Just then a dark car arrived. As the parking attendant came forward to open the door, a huge man dressed in black came out of the driver’s side with a pistol in his hand. He shoved the attendant out of the way and looked carefully around. He nodded to someone inside the car. Two men who resembled him emerged the car’s rear doors. Their jackets were unbuttoned and you could see their holstered guns under their arms. One of them reached a hand inside and helped an elegant portly woman out of the car. A little bald man with a tan and round glasses got out of the other side.
“The senator’s car needs to stay where we can get out in a hurry,” one of the men with guns told the attendant, while another car came up to the gate.
“The usual bigwigs,” muttered Clarence. “That’s Senator Wilkins,” he told Ruth. “He’s already escaped two assassination attempts. He’s fighting organized crime.” Clarence shook his head. “But he’s the one who looks like a mob boss. What’s the difference between those bodyguards of his and a trio of gangsters?”
As they came up the steps to the villa they could hear an orchestra playing. And the buzz of people.
“I say it’s a fleshpit,” growled Clarence.
Ruth laughed softly. They came into the atrium.
The walls of the villa were covered with photos of movie stars, like a huge worldly exhibition.
“Another example of Hollywood celebrating itself,” growled Clarence. “They take this buffoonery very seriously.”
An elegant man with dainty movements and platinum hair rushed toward them as soon as he spotted Clarence. He flung his arms around him and kissed him with exaggerated enthusiasm. “Here’s the king of the evening. Almost all the photos are from your agency.”
Clarence detached himself from the embrace with a polite smile. “This is the photographer Ruth Isaacson,” he said. “Blyth Bosworth, the man who had this charming idea,” he said.
Blyth Bosworth opened his eyes very wide under plucked eyebrows and spread out his arms, admiring Ruth. “Oh my, I think we’ve just found the queen of the evening, too,” he cooed. “The guests have all fallen in a heap in front of a photo that’s … just a teeny weeny bit scandalous,” he laughed. “Come along, dear,” he said, taking Ruth’s hand and urging her toward a room crowded with people.
Ruth turned towards Clarence worriedly. He waved at her, laughing, like a naughty child.
“Make way, people!” Blyth cried as they came into the room.
Everyone turned to look at them. “John, John!” he shouted. “John! The Traitress is here!”
The crowd fanned out, and next to a huge photograph Ruth saw John Barrymore.
The actor wore a dark jacket with a dazzlingly white shirt. The top button was open and his cravat slightly loosened. When he saw Ruth his lips parted in a delighted smile. He took a slow, theatrical bow, and then held out his arms to her.
Ruth blushed violently and didn’t move.
“Go on, darling. Timid virgins are completely out of fashion in Hollywood this season,” Blythe said, pushing her towards the great actor.
Ruth looked at the photo as she moved toward him. It was one of the ones she’d shot at Barrymore’s house, before he’d gotten dressed. The actor was wearing the striped satin robe, and he was looking at the lens with a distant and melancholy gaze. The blade of light that came through a crack in the drapes fell on his unkempt hair, his bare feet, and a bottle on the floor. Blown up to his size, the photo was even more striking, more true, with its sharp contrast of light and darkness.
“Naturally, I’ve explained to our friends,” said Barrymore, putting his arm around Ruth’s shoulders and showing her to the guests, “that that bottle contained only nasty cold tea.”
His audience laughed, then they applauded.
Barrymore smiled and drew Ruth closer to him. “I’m glad you came, Traitress,” he told her softly. “I’ve futtered them all. Nobody looks at any other photo. Not at Garbo, not at Valentino. Gloria Swanson was furious. I believe she’s actually gone home.”
Ruth looked at him and winked. “You didn’t pay me for this one, Mr. Barrymore.”
“Oh, but I did. I even gave you a bonus, dear Traitress.”
Ruth raised an eyebrow.
“I’m the one who told your Christmas where he could find you,” said Barrymore.
Ruth looked down.
“Did I do the wrong thing?” Barrymore asked her.
“No,” she said softly.
“Now pose next to the photograph, you two,” cried Blyth. He moved aside, making room for the magazine photographers he’d invited. Flash bulbs went off, like a brilliantly lit execution squad.
