by Janice Weber
He had laughed. “I think you’ve got the wrong number.”
“Wait! Don’t hang up, damn you! It’s Philippa! I’m at the cabin!”
“Oh. Hi. Is everything all right?”
“No! I wouldn’t be calling otherwise!”
“Phil, would you mind speaking a little louder? I can hardly hear you.”
“I can’t talk any louder! I’m under the bed hiding from a maniac! You’ve got to get up here right away and rescue me!”
“You must be imagining things. No one’s been butchered up there since nineteen thirty-four.”
“Listen, you motherfucker, if I’m lying here in a pool of blood tomorrow morning, it’s all your fault!” Thunder struck and she had screamed. “Help! I’ll do anything you want!”
“Calm down,” Ross had sighed. It sounded as if he were rolling up blueprints. “I’ll be right up. Should I bring my ray gun?”
“This is no joke! Don’t be surprised if you find a body on your front porch!”
“A body? Are you throwing a party or something? Never mind. I’ll get there as soon as possible. You’ll be waiting for me under the bed in about two hours?”
“Two fucking hours? I’ll be in fifty pieces by then!”
“That’s nonsense, Philippa. Simple decapitation would be sufficient.” Ross had hung up.
Except for the rain, all was quiet outside. Tiptoeing to the kitchen, Philippa had grabbed a kitchen knife and squeezed back under the bed to await either her rescue or her execution. Every snapping branch, every thunderclap outside, detonated throughout her nervous system.
After a century, the bedroom lights clicked on. “Philippa?” Ross had called. “You can come out now.” Instead, she had taken a swipe at his shoes with the kitchen knife. “Hey!” Ross had snapped, peering under the bed. “What the hell is the matter with you?”
“Is he still out there?” she had whimpered.
“Who? Where?”
“There’s no one outside?”
“Absolutely not. Come out from under there.” Ross extended his hand and pulled her to her feet. “Good Lord,” he said, brushing the dustballs off her sweater, “your face is a mess. Tumble in the bathtub, Emily told me?”
“No! A dentist did it!” Philippa had cried, disoriented with shame and fright. She had begun stuffing her suitcases as Ross watched bemusedly from the dresser.
“I think you need a drink,” he said finally, going to the living room. “What would you like, dear?” he had called, clanking the bottles. “Cinzano or Amaretto? That’s about all I can offer at the moment.”
“Nothing!” Philippa lugged her suitcases to the front door. “Just take me to the airport!”
Ross had calmly turned down the heat and switched off the lights. As he was locking the front door, he paused. “Eh, what’s that?” he asked, picking up a brown paper bag. “A bottle of scotch? How did that get out here?”
Philippa had snatched it away. “It’s mine. I left it outside to cool.”
Smiling in that private, infuriating way of his, Ross had put her suitcases in the car. “Are you sure you want to go to the airport at this hour?”
“Yes! Yes!” Philippa swallowed a sloppy mouthful of scotch. “As fast as you can!”
Ross backed ever so slowly out of the driveway. “Emily’s going to be disappointed.”
“She’ll get over it! Tell her to visit me in L.A.!”
“She’s already there, I thought.”
Was this Ross’s Saab or Dante’s Inferno? As the specter of Dana Forbes filled the car, Philippa retreated into a giddy, fearful silence, alternately punching the radio and guzzling scotch as Ross drove through puddle after puddle, spewing cataracts into the night. It was a horrible trip, fraught with that silent, molten rage endemic to families wherein two kin realize that, were it not for the indissoluble ties of blood or marriage, each would gladly exterminate the other. At the airport, Philippa s door was wide open before Ross’s car had even come to a stop.
“Tell Em I’ll call her,” she had cried, leaping out. “Thanks for rescuing me, darling!”
Except for cleaning ladies, Logan Airport was deserted. Philippa had taken the next few flights anywhere, eventually stopping in Orlando. Another German tourist had just been murdered in Miami, precipitating another slew of cancellations, so she had no problem getting a room at the airport hotel. Philippa remembered taking a long, loud shower, then toppling into bed. She had slept with the lights on.
What day was this now? Somewhere in late September. Philippa called room service. “This is room three-seventeen,” she said. “I would like some breakfast.”
