Tries to sue you."

" -- tries to sue me."

They chuckled at the incident for a moment, then rode in silence for a while.

SIX

"So what exactly did Jerry tell you about this place?"

Todd asked Maxine as they stood outside the Hideaway.

"Not much. I told you he'd played here as a kid? Yes, I did. Well, he said he had wonderful memories of the house. That was about all."

Maxine hadn't taken any pictures of the exterior, it had been raining so hard that day. Now, seen clearly for the first time, the house appeared much larger than Todd had anticipated; perfectly deserving of the term 'dream palace'. He couldn't get a complete grasp of its size because the vegetation around it had been left to run wild. A large grove of bamboo to the right of the front door had grown fully thirty feet, its tallest stalks standing higher than the chimney-stacks. Bougainvillea grew everywhere in lunatic abundance, purple, red, pink and white; and even the humble ferns, planted in the shade of the perimeter wall, had flourished there, and grown antediluvian. There was room beneath the fronds to stand with your hands raised and still not touch the nubby spores on their underbellies.

The house itself was palatial Spanish in style, with more than a hint of Hollywood fantasy in its genes. The stucco was a washed-out pink, the roof a washed-out red. There was a great deal of elaborate tilework at the front steps, and around the windows, the tiles themselves still bright blue and turquoise and white, the complex interplay of their patterns lending a touch of Moorish beauty to the facade. The front door looked as though it had been purloined from the set of a medieval epic; the kind of door Douglas Fairbanks Senior might have slammed and bolted shut to keep out an army of evil-doers. It would have sufficed too, in its enormity. Maxine had to push hard to open it; and when it finally swung wide it did so not with a gothic creak but with a deep rumble, as a system of counterweights hidden in the wall aided her labor.

"Very dramatic," Todd remarked, playing it off. In truth, he was impressed by the scale of the place; by its scale and theatricality. But guileless enthusiasm he'd had shamed out of him long ago. It wasn't cool to like anything too much, except yourself.

Maxine led the way through the turret, with its grandiose spiral staircase and its trompe l'oeil ceiling, into the house. The photographs she'd taken had come nowhere near doing the place justice. Even stripped of most of its furniture, as it was, and in need of repair, it was still nothing short of magnificent. There was everywhere evidence of master craftsmen at work: from the pegged wood floors to the elegantly carved ceiling panels; from the exquisite symmetry of the marble mantels to the filigree of the wrought iron handrails, only the best had been good enough for the man or woman who'd owned this place.

Marco had artlessly arranged a few items of Todd's furniture in the living room, a little island of brittle modernity in the midst of something older and more mysterious. Todd made a mental note to give everything he owned away, and start again. In future, he was going to buy antiques.

They went through to the kitchen. It was built on the same heroic scale as everything else: ten cooks could have happily worked in it and not got in one another's way.

"I know it's all ridiculously old-fashioned," Maxine said. "But it'll do for a little while, won't it?"

"It'll do just fine," Todd said, still surprised at how much the place pleased him. "What's out back?"

"Oh the usual. A pool. Tennis courts. And a huge koi pond. Probably a polo field for all I know."

"Any fish in the pond?"

"No. You want fish?"

"It's no big deal."

"I can get koi for you if you want them. Just say the word."

"I know. But it's not worth it. I'll be here a month and gone."

"So take them with you."

"And where would I put them?"

"Okay," Maxine shrugged. "No fish." She went to the kitchen window and continued her description of the real estate. "The whole canyon belongs to the house, as far as I can see, but the gardens spread down the hill an acre and a half and all the way up to the top of the hill behind us. There's a guest-house up there. Perhaps two. I didn't go look: I figured you wouldn't be having any visitors."

"Does Jerry know anything about the history of the place?"

"I'm sure he does, but to be honest I didn't ask."

"What did you tell him about me?"

"I told him you had a stalker, and she was getting dangerous. You needed to get out of the Bel Air house for a while until the police had caught her. Frankly, I'm not sure he bought it. He's got to have heard the rumors. I think we'd be best letting him in on what's been happening -- "

"We've had this conversation once -- "

"Hear me out, will you? If we make him feel like he's part of the conspiracy, he'll stay quiet, just because he wants to please you. He'll only get chatty if he thinks we kept him out because we didn't trust him."

"Why the hell would he want to please me?"

"You know why, Todd. He's in love with you."

Todd shook his bandaged head, which was a mistake. The room around him swam for a moment, and he had to grab hold of the table. "You okay?" Maxine said.

He raised his hands, palms out, in mock surrender. "I'm fine. I just need a pill and a drink."

"I sent Marco out to get some supplies."

"But Todd ... it's not even noon."

"So? If I stay here and get shit-faced every day for the next month who's going to care? Find me something to drink, will you?"

"What about Jerry? We didn't finish -- "

"We'll talk about Jerry some other time."

"Am I telling him or not?"

"I said I don't want to talk about it any more."

"All right. But if he starts to gossip, don't say I didn't warn you."

"If he tells the fucking National Enquirer it's my fault. Happy?" Todd didn't wait for a reply. Leaving Maxine to search for the liquor, he wandered out to the back of the house. The lawn -- which lay at the bottom of a long flight of steps from the house, their railings entirely overtaken by vines -- was the size of a small field, but it had been invaded on every side by the offspring of the plants, shrubs and trees which surrounded it, many of them in premature flower. Bird of Paradise trees twenty feet tall, sycamore and eucalyptus, rose bushes and fox-gloves, early California poppies shining like satin in the grass; meadowfoam and corn lily, hairy honeysuckle and wild grape, golden yarrow, blue blossom and red huckleberry. And everywhere, of course, the ubiquitous pampas grass; soft, fleecy plumes swaying in the sun. It was uncommon, even uncanny, verdancy.

Todd strode across the lawn, which was still wet from the rain, down to the pool. Dragonflies flitted everywhere; bees wove their nectar trails through the balmy air. The pool was a baroque affair, descending from the relatively restrained style of the main house into pure Hollywood kitsch. The model, perhaps, was B de Mille Roman. A large mock-classical bronze fountain was set at the back of the pool, the intertwined limbs of its figures -- a sea-god and his female attendants -- rendered more baroque still by the tracery of living vines which had crept up over it. A sizable conch in the sea-god's hands had once been a source of rejuvenating waters for the pool, but those waters had ceased to flow a long time ago. Todd was mildly disappointed. He would have liked to have seen sparkling blue water in the pool instead of the few inches of bottle green rain-water that were there at the bottom.

He turned and looked back towards the house. It was still more impressive from this side than it had been from the front, its four floors rising like the tiers of a wedding cake, its walls lush with ivy in places, and in others naked. Beyond it, further up the hill, Todd could just see a glimpse of one of the guest-house that Maxine had mentioned. Altogether, it really was an impressive parcel of land, with or without the buildings. Had Jerry shown it to him as part of the grand tour Todd might well have been tempted to invest. The fact that Jerry hadn't done so probably meant that it had not belonged to anyone of significance, though that seemed odd. This wasn't just any Hollywood show-place: it was the crème de la crème, a glorious confection of a residence designed to show off all the wealth, power and taste of a great star.

By the time he'd made his way back inside, Marco had turned up from Greenblatt's with a carload of supplies. He welcomed his boss with his usual crooked smile and a generous glass of bourbon. "So what do you think of the Old Dark House?"

"You know ... in a weird way I like it here."

"Really?" said Maxine. "It's nothing like your taste." She was plainly still mildly irritated by their earlier exchange, though for Todd it was past history, soothed away by his wanderings in the wilderness.

"I never really felt comfortable in Bel Air," he said. "That house has always been more like a hotel to me than a home."

"I wouldn't say this place was exactly cozy" Maxine remarked.

"Oh, I don't know," Todd said. He sipped on his bourbon, smiling into his glass. "Dempsey would have liked it," he said.

