Impassioned and angry, she went through all the drawers. She found a studded leather collar and a Polaroid photograph of a red-haired woman in a complete outfit, brandishing a riding crop. She didn’t understand exactly what that meant, but she knew it implied some sort of contact. He had obviously gone beyond masturbatory fantasies.
Was he having an affair with some bizarre sadistic woman? The images that flooded her mind were appalling, humiliating. The thought of him coming home to bed from some hole in the wall where he had let a pervert whip him was sickening.
She finished packing, not bothering now whether she had enough things. She wanted to get out. She made sure she had her copy of her manuscript and book. She waited until it was seven o’clock in the morning before phoning Betty. She still woke her up.
“I’m coming over right away.”
“Okay,” said a sleepy voice. “Are you all right?”
“I’ll be over right away.” She hung up and looked at the magazines, the collar, the Polaroid lying on the coffee table where she had examined them.
Sooner or later she’d have to tell him. She’d rather do it without having to see his face.
She picked up her suitcase and walked out. She left them behind, exposed grotesque fossils of their now extinct relationship. That would suffice as her Dear John letter.
CHAPTER 17
After Tony had been cleaned up, Andrea Warren drove him back to Malibu in her car. He could remember only a few blurry moments of the drive, his face buried in the soft upholstery of the Mercedes. He woke up when he felt stillness: he saw Andrea’s small body at the door to Garth’s house, talking to two figures, who peered out at him. They came toward him eventually— he tried to get himself up, but his body had a mule’s stubbornness, moving only when forced to.
“Hey, man,” Garth’s face said to him. He felt arms reaching under him.
Helen, looking beautiful, her eyes sympathetic, her long hair falling on tanned shoulders like an innocent Tahitian girl’s, smiled sweetly: “We’ll get you to bed.”
They put his arms around their shoulders and became his crutches. Andrea held the wooden gate open. Tony’s head flopped from side to side, a helpless newborn. He rested on Helen’s shoulder and found himself looking straight down her nightshirt at those remarkable breasts, full and long, big nipples, standing with languid elegance, erect, but not arrogant. He kissed the top of her chest, his lips smacking. “God, they’re beautiful!” he shouted.
She laughed. A deep, throaty, amused noise, unselfconscious and welcoming. He heard Garth say: “He’ll be fine,” to someone, and then time skipped, a needle dancing across the record surface, making nonsense of the music.
Without Tony knowing how, he was in a bedroom. Garth stood a few feet away, naked except for bright blue underpants.
There was hot liquid in him. He forced his eyes open and saw a large mug at his lips, a light green pool lapping at his mouth, its gentle tide infiltrating, warming him, his head clearing. He heard the pleased chuckle again.
“He’s turning me on,” a voice at his side said.
“I don’t mind, if you don’t,” Garth answered, squinting with concentration.
Like a picture coming into focus, he could now see. His eyes must have been closed before. He was lying in their bed, naked. His right thumb was rubbing Helen’s nipple, while his palm caressed its underside. But she wasn’t looking at that, her eyes were on his genitals. Tony glanced down and saw he had an erection, so complete in its yearning that it arched above his belly, a missile angling for launch. She was holding a mug of tea to his mouth.
“I thought booze made you boys impotent,” she commented pleasantly to her husband. They spoke as if he weren’t conscious.
“He’s young,” Garth said with his patented ironic smile, almost a sneer, one comer of his mouth furrowing. Tony closed his eyes again. “And horny. It’s been two months. Told you we should have gotten him a girl.”
“Shouldn’t we let him sleep?” she asked in a halfhearted tone.
“This’ll deal with tomorrow’s hangover.”
“I’m not out,” Tony heard himself say. He wanted to shut up, continue pretending unconsciousness, but he was still too drunk to dissemble. He spoke the words together, all soft vowel sounds.
“What?” Helen asked, moving the cup away.
