Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

TWO

Maxine came up to the house the following afternoon to tell Todd about the Oscar festivities, reporting it all—the ceremony itself, then the par-ties—with a fine disregard for his tenderness. Several times he almost stopped her and told her he didn't want to hear any more, but the dregs of curiosity silenced him. He still wanted to know who'd won and who'd lost.

There'd been the usual upsets, of course, the usual grateful tears from the usual surprised ingénues, all but swooning away with gratitude. This year, there'd even been fisticuffs: an argument had developed in the parking lot at Spago's between Quincy Martinaro, a young, fast-talking filmmaker who'd made two movies, been lionized, and turned into a legendary ego all in the space of fifteen months, and Vincent Dinny, a vicious writer for Vanity Fair who'd recently profiled Martinaro most unflatteringly. Not that Dinny was a paragon himself. He was a waspish, embittered man in his late sixties, who—having failed in his ascent of the Hollywood aristocracy—had turned to writing about the town's underbelly. Nobody could have given a toss for his pieces had they not carried a certain sting of truth. The piece on Martinaro, for instance, had mentioned a certain taste for heroin; which was indeed the man's vice of choice.

"So who won?" Todd wanted to know.

"Quincy broke two fingers when he fell against his car, and Dinny got a bloody nose. So I don't know who won. It's all so ridiculous. Acting like children."

"Did you actually see them fighting?"

"No, but I saw Dinny afterward. Blood all over his shirt." There was a pause. "I think he knows something."

"What?"

"He was quite civilized about it. You know how he is. Shriveled-up little prick. He just said to me: I hear Todd's had some medical problems, and now you've got him under lock and key. And I just looked at him. Said nothing. But he knows."

"This is so fucked."

"I don't know how we deal with it, frankly. Sooner or later, he's going to suggest a piece to Vanity Fair, and they're going to jump on it."

"So fucked," Todd said, more quietly. "What the hell did I do to deserve this?"

Maxine let the question go. Then she said, "Oh, by the way, do you remember Tammy Lauper?"

"No."

"She runs the Fan Club."

"Oh yeah."

"Fat."

"Is she fat?"

"She's practically obese."

"Did she come to the office?"

"No; I got a call from the police in Sacramento, asking if we'd seen her. She's gone missing."

"And they think I might have absconded with her?"

"I don't know what they think. The point is, you haven't seen her up here?"

"Nope."

"Maybe over in Bel Air?"

"I haven't been over in Bel Air. Ask Marco."

"Yeah, well I said I'd ask you and I asked."

Todd went to the living-room window, and gazed out at the Bird of Paradise trees that grew close to the house. They hadn't been trimmed in many years, and were top-heavy with flowers and rotted foliage, their immensity blocking his view of the opposite hill. But it didn't take much of an effort of imagination to bring the Canyon into his mind's eye. The palm-trees that lined the opposite ridge; the pathways and the secret groves; the empty swimming pool, the empty koi-pond; the statues, standing in the long grass. He was suddenly seized by an overwhelming desire to be out there in the warm sunshine, away from Maxine and her brittle gossip.

"I gotta go," he said to Maxine.

"Go where?"

"I just gotta go," he said, heading for the door.

"Wait," Maxine said. "We haven't finished business."

"Can't it wait?"

"No, I'm afraid this part can't."

Todd made an impatient sigh, and turned back to her. "What is it?"

"I've been doing some thinking over the last few days. About our working relationship."

"What about it?"

"Well, to put it bluntly, I think it's time we parted company."

Todd didn't say anything. He just looked at Maxine with an expression of utter incomprehension on his face, as though she'd just spoken to him in a foreign language. Then, after perhaps ten seconds, he returned his gaze to the Birds of Paradise.

"You don't know how wearying it gets," Maxine went on. "Waking up thinking about whether everything's okay with Todd, and going to sleep thinking the same damn thing. Not having a minute in a day when I'm not worrying about you. I just can't do it anymore. It's as simple as that. It's making me ill. I've got high blood pressure, high cholesterol—"

"I've made you a lot of money over the years," Todd broke in to observe.

"And I've taken care of you. It's been a very successful partnership. You made me rich. I made you famous."