SEVEN

On Thursday, 18th of March, Maxine got a call that she knew was coming. The caller was a woman called Tammy Lauper, who ran the International Todd Pickett Appreciation Society, which despite its high falutin' title had its headquarters, Maxine knew, in the Laupers' house in Sacramento. Tammy was calling to ask a very simple question, one that she said she was 'passing on' to Maxine from millions of Todd's fans worldwide: Where was Todd?

Maxine had dealt with Tammy on many occasions in the past, though if she possibly could she ducked the calls and let Sawyer deal with them. The trouble was that Tammy Lauper was an obsessive, and though in the eight years she'd been running the 'Appreciation Society' -- (she'd once said to Maxine she hated to hear it called a fan club. 'I'm not an hysterical teenager,' she'd said. This was true: Tammy Lauper was married, childless, and, when last spotted, an overweight woman in her middle thirties) -- though in that time she'd done a great deal to support Todd's movies, and could on occasion be a useful disseminator of deliberately erroneous information, she was not somebody Maxine had much time for. The woman annoyed her, with her perpetual questions about trivia, and her unspoken assumption that somehow Todd belonged to her. When she was obliged to speak to the Lauper woman -- because there was some delicate matter in the air, and she needed to carefully modulate the flow of news -- she always aimed to keep the exchanges brief. As courteous as possible -- Tammy could be prickly if she didn't feel as though she was being given her due -- but brief.

Today, however, Tammy wasn't about to be quickly satisfied; she was like a terrier with a rat. Every time Maxine thought she'd satisfied the woman's curiosity, back she'd come with another enquiry.

"Something's wrong," she kept saying. "Todd's not been seen by anyone. Usually when he goes away, members of the Society spot him, and they report to me. But I haven't heard one word. Something's wrong. Because I always hear."

"I'm sure you do."

"So what's going on? You've got to tell me."

"Why should anything be going on?" Maxine said, doing her best to maintain her equilibrium. "Todd's tired and he needs a break, so he went away for a few weeks."

"Out of state?"

"Yes. Out of state."

"Out of the country?"

"I'm afraid he asked me not to say."

"Because we've got members all over the world."

"I realize that, but -- "

"When he went on his honeymoon to Morocco," Tammy went on, "I had six reports of sightings." (This was a reference to the event which had caused Maxine more publicity problems than any other in Todd's life: his short-lived marriage to the exquisitely emaciated model Avril Fox, which had been strewn with potentially image-besmirching scenes: adulteries, a couple of ménage-à-trois involving Avril's sister, Lucy, and a spot of domestic violence).

"Sometimes," Maxine said, a trace of condescension creeping into her voice now, "Todd likes to be out in public. Sometimes he doesn't".

"And right now?"

"He doesn't."

"But why would he mind being seen?" Tammy went on. "If there's nothing wrong with him ... "

Maxine hesitated, wondering how best to calm the suspicions she was clearly arousing. She couldn't just make an excuse and jump off the phone; that would make the Lauper woman even more curious than she already was. She had to maneuver the conversation away from this dangerous area as carefully as possible.

"I'll tell you why," she said, dropping her voice a little, as though she was about to share something of real significance with Tammy. "He's got a secret project in the works."

"Oh?" Tammy said. She didn't sound persuaded. "This isn't Warrior, is it? I read that script, and -- "

"No, it isn't Warrior. It's a very personal piece, which Todd is writing himself."

"He's writing it? Todd is writing something? He said in an interview with People last July he hated writing. It was too much like hard work."

"Well, I lied a little," Maxine said. "He's not doing the actual writing. He's working with somebody on the project. A very well-respected screenwriter, actually. But he's pouring out his heart, so it'll be a very personal project." There was a silence. Maxine waited. Had Tammy taken the bait or not?

"So this is autobiographical, this movie?"

"I didn't say it was a movie." Maxine said, taking some petty pleasure in catching Tammy out. "It may end up on the screen, but right now he's just working hard to get his feelings down. He and the writer, that is."

"Who is the writer?"

"I can't say."

"You know it would make all this very much more believable if you gave me some more details," Tammy said.

That was it. Maxine lost her composure. How dare this little bitch suggest her lies weren't believable?

"You know I've really said more than I should already, Tammy," she snapped. "And I've got six calls waiting. So if you'll excuse me -- "

"Wait -- What am I going to tell the members?"

"What I just told you."

"You swear Todd's fine?"

"Good God, how many times? Yes. Todd is perfectly fine. In fact, he's never been better." She drew a deep breath, and attempted to calm herself a little before she ended up saying something she regretted. "Look, Tammy, I really wish I could tell you more. But this is a matter of Todd's privacy, as I'm sure you understand. He needs a little time away from the pressure of being a celebrity, so he can work on this project, and when he's finished I'm sure you'll be one of the first to hear about it. Now really, I've got to go."

"One more question," Tammy said.

"Yes."

"What's it called?"

"What's what called?" Maxine replied, playing for time.

"The script. Or the book. Or whatever it's going to be. What's it called?"

Oh shit, Maxine thought. Now she was in deep. Well, why the hell not give the damn woman a title? She'd lied herself into a hole as it was, one more shovelful wouldn't hurt. She pictured Todd in an image now indelibly inscribed in her mind's eye, sitting waiting for Burrows to start cutting away the bandages. And the title came: "The Blind Leading the Blind," she said.

"I don't like that," Tammy said, already proprietorial.

"Neither do I," Maxine replied, thinking not just of the title, but of this whole, sprawling, exhausting mess. "Trust me, Tammy. Neither do I."

Tammy Jayne Lauper lived on Elverta Road in Rio Linda, Sacramento, in a one-story ranch-style house fifteen minutes from the Sacramento International Airport, where her husband had worked for eight years as a baggage handler. They had no kids, nor any hope of having any, this side of a miracle of Biblical proportions. Arnie had a zero sperm count. Tammy didn't mind much. Just because God had given her breasts the size of watermelons didn't mean she was born for motherhood. And of course the absence of children left plenty of space in the house for all the files relating to what Arnie sneeringly called Tammy's little 'fan club.'

"It isn't a fan club," Tammy had pointed out countless times, "it's an Appreciation Society." Arnie said Tammy wasn't no appreciator, she was a fan, plain and simple, and he knew every time they'd used to sleep together and she closed her eyes it was that dickhead Pickett she'd been imagining on top of her fat ass, and that was the whole unvarnished truth of it. When Arnie got to talking like that, Tammy would just tune him out. He'd stop eventually, when he knew he she wasn't listening; go back to sitting in front of the TV with a beer.

The main center of the Todd Pickett Appreciation Society's operations was the front bedroom. The room she and Arnie slept in was considerably smaller, but as she'd pointed out to him, it didn't really matter since all they did was sleep in it. They still had a double bed, though God knows why; he never touched her; and a couple of years back she'd stopped wanting him to. The third bedroom (and all the closets), were used for storage: files of clippings, issues of the fanzine (quarterly for the first year, then monthly, now quarterly again), photographs and biographies to be distributed to new members, copies of press kits from every film Todd had ever made, in twenty-six languages. Downstairs, in what would have been the family room, she kept the Collection. This was made up of items related to Todd and his career, all of them relatively rare, some one-of-a-kind items. Hanging in zipped-up plastic laundry bags were articles of clothing made for the cast and crew of his pictures. On the mantelpiece, still sealed in their boxes were six Todd Pickett dolls that had been the hot thing to own during his teen-idol period, the boxes signed by Todd. Preserved in a vacuum pack were several unused latex makeup pieces for his Oscar-nominated performance as the maimed firefighter in The Burning Year. She didn't ever look at those. She'd been warned that they deteriorated when they were exposed to sunlight.