Ruth was blinded. Everything was white. Then black. Then the people around them, laughing and clapping, began to reappear. And in the middle of that smiling crowd, just for an instant, Ruth saw one serious face. The flashbulbs popped again. Black, White. The faces coming back into focus. And those haunted eyes were still fixed on her. Amazed. Sullen.
Ruth felt her legs growing weak. And the laughter of the crowd became one single, frightening laugh, rising out of the past.
Bill had come to the party early. He parked his car in the driveway and came inside, a voluminous package under his arm. The owner of the house welcomed him into his private office. Bill handed over the package and jammed seven thousand bucks into his pocket. They opened the package together and took a hit of cocaine. Bill didn’t know how many that made for the day. Being with all those big shots made him nervous. He’d consumed at least one of his personal vials. The coke kept him from feeling out of place, he told himself. And in fact, he felt perfectly at ease, joking with his host. Or at least, he was fine till the guy’s wife showed up. Young, maybe thirty, she’d made a couple of movies before she got married to this millionaire. She hadn’t said a word to Bill, she’d only had eyes for the coke. She snatched up a vial for herself and slipped it into her evening bag; then she turned to her husband. “Is this guy staying?” she asked him. The master of the house took her by the arm and led her gently to the door of his office. “Who do you think’s going to notice him?” he said to her softly, “With that white suit and that hideous red shirt?” said his wife. “Who cares? There’ll be so many people out there …” he said, even more softly. But not softly enough. Bill could hear it. When the coke was running through his veins, Bill could hear everything. And he could see everything, too. That’s why he was sure he was invincible. But now he noticed he was sweating. He had an irresistible longing for another hit.
Once his host finished easing his wife out of the office, he came back to find Bill leaning over the table, sniffing a line of white powder. The man laughed. He opened the liquor cabinet and took out a cut-glass decanter and two glasses. “Eighteen-year-old Glenfiddich,” he said. “I sneaked it through customs after one of my last trips to Europe. Cocaine and Scotch — who could ask for anything more?” He clinked his glass against Bill’s and warned him not to go around telling people he was The Punisher. “Let’s keep certain things to ourselves.”
As more guests arrived, Bill felt even more excluded. Hopelessly excluded. The more uncomfortable he felt, the more coke he snorted, closing himself in one of the five opulent ground-floor bathrooms. Then he went back to the private office and drank some more aged Glenfiddich. Without asking anybody’s permission. And when a waiter came in and saw him drinking straight from the cut-glass decanter, Bill glared at him angrily and snarled, “Whatcha lookin’ at, ya dumb piece o’ shit?” He drained the bottle and left it on the cherry wood desk, staining the polished surface.
He kept on drinking everything he could find. And as soon as he felt his head starting to get heavy, he went back in the bathroom and took another, even bigger, hit of cocaine.
Nobody said a word to him. Bill looked at the photos on the wall. I oughta be up there, too, he thought sullenly. How many times didja get t’ jerk off on accounta what I done, dickheads? I’m a star. He felt the muscles of his face contract. He tried to smile, but whe
n he looked in the mirror all he could see was a smirk. Once he’d finished his second vial of coke, he had the clear sensation that people were looking at him. And they whispered something to each other. Then they stared at him again. Whatcha lookin’ at? he thought again. Ya want me t’ fuck ya wife, huh? Ya want I should beat da shit outa her? Make her bleed? Sue ya do, ya cowardly piece a shit.
At some point he was by the exit. Maybe he should leave. What the fuck did he have to do with these rich shits? They acted like they were ashamed of him. They pretended like they didn’t know him. He’d said hello to a couple of them. Guys he sold coke to. All smiles and sweet talk — “bowin’ an’ scrapin,’” he sneered — when they needed some nose candy. Now they were acting like they’d never seen him before. He should put rat poison in their cocaine. That’s what he’d do too. Because rats was what they were. Guys with no balls. He should leave, he told himself again, trying to get some fresh air into his lungs. But what the fuck, why should he give up? He was The Punisher. The best. He clenched his fists, went into a dark corner of the garden and inhaled whatever was left in the vial. Yeah, up yours, losers, he thought. Let’s see who’s got balls.
