Belinda

by Anne Rice

  I took the pen out of her hand, my hand shaking so badly I scarcely control it, and I wrote: “Marry me?” the pen skittering like skates on ice.

  She nodded, winked at me, then let loose in Italian again to Susan. The plainclothesmen weren’t even looking at her. What the hell was she doing?

  Suddenly Susan broke up. She threw back her head and let go with a loud, deep laugh and, doubling her right hand into a fist, she hit me the arm: “Sit down, Walker!” she said.

  The doors to the lobby were being opened. I moved into the seat next to G.G. as Susan took the aisle seat next to me. And then Belinda sat down in the aisle seat across from us, right in front of the plainclothesmen, utterly oblivious to them, and flashed another great big smile.

  “Susan!” I whispered in panic.

  “Shut up,” she whispered back.

  The crowd was already streaming down all four aisles.

  My heart was so loud I wondered if the plainclothes guys could hear it. Belinda, when I could catch a glimpse of her through the people passing us, was scribbling again.

  “Now what do we do?” G.G. whispered to me.

  “How the fuck should I know?” I asked.

  I couldn’t tell whether Alex had recognized her or not, he was charting with the ladies in front of him, and Blair had a similar conversation going with a young reporter I recognized from the Stanford Court.

  Susan sat there, with her red hat on, and her long fingers spread out on her knees, just watching the people stream in.

  It didn’t take long for the theater to fill. Pretty soon only a few were left combing the place for seats together, then splitting up to take the last empties on the far aisles. The lights went dim. Somebody tapped Susan on the shoulder. And she started slowly down the main aisle towards the stage.

  Belinda was staring right at me, but I didn’t dare look directly at her. Then I saw that G.G. was looking at her and she was beaming at him. “G.G., she doesn’t know the cops are behind her!” I whispered.

  “The cops are everywhere, Jeremy,” he whispered back. “Just try to keep very calm.”

  Then Belinda turned and asked one of the cops very loudly in that accent if it was OK to smoke in the theater, and he said no, and she threw up her hand in exasperation, and then I heard him lean forward and say something in Italian to her, very apologetic in tone.

  Suddenly she was talking to him in Italian. And he was talking to her. “Christ, G.G.” I whispered. “The fucking cop is Italian.”

  “Just take a deep breath, Jeremy,” G.G. said. “Let her handle it. She’s an actress, remember? So she’s going for the Academy Award.”

  All I could catch were a lot of place names, Firenze, Siena, si, si. North Beach. North Beach! I was going to lose my mind.

  But Susan had just gone up the little steps to the stage. The spotlight hit her, setting her red satin clothes beautifully on fire. The theater was alive with enthusiastic applause.

  Susan smiled, took off her cowboy hat, got another big volley of whistles and claps, and then she gestured for quiet.

  “Thank you all for coming out tonight,” she said. “This San Francisco premiere of Final Score is kind of a special event for us, and I know we all wish Belinda could be here, too, to see the show.”

  Loud applause. Everybody was clapping, even the cool people in the press rows in front of us. Everybody that is, except the cops, and Belinda who was again scribbling on her pad.

  “Well, I’m just here to remind you of what I think you really do know ... that there are lots of other people in this movie, lots of people who helped to make it a special experience, including actress Sandy Miller, who is really the star.” More applause. “Sandy would be here tonight if she wasn’t in Brazil scouting locations for a picture. And I know she thanks y’all for your warm applause. Now y’all will pay close attention to the credits, won’t you, because all of these people did a fine job, but I can’t leave this microphone without thanking Belinda’s mother, Bonnie Blanchard, for financing this picture. Because without Bonnie it would never have been made.”

  She didn’t wait for the crowd’s reaction on that one, but left the stage immediately, and there was only one beat, maybe two, of hesitation before the crowd applauded again.

  The lights were out by the time Susan reached her seat. The theater fell dead silent. Final Score had begun.

  I could scarcely see the first few scenes—or hear them. I was sweating under the boiled shirt and hot dinner jacket. I rested my head in my hands.