The collection also contained a comprehensive library of scripts for his movies, with all their addenda, including one marked up in Todd's handwriting, along with a complete set of novelizations of the movies, leather-bound with gilt lettering. There were also credit-listings on all the crews who worked with him, costume sketches and call-sheets, and of course, posters of every size and nationality. If the Smithsonian ever wanted to open a wing dedicated to the life and career of Todd Pickett, Tammy had once boasted, they need look no further than her front room. Once, she'd attempted to enumerate the items she owned. It was something in the region of seventeen thousand three hundred, not including those pieces of which she had more than one copy.

It was to this shrine that Tammy had come after her frustrating exchange with Maxine Frizelle. She closed and locked the door (though Arnie would not be back from work and his after-hours carousing for several hours), and sat down to think. After a few minutes, turning over the conversation she'd just had, she went to the very back of the room, and took from its place amongst the treasure-trove a box of photographs. These were her special pride and joy: pictures of Todd (fourteen of them in all) which she'd managed to buy from somebody who'd known the still photographer on Todd's fourth picture, Life Lessons. This was Todd's coming-of-age picture: the one in which he'd changed from being a Boy to being a Man. Of course, his smile would always be a boy's smile, that was part of its magic, but after Life Lessons he went on to play tougher roles: a homecoming soldier, a firelighter, a man wrongfully accused of his own wife's murder. Here then, caught in the moment before his cinematic adulthood, was the boy-man of Tammy's dreams. She had even purchased the negatives from which the series of pictures had been printed, and along with them the assurance from the person she'd got them from that they had been 'lost' in the production offices before they were ever seen by the director, the producer or by Todd himself. In short, she had the only copies.

Their rarity wasn't the reason she valued them so highly however. What made them her special treasure -- the quality that made her return to them over and over, when Arnie was out at work, and she knew she had time for reverie -- was the fact that the photographer had caught his subject unawares. Well, shirtless and unawares. Todd was sleek and pale, his body not heavy at all, not all muscle and veins popping out, just a nice, ordinary body; the body of the boy next door if the boy next door happened to be perfect. She had never seen a body she thought so beautiful. Then there was his face. Oh that face! She'd seen literally thousands of photographs of Todd in the last eleven years -- and to her adoring eyes he was handsome in every single one of them -- but in these particular pictures he was something more than handsome. There was a certain lost look in his eyes, that allowed her to indulge the belief that if she'd been there at that moment -- if he'd seen her and looked at her with the same forsaken feeling in his heart as was in his eyes -- everything in her life would have been different; and maybe, just maybe, everything in his.

When she was thinking clearly, she knew all this was romantic nonsense. She was a plain woman; and, even though she'd shed thirty-two pounds in the last two years, was still thirty overweight. How could she hope to compare with the glossy beauties Todd had romanced, both on screen and off? Still she allowed herself the indulgence, once in a while. It made life in Sacramento a little more bearable to know that her secret glimpses of Todd were always there, hidden away, waiting for her. And best of all, nobody else had them. They were hers and hers alone.

There was one other wonderful thing about the fourteen pictures: they had been snapped in such quick succession that if she leafed through them fast enough she could almost create the illusion of movement. She did that now, while she thought about the way Maxine had talked to her on the phone. That nonsense about Todd going away to write his life story, or whatever she'd said it was going to be; it didn't ring true. It simply wasn't like Todd to be so inaccessible. Every vacation he'd taken -- in India, in New Guinea, in the Amazon, for God's sake -- he'd been spotted. Somebody had had a camera, and he'd posed; smiled, waved, goofed around. It just wasn't like him to disappear like this.

But what could she do about it? She wasn't going to get any answers out of anybody close to Todd: they'd all trot out the same story. She'd already exhausted her contacts at the studios, all of whom claimed not to have seen Todd in a while. Even over at Paramount, where he was supposedly making his next picture, nobody had seen him in many months. Nor, according to her most reliable source over there, the secretary to Sherry Lansing's assistant, were there any meetings on the books, either with Todd or any of his production team. It was all very strange, and it made Tammy afraid for her man. Suppose they were covering something up? Suppose there'd been an accident, or an assault, and Todd had been hurt? Suppose he was in a hospital bed somewhere on life-support, his life slipping away, while all the sons of bitches who'd made fortunes off his talent were lying to themselves and anyone who'd listen, pretending it was going to be okay? Things like that happened all the time; especially in Hollywood. Everyone lied there; it was a way of life.

Her thoughts circled on these terrible images for an hour or more, while she sat amongst her treasures. At last, she came to a momentous decision. She could do nothing to solve this mystery sitting here in Sacramento. She needed to go out to California, and confront some of these people. It was easy to tell somebody a lie on the telephone. It was harder to do when you were face to face with someone; when you were looking into their eyes.

She took one last look through the sequence of photographs, lingering on the last of the fourteen, the one in which Todd's gaze was closest to making contact with the camera. Another shot, and he would have been looking directly at her. Their eyes, as it were, would have met. She smiled at him, kissed his picture, then put the photographs away, tucked the box out of sight and went through to the kitchen to call Arnie at the airport, and tell him what she planned to do. He was in the middle of his shift, and couldn't come to the phone. She left a message for him to call her; then she made a reservation on Southwest for the flight to Los Angeles, and booked a room in a little hotel on Wilshire Boulevard, which she'd stayed in once before when she'd come into LA for a Todd Pickett convention.

The flight was scheduled at 3:10 that afternoon, and was to get into Los Angeles at 4:15, but the departure was delayed for almost two hours, and then they circled over LAX for almost three quarters of an hour before they could land, so it wasn't until half-past seven that she stepped out of the airport into the warm, sweet-smog air of her beloved's city.

She didn't know what she was going to do, now she was here; how or where she was going to begin. But at least she wasn't sitting at home brooding. She was closer to him, here, whatever Maxine Frizelle had said about him being off in some faraway place. That was a lie; Tammy knew it in her bones. He was here. And if he was any in any trouble, then by God she would do her best to help him, because whatever anybody might say she knew one thing for certain: there wasn't a soul on earth who cared for the well-being of Todd Pickett more than she. And somewhere, tucked away in a shameful corner of her head she almost hoped that there was some conspiracy here; because that would give her a chance to come to his rescue; to save him from people like Frizelle, and make him understand who really cared about him. Oh, wouldn't that be something! She didn't dare think about it too much; it made her sick with guilt and anticipation. She shouldn't be wishing anything but the best for her Todd. And yet the same thought kept creeping back: that somewhere in this city he was waiting for her -- even if he didn't know it yet; waiting to be saved and comforted. Yes, she dared think it: perhaps even loved.

EIGHT

Todd and Marco had settled into life at the Hideaway in the Canyon quite easily. Todd occupied the enormous master bedroom which had (as Maxine had boasted) an extraordinary view down the canyon. On clear days, of which there were many in that early March, Todd could sit at his window and watch the ocean, glittering beyond the towers of Century City. On exceptional days, he could even make out the misty shape of Catalina Island.

Marco had taken a much smaller bedroom on the floor below, with an adjacent silting room, and did much as he had in the Bel Air home: that is, served with uncanny prescience the needs of his boss, and having provided such services as were required, then retreated into near-invisibility.

The area was much quieter than Bel Air. There seemed to be no through traffic on the single road that wound up through the Canyon, so apart from the occasional sound of a police helicopter passing over, or a siren drifting up from Sunset, Todd heard nothing from the city that lay such a short distance below. What he did hear, at night, were coyotes, who seemed to haunt the slopes of the canyon in significant numbers. On some nights, standing on one of the many balconies of his new mansion nursing a drink and a cigarette, he would hear a lone animal begin its urgent yapping on the opposite slope of the canyon, only to hear its call answered from another spot, then another, the din rising into a whooping chorus from the darkness all around him, so that it seemed the entire canyon was alive with them. They'd had coyotes up in Bel Air too, of course. Their proximity to the house would always send Dempsey into a frenzy of deep-chest barking, as though to announce that the dog of the house was much larger than he was, in reality.