When he came back inside the villa he could hear laughter and applause. “They oughta be doin that for me,” he said, following the light of the flashbulbs. He came into the room, pushed through the crowd; nostrils dilated, eyes glassy and wide open; his teeth worrying his insensible lips. Thoughts that twisted through his brain without ever coming together. He wanted to see which of these losers was getting the attention that he rightly deserved.
And then he saw her.
She was looking right at him.
At once Bill knew that all his past nightmares had been a premonition. Of this moment. The laughter and applause stopped. With every flash that went off, Ruth seemed to have come a little bit closer. His own thoughts stopped, too. As if they’d been killed that very second. Struck dead by Ruth. Bill had no thoughts left. He looked at her. He didn’t move. All he could do was keep his eyes on her. Hypnotized.
As if he was watching his own fate. As if after all that running he’d ended up in front of his own death. The death that had tormented him by night, making him wake up in terror. She was there. And she was there for him. Only for him.
Ruth had come to get him.
She reached out an arm toward him. She was pointing him out. Her mouth was going to open and scream out, “it’s him!” And everyone, in that unreal silence, would look at him. They’d know. “It’s him!” They’d hunt him down like an animal. They’d knock him to the ground. Immobilize him. Jeer at him. They’d tie him up and hand him over to the cops. And the police would put him in the chair, with the leather straps and the metal cap with the sponge dripping water. “It’s him!” Ruth would scream that out as she turned on the juice. And The Punisher would be dead. Fried. His brain spurting crazily inside his skull. His hands clutching the armrests. Like a dog. Like in his nightmares.
A photographer shot a picture from right behind him. The magnesium exploded, ripping apart the silence in Bill’s head. He turned back, eyes wide open, staring. He punched the photographer. Now everyone was looking at him. They weren’t laughing any more.
Bill turned back and looked at Ruth. She was still looking at him. She smiled. He was sure that Ruth was smiling as she looked at him. A dreadful smirk. Just like in his nightmares. Everything was like the nightmares.
Bill saw a guy mincing toward him. His eyebrows were plucked like a dame’s and he had fake platinum blond hair. Bill raised his fist. The pansy shrieked and protected his face with his hand. Bill knocked him to the ground. Then he ran, shoving his way through the rich shits.
Ruth recognized him immediately.
She felt her legs going weak. She choked on her own breath. A wave of terror swept over her.
Bill was staring at her. And he had recognized her, too.
The meeting she had feared so terribly. The man of her nightmares. The past that had come back to swallow her, to suck her into its whirlpool. Ruth felt a sharp pain where her amputated finger had been. She was afraid it would start to bleed again.
Bill was staring at her with a fierce look on his face.
The victim and the predator had recognized each other. And it was as if the two of them were the only people in that crowded room.
Ruth felt the tight grip of something crushing her. Bill’s hands. The hands that had pressed her against the floor of the van that night. The hands that had ransacked her, struck her, made her bleed. The hands that had broken her nose, her lip, her ribs. That had ruptured an eardrum. The hands that had mutilated her with garden shears. That had dirtied her and marked her life. And the images that came to her, vivid and brutal, immobilized her just as Bill’s hands had done that night, with no possibility of flight, of escaping from humiliation and brute violence.
Between one flash and the next, Ruth watched Bill. She couldn’t manage to make herself scream, or weep, or flee. All she could do was stay there, staring into his eyes, petrified with horror. She could almost smell the alcohol on his breath, just as she could feel his body forcing itself inside hers; just as his voice was the only one she could hear now. That terrible laugh rising.
Bill kept on looking at her, and in his eyes Ruth could read his strength, the power he had over her.
With maddening slowness she took hold of Barrymore’s sleeve. Almost without being aware of it. But as soon as she felt the touch of that light soft wool, tears blurred her eyes. She could move, she told herself. There was still time for her to move. Perhaps she could even run away. Or she could turn away, so that he couldn’t keep looking at her with that inhuman stare. She could find a bit of courage, or at least some anger. She could point him out to people. Have him arrested. She could avenge herself. She could defeat him. She could crush him. But only if she could get away for a second, just one second, from his pitiless stare.
