Slide (25 page)

He sorted through the years, the deals, starting way back. Strange how clear and chronologically correct those events, important and minor, were presented by his memory. He refused to fool himself, called a right a right and a wrong a wrong. But too soon the ledger was way out of balance, and he was deep in the red.

That wasn't going to get him anywhere but bankrupt. He had to be easier on himself. There were two sides to every life.

Maybe, instead of all this self-accusing mishmash, if he could settle things with just one, face up to just one sort of representative offense, that would take care of the rest.…

Walter Nyland came to mind.

Elliot pushed him aside. Not Nyland, he told himself.

But Nyland returned. He'd been chosen and there was no use trying to get away from him.

Nyland was an author who had written his first novel at age forty. He'd quit a steady career to take that late longshot. The first novel came pouring out. It was acceptable but a psychological catharsis with too many of Nyland's own problems in it to be a critical or popular success. Nyland went at his second less sure of himself and with more respect for the craft. Somehow he tapped an extremely perceptive source in himself and the result was
Love Knots
, a story about a marital infidelity that managed to keep on the fine line between artistic frankness and sensationalism.

One of the assistant editors at Nyland's publisher was a woman named Janet Hamlyn. Ambitious, underpaid, more of a clotheshorse than a workhorse, she was one of the links in motion picture producer Elliot Janick's chain of inside connections. He had women in similar positions at every major New York publishing house. Not on his steady payroll but part of a reward system. When a promising manuscript came in, they immediately made duplicates that they sent to Janick.

That way he got first look, first chance at all the better material, and if, as a result, a deal was made by him, the editor involved received a nice chunk of cash that she didn't have to report as income.

Janet Hamlyn passed a copy of Nyland's
Love Knots
manuscript on to Janick, who read it and realized it had all the ingredients of a best seller and a big grosser at the box office. Janick had the jump on all the other producers. He personally got to Nyland, who was hungry for recognition. Nyland ate up the famous filmmaker's attention and flattery. Talent should be appreciated, and how much he wished he'd been blessed with such ability, Janick told him among other things. No mention of wanting to buy
Love Knots
.

Next, on a public bench opposite the Sherry Netherland Hotel, Janick put Nyland's agent in his pocket by promising to buy at least two other properties of lesser quality the agent had been trying to peddle. Plus fifty thousand cash on the side.

Janick made his firm offer on
Love Knots
.

Forty thousand and a small percentage of the producer's net.

The agent recommended Nyland take it. Nyland signed where he was told and didn't learn until much later that he could have gotten as much as four hundred thousand. The book went on to be on the lists, a bestseller. Nyland made a considerable amount from the paperback sale and a book club but the bigger money would have been from the movie rights.

Mainly it was Janick who screwed him.

Nyland knew but didn't have a fact to stand on.

Love Knots
, as it turned out, was Nyland's only important book. Some said it was the only one he had in him. Actually, being suckered by Janick brought so much disillusion and rage it blocked him, got in the way of any other feelings he tried to put down on paper.

As a film,
Love Knots
earned sixty million, was the picture of the year and took over eighteenth position on the all-time box-office grossing list.

One night years later Janick happened to run into Nyland at the La Scala Restaurant in Beverly Hills. Nyland couldn't really afford the dinner he'd just signed for. Aside, to hell with pride, he asked Janick for a screenwriting assignment. Janick, with a big smile and no hesitation said, “Why not?” and told Nyland to call him the next afternoon at the studio, knowing he was leaving for London in the early morning.

The next week Nyland was dead from downers and booze and ingrown anger.

Now there he was on the screen of Elliot's mind, waiting to be answered to. Elliot tried to diminish the hard edges with contrition. Nyland stared out, stiff, damning.

“It was a deal,” Elliot explained. “All's fair in making a deal.”

Nyland appeared to soften.

Elliot grabbed the opening. “Forgive me.”

“I forgive you,” Nyland said, exactly as Elliot wanted, a sincere pronouncement.

The trouble was Elliot didn't believe him.

