Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

TWO

About the time Jerry Brahms had been waking up from his dream of Katya and the snails—which is to say, just half an hour before dawn— Tammy and Todd were slipping—"quietly, quietly," she kept saying— into the little hotel where Tammy had been staying. The last few days had provided Tammy with a notable range of unlikely experiences but surely this was up there among the weirdest of them—tip-toeing along the corridor of her two-star hotel with one of the most famous celebrities in the world in tow, telling him to hush whenever his heel squeaked on a board.

"The room's chaos," she warned him as she let him in. "I'm not a very tidy person . . ."

"I don't care what it looks like," Todd said, his voice so drained by exhaustion it had no color left in it whatsoever. "I just want to piss and sleep."

He went directly into the bathroom, and without bothering to close the door, unzipped and urinated like a racehorse, just as though the two of them had been married for years and he didn't give a damn about the niceties. Telling herself she shouldn't be taking a peek, Tammy did so anyway. Where was the harm? He was bigger than Arnie, by a couple of sizes. He shook himself, wetting the seat (just like Arnie), and went to the sink to wash, splashing water on his face in a half-hearted fashion.

"I keep thinking—" he called through to her. "Can you hear me?"

"Yes, I can hear you fine."

"I keep thinking this is all a dream and I'm going to wake up." He turned the water off and came to the door, towel in hand. He patted his wounded face dry, very gently. "But then I think: if this was a dream, when did it begin? When I first saw Katya? Or when I first went up to Coldheart Canyon? Or when I woke up from the operation, and it had all gone wrong?"

He tossed the towel onto the floor of the bathroom; something else Arnie always did. It used to irritate the hell out of Tammy, forever chasing around after her spouse, picking up stuff he'd dropped: towels in the bathroom, socks and skid-marked underwear in the bedroom, food left out of the refrigerator, where the flies could get at it. Why were those habits so hard for men to change? Why couldn't they just pick things up and put them away in their proper place?

Todd was still talking about when his dream had begun. He'd decided it started when Burrows put him under.

"You're not serious?" she told him.

"Absolutely. All this . . ." he made an expansive gesture that took in the room and Tammy ". . . is part of the same hallucination."

"Me, included?"

"Sure."

"Todd, you're being ridiculous," Tammy said. "You're not dreaming this, and neither am I. We're awake. We're here."

"Here, I don't mind," Todd said, looking around the room. "I can take being here. But Tammy, if this room exists, then so does all that shit we saw up at Katya's house. And I'm not ready to believe in that." He bit his nails as he spoke, pacing the floor. "You saw what was in the room?"

"Not really. I mean I saw the man who killed Zeffer—"

"And the ghosts. You saw the ghosts."

"Yes, I saw them. And worse."

"And you believe all that's real?"

"What's the alternative?"

"I've told you. It's all just some hallucination I'm having."

"I think I'd know if I was having an hallucination."

"Have you ever done LSD? Really good LSD? Or magic mushrooms?"

"No."

"See, you do some of that stuff and it's like you never look at the real world the same way again. You can never really trust it. I mean it's all consensual reality anyhow, right?"

"I don't know what the hell that is."

"It's a phrase my dealer uses. Jerome Bunny is his name. He's a real philosopher. It isn't just drugs with him, it's a way of looking at the world. And he used to say we all just agree on what's real, for convenience' sake."

"I still don't get it," Tammy said wearily.

"Well he used to explain it better."

"Anyway, I thought you didn't do drugs. You said in People you were horrified to see what drugs had done to friends of yours."

"Did I name anyone?"

"Robert Downey Jr. was one. A great actor,' you said, 'killing himself for the highs,' you said."

"Well I don't fry my brains every night like Robert did. I know my limits. A little pot. A few tabs of acid—" He stopped, looking a little irritated. "Anyway, I don't have to justify myself to you."

"I didn't say you did."

"Quoting me—"

"Well that's what you said."

"Well it's bullshit. It's his life. He can do what the hell he likes with it. Where did all this start anyhow?"

"You saying—"

"Oh yeah, we're having this dream together, because that way Cold-heart Canyon doesn't exist. Can't exist. It's all something invented. I mean, how can any of that be real?"

"I don't know," said Tammy flatly. "But whatever you say about dreams or consenting reality or whatever it was: that place is real, Todd. It's up there in the hills right now. And she's there too. And she's planning her next move."

"You sound very sure." He was studying his reflection in the mirror of the dresser as he talked to her.

"I am sure. She's not going to let go of you. She'll find a way to get you back."

"Look at me," he said.

"I think you look fine."

"I'm a mess. Burrows fucked it all up." His hands went up to his face. "It's gotta be a dream . . ." he said, returning to his old theme. "I can't look like this in the real world."

"I do," Tammy said, considering her own unhappy reflection. "I look like this." She pinched herself. "I'm real," she said.

"Yeah?" he said softly.

"I know who I am. I know how I got here, where I came from, where my husband works."

"Your husband?"

"Yes, my husband. Why? Are you surprised a woman with my dress size has got a husband? Well, I have. His name's Arnie, and he works at Sacramento Airport. And you don't know anything about him, do you?"