Tony opened his eyes. At first he couldn’t focus on anything. “I’m awake!” he shouted, so his words would be clear. He stared at her, seeing that she was also nude. He told himself to let go of her breast, but his hand held on. Looking into her eyes, he forgot everything else. They were all that existed in the universe. Again, he wasn’t sure who he was—he felt very young, lying in bed with a beautiful motherly woman smiling lovingly at him. “I’m only pretending to be drunk!” he yelled again, slurring his words so badly that “drunk” came out “drugged.”
He heard Garth laugh. “It’s a very good performance,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” Tony said in his direction, but when he swung his head that way, he felt his stomach swish and slosh sickeningly, a bag full of water precariously connecting his torso to his legs. He groaned.
“Easy,” she said, and he felt her arms, very warm, come around him. He closed his eyes. Her breasts pressed against his tired, tired face. Her heat swelled over him, a mother bear protecting her cold child.
“I’m asleep,” he mumbled and let go of the world.
The rest is silence, David Bergman repeated to himself, hearing Richard Burton’s long hiss of sorrow from his high-school drama-class days, the sour-faced teacher standing rapturously beside the big box of a turntable. David moved through the nightmare with a still mind, becalmed of anxiety. The rest is silence, a dead actor’s voice told him.
Chico had taken it hard. He shouted and pleaded with the Brazilian police, switching from nervous pleas for understanding to arrogant demands for freedom from questioning. He had made a brief feint at pretending they didn’t know who the dead man was—but he soon gave that up and began shouting for the right to communicate with Newstime. Not only to have this story explode in their face but also to be scooped on it was the cause of Chico’s agony.
He hasn’t realized yet, David coolly observed, that our careers are over. Neither of them would ever be Groucho.
After twelve hours they were freed and permitted to leave the country. Newstime having agreed to release and in fact surrendering all the information they had on Gott. In a brief phone conversation with Rounder. Chico had been told that Newstime was making a completely open response to the event.
On the flight home, they had in hand the first burst of world news coverage. The pertinent embarrassment, that Newstime had been in the process of paying Hans Gott for his story, was mentioned only in passing—David knew it would take until the second editions for the criticisms to begin. The simple facts were that his killer, Tamar Gurion, arrested at the scene peacefully, was the descendant of a Jewish family—most of whom, she claimed, had been victimized in the camps by Mengele and Gott. Whether the dead man was in fact Gott was still in question, and it was this problem that obsessed Chico throughout the flight.
“I think we owe it to Mrs. Thorn to make no comment until we’ve talked it out with her and Richard,” Chico said, knowing they would be mobbed by reporters at the airport. David noticed Chico was now calling Rounder by his first name—usually he contemptuously referred to him as Rounder, sometimes as Round Robin.
“I thought he said we should be open,” David said. “Doesn’t that mean answering all questions?”
“We have to talk it all out and then hold a news conference. We’re going to be making appearances anyway.”
“Appearances?”
“Nightline, the Today Show, they’re all gonna talk to us—but you have to do your piece on the killing first.”
David stared off. So he would have to preside over this indignity. Report his own stupidity, cowardice, and avarice as though they were merely the virtues of being
an innocent bystander. What platitudes would he have to invent about the young woman, whose eyes seemed so calm and happy as she killed? Predictably, he would have to take the attitude she wasn’t a hero or a villain, but tragically, another victim. He thought of her, alone now, in a jail filled with … what? Were they monsters too? Would she be electrocuted, guillotined, poisoned, hanged, shot? I guess the guards won’t rape or beat her since she’ll have to be shown to the cameras a lot, he tried to console himself. He prayed that the malicious old man really was Gott. If she had destroyed herself over a fake—the ultimate non-news story—the tone he would have to adopt in the piece … His stomach churned at the thought. He looked at Chico, talking feverishly, a dead man not knowing the killing blow had been struck, a megalomaniacal chicken missing his swelled head, and wished he could choke him. Stuff all the bullshit back down into his throat and out the right end. The rest is silence, he said to himself in bitter silence.
