‘What?’
‘Yes, I know, it’s screwy as hell. Roundabout is going to make a lot of money and I hear that Fred couldn’t be going better, but you know what the industry’s like now, everyone’s running scared. Money is very, very tight. They can’t get the deal together, and frankly I never was impressed with that script.’
‘But it doesn’t make sense. My films make money, I haven’t had a flop yet. I’m still one of the top-ten box-office stars. It’s ridiculous.’
‘Sure it’s ridiculous, and they’re going to realize it. Listen, it’s not going to affect you too badly. Your working schedule in Europe is crammed anyway, I should think you would be glad of some time off.’
‘I don’t like not working,’ Charlie said stiffly. ‘I don’t enjoy sitting around on my backside while newer, younger, actors push themselves forward. Find me something else to do – an independent, a low-budget art film. I wouldn’t mind a change of pace. I’ll drop my price if it’s something I really like. Take a piece of the action.’
‘OK, Charlie.’
‘I might even be prepared to finance something myself.’
Marshall shook his head in disbelief. ‘You actors – you’re all the same, you’ll even pay to see yourselves on the screen!’
Chapter Thirty-Six
‘What’s with the kid?’ Carey asked, her mouth open in astonishment.
Sunday, looking incredibly beautiful in a yellow dress, her hair wild around her suntanned face, smiled. ‘Jean-Pierre, meet Carey. Carey, this is Jean-Pierre Hussan.’
The small boy stared up at Carey solemnly and extended his hand.
‘Wow,’ Carey sighed, ‘if the father looks anything like the son, I can understand your hang-up.’
‘The father is just as beautiful.’ Sunday laughed. ‘Oh, Carey, I’m so happy!’
‘You look like you are, in fact you look great. I want to hear all about it, but first let’s get to the car before some wandering photographer spots you and pounces. By the way, why did you tell me no press at the airport?’
Sunday nodded at the boy. ‘Claude insisted. Anyway, they would only be asking me stupid questions about Steve Magnum.’
‘We have to go straight for fittings. You were needed two weeks ago.’
‘I’m sorry, but everything’s been so marvellous, I couldn’t come before.’
‘I understand.’
After the fittings they drove to the Château Marmont where Sunday collected the rest of her luggage. There was a lot of mail that she had told them to hold for her.
‘I don’t know why you didn’t have it all forwarded on to you in Acapulco,’ Carey said. ‘It’s ridiculous, there might be something important.’
Sunday shook her head. ‘The only letter that could even be remotely important will be from my aunt in England, and she only writes twice a year. In fact I can’t imagine who all these letters are from.’
‘You’d be surprised who you get letters from when you’re famous. Probably other agents trying to steal you away!’
Sunday laughed. ‘I’ll open them at the house. I’m so excited about it. Jean-Pierre’s going to love it with the ocean right there, aren’t you, sweetheart?’
She gave the little boy a hug and he smiled, something he had only just started to do.
Carey said, ‘I checked the house out yesterday, it’s all in order. I got in some groceries. I really can’t understand why you want to be stuck down in Malibu.’
‘I’m not stuck down in Malibu. I’m going to be in a great little house overlooking the sea, away from all the smog and phoney social bit. I think Claude will love it.’
‘Is Claude going to be moving in with you?’
‘I hope so. Carey, I know you’ll like him, I can’t wait for the two of you to meet. I want to have a little barbecue dinner when he arrives, just maybe you and Marshall, Branch, if he’s back, and perhaps Max Thorpe.’
‘Sounds like a fun group. Why not ask Dindi and Steve to make it really fun?’
‘Are they going together?’
‘Rumour and Joyce Haber has it. I hear that he’s so tanked up that it’s an effort for him to get it up any more!’
‘You’re really disgusting!’ But she was laughing, and once more Carey marvelled at the change in her. Good, bad or indifferent, Claude Hussan had certainly brought out a new Sunday.
