by Alan Russell
“What’s your point?”
“I kept playing the Kevin Bacon game with Cannon and Robinson. It wasn’t hard finding connections, but they didn’t seem to be the right ones. It’s no secret that Hollywood’s an incestuous town, with all sorts of ties with or without Kevin Bacon in the picture. The only obvious connection between Cannon and Robinson was that he had directed films with other actors she had worked with. But my mistake was that I was looking for something that was there, instead of something that wasn’t there. You.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Last year you were supposed to be in a film directed by Joseph Cannon. He had to bow out because of his difficulties. As for Robinson, both of you were up for the part in Mrs. Lincoln’s Bedroom. When Haley dropped out of contention, you got that role. Most of that film was shot in Washington, DC.”
“So what?”
“I assume in the not too distant past that someone—some organization—noticed your burgeoning friendship with the vice president. Maybe they were privy to information that the relationship even went beyond that. They decided your proximity to Tennesson was in their best interests.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“You saw the vice president when he visited less than two weeks ago—”
“Hundreds of people saw him.”
“You rented a Jaguar and left it at the Palms. The night of the fund-raiser you had the studio limo at your disposal. You were discreet, neither getting picked up nor dropped off at the Palms. My guess is that you used a third car, parking it in a location where the limo picked you up and dropped you off. What I know for sure is that you took the Jaguar using a second set of keyless remotes. That allowed you to bypass the valets at the Palms and permitted you and the vice president to slip away unnoticed.”
Lanie was shaking her head and rolling her eyes. Her body language told him he was being ridiculous; no, crazy. But she was waiting to hear what he had to say. “You missed your calling as a fiction writer.”
“Something happened with you and Tennesson that night.”
“I suppose we had a three-way with Elvis. That’s about par for the tabloids you work for, isn’t it? Or maybe the vice president and I were abducted by aliens. Isn’t that one of the tabloids’ take on my interest in astronomy? They said I was abducted at the age of twelve, and that’s why I keep looking up to the skies waiting for my friends to return.”
“Something bad happened.”
She tried to hide the pain, but he saw it in her eyes. He knew that look from his own mirror, and felt her hurt. Even after all this time, he knew it wouldn’t take much for his own stitching to tear away. Without even knowing the particulars, he still knew her pain.
Lanie assumed a pose of hauteur. “I suppose you have a witness to this bad thing. No. Witnesses. Probably a convention of nuns saw the whole thing.”
“No witnesses,” said Graham.
She didn’t seem all that relieved by the news. Graham remembered how there were times when he had wanted to be caught, when the idea of punishment seemed not only right but appealing. He had waited for the other shoe to drop, and then had learned it didn’t need to drop; every day the wait ground him down that much more.
“Get out.” She said the words softly, with her eyes closed. Graham would rather she had screamed them.
Lanie started shaking. Her body tensed in an effort to regain control, but her hands seemed to have a mind of their own. She opened her eyes, and saw that Graham was watching her.
“Leave or . . . I’ll call . . . the guard.” It took her three breaths to complete the one sentence, to keep control.
“Believe me, I know what you’re feeling.”
Lanie walked toward the phone. Graham knew he couldn’t leave. For once, he wasn’t thinking about himself. If Lanie was left alone, he was afraid she would kill herself.
She picked up the phone. Graham reached around her shoulders, cradling her hands and the phone between his fingers.
“Unhand me.”
Graham didn’t let go. He could feel her civil war. Her body was rigid from trying to hold in her raging emotions. Graham had been there. He remembered his own struggles.
It was never his intention to tell her anything. Any kind of admission would weaken his position. But he remembered how he had felt when Smith dangled his secret in front of him. He had wanted to throw up; he had wanted amnesia; he had wanted to run away. Time was supposed to heal all wounds, but it hadn’t.
“I told you that Smith blackmailed me. A few years ago I did something bad, something wrong. My actions resulted in the deaths of two people. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about what I did. I would give anything to relive that one act and take back what I did, and I know it’s the same with you. I’ve heard that men who have gone to war and been in battle can sense that same pall in others. It’s an experience that marks people in a certain way. That’s how it is with us. We have that connection. There are very few people who can tell you, ‘I know what you’re going through.’ I can.”
Lanie stopped trying to pick up the phone. With his arms still encircling her, she turned around and looked up at him, staring at his face to see what was there. Her scrutiny unnerved him. He hadn’t felt that exposed since being on the oil rig with Smith. But she wasn’t looking at him critically. Tears welled up in her eyes. Together, they were secret sharers of each other’s pain. She started sobbing, and he felt her chest and stomach convulse against his own. His eyes started watering, and Graham bit hard on his lip, drawing blood. The physical pain was easier for him to deal with, and prevented his tearing.
She burrowed her head deep into his chest. Graham didn’t think; he reacted. Someone else needed comforting. He started stroking her head with his hand and nuzzling it with his mouth. He couldn’t forgive himself, but forgiving her was easy. He kissed her forehead, and then kissed the tears on her cheeks. Their lips brushed, separated, and came back together.