"I'm surprised we've got so many coyotes up here," Marco said, after one particularly noisy night. "You'd think they'd go somewhere with a lot more garbage. I mean, they're scavengers, right?"

"Maybe they like it here," Todd observed.

"Yeah, I guess."

"There's no people to fuck with them."

"Except us."

"We won't be here long," Todd said.

"You don't sound too happy about that."

"Well I guess I could get used to it here."

"Have you been up on the ridge yet?"

"No. I haven't had the energy."

"You should go up there. Take a look. There's quite a view."

The exchange, brief as it was, put the thought of a trip up the hill into Todd's head. He needed to start exercising again, as Maxine had pointed out, or he was going to find that his face was all nicely healed up and his body had gone to fat. He didn't believe for a minute that his face was anywhere near being healed, but he took her point. He was drinking too much and eating too many Elvis Midnight Specials (peanut butter, jelly, crispy bacon and sliced banana on Wonder Bread sandwiches, deep fried in butter) for the good of his waistline. His pants were feeling tight, and his ass -- when he glimpsed it in the mirror -- was looking fleshy.

In a while he'd have to get back to some serious training: start running every morning; maybe have his gym equipment brought over from the Bel Air house and installed in the guest-house. But in the meantime he'd ease back into the swing of things with a few exploratory walks: one of which, he promised himself, would be up the top of the hill, to see what the view was like when you got to the end of the road.

Burrows and Nurse Karyn came every other day to change the dressings and assess the condition of his face. Though Burrows claimed that the healing process was going well, Burrows claimed, his manner remained subdued and cautious: it was clear that the whole sorry business had taken a toll upon his confidence. His sun-bed tan could not conceal a certain sickliness in his pallor; and the skin around his eyes and mouth, taut from a series of tucks and tightenings, had an unnatural rigidity to it, like a teak mask under which another, more fragile man, was trapped. Superficially, he remained unfailingly optimistic about Todd's prognosis; he was certain there would be no permanent scarring. Indeed he was even willing to chance the opinion that things were going to work out 'as planned', and that Todd was going to emerge from the whole experience looking ten years younger.

"So how long is it going to be before I can take off the bandages?"

"Another week, I'd say."

"And after that ... how long before I'm back to normal again?"

"I don't want to make any promises," Burrows said, "but inside a month. Is there some great urgency here?"

"Yeah, I want people to see me. I want them to know I'm not dead."

"Surely nobody believes that," Burrows said.

Todd summoned Marco. "Where are those tabloids you brought in?" he asked. "The doctor's not been reading the trash in his waiting-room recently."

Marco left the room and reappeared with five magazines, dropping them on the table beside Burrows. The top one had a blurred, black and white photograph of a burial procession, obviously taken with an extremely long-distance lens. The headline read: Superstar Todd Pickett Buried in Secret Ceremony. The magazine beneath had an unsmiling picture of Todd's ex-girlfriend, Wilhemina Bosch, and announced, as though from her grieving lips: "I never even had a chance to tell him good-bye." And underneath, a third magazine boasted that it contained Todd Pickett's Last Words. "I saw Christ standing at his death-bed, claims nurse." Burrows didn't bother with the others.

"Who starts bullshit like this?"

"You tell me," Todd replied.

"I hope you're not implying that it was somebody in my surgery, because I assure you we've been vigorous -- "

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Todd said. "You're not responsible for anything. I know. See? I finally got smart. I read the small print."

"Frankly, I don't see where your problem lies. All you'd have to do is make one call, tell them who you are, and the rumors would be laid to rest."

"And what would he say?" Marco asked.

"It's obvious. He'd say: I'm Todd Pickett and I'm alive and well, thank you very much."

"And then what?" Todd said. "When they want to come to take a photograph to confirm that everything's fine? Or they want an interview, face-to-face. Face. To. Face. With this?"

His face was presently unbandaged. He stood up and went to the mirror. "I look like I went ten rounds with a heavyweight."

"I can only assure you that the swelling is definitely going down. It's just going to take time. And the quality of the new epidermis is first-rate. I believe you're going to be very pleased at the end of everything."

Todd said nothing for a moment. Then, with a kind of simple sincerity he'd seldom -- if ever -- achieved in front of a camera, he turned and said to Burrows: "You know what I wish?" Burrows shook his head. "I wish I'd never laid eyes on you, you dickhead."

NINE

Tammy knew only a very few people in Los Angeles, all of them members of the Appreciation Society, but she decided not to alert anybody to the fact that she'd come into town. They'd all want to help her with her investigations, and this was something she preferred to do alone, at least at the outset.

She checked herself into the little hotel on Wilshire Boulevard, within a few hundred yards of the Westwood Memorial Park, where a host of stars and almost-stars were buried or interred. She'd made her rounds of the famous who rested there on her last visit. Donna Reed and Natalie Wood were amongst them, so was Darryl F. Zanuck and Oscar Levant. But the Park's real claim to fame -- the presence that brought sightseers from all over the world -- was Marilyn Monroe, who was laid to rest in a bland concrete crypt distinguished only by the number of floral tributes it attracted. The crypt beside it was still empty, kept -- so it was said -- for the mortal remains of Hugh Heffner.

Tammy had not much enjoyed her visit to the Park. In fact it had depressed her a little. She certainly had no intention of going back this time. It was the living she was concerned with on this visit, not the dead.

When she was settled in she called Arnie, gave him her room number in case of emergency, and told him she'd be back in a couple of days at most. She heard him pop a can of beer while she was talking -- not, to judge by his slightly slurred speech, his first of the night. He'd be fine without her, she thought. Probably happier.

She ordered up some room-service food, and then sat plotting how she'd proceed the next day. Her first line of enquiry would be the most direct: she'd go up to Todd's home in Bel Air and try to find out whether or not he was there. His address was no secret. In fact she had pictures of every room in the house, including the ensuite bathroom with the sunken tub, taken by the realtor when the house was still on the market, though of course it had been remodeled since and its layout had probably changed. Of course, her chances of even getting to the front door -- much less of seeing him -- were remote. But it would be foolish of her not to try. Maybe she'd catch him going out for a jog, or spot him standing at a window. Then all her concerns would be laid to rest and she would be able to go back to Sacramento happy, knowing that he was alive and well.

She'd hired a car at the airport, and had planned to drive up to Bel Air the evening she arrived, but after the hassles of the delayed flight she was simply too tired, so she went to bed at ten and rose bright and early. The room service offered at the hotel was nothing special -- and she liked a good breakfast -- so she crossed over Wilshire and went into Westwood Village, found herself a diner, and ate heartily: scrambled eggs, bacon, hash browns, white toast and coffee. While she ate she skimmed People and USA Today. Both had pieces about the upcoming Oscars, which were now only three days away. Todd had never won an Oscar (which Tammy believed to be absolute proof of the corruption of the Academy) but he'd been nominated four years ago for Lost Rites, one of his less popular pictures. She'd been very proud of him: he'd done fine work in the movie and she'd thought he had a crack at winning. Watching the ceremony had been nearly impossible. Her heart had hammered so hard as Susan Sarandon, who'd been presenting the award, had fumbled with the envelope; Tammy thought she was going to pass out from anticipation before the winner was even named. And then of course, Sarandon had named the winner, and it hadn't been Todd. The cameras had been on him throughout the whole envelope-fumbling routine, and there'd been a moment between the naming of the winner and his applauding when his disappointment had been perfectly clear: at least to someone who knew the language of his face as well as Tammy.

She'd only seen one of the movies in this year's race, and she'd only gone to that because Tom Hanks was in it, and he seemed such a likable man. She skimmed the articles rather than reading them, hoping maybe there'd be some reassuring mention of Todd. But there was nothing.

Breakfast finished, she walked back to the hotel, left a message for Arnie at the airport, just to say all was fine, and then picked up a map at the front desk in case her sense of direction failed her. Thus prepared, she set off for Todd's home.