They stopped off at Carey’s apartment to fetch Limbo. Then they drove straight down to the house.
‘It’s so great,’ Sunday exclaimed. ‘Much better than I remember. Why don’t you borrow a suit and we’ll have a swim? Come on, Jean-Pierre, get changed.’
She opened his suitcase and threw him a small pair of bathing shorts. Limbo was running around, going mad with excitement.
‘I can’t stay,’ Carey said wistfully, ‘I’d like to, but I’ve been out of the office all day and there’s things to be done. Now, tomorrow your press conference is at two p.m. I’ll have a car pick you up at one. I do think it would be a good idea not to bring the child. The maid comes in tomorrow at ten; have her look after him. There are several interesting offers I’d like to discuss with you, so I thought maybe dinner tomorrow night at Marshall’s house.’
‘I want to hear all about that. Is there going to be a wedding?’
‘Listen, kid, I must rush, I’ll call you later. There’s a list of local services in the kitchen in case you need anything, and I’m always available on the phone.’
‘We won’t need anything. We’re going to have a swim, something to eat, and an early night.’
The ocean was warm, throwing up big waves that knocked Jean-Pierre flat and sent Limbo scurrying in mad circles on the shore. Sunday set the little boy firmly on her shoulders and waded in.
Later, after the child was in bed she unpacked a few things, fed Limbo and wandered around, exploring the house. Carey telephoned and they had a short chat. Claude didn’t, although he had promised.
She wondered how he would like the house. It would be peaceful for him, a place where he could really relax. He was so involved in his work, always planning and flunking about it, having discussions and meetings.
That was a good thing, she decided. A man should be dedicated to his work. She didn’t care if she ever worked again. If things worked out with Claude, perhaps she wouldn’t: it would be enough just to be with him, look after him and have his children, lots and lots of them, all looking like Jean-Pierre.
She sighed. It was a dream. He was still married, and even if he were single, she knew he wasn’t the marrying kind. Well, she didn’t mind that. They could just live together, and still have children. She wouldn’t tie him down.
What was her career all about anyway? Nobody cared about her as an actress, a person. All they cared about was the maximum exposure of breasts, legs, and anything else that was going. Even if she became a star, that was still all they would care about.
She sat down and started opening her mail.
Carey was right. Two letters from agents, offering her their services; circulars about cars, televisions and household equipment; a short letter from Aunt enclosing an English press clipping and complaining about Sunday’s lack of clothes in the photograph.
There were three bulky envelopes, all addressed in the same scrawly hand. She inspected the postmarks and opened the oldest one first. A plastic bag fell out. ‘Sunday – when will you—’
‘Oh God!’ she groaned. It was full of obscenities about what the writer wanted to do to her, imagined doing, and said they would soon be doing.
She read it briefly in fascinated horror.
‘I promise not to keep you waiting too long, we will be together soon, so keep your lovely—’
She tore it up.
The other two were the same, the ravings of a sick mind.
It was very depressing, and because the man seemed so certain they would be together, a little frightening. She was glad the writer didn’t know where she was now; at least he only knew the hotel where she had been.<
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She telephoned the Château in a panic, and told them not to give out her address.
It was nothing to worry about. Carey said that all actresses got these kind of letters.
She went to bed feeling sick, and looked forward to the brightness of the morning.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
It was Herbert’s third shower of the day. The water trickled lukewarm down his thin hairless body.
His eyes were clenched shut, as he thought about what he had caught his fat whore of a wife doing. Legs spread, she had been next door taking on all comers. Of course from the window where he had crouched watching, he didn’t have the best vantage point, but he certainly knew what was going on, oh yes, he certainly knew.
It was good he had not told Marge about getting fired from the Supreme Chauffeur Company. Now he was free to spy on her. In fact he was free to do what he wanted all day and all night.
