by Judith Gould
Tamara nodded obeisantly, and Pearl continued kneading her tensed muscles, her hands creeping lower and lower, until they were near the young woman's nubile breasts. Tamara, though she was not totally innocent and guileless, if inexperienced in some matters, let the touch of the other woman soothe her. Pearl was proving useful, after all. The fingers felt so gentle, so light, so . . . caressing.
There was a sudden knock on the door, and both women jumped. Pearl jerked her hands away.
'It's time, Miss Boralevi,' a stagehand called out. 'Mr. Ziolko should be on the set at any moment!'
Chapter 3
Naked or dressed, Louis Frederic Ziolko was too impressive a man to easily melt into a crowd. For one thing, there was his great height, his naturally wavy black hair, his princely Renaissance nose, his sensual, arrogant lips and his penetrating obsidian eyes. For another, he had the toned, well-developed body of the natural athlete. He looked a casting agent's dream for the ultimate Hollywood prop, the quintessential playboy. And playboy he was, when the opportunity presented itself.
To outsiders who didn't know any better, making movies seemed the ultimate casual life, consisting of forty-five percent glamour and forty-five percent parties, with an occasional ten percent of lackadaisical work thrown in, when in reality the exalted citizens of this celluloid fiefdom thrived on the greatest work to lowest relaxation ratio known since slavery. Filmmaking being a gruelling six-day-a-week business with inhuman hours that stretched from dawn to well past sunset, these relentlessly driven workaholics naturally took spirited advantage of their one well-earned day of rest—Sunday. Sunday afternoons consisted of endless rounds of swimming parties, tennis matches, and social get-togethers. These legendary events in the Hollywood Hills—most notably Lookout Mountain—actually began on Saturday nights, with stars roaming from house to house, carrying their cocktails with them. Appian Way on Lookout Mountain became known as the Gold Coast, and if it didn't provide enough action, the stars would descend from their roosts, dressed to the nines, and head for Ciro's and the Trocodero to dine and dance. In many ways, these much-celebrated parties were just an extension of work. No one dared turn down the imperial summons of a studio chief’s invitation, even if it was well known that he wanted his lawns sprinkled with stars, starlets, directors, and writers to be photographed for the ravenous newspapers and magazines or for the studio's very own news reels, thereby creating news out of play and exploiting it as a great public-relations event. Not surprisingly then, Hollywood parties turned into the stuff of legends.
For his part, Louis Ziolko was a regular feature at all these Sunday gatherings, seemingly none the worse for wear after dancing the night away with a beauty on the Sunset Strip. He was a demon on the tennis courts and a fish in the pools, which kept him in superb physical condition. He appeared more mature than his thirty years, and since he was an extraordinarily handsome, cultured, well-mannered bachelor, and women in Hollywood are no different from women the world over, he had more than his fair share of beauties breathing down his neck for friendship, marriage, or a casual tumble in bed in exchange for helping further their careers, or sometimes simply for the pure pleasure of it.
He revelled in this female attention. These Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons helped create Louis Ziolko the legend: the successful, debonair, rich, and sexually heroic young director-about-town. More than one woman had let herself be seduced by him in the mistaken hope of obtaining a ring for her finger; but only one woman ever had, and like most exwives, she was a fading memory to Louis, except when alimony time rolled around.
Despite the torrid affairs and scandals which brewed with the regularity of clockwork, especially in the Hollywood Hills, the film community was a close-knit one, and most studio bosses were downright prudish when it came to matters of sex. Consequently Louis was discreet regarding his more notorious sexual affairs. Otherwise, he was dauntless in his actions and beliefs and cared not an iota for the opinions of others. While he sometimes bedded women who spread the word of his prowess, it was also to his advantage to pay for the gratification of the female company he craved—a thirst he slaked by picking up various prostitutes whose daily path he would not be in danger of crossing. Paying for sexual favours was not abhorrent to him, it was practical. He welcomed paying for services rendered, followed by a swift good-bye, with no questions asked, nothing known about him to his partner and vice versa, and above all, no lingering relationships. This was preferable to involved, potentially dangerous affairs that might eventually explode out of proportion and become more complicated than he wanted them to be.