  And then I was jolted suddenly by Blair pushing his way out of the row, whispering, “Stay where you are,” as he went by.

  Susan waited a couple of seconds, then followed him.

  Belinda took out her cigarettes and her lighter, glanced back at the cop and shrugged, and went out to the lobby, too.

  “We’re going to sit here like two little birds on a perch,” G.G. whispered.

  I started watching the movie just so I wouldn’t start yelling and screaming. Then Susan came back. But Blair and Belinda did not.

  “So what’s happening?” I whispered to her.

  She made a little gesture for me to be quiet.

  By the end of the first forty-five minutes of the movie, two things were clear. Blair and Belinda were flat out gone. And this movie was a viable commercial hit.

  Of course, I knew every syllable of it from watching it during those drunken days in New Orleans right before G.G. and Alex had come down. But no videotape is a substitute for the theater experience. Only here could I feel the pace, the responsiveness of the audience, the way the timing and the humor, which was considerable, worked.

  When Belinda finally appeared on horseback, the audience broke into spontaneous applause. Then the crowd went dead quiet during the love scene in the white bedroom of the little house. I felt a frisson all through my body when the moment came, the moment I had painted, Belinda’s head back, Sandy’s lips on her chin.

  As soon as the scene was over, the applause broke out again.

  Then I got up and I went out into the lobby. I couldn’t stand it a moment longer. I had to at least get up and move my legs. And damn it, Susan had to get her ass out here and tell me something. I was going to drag her out if she didn’t come.

  I went to the candy counter and asked for some popcorn. The little knot of people talking on the balcony stairs had gone quiet.

  Two of the plainclothesmen came out and passed behind me over to the ashtray by the men’s room door.

  “The popcorn’s on us, Jeremy,” said the girl behind the counter.

  “You remember Belinda?” I asked. “All the times we came in together?”

  The girl nodded. “I hope it works out all right.”

  “Thanks, honey,” I said.

  Susan had just come out. She went to the one door that was open to the street and stood there looking out. She had her hat pressed down really low, and her thumbs were hooked in the back of her pants.

  I came up beside her. I saw the limo out there. I saw one of the plainclothesmen tense, like we were going to run.

  “Congratulations, lady, it’s a bang-up film,” I said. “Should have been released a long time before now.”

  She smiled at me, nodded. She was almost as tall as I was. We were almost eye to eye. But, of course, she had on those high-heeled cowboy boots.

  Then, without her lips even moving, she whispered: “Reno or bust, OK?”

  The chills went down my arms and back. “When you say the word.”

  She looked outside again. I pushed the popcorn at her. She took a handful, ate it.

  “You’re sure?” she whispered. “Belinda wants you to be really sure! She said to say Holy Communion to you and Are you sure?”

  I smiled and looked out at the limo gleaming like a big white opal in the lights of the marquee. I thought of my house only two blocks around the corner, the fortress of the past two decades, all choked with dolls and toys and clocks and things that had not meant anything for
years and years. I thought of Belinda smiling up at me through that lovely disguise.

  “Honey, you can’t know how sure I am,” I said. “Holy Communion, she said it. Reno or bust.”

  She was satisfied. She turned to go back in. “Nice sitting in the back row,” she said in a normal voice, “I can keep my hat on, for a change.”

  Dan was suddenly standing next to me. He had lighted a cigarette already, and I could see it shaking between his thumb and middle finger as he tapped the ash onto the rug. The plainclothesmen were still over by the ashtray, their eyes on us.

  “Client-lawyer privilege,” I said.

  “Always,” Dan said. But he sounded as if he had no more stamina left in him. He leaned his shoulder against the door.

  “You’re one of my closest friends in the whole world, you know that, don’t you?” I asked.

  “You asking my opinion on something?” he asked. “Or are you saying good-bye?” I could see his teeth biting into his lip.