As he had been working night shifts, he left the house at the usual time. Then he would either spend the evening at the movie theatre where the Jack Milan film with Sunday Simmons was playing, or he would go to a topless bar and watch the scenery with his cold hard eyes.
He knew when Marge was planning to go out. She became jumpy and nervous, fussing around him, trying to hurry him out of the house. He obliged by leaving quickly, but then he would return and watch her disgusting behaviour through his neighbour’s window.
Money was running short. He would have to get another job soon. He wasn’t worried, because long before being fired he had been prudent enough to steal some Supreme Chauffeur notepaper, and had written himself several glowing references.
When he found a job he would leave Marge – just walk out and leave her. Why should he work hard to put food in the mouth of such a filthy woman?
First he decided he would draw out her savings and buy himself a car. He would trick her into signing something, giving him access to her money, or he would forge her signature. That shouldn’t be too difficult.
‘Are you gonna be in there all day, Herbie?’ Marge whined outside the door.
She was always whining about something, asking him stupid questions about bank raids and women getting raped. Only that very morning she had said to him, ‘Herbie, isn’t it kinda difficult to rape a woman unless she wants it?’
‘You think of nothing but sex,’ he had replied in disgust.
‘There’s nothing wrong with that, is there? I can remember when your tongue used to hang out when I worked in that place with my titties all bare. You loved it.’
‘I don’t love it now, you’re a fat cow. Aren’t you ashamed of your body?’
Marge banged loudly on the bathroom door. ‘I’m gonna pee in my pants if you don’t let me in.’
Reluctantly he climbed out of the shower and, covering himself with a towel, opened the door.
She bounced in, and with a flash of fat thighs plonked herself on the toilet.
‘Hey, Herbie, remember that murder up on er – Miller Drive – just off the Strip? Remember it? Some young girl.’ She paused. ‘What’s the matter?’
He had turned white. The towel had fallen from his hands and he stared at her in horror. She knew. The bitch knew!
With a sense of triumph Marge realized that she had hit on something at last. Louella had been right! Her plan had worked! All the studying of newspapers and remembering names of streets, banks and victims had paid off.
‘What do you know?’ he demanded harshly.
‘Enough,’ she replied, remembering Louella’s advice to stay quiet. ‘Enough to put you behind bars for life.’ She added the last line on impulse; it sounded good. Lana Turner had said it on the late movie two nights before, and the guy she said it to had crumbled, buried his head in his hands and begged for mercy.
Herbert did neither of those things. He just stood there in his hairless nakedness, chewing on his bottom lip and narrowing his small mean eyes.
Marge felt good. In all their years of marriage Herbert had treated her like a piece of furniture, bossed her around, and even beaten her up. No wonder she had let herself get fat. For years before meeting Louella, she had hardly been out of the house except to go to the market. And there had been no sex at all after she lost the baby. Not that Herbert had been any great shakes at it – in and out like a rabbit and straight into the shower – but it had been better than nothing. Later Marge had harboured a grumbling resentment against him, especially when she found the filthy letters he was writing to all those fancy movie stars. The letters had helped, though; instead of Herbert, she took the letters to bed and imagined he was talking to her.
Herbert’s mind was racing. How had the bitch found out? Did he talk in his sleep? How did she know? And more important, what did she want from him?
‘What are you going to do?’ he asked, picking up the towel and wrapping it around himself, trying to stay calm and cool and not beat the fat bitch in case perhaps she had told someone else. Maybe she had told that crabby neighbour, or one of the men she had been with at those disgusting sex orgies.
‘Don’t worry.’ Marge shifted herself off the toilet. ‘Why should I do anything? You’re my husband, aren’t you? And husband and wife should stick together.’ On impulse she put her arms around him and did a little wriggle against his body.
With horror he knew what she wanted.
‘Yeah, you’re my husband and I’m your wife, so even if I wanted to go to the cops it wouldn’t seem right, would it?’
