Deep beneath the ground, he continued to sleep, unaware of his entombment. But he had digested most of his feast, and his sleep was twitchier now, and his eyes started to flicker.
The new link road between Leeds and Roundhay was finished in the middle of January, a week ahead of schedule. In the same week, his property was sold at auction in Dewsbury, and fetched well over £780,000. A Victorian portrait of a white-faced woman in a white dress was particularly admired, and later featured on the BBC’s Antiques Road Show. Among other interesting items was a Chippendale secretaire. The new owner was an antiques dealer called Abrahams. When he looked through the drawers, he found scores of unopened letters, some from France, many from Romania and Poland, and some local. Some were dated as far back as 1926. Among the more recent correspondence were seven letters from the county council warning the occupier of a compulsory purchase order, so that a new road could be built to ease traffic congestion and eliminate an accident black spot.
He lay in his casket, wide awake now and ragingly hungry – unable to move, unable to rise, unable to die. He had screamed, but there was no point at all in screaming. All he could do was to wait in claustrophobic darkness for the traffic and the weather and the passing centuries to wear the road away.
Lolicia
He came home from the studio just before eleven in the evening, his chinos crumpled, his hair sticking up, and the back of his shirt stained with sweat. He slung his coat over the back of the living-room couch, came straight into the kitchen, kissed Susan on the cheek and then went straight to the freezer and took out a frosted bottle of Stolichnaya.
He poured himself a large glass and drank it as if it were water. Then he poured himself another, and drank half of that, too.
“Jesus, you don’t know what a day I’ve had.”
“Oh, yes?” Susan banged the pot sharply on the hob and he should have taken his cue from that.
“We didn’t finish shooting the last scene till gone nine.”
“You could have called,” said Susan. “The clam sauce is ruined.”
“Hey, I’m sorry. I had no idea it was going to go on so damned long. That scene when the girl gets strangled—”
“You still could have called.”
“Listen, I’ve said I’m sorry. If the meal’s ruined I’ll take you out to eat. I’ll take you anyplace you want to go.”
“Jeff, I don’t want to go out to eat. I’ve spent most of the afternoon making all of this. It was supposed to be special. I’ve made you frittata. I’ve made you pinzimonio salad. What do you want me to do with it? Throw it all away?”
Jeff came over and peered into the saucepan. “Looks all right to me. Kind of gummy, maybe. But so what. We could call it spaghettini alla gummy vongole.”
“That’s it!” she said. She picked up the pan and turned it upside-down over the sink.
“For Christ’s sake, Susan, what are you doing? Listen, that was a joke, okay? I’m sorry I’m late and I’m sorry I made a joke, but let’s forget it, okay? Let’s just have something to eat, okay? I could eat a horse. I could even eat a gummy spaghettini.”
She dropped the pan with a clatter, and turned on him. “You have been late every single night for the past three months – that’s when you’ve bothered to come home at all. Ever since you started this series I haven’t seen you from one week’s end to the next. You keep telling me you’ve come alive. ‘Oh, Susan, I feel twenty years younger.’ Haven’t you thought for one minute what it’s been doing to me? Haven’t you thought for one minute how boring it’s been?”
“Susan, listen sweetheart, apart from post-production the series is finished. It’s wrapped. We can go away for a couple of weeks. Up to Napa, maybe. We’ll visit your mother, we’ll drink some wine. Well, maybe we’d better drink some wine before we visit your mother.”
Susan pulled off her butcher’s apron and threw it across the floor. “Jeff, I don’t find you funny any more. You’ve turned into somebody I don’t even know and I don’t even like. Even when I’ve seen you, you’ve talked about nothing else but Creatures this and Creatures that and say, ‘honey, I’m so worried about Creatures.’ You’re selfish and obsessive and totally one-dimensional.”
Maybe it was sheer exhaustion after sixteen solid hours of shooting the last episode of Creatures. Maybe it was too much vodka on an empty stomach. Maybe it was simply the let-down of leaving the studio to whistles and cheers and coming back to someone who had no idea what he had managed to achieve. Whatever it was, he slapped her.