"No."

"So you can't have dreamed him, can you?"

"No."

"See? That's my life. My problem."

"Why's it a problem?"

"Because he drinks too much and he doesn't love me and he's having an affair with this woman who works at the FedEx office."

"No shit. Is he the violent type?"

"He would be if I let him."

"But you don't."

"I fractured one of his ribs the last time he tried something stupid like that. He was drunk. But that's no excuse."

"So why do you stay with him?"

"You really want to know?"

"Yeah."

"Sound like you mean it."

"I mean it."

"If I tell you, you've got to promise me one thing."

"What's that?"

"Promise first."

"Shit. I promise. Scout's honor. Why'd you stay with him?"

"Because being alone is the worst. Especially for a woman. I walked out on him two and a half years ago, when I found out about one of his women, but after a month I had to go back to him. Being on my own made me crazy. I made him tell me he was sorry for humiliating me and that he'd never do it again, but I knew that wasn't true. Men can't help being pigs. It's the way God made them."

"And I suppose women are—"

"Bitches, most of us. Me included. But sometimes you need to be a bitch so you can get through the day."

"And Katya?"

"I wondered how long it would take you to get round to her," Tammy said. "Well I'll tell you how much of a bitch she was. You know the man she threw into the room?" Todd nodded. "His name was Zeffer. He was the man who made her into a movie star. That's the kind of woman she was."

"There was another side to her, believe me."

"Don't tell me: she loves dogs."

"Wait . . ." he said wearily, waving away her cynicism. "I'm trying to explain something here."

"I don't want to hear about her kinder, gentler side."

"Why not?"

"Because she's a bad woman, Todd. They named Coldheart Canyon after her, for God's sake. Did you know that? Anyway, we're neither of us going back up there. Agreed?"

Todd didn't reply. He simply stared at the faded photograph of the Hollywood sign that hung above the bed. "Didn't somebody throw themselves off that?" he said finally.

"Yeah. Her name was Peg Entwistle. She was a failed actress. Did you hear what I said?"

"About what?"

"Neither of us is going back up to see Katya again, agreed? You're not going to try and sneak back up there the moment my back's turned?"

"Why? Would it matter so much if I did?" he said. His belief that all this was a dream seemed to have lost credibility in the last few minutes. "You're never going to see me again after this anyway."

It was true, of course: this was the first and last time she'd sit in a motel room and have a conversation with Todd Pickett. But it still stung her to hear it said. Hurt, she stumbled after a response. "It only matters because I want the best for you."

"Then move over," he said, coming to the bed, "and let me lie down and sleep. Because that's what I want right now."

She got up off the bed.

"You're not going to sleep?" he said.

"There isn't room for both of us."

"Sure there is. Lie down and get some rest. We'll talk about this when we've had some sleep."

He slipped off his shoes and lay down, placing one of the paper-thin pillows beside the other so they'd both have somewhere to lay their heads.

"Go on," he said. "Lie down. I won't bite."

"You do know how weird all this is for me, don't you?"

"Which part: the girl, the house, the Devil's wife—"

"No. You and me, together in one bed."

"Don't worry, I'm not going to be making sexual advances—"

"I know that—"

"—I'm just suggesting we get some sleep."

"Yeah. Well. Okay. But it's still weird. You know, you used to be somebody I idolized."

"With a heavy emphasis on the used to be," Todd said, opening one eye and looking at her.

"Don't be so sensitive."

"No. I get the message. It was the same when I met Paul Newman, in the flesh." He closed his eye again. "I always used to think he was the coolest of all the cool guys. He had those ice-blue eyes, and that easy way of . . ." His words were getting slower, dreamier. ". . . walking into a room . . . and I used to think . . . when I'm famous . . ." The words trailed away.

"Todd?"

He opened his eyes a fraction and looked at her between the lashes. "What was I saying?"

"Never mind," she said to him, sitting on the bed. "Go to sleep."

"No, tell me. What was I saying?"

"How much you wanted to be like Paul Newman."

"Oh yeah. I just used to practice my Newman act for hours on end. The way everything he did was so relaxed. Sometimes he looked so relaxed you couldn't believe he was acting at all. It looked so... easy . . ."

While he talked Tammy took off her own shoes (her feet were filthy, and ached, but she didn't have the strength to get into a shower), and then lay down beside Todd. He didn't even seem to realize she was there beside him. His monologue continued, though it became less coherent, as sleep steadily made his tongue more sluggish.

"When I met him .. . finally met him ... he was.. . so . .. small . . ."

His conclusion reached, he began to snore gently.

Tammy sat up on her elbows and looked at him, lying there, wondering how she would have felt if she'd been told a few days ago that she'd be sharing a bed with Todd Pickett. It would have made her heart jump a beat to even contemplate the possibility. And yet here she was, lying down beside him, and she felt nothing; nothing except a vague irritation that she was not going to get a fair share of the bed with him sprawled out over it. Oh well, she had no choice. She could either sleep on the bed with Mister Heart-throb, or take the floor.

She closed her eyes.

She was exhausted: sleep came in a matter of moments. There were no dreams.