Hollywood Boulevard (29 page)

    I was tired, and I knew things would look just as black and unresolved in the morning, so I told myself to go to bed: Sleep, Ardennes, sleep. I laughed dully. Not like Grandma used to say: "It'll all be brighter in the morning, Ardie, sweetie, you'll see."

    Instead of turning out the lights, I dialed the Detective's cell and got his message voice. What did I expect? Cops sleep; they're not required to keep their phones on, the way off- duty police must carry their sidearms and ID. Are they? I left a brief message: "It's Ardennes, Detective. Sorry to call so late. I hope you're sleeping well." I paused enormously, stupidly, and then added, "Good night." The call made no sense. But neither did anything else, not after a day like this.

A
fter calling Billy I actually slept. Time just moved along and plowed everything in its path and in the morning I awoke refreshed. For a full minute I forgot Andre was not beside me, somewhere on the island of our giant California king. That's right, I reminded myself, he's in another hotel. Okay, no matter, I felt very clear for the first time in a long time, and I was pretty sure I knew what I had to do.

    First things first: shower, tea, breakfast— I was ravenous after another day of near zero nutrition. Opening the curtains revealed exquisite skies: pellucid, pale blue, no clouds other than the usual puffers over the San Gabriels, and the mountains were shining to bursting, snow visible like veiled virgin brides. No sign of the pollution ring hovering over downtown and the hills. The air had been wiped clean, scrubbed, the temperature crisp, though it would likely heat up. Gone were the ghosts of last night.

    I sat at the table with my tea and a big bowl of cereal and banana. I found one last croissant in the freezer and heated that. I could have wolfed down a he- man breakfast of pancakes, eggs, home fries and toast. I thought about jumping into the car and driving over to the Detective's diner. My mother made fun of my diner taste. I'd tell her it was my personal bit of white trash coming out and she'd say, "I don't know from whom." Not from her French- Scottish people, only a generation down from Canada.

    Not Daddy. The Thrushes were English from way back, though things got muddied a drop when his grandfather married an Italian— northern, Dad always added— the one lapse into snobbery from a staunch egalitarian. I thought about that, and in this wide- open day I couldn't see Simon Thrush as a man who'd left a soldier to die alone in the field. I decided the soldier had already died, and I was willing to let it go at that, not pick it apart and insist on leaving a hangnail of doubt. I had a lifetime of picked- over doubts that I would not let go of, a whole filing cabinet marked: UNDECIDED DOOM.

    But Grandma must have been right: Things did seem brighter this morning, only I had a giddy feeling I'd forgotten something important and couldn't think what. I turned the cereal box upside down for a second bowlful, but only a couple of flakes fell out. Put it on the list, I told myself. Today I was going shopping. Head out to Trader Joe's on La Brea, fill the larder. I was going to cook a proper dinner, and we were going to sort everything out. I was practically whistling. The song "What a Difference a Day Makes" and the rejoinder
twenty- four
little
hours
circled inside my head like a plane waiting to land.

    My first mistake was turning on my cell phone. I'd recharged before going to sleep, the charger plugged in by the bed. No message from Andre. He would still be asleep was my guess; I wouldn't call and chance waking him up. Unless he was already awake, and doing damage control. Billy had returned my call, telling me to return his when I got the message. I couldn't tell much from his neutral tone. I lay back on the bed and played the message again. It didn't sound so neutral the second time. I played it again. Longing struck. I felt his weight on me, I felt him . . . it's funny how the exact memory of sex slips away, like they say about pain: You can't recall the exact sensation. You can recall the longing. . . .

    It was just after nine o'clock; probably Billy called from work, but why not from home as soon as he got my message? I hit call history; he'd phoned about eight minutes ago. Probably didn't want to wake
me
up in case my phone was on, but now, like it or not, we had to get down to business. I decided not to return his call. Not just yet. That was the second mistake.

    I brushed my teeth and applied the usual minute amount of makeup, mostly under my eyes, where my mother said the Italian grandmother showed up and left her mark. No else in the family had the dark circles. They're not that bad, but the makeup people treated them like leprosy, constantly reworking my eyes for every scene. Caking was an issue in a close- up. Joe said it was a sign of character— he meant real, not as in playing one. I did what I could with the circles, tossed my hair around, and went to clear the breakfast things.

    As I dried my hands on the dish towel, wisps of thoughts crept out of that yet- to- be destroyed UNDE CIDED DOOM file cabinet. A whole new document, the subject:
What are you so chipper about,
Ardennes?
Slam the door! I told myself— don't listen— but the fact was there, as real as the gorgeous L.A. day beyond my balcony— into which I planned to go in a few minutes, this being no day to be stuck inside— that nothing had in fact been resolved. "It will be," I whispered aloud. "It will be."

    My third mistake was answering the doorbell. The do- not- disturb sign was not out. The maids always rang the bell before unlocking the door. But would Alma or Zaneda come this early? The desk people called before sending up maintenance or a package. Carola or any of Andre's people would call. I half decided, for whatever reason, it must be Grant Stuart. My inclination was to ignore the bell, retreat to the bedroom until whoever it was went away. But the maids would come in if I didn't answer. I moved into the bathroom; I could say I hadn't heard the bell. It rang again. I should listen to the little inner voice . . . but then I thought it might be Andre and that he was being formal, making a kind of separation between us, putting me on notice that things had grown seriously strained, hence he was announcing his arrival rather than entering intimately as a husband. But I knew it was not him— the little voice did. I think I
wanted
it to be him. Wanting it to be him was revealing. If I hadn't wanted it to be him, it would have been revealing in the other direction. I walked to the door. I didn't look through the peephole. The fourth mistake.

