Hollywood Boulevard (45 page)

    "Well, I'm glad it isn't up to you," Sylvia said, looking briefl y over her glasses— mostly at me. The wall she'd built around herself over years of exposing her body to countless men, which had only gotten bigger after Lucille Trevor died, was up now like a fortress. As if on cue, Mucho barked. Sylvia pushed herself off the car and, hugging her dog close, turned toward the stairs. I watched her walk away. That little mutt in her arms was about the sum total of Sylvia's world, that and a pain in her being that was never going to let go. I'm going with the idea that she was trying to do something for me, whatever else she got herself caught up in, however confused her mission. The way I saw it, old Sylvia wasn't one of the bad guys, and I'll take confused eccentric almost every time over tight and sure. That's just how I called it.

    "You know what you're doing?" Billy asked me. I nodded. "You'll have to file a report
and
sign it."

    "I know." My good mood was souring.

    "They'll ask questions; better have a story ready, and it better be convincing."

    I looked at him but didn't say what had to be obvious: I was considered a pretty good actress; being convincing was my job. I tried for a smile, but none would come. I wanted sterling, not an actor's pose. I do know the difference between a real smile and a fake. "Listen, Billy, the weapon will never be found— assuming I'm saying there was a weapon. And I'll deny everything. I'm sorry I got you dragged into my mess." And I meant that, truly.

    He looked at me. He'd already told me, others didn't get him into messes. We sat, by unspoken agreement reluctant to give up the moment between us.

    I took a deep breath and we both got out of the car. The Detective opened the back door and reached for my bags. I stuck both hands into my ruined jacket pockets, possibly to hide my bruised wrists, or maybe as a way to calm myself. The next step was not going to be easy. I found a folded up scrap of paper in my right pocket. I took it out, unfolded it, and read a typed message:
Computer, note
book, and cell phone bottom bureau drawer
. Hardly the note of a murderer. I looked up at Sylvia's balcony and smiled, just in time to see her pull her Carol Channing head back. I shoved the paper scrap back into my pocket. I didn't think Billy saw, but he did. He didn't say anything, but I knew he was on to my every move. "It's nothing, Billy."

    " Uh- huh."

    "Try not to be angry with me, okay?"

    If he was going to answer, he didn't have the chance. Carola came down the steps just then, bounding two at a time when she saw me. "Ardennes!" For once she didn't look worried. Her eyes were round, her smile beatific. She saw the bruise on my face and pulled back from embracing me. She scanned my jacket and went for my hands, taking the right one carefully in hers, lightly resting a finger on the discolored wrist. "I am so happy to see you!" Unqualified, genuine happiness. I thought Andre was lucky to have her.

    I reached over to take her head of long, streaked blond hair into my hands and kissed the top. She stood just about to my chin, which I carefully kept from touching her hair. "I hear you showed bravery under fire?" She blushed deep red. "I'm very glad to see you too, Carola."

    She looked at Detective Collins. " Thank you for finding Ardennes." He had no response to that other than a slight nod of his head, which meant pretty much nothing. And, anyway, technically, I found
him
. " Andre is upstairs," Carola told me, unnecessarily.

    "Yes," I said, and she stepped aside to let us pass. In that moment I saw, from the way she stepped aside, the quiver of modesty in her expression, that she was so in love with Andre. I wish I could have laughed and hugged her.

    I slowed to a crawl once we were in the darkened corridor leading to my and Sylvia's doors. Did Detective Collins have to be with me when I entered the suite? Did I have a choice? Was I still official police business?

    Sylvia must have slipped the passkey into my bag. I'd seen it there earlier, at the hospital. Billy grunted when he saw it. "We could get prints off that," he said, making the correct assumption it had been stolen and returned.

