Photoplay

by Hallie Ephron

  The fall might have been staged, but Bunny’s injuries were not. Duane remembered the door slamming. Puta. Whore. He wondered if Bunny had been hurt before the party, if the fall had been faked in order to account for her injuries. That so-­called doctor might even have been in on it.

  Duane wondered, too, if Bunny’s daughter was so easily duped. He thought not, as he followed Joelen’s gaze across the room to where Tito was now standing in the shadow of a tall potted palm, eyes hooded, a cigarette hanging from his lower lip, doing a swell Robert Mitchum imitation.

  Tito took two martini glasses from the tray of a passing waiter, and made his way over to where Joelen’s friend Deirdre was standing. He offered her a glass. At first Deirdre shook her head, but after some back-­and-­forth she took the glass, sipped, coughed, and laughed. Tito rubbed her back and then slipped his arm around her waist. She gazed up into his eyes, her cheeks pink. Duane glanced about to see if Deirdre’s parents were in the crowd to witness this scene unfold. They weren’t, but Bunny was watching with bottled rage. With a flick of her finger, Bunny gestured Sterling over and said something in his ear. He stood, shot his jacket sleeves, charged over, and inserted himself between Tito and Deirdre.

  Duane took advantage of Sterling’s absence to pull out his second camera and snap picture after picture of Bunny and Joelen, one seated and the other standing, both of them watching drama play out between Tito and Sterling. Joelen looked increasingly distressed. Her mother’s hand clamped on her arm seemed to be the only thing keeping her from rushing over to her friend. The anger on Bunny’s face faded into uncertainty and finally into grim satisfaction. She pulled Joelen down on the sofa beside her, drew her close, and kissed the top of her head. Mother and daughter. They looked so vulnerable, both of them. Duane almost couldn’t bring himself to take another shot.

  When he lowered his camera, both Tito and Deirdre were gone. Deirdre reappeared about an hour later, wobbly on her pins, her bouffant deflated, laughing and dancing about until she started to slow down like an overwound toy. By then the girl’s parents had gone home. At one in the morning when the party ended, Tito still hadn’t put in another appearance.

  DUANE WAS THE last to leave. He’d packed away his equipment and started to walk down the driveway back to his car when he heard girlish singing dissolving into laughter. Shrieks and giggles.

  Deirdre and Joelen were on the lawn, silhouetted in the spotlights mounted at the corners of the house. Joelen had her arms out and her head pitched back as she spun around. She caught her foot on the hem of her dress and sat down hard. Meanwhile, Deirdre twirled, her arms forming an arch over her head as her skirt floated around her. She looked like an ethereal ballerina.

  Duane rummaged in his bag for his camera, but before he could get it out, Deirdre had staggered to a halt. She doubled over, sank to her knees, and just hung there.

  “Are you okay?” Duane heard Joelen ask.

  Deirdre hiccupped. “I’m—­” She put her hand over her mouth. Burped. Spasmed. And threw up, vomit exploding from between her fingers. Even from a hundred feet away, Duane could smell it.

  Doubled over, Deirdre vomited again. And again. Finally she just hung there for a few moments before falling over and lying facedown in the grass. “He said—­” The words came out in a croak. Duane moved closer so he could hear better. “He said they were Shirley Temples.”

  “Tito?” Joelen said, crawling over to Deirdre.

  Duane couldn’t hear the answer. Only Joelen’s next question. “Were they pink?”

  “Huh?”

  “The drinks. Were they pink?”

  Duane didn’t need to hear the answer. After long pause, Joelen said, “The bastard. Did he do anything else?”

  Deirdre started to cry.

  Duane fought the urge to rush over and comfort her. If anything like this had happened to Susan, he’d have wanted to be there. To tell her that whatever had happened, it wasn’t her fault. Not that he’d ever let Susan dress up and swan about at a Hollywood party like some ingénue. But now that Susan was turning sixteen, soon she’d be driving and God knew what her mother would let her to get into in the back-­of-­beyond Maine. Reality was, Duane was going to miss the rest of his daughter’s firsts: good and bad, triumphs and traumas. He started to weep, and that’s when he realized just how soused he was. He’d lost count after the fifth shot. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose.