It took twenty-five minutes driving through the heavy morning traffic to get up into the narrow, winding streets of Bel Air. There wasn't much to see; most of the mansions were hidden behind high walls, bristling with spikes and video cameras. But there was no doubting the fact that she was in a very select neighborhood. The cars parked on the narrow thoroughfares were all expensive (in one spot she maneuvered past a coffee-and-cream Rolls Royce on the left and a red Porsche on the right). On another street she encountered some glamorously-hooded superstar out running, a black limo following close behind, presumably carrying the bottled water and the granola bars.

What must it be like, she wondered as she drove, to be so pampered and cosseted? To know that if there was no toilet paper in the house, no ice cream in the freezer, then it was somebody else's damn job to go and get it. Never to have to worry about taxes or mortgage payments. Never to wake up at three in the morning and think: Who am I? I'm nobody. If I died tomorrow nobody would ready notice, nobody would really care.

Of course she knew there were plenty of responsibilities that came along with all this wealth and comfort. And they took their toll on some folks: it drove them to drink and drugs and adultery. It was hard to be idolized and scrutinized. But she'd never had much sympathy for the complainers. So, people paid you millions to see you smile, and it made you feel inadequate. Tough shit.

She found Todd's house readily enough. There was no number, but she recognized the castellated wall and the square lamps on either side of the gate. She drove on up the street, found a parking spot, and wandered back towards the house, trying to look as inconspicuous as any two hundred and three-pound woman in orange polyester pants could. When she reached the gates she saw that there was a car parked in the driveway, twenty yards inside the gates, its trunk open. There was no sign of anyone loading or unloading. She watched from the street for a minute or two, her courage alternately rising then failing her. She couldn't just go up to the gate and ring the bell. What would she say? Hello, I'm Todd's Number One Fan, and I was wondering if he was feeling okay? Ridiculous! They'd think she was a stalker and have her arrested. In fact they might be watching her right now, on a hidden camera: calling the police.

She stood there, quietly cursing herself for not having thought this through properly before she came up here. She didn't know whether to stand her ground, and make the best of this nightmarish situation, or attempt to casually slip away.

Then a door slammed, somewhere out of sight. She wanted to make a run for it, but she too far from the car to make a quick retreat. All she could do was stand there and hope to God there was nobody looking at the security monitors at that particular moment.

Now came the sound of somebody whistling, and seconds later the whistler himself stepped into view. Tammy recognized him instantly. It was Marco Caputo, Todd's assistant and bodyguard. She'd encountered the man twice before, once at the premiere party for The Burning Year, and the second time in Las Vegas, when Todd had been named Actor of the Year at ShoWest. She'd very politely presented her credentials as the President of the Appreciation Society, and politely asked Caputo if she could have a minute to talk with Todd. On both occasions he'd been rude to her. The second time, in fact, he'd called her 'a crazy bitch', which she'd complained to Maxine Frizelle about. Maxine had apologized in a halfhearted way and said it would never happen again, but Tammy wasn't about to put Caputo's temper to the test a third time, especially under these dubious circumstances.

Before he could look up and see her she backed off into the thicket of blackberry bushes that grew unchecked on the other side of the street. She kept her eyes on him at all times; he was too busy with his present labors to notice her, thank God; and now, hidden in the bushes, she had the perfect vantage point from which to observe him as he went back and forth between the house and the car. He was loading his vehicle up with an odd assortment of things: including several awards she knew belonged to Todd. He was also removing some other items: a variety of fancy ornaments, a marijuana plant in a pot, some framed photographs. All this, plus nine or ten sealed cardboard boxes, carefully placed in the trunk or on the back seat of his car. There was no sign of Todd through the process; nor did she hear any exchange from inside the house. If Todd was here, he was not engaged in conversation with Marco. But her instincts told her he was not here.

For fully a quarter of an hour she watched him work and finally -- putting all the evidence together -- she came to the conclusion that she was witnessing an act of theft. Of course, her dislike of the thief factored into her assessment, but there was no doubt that Caputo looked furtive as he went about his labors. Every now and then he'd glance up as if he was afraid he was being watched (perhaps he sensed that he was); and when he did she saw that his face was ill-shaven, and his eyes heavy. Sleep wasn't coming too easily of late.

She had already decided what she was going to do well before he'd finished with his felony. She'd follow him when he departed and find out where he was dropping off all his booty. Then she'd call the police and have him arrested. Hopefully that would improve Maxine's low opinion of her. She might even find herself trusted enough to be invited into the charmed circle around Todd. Well, perhaps that was a little too much to hope for. But at the very least she'd be stopping Caputo profiting from his theft.

With the car now filled to capacity, Caputo slammed the trunk, and headed back to the house, presumably to lock up. Once he'd gone Tammy disentangled herself from the blackberry bushes and hurried back to her own car. It was getting warm. She felt sweat running from beneath her breasts, and her underwear was bunched in the groove of her butt. She turned the air-conditioning to its coldest setting, then drove on up the street a little way until she had sufficient room to turn around, and came back down in time to see Caputo's black Lexus easing out of the driveway. He was the only occupant of the vehicle.

Keeping her distance, she followed the Lexus down through the maze of Bel Air's walls and cameras to Sunset Boulevard. She almost lost her quarry at the lights, but luckily the eastbound traffic on Sunset was heavy, and with a little discourteous driving she was able to keep him in sight, finally catching up with him again. He drove with ease and impatience, slipping lanes to overtake tardy drivers; but she was a match for him. Wherever he was going, she was going to be on his thieving tail.

She had no time to consult the maps she'd picked up, she was too busy keeping her eyes on him. So when he suddenly swung a left, and took off up into the hills again, she instantly lost all sense of where they were headed. The traffic soon grew sparse, the streets narrow and serpentine.

Once he halted at a stop sign and he looked back over his shoulder. She was certain he'd realized he was being followed, and prepared herself for a confrontation. But no; something he'd laid on the back seat had moved, it seemed, and he was simply leaning over to reposition it. The job done he then proceeded on his way, and she continued to follow, at a discreet distance.

The road wound so tightly on itself as it ascended that she let him slip out of sight several times rather than risk his realizing he was being pursued. But she didn't fear losing him. Unlike Bel Air, which was made up of a warren of small streets, the Canyon into which they were climbing seemed to have only one thoroughfare, and they were both on it. What little sign of habitation she saw -- a wall, and occasionally a gate in a wall -- suggested this was not particularly well-fancied real estate, which was surprising given its location. The trees had been allowed to grow over the road, in some places intertwining their branches to form a leafy vault overhead. In one spot, where a number of tall palm trees grew close to the road, fallen fronds lay in a brittle carpet on the pot-holed tarmac.

She began to get just a little anxious. Although she reassured herself that she was just a couple of minutes' drive away from Sunset, this felt like a very different world; a backwater, where who knew what went on? That very fact, of course, supported her shadier suspicions. This was a perfect place for an illegal transaction: there didn't appear to be anybody here to witness Caputo's dealing. Except, of course, herself.

The black Lexus had been out of sight for quite a while when, as she turned a corner, she came upon it parked so badly that she might have ploughed into the back of it had she not acted quickly to avert the collision. She swung wide of it, glancing back to see Caputo manually opening a pair of immense gates. The thief started to look round at her, but she put her foot on the accelerator and was out of sight before he could fix his gaze. She drove on a considerable distance, but the road came to a dead-end, which left her with two options. One, to turn round and make a conspicuous retreat past the gates, so that he was certain she'd gone; or to hope that the urgency of his mission would make him careless about her presence, and by the time she'd trekked back to his thieves' lair she would have been forgotten. She decided on the latter. She'd come too far to turn and run off now with her tail between her legs.