If anything made his life less than perfect, it was the fact that he was unmarried. The trouble was, he had yet to meet a woman he thought he could stand to live with.
While Tamara waited with bated breath for Louis Ziolko's imminent arrival, she had no idea that he was not then on the set, that he had no intention of going there, and that he was certainly not in a good mood. Last night he had spent drinking and screwing vigorously; this morning he had awakened to the worst headache in memory, and worse, he could see everything he'd ever worked for slipping away. Literally. Right in front of his eyes.
Yesterday his troubles had begun when his burgundy-and-black model 'J' Duesenberg had given up the ghost in the middle of Wilshire Boulevard and had had to be towed to a garage, where, he'd been informed it would have to 'set for a week or two till them parts come from Dee-troit'. He'd have to use his dark blue Chrysler. Later that night, he'd had to thumb through nearly every page in his 'little black book' before he'd finally struck lucky and found a girl who was available for the night. He'd never used her before but had heard she gave good service.
This morning, he'd awakened to an ominous rumble. His first thought was: My house!
Even in his sleep, he'd heard the ear-splitting groan, and he could have sworn that the house had actually bucked like a goddamn bronco in a rodeo. The terrible thought which haunts all Californians had flashed instantaneously into his mind: Quake! The quake! The killer quake!
His heart had leapt to his throat as he'd jerked bolt upright from the midst of his peaceful, dreamy sleep, only to catch the call girl rifling his baubles, making a neat pile of his gold-and-diamond cufflinks, diamond evening studs, gold lighter, Cartier cigarette case, and gold Rolex watch.
Then, just as he'd leapt from the bed to throttle the two-bit whore, a horrible cracking sound rent the air. A deep, shuddering rumble had followed, and they'd both been thrown to the deep-pile carpet.
Unlike Louis Ziolko, who was Brooklyn-born and bred, the girl was a seasoned Californian and found her feet first. Forgetting the expensive baubles on the bureau, she bawled: 'Quake!' and made a naked beeline for the nearest doorway.
Yanking that particular door open proved to be a dreadful mistake. It opened onto the narrow walk-around deck facing the rising vertical hillside of the canyon behind the house. Ziolko was suddenly wide-awake, horrifed by the wall of glutinous mud flowing ceaslessly through the door like brown vomit spewing from a monstrous mouth. He knew in a flash that unless he acted fast, both of them would be smothered within seconds.
He yanked the terrified girl by the arm and they both escaped by making a dash for the balcony door on the other side of the room. Even as they ran across the balcony toward the driveway, Ziolko couldn't help wishing that he'd let the thief drown in that morass of mud, but this belated thought instantly fled from his mind as another, more treacherous one took sudden precedence: the balcony underfoot, which hung three hundred feet above Los Angeles, was actually groaning and heaving, its huge concrete slabs buckling one after the other.
Earthquake! Ziolko's mind still screamed in silent terror. The killer quake's here!
Only once they stood on the still-unmoving driveway did it occur to Ziolko that the ground all around was steady. Only the hillside on which the house was perched was sliding down the canyon in a sheet of liquid mud.
Now, standing naked in the torrential icy blast of rain,
Ziolko screeched, 'It's a mud slide! A goddamn mud slide!' Shivering with cold as they stood on the relative safety of the driveway, both he and the girl riveted their eyes on Ziolko's pride and joy—his house. The cantilevered Art Deco structure, all concrete beams, sturdy pilings driven deep into the hillside, and streamlined balconies that jutted proudly out over Los Angeles, had never been intended for this nearly vertical site, a fact which the previous owners, an asbestos tycoon and his young starlet wife, had taken no heed of whatsoever. They instructed the worried contractor to sink pilings into the soft hillside so that the ocean-liner superstructure of the house looked as if a massive tidal wave had detached it in toto from a seagoing hull out in the Pacific and washed it up against the hillside.
