Bride of the Rat God

by Barbara Hambly

  “Forget it, children.” She returned her attention to the pie. “I will not have Christine feed them from the table, by the way; it makes them into completely intolerable pests, besides being not at all good for them. She bought them in England, you know. She’s a fiend for anything Chinese.”

  Mindelbaum grinned and leaned down to ruffle Chang Ming’s lion-colored mane. “Oh, yes. I’ve watched her trying to out-Chinese Flindy McColl for eighteen months now. Flindy got some kind of antique mah-jongg set just before Chris left for France—in retaliation, I think, for the ‘ancient Chinese necklace from the Forbidden City’ that Frank Brown gave Chris. Which read surprisingly well on film, I thought. I wasn’t surprised to see Chris come back with Pekingese.”

  Norah rolled her eyes. “I thought there was something behind that. Anyway, the woman who bred these dogs lives outside of Birmingham. Someone told Christine I was in Manchester, but not under what circumstances. Mrs. Pendergast called her a ‘film person’ and insisted that she only be admitted into the kitchen, and the servants’ kitchen at that.”

  “Why?” He leaned his chin on his hands, fascinated. “I would have thought a respectable Midlands matron would have fallen all over herself to have a film star in her living room.”

  “Not Mrs. Pendergast.” Norah smiled. “She said that Christine was no better than she should be and would probably steal the furniture. She and Christine had a quarrel you could have heard in Blackpool, and the upshot was that Christine said she was taking me out of there. I suspect the fact that the breeder wasn’t about to let her dogs go to someone who hadn’t made provisions for feeding and brushing and caring for them played a part. It occurred to Christine that I would be ideal. Prior to that afternoon,” Norah added with a kind of wonder, “I would no more have considered living in Hollywood than I would have considered relocating to the South Pole. Then, the next morning, I was getting on a boat. It was...very odd.”

  Under the table Buttercreme stood on her hind legs and put delicate forepaws on Norah’s shin, gazing up at her with melting eyes. Norah sighed. “All right, princess, up you come. But don’t presume on it.” She hoisted the ivory-pale bitch to her lap.

  “You glad you did?”

  She thought for a moment. God, am I! seemed the appropriate reply. Yet she remembered the nights of anxiety in her tiny servant-class stateroom, her exhaustion and misery as she rebelled against the never-ending stench of Christine’s cigarettes in her clothes and hair, the other woman’s nonstop brainless blithering, and those occasions when she’d had to help her—incapably drunk or giggling helplessly on cocaine—to bed. How many nights, she wondered, had she sat on the floor with Black Jasmine or Buttercreme in her arms, wishing with all her heart she was back in her dreary but familiar attic in Manchester?

  All those things still bothered her—more, in fact, since she’d come to care about her sister-in-law’s health and sanity—but looking back, she was beginning to see how much of her reaction had been the holdover of the pain that had driven her almost to suicide: loneliness, change, and the desperate craving for things she would never have again.

  Her parents’ love. The quiet studiousness and sense of purpose of her years at Oxford. Jim.

  Jim.

  Slowly she said, “I’m more surprised at myself than anything else, really. I was raised very properly. When you grow up in London and go to Oxford, even Manchester seems like the antipodes. California is like... like Oz or Barsoom. And speaking of Barsoom, who on earth designed that train station?”

  Mr. Mindelbaum threw back his head and laughed at the comparison. “God, the pink peanut stand! I don’t know, but I think he’s working in the prop department at Famous Players-Lassky by this time. Have you seen Grauman’s Egyptian yet?”

  “No, but I’ve been to Frank Brown’s estate in Beverly Hills, and I’m told it’s much of a muchness. I must admit—”

  “My dear Mrs. Blackstone!”

  Byron’s Corsair, the Scarlet Pimpernel, and Rupert of Hentzau rolled into one, her mother had said with a twinkle in her brown eyes. Even several sheets to the wind, his coin-perfect profile attached to a face badly lined, Charlie Sandringham still moved like a prince and spoke like Zeus from Olympus. It was more than a pity that motion pictures were silent, Norah thought. In his case it was a tragedy.

  “A pleasure indeed to see you about. Did you enjoy the premiere?”