  The girls were getting to their feet. With Joelen holding Deirdre up, they started for the house. Now that was a picture. But before Duane could get out his camera, the outdoor lights went out and the girls disappeared in shadow. A few moments later, a rectangle of light flashed—­the front door opening and closing. The lights in downstairs windows of the house went out. At last only a bank of upstairs windows was lit.

  Duane sat on the lawn. He yearned for sleep. He lay down and closed his eyes. He’d rest just for a few moments, until the world stopped spinning and he’d regained his bearings. Then he’d drive home and close himself into his darkroom to develop the proofs he’d promised for tomorrow.

  He shut his eyes. Past a cricket’s chirp, Duane heard raised voices. Sounded as if Bunny and Tito were picking up where they’d left off.

  AT FIRST DUANE thought the headlights that woke him were searchlights, strafing the sky—­he’d been dreaming that he was taking pictures at a movie premiere.

  He propped himself up on his elbows and watched as a sports car with its top down turned around in front of the house. Tires screeched as it peeled off down the driveway, close enough for him to see that the driver was a man before its taillights winked out over the horizon. Moments later, a dark sedan came up the driveway and pulled around to the back of the house. A car door slammed.

  Duane sank back down onto the grass. The moon, which had been directly overhead, was now midway to the horizon and seemed much larger. What was the word for that? Parallax. Of course. He knew full well how much camera angle mattered.

  He lay there a few minutes longer. Not completely sober but nearly there, he lumbered to his feet and rubbed his face. God, what he would have given for a glass of orange juice. His mouth tasted like old tires. It took him a moment to remember that his own car was parked down the driveway by the pool. He picked up his camera bag, yawned, and gazed across the stretch of lawn at the house.

  That was when he noticed that the front door was wide open, and lights were on in all the upstairs windows. Duane checked his watch. It was three in the morning. Were Bunny and Tito still fighting? He made his way up to the house. At the open front door, he listened for voices.

  What he heard were sirens, far away and growing louder. He turned his back to the house, facing down the hill and looking in the direction of Sunset Boulevard, the direction from which the Beverly Hills PD or Fire would be coming. The sirens grew steadily louder until strobes lit up the horizon.

  Duane thought of the photo ops he’d missed. He’d been out drinking with friends and arrived too late to capture the fires that engulfed a block of houses in west Beverly Hills where Howard Hughes crashed a prototype army plane. He’d been in Vegas when Eddie Fisher headlined at the Tropicana, but it hadn’t occurred to him to get a picture of the singer with Debbie Reynolds on one arm and Elizabeth Taylor on the other. He’d raced north from Encino but arrived too late to get a picture of the wreckage of James Dean’s lethal crash.

  The tops of the cypress trees that lined the driveway flashed light and shadow. Any moment emergency vehicles would be at the house. Something had happened to call them here, and this time Lady Luck had anointed him cameraman. Maybe he’d capture the final act in Tito Acevedo’s and Bunny Nichol’s tumultuous affair. Tito Acevedo being led off in handcuffs. Bunny in tears.

  Duane slipped inside. The downstairs was dark, the only voices from overhead. He raced up the stairs, taking them two at a time, his camera bag banging against
his side. At the top landing he paused and listened. A man’s voice was barely audible from behind the nearest bedroom door. Duane caught just the occasional word. “Keep . . .” “Do not . . .”

  The voice grew louder. The door to the room started to open. Duane dashed down the hall, around the corner, and let himself into the first room, closing the door quietly behind him. For a moment, he pressed his back against the door and hugged his camera bag to his chest. When he didn’t hear anyone coming after him, he relaxed a notch and looked around.

  He was alone in what he knew right away was Bunny’s daughter’s bedroom. The room smelled of hairspray and shoes and vomit. A wall closet was open and clothing cascaded out onto the plush wall-­to-­wall carpeting. No one was sleeping in either of the twin beds with white headboards. The bedding on one of the beds, a rumpled quilt patterned in yellow-­and-­white daisies, was pushed back. The other bed had been stripped down to a bare mattress.