“We’re serving lunch now, ma’am.”
Philippa almost divulged her name; that was usually good for breakfast twenty-four hours a day. But, having checked in as Emily Major, she decided to remain so. “Then send me what-ever lunch tastes most like breakfast.” She called the hotel travel agent. “Book me on the first nonstop to Los Angeles, please. First class, window seat.” That way, only half her battered face would show. “Nine o’clock tonight? How am I supposed to amuse myself for seven hours in this godforsaken hole? You’ve got to be kidding, I couldn’t care less about dolphins! Golf? Please!” Her third husband, George, had been a third-rate golf pro; the only thing he had done with absolute consistency was miss easy putts. “Never mind,” she sighed as the woman suggested a bridge tournament in the banquet room. “Just send up my ticket. Thank you.”
She studied the clock: twothirty here, eleven-thirty in Los Angeles. Emily would just have wrapped up her power breakfast with that Czech producer. Soon she’d be calling the cabin in New Hampshire with a report. Getting no answer, she’d probably think Philippa was out swimming, walking, doing healthy things ... ah, damn. Suspecting nothing, Emily would catch a flight back to Boston. She’d call the cabin again, still get no answer; then she’d probably call Ross. Ross! Philippa groaned; he’d blab every humiliating detail.
She dialed his office. “Mr. Major, please. This is his sister-in-law. It’s an emergency.”
After a long wait, he came on the line. “Well, well! Where are you calling from, Baghdad?”
“As a matter of fact, I’m in Orlando for a few days. Interviews. Listen, Ross, would you mind not telling Emily anything about last night? It would just get her upset.”
“What do you suggest I do instead? Let her drive all the way to New Hampshire and find an empty cabin? That’s not very nice.”
“Can’t you just make up a story then? Tell her I had to stand in for someone. Just don’t get her worried about me,” Philippa wailed. “She’s already worried enough.”
“Why? You’re a responsible adult, aren’t you?”
“This is an absolute secret. You must tell no one what I’m about to tell you.” Philippa inhaled dramatically. “Someone’s trying to kill me.”
To her irritation, Ross burst out laughing. “You? What for?”
“Things you wouldn’t understand,” she said darkly. “Just promise me you won’t upset Emily when she gets home.”
“Tell you what,” he said, still chuckling. “Give me your phone number. Emily can call you herself when she gets in. By that time, I’m sure you’ll have come up with an excellent story.”
“That’s impossible. I’ll be long gone by the time Emily gets to Boston.”
“Gone where? Didn’t you just say you had interviews in Orlando?”
“Orlando is my first stop,” Philippa sniffed. “Forget I asked.”
“I’ll do what I can,” Ross said. “By the way, you really should sue that dentist.”
Philippa ate a cold lunch containing too many eggs. She took another long bath; perhaps in a former life, she had been a fish. At least her face looked less purple today. Soon she’d be ready for public consumption again. Cheered, Philippa passed the time watching pornographic movies; many of her costars had either begun or ended their careers in this genre, and it was always amusing to see them huff and puff in faux rapture. She
got a manicurist to come to her room and, chatting in a French accent, convinced the woman that she was a princess from Palm Beach. Philippa only started to drink when a late afternoon thunderstorm swept through Orlando. The driving rain against her window tore her right back to the cabin in New Hampshire; she could almost hear Guy Witten muttering deliriously outside her door. Where had he gone, a hospital? Home? For the first time, Philippa thought about the consequences of having left Guy out on the porch last night. He would never speak to Emily again: The hatred in that last howl had been irrevocable. What would Guy do when one fine day, missing him so much that she no longer cared what people saw or thought, Emily innocently returned to Cafe Presto? Philippa shuddered, condemned; had she just hauled Guy inside the cabin and confessed everything, he and she could have devised a way out, maybe even laughed about it. Philippa would have had to let Guy go, but she would still have had Emily. Now she would lose them both. Suddenly Philippa began to cry, for once with absolute sincerity. Life without Emily? Unthinkable. Emily was her rudder, her lodestar, wellspring, conscience, twin!