  “As a matter of fact, I did. Chang,” she added warningly as the golden dog began an intensive sniff of Sandringham’s trouser leg. “The scene in the lobby afterward was a bit unnerving. Are all fans that persistent?”

  “What, Johnny Chinaman? He was quite mild and polite, talk of life and death nothwithstanding. You should see what some of the women do around poor Rudy Valentino. Be off, you pestiferous little brute,” he added good-naturedly to Chang Ming, and thought about it a moment, gazing hazily into the middle distance. “A remarkable face,” he said. “Not at all the type you’d expect to be making a fool of himself over a star’s autograph. Certainly not a Chinese gentleman that old, over, as they say in the Celestial Empire, a mere woman. But nothing to worry about.”

  He glanced back over his shoulder at Mindelbaum, who had excused himself at a sign from the waiter and gone to the bar, where he stood talking with a big man in a sailor’s pea jacket whose bushy white hair and beard gave a general impression of a demented Father Christmas. Kevin—or Kenneth—was there, too, beautiful as daylight in his immaculate evening clothes, deep in conversation with Doc LaRousse—Colossus’s red-haired electrician—and Hank Silver, an extremely handsome, scar-faced cowboy star whose name was actually Hans Schweibler and who could barely speak a word of English. For a moment the older man’s brows pinched together, and a look of hurt longing crossed the back of his eyes; then he turned to Norah and went on. “I was delighted to see you at the premiere at all, Mrs. Blackstone, since you always seem to be relegated to the corners with those wretched little beasts while our girl makes a disgrace of herself over the saxophone players at the Grove.”

  Norah laughed but at the same time was touched. “Having been a genuine companion, I can assure you, Mr. Sandringham, I’m not ill treated. Occasionally, when Flindy’s maid has a day off, I get press-ganged into playing mah-jongg, but they all treat me very kindly and help me arrange my tiles and don’t make me play for money.”

  “Like nursery cribbage.” He smiled.

  “Exactly like nursery cribbage.” She chuckled at the comparison, though she felt an odd little stab of nostalgia. Alone of those she’d met in Hollywood, this aging god had played cards in her own childhood milieu of younger cousins in starched white dresses under some nanny’s watchful eye: scorched toast, drying shoes, oatmeal soap, and rain. The memory warmed even as it hurt.

  “And a good thing, too,” she added, “considering the sums that maid of Flindy’s takes off Christine. It’s kind of you to think of me.” She held up her hand to him, and his fingers touched hers. The blue eyes, looking down into hers, were gentle and concerned. “I simply don’t shine in company. Mostly I prefer to retreat with a book.”

  “Perfectly sensible of you, my dear Mrs. Blackstone. Faced with the prospect of one of Mr. Brown’s parties, I wish I, too, could retreat with a book. I feel rather in need of sustenance before the ordeal.”

  “The cobbler’s excellent.”

  Sandringham drew himself up like King Lear in the first act. “My dear Mrs. Blackstone, I was not referring to food.” He produced a silver hip flask. “Mr. Enyart is famous throughout the cinematic community for the excellence of his—er—libations. Though why any country should have passed such a barbarous law in the first place...”

  “Which brings up the fact that we ought to be pushing on.” Kevin—or Kenneth—lounged over from the counter where he had been exchanging good-natured jibes with the obese and clever Ned Bergen, chief prop man of Colossus, and his assistant, the pale and willowy Ned Divine. Both Neds wore rather shabby Sunday bests and had clearly not
been invited to rub elbows with Griffith and Gish at Frank Brown’s. Neither, apparently, had Flindy McColl’s beau, Dale Wilmer; he was arguing furiously with Hank Silver and a group of studio musicians with the rapid-fire, incoherent decisiveness that Norah had quickly learned to identify as one of the effects of cocaine.

  “You remember Fairbanks said he couldn’t stay long, and you did promise me an introduction.”

  “To be sure I did, and it’s a dreadful long drive out to Beverly Hills. Have you been to Karnak Estate, my dear? It really does have to be seen to be believed. Mrs. Black-stone, Keith Pelletier, the gentleman who actually had to hang over that cliff and fall thirty-five feet to the bottom when Christine raised objections to doing so.”