There was an extraordinary moment in which he felt as if he had stepped through a mirror. Out of one life and into another.
He said, “Shit, Susan. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”
“You—” she began, and she tried to slap him back, but he dropped his martini glass and caught hold of her wrists. The glass shattered on the kitchen tiles. She tried to slap him again, but when she couldn’t, she wrenched herself free from him and went straight to the front door.
He followed her, trying to catch her arm. “Susan! I’m sorry! I lost my temper, that’s all! It’s not your fault!”
She snatched her keys from the hook by the door. Her cheek was flaming red and her eyes were filled with tears.
“Listen, I’m really sorry, sweetheart! Don’t go! You can come back here and hit me back, OK? I’m sorry!”
“You bastard,” she said, with a terrible vehemence.
“Susan, for Christ’s sake, don’t go out! You shouldn’t drive while you’re feeling like this!”
“What, are you worried I might kill myself?”
She went out of the door and slammed it behind her. Again he followed her, but she was already halfway down the steps in front of the house.
“Susan! Listen to me!”
But she didn’t listen. She climbed into her little black Honda sports car and backed down the driveway. By the time Jeff reached the street she had sped off out of sight.
Across the street, his neighbor, Bill Arnold, was standing in his bathrobe in his open doorway, staring at him.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” Jeff shouted at him.
He went inside and poured himself another large vodka. He looked around the kitchen – at the carefully prepared salad, at the freshly fried spaghetti frittata, at the beans still simmering on the stove. He smashed his fist down on the counter and the lid toppled off Susan’s favorite cookie-jar – the one in the shape of W.C. Fields – and broke.
How the hell could he have hit her? He stared at his offending hand and he couldn’t believe it.
They had argued before, frequently, and sometimes their arguments had led to slammed doors and nights on the couch. But he had never touched her, not once. If only he could run those few seconds back, and cut them out. If only they could be sitting down at the table, drinking a celebratory glass of Orvieto and eating the dinner that she had spent so much time preparing. He lifted the saucepan out of the sink and flushed away the splattered clam sauce. He felt so upset so that his hands were shaking.
He went through to the living-room and picked up the phone. It rang for a long time before anybody answered. “Hazel? Listen, this is Jeff. I’m sorry to call you so late. No, nothing like that. Susan and me have just had a bit of a bust-up. Well, yes. It was all my fault. I was tired, I lost my temper. Well, look, I expect she’ll come over to your place. About five minutes ago. Sure. But when she gets there, can you ask her to call me? Can you do that, please? And can you tell her how sorry I am? Well, I will, for sure, but it might help if she hears it from you, too.”
Hazel was Susan’s sister. She lived a half-hour away in Sherman Oaks. She and Susan had always been especially close, right to the point of choosing the same color dress to wear on the same day and finishing each other’s sentences.
He put down the phone. Beside it stood a large framed photograph of himself and Susan that had been taken last summer on the beach at Cancun, in Mexico. Susan had her arms around his waist and she was laughi
ng. Look at her, he thought. How could I have hit her?
They say that people always fall in love with themselves, and that was certainly true of Jeff and Susan. They were both tall, both very slim, and they had a chiseled look about their faces which occasionally led people to think that they were brother and sister. But while Jeff was dark-haired and brown-eyed, Susan had a mass of soft blonde curls and eyes as green as crushed emeralds. In the photograph she was wearing a peacock-blue one-piece swimsuit which showed off her figure – full-breasted, slim-waisted, with long, long legs.
He had been captivated by Susan the day he had first met her, when she was an extra in some surfing movie and he was assistant script-editor. Well, more like assistant to the assistant script-editor’s assistant. But Susan had thought that he was somebody important, and so she had agreed to go out with him. He had practically emptied his bank account taking her to The Palm in West Hollywood. They had made love the same night; and again the next day; and by the time Susan realized that he wasn’t much more than a glorified gofer, she liked him too much to care.