  Lights flashed outside the window and the siren cut off. Duane looked out. Two police cars were pulled up in front of the house. Officers got out and entered the house. All Duane had to do was wait a bit and then creep back to the top of the stairs. From there he’d be able to figure out what was going on and determine the best camera angle.

  That’s when something on the floor caught his eye. Yellow lace. He stooped to get a better look. It was the dress he’d last seen Joelen’s friend wearing. Now the top was ripped and the skirt was stained red. Dark red. A new smell came to him, sharp and metallic like the inside of a tin can. He had to force himself to raise his camera to capture what he saw. The little girl’s room with one twin bed stripped of its bed linen. Click. The soiled dress crumpled on the floor. Click. He reset the camera and braced himself against the wall, trying to get a wider angle. Click.

  He lowered the viewfinder. A good picture told a story, but this one asked a question. Where were the girls who should long ago have been tucked into these beds?

  The window lit up. Flashes of light, but no siren. Duane looked out. An ambulance was pulling up behind the patrol cars. The driver got out, strolled around, and opened the back doors. He stood there talking to a uniformed police officer who gestured toward the upstairs of the house. Obviously neither of them was in any big rush to go up there. That meant that either there was no dire emergency, or the person the ambulance had come for was beyond help.

  Duane glanced back at the torn, stained yellow dress. His stomach twisted. But this was no time to get sentimental. If he was going to get his picture, it was now or never. He forced himself back into the hall, stopping just before the bend and peering around it. A police officer was in the hall, facing into the bedroom at the top of the stairs. Duane aimed the camera and got off a shot.

  The moment the shutter snapped, a figure burst out onto the landing. Duane drew back, waiting and counting to ten before he dared to look again. When he peered around the corner, Sy Sterling stood not four feet away, his arms folded across his chest, staring directly at him.

  Duane expected Sterling to attack, or at the very least smash his camera and ream him out. Instead he just stood there with his head tilted, considering. “You came back.”

  “I . . . I . . .” Duane groped for what to say. “I was looking for the bathroom.”

  “Did you find it?”

  Duane gave a mute nod.

  Sterling’s gaze dropped to Duane’s camera. His eyes narrowed and a muscle worked in his jaw. Then he smiled, or at least his mouth did. He stepped over, put an arm around Duane’s shoulders, and squeezed, pressing up against Duane’s side. “Good. Now you can make yourself useful.” He propelled Duane into the bedroom at the top of the stairs.

  Duane blinked away the bright lights as he entered. The room was lit up like a stage set with every fixture on, plus some portable spotlights the police must have brought. Against the far wall was a bed with a pink satin tufted headboard. The bedding was rumpled, as if someone had just gotten out of it.

  Mounded on the floor beside the bed was the twin to the daisy-­printed quilt that Duane had seen in Joelen’s bedroom. It was covering what could have been a body, or possibly even two. Where were Joelen and Deirdre? For that matter, where were Bunny and Tito? Who had Duane overheard Sterling talking to?

  “Go ahead. Take pictures,” Sterling said.

  Astonished, Duane raised his camera and took the shot. None of the officers stopped him.

  The door to what Duane suspected was a bathroom or dressing room opened and Elenor Nichol stepped into the room. She wore a loosely tied, black silk dressing gown, her hair in tangles and her eyes red. The swollen bruise on her cheek was livid—­whatever makeup she’d used to conceal it during the party had been removed—­and there were red marks around her neck.

  Sterling elbowed Duane. Duane took a picture.

  “I did it,” Bunny said, her voice scratchy and raw.

  Click.

  Bunny’s gaze lifted. She snuck a look in Duane’s direction, gauging her effect as she might have checked herself in a mirror. She offered up her wrists like a penitent.

  Click.

  Duane was adjusting the settings for a close-­up when Bunny stared past him, her look of calm turned stricken. He turned. Joelen stood in the doorway, wearing a floor-­length nightgown patterned in tiny flowers. At the party, she’d look like she was going on thirty; now she looked as if she were going on twelve.