Almost in a trance, she vibrated with each long rumble outside. Finally, when the storm had trundled off to Walt Disney World, Philippa sat up, burping champagne. Her suicidal mood had faded with the thunder. Wrapping her face in veils, Philippa checked out of the hotel and caught her plane to Los Angeles.
A large, voluble crowd met her at the baggage claim. At first Philippa thought they were her fans; then she saw a dozen banners bearing the name of a rock star who had evidently been on her flight from Orlando. As Philippa walked insignificantly past, the crowd began screeching at the object of their adoration, a middle-aged man who had been sitting across the aisle from her, reading investment reports. Apparently, having outlived his vocal rivals from the sixties, the fellow had connected with a second, maybe third or fourth, generation of teenagers. He waved as calmly as a pope at them before disappearing into a limousine. Damn! Couldn’t Aidan or Simon have organized a little reception for her as well? Philippa yanked her blue bag off the luggage carousel. This time the fault was hers; no one even knew of her arrival back in town. What a colossal blunder to have holed up in the woods just when Choke Hold was hitting the charts! Those three days in New Hampshire had probably cost her millions in lost opportunities.
She should never have listened to Emily’s tales of murder. Nevertheless, apprehensive about going home alone, Philippa checked into a hotel in Santa Monica, whence she phoned Simon. It was almost one in the morning; he’d be either groggy or manic depending on the chemicals he had ingested for supper. The phone rang a half dozen times before a sleepy bimbo answered. Odd; Simon was very touchy about other people picking up his telephone. It was private property, like his Retin A cream. “Put Simon on, please,” Philippa commanded.
“He’s in the hospital.”
“What? What’s the matter with him?”
“He got sick.”
“How sick? Heart attack? Bleeding hemorrhoids again?”
There was a short pause; hopefully, the girl was thinking. “I don’t know.”
“When did this happen?”
“Eh, ah—I’m not—sure.”
“Which hospital then?”
Another space. “I forget.”
This dame was about as swift as the silicone in her boobs! Philippa called Aidan, who was in bed himself, although with rubber, not plastic. “That you, Phil?” he said. “We’ve been trying to find you all day! Where were you? Playing with Carmen’s crystal ball again?”
Who the hell was Carmen? What crystal ball? “None of your business. What happened to Simon?”
“No one knows. He was sitting in the back of his limousine and began to choke. The driver got him to the hospital just in time. They think it was an allergic reaction to breakfast. What did you eat at Luco’s anyway?”
“Lobster Baked Alaska,” Philippa guessed. That was what she had told Emily to order. “Is Simon all right now?”
“He’s flat on his back. They’re going to run tests for another few days.”
“Eh—did he say anything about my new movie with that Czech producer?”
“Yeah. Someone stole the script out of the limousine when they were schlepping him into the E-room. He’s pissed.”
“What’s his number at the hospital?” Aidan gave it to her. Simon answered after half a ring. “Hi,” Philippa said. “Hear you had an exciting day.”
“Exciting my ass! I came within an inch of buying the farm! There I am minding my own business, trying to get an honest day’s work done when wham, I begin to choke. Like someone was trying to strangle me with my tie.”
“Maybe it was something you ate.”
“Very funny, you bitch!” She was trying to make him feel like a cheapskate for not buying her any breakfast. “This deal isn’t in the bag yet, you know. It could all turn to shit at any moment.”
“But didn’t we do well at Luco’s?” Philippa asked uncertainly.
“Are you out of your mind? What was there to do?”
Philippa realized that she would have to talk with Emily before asking Simon any more questions about that breakfast meeting. However, her curiosity verging on heartburn, she asked, “The script got stolen? How’d that happen?”
“Couldn’t tell you, darling. At the time, I was unconscious on the backseat of the limo. This town’s full of thieves who’d steal your balls if they weren’t attached.”
“Did you read it? How’d it look?”
“I hardly read two words before I got sick. Damn thing was wrapped in fifty layers of plastic, like a preemie in an incubator. You saw it. Took ten minutes to saw all that crap off with my emery board. I read the title page and began to choke. That’s all I remember. No, I remember pounding on the partition. The driver nearly rammed a tree when he saw the look on my face. He floored it to the hospital. Shit! I stood up an important appointment because of this!”