    I held the card in my hand for a few seconds before inserting it into the lock. I shook my head. "Gloves," I said. The Detective wanted Sylvia badly, but as long as I had anything to say about the matter he wouldn't get her. I hadn't cooked up a story for the police yet, wasn't sure what I planned to tell them regarding my sudden disappearance. I was thinking along the lines of a row with my husband: I'd gone to stay with a friend, I could say. Dottie came to mind. She'd stick by me if asked, but I'd hate to have to do that to her. The bruises were going to be tougher to explain. The way I saw it, I hadn't done anything wrong. My Indio message would corroborate that I'd gone away to think things through. Nobody had gone to Indio to look for me, so far as I knew; I'd lost my way and ended up north. If pressed, I'd say I didn't care to mention where I'd gone to privately conclude my marriage was over. Whatever I said wasn't going to add up, but that line should raise eyebrows sufficiently to knock the police off the scent. If I wasn't complaining, where was the crime? I could add that I needed to think about accepting the offer to replace Luce Bouclé. There was truth to the last two parts, but none of that would satisfy the press hounds; they'd stick around, smelling lies to pick over and embellish, drag through the mud. As Harry Machin would say, "They're inevitable so put them to good use. No one believes half of what the Hollywood press says anyway."

    "Detective Collins, could I ask you to give me a few minutes alone with Andre?"

    "I can leave now if that's what you want." I shook my head.

    The lock blinked green; I turned the knob and handed the passkey to Billy. "Just a couple of minutes, okay?"

    Andre was on the phone, facing the balcony. He turned and saw me and said into his phone he'd call whoever it was back.

    We stood a minute looking at each other, a sea of tension fl owing between us. I smiled as if remembering something pleasant. He came toward me; I met him halfway.

    "Ah, Ardennes! My God, Detective Collins said you were shot—"

    "That wasn't part of the plan?"

    He looked at me for a long moment before giving in and answering. "Ardennes . . . you were not supposed to be taken from the hotel, not hurt in any way." I shook my head. He came up to me, carefully— as if I might break— taking my right arm, guiding me into the sitting room and over to the couch. I didn't sit down.

    "What you did to that poor woman, Andre, to use her grief like that— don't tell me you paid her; I don't care. What you did to her was cruel, just unforgivably cruel." I took a breath, waved my arm, the good one; almost a swipe, but at nothing. "I'll do the part," I said.

    There were two quick knocks on the door. Devin Collins opened it and came in.

    Andre turned to face him. "Detective Collins, I am grateful, and I—"

    "The deal isn't quite sealed, Mr. Lucerne. Ms. Thrush will have to make a statement. She doesn't seem to want to indict her captor, who may also be her shooter."

    Unseen by Billy, I shook my head slowly at Andre. "
Was
there a captor?" he asked the detective.

    Billy was among the artists now, on a different stage, where information traveled by less direct paths. His cop's intuition would take him only so far into the realm of facts being, in and of themselves, not all that interesting. He wouldn't understand how we made our worlds up. . . . Billy's universe of cops and robbers and killers isn't as real. We
played
cops, and wrote cops, could create a libretto for a policeman's opera, get into the cop soul, but we couldn't any of us
stay
in character as a real cop. The next few minutes were going to bewilder and anger Detective Collins. It couldn't be helped.

    Billy turned to me. I gave him nothing, only shifted my gaze back to Andre. "The money is still in place?" I said.

    "Of course, with you in."

    I nodded. "When do we start?"

    Andre shrugged, expanded his arms. "Now?" He bit his lip. "If you are able."

    "I'll need a bath. . . ."

    "No, yes, yes, of course. We can rehearse as soon as you've reread the script." He glanced at my torn jacket sleeve. Some fancy camera work would be required to hide my run- in with Sylvia and her gun. Kind of like Lucille Trevor and her disfigured legs— or Anne Dernier and hers.

    "Five minutes to learn my lines!" I turned to Billy. "Okay if I come in tomorrow to make a statement?"

    "Sure. Or the next day, or after that." Something like loathing passed over his face. He probably felt used. "You'll be careful of her, Lucerne?"

    I answered before Andre could: "Mr. Lucerne will be moving out, to another room or, if he likes, another hotel."

    "Does that concern me?"

    "It might if my safety is in question."

    "According to you it never was."

    Now it was Andre's turn to be left out in the cold. But he'd need no translation for what just passed between me and Billy.