"You didn't make me famous."

"Well, if I didn't I'd like to know who the hell did."

"Me," Todd replied, raising the volume of his voice just a fraction. "It's me people came to see. It's me they loved. I made myself famous."

"Don't kid yourself," Maxine said, her voice a stone.

There was a long silence. The wind brushed the leaves of the Bird of Paradise trees together, like the blades of plastic swords being brushed together.

"Wait," Todd said. "I know what this is about. You've got a new boy. That's it, isn't it? You're fucking some kid, and—"

"I'm not fucking anybody, Todd."

"You fucked me."

"Twice. A long time ago. I wouldn't do it today."

"Well just for the record neither would I."

Maxine looked at him coldly. "That's it. I've said what I needed to say."

She went to the door. Todd called after her. "Why do it to me now? Why wait till I'm so fucking tired I can hardly think straight!" His voice continued to get louder, creeping up word on word, syllable on syllable. "And then screw me up like this?"

"Don't worry, I'll find somebody else to look after you. I'll train them. You'll be taken good care of. It's not like I'm walking out on you."

"Yes you are."

He turned to look at her, finally. The blood had rushed to the surface of his half-mended face. It was grotesquely red.

"You think I'm finished, so you're leaving me to be crucified by every piece of shit journalist in the fucking country."

Maxine ignored the outburst, and picked up what she was saying. "I'll find somebody to take over, who'll protect you better than I can. Because I'm just as tired as you are, Todd. Then I'm going to have one last party down at the beach-house, and get the hell out of this city before it kills me."

"Well I'm not going to let you go."

"Oh, now don't start threatening—"

"I'm not starting anything. I'm just reminding you. We've got a contract. I'm not going to allow you to make a fortune out of me and then just walk away when things get difficult. You owe me."

"I what?"

"Whatever's on the contract. Another two years."

"I can't do it. I won't do it."

"Then I'll sue your ass, for every fucking cent you earned off me."

"You can try."

"And I'll win."

"Like I said, you can try. If you want all our dirty washing dragged out for everyone to see, then do it. I guarantee you'll come out looking worse than I will. I've covered for you so many times, Todd."

"And you signed a confidentiality agreement. If you break it, I'll sue you for breaking that, too."

"Who cares? Nobody gives a rat's ass about me. I'm just a professional parasite. You're the movie star. You're the all-American boy. The one with the reputation to lose." She paused. Then murmured, almost ruminatively: "The tales I could tell . . ."

"I can tell just as many."

"There's nothing anyone can call me that I haven't been called a hundred times. I know everyone says I'm a cunt. That's what they say, right? 'How can you work with that fucking cunt?' If I have to hear it in a courtroom one more time, I can take that, as long as when it's all over I don't have to hear your whining and complaining anymore."

"Okay," Todd said. "If that's the way you want to play it."

Maxine headed for the door. "For your information," she said, "I could go down to LAX right now, and I could fill a limo with kids who have ten times your talent. They're all coming here, looking to be the next Tom Cruise, the next Leonardo DiCaprio, the next Todd Pickett. Pretty boys with tight asses and nice abs who'll end up, most of 'em, selling their tight asses on Santa Monica Boulevard. The lucky ones'll end up waiters.

"If I wanted to, I could make any one of them a movie star. Maybe not a star like you. But then again maybe bigger. Right face, right time, right movie. Some of it's luck, some of it's salesmanship. The point is, I sold you, Todd. I told people you were going to be huge, and I said it so often that it became the truth. And you were so sweet back then. So . . . natural.

You were the boy next door, and yes—for your information—I was a little in love with you, like everyone else. But it didn't last long. You changed. I changed. We both got rich. We both got greedy." She put her hand to her mouth, and gently passed her fingers over her lips. "But you know what, Todd? Neither of us was ever happy. Am I right? You were never happy, even when you had everything you'd ever dreamed of wanting."

"What's your point?"

"I don't know what the point is," she said softly. "I guess that's the problem in a nutshell, isn't it? I don't know what the point is." She stared into the middle distance for a while. "You'll be fine, Todd," she said finally. "Things will work out better without me, you'll see. I'll find someone to take care of you, Eppstadt'll find a movie for you, and you'll be back in front of the cameras in a few months, looking perfect. If that's what you want."