It started more as mouth-to-mouth resuscitation than a passionate kiss. Both were breathing life into the other. But the comforting quality of their kisses suddenly changed.
This isn’t happening, Graham thought, kissing her. This can’t be real. But it was. He kissed her again. It was as if something had been switched on inside of each of them, something that had started with a little spark and was now flaring. They held each other tightly, afraid to let go. With no conscious thought of direction they swayed and moved, dancers in search of a rhythm. Step. Kiss. Step. Gasp. Their mouths locked, and they accelerated forward, rolling out the doorway. They pinballed along the hallway, his back against the wall, then hers. It was a tilt game, each of them out of control, each of them free-falling. Together, they fell through an open doorway and dropped onto a bed.
Buttons loosened and zippers fell. Their hands groped each other. No words passed between them until Graham raised himself to enter her. She reached out with her hands to welcome him into her, but then with tensed arms delayed his entry.
With shortened breath, she gasped, “My real name is Elaine Bernsdorf.”
“What are you telling me?” Graham asked.
“I am telling you who you’re going to bed with. Not Miss L. Not somebody you have seen on the screen. Elaine Bernsdorf.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Elaine.”
Clarifying that point seemed important to her. For a moment, Graham wondered if they should shake hands, but he remembered her fingers were already occupied. So did she. Lanie guided him into her, and for a time they were able to escape their thoughts.
Graham took a deep breath. He was physically at peace, felt about a hundred pounds lighter. He resisted consciousness, did his best to just hold on to his feeling of contentment, but his mind was surfacing from its cave. Lanie Byrne was lying next to him, naked and still. He had just made love to Miss L. Graham. He wanted to pinch hims
elf, he who prided himself on never being starstruck, who thought he was impervious to Hollywood’s glitter. But God she was beautiful.
Lanie felt him stirring. She raised her head and took stock of the room. The blankets were on the floor, as were the pillows. The sheets were still clinging to the bed, but they were wet and askew.
She shook her head.
“What?” asked Graham.
“Believe me when I say that what happened is very, very out of character for me. I have to be emotionally involved with a man before I get intimate. I don’t even know you.”
“I think a part of you does know me. We’ve been shaped in the same crucible.”
“Shaped or warped?”
Graham answered with a question of his own. “Is that why you introduced yourself to me? Because you didn’t think we knew each other well enough?”
“Partly,” she said, not choosing to elaborate beyond that.
The glow from their lovemaking was already fading on Lanie. On her face, he could see her shadows were coming back to roost. The silence between them grew, at odds with the noise that had shaken the room minutes before. Graham tried to reach out to her with a story.
“For a time I worked as a war photographer,” he said. “One night I holed up in this little village. Another photographer and I—I think his name was Jack—ended up having to share a room. We also shared a bottle.
“We started telling stories. It’s odd how sometimes you open up more quickly with a stranger than you do a friend, and that’s how it was. Jack told me about a funeral he had attended a few years back. He was friends with both the man who died and his wife. The man’s death was a shock to everyone. He was one of those fitness types, and wasn’t even forty when he died of heart failure.
“After the funeral, Jack consoled the widow. He said they were crying in each other’s arms one moment, and the next he was hiking up her black dress and they were making love. Jack said it was the strangest thing that ever happened to him.
“I was a bit skeptical of the story at first. I asked Jack if he’d ever been intimate with the woman before, and he told me that the one and only time they were ever together was after that funeral.
“I asked him about the widow, and her marriage. I figured she had to be in a loveless marriage, or had wanted to get posthumous revenge against her husband for some reason. Jack said I was way off the mark. He said she loved her husband, and that they had a good marriage.
“So I asked the obvious: How could the two of them be screwing each other on the very day of the funeral? Jack asked me if I had ever heard of people laughing at funerals. I told him that I had, but I said I thought that was understandable. Extreme emotions produce extreme responses. But what they had done, I told him, went far beyond that.
“Jack said that he had given a lot of thought to what happened. He said that he and the widow were both numbed by the death, though he knew that didn’t justify what occurred. Jack could understand how others might view their actions as debased or grossly inappropriate, but in his own heart he said that what they did felt right. Grief brought them together. For a time, each was the other’s life preserver. They felt like they were drowning inside, so they grabbed onto what they could. Jack said they came together to prove they were still alive. Sex was a way of keeping death at arm’s length.”
Lanie thought about the story before responding. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” said Graham. “Maybe there was something to what Jack said. Maybe both of us needed a reminder that we’re alive.”
“Or maybe,” she said, almost sounding playful, “all of you photographers are a little strange.”
“Don’t let me get started about actors.”
“I’ll concede you that one.”
Lanie slid off the bed and walked over to a walk-in closet. It was dark enough that she wasn’t much more visible than a shadow; it was light enough for Graham to appreciate what he could see. She pulled down two terry robes, draped one over her back, and brought the other back to Graham. While she picked up the strewn pillows, he put on the robe.
