Shooting Hollywood

by Melodie Johnson Howe

  “Kera told me you had an affair with her, too.”

  “But much later. She was like trying to make love to a shadow.”

  “Her mother’s?”

  “Yes. What do you think of Logan Bedford?”

  “He’s a domineering snake.”

  “I love the way women talk. Images slightly askew, but the meaning so clear.”

  “Ella told me that Bedford wanted to kill her.”

  His eyebrows arched over his sunglasses. “Are you saying she didn’t fall down the stairs?”

  “I don’t know what I’m saying. You can go back to Sydney with an ‘i’, wherever it is. I’m going home.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “Where’s your car?”

  “They took my license away. I had to take a cab here.” He guided me across the lawn. “The driver couldn’t find Beverly Hills. And I only know how to get around this town when I’m drunk. So we got lost in a town called Mar Vista, where you cannot see the ocean from any point. Why are words never what they mean in this world of ours, Diana?” he asked, forlornly.

  “You mean like the word love?” I asked. Again I felt the pain of loss.

  With the sun in our eyes and the palm trees swaying in the warm breeze like melancholy hula dancers, Ryan and I waited in the driveway for the valet to bring my car around. Logan Bradford stepped out of the house.

  “May I speak to you for a moment? Alone.” He took my arm and guided me away from Ryan. Leaning close he asked, “What did my wife tell you?”

  “I don’t know what you mean?”

  “What did she say about me?”

  “We talked about Ella.”

  “She hated her mother. She wouldn’t spend time talking about her. What did she tell you?” He pressed his steel-like fingers into my arm.

  “Let go of me.”

  “Whatever she said to you is a lie.”

  Ryan stepped between us. “Your car is here, Diana,” he announced, preemptively.

  In the car Ryan asked, “What did the domineering snake want?”

  “He wanted to know what Kera and I were talking about. He thought it was about him.”

  “I hear he has chiseled her into his version of a woman. Except I also hear he doesn’t like women.”

  “He likes us well enough to be having an affair with one. Kera looks terrible.” I turned left onto Sunset Blvd. and flipped the visor down. I drove past some of the same mansions that years ago Kera and I had driven by. I tried to remember which ones I had chosen to live in when I was going be rich and famous. But I couldn’t.

  “Why did she let him do it to her?” Ryan asked.

  “She’s afraid of him.”

  “Could we turn the air conditioning on?”

  “It doesn’t work.”

  “Why do you cling to this old Jag?”

  “Because I can’t afford a new car.”

  “Let me buy you one, then you can drive me around town and I won’t get lost in Mar Vista where you can’t see the ocean.”

  “Ryan, why did you go to bed with Kera?”

  “I’ll go to bed with anybody. I also thought in my infinite self-centeredness that I could keep her from seducing your husband.”

  “You must not have been very good.”

  “I’ll have you know that I performed like a stallion. Well, maybe a very lusty Shetland pony. If you remember, you and Colin had separated over some stupid argument.”

  “I don’t even remember what it was. I don’t even remember what great mansion I wanted to live in when I was nineteen.”

  “Mansion? You’re not desperate enough to live in a mansion. What are you talking about?”

  “Time.” As I curved further west on Sunset I could feel those big houses and my youth receding from me like ocean waves that lap at your ankles and then swiftly pull away.

  “I’ll tell you why you and Colin were arguing,” Ryan said. “It was two creative temperamental egos colliding. If you hadn’t decided to makeup with Colin and then come back to the house in the middle of the night to surprise him, you wouldn’t have found him with Kera. What I mean is, he would never have gone to bed with her if he knew you had wanted to come back. Why do women always want to surprise men anyway? I think you unconsciously want to catch us at our worst.”

  “Maybe we want to catch you at your best.”

  “If that’s the case then Colin, the great man of taste and discretion, failed, didn’t he?”

  I looked sharply at Ryan. He was grinning, pleased at the thought of a discredited Colin. Too pleased.

  We stopped at the light where Sunset Blvd. ends and the Pacific Ocean begins. The waves splashed on sand so smooth and flat that it looked like a cheap beige carpet.