"Why wouldn't I want that?" he said to her.

She looked at him wearily. "Maybe because none of it's worth a damn."

He knew he had a riposte for that; he just couldn't figure out what it was at that particular moment. And while he was trying to figure it out, Maxine turned her back on him and walked out.

He let her go. What was the use of a feud? That was for the lawyers. Besides, he had more urgent business than trading insults with her. He had to find Katya.

The afternoon sun was not just warm, it was hot, and the foliage was busy with hungry hummingbirds and the Canyon was quiet and perfect. He threaded his way through the overgrown bushes, past the tennis courts and the antique sundial, up toward the guest-house. The gradient became quite steep after a time, the narrow steps decayed by time and neglect, so that in some spots they'd collapsed completely. After a while, he realized the path had divided at some earlier point, and that he'd taken the wrong turning. The mistake took him on a picturesque tour of the garden's hidden places, bringing him first to a small grove of walnut trees, in the middle of which stood a large gazebo in an advanced state of disrepair, and then into a garden within a garden, bounded by an unkempt privet hedge. Here there were roses, or rather the remains of last year's blooms, the bushes fighting for space, and strangling each other in the process. There was no way through the thorny tangle to pick up the path on the other side, so he was obliged to try to get around the garden from the outside, staying close to the hedge. It was difficult to do. Though the plants he was striding through didn't have thorns, they were still unruly and wild; twigs and dead flowers scraped at his face, his shirt was quickly soiled, his sneakers filled with stony dirt. By the time he got to the other side of the garden, and took to the path again, he was short of breath and patience; and had two dozen little nicks and scratches to call his own.

His wanderings had brought him to a spot that offered a spectacular view. He could see the big house below him surrounded by palms and Birds of Paradise; he could see the baroque weathervane on the top of the gazebo he'd passed on his way here, and the orchid house, which he had come upon during one of his earlier trips around the garden. All this, bathed in clear warm California light; the crystalline light which had brought filmmakers here almost a century before. Not for the first time since coming to the house he had a pleasurable sense of history; and a measure of curiosity as to the people who might once have walked here, talked here. What ambitions had they plotted, as they ambled through these gardens? Had they been sophisticates, or simpletons? What little he knew about Old Hollywood he'd heard from Jerry Brahms, which meant he'd only ever really been half-listening. But he knew enough to be certain those times had been good, at least for a man like himself. Douglas Fairbanks and Rudolph Valentino, Charlie Chaplin, the Barrymore clan and all the rest had been like royalty, lording it over their new dominion in the West. A bean-counting prick like Eppstadt—with his demographics and his endless corporate maneuvering—would have had no power in the world this Canyon still preserved.

Having caught his breath, he now continued his ascent. The shrubbery became denser the closer he got to the guest-house. He would have needed a machete to hack through it efficiently; but, lacking one, had to do with a branch he picked up on his way. The flowers gave up their perfume as he beat his way through them, and he recognized their scent. It was her scent. The scent on Katya's skin. Did she walk naked among them, he wondered, pressing the flowers against her body? Now that would be a sight to see.

The thought of this had stirred him up; he actually had a hard-on. Not an everyday order of hard-on either, but the kind that was so strong it actually hurt. It was a long time since he'd had a woodie so fierce, and it added immeasurably to his sense of well-being. With the guest-house now in view he pressed toward his goal, feeling curiously, happily, adolescent. So what the hell if Maxine was deserting him? What the hell if he'd never be a Golden Boy again? He was still alive and kicking, still had a stick in his hand, and a woodie in his pants, and the thought of Katya's flower bath in his mind's eye.

The thicket had finally thinned, and he was at last delivered onto a small unkempt lawn. The house before him was a two-story affair, built in the same style as the main house, simply on a much more modest scale. Above the door, set into the stucco, was a single tile, with a man on a horse painted upon it. He glanced up at it for only a moment. Then he pressed his flattened hand down the front of his jeans to push his erection into a less obvious position on the clock, and knocked on the madwoman's door.