The first thing she noticed when she got out of her car was the deep hush of the canyon. Though the Bel Air house was nicely situated, away from the din of any major thoroughfare, she'd still been aware that she was in the middle of a city. But here the only sound was the music of birds, and insects in the grass. She was careful not to slam the door. Leaving the key in the car, and the door just slightly ajar in case she needed to make a fast getaway, she headed back down the street to the gate.

There were no cameras mounted along the perimeter this time, which surprised her; but then perhaps she was walking into a nest of infamous felons, and everyone in the vicinity knew to keep their distance. If so -- if the people Marco was doing business with were real villains -- then she was in trouble. She was alone up here; and nobody knew where she'd gone.

This is insanity, she thought to herself as she walked. But she kept on walking. The prospect of coming out of this the unlikely heroine was simply too attractive to be turned down. Yes, there was a risk. But then perhaps it was time she took a few, instead of hiding away in her house and doting on her picture collection. She was in the thick of things now, and she wasn't going to allow herself to turn her back on this adventure. If she did -- if she got in her car and drove away -- wouldn't she always wonder how different things might have been if for once in her life she'd had the courage of her instincts?

Arnie had always called her a dreamer, and maybe he was right about that. Maybe she'd been living in a dream world for too long, with her little museum of photographs to dote on; hoping -- though it could never happen, of course -- that one day, when she flicked through the pictures, Todd would look at her and smile at her and invite her into his world, to stay. It was a silly dream, and she knew it. Whereas being here now, walking on the hard street in the hot sun, with an old cracked wall to the left of her -- all that was real, perfectly real. So perhaps today was the day when the photographs became real too; the day when she finally found her way to a man of flesh and blood; to a Todd who would return her look, finally; see her and smile at her.

The thought made her quicken her step; and she arrived at the gates breathing a little faster, exhilarated by the prospect that with the hazards she imagined the house contained there was one possibility she could not properly imagine (though Lord knows she'd tried to conjure it over and over): the image of her idol, appearing before her, and her with so much to say she wouldn't know where to begin.

TEN

She scanned the area around the gates (the bars of which were exquisitely interwoven with both wrought iron vines and the living variety), in search of the inevitable security cameras, but to her surprise found none. They were either extremely well concealed, or else the owners of this house were so certain that their Canyon was safe from visitors that they didn't feel the need of them. More surprisingly still, the gates had no locks; she was able to push one of them open wide enough for her to slip through.

She could see some of the house from where she stood, though it was mostly hidden by the great riot of shrubs and trees that lined the curving driveway. Caputo's car was parked close to the front door. The trunk was open, and he was now unloading his loot. She wished she'd brought a camera; then she could have simply photographed him in the middle of his illicit transaction, and left with her evidence. But as it was, she felt obliged to get a little closer, and find out who he was dealing with. If she didn't have some further evidence, it was going to end up being his word against hers; and she, after all, was the trespasser here. Her accusations weren't going to carry much weight unless she could be very specific about what she had witnessed.

She waited until Caputo had gone into the house, and then crept towards the front door, covering perhaps half the distance between door and gate before the thief strode out of the house again, and returned to the car. She ducked for cover behind a Bird of Paradise, its sickly sap gummy beneath her heels. From there she watched while Caputo hauled another load of booty up out of the trunk. As he did so there was a shout from inside the house; the voice curiously muted.

"Marco! This picture's cracked."

"Shit."

Marco set down the box he was lifting from the trunk, and went back to the doorstep. As he did so, the owner of the picture, and of that curiously muffled voice, came out of the house. The sight of him made Tammy's heart quicken. First, he was shirtless, his slacks hanging low on his hips. His torso was tanned, but far from trim. He looked to have a body that had once been well cared for but was now quickly going to seed. The muscles of his upper arms were soft, and he had the beginnings of love-handles spilling over his belt. His face was swathed in bandages. They weren't tight to his skull, like the bandaging on a mummy. They were more irregular; patches of gauze held against his cheeks and brow and jaw and neck, with lengths of bandaging running all the way around his head to secure them and locks of his lush dark hair stuck up out of the bandages like tufts from the pate of a clown. All in all, that was what he resembled, with his ill-fitting pants, and his little paunch: something from a circus. Part clown, part freak.

He lifted up the picture for Marco to see. "Look."

"It's just the glass that's cracked. Easy fix."

"You're careless."

"I said I'd get it fixed, boss."

"That's not the point. You're fucking careless."

Only as the clown returned into the house, dropping the offending picture against the door-jamb for Marco to pick up, did Tammy realize who she'd just seen.

It was Todd. Oh my Lord ...

It was Todd standing there on the doorstep, with his face all bandaged up and his stomach hanging over his trousers.

Tammy heard herself gasping. She put her hand over her mouth to silence the sound, but she needn't have bothered. The men's fractious exchange had escalated into an argument loud enough to drown out any noise she might make.

"You're so fucking clumsy."

"Some of the stuff slipped off the back seat, that's all. No big deal. It was an accident."

"Well, there's too many fucking accidents around here for my liking."

"Hey ... I said I'm sorry."

"It's a picture of the house where I was born."

"Yeah? Well I'll get a new frame for it on Monday." The exchange about the broken glass apparently came to a halt there. Tammy watched while Caputo stood on the step, staring into the house, muttering something under his breath. Whatever it was, it wasn't for Todd's ears; he was just quietly letting off steam. He leaned on the car, lit a cigarette and soothed himself with a smoke.

Tammy didn't dare move. Even though Caputo wasn't looking directly at her, there was a better than even chance that he'd catch sight of her if she broke cover. All she could do was stay where she was, her mind filled with feverish explanations for what she'd just seen.

Obviously something horrible had happened to Todd, but what? Her first thought was that one of his ex-girlfriends had tried to harm him (he'd always had poor judgment when it came to women). Either that or there'd been some kind of accident (was that what his remark about "too many accidents" had meant?). Whatever it was, he was in terrible pain, or else why would he be acting the way he just had? Her heart went out to him. And to be stuck up here in this God-forsaken place with only that cretin Caputo for company: it would drive anybody crazy.

Finally, Caputo dropped his cigarette, ground it out, and went back to his work. Tammy waited until he'd disappeared inside the house and stepped out of her hiding place. What now? Back to the gate, up the street to her car, and away? Clearly that was the most sensible thing to do. But that would mean leaving without finding what was wrong with her poor Todd. She couldn't do that. It was as simple as that. She couldn't do it. She was going to have to find a way into the house, and then discover some means to speak to him before Caputo intervened. Obviously the front door wasn't the way to go; not with the thug standing right there. She was going to have to try around the back. She retraced her sticky steps a few yards, and then crossed to the corner of the house. A paving stone path led down the flank of the house. It was a narrow, steep descent, and it plainly hadn't been used in many years. Roots had cracked the stones, and shrubbery choked the path in several places. It took her fully ten minutes to make her cautious descent, but it delivered her into a far more beautiful spot than she'd expected. Somebody had once created a wonderful garden back here; and now, with spring early this year throughout the state, the place was glorious. Everywhere there were bursts of brilliant color -- and hummingbirds, going from flower to flower, and butterflies, drying their newly-exposed wings to the sun.

The beauty of the place put all thoughts of jeopardy out of Tammy's head, at least for a few moments. She made her way through the bushes to what had once been an enormous lawn -- though there were so many wild flowers in the tall grass, and so much grass sprouting in the border, that lawn and border had become virtually indistinguishable -- and looked back up at the house, her gaze going from window to window, balcony to balcony, to see if there was anybody watching her. She saw nobody, so she grew a little more confident and strode out into the middle of the lawn so that she could get herself a good look at the house. It was much larger than she'd assumed from the front, and even in its dilapidated state it was an, elegant place, the curves of its balconies echoing one another, the ironwork of its railings delicate.