  Late that night the doorbell rang, jarring me awake. I peered at the clock. It was eleven-thirty. Out of habit I looked at the other half of the bed for help. It was empty; Colin’s pillow firmed and plumped. Untouched. I got up and threw on my robe and padded across the cool Mexican pavers into the hallway. Peering through the peephole I saw Kera’s waxen face illuminated by the porch light. Fear pulled at her lips and eyes, distorting her into grotesqueness. I opened the door.

  “This is the only place I could think of where Logan wouldn’t know to find me.” Half dazed, she wandered into the living room. “I’ll leave if you want me to.”

  “Don’t be silly. I’ll get you a drink.”

  When I came back with a brandy, she was standing out on the balcony staring at the ocean. Her hand shook when she took the glass.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “The night mother died Logan wasn’t at home with me. I thought he was with his mistress. This evening I confronted him about what mother had told you and he went into a rage. I’m afraid of him. Can I stay here just ‘til morning?”

  “Well, I…”

  “Please, Diana.”

  “I’ll put you up on the sofa.”

  “Who’s that?” She pulled a gun from her coat pocket and aimed toward the walkway and the swaying hibiscus bush.

  “Don’t turn the bloody hose on me,” Ryan roared, staggering to his feet.

  “It’s Ryan Johns. He’s drunk,” I told her.

  “Will somebody help me with him?” A woman whined. Golden Sydney with an ‘i’ came into the light of my deck. “This is the worst evening of my life.” Her eyes came to rest on the gun quivering in Kera’s hand.

  “Hello, Sydni,” Kera greeted coldly.

  “Kera?” Sydni froze.

  “You had an awful evening,” Ryan suddenly bellowed at the young actress then began to make his case to us. “I had to spend it talking to a viped vaper. Vapid viper. Flipping her hair, clicking her nails, licking her lips. She even flossed.”

  “I was bored,” Syndi snapped at him, forgetting the gun in Kera’s hand. “I went out with you because you said you had a part for me in your new script. And all you did was talk about your parents not understanding you. I thought you got over that when you’re middle-aged.”

  “Middle what?”

  Sydni turned on Kera. “And if you’re trying to scare me with that gun it won’t work.”

  “Gun?” Ryan tired to focus.

  “Did you think it wasn’t proper to see my husband on the night of mother’s funeral?” Kera asked her.

  “Logan thought he should be with you and not me tonight.”

  “Jesus, it is a gun,” Ryan said. “Why do you have a gun?” He lurched toward my stair rail and bumped into Sydni. “Oh, Chist, the vipid vaper is still here.”

  Kera slipped the gun back into her pocket and walked into my house.

  Now Sydni ranted at me. “He slobbered all over me, never once mentioned his new script, and then looked at his watch, leaped up, and said we have to leave. And tell that bitch if she’s trying to scare Logan and I it won’t work.” She turned on Ryan. “God, you’re disgusting.” She stalked back down the narrow passage toward Pacific Coast Highway and her car.

  “Am I
disgusting, Diana?” he asked, like a little boy. “Yes.”

  “Why does Kera have a gun?”

  “She’s afraid of Bedford.”

  “I am disgusting.”

  “Go to bed.”

  I went into the living room and closed the sliding glass doors and locked them. Kera sat on the sofa. Her hair was dead black against her eerily pale skin. Exhausted I sat down across from her.

  “How long has your husband been seeing Sydni?” I asked.

  “About three months. She’s perfect.”

  “She’s young.”

  “He hasn’t done a thing to her. I want you to know, Diana, that I didn’t go to bed with your husband to take him away from you.”

  “You couldn’t have done that even if you had wanted to.”

  “I went to bed with him because mother had gone to bed with him. When I was old enough I made a pact with myself. I would seduce every one of mother’s lovers. And it would be my secret until it was the right time to tell her, until it would wound her deeply. But I never found the right time,” she added, desolately.

  I stared at Colin’s two Oscars on the mantel. Casting their twin shadows on the wall they glimmered with sleek pride.

  “What did Colin say to you when you went to bed with him?” I asked.