Marsha Hilbert saw herself with a new strong man. Better looking, younger, certainly more masterful than Elliot.

Her new one had a jaw that set, clamped like a lock, and eyes that reached out dark and hard as stones to punish her for the slightest infraction. He wouldn't let her get away with anything, no matter how much she tried. He was poor but with taste, one of those who knew and wanted the best if only he could afford it. He adapted immediately to having her money.

There she was, in something gray and relaxing by Ungaro. A little loose sable around her neck.

He in proud, dominant black serge with a subtle stripe.

They'd be in Zurich together, beating Elliot to the bank by an hour, withdrawing every cent. Without a hitch because she had it memorized like a line in a part: One, three, nine, eight, zero, nine. Zephyr.

Worth, she was sure, millions.

They'd wait in the car across the street from the bank for Elliot to arrive. They'd watch him go in and, when he came out, she'd call him over so she could wave the Swiss bank's cashier's check at him. She'd fold it slowly, deliberately and, with beautiful insouciance, tuck it into the breast pocket of her new love's suit.

Up would go the car's electric window as she zoomed away, watching Elliot become smaller in the sideview mirror.

Gloria Rand thought how certain she was that she and Brydon would never do anything ordinary.

They wouldn't, for example, ever go to an obvious, over-trampled place like Hawaii or Bermuda. Two weeks on a barge, nomadizing on the canals of Holland would be their style.

A comfortable, Dutch-clean barge hired privately by them. No more expensive than staying at a hotel, renting a car and all that. Much more romantic. Cheese and wine on deck at twilight. Friendly windmills turning into entertainingly ominous silhouettes. Them making long, good love, falling asleep overlapped, and then waking to a flood of pastel tulips as far as they could see.

Lots of such times.

Years and years of such times.

How true he'd be. Compulsively loyal. Never even a turn of the head for young legs or the walking pump of a young derriere. He'd tell her she was far more attractive than any other woman or girl, in every department, and mean it. Better yet, demonstrate it.

All ways.

Next she had them in Provence — the beautiful old religious city of Avignon, where they vowed and worshipped one another and placed alms in the form of loving pleasure upon their plates. Walking the banks of the Rhone. Napping beneath almond and fig and olive trees.

She went on and on and on with her romantic itinerary.

Frank Brydon spent some of the time on thoughts of that Navajo healer he'd heard about.

In his mind he went to Taos, New Mexico, inquired about her. The mere mention of her name, Sky Touching Woman, made other Indians suddenly silent. Brydon took that to mean respect and was encouraged by it.

He finally located Sky Touching Woman ten miles out on the wasteland — in a crude adobe hut. It seemed consistent that she should be apart from everyone. Brydon tried to disregard the Ford pickup truck parked around back.

He entered the hut but had to stoop because the doorway was so low. She was sitting on the earth floor off to one side, profile to him. With a handwoven robe around her, although it was a warm day. She might be immune to such mundane conditions, he thought.

She was about fifty, squat, plump-breasted. Her face was flat as it should be, time-lined. Eyes with dark pupils, yellowed whites, an appropriate vacantness to them.

She didn't greet him, remained unmoved, as though she had expected him. Was there the chance that someone, one of those he'd asked, had told her he was coming? He had to put himself into her line of sight. Still she said nothing. He told her his name, his problem. In the corner off to her left was a regular brown paper shopping bag on its side, its contents partially spilled out: two cans of Chef Boy-ar-dee spaghetti and an economy-size bag of potato chips. She had to eat, he told himself.

She spoke for the first time. A single word.

He undressed as instructed and understood from her gesture that he was to lie down on the rug that was spread before her. She raised her head, looked briefly skyward and then down to him, not at his face but his chest. She repeated that motion several times, more and more rapidly, until it became a sort of delirious nod. He decided it might be her way of trying to connect him spiritually with her source of supernatural power.