“Don’t worry,” Philippa replied. “She’s still sleeping in your bed. What was the title of this script?”
“I don’t remember. The Devils Toy or something. Probably a bad translation. It really stank.”
“How would you know if you didn’t read it?”
“I mean it smelled disgusting. They must use paper made out of turnips over there. Maybe that’s why it was wrapped up like that. Personally, I think Vitzkovich typed it in poison ink. I have a few serious enemies in Prague. Crap, here comes the nurse. She’s been trying to give me an enema since I checked in. Call me tomorrow, would you?”
After hanging up, Philippa lingered a few moments at the phone. Odd that Simon hadn’t mentioned the mysterious producer at all. Bad-mouthing every human on the planet was the joy of his existence. Now he hadn’t even told her the man’s sexual persuasion; that was like not collecting his 20 percent commission.
Philippa dozed off during a late movie about Prohibition, awaking briefly during the heavier gunfights. Her wake-up call came promptly at six; strangely bright and sharp, she called her sister in Boston. There it was nine in the morning; Ross would have gone to work and Emily would be putzing around the house, looking for things to do. “Hi Em,” Philippa chirped. “Get back in one piece?”
After long silence, a pale voice said, “Oh yeah.”
“What’s the matter? Emily! Are you all right? Say something!”
“Where are you?”
The quaver in her sister’s voice broke Philippa’s heart. “Back in LA. Tell me what’s wrong, honey.”
“A good friend of mine died. I just read it in the paper.”
Philippa’s guts became sawdust. “Who was that?”
“Guy Witten, my boss at Cafe Presto. He was in a car crash. No one even called to tell me.”
Philippa’s lungs finally got a little air moving through her larynx. “But you were away!”
“I have an answering machine. Ross said there were no messages.” Emily’s voice rose to a half wail. “Why wouldn’t anyone call? They knew how close we were.”
“No one wanted to break the news. People are odd like that. They don’t like to congratulate you and they hate to tell you that your”—here Philippa caught herself just in time—“your friend died. It’s perverse, but true.”
Emily blew her nose. “The article said he had injuries prior to the crash. I don’t understand what that means.”
“Didn’t he have an accident at his place last week?”
“How’d you know that?”
Damn! Damn! “Ross told me on the way to the airport,” Philippa lied. “When was the car crash?”
“Tuesday night, when I was flying to California.”
“Where’d it happen?”
“On Route Ninety-three right outside Boston. Guy lost control of his car. Ross says it was a rainy night.”
“It was a horrible night. Visibility zero. I’m so sorry, Em. Was he special?”
Was! “I don’t know how I’m going to get over this one.”
“You will, honey. Ross will help you.” Philippa flushed at her own supernal hypocrisy. Thank God for the camouflage of telephones!
Emily sighed, at one with the dead. “Why did you leave the cabin?”
“I was frightened by a storm. My nerves weren’t used to days of silence, then all that noise. It was like ten horror films at once. Ross was a dear to take me to the airport. Did he tell you about it?”
“Not much. You called him at the office?”
“Yes. It was quite late. He was still working, poor man.”
“He said you were pretty shaken up.”
“I was somewhat out of control by the time he got there. I had let my imagination and a few swallows of Cinzano run away with me. Would you believe I ended up in Disney World? I holed up there for a day then flew to L.A. last night. My face is looking much better.” Philippa had to pause for breath; her lungs still weren’t doing too well. “How was your breakfast with Simon?”
“It was a nonevent. We didn’t eat and this mysterious producer never showed.”
“How’d Simon get the manuscript, then?”
“This was weird, Philippa. We’re sitting at Luco’s at eight in the morning. Simon’s getting ticked waiting. Then, instead of the producer, a waiter comes over with a script wrapped in plastic. People are staring as if it were the head of John the Baptist. The waiter puts it on the table and tells us that Vitzkewicz can’t come but he wants a yes or no in twenty-four hours. That was it. Simon didn’t want to stay, or should I say, pay, for breakfast. So we left. The whole episode took fifteen minutes. I never even got to try the Lobster Baked Alaska.”
