Hollywood Boulevard (46 page)

    I took my jacket off, even though I felt cold. Andre glanced at my bandaged arm. I wanted him to see it. I reached for my cashmere shawl, from the back of the couch where I'd left it how many days ago.

    "Yes, you've returned to your senses," he said. "This madness of not acting is over."

    I'd just spent three days in a dead woman's closet. I'd calmed myself in that claustrophobic hole, my smelly lair on an old stripper's gowns. I'd been shot at, for Christ's sake. How could Andre be so certain I wouldn't press charges and the whole abduction come out? Because he knows me that well, that's how. Even with bullets fl ying. Even if I wanted to, turning him in meant turning Sylvia in, and that was not going to happen.

    "Dear Andre," I said, "how you've manipulated everything."

    He laughed, but not smugly. "You are going to be magnificent, Ardennes. Acting is where with all my being I believe you belong."

    Andre was not complacent. It was just that his unfortunate European intonation and his enormous, driven confidence made him sound it. He was acutely present and boyish again, watching me. He'd risked a great deal to get me back in front of his camera, blind to the selfishness of it. If Andre Lucerne was a businessman, he'd be a billionaire. He goes after, and gets, what he wants. Sylvia was only a pawn; I bet he paid her well.

    After that moonlit night came a dangerous storm. We woke up to heavy rain, a tropical depression that churned into a tropical storm. So much rain fell, maybe a foot in a day. The road out of the villa washed out, a torrent of rushing brown water tossing white rocks and chunks of asphalt like a Colorado rapids. Angry rain and more rain and a howling wind all night. The bathroom fl ooded under the sideways falling water. How could the sky hold so much water? The generator was turned on, so we had lights when hardly anyone else on the hill did. No telephone, no DSL, no way out; the two of us at the edge of the world. Flights off the island were canceled; the road beyond the villa continued to wash away. The tree frogs croaked beneath the sound of wind and endless rain, maddeningly primitive. I kept getting up to see if any stars had appeared; it was crazy, there were no stars. The third morning it let up; pale yellow silt and sand filled the sea, washed from the earth, spreading like a virus, corrupting the Caribbean blue.

    " There was a storm after the moon," I reminded Andre.

    " There are always storms," he said.

    "And we'll always have Montego," I said. I wouldn't waltz out of Andre Lucerne's life without some regret. I guessed at his plan: Get me under his directing and the rest would fall into place. I'd be naive to think he didn't want power over me. But he was mistaken if—

    The three of us turned toward the door at the sound of someone rapping: two slow, three fast, pause, two slow. That would be Fits. Detective Collins went into gear. "Stay where you are," he told us. He walked soundlessly to the door, looked through the peephole and opened up. In walked Fits.

    "You living here now, Detective?" Fits asked, without stopping for a reply. He walked toward Andre. "Any word?" he asked.

    Andre stood up, pointed with his chin. Fits turned the corner. I stood up.

    "Hey, darlin'." He came up to me, all open and warm, didn't hold back. "Whaddaya, cut yourself shaving?" He took me and pressed me to him, delicate toward my bruises. His was the most welcoming embrace, the only one without an agenda.

    "I'm doing the part," I whispered into his ear. "And I've been shot, but only you know."

    He pushed me back, lightly, to look into my eyes; was I on the level or had I lost my mind over the past missing days? "Tell me you're good."

    "I'll be okay, Fits."

    "Welcome home, baby."

    He spun me once, and we slipped into a slow waltz. He whispered into my ear, "I know a doc with closed lips." Good old Fits.

    Andre and Billy watched until Fits dipped me and our brief dance ended. Andre's expression was delight. This was what he lived for. Billy was not immune, but he poked at the scene: "Doesn't anyone around here ever ask what happened?" Fits, Andre, and I looked at the cop in our midst, Fits with his beefy arm still around my waist. "Yeah, guess not. I think I get it." He turned and headed for the door.

    "Devin," I said, and he stopped. "Let me walk you to your car." I walked over to him and touched his back, letting go as we passed through the door. We were quiet until we reached the car. I felt as if a thousand eyes were on me from all over the hotel: Andre's crew, the maids, even the other guests; if White Shirt could see the parking lot his eyes would be on me too. I was performing for them all. But not for Billy. To think I thought I was invisible only few days ago. "So I'll come in tomorrow?"

    "Whatever you want."

    "I mean, you won't get into trouble?" He shot me a look— he'd already told me . . . I nodded. "I'll call you."

    "Call the desk sergeant; arrange to make a statement."

    "Won't you be there?"

"I'll file my report."

"Billy."

"You people don't operate in good faith."

I smiled. He was right, of course. " Worse than criminals?"

"You'll be all right here?"

    I nodded. "I'll have to jump into Andre's movie with everything I've got, and I'm scared to death. I'll have no life once we start, but I'd like . . .
Can
I call you?"

    "You have my number." He touched my hair, the lightest of gestures. "Have that arm looked at," he said, sounding the stern cop. He climbed into his car, backed out, and was gone. If he took a backward glance, I didn't see it.

    I watched his car drive the sharp curve downhill that led out of the Hollywood Heights. A spasm of loneliness passed over me, utter and deep, but was quickly replaced by a spasm of excitement, the kind you get as a kid when it's not your birthday but feels as if it is; an unnamable sense— irrational joy, maybe— that something good was going to happen.

    Andre always maintained I never really quit. Acting is what I do, and I happen to do it well. "The business end is just part of it; the liars and power creeps, the suck ups and phonies, the nasty, self- involved types are just something Osgood would have to live with for the rest of his life." That last line was from the one movie I did with Fits— I just wanted to try it out.

    Anyway, no more hotel spying: no White Shirt or the kitty who befriended me or the old man at sunset with his ugly dog and jar of wine. I won't be wandering Hollywood Boulevard. I'm back in the acting game, where— for now— it looks like I belong: the good, the bad and the chronically make- believe. Funny, I was free to quit but not free to
un
quit until Andre started playing his dangerous games. I can hear Joe now saying, I told you so.

    You just can't slam that Joe file all the way shut, can you, Ardennes; can't shake off the past. And there's my mother, telling me I would make things harder for myself than they had to be. Maybe so, Mom, but what's so good about everything coming easy? Maybe we have to fall on our faces a few times to catch on, to figure out how to make the pieces of our past fit together into some sort of whole.

    I started back up the stairs and heard a door open and then a car start. The parrots suddenly squawked in the coral tree. I turned at the top of the stairs and saw Zaneda smile and wave to me from the unit across the way, where I'd seen the lovers that moonlit night. The Muse was coming back to life. Or was that me?

    So here's the deal: I'll take Andre's movie all the way to the top, give Anne Dernier her voice, make her a character to remember, and then I'll see where I am.

For supporting me in this work I wish to thank Varley O'Connor, Traci Parks, Fred Ramey for "being the fellow," Marcy Rosewater, Karyn Parsons, and Tom Herman. I also thank Alex Rockwell for
Pete Smalls
, which brought me to Hollywood. Thanks to Brenda Heyob and Carol Davis for showing me L.A. and to Madge, Henry, Shereen, and Chisolm, my Jamaican family. With enduring appreciation, Peter, Jr., for his input, my sister Lorene, and the Col. Joseph Stefan and my mother for keeping the nightlight burning. And B., my secret weapon.