She suddenly pulled off her cheap cotton dress, dragging it impatiently over her head. Then she released her mammoth bosom from a pink bra and shook it at him. ‘I guess we should do some of those things married people like to do together, huh? I guess that would be a lot of fun.’
She tugged at the towel round his waist. He stood quite still. If he did that with her he could catch something. He had seen her with all those other men; she must be crawling with germs.
But she didn’t want him to do that. She wanted him to do something to her much more intimate, something she had tried to get him to do when they were first married but he had refused.
He couldn’t refuse now. Bile rose in his throat and he went to work.
Later when Marge had gone out, smiling, triumphant and unwashed, Herbert wrote to Sunday Simmons, pouring out all his desires and needs, and charged his frustration into a clean plastic bag. She was all he had in life, the only beautiful thing.
He went out, posted the letter, and then went to see her in the Jack Milan movie, where he spent the rest of the day, watching it four times. He left after slipping his hand up the leg of an unsuspecting woman. Before she could complain he was gone.
He bought a newspaper and sat in a coffee shop studying the jobs vacant. He circled several possibilities. Tomorrow he had to get a job. There was no money, and with Marge knowing what he had done he could hardly walk out and leave her; she’d have the cops after him in no time.
The only answer, he realized, was to get rid of Marge – get rid of her once and for all.
It needed planning, but it could be done.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
‘I wouldn’t have thought this would be your scene at all,’ Lady Phillipa said. She was sitting next to Charlie on the bus, her long hair wispy around her unmade-up face. She was wearing a purple patterned flowing dress and no shoes.
‘Why ever not?’ Charlie asked, feeling very much part of the group in his new outfit.
‘Well, you’re part of the whole film star bit, aren’t you? Big cars and houses. Surrounded by possessions. Possessions are your hang-up, aren’t they? You probably use women as possessions too. Tell me this, a woman is a sexual object to you, is she not?’
‘No, she’s not,’ he replied sharply. This ratty girl had a great knack of making him angry. ‘And possessions are not my hangup, as you put it. I don’t even have a house of my own.’
‘Tough shit.’ She started to laugh. ‘Don’t even have one little house of your own, that’s really bad.�
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‘Is there something you don’t like about me?’ he asked tightly.
‘Nothing about you personally. Just you generally. I mean you’re part of the so-called establishment, you’re one of them, not one of us. Why are you hanging around with us?’
‘I’m not hanging around with you – I’m taking a trip with friends, Laurel and Floss and the others. Why does that upset you?’
‘Because you belong to a different generation. You’re my mother’s whole scene. You don’t belong here.’
The different-generation crack hurt Charlie. He stared out of the window and wished he hadn’t come.
After a while Phillipa said, ‘I could do with getting high. Got anything?’
‘Oh, I’m all right for supplying you with pot, am I?’
‘Yes. If you like I’ll pay you by sleeping with you.’
‘That’s the second time you’ve offered me sex. Haven’t you got any money?’
She flushed. ‘I told you I don’t like sex much, money’s more important to me, so I offered you the least important.’
‘Bully for you!’ Maybe one was better off with a big-breasted dumb girl. ‘By the way, I don’t even know your mother.’
‘You don’t have to know her. You’re part of the great showbiz world, aren’t you?’
‘So are Laurel and Floss,’ he pointed out mildly.
‘They’re different.’
He produced a joint and wondered if it was all right to smoke it on the bus. He didn’t feel like it, but he wanted to keep Phillipa company, so he lit up and in two minutes Floss was by his side, hissing, ‘Are you crazy? If the cops should stop us there’d be no trip of any kind.’
‘Sorry,’ said Charlie, quickly stubbing out the cigarette.
Phillipa laughed. ‘Everyone’s so uptight. Get pleasantly happy on a little hash and that’s bad.’
‘I’m with you,’ he agreed.
‘Yes, but the rest of your neurotic age group aren’t.’
Sinners Page 21