  “I did it,” Joelen said.

  Duane turned his camera on Joelen, but he couldn’t seem to get the viewfinder to focus. When he finally did, for first time that he could ever remember, he couldn’t shoot. He lowered the camera.

  “Don’t listen to her,” Bunny said, color rising in her cheeks. “I did it.”

  “No. It’s all my fault,” Joelen said. She rushed over and hugged Bunny. “I—­”

  “Enough,” Sterling said, his voice echoing in the room.

  Joelen’s gaze shifted from her mother to Sterling. Lowering her voice to a whisper, she said, “She wouldn’t stop. I had to protect her.”

  Bunny stroked Joelen’s hair. “Shhh. It’s okay. It’s over now.” She glanced across at Sterling. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying. I gave her a sedative and she’s delirious. She’s not herself. She’s—­”

  “Stop. Talking,” Sterling said. Duane remembered he wasn’t just Bunny’s business manager; he was also her attorney.

  Sterling turned to one of the police officers. “Please, take them out of here.” Just like that, the officer ushered Bunny and Joelen from the room. Duane started to follow them out but Sterling held him back.

  Sterling closed the door to the hall. He gestured to a police officer to remove the quilt. Duane dreaded what the officer would uncover. He hoped his Susan was tucked safely in bed. She liked to sleep late, and it was nearly seven in the morning in Maine.

  “Mr. Foley,” Sterling said, “I hired you for the night.”

  Duane had never imagined that his iconic photographic opportunity—­his James-­Dean-­car-­crash, his Eddie-­Fisher-­wife-­on-­each-­arm moment—­would involve taking pictures of a dead fifteen-­year-­old girl. His chest felt tight as he raised his camera, bringing the quilt’s yellow-­and-­white daisies into sharp focus. He’d send Marie the money he made on tonight’s gig, he promised himself. All of it.

  He could barely stand to watch through the viewfinder as the quilt was pulled back. But this was his job, something he did automatically, and he did it now taking picture after picture. The carpet stained red. The black silk shirt, unbuttoned to the waist. Adjusting the angle, focusing in on a knife stuck in up to the hilt, just below the rib cage. Kneeling for a close-­up. The perfectly sculpted face with an aquiline nose, the flesh turned waxy and the lips tinged blue.

  All the while thinking, Thank God it isn’t Susan even though he knew full well it couldn’t have been, as his breathing eased and relief cour
sed through him.

  “THANK YOU,” STERLING said to Duane later as they stood in the driveway in front of the house. It was nearly six and the sky had started to lighten. Tito Acevedo’s body had been carried off in the ambulance. Bunny and Joelen had ridden off with the police, and Sterling had promised to follow. No one had mentioned Joelen’s friend, and Duane wasn’t about to ask what happened to her.

  Sterling reached into his back pocket for an envelope. He handed it to Duane. Duane looked inside. It was thick with one-­hundred-­dollar bills, at least double Duane’s usual fee.

  “I’ll take the film now,” Sterling said. “All of it.” A pause. “From both cameras.”

  Both? Before Duane could muster a response, Sterling wrenched away his camera bag. Quickly he rooted through, collecting film canisters. He handed Duane one camera, and then the other, and waited for him to wind and remove film that remained in each and hand it over.

  “Don’t worry,” Sterling said. “You’ll be credited for any pictures that get published. You just won’t get to pick which or frame the images. Is that understood?”

  At that moment, a baby-­blue Buick LeSabre with a white roof drove up the driveway and pulled up in front of them. It was Duane’s . . . actually, his wife’s car. She’d picked it out, then left it when she left Duane. The driver, an older man in a blue work shirt and jeans, got out and offered Duane the keys.

  But how was this possible? Duane had the only set of keys to that car. Right in his trouser pocket. He reached in but all he found was a pocketful of change. That’s when Duane remembered how Sterling had hip checked him when he hustled him into Bunny’s bedroom. He must have picked Duane’s pocket, helping himself to his keys.

  “Sorry,” Sterling said. “We needed to be sure you’d stay for the whole show.”