  “Why do want to know what he said?”

  “He cared about words.”

  “Who can remember? I didn’t mean anything to Colin.”

  “He wouldn’t have gone to bed with you if you’d meant nothing to him. What did he say?”

  I had never asked Colin for an explanation and he had never offered one.

  “We had great sex that was all. It was nothing.”

  Only in Hollywood can great sex equal nothing, I thought. Again I could see her mother’s eyes glinting out at me and I knew she was lying. I knew it had meant something.

  “I’ll take the gun.” I held out my hand. She hesitated then reached into her pocket and handed it to me.

  “Who was this for?”

  “Me. Maybe Logan. I’m tired of being hurt. Of being second best.”

  I made a bed for her on the sofa then I went back to my room. But I couldn’t sleep, not with a woman I didn’t trust on my sofa and her loaded gun on my nightstand. At two o’clock the doorbell rang. I peered at Colin’s pillow. Then wrapping my robe around me, I hurried out to the foyer. Kera was already there.

  “It’s Logan,” she said, frantically.

  I looked out the peephole. “I don’t see anybody.”

  “He must’ve gone around to the ocean side of the house. Where’s the gun?”

  “You don’t need it.” We went into the living room. Logan Bedford appeared on my deck and began pounding hard on the sliding glass door. The glass shook in its frame. I unlocked the door and slid it open about an inch.

  “She doesn’t want to see you. Go away or I’ll call the police.”

  He shoved the door wide and pushed me out of the way with such force I slammed against the wall, striking my head. Kera screamed and rushed toward my bedroom. Bedford strode down the hall after her. Dazed I leaned on the back of a chair.

  “No more. No more, Kera,” he yelled from my room. Then there was the sound of a slap. Kera whimpered. The gun went off. I staggered into the bedroom. The smell of nitrite and the intimate smell of my own perfume mixed with the salt air. I leaned against the door jam. Logan Bedford was sprawled on his back on the bed, his head on Colin’s pillow. Blood spread across his chest and seeped from his open mouth onto my sheets. Kera stood at the foot of the bed, the gun still in her hand. She slowly lifted it to her head. I lurched for her and grabbed it. Collapsing in a chair, she covered her expressionless face with her aging hands.

  Three hours later I stood on Ryan’s veranda pounding on his French doors. Since my bedroom was a murder scene I had no place else to go. Yellow tape had been draped around my small house. The lights were still on and the police were still there. I had told them everything that had happened. Kera had called her lawyer who had come to the house. She was allowed to leave in his custody. The French doors finally opened.

  “Am I dreaming?” Ryan muttered.

  “I need to stay here for the night. Or what’s left of it. Kera shot the good doctor in my bedroom.”

  “Kera did? Are you all right?”

  “Didn’t you hear the commotion?”

  “I sleep deeply when I’m passed out. But if I’d been awake and sober I would have rescued you.” He guided me into his overly decorated living room.

  “Forget it. I’m too old to be rescued.” I sank into a sofa that was obese with down feathers and watched Ryan as he fixed us drinks. He didn’t look like a man who had been asleep.

  Two days later Ryan and I stood in my bedroom staring at my new Beautyrest mattress. The other one had been soaked with Dr. Logan Bedford’s blood.

  “The least Kera could have done is pay for it,” he said. “Would you like to christen it?” He wiggled his eyebrows at me.

  “No.”

  “Inaugurate it?”

  “No.”

  “Diana, it’s no longer Colin’s bed.”

  “Is that why I feel so betrayed?”

  Grabbing me he pressed my body to his and awkwardly kissed me. I stepped back from his embrace. Flushed, he managed an expression of bemusement, but his blue eyes shone with rejection.

  “I’m sorry, Ryan. But I keep thinking about the night Kera shot her husband. Seeing him lying on my bed. I feel as if I’ve somehow been taken advantage of. As if I had been in a play. And everybody was acting their roles except me because I didn’t know the script.”

  “Forget it. You had an out of body experience. It happens when you’re witnessing something horrifying. I felt it just now when you couldn’t wait to get away from me.”

  “Ryan, why did you go out with Sydni that night?”