  I didn’t answer for a moment. I ate some of the popcorn. In fact, I realized I’d been eating the popcorn ever since I bought it. It was probably the first thing I’d really eaten with any gusto in days. I almost laughed. “Dan, I want you to do something for me,” I said.

  He looked up as if to say, What now? Then he glanced at me and gave me a warm, but very worn smile.

  “Give all the toys to an orphanage or a school or something,” I said. “You don’t have to say where they came from. Just see they go to some place where kids will enjoy them, OK?”

  His lip was trembling, and he drew up his shoulders like he was going to yell. But he didn’t. He took another drag on the cigarette and looked out the open door again.

  “And Andy’s sculpture, you’ve got to get that out of my backyard and out someplace where people can see it.”

  He nodded. “I’ll handle it.” Then I saw his eyes glass over.

  “Dan, I’m sorry about all this as far as you’re concerned.”

  “Jer, save it. At least until you get my bill.” But then he gave me another of his rare and very genuine smiles. So quick maybe nobody else would have caught it. “I just hope you make it,” he said, as he looked out the door again.

  [8]

  Two seconds after the last shot faded, after the applause started, Susan was out the doors with me and G.G. right behind her, striding through the lobby and across the pavement to the limousine.

  Alex had not followed, and I knew this was deliberate. But I saw the plainclothesmen just coming out, with the crowd flowing right behind them, as I slid after G.G. into the backseat.

  I don’t think I realized until the motor started that Susan was at the wheel. The driver was gone. The bars on Castro hadn’t closed yet, the streets were relatively deserted, and the limousine moved forward very fast around the cop car in front of it and made a smooth right onto Seventeenth, just as if we were going home.

  I glanced back. The cops had not even unlocked the door of their car. Dan was talking to the one with the keys in his hand.

  Then we were off, roaring past Hartford, G.G. and I thrown forward, the limo gaining speed as it ran through the stop sign on Noe and went on past my house and screeched into a left-hand turn at Sanchez Street. “Jesus, Susan, you’ll kill us,” G.G. whispered.

  I could hear the sirens suddenly screaming behind us, and then I looked out and saw the flashing light.

  “Hell, damn!” Susan said. She slammed on the brakes, and we skidded into the intersection, barely missing an old man crossing the street, who had obviously made Susan stop. He turned, yelled at us, gave us the finger. The cop car was blazing across Noe.

  Susan swerved left on Sanchez and raced ahead.

  “Fuckers saw us turn, damn it, hang on,” Susan said.

  She threw us into a left turn on Market and then a sharp right, roaring into another left.

  I saw the lights of the Golden Bear Motel above us, the balconies. She had driven us around back, out of sight of the street, and come to a stop in a parking slot.

  “Move it, both of you!” she said.

  The sirens were multiplying. But they were racing down Sanchez. They hadn’t made the turn on Market Street.

  A big silver Lincoln Continental had pulled up right behind us, and Susan opened the passenger door. G.G. and I slid into the back. Blair was driving, wearing a red baseball cap over his bald head.

  “Get down, all of you,” he said in that ferocious voice of his.

  Sirens were screaming past on Market now, right out front.

  I could feel the car rolling steadily out of the driveway then turning right as if we had all the time in the world. We were cruising back towards Castro.

  A squad car roared by, light revolving. I didn’t dare look, but I thought it turned left.

  “So far, so good!” Blair said. “Now Walker, how the hell do I get to Fifth and Mission from here? Fast!”

  I glanced up over the back of the seat and saw squad cars all over Castro. The crowd was pouring out of the theater still.

  “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” I said. “Go straight up the hill, up Seventeenth.”

  There were so many sirens now it sounded like a five-alarm fire.

  But Blair went up the hill at old-geyser speed until I told him to take a right again, and then led him back down again on Market up near Fifteenth.

  Within minutes we were in the early-morning glare and waste of downtown, away from the sirens and away from the Castro, and nobody was the wiser. Nobody had even seen Susan make that lightning turn into the motel.

  When we finally turned off Mission into the big multistory parking lot opposite the Chronicle Building, Blair said, “Get ready for another change.”

