Dazzle The Complete Unabridged Trilogy (135 page)

The pimp's sloe eyes glanced back at her in the rearview
mirror. 'Yes, ma'am.'

Cleo giggled. 'Did I hear right?' she asked Daliah. "That
nigger call me "ma'am"?'

'C'mon, Cleo,' Coyote begged. 'You're gonna' ruin my
reputation. If word gets round that I'm soft on you, how you
'spect my girls to do like they s'posed to?'

'Don't worry, Coyote,' Cleo said with a laugh. 'I'll try to
show more respect when your girls are around.'

'One fuckin' bit-part walk-on,' he moaned, 'and she think
she owns me. How much longer am I gonna have to pay for
it?'

'Well, if you want another walk-on in a new Kurt Russell
movie,' Cleo said slowly for maximum effect, 'I'd say you'll
be enslaved a good while longer.'

'Another part?' Coyote's eyes flickered back at Cleo from
the rearview mirror with such interest she knew she had him
hooked. 'Which movie's this?'

'I'll tell you all 'bout it when I have more information to
give you. Meanwhile, Daliah's feelin' a little down, and I'm
not at my greatest either. Up the windows all the way and pass
the goods on back here.'

Coyote gladly handed her a small glass vial with a tiny silver
spoon attached. Cleo unscrewed the cap, quickly took a snort
up each nostril, and handed it to Daliah.

Daliah shook her head.

'C'mon,' Cleo urged. 'It's pure coke. One hit, and I guaran
tee you'll feel a lot better.'

Daliah lifted the spoon carefully to her nose. She snorted
deeply. Then her eyes brightened and she passed the vial back.
Cleo was right. The moment the coke hit her system, she felt a hundred percent better. 'What is this, a wake?' she asked
suddenly. 'Let's have some music. Turn on the stereo!'

'All
right!
'
Coyote exclaimed happily, his hand already
reaching to punch James Brown back on.

Cleo lived in one of those tenement railway flats, a series of
six dark narrow rooms stretching from the front of her building
all the way to the back. The bathtub was in the middle of the kitchen, and Cleo's bed was surrounded by mousetraps, but
the front door of the building was secure, the intercom usually
worked, the boiler broke down only once or twice each winter,
and best of all, it was that rare New York phenomenon—a
rent-controlled apartment handed down to Cleo from a rela
tive who'd lived there for nearly thirty years so that the rent was a minuscule eighty-three dollars a month. Besides being
such a good deal financially, the apartment also let Cleo keep
one foot in black culture, so that no matter how far or wide
her job might take her, she always came back to Harlem and
never completely lost contact with her origins.

The last two hours had passed by quickly. Daliah had
unloaded her heart to Cleo, not leaving out a thing, and once she'd gotten everything off her chest, she began to feel a little
better. Not great, to be sure, but just talking things out and
having someone listen seemed to have helped.

Cleo was an attentive audience; she was also the only logical
ear for Daliah to turn to. Cleo knew Jerome well enough to
understand how his mind worked, and being Daliah's closest friend, she could sympathize with what her friend was going
through. Also, being in the movie business herself, and having
worked on and off with both of them, Cleo had a good understanding of the problems inherent in film financing and pro
duction. The business being the frenetic zoo that it was, for a
long time she had marvelled at Daliah and Jerome's being able
to both live and work together, and she'd wondered how such
obvious professional strains could not affect their personal
relationship. Now she wondered no more about it. The strain
had obviously reached the breaking point.

'Well, at least there's a bright side to all this,' Daliah mur
mured. She looked morosely down into her drink. It was
Cleo's special, a quart-sized screwdriver with just enough ice
to cool it but not enough to dilute the alcohol. The initial sense
of well-being she had felt from the coke had long since worn off, but she'd refused another snort. She looked back up and
held Cleo's questioning gaze. 'Jerome and I aren't married,
and we don't have any children,' she said softly. 'There's that
for a bright side.'

Cleo considered that, and then she shook her head. 'White
Woman, that's like sayin' you're glad you didn't get treated for lung cancer because you've died of a heart attack. That
don't make any sense at all.'

'You're right, of course.' Daliah nodded and compressed
her lips. 'But children or marriage
would
have made it more
difficult to break up.'