A year later, the wife of the tycoon had developed a passion for all things Latin and moved into a Spanish stucco 'hacienda' in Bel Air complete with a new Cuban playboy husband whose sexual endowment and endurance were legendary.
When Ziolko learned that the house was for sale he'd promptly purchased it, had a huge swimming pool blasted into the hillside at the far end of the house, dotted the rooms sparsely with sleek-veneered Art Deco furnishings, and settled in contentedly, laughing at the spoilsports who in turn laughed and condemned the canyon-hugging folly.
But now it was he who was damning the house, all five vertical acres of sparsely vegetated grounds, the sixteen huge rooms and four-car garage, the granite-tiled patio surrounding the heated swimming pool—he was cursing, in fact, everything and everyone. Angrily he watched his beautiful house crack neatly in half, one part sliding piecemeal down the steep hillside, the other still perched precariously on the hill. For a long, intensely sad moment he had a child's-eye view of the rear of a dollhouse—three stories of exposed, cut-away rooms: the sweeping, monumental staircase, the dining room, and the bedroom where the mud was still gushing through to fall in a perfect brown waterfall down into the canyon bed three hundred feet below.
'Goddamn sons of bitches who sold me this fucking place!' he thundered. 'I'll sue their goddamn asses off!'
'My watch!' the girl sobbed quietly. 'My clothes.' She stood there pathetically trying to cover her exposed breasts and the blonde patch of hair between her thighs. 'All of my best things were in that bedroom!' she wailed, her teeth chattering and her body racked by shivers from the cold.
'Fuck you, you two-bit whoring thief!' Ziolko bellowed. 'It's my goddamn house I'm worried about!'
Ziolko and the girl, staring from their ringside spot beside the Chrysler, watched awestruck as, with a doomsday rumble and a decidedly Cecil B. de Mille effect, the remainder of the house cracked into four giant pieces, alternately sliding and somersaulting down the rain-drenched hillside. Tons of molten mud slid down after it, a slow-moving river to bury it forever.
Slowly Louis Ziolko lifted his rain-and-tear-streaked face. Abruptly he threw back his head and began to laugh uproariously, the rain pouring down his face, not caring that the girl thought he was a psycho bound for the loony bin.
What a farce!
Hell, now that he'd had a minute to think things out, they weren't all that bad after all! At least he'd managed to obtain this grand house in the first place, he still had his enviable position as the number-one director in a town full of directors, and as such, wielded immense influence and power—no easy feat for anyone to obtain, let alone Louis Ziolko from Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Thank God he'd managed to escape that. It hadn't been easy, but he'd always had sense: street sense, business sense, art sense, motion-picture sense. The senses he hadn't been born with, he'd simply cultivated.
'My son, the macher,' his mother, Zelda, used to complain disparagingly to anyone who would listen. 'Too smart for his own good, he is. He'll come to no good, I know it. A nogoodnik he is.'
But these very qualities had served him well in the past and were serving him well now. Otherwise, he'd never have had the foresight to sign an enormously expensive insurance policy to go along with the deed to the house. The place was tremendously overinsured.
Hell, he'd end up making money!
Things were looking better and better. Who would have believed it? If he'd needed the money, which he didn't, and if he'd tried to sell that goddamned white elephant of a house, he would have had to wait for years to find a sucker. So right there, he was coming out ahead. The insurance company might scream and tear out its hair, but it had no choice but to pay up.
And as far as the film business went, his position had never been better. The Depression was bringing out moviegoers by the droves, perhaps because it got people's minds off their problems. His studio boss, Oscar Skolnik, O.T. as he was known, the legendary wunderkind of International Artists— what Irving Thalberg was to MGM—had already selected him to direct three new pictures for IA over the next eighteen months. Another ninety thousand dollars there.
Indeed, California wasn't called the Golden State for nothing!
'Now what do we do?' the girl wailed plaintively, yanking Louis Ziolko back to harsh reality to the rain-drenched, menacing present of the chill Los Angeles hillside.