That said, it was a strange house for Todd to be living in. She knew how hard he'd worked to perfect his residence in Bel Air (four architects; two interior designers; millions of dollars spent): so why was he here? There could only be one explanation. He was in hiding. He didn't want anyone to see him in his wounded state. She understood the logic of that. There were some people -- some of his fans -- who wanted to think he was perfect. Luckily she wasn't one of those people. Far from it. The fact that he was here, all locked away, hurting and angry, made her feel all the more love for him. If she got a chance, she'd tell him so. If he'd let her, she'd peel those stifling bandages off his face. She didn't care what he looked like underneath; it was still her Todd, wasn't it? Still the man she idolized. For once the fact that her breasts were too big would be a Godsend. They'd be a comfortable place for him to lay his hurt head. She could rock him and keep him there, safe and sound.

From the corner of her eye, she saw something move in the foliage. The blissful imaginings fled. Very slowly, she looked towards the shrubs where she'd seen the motion. The sun was bright, the shadows dark and solid. The leaves shook in the light breeze. Was that what she'd seen? The leaves shaking? Apparently so, for there was nothing else visible.

She returned her gaze to the house, looking for the best way for her to get in. There were no open windows on the garden level -- at least none that she could see -- and the doors all looked to be securely locked. She pushed her way through a line of shrubs so as to see if the house was any more vulnerable elsewhere, but the foliage grew thicker around her as she proceeded, and then she somehow managed to become disorientated, because when she turned back to try another way she found that she'd lost sight of both the lawn and the house. She felt like Alice, suddenly shrinking away; the flowers around her were huge, like sunflowers, only purple and scarlet, and the scent they gave off was achingly sweet. They grew so tall, however, and in such preternatural numbers, that she could not see the house at all -- not a chimney pot, not a balcony. Her only hope was to make a guess at the direction in which the house lay, which she did, plunging on through the enormous blooms. But her guesswork was hopelessly amiss. The shrubbery simply thickened, the sunflowers giving way to bushes whose branches carried bell-shaped yellow blossoms, almost the size of her head. She couldn't yell for help, of course; that would bring Caputo running. She had no choice but to head on in the same hopeless fashion, until at last the thicket cleared somewhat, and she had sight of the sky again.

Emerging from the shrubbery she was instantly on her guard, in case she'd come to a place where she could be spotted. But she needn't have worried. Her travels had brought her down the hill, and put a line of cypress trees (which she could not remember moving through) between herself and the house. Only one reasonably sensible option presented itself. Directly ahead of her was a narrow pathway -- as overgrown as the one that had brought her down the side of the house. She had no idea where it led, but it was a pathway; it implied that others had been here before her, perhaps in the same predicament, and this trail of trodden ground marked their exit. If it had worked for them, why not for her? Pulling pieces of twig and blossom from her hair and blouse as she went, she followed the path.

She suddenly had a mental picture of herself in her present state. What a sight she must be, stumbling out of the greenery like some crazed explorer. What the hell was she thinking of? Out there on the open street it had been easy to talk herself into this trespass. Now she was beginning to think the whole idea wasn't so smart. It wasn't the fact that she was lost in the environs of the house that discomfited her: she'd find her way back to the street eventually. Nor was she particularly concerned about the threat posed by Caputo; not now that she knew Todd was here. Caputo might yell a bit, and threaten her with the police if she didn't leave; but he was more bark than bite. No, what had brought her to a halt was the distinct sense that she wasn't alone out here in the undergrowth. There was somebody close by. She couldn't see anybody, but the feeling was too strong to be ignored.

She slowly started to turn on her heel, viewing the scene around her.

"Whoever you are ... " she said, doing her best to keep her voice as quiet and non-confrontational as possible, "please show yourself."

There was a motion in the undergrowth, five or six yards from where she stood. Somebody -- or something -- had apparently moved from their hiding place. There was more than one creature in the vicinity, she guessed; it was several. There was foliage moving all around her now, as though those hiding in the shrubbery were getting ready to show themselves.

She started walking again, faster than before, and her walking brought her into a place where the shrubbery cleared a little, presenting her with a most unexpected sight. There were perhaps seven or eight cages, arranged on either side of a wide, flagged walkway. They varied in size. The largest might have housed two horses and left some room for maneuver, the smallest was perhaps half that size. Vines had wrapped themselves around the bars and fell here and there, in tattered green curtains, as though to conceal what lay inside the cages. In fact, there was nothing to conceal. The occupants of this menagerie had long since disappeared.

She moved down the walkway cautiously, increasingly certain that her stalkers were matching her motion step by step on the other side of the cages. Some of the cages had high wooden bars, which suggested they'd housed small monkeys. Others were built more robustly, their bars twice or three times the thickness. What kind of animal had been held in a cage like this? It was too small to comfortably accommodate a rhinoceros, or even a bear or tiger. And in a day rife with unanswered questions, here was another one: what had happened to the occupants of this tawdry private zoo? Was there a graveyard somewhere in the thicket where the animals had been laid to rest? Or had their owner set them free to roam the Canyon?

She was almost at the end of the walkway now. The final cage on her right was in a much better state than the others. Foliage had been interwoven with the bars so cunningly that there was practically nothing of the interior visible. Its gate, which was similarly covered, stood a little ajar. Tammy peered in. The air inside smelled of some subtle perfume, its source the candles which were set in a little cluster at the far end of the cage. There was a small cot set against the wall to her right, somewhat incongruously made up with two oversized red silk pillows and a dirty yellow comforter. There was a chair and a tiny table on the other side of the cage, and on the table paper and pen. Beside the cot there was an upended wooden box, which also functioned as a table. Books were piled high upon it. But her attention didn't linger on the books. It was drawn to the cluster of candles at the far end of the cage. There was a kind of altar there, roughly made; set on a few pieces of wood raised up on rocks. In the middle of the altar was what Tammy first thought was a piece of sculpture, representing the face of a beautiful young woman. When she got closer to it, however, she saw that it was a life-mask. The mouth carried an oh-so-subtle smile; and there was a slight frown on the subject's otherwise perfect brow. Such beauty! Whoever this woman was -- or had been -- it was easy to understand why she'd been elected for this place of honor in the candlelight. It was the kind of face that made you gape at its perfection. The kind the camera loved.

Ah now; the mysteries of this house and place began to seem more soluble. Was this beauty the owner of this once-great house; remembered here by some obsessive fan? Was this shrine made out of devotion for a woman who'd walked in these gardens, once upon a time?

Tammy took another step towards the altar, and saw that besides the life-mask there were a number of other, smaller items set there. A scrap of red silk, one edge of it hemmed; a cameo brooch, with the same woman's face carved in creamy stone; a little wooden box, scarcely larger than a matchbox, which presumably held some other treasure; and lying flat beneath all of these a cut-out paper doll, about twelve inches tall of a woman dressed in the frilly underwear of a bygone era. The paper from which the doll was made had yellowed, the colors of the printing faded. It was something from the twenties, Tammy guessed. Her knowledge of that era of cinema was sketchy, but the three faces, one of cardboard, one of plaster, one of stone, teased her: she knew the woman whose image was thricefold copied here. She'd seen her flickering black and white picture on some late-night movie channel. She tried to put a name to the face, but nothing came.

Despairing of the puzzle, she took a step back from the altar, and as she did so she felt a rush of cool air against the back of her neck. She turned, completely unprepared for what met her gaze. A man had come into the cage behind her, entering so silently he was literally a foot from her and she hadn't heard his approach. There were places in the leafed and barred roof where the sun broke through, and it fell in bright patches upon him. One of them fell irregularly upon his face, catching both his eyes, and part of his nose, and the corner of his mouth. She saw immediately that it wasn't Caputo. It was a much older man, his eyes, despite the sun that illuminated them, gray, cold and weary, his hair, what was left of it, grown out to shoulder length and quite white. He was gaunt, but the lack of flesh on his skull flattered him; he looked, she thought, like a saint in her grandmother's old Bible, which had been illustrated with pictures by the Old Masters. This was a man capable of devotion; indeed addicted to it.

