Coldheart Canyon (32 page)

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“No, it was this
strange
picture directed by Edgar Kopel. Very shocking for its time. The bed was supposed to have been owned by the Devil, you see. Carved to his design. And then the hero, who was played by Ronald Colman, inherits it, and he and his bride use it for the bridal bed. But the Devil comes for the bride, and then all Hell breaks loose.”

“What happened in the end?”

“The Devil gets what he wants.”

“You?”

“Me.”

“I don’t think that would work for modern audiences.”

“Oh it didn’t work in 1923. They stayed away in droves.”

They walked on for a while in silence. Finally Katya said: “What’s troubling you?”

“I can’t make sense of what you’re telling me. The pieces don’t fit—”

“And it frustrates you.”

“Yes.”

“Maybe it’s best you just don’t think about it.”

“How can I
not
think about it?” he said. “This place. You. The posters.

The bed. What am I supposed to make of it all?”

“Make whatever pleases you,” she said. “Why’s it so important that you have an explanation for everything? I told you: things are different here.”

She caught hold of his hand, and they stopped walking. There were insects in the grass all around them, making music; overhead, the stars were coming out, their patterns as familiar as the din of cicadas; and tonight, as strange. His doubts were contagious. The fact that he didn’t understand how it was possible this woman could have lived the life she claimed to have lived spread confusion into every other sign the world brought him. What was he doing here, in between the music in the grass and the brightening stars? He suddenly seemed to understand nothing.

His face throbbed, and his eyes stung.

“It’s all right,” she said softly. “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“I’m not afraid,” he said.

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It was the truth, in a way. What he felt was not fear, it was something far more distressing. He felt lost, cast off from every certainty.

But then he looked at her face, at her perfect face, and he felt a calm come over him. So what if he was adrift? So were they both. And wasn’t it better to be with
her
, sharing her gentle madness, than to be alone in this unforgiving world?

He leaned toward her, and kissed her on the lips. Nothing overtly sexual; just a tender kiss.

“What was that for?” she asked him, smiling.

“For being here.”

“Even though you think I’m a lunatic?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“No, but you think it. Don’t you? You think I’m living in a fantasy land.”

“I’m taking your advice,” he replied. “I’m making whatever I like of it.

And I like being here, right now, with you. So the rest can go to Hell.”

“The rest?”

“Out there,” he said, waving his arm in the general direction of the city.

“The people who used to run my life.”

“To Hell with them?”

“To Hell with them!”

Katya laughed. “I like that,” she said, returning his kiss in the midst of their laughter.

“Where now?” he said.

“Down to the pool?” she replied.

“You know the way?”

“Trust me,” she said, kissing him again. This time he didn’t let her escape so lightly, but returned her kiss with some force. His hand slipped up into her hair and made a cradle for her head. She put her arms around his waist, pressing so hard against him it was as though she wanted to climb inside his skin.

When they broke the kiss they gazed at one another for a little time.

“I thought we were going walking,” he said.

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“So we were,” she said, taking his hand again. “The pool, yes?”

“Do you want to go back to the house?”

“Plenty of time for that later,” she said. “Let’s go down to the pool while there’s still some light.”

So they continued their descent, hand in hand. They said nothing now.

There was no need.

On the other side of the Canyon, a lone coyote began to yap; his voice was answered by another higher up on the ridge behind them, then another two in the same vicinity, and now another, and another, until the entire Canyon was filled with their glorious din.

When Todd and Katya reached the lawn there was a small, scrawny coyote loping across it, giving them a guilty backward glance as he disappeared into the undergrowth. As he vanished from sight, the pack ceased its din. There were a few moments of silence. Then the insects took up their music again.

“It’s sad, the way things have declined,” Katya said, looking at the sight before them. The starlight was forgiving, but it couldn’t conceal the general condition of the place: the statues missing limbs, or toppled over and buried in vines; the pavement around the pool cracked and mossy, the pool itself stained and stinking.

“What’s that?” Todd said, pointing out the one-story mock-classical structure half-hidden by the cypresses around the pool.

“That’s the Pool House. I haven’t been in there in a very long time.”

“I want to see it.”

It was a larger building than it had appeared from the front, and uncannily bright. There were several skylights in the ceiling, which ushered in the brightness of moon and stars, their light bouncing off the silky marble floor. In the center stood a cocktail bar with mirrors of marbled glass behind the glass shelves. Even after all these years there were dozens of bottles on the shelves—brandies, whiskies and liqueurs.

“You used the pool a lot?” Todd said.

“We had the best pool-parties in Hollywood.”

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meet them. “And the people who came here, knew . . .” Katya said. “They
knew
.” Letting the thought go unfinished, she moved past him to the bar.

“What did they
know
?” he said.

“Not to make any judgments,” she replied. She slipped behind the bar, and began to survey the rows of bottles.

“I don’t think we should try drinking any of that stuff,” he said. “I’ve got fresh booze in the house if that’s what you want.”

She didn’t reply; simply continued to survey the selection. Finally she decided upon one of the brandies, and taking the bottle by the neck she pulled it forward. There was a grinding noise from behind the mirror as some antiquated mechanism was activated. Then the mirror slid sideways three or four feet, revealing a small safe.

Todd was intrigued. He hopped over the bar to get a better look at what Katya was up to. She was working on the tumbler lock; he could hear a faint clicking as she flipped it back and forth.

“What’s in there?” he said.

“We used to have a book—”

“We?”

“Zeffer and I. We just kept it for fun.”

“A book of what?”

“Of party pieces,” she said, with a little smile. “
Who
did
what
to
whom
.