She stopped doing that a bit too abruptly and reached for an object by her side. A carved piece of hardwood with a series of toothlike notches. A rasp. She held it above him, ran another piece of wood over it, back and forth, creating a hard scrubbing sound. He took that, possibly, to be the cleansing of him prior to the operation.

When she was done with that, she said, “Did you bring your gratitude?”

It bothered him that she didn't wait until it was over. Also her using the word gratitude. He reached for his trousers, took a twenty from a pocket and, as a second thought, another twenty for good measure. She shoved the bills down inside her high-top, rubber-soled work shoes.

A black cross was painted on his chest. Black stuff made from a tree that had been struck by lightning, she explained, more talkative now for some reason.

She shook her right hand as she would if it held a rattle, and she moaned some.

He had the impression that she was merely going through the motions now, getting through it as quickly as she could. She made grabbing gestures at his chest, as though digging into him, getting hold of something and pulling it out. Several times. She grimaced. She wiped her hands with her hands, snapped them sharply as if ridding them of some substance, then applied a couple of squirts of Vaseline Intensive Care hand lotion that she worked in.

On the overnight drive home he was sure it had been a waste of precious time. At least he hadn't been taken for much. From what he'd experienced he couldn't see how Sky Touching Woman had gained such a far-reaching reputation. Oh well, the world was full of gullible, desperate people who would rather believe in the powers of someone like Sky Touching Woman than admit to being beyond help.

The next day he went in to see Doctor Bruno. He made no mention of his trip to the healer, felt a fool for it.

X rays were taken. Just routine.

Bruno studied them, alone, for a long while. He ordered another whole series.

Same thing.

Definitely.

The cancer was not diminished.

It was gone.

At midnight the ten survivors were on top of twelve feet of mud. By 2:00 A.M. it was eighteen feet.

Only five more feet to the ceiling.

“Everyone all right?” Brydon asked.

Down the line they said they were, except the last, Judith Ward.

“I can't feel my right leg,” she said. From the bullet wound, torn muscles and nerves.

“Don't let yourself go,” Brydon told her sternly.

“Oh, my God.” Marion shook.

“It's numb,” Judith said. “I don't have any control over it.”

“Try, keep trying.”

“I am.”

“Pretend you feel it.”

“That's what I've been doing.”

“The leg is there. You know it is. Make yourself feel it.”

“I think it's sinking.”

“Oh, please, no,” Marion said.

“Only a little while longer,” Brydon told her. He wished he was over there next to Judith instead of farthest from her. At least maybe then he could help her in some way.

“My other leg!” Judith was hysterical. “It's being pulled under.”

“No!” Marion protested, a wail.

“Fight it,” Brydon shouted.

Judith's wounded leg was almost completely submerged. Mud had gotten above the plastic, pound after pound of it until it put so much weight upon her she couldn't hold up. It caused her back to arch. Her legs bent at the knees. She strained, asked her body for more strength than it had. Her lower half sank gradually.

“I'm going under!” she screamed.

She felt as though she were standing upright and would be able to remain that way.

Marion could no longer restrain herself. She broke position to reach for Judith. As she turned onto her side, she sacrificed the tension on the plastic that had kept her afloat.

Judith slapped out, desperately, caught hold of Marion's arm. They clutched, pulled, tried to get to one another, but the mud resisted.

Screaming, Judith went under first.

Then Marion — because she couldn't let go.

Nearest was Amy Javakian. She trembled, couldn't stop trembling. Her breath came in shallow catches. She was on the edge of losing control.

Not only Amy. What had happened to Judith and Marion might set off a chain reaction of panic, Brydon realized, and they would start reaching to one another for support and all be lost.

Brydon told them to keep calm, to concentrate on the ceiling.

Somehow they did.

Within the next half hour the mud lifted them another two feet. Three more to go. The ceiling was just out of reach.

The flashlight that lay on Brydon's chest now made a more intense circle of light on the white acoustical-tile paneling above. Brydon could easily make out the perforated pattern of the tile, and he saw that it was installed in three-by-five sections, held in place by narrow white aluminum strips, a normal installation.