    Andre sat on an armchair and crossed a leg over his knee. Mimicking him, I suppose, I sat on the couch, directly opposite. Billy stood, a fulcrum between us.

    "So I gain the actor but lose the wife," Andre said. It was not a question.

    I thought of Sylvia: One down, one to go. I said, "It's what you wanted. Or maybe what you need, like the song says."

    Billy pulled one of the two dining chairs out and sat down. He didn't cross his legs.

    " Still here, Detective?"

    " Until Ms. Thrush assures me she'll be all right."

    The balcony door was open on the warm day. I could see the hills up to the observatory. The San Gabriels were shy behind a thickening haze. The air looked to be turning ugly; by evening a familiar gritty feeling would descend on the City of Angels. I didn't care a hang about White Shirt at the moment, though I could see his house and two sets of sheets on the line, one off- white, one lavender. Very soon I wouldn't care about much beyond my character. I would become Anne Dernier and all else would be peripheral, distraction and confusion. Andre would direct, and he would have me— or Anne— totally. I would be under his and her thrall all the way to my bones. I both dreaded and longed for that immersion. We would rob each other, me and the character; get at a truth rarely known in real life. I thought of Harry. I'm back, dear old Harry; rest in peace.

    I turned to Andre. "Harry's gone. I don't have an agent."

    "Kurt can make up a contract."

    "Yeah, no, thanks, not Kurt. Fits will have someone."

    He twirled the fingers of his left hand. "Luce Bouclé's terms, to the fullest."

    "You cast her on purpose." Andre bowed his head. "You really do stink," I said, but not with malice.

    Detective Collins stood up. Andre and I turned to face him. He looked at me, haunted suspicion in his eyes. "Taxpayers' money was used here, if that matters to you."

    "Meaning?" Andre asked.

    "Meaning I hope this episode wasn't some lousy Hollywood publicity stunt."

    "Ah. Sincerity is overrated, though, don't you think, Detective? No one was seriously hurt, hmm?" Andre's tone could freeze ice.

    I winced for Billy's sake. "No," I said quietly, not looking at him. "We're just talented imposters."

    I looked at Andre— the easier male, the one of waning potential.

    "We're a long way from the moon over Montego Bay," he said to me.

    Andre and I had been married five days. The other guests left that morning. The staff was gone for the day, or in their quarters, so we were alone. The Caribbean spread before us; lights on the hills along the bay twinkled and swayed but felt temporary in the night, as if they knew they had no business on an island where wild jungle grew over neglected civilization in a matter of days. On the lip of the horizon a tour boat made slow passage on its way to Mexico, the size of a tiny bathtub toy with strings of white lights, a fl oating fiesta. Tree frogs were already long at their surround- sound calls, like thousands of tiny glass bottles rubbing their legs together in the dark. The moon pushed up orange behind the lush mountains until a black shred of cloud caught on it; moonlight seeping out beneath the veil as in a dark Ryder painting. We soaked in the hot tub, leaped steamy, naked bodies into the cold pool. The shroud tore away and crystal moonlight lit the landscape black and white. Venus, balanced to the moon's right, beckoned, forever unable to embrace her sister. It was a night for poetry or sex. We chose the latter. Andre spread blue and white striped towels on the ground beside the pool and we fell on each other. His passion was never white hot; he made few sounds, enjoying an unorthodox placement of a hand or finger. He was a considerate lover without letting go of the balance of power. That night he was an athlete, a yogi of endurance; entering me and withdrawing, whispering into my ear, back in, a fit of movement and out again until I pulled him into me, insistent and yearning. Fits once asked me if Andre was a director in bed. He may have been that night. Too bad for him he took possession just as the idea of quitting began to germinate in my deepest folds.

    Oh, I suppose he cast a spell that night, but now we were here in the Hotel Muse, and the spell was broken. This was not going to be a baby- torn- from- the- womb ending. Not Joe and me ripping everything to miserable shreds before letting go of the tatters. "It was a lifetime ago, Andre, and so much has changed."