    I opened up with the determination of a fresh ocean breeze and who should I see standing there, throwing a curve to my wind, but Sylvia Vernon, diminutive, unsmiling, her face all business, and not good business either by the look of her. She pushed in. Why didn't I push back? My fifth mistake.

    "Where's Mucho? And what's that in your hand, Sylvia?"

    By way of reply she waved the gun, indicating I back up, which I did. The piece was small, a .22 if I knew my movie guns, and it looked old. Sylvia had her heels on and leggings and a long linen tunic top. No hat this time, just her bright Carol Channing hair. I could have kicked her, she was that close and so much smaller, but I reminded myself this was not a movie take, no one would call
Cut,
try it again
, if I missed, no director was in charge, and the moment for me to try any stunts quickly passed. Besides that, part of me wouldn't go around kicking old ladies. The result was Sylvia in charge.

    "You're coming with me," she said.

    The clarity I'd felt since waking up vanished into something like a heavy sadness for the whole world, a weary sadness that it was all so unknowable. All our little and big struggles, hurting each other along the way, the importance we place on every little gesture as one day turns into the next until we think we have it figured out, or stop short of that and settle on some approximation of what we think we were meant to be. I felt like lying down. But Sylvia was aiming that pistol at me and I had no idea why. Hers was the second gun in my life in as many days, if you count the Detective's piece. And that made me think of my father and the pistols I'd lost track of, and it came to me all at once, a minirevelation: My father was a kind man, as a father but also to others, and he was not a man to run from a fight. And that thought, in the current moment of an ex- stripper pointing a revolver at me, made me feel the most outrageously glad I'd ever felt. That would explain the giddy feeling from before. I slammed the drawer shut on that doom file with all my mental might: I was certain my father never left any soldier to die alone while he ran out of the Ardennes Forest to save his own skin. I wanted to tell Sylvia: He would never have named me after the scene of his own disgrace! The sin of the father did not visit the daughter. There was no sin. Ha!

    "What's this all about, Sylvia?" I asked almost gaily, as if the two of us had arranged a lunch and she'd made the reservations; dressy or casual? My energy returned. I was curiously unconcerned, though Sylvia had to be insane to be pointing that gun at me.

    " Never mind. You pack up a weekend bag: panties, tops; what you'd need for a few days."

    "All right. Can I ask where we're going?"

    "No, you cannot. Hand me that cell phone."

    She'd caught me looking at it on the table. Dumb, Ardennes, dumb. I stepped cautiously over to the table and picked up the phone to hand to her. She shook her head, the gun steady. " First change your answer message; say, 'I've gone away for a few days. I'll return your call soon. Thanks.' Make it convincing."

    "Hi all," I said into the phone's voice- mail recorder, keeping my eyes on Sylvia, my voice steady. "I've gone to Indio for a couple of days. I need to think. Back to you soon. Thanks."

    "Why'd you say Indio? That some kind of trick?"

    I shook my head. "You said make it convincing. I went there once to rest after a long job. It's in the desert, nothing there—"

    "I've danced Palm Springs. I know Indio; it's a dump."

    I kept surprisingly cool. "They have a polo club. . . ."

    "Get packing."

    As I walked toward the bedroom, I said over my shoulder, "You sent the dead roses, didn't you, Sylvia?"

    "You're a pretty smart cookie."

    "Why?"

    "What did you do with them?" I told Sylvia I'd hidden them in the closet so my husband wouldn't find them and become alarmed. If she'd seen me with Billy, that didn't mean she knew he was a cop. I steered clear of mentioning him. "Get them," she barked.

    I retrieved the flowers. Next I grabbed what clothes I thought I'd need for a couple of days and tossed them with my toothbrush into a weekend bag. I asked if I could take my vitamins. That was all right with Sylvia, and any medicines, she added, "Take those." That was hopeful; she wouldn't be killing me if I was allowed to take my vitamins. Right? Fits's J. D. Salinger was still in my purse, so I'd have something to read if ransom was her game and there would be downtime. I started thinking of all the standard movie lines when a character is facing a loaded gun:
Why are you doing this? What do you
want? You don't have to do this. You won't get away with it.
. . .

    "Let's go," Sylvia said, pointing the way with the short muzzle. We stopped in the kitchen to put the dead flowers into a white trash bag. Now I was holding that, my purse and the weekend bag, and a brown barn jacket.

    I stopped again at the door. "I forgot my hairbrush. I'd never leave without it; my husband will notice." I was stalling, trying not to leave the suite; in the suite there was the chance of Sylvia's plan being disrupted; after that . . .

    "Fine. Go get it."

    "What about the hang- up phone calls, Sylvia?"

    "What about them? Get the brush."

    I did, and I added a jar of face cream, and we were at the door again. She already had my passkey. Out in the corridor I started to turn right, toward the landing. "No, go to my door. Push it open." I obeyed, expecting Mucho to fly at me the minute Sylvia's door opened, but no Mucho. Did she kill the miserable runt?

    Sylvia shut the door behind us and locked it twice. Her place was the same size as mine but completely different. Most of the walls had been knocked out to make a kind of loft. Painted white ceiling beams were exposed in a beach- bungalow effect with all- white walls, floors, beams, shag rug, and furniture. The only splash of color was a pair of bright magenta throw pillows on the white couch. Even the balcony chairs were white. As with my suite, we entered via the kitchen. Hers was smaller. I didn't have more time to look around. Mucho started barking from what I guessed was the bathroom, located inartistically smack next to the couch, lined up with the kitchen plumbing. Sylvia ignored Mucho's frantic yaps.