But all she could manage to do was hold tightly to John Barrymore’s sleeve, while the flashbulbs kept on popping crazily, erasing Bill’s face for a succession of instants. But Ruth knew he was still there, and he was looking at her. Impaling her on his gaze. In his clutches, she thought. As if she was his property. A thing that belonged to him. With no willpower, no possibility of escaping his grip.
Suddenly she saw Bill turn toward a flash. She saw him hit a photographer, swing at Blyth who had come up to him. And now Bill was running away. Losing himself in the crowd.
Running away. Bill was running away.
Ruth could feel her legs stretching upward as she stood on tiptoe, trying to keep Bill in sight as he pushed through the crowd. She saw him turn back a moment before he left the room. And in his eyes she could see something bestial. Something that was like her own fear. And her own fear dissolved in it. As if their story could only contain a single fear. Now that fear was no longer hers.
She found herself sweating. A chilly impalpable veil. Like a dew of fear. But she could feel warmth returning to her body again. She let go of Barrymore’s sleeve. And that feeling of warmth, of blood starting to flow through her veins again, gave her a little shock, almost electric. She breathed. A long, violent intake of air. As after a deep plunge under water. Like birth.
Bill ran away. Now he was the one who was afraid. Of her.
Ruth smiled faintly. Like an unexpected gift, like a priceless treasure. Nothing more than a slight rippling of her lips, still trembling from the echo of her fear. A smile that, as yet, had no thought behind it. Like a flower born just before sunrise. And while the smile was forming on her lips and beginning to show in her eyes, she no longer remembered being afraid. As if it had never happened. As if Bill had carried it away with him. And she could feel that she had reached the end of the race she’d been running. She felt — even in the most hidden labyrinths of her soul — that the moment had come, that time was beginning to flow again.
She knew she had been imprisoned inside a frame of motion picture film. And that Bill had bee
n captured within it, too. Both of them had been condemned. Her life had crystallized, one night more than six years before.
But I’m not me anymore. And now you aren’t you, either, she thought, amazed at the simplicity of that notion.
With a kind of lightness in her heart, or even only the promise of lightness, she turned towards Barrymore. “I have to go,” she murmured in his ear, then went to rejoin Clarence. She tucked her hand through the old agent’s arm and went toward the exit.
The air was cool. Limpid. The sky was full of stars.
“The car’s down there,” said Clarence, pointing down the long driveway.
Ruth thought she saw a man in a pale suit and flashy red shirt darting through the parked cars, stop halfway down the row, look around, and then start running again. He might even have fallen. But Ruth wasn’t really paying attention. She didn’t know that man. She didn’t know him anymore. He could be anybody.
Ruth smiled and started down the steps. You can’t have me anymore, she thought. Her smile was opening the cage. “Goodbye, Bill.”
Bill stumbled. Fell. Scrambled up.
His LaSalle was blocked by dozens of other cars.
“Are you leaving?” an attendant asked him. “Give me ten minutes and I’ll get her out for you.”
Bill shoved him aside. “Fuck off,” he growled. He didn’t have ten minutes. He didn’t even have one second.
He looked back toward the villa. Ruth was at the entrance, and looking in his direction. She was with a man. He must be a cop. The cop lifted his arm and pointed right at him. Ruth was laughing.
Bill rushed toward the gate. He had to get away. He wasn’t going to let them get him. As he ran, he bumped into parked cars, and gravel got into his shoes. He looked back again.
Ruth was coming down the steps of the villa with the cop. They acted like they weren’t in a hurry. They were toying with him. He was in a cage. And the cage was shut tight. Bill felt his brain exploding. He saw blinding flashes and then darkness and then more flashes. The alcohol had fucked up his legs. He started to run again. The gate was pretty close now. But what would he do once he was out on Sunset? He couldn’t get away on foot. They’d get him. He looked over his shoulder. The cop pointed at him again. And the attendant turned around and pointed at him, too. Ruth laughed. She was laughing, laughing at him.
The Boy Who Granted Dreams Page 62