Ziolko didn't waste time or words. 'We drive out of this hellhole before the rest of the goddamn hillside ends up down there and buries us along with it,' he said grimly. 'That's what we do.' He yanked the driver's side of the midnight-blue Chrysler's door open and climbed inside, gratified to see the key. The leather upholstery felt like sticky ice against his bare wet buttocks, but he scarcely noticed the discomfort. He reached across the seat and flung open the passenger door for the girl. She stood there stupidly, not knowing quite what to do.
'Well, get in!' Ziolko ordered tersely.
The girl glanced around uncertainly, as if she had any other option, then slid in awkwardly beside him. 'I haven't got any clothes,' she complained morosely, staring out the rain-streaked windshield.
'You'll get some.' Ziolko turned the key and stepped on the starter. The engine hesitated, sputtered, and abruptly died. Ziolko cursed and pressed on the starter again, careful not to wear out the battery. After a few more coughs and stops, the engine finally turned over steadily. He let out a sigh of relief. 'Goddamn rain,' he muttered. 'How come it never rained like this in New York?' he growled.
'Because it snows in New York,' the girl muttered sullenly.
Ziolko ignored her and switched on the windshield wipers. They began squeaking slowly to and fro, barely able to keep up with the blinding buckets of rain the sky seemed to fling against the glass. Finally a vague, blurry arc of vision appeared. He jerked at the gear lever, threw the car into reverse, and looked over his shoulder in vain to make out the end of the drive through the rain-streaked rear window. The rear bumper made unceremonious contact with the hillside behind them, and both he and the girl were flung forward in their seats.
'Jesus!' the girl breathed, gingerly touching her forehead. 'I hit my head on the windshield. I could have been killed, you bastard!'
'Not soon enough,' Ziolko grunted under his breath. All he knew was that the further he got away from this goddamn sliding hillside, and the sooner he dumped the girl, the better. After that he'd have a chance to get resettled, to think. The last thing he needed now was a shrew.
But he consoled himself with the fact that the engine throbbed steadily in anticipation, and he swerved the car in a half-circle and nosed the hood straight up the steep drive, more by memory than vision. He didn't bother to come to a stop at the intersection, and swung right onto the canyon road. He figured that chances of a collision were rare; the road was hardly ever used, especially not in miserable weather like this.
Ziolko sneaked a glance sideways. The girl sat hunched over, shivering convulsively, her teeth chattering and her flawless, sculptured skin textured with gooseflesh. At least she was keeping quiet about his lethal driving on the hairpin curves.
After a long silence, the girl slid a sideways glance over at Ziolko. 'Got any cash to tide me over?' she asked in a small voice. 'I need to buy some clothes to replace those. Besides, y
ou didn't pay me yet.'
Ziolko burst out laughing, a laugh from the depths of his guts. It was the first good laugh he'd had all morning, and it did him a world of good.
'What's so funny?' the girl demanded belligerently, furtively sliding further down in her seat.
Ziolko slammed his fists on the horn for emphasis. 'I'll tell you what's so funny. Money! You want money, I'll back up the way we came and you can go scavenging around down where the house is. That's where my fucking money is!'
The girl muttered a curse under her breath.
'Reach in back. There're some blankets on the seat. Give me one of them, you take the other. Least we won't be naked as jaybirds. That's all we need now, being thrown in the clink.' Ziolko pulled over to the shoulder of the road, screeched to a halt, and they wrapped themselves into the scratchy plaid Shetland wool. 'Where should I drop you?'
'I told you. My apartment's down near the Strip.'
Ziolko reached past her, punched the walnut glove compartment open with a stab of his finger and fished out a five-dollar bill he kept handy for gassing up in emergencies. 'Here's a fin. Take it. I'll drop you off and send the rest to you later today.'
The girl palmed the money eagerly, and sat in a less sullen silence. Ziolko tried to guess her age. She claimed to be twenty-one and looked it, but close up, seventeen was probably more like it. Well, the younger the better.
The girl looked surprised when Ziolko made a sudden left turn into a deserted side road, the branches of wet trees brushing and whipping the car. Then he slammed the brakes so hard they were both thrown forward once again.
'Where are we?' the girl demanded. 'You crazy or something? We aren't even in town yet.'