  “I didn’t mind that so much as being hauled out to Big Bear for retakes because some dumb cluck of a cameraman didn’t have the lens cap off or something.” He gave her a smile slightly too dazzling for first acquaintance.

  “I’d heard it was because Gus Campbell had some different ideas for camera angles, which I admit were quite stunning,” Sandringham said tactfully.

  The young man shrugged. “They all say that.” He studied Norah for a moment more, taking in not her face—which was to be expected, since she was well aware that beyond containing a small straight nose, small straight mouth, passable cheekbones, and quite pretty gray eyes, her face never stood a chance in Hollywood—but her clothing with an air of mildly impatient contempt. Not worth my time.

  “You aren’t coming out to Frank’s?”

  “I’m afraid I wasn’t invited.”

  He laughed, displaying very white teeth. “Jesus, honey, if you wait to be invited in this town, you’ll never get anywhere! Let’s go, Charlie. I don’t want to be so late we’ll miss the people who count.”

  He led the way in the direction of the back room, arrogant in his beauty, as if in a velvet cloak. Sandringham stood still a moment, gazing after him; Norah touched his hand and said softly, “‘Being your slave, what should I do but tend / upon the hours and times of your desire? / I have no precious time at all to spend, / Nor services to do, till you require.’”

  “True.” Sandringham sighed. “True. But you know what love is.” He followed then.

  “Poor Charlie.” Mindelbaum slipped back into the booth and tucked into his cobbler like a starving man. Father Christmas was now nowhere to be seen. “His last flame took him for enough gold cigarette cases and pinkie rings to stock Nieman Marcus and then went off with a Mexican bootlegger and a couple thousand dollars of Charlie’s money. I’m afraid this kid’s going to do the same. Though he is a hell of a stunter. Just once I wish Charlie would find somebody who’ll treat him as well as he deserves. And no, you can’t have any,” he added to Chang Ming’s ardent gaze. “I don’t care if Christine hasn’t fed you in three years and your Aunt Norah beats you every day.”

  “Mrs. Pendergast’s son was like that,” remarked Norah, sipping her tea and watching the two elegant black backs disappear through the speakeasy door. “Except with him, it was girls. And he was just as much a predator as they. But he had neither taste nor judgment—nor kindness. It used to drive his mother frantic when he’d bring home these... these doxies. They all had voices like parrots and awful Scouse accents. I think one of them stole my engagement ring—it disappeared when I’d had it off to polish glasses, because the diamond scratched. But of course I hadn’t any proof.”

  She paused, keeping the quake of anger out of her voice with an effort, then bent her head quickly down over Buttercreme’s sleeping form so that her companion wouldn’t see the sudden quiver of her mouth. Why she should still be angry nearly three years later, she didn’t know; it hadn’t been the worst indignity of those years by a long shot.

  “You can take comfort in the fact that if she was keeping company with this toad Pendergast, she probably got what she deserved somewhere down the line.”

  Keith Pelletier and Charlie Sandringham emerged from the back room, each laden with two big green bottles. Norah watched them through the wide plate glass window as they got into the Dusenberg.

  “Thank God,” she murmured. “At least that boy’s driving.”

  “Any sane person would if they’d ever ridden in a car with Charlie.” The waiter refreshed Mr. Mindelbaum’s coffee, but he only cast a doubtful glance at Norah’s rapidly cooling tea. “Even stone-cold sober he forgets which side of the street Americans drive on, not that he’s been stone-cold sober since the McKinley administration. A lot of the older stunters can’t stand the kid—the old barnstormers and the Gower Street cowboys—but I won’t be surprised if he parlays himself into leading roles if he meets the right people.” He shrugged. “That’s Hollywood for you.”

  Sitting like a king in the passenger side of the car, Sandringham turned his head and saw Norah through the lighted window. He blew her a theatrical kiss and raised one of the champagne bottles in a gesture midway between a wave and a toast. Norah smiled in return and lifted her mug.

  “‘Drink to me only with thine eyes,’” quoted Mindelbaum. “‘It’s safer, with bootlegged liquor supplies.’”