  “Why not?”

  “It just seems odd that Sydni should show up here exactly when Kera did. And what about the police cars, the ambulance? You had to hear the sirens.”

  “I have rewrites to do and a bottle of Scotch to finish.”

  “Ryan, answer me.”

  “I felt sorry for Kera. Somebody has to feel sorry for the shadows of our world.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Kera wanted me to bring Sydni back to my house at the same time she would be waiting on the deck of your house.”

  “Because she knew that Syndi would call Bedford and tell him where she was?”

  “I didn’t know he would be shot. But he did kill her mother and mutilate her.”

  “Did he?”

  “Leave it be, Diana. Like Colin I just felt sorry for her.”

  “Are you saying Colin went to bed with Kera because he felt sorry for her?”

  “Thanks for not wiping my kiss off with the back of your hand, Diana.”

  He left me staring at my bare pristine mattress. My feeling of betrayal turned to anger. I grabbed my keys and purse and drove to Beverly Hills.

  The sun was going down, casting the white brick house into pink shadows. I knocked on the front door, but no one answered. I walked around to the back. The liquid-amber trees were turning black in the dimming light. I stepped in through an open den door, walked into the hallway, and up the curved stairs. Kera, with her back to me, was in the sitting room staring up at her mother’s portrait: the young Ella Sands peered down at her grown daughter with that same perplexed expression. When I closed the door behind me Kera turned quickly around.

  “Diana? You have the same look on your face that you had when you found me in bed with Colin.”

  I leaned against the door. “You set me up. I was the perfect witness, wasn’t I? Someone who doesn’t like you, who wouldn’t lie for you.”

  She tossed her dead-black hair back from her face. “My mother unintentionally set you up. She told me she had talked to you. She told me she thought Logan wanted to harm us. She had it all wrong as usual. But that’s becau
se she never paid any attention to me.” Self-pity pulled at her lips.

  “So you shoved her down the stairs.”

  “I told her about how I had gone to bed with each one of her lovers. She didn’t want to hear it. She ran out into the hallway. I couldn’t stand the expression on her face. Her self-hatred.”

  “Or was it your own self-hatred you couldn’t stand? Did Ryan know you killed her?”

  “No. Nor did he know I intended to kill Logan. I just got him to take out Sydni.”

  “But why kill your husband?”

  “Logan was fine as long as he did exactly what I wanted, which was to erase mother’s likeness from my face. His reward was marrying into a small fortune and keeping his mistress. But he guessed I had killed mother. Funny, he was afraid that I was going to tell people that he did it.”

  “One more question. What really happened between you and Colin besides great sex?” I added, sarcastically.

  “I already told you.”

  “No, you were lying. I could see it in your eyes. You know I can still see your mother in your eyes?”

  Kera stiffened.

  “And look at your hands. They look exactly like your mother’s.”

  She peered down at her hands, clenching them and unclenching them.

  “Haven’t you heard, Kera? We all end up looking like our mothers. Did you really think you would be the only one who didn’t?”

  “That’s not true. It’s not true! And your Colin was a big failure in bed. He just wanted to put his arms around me and hold me.” Resentment narrowed her eyes. “I’ve never wanted to get out of a man’s bed so fast in my entire life. God, I was glad when you showed up.” Again she attempted her mother’s worldly laugh and failed.

  “Oh, Kera, you should have let him comfort you.”

  It was dark when I returned to Malibu. I poured a glass of wine and went outside and breathed in the ocean air and tried to remember the touch of my husband’s embrace. In the walkway the hibiscus bush shook. I peered down at the heap that was Ryan Johns. In his stupor he muttered and kicked his feet as if he were running away from something. Everybody is running away in this town, trying to get out from under the shadow of the more famous, the more wealthy, the more creative, the more loved, the more beautiful. And most of them don’t make it, yet they never think of leaving. They stay silhouetted against those they hate, envy, or can never have. I left Ryan and went back into the house and lay down on my bare Beautyrest mattress. I knew I had to call the police. Let them try to capture all the shadows. I reached for my husband’s pillow but it wasn’t there.