He raised his hand and put a homemade cigarette to his lips. Then, with a kind of old-fashioned style, he flicked open his lighter, lit the cigarette and drew deeply on it.

"And who might you be?" he said. His voice was the color of his eyes.

"I'm sorry," Tammy said. "I shouldn't be here."

"Please," he said gently, "Let me be the judge of that." He drew on the cigarette again. The tobacco smelled more pungent than any cigarette she'd ever inhaled. "I'd still like your name."

"Tammy Lauper. Like I said -- "

"You're sorry."

"Yes."

"You don't mean to be here."

"No."

"You got lost, I daresay. It's so easy, in the garden."

"I was looking for Todd."

"Ah," the stranger said, glancing away at the roof for a moment. The cigarette smoke was blue as it rose through the slivers of sun. "So you're with Mr. Pickett's entourage."

"Well no. Not exactly."

"Meaning?"

"I just ... well, he knows me ... "

"But he doesn't know you're here."

"That's right."

The man's gaze returned to Tammy, and he assessed her, his gaze, though insistent, oddly polite. "What are you to our Mr. Pickett?" he said. "A mistress of his, once?"

Tammy couldn't help but smile at this. First, the very thought of it; then, the word itself. Mistress. Like the flick of his lighter, it was pleasantly old-fashioned. And rather flattering.

"I don't think Todd Pickett would look twice at me," she said, feeling the need to be honest with this sad, grey man.

"Then that would be his loss," the man replied, the compliment offered so lightly that even if it wasn't meant it was still beguiling. Out of nowhere she remembered a phrase her mother had used, to describe Jimmy MacKintosh, the man she'd eventually divorced Tammy's father to pursue. "He could charm the birds of the trees, that one." She'd never met a man with that kind of charisma before, in the flesh. But this man had it. Though their exchange so far had been brief and shallow, she knew a bird-charmer when she met one.

"May I ask ... "

"Ask away."

" ... who are you?"

"By all means. One name deserves another. I'm Willem Zeffer."

"I'm pleased to meet you," Tammy said. "Again, I'm sorry." She made a half-hearted glance over her shoulder at the altar. "I shouldn't have come in here."

"You weren't to know. It's easy to get lost in this ... jungle. We should have it all cut back." He smiled thinly. "You just can't get the staff these days."

"That woman," Tammy said. "The one in the mask?"

"In the mask?" Zeffer said, "Oh. I see. Yes. In the mask."

"Who is she?"

He stepped to the side, in order to have a dear view of the altar and what was upon it. "She was an actress," he explained, "many, many moons ago."

"I thought I recognized her."

"Her name's Katya Lupi."

"Yes?" The name rang a bell, but Tammy still couldn't name any of the movies this woman had been in.

"Was she very famous?"

"Very. She's up there with Pickford and Swanson and Theda Bara. Or she was."

"She's dead?"

"No, no. Just forgotten. At least that's my impression. I don't get out into the world any more, but I sense that the name Katya Lupi doesn't mean very much."

"You'd be right."

"Well, she's lucky. She still has her little dominion here in Coldheart Canyon."

"Coldheart?"

"That's what they called the place. She was such a heart-breaker, you see. She took so many lovers -- especially in the early years -- and when she was done with them, she just threw them aside."

"Were you one of them?"

Zeffer smiled. "I shared her bed, a little, when I first brought her to America. But she got tired of me very quickly."

"What then?"

"I had other uses, so she kept me around. But a lot of the men who loved her took her rejection badly. Three committed suicide with bullets. A number of others with alcohol. Some of them stayed here, where they could be close to her. Including me. It's foolish really, because there's no way back into her affection."

"Why would you want to be ... back, I mean?" Tammy said. "She must be very old by now."

"Oh time hasn't staled her infinite variety, as the Bard has it. She's still beautiful."

Tammy didn't want to challenge the man, given that he was plainly besotted with this Lupi woman, but the idol of his heart must be approaching a hundred years of age by now. It was hard to imagine how any of her beauty remained.

"Well, I guess I should be getting along." Tammy said.

She gently pressed past Zeffer, who put up no resistance, and stepped out of the cage onto the walkway. It was so quiet she could hear her stomach rumble. Her Westwood breakfast seemed very remote now; as did the little diner where she'd eaten it.

Zeffer came after her, out into the open air, and she saw him clearly for the first time. He had been extremely handsome once, she thought; but his face was a mess. He looked as though he'd been attacked; punched repeatedly. Raw in places, pale and powdery in others, he had the appearance of a man who had suffered intensely, and kept the suffering inside, where it continued to take its toll. She couldn't make quite so hurried an attempt to abandon him now that she'd seen him plainly. He seemed to read her equivocation, and suggested that she stay.

"Are you really in such a hurry?" He looked around him as he spoke; he seemed to be reading the peculiar stillness in the air.

"Perhaps we could walk together a ways. It isn't always safe up here."

Before she could ask him what he meant by this he turned his back to the door of the cage and picked up a large stick that was set there. The way he wielded it suggested he'd used it as a weapon in the past, and had some expectation of doing so again now.

"Animals?" she said.

He looked at her with those sorrowful gray eyes of his. "Sometimes animals, yes. Sometimes worse."

"I don't understand."

"Perhaps, with respect, it would be better not to try," he advised. The stillness seemed to be deepening around them, the absence of sound becoming heavier, if that were possible. She didn't need any further encouragement from Zeffer to stay close to him. Whatever this stillness hid, she didn't want to face it alone. "Just take it from me that Coldheart Canyon has some less-than-pretty occupants."

Something behind the cages drew Zeffer's attention. Tammy followed the direction of his gaze. "What were the cages for?" she asked him.

"Katya went through a phase of collecting exotic animals. We had a little zoo here. A white tiger from India, though he didn't live very long. Later, there was a rhinoceros. That also perished."

"Wasn't that cruel? Keeping them here, I mean? The cages look so small."

"Yes, of course it was cruel. She's a cruel woman, and I was cruel for doing her bidding. I have no doubt of that. I was probably unspeakably cruel, in my casual way. But it takes the experience of living like an animal -- " he glanced back at the cage " -- to realize the misery they must have suffered."

Tammy watched him scrutinizing the shrubbery on the far side of the cages.

"What's out there?" she said. "Is it animals that -- "

"Come here," Zeffer said, his voice suddenly dropping to an urgent whisper. "Quickly."

Though she still saw nothing in the shrubbery, she did as she was told.

As she did so there was a blast of icy air down the narrow channel between the cages, and she saw several forms -- human forms, but distorted, as though they were in a wind-tunnel, their mouths blown into a dark circle lined with needle teeth, their eyes squeezed into dots -- come racing towards her.

"Don't you dare!" she heard Zeffer yell at her side, and saw him raise his stick. If he landed a blow she didn't see it. The breath was knocked from her as two of her attackers threw themselves upon her.

One of them put a hand over her face. A spasm of energy passed through her bone and brain, erupting behind her eyes. It was more than her mind could take. She saw a white light, like the light that floods a cinema screen when the film breaks.

The cold went away in the same instant: sounds and sights and all the feelings they composed, gone.

The last thing she heard, dying away, was Willem Zeffer's voice yelling: "Damn you all!"

Then he too was gone.

In the passageway in front of Katya's long-abandoned menagerie, Willem Zeffer watched as the forces that had broken cover carried Tammy Lauper away into their own horrid corners of the Canyon, leaving him -- as he had been left so often in this godless place -- helpless and bereft.

He threw the stick down on the ground, his eyes stinging with tears. Then the strength ran out of him completely, and he went down on his knees at the threshold of his hovel, cursing Katya. She wasn't the only one to blame, of course. He had his own part to play in this tragic melodrama, as he'd admitted moments before. But he still wanted Katya damned for what she'd done, as he was damned: for the death of tigers and rhinoceros, and the murder of innocent women.