  The lights of Pickford Studios flashed across the Dusenberg’s silver-gray bonnet as the car pulled into the thin traffic on La Brea, gleaming on the young stuntman’s dark hair. That was how Norah always remembered Keith Pelletier afterward, graceful as a young prince, deft and sure and arrogant as he gunned away from the curb.

  Certainly it was how she described him to the police when they showed up on Christine’s doorstep the following afternoon to ask her questions about his murder.

  THREE

  LAKE OVER HEAVEN

  Cries of warning—it is auspicious to

  go somewhere...

  A warning of danger in the night...

  Dogs barking...

  THE WIND ROSE as the night deepened, blowing gusts of rain. Dozing on the divan in the parlor, Norah heard it even in her dreams.

  They were not easy dreams. She saw Christine running again through the rocks and darkness of that cinematic landscape, stumbling in her diamond-heeled shoes and slithery dress, the pale jewels of her necklace gleaming in ghostly eldritch light that seemed to come from nowhere.

  But there was no fog in this film. Wind lashed wildly at the trees and branches, tore at her dark skirts, snatched wild handfuls of her hair as she fled. In spite of the rain, the night smelled somehow of deserts, of dust, underlain with a half-familiar sweetish stink. Somewhere dogs were barking like the gruff coughing of lions. Dimly Norah could see their eyes shining like amber moons in the dark.

  They are lions, she thought. Wild-maned and terrible.

  But there was something else in her dream. Something worse. Something moving in the wind, scuttling half-seen in the corner of her vision, something waiting in the darkness beneath the thrashing boughs of eucalyptus and oak that covered the hillside that rose so steeply on the other side of Ivarene Street. Something whose silent, greedy patience could be felt in the darkness, more terrible than the snarls of the dog-lions. Something that wanted Christine.

  With a jolt Norah came awake, gasping in the dim light of the single tasseled lamp. The long parlor of Christine’s house, with its creamy plastered walls and dark wood floors, was thick with shadow: the archways into the hall, the breakfast room, the stairway framed blackest night. Wind screamed over the tile roof and threw desiccated leaves against the three tall front windows with the thin clattering of clawed fingers.

  The dogs clustered in the vestibule in front of the door, barking furiously. Their hackles lifted so that their little puffball bodies seemed to bounce like cats with electricity; their huge, round eyes did indeed flash in the lamp’s muted glow like the eyes of the lions in Norah’s dream.

  “What is it?” She got to her feet and pulled her threadbare pink wrapper close. She had braided her hair, long and old-fashioned and the color of brown sugar, in the expectation of going to bed; it lay in a rope the thickness of her wrist down over her back. “What’
s got into you?”

  They turned their heads at the sound of her voice, three flat-nosed faces weirdly human, like enchanted children deformed by fairy malice. Norah frowned, for she had never heard them bark this way. Like Mr. Sandringham, she had thought Pekingese were yappy until she had met them, but in fact they were very silent little dogs, seldom barking except in their roughest play. Now—and Norah was not sure what had triggered it—the dogs began to bark again, Black Jasmine throwing himself at the door like a furious little gentleman in a tuxedo, his sharp, quacking voice sounding almost like a duck.

  Concerned, Norah started toward the vestibule. Chang Ming spun and bounded toward her, bracing himself in her path and barking an unmistakable warning that if she took another step forward, he would snap at her. She halted, disconcerted. It was not that Chang Ming could do any damage with his teeth on the best day he ever had, but in the two months she had taken care of him, he had shown himself to be the friendliest and most loving of creatures.

  She took another doubtful step, and he bounced on his short legs, barking wildly, urgently, while Buttercreme and Black Jasmine scratched in a frenzy at the door. As far as Norah knew, Chang Ming would no more have tried to bite her than he’d have stolen a car. This is silly, she thought, an echo of her aunts’ voices. One shouldn’t allow oneself to be intimidated by something that can be picked up and tucked under one’s arm.

  Yet she backed up and sat on the black silk cushions of the divan once again. And not because she feared Chang Ming. She could not have said exactly what it was she did fear.

  The golden dog’s trembling stopped. Enormous tail raised like a triumphal banner, he trotted to the door where the other two sniffed intently at the panels.