'Relationships,' Cleo shook her head. 'Why can't they ever
be perfect?' She paused and looked at Daliah. 'I take it you're
not planning to go back to him?'

'Not unless he refuses the Arab financing, no.'

'Still, you should have stayed on in Cannes. You're up for an award. I wouldn't have missed out on that if I were you.'

'Cannes,' Daliah said succinctly, 'is too small for both
Jerome and me.' She traced her index finger around the rim
of her glass.

'So what are you planning on doing now?'

Daliah shrugged. 'Well, for the first time in over two years I have three weeks to myself. We were going to spend two of
those weeks in Cannes, but now I can add that to my vacation
time.' She gave a low laugh. 'It's been so long since I've had
nothing to do that I'm not sure I know what to do with all that
time. But first, I think, I'm going to find an apartment of my
own here.'

'You mean you're gonna move out of the loft?'

'That's right.' Daliah nodded. 'It was Jerome's loft to start with, so I can't really throw
him
out
.
I figure it'll take me a
week to find a place and get my things moved in. Then I think
I'll go up to Cape Cod and stay with Inge for a few days.'

Inge's employers, the Steinbergs, had died and left Inge a
respectable inheritance, which she had used to purchase a
motel on the beach, and Daliah had a standing invitation to
visit.

'And then, of course,' Daliah continued, 'there's Ari's wed
ding. I was planning to fly to Israel for it anyway, and that hasn't changed. It's been too long since I've been back home. Eleven years is a lifetime, and I've been neglecting my family
for that long.'

Cleo nodded. 'When it comes down to it, family's sometimes the only thing you can depend on.' She grinned sud
denly. 'Family
an'
me, that is.'

Daliah set her drink down, leaned forward, and took Cleo's
hand in her own. She smiled. 'Yes, you've been a true friend,'
she said, 'and I know I'm lucky to have you.'

'An' that goes vice versa too,' Cleo declared staunchly.
'We're each other's sob sisters.' She gestured at the end table.
'C'mon, hand me that drink. It's all water by now an' it's time
I freshened it up. I mean, what's the use of bein' miserable if
you can't at least get drunk, huh?'

Three afternoons later, after having scouted nine different rental apartments and four furnished lofts, Daliah found a
suitable two-bedroom corner apartment on Central Park
West. It was on a high floor and had four living-room windows
along one wall, which looked out over the park, and another
two windows looking over at the steep green Gothic roofs of
the Dakota. It was available for immediate occupancy and she
signed a one-year lease. Then she got on the phone and found
a moving company that could take care of her the following day. Two more phone calls proved it would be three days before the telephone company could connect her, and eight
days before the cable people could come, but she didn't care. Moving her things out of Jerome's loft as quickly as possible meant severing yet another tie with him, and she felt that the
sooner that was done, the easier things would be for her in the
long run.

She and Cleo spent all that Tuesday night packing cartons,
getting ready for the removal men in the morning. It had been
years since she'd moved last, and she'd almost forgotten what
it entailed. How things accumulated when one lived in the
same place for years and had the luxury of endless space to
store it all in! There was the gleaming 1820s Biedermeier furni
ture she collected, with the burled veneers and layers upon
layers of lacquer—a very serious luxury for a person who
hailed from a country which had been denuded of wood over
the centuries and where every twig counted. Then there were the wardrobes full of clothes, the mementos she had collected
during her travels to location shoots, and silver-framed photo
graphs by the dozens. Why did it take a move to make one see
just how much one had accumulated? Not that she minded
getting rid of things for which there was no longer any space
or use, but right now she just didn't have the time or the
patience to sort through it all and start editing out the useless
things. For the moment, at least, it was simplest just to pack
it all and have it moved.

Closing off her mind to the size of the chore at hand,
she separated what clearly belonged to her and what was
Jerome's, and when ownership was in doubt, she settled upon
leaving it behind.

She and Cleo packed, folded, wrapped, taped, and labelled,
and it became clear to them that if they wanted to be finished
by the time the removal men arrived, they would be at it all
night long.

'How on earth did I acquire so much junk?' Daliah moaned
at one point. She flopped down into a chair and stared at Cleo
through bleary eyes. 'The new place is going to look like a
warehouse.'

'Don't worry, we'll get it all unpacked and put away within
a couple of days,' Cleo assured her. 'We don't have to do it
all by ourselves. I can always call in some favours.'