He sat alone with his head in his hands and thought that he should have remembered those days, when love was more important than ambition.
She didn’t go to see Hazel. Instead she went to the Café del Rey on Admiralty Way in Venice Beach for no other reason except that she and Jeff used to go there almost every week when they were first dating, and there was a bar where singles could eat or drink alone. She ordered a Chardonnay spritzer and sat looking out at the lights of the marina. She didn’t know if her cheek was still red but she untied her hair and drew it across her face so that nobody could see.
The barman had a huge black quiff and looked like Frankie Avalon from one of those 1950s beach-party movies. “You want to eat?” he asked her. “We have ikura caviare with spicy miso vinaigrette. Or maybe you’d care for the black pepper hamachi carpaccio.”
Susan shook her head. “I’ve had enough of food for one lifetime,” she said.
“You look upset if you don’t mind my saying so.”
“Do I? I think my marriage just finished and I don’t really know why.”
“Come on. You know what Scarlett O’Hara said.”
Susan pushed her glass across the counter. She felt bruised and miserable and she didn’t really want to get drunk but she didn’t know what else to do. In the corner a woman cellist with long swinging hair was playing an absurdly mournful version of “Yesterday”. She felt like crying but she knew that if she started she wouldn’t be able to stop, and what could be more embarrassing than a woman sitting on her own with a flaming red cheek and tears pouring into her drink?
The barman passed over her spritzer and said, “There you go. It’s on the house.”
She had taken only one sip before she became aware that a man was standing close to her elbow. He was huge, the size of a wall, and he was darkly suntanned, with improbably blond hair. He was wearing a white linen suit and a bright turquoise shirt.
“You looking for some company, ma’am?” he asked her.
Susan shook her head. “I’m sorry. Not right now.”
“Well, that sure is a pity. Mr Amberson wants to know if you’d like to join him tonight.”
“What?” asked Susan. She turned around on her stool. There – on the opposite side of the restaurant, flanked by two more enormous bodyguards – sat a short, stocky man in a wildly patterned Hawaiian shirt. His head was rather too large for his body, but he was handsome in a raddled, worn-out way, with devilish eyebrows and an equally devilish grin. He raised his glass to her and called out, “Salut!”
“Is that Jack Amberson the movie actor?” she asked.
“You’d better believe it, ma’am. And he’d really like to make your acquaintance. In fact, he insists.”
“I don’t know,” said Susan. “I haven’t had a good day. Will you tell him I’m very flattered, but no thanks.”
The man bit his lip. “Listen, I can’t tell him that.”
“What do you mean, you can’t tell him that?”
“Mr Amberson isn’t the kind of man who takes no thanks for an answer, ma’am. Especially when it comes to his favorite.”
“His favorite?”
“Tall blondes, ma’am. Just like you. Especially when they’re taller than him.”
“Well, I’m sorry,” said Susan. She glanced back toward Jack Amberson’s table. He was beckoning to her and mouthing the words, “C’mon over here.”
She hesitated. It was so strange, seeing him sitting there in the flesh. She had seen him in so many movies that she felt as if she knew him already. He always played wolfish men with bad reputations, although he usually managed to convey a sense of little-boyish vulnerability, too. He mouthed “C’mon, come here,” for a second time, and she thought to herself: why not? We’re in a public restaurant, what harm can it do? Think of the story I’ll have to tell Hazel tomorrow. She’s absolutely crazy about Jack Amberson.
And besides, at least it shows that some men appreciate me for what I am.
She said, “All right, then,” and slipped off her barstool. The big blond bodyguard led her by the elbow to Jack Amberson’s table. He stood up, and grinned, and kissed her on the wrist. For a man who played laborers and cowhands and oil-rig workers, his hand was unexpectedly soft.
“Why don’t you let me buy you a drink?” he asked her. “They do great frozen daiquiris here. Or maybe a tequila slammer?”