“I’m afraid to look at the time,” she said. “I have to be on the set early. Very early. Makeup’s going to have a hard time trying to make me look presentable.”
“I doubt that.”
“I’m not fishing for compliments. You’ve heard how a camera puts ten pounds on you? Sleepless nights put ten years on you.”
“Is that my cue to leave?”
“I am explaining that I’m very tired.”
“That’s two of us. I haven’t been home in days. I’ve been on the run.”
“From the brothers?”
“They’re the tip of the iceberg that I know. I am afraid that what’s underneath scares me even more.”
“If I could assure you that you were no longer in any danger, could you just take the money and forget everything?”
“I’m listening.”
“This is off the record. Do you swear to that? Can you make a vow to whatever is holy to you?”
What was there that was holy to him, Graham wondered. Lanie was looking him in the eye when he said, “Yes.”
She didn’t seem to know how to begin. Finally, she said, “My real name is Elaine Bernsdorf.”
Again, she made the pronouncement as if that should explain something.
“I decided I wanted a simplified stage name, so I changed it to Lanie Byrne.”
That was an old thespian tradition. Marilyn Monroe, John Wayne, Winona Ryder, Jamie Foxx, Vin Diesel, Natalie Portman, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and countless others had also changed their names.
“By blood, I am a Jew, though not a practicing one. My mother is more of a Buddhist than anything, at least when it suits her, and my father is an agnostic. He says that when it comes to religion, he’s too indifferent to even be an atheist.
“My father is a geologist, a hired gun for the oil companies. His job takes him around the world. I was only eight when my parents decided to send me to a year-round boarding school. According to them, they did that to provide me with a more stable environment.
“When my parents were out of the country for the holidays, which seemed to be most years, I went and stayed at my Aunt Miriam and Uncle Hi’s. It would be hard to find two more different people than my father and his brother. Uncle Hi—his real name was Hiram—was outgoing and loud. He couldn’t seem to give enough hugs. Uncle Hi also had very firm beliefs. Family, community, and religion were all very important to him. It was through my uncle’s family that I learned about Judaism.
“One of the things my uncle was proudest of was his being a sayan.”
After a moment’s pause, Graham asked, “What’s that?”
“A sayan is a Jewish volunteer who assists the Israeli intelligence service.”
“The Mossad?”
A nod. “My uncle owned commercial and residential real estate in New York City that he allowed the Mossad to use for their own purposes.”
“In what way?”
“All sorts of ways, and all of them secret. When the Mossad went through my uncle there were no paper trails. No deposits. No governmental red tape. Sometimes Uncle Hi was able to entice certain enemies of Israel to rent a particular apartment or building. Naturally, the Mossad was given full access to those rentals, which allowed them easy monitoring. My uncle said his ‘special friends’—that’s what he called the Mossad—sometimes used his office space to set up phony businesses that allowed them to target their enemies. ‘Friends you keep close,’ my uncle always said, ‘but enemies you keep even closer.’ He and his network helped Israel however they could.”
“Network?”
“The sayanim. Around the world there are tens of thousands of sayanim like my uncle. They offer financial, professional, and material support to the Mossad. A
s a resource, they’re invaluable, like the sayan ticket agent at the airline counter who magically eliminates any record of a Mossad agent’s passage, or the sayan gun-shop owner who provides weapons without paperwork or a waiting period, or the anonymous sayan doctor who treats those kinds of injuries that hospitals might be nosy about. Without the sayanim, Israeli intelligence would not be nearly as effective as it is.”
“You were recruited as one of those?”
“Yes.”
“To do what?”
“To tell you would be a betrayal. I can say that nothing I ever did was anti-American.”
“But you spied nonetheless?”
“I assisted.”
“Why?”
“Maybe to atone for not being a very good Jew. Israel has enemies on all its borders. It is an island under siege. I decided to be its friend.”
“You could have been its friend by writing a fat check to B’nai B’rith instead of being Mata Hari.”
“I was no spy.”
“Then what were you?”
Lanie didn’t answer.
“Did you tell anyone of your involvement?”
She shook her head. “No. I was under strict orders to keep silence.”
“Not even your uncle?”
“He died several years ago. Part of the reason I decided to work with the Mossad was that I knew Uncle Hi would have wanted me to. He considered his contributions as a sayan to be one of the crowning achievements of his life.”
“How did the Mossad approach you?”
“One of the brothers—Ari Cohen—was attending a Hollywood function and came up to me.”
“The brothers are the men who abducted me?”
“Yes.”
“Did this Ari identify himself as being with the Mossad?”
“Not at first. Ari told me he was a friend of my Uncle Hi’s, and that his death had saddened him greatly. He said my uncle was a great man who had saved countless lives and contributed to the state of Israel in more ways than anyone could ever imagine. Without being too obvious, it was clear Ari was talking about my uncle being a sayan.”