When they landed he realized the isolation on the plane with Chico was a blessing compared to the invasion of his brothers at the airport. The Minicams, the microphones, the notebooks rustling like autumn leaves, the pasty eager faces made bodiless by their equipment, swelled in their way, flowing with their attempt to escape the airport, a moving aggressive pack of animals unconscious of everything but the pursuit of their prey. The lights they cast followed their every step—David noticed other passengers watching the spectacle with confused expressions on their faces. Who are they? he could almost read their lips. You’ll know soon, David thought to himself. He was going to make every network, every paper, every wire service, both national newsmagazines. He could see the camera photos, read the captions, hear the laughter at Weekly, and write their stories with just the right touch of sardonic disparagement. Two of the big boys had fucked up, rushed off half-cocked into a dubious arrangement, and were now at least responsible for the ruination of a young woman, and possibly for the death of an innocent con man.
David stared at them. He felt no panic at the press of their bodies and the thrusts of their questions. I know who you are, he thought to himself, cold passing throughout his system, numbing fear or embarrassment. Chico, however, was bursting with energetic terror: “Sorry, no comment. We’ll have a news conference as soon as possible. Nothing to add.” He tried desperately to behave grandly, confidently, but surely the scene must have brought it home:
Their careers were over. They’d crapped in their pants, and Mrs. Thorn wasn’t going to admit she had toilet-trained them badly. They wouldn’t be fired. But all the rungs of the ladder above them were being sawed off now—and eventually, when enough time had passed, they would be “promoted” to some special project away from the weekly magazine, to the book division, to work on new magazines, something on another floor, away from the barrel so their rot wouldn’t spread.
“Come on, fellas, give us a break,” some print reporter shouted. “We’re newsies—give us a crumb. Was it Gott?”
“Everything on that point, all the information we have, has already been given to you,” Chico said, sweating and speaking nervously, so that this truth sounded like a desperate lie. Every time he responded at all, as though his answers were the cries of a desperate animal, the pack drew closer, baring their teeth, tasting the meal they would soon have.
“Mr. Bergman? You’re Jewish, aren’t you?” Janet Halston from CBS shouted above the rest as they reached the doors to the street. It was the first question directed only to him. “How did you feel,” she continued, knowing the answer to her previous question, “sitting across from one of the most heinous Nazis?”
As though a high-pitched whistle had been blown that only the dogs of the press could hear, the pack paused, their lights, their eyes, their pens focused on David.
All he could think of was the anchorman’s expression, neutral, superior, after this clip of his answer would be shown.
“Did you tell Tamar Gurion of the meeting ahead of time?” someone called out.
“Oh, please!” Chico said, and tried to push them through.
But Janet Halston, holding her mike casually, her cool blond hair unruffled in this crush, clung to David, asking her question in a tone of gentle insinuation, as though they were lovers confessing sins. “Did you feel sympathy for the killer’s action?”
David turned away from her—he didn’t want her to get a usable clip—and addressed the print reporter. “I had never met or known of Tamar Gurion until she appeared in the coffee shop. I did not tell her.”
“No more!” Chico shouted into the shouts. David smiled to himself at the panicked tones coming from Janet Halston. She couldn’t use his answer. She had thought she’d get something. Chico pulled him through the doors. A limo, waiting to take them to Newstime to meet with Mrs. Thorn and Rounder, was there for them to dive into. David turned back and caught Janet’s frantic eye—she was shouting her provocative questions at him. He winked at her while he closed the dark limousine window electronically. Fuck you, honey, he whispered. Fuck you.
Tony heard the insistent surf and felt the bobbing movement of the water. He was sleek and young, a boy lying happily on the shore, stroked with love. There were bodies beside him whom he could trust. The agony was over, the poison out of his system. I’m not hung-over, was the first clear thought.