“A glass of wine will do fine, thanks.”
Jack clapped his hands and called, “Champagne, please, barkeep! A bottle of your Dom Perignon, and some of those Parmesan nibbles!”
He turned conspiratorially to Susan and said, “I can’t resist their Parmesan nibbles. I mean that’s the way I’d like to die. Making love to a tall blonde woman and choking on a Parmesan nibble.”
“Your friend here said you had a thing for tall blonde women.”
Jack Amberson frowned at her as if he didn’t understand what she meant. “My friend?” Then suddenly he turned to the big blond bodyguard and laughed. “Christopher isn’t my friend! He’s simply a hired lump of meat. Anyhow, I don’t have any friends. Only enemies and lovers.”
“But I’m neither of those things. Why did you want to talk to me?”
“In the hope that you might become one before you become the other.”
“Well, you obviously have a pretty high opinion of yourself. I’m already married.”
“I know you are. You’re too badly dressed to be single.”
“Thanks for the compliment. You sure know how to make a woman feel on top of the world.”
Jack Amberson laid his hand on top of hers, and when she tried to draw it away he pressed it harder against the tablecloth so that she couldn’t. His eyes looked like two gray mismatched stones, and he had the screen actor’s trick of never blinking.
“You’re also too beautiful to be single. Women as beautiful as you never stay unmarried for long. The men in their lives think that if they’re married, that’ll keep the wolf-pack at bay. In my experience, of course, that almost never happens. A beautiful woman is still a beautiful woman, even if she’s wearing ten wedding-bands and a chastity belt with a Bramah lock.”
Their champagne arrived, along with a large glass dish of Parmesan pastries. Jack Amberson crammed a huge handful into his mouth and sat smiling and munching and staring at Susan and never once blinking his eyes.
“I’ll give you a toast,” he said, when he had swallowed the last of the pastries. He raised his glass and clinked it with hers. “Here’s to simultaneous orgasm.”
She didn’t know exactly when she decided to sleep with him. But after he had turned the Dom Perignon bottle upside-down in the ice-bucket he said, “I’ve got plenty more champagne at home,” and she knew that she was going to go back with him, and what it would mean if she did.
They left the restaurant shortly after one o’clock, surrounded by a human barricade. Two girls screamed and called out, “Jack! We
love you!” but when they tried to approach him they were pushed forcefully away. A glossy black Lincoln slid up to the curb and they climbed inside, where it smelled of leather upholstery and very expensive perfume. Then the door was closed and they were swept behind darkly tinted windows into the night.
“What kind of a guy is your husband?” asked Jack.
“Jeff? He’s a TV producer. Very hard-working. Too hard-working.”
“Is that why he slapped you?”
Susan blushed and said, “How did you know that?”
“A beautiful married blonde sits alone in a bar at eleven o’clock at night with a red mark on her cheek and her mascara all blotchy – what conclusion do you draw?”
Susan hesitated for a moment. Then she said, “He was late home. His supper was ruined. I’d been working all afternoon to make it special.”
“You should humiliate him. A guy like that needs to be humiliated.”
“I don’t want to humiliate him. I just want him to pay me more attention. Everything centers around him, and what he’s doing. I could have been a good actress if he’d let me. Tony Scott said I was one of the most promising young personalities he’d seen for years.”
Jack laid his hand on her knee. “And I agree with him. And that’s all the more reason that you should make your husband feel small. Do you know what you should do?”
“Tell me.”
“You should come to bed with me, and then, when you go back home, you should tell this Jeff of yours exactly what happened, in every microscopic detail. Tell him how big my schlong is. Tell him how you screamed when you came.”
She said nothing. She had already decided that she wanted to go bed with him. But she knew that she would never tell anybody, ever – not even Hazel. She wasn’t out to make Jeff feel bad. She was looking for reassurance that other men found her sexy and arousing and interesting, and that six years of marriage hadn’t washed all of her personality out of her, like ink out of a handkerchief.
Feelings of Fear Page 2