And how many times.”

“You’re kidding!”

She turned the lock one more time, and then pushed down on the handle and pulled the door. There was a cracking sound, as the decayed rubber seal broke. Then the door swung wide.

“Are there any candles?” she said to him. “Look in the cupboard there between the columns, will you?”

Todd did as he was instructed, and found several boxes of plain white candles on the shelves. One was open, and the heat of many summers had turned the contents into a single box-shaped slab of white wax. But the contents of the other two boxes were in better condition: under the first layer, which was partially melted, there were salvageable candles. He set CC[001-347] 9/10/01 2:26 PM Page 242

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up six of them on the bar, seating them in their own dribblings so that they wouldn’t fall over.

Their flickering yellow light flattered the marble interior; and by some strange arrangement of the walls it seemed he heard the whispering of the flames multiplied. Indeed they almost sounded like voices; uncannily so. He looked around, half-expecting to see somebody flitting between the columns.

“Ah,
voilà!
” said Katya, reaching into the depths of the safe.

She brought a small, thick book out of the little safe along with a sheaf of photographs and set them all down on the bar in the light from the candles. The book looked like a journal, bound in dark red leather. When she opened it he saw that its handwritten contents were arranged symmetri-cally; two columns to each page.

“Take a look,” she said, obviously delighted with her find.

He picked up the book and flicked through it. Almost three-quarters of its pages were written on, sometimes in the two-column configuration, sometimes simply filled up from top to bottom. He turned to a page of the former variety. On the left-hand side of the pages was a column of names; on the right hand, a column that was far harder to make sense of. Occasionally there were names, but more often letters and symbols, some of them resembling obscure mathematical equations. His puzzlement amused her.

“Think of it as a history book,” she said, offering a teasing smile along with the clue.

“A history of what?”

“Of better times.”

Todd flipped through the pages. Now and again, among the names, he came upon some he knew: Norma Talmadge, Theda Bara, John Gilbert, Clara Bow; all movie stars of another era.

“You knew all these people?” he said to her.

“Yes, of course. This was the place to come, when you wanted to have some fun. Every weekend, we’d have parties. Sometimes in the pool.

Sometimes in the house. Sometimes we’d have hunts, all through the Canyon.”

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“Animal hunts?”

“No.
People
hunts. People treated like animals. We whipped them and we chained them up and . . . well, you can imagine.”

“I’m beginning to. Wow. You had Charlie Chaplin up here, I see.”

“Yes, he came up here often. He used to bring his little girls.”

“
Little
girls?”

“He liked them young.”

Todd raised a quizzical eyebrow. “And you didn’t mind?”

“I don’t believe in
Thou Shalt Not
. That’s for people who are afraid to follow their own instincts. Of course when you’re out there in the world you’ve got to play by the rules, or you’ll spend your life behind bars.

They’d lock you up and throw away the key. But this isn’t the world. This is my Canyon. They called it Coldheart Canyon, because they said I have a soul like ice. But why should I care what people say? Let them say whatever they want to say, as long as their money pays for the little luxuries in life. I want my Kingdom to be a place where people could take their pleasures freely, without judgment or punishment.

“This is Eden, you see? Only there’s no snake. No angel to drive you out either, because you did a bad thing. Why? Because there were no bad things.”

“Literally none?”

She looked at him, her stare luminous. “Oh you mean murder, perhaps? We had one or two murderers here. And we had sisters who’d fucked their brothers, and sons who fucked their mothers, and a man who liked having children suck him off.”

“What?”

“Ha! Now you’re shocked. His name was Laurence Skimpell, and he was as handsome a man as I’ve ever met. He had a contract at Warner Brothers, and they were going to make him a star. A big star. Then this woman turns up at the studios with a child, who she said was Skimpell’s.

Warner Brothers have always been very loyal. They offered the woman money; said they’d put the child up for adoption. But as she got up and left she said: You don’t understand, this isn’t his offspring. This is his lover.”

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“Oh Jesus Christ.”

“That was the last we ever heard of Laurence Skimpell.”

“That’s a ridiculous story. I don’t believe a word of it.”

She laughed, as though perhaps this time she was inventing a little.

“You’re in here,” he said, coming to some mentions of Katya Lupi. “And there’s a long list of men . . .”

“Oh that was a competition we had.”

“You
had
all these men?”

“It was my Canyon. It still is. I can do what I like here.”

“So you let people do what they wanted?”

“More or less.” She returned to the book. “You see the symbols beside the names?”

Todd nodded, somewhat tentatively. The conversation had taken a turn he was by no means certain he liked. It was one thing to talk about freedom in Coldheart Canyon; it was another to have her boasting about babies sucking dicks. “All the symbols mean something different,” she said. “Look here. That squiggle there, that means snakes. That knotted rope? That means being bound up. The more knots in the rope the more bound the person likes to be. So . . . here . . . Barrymore . . . his rope has six knots in it. So he liked to be very well tied up. And then there’s a little flame beside him. That means—”

“He liked to be burned?”

“When he was sober. In the end, I stopped inviting him because he got so drunk and so abusive he wasn’t any fun.”

“Ah! So you
did
make a judgment.”

She considered this for a moment. “Yes. I suppose I did.”

“Did he spoil the secret? Once you didn’t invite him anymore. Did he start telling everyone about what it was like up here?”

“Of course not. What was he going to say? Even
he
had a reputation to keep. Besides, half of Hollywood swam in that pool at one time or another. And the other half wished they could. Nobody said anything but everybody
knew
.”

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“What . . . exactly? That there were orgies here? That women got fucked with snakes?”