My prick is in someone’s hand, was his second.
Tony opened his eyes to see a gray light. The soft surface was bedding, not sand. The crash of the water came from outside, the bobbing was Bill Garth fucking his wife right next to Tony.
The actor moved slowly on top of his woman, sleepily, in a steady rhythm, his eyes closed, his forehead butting gently against a pillow. Helen’s arms were around him, kneading his broad muscled back. One of Garth’s hands was holding Tony’s erection, his fingers lightly closing on the tip, flower petals closing and blossoming.
Tony closed his eyes. The lids felt rough, a harsh curtain closing. The back of his skull opened like a trapdoor and he felt he was falling into unconsciousness. Helen groaned softly. Garth’s hand felt feminine, gentle, soothing. Their motion on the bed quickened. The hand clutched him. He opened his eyes, the world coming into place wobbly, a table in danger of collapse. But I could stop this, he argued to himself. What’s the proper etiquette? I need you to make my picture, but get your hand off my penis.
“Ah,” Garth said as he climaxed, like a runner taking a first sip of liquid after exercise. He moved off Helen and noticed Tony. “Hello,” he said casually. Helen, her face soft from sleep, her body glistening with her husband’s sweat, turned in his direction.
She smiled. “How are you feeling?”
“He’s still hard,” Garth reported, and squeezed tightly before letting go, a handshake of farewell. “That was fun,” he said.
“Don’t get used to it,” Helen teased. They behaved like a cute television couple about the situation, as though they were involved in this week’s harmless prank.
Garth got up. Helen turned on her side, revealing her spectacular figure, and put a hand on Tony’s chest, lovingly, patting him. Tony was hypnotized by her body, entranced by his intimate proximity. “We’re willing to have your mother killed if you want,” she said.
“Damn right,” Garth said, putting a robe on. “I’m gonna make Tony some more herb tea.” He shuffled out, humming.
“You’re lucky to be alive. That woman who brought you home could barely stand.” She glanced down at his penis. Then she smiled. “Does your mother often get you drunk and then tell you you have no talent?”
“I told you about it?” Tony’s voice croaked. He felt childlike, but his voice was an old man’s. He looked at her with awe, flabbergasted by the perfection of her tall, full, but fatless olive-skinned body.
“You talked constantly. Even while you were passing out, you went out mumbling. It was kinda sad and wonderful at the same time.” She took his hand and kissed it. “Poor baby.”
Garth’s voice boomed from the doorway. “You want anything
?”
She turned her head to answer. Her long hair streamed like a waterfall over her shoulders. “Coffee.” Tony felt her take hold of his penis, offering it to the air, pleading its case, showing an object for consideration. “Can’t I do something about this?” she asked her husband.
Tony looked to Garth for an answer with mild curiosity, as though he himself were merely a spectator watching an interesting drama unfold. The sexual ache of his genitals seemed divorced from his consciousness, but he was also enslaved to the desire for her, unable to resist its needs, no matter how bizarre or disgusting the circumstance. The question seemed pertinent: shouldn’t somebody do something about loving him?
“I don’t know,” Garth said, a hand running through the hair over his right temple. “That really kind of freaks me out. I’m pretty possessive about you.” He frowned. “Do what?”
My God, Tony thought, it’s a negotiation. His brain recoiled further from them and his circumstance while her hand—warm and casual, tentatively considering the value of his passion, a tempted shopper afraid the cost might be too high—made protest impossible. He not only wanted her, he wanted Garth’s permission. He had slept in their bed, breaking the barrier of house servant, but that had been pity—or perversion. This might be more, a kind of acceptance into the family, an embrace of both his being and his talent. Surely Garth’s agreement would be forthcoming only if Tony belonged, not only in their hearts but also in their world.
Helen turned to Tony, her long hair brushing his shoulder. He shivered. Her hand rested on the base of his penis, the fingers curling around his testicles. “What would you like?” she asked.
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