  This time it was a big cushy silver van we piled into, the kind with shaggy upholstery and tinted glass. Susan took the wheel again, Blair rode shotgun beside her and, when I opened the side door of the van, I saw Belinda in there, and I climbed up inside and into her arms.

  I squeezed her so tight I might have hurt her as we pulled out. For this one second I didn’t care about anything in the world—people chasing us, looking for us, it didn’t matter. I had her. I was kissing her, her mouth, her eyes, feeling her kisses just as heated and crazy as mine, and I’d defy the whole world to separate us now.

  The van was back on Mission. Sirens again, but they were blocks away.

  Only reluctantly did I let her go and let her turn towards G.G. and embrace him, too.

  I sat down in the backseat, winded, anxious, and deliriously happy and just feasted my eyes on her and G.G. hugging, those two who looked more like twins than father and daughter, enjoying their own version of the moment I was feeling right now.

  “All right, gang,” Susan said, “we ain’t home free yet. The Bay Bridge, where is it? And if you see a squad car or any funny-looking car for that matter, get down!” I saw she’d taken off her cowboy hat—in fact, she had on one of those baseball hats just like Blair. Two nice vacationers, they looked like. And nobody could see us on account of the tinted glass.

  “Straight ahead, Susan, you’ll see the sign, last on ramp by the East Bay Terminal,” Belinda said.

  “Hey, talk to me,” I said, pulling her back against me. “Just talk to me. Say anything, say anything at all.”

  “Jeremy, you crazy guy!” she said. “I love you, you crazy guy. You did it. You really did.”

  I held her with no intentions of ever letting her escape again. I held her face tightly, kissing her mouth a little too hard perhaps, but she didn’t seem to mind at all. Then I started taking the pins out of her shiny brown hair. And she shook it all out. She put her hands on the side of my face, and then she looked like she was about to cry.

  G.G. stretched his legs out on the middle seat in front of us, lit a cigarette, and shut his eyes.

  “OK, gang, four hours till Reno,” Susan said. We were going up the ramp to the bridge. “And when we hit the open freeway, this van’s gonna fly.”

  “Yes,
well, please crash-land at the first liquor store you see past Oakland,” G.G. said. “I need a drink even if I have to stick the place up.”

  Everybody laughed. I was positively dopey suddenly. I was so happy with Belinda against me and her arm around me. I was floating.

  I looked out the deep window at the silver rafters of the Bay Bridge above. The van was rocking with a hypnotic rhythm as it went over the seams in the bridge beneath us, and in the early morning there was not another car to be seen.

  It felt odd to me, like the first time I had come to California when I had been very young and I had everything that mattered to me in one suitcase and dreams of pictures in my head.

  Dreams of pictures. I could have seen them now if I shut my eyes. Out of the radio came a country-and-western song real low, a lady singing one of those preposterous lyrics, like the washing machine broke down after you broke up with me, and I started to laugh. My body felt tired and light and full of energy, the way it hadn’t since Belinda left.

  Belinda snuggled closer. She was looking at me very intently, eyes even bluer on account of the dark lashes. Her hair had fallen down free over the collar of the horrible leopard coat. I realized there was luggage piled in the van behind us, tons of luggage, and there were boxes and tripods and cameras in black cases and other things.

  “Mink coats,” she said, as she watched me. “You don’t mind getting married in a mink coat?”

  “You damn well better not mind!” Blair said over his shoulder. Susan gave a deep-throated laugh.

  “I love it,” I said.

  “You madman,” she said. “You really did it all right, and what happens when you realize what you did?”

  Then I looked down at her and saw she was afraid.

  “You think I don’t realize?” I said.

  “They’re burning your books, Jeremy,” she said with a little catch in her voice. “All over the country they’re taking them out of the libraries and burning them in the town squares.”

  “Yeah, and they’re hanging him in the New York Museum of Modern Art, aren’t they?” Blair yelled. “What the hell do you want?”