Stars Screaming (26 page)

“What’re you gonna do?” asked the first caller, a man named Rex.

“I’m not sure. Travel. Garden. Read. Try to find a girl and maybe settle down.”

“Have some kids.”

“That’s in the plan somewhere.”

“Put it on the top of the list. Kids are where it’s at, as long as you don’t expect too much from them when they’re grown. Take my word for it. I spawned five, so I know. They all turned out fine except one, the middle son, Lee. Somewhere he got this name inside his head that he can’t get out: Edgar Peters. Repeats it over and over and over. All day long. Ask him who this fella is and he just shrugs. Don’t know him from Adam’s house cat, he says. Can’t hold a job or lead a normal life if you got that goin’ on upstairs. He’s up at Patton State Hospital now, where they’re tryin’ out a new drug.”

“Let’s hope it works.”

“I ain’t holdin’ my breath.”

Radio Ray’s next caller said he was using a pay phone in Culver City.

“Right now I’m gassin’ up my car,” he told Radio Ray. His voice
sounded optimistic. “Actually it’s a Ford Ranchero. I’m on my way up to Sacramento to visit an old war buddy.”

Radio Ray said, “Jimmy Fain, this boy I grew up with, he had a ’fifty-nine Ranchero. White.”

“Mine’s black,” said the caller.

“Jimmy missed a turn comin’ back from Lake Ballard. Three kids riding in back were killed: the Boulton brothers, Pete and Greg, and Mary Sperling. That was in the summer of ’fifty-nine. ‘Personality,’ by Lloyd Price was all over the radio that summer. That was Jimmy Fain’s favorite song. Mine was ‘Only Sixteen’ by Sam Cooke.”

“Gene had those,” Burk said out loud, speaking directly to the radio. “He owned every oldie you can think of. But there were no oldies back in ’fifty-nine. Everything was new—all the tunes, the chicks, sex, everything. It was a cool summer,” he said, looking out the windows at the star-scattered sky. “A lot of things seemed better back then.”

Although there was still one more hour left, Radio Ray accepted only one more call, the last he would ever take. It was from a woman who chose to remain anonymous. She said, “Life? There is no meaning. Love? It never lasts. The truth is you never know the truth. Be grateful. Face reality. Stay out of the future. Treat people decently. There is only integrity. That’s it. That’s all you’ll need to know.”

That night Burk dreamt he was inside the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard, watching Doris Day dance with James Cagney in the musical
West Point Story.
His father was sitting next to him and his cousin Aaron was in the same row, but they were separated by three seats.

In the middle of a production number, Ricky Furlong came down the aisle and sat behind Nathan Burk. He said, “I’ve got Doris Day’s autograph in my book. I was on the set. My dad took me. I got James Cagney’s, too, and Virginia Mayo and Gordon MacRae.”

Aaron spoke to Ricky while Burk and his father watched the action on the screen. “I knew Cagney in New York,” Aaron said. “He was a tough guy, real tough. But not as tough as me. Right, Nate?”

“Right,” Nathan Burk said. He leaned toward his son and spoke out of the side of his mouth. “Every Sunday after church, Doris came by the newsstand. I gave her a copy of the
Cincinnati Enquirer.
That’s her hometown. She went to high school with Vera-Ellen.
That’s a little-known fact. She started out as a dancer. Her mother sewed all her outfits until she was sixteen and went on the road. She once owned a French poodle she called Smudge Pot. She’s a great gal.”

In the dream that followed, Burk was inside Bonnie Simpson’s apartment in the Argyle Manor. On her television, two middleweight fighters from the fifties were slugging it out in Madison Square Garden. The picture was in black-and-white until one fighter was cut over his eye; then the blood turned red as it ran in jagged lines down the side of his face.

Bonnie came into the room and sat on the edge of the bed. Her hair was freshly washed, and she was wearing vanilla corduroy trousers and a dark blue v-neck blouse that exposed the tops of her breasts. In her hand was a drink that looked like whiskey.

Burk said, “My mother wore the same skirt when she visited me once.”

Bonnie smiled softly before she finished her drink in one swallow. After she put her empty glass on top of the nightstand, she stood up and casually stripped off her clothes. On the television there was a close-up of the spectators seated at ringside. Aaron was there, sitting next to Ricky’s mother. Frank Havana, Max Rheingold, and Jack Rose were in the expensive seats, too. Grace Elliot was seated between them, the front of her white dress spotted with blood.

In the dream, Burk heard Bonnie say, “Tell me what you want me to do. I’ll do anything you want.”

“I want you to stay.”

“You want me here when you wake up?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’ll have to be good to me.”

“I will.”

“I know you will,” she said, “because you love me. Don’t you?”

“Yes,” Burk said in his dream. “I do.”

Fifteen

Sunday

Max Rheingold was bloated and soaked in sweat when he woke up before daylight on Sunday morning. He tried to lift his clammy body out of bed but was thrown backward by a stabbing pain that quickly burrowed deep into the folds of his stomach, searing his insides. “Jesus, not again,” he said in a terrified whisper.

He reached for the phone to call Arthur Schlumberger. “He’s not on duty this weekend,” the operator said. “But I can have his associate, Dr. Marx, get back to you shortly. Is it an emergency?”

Rheingold gasped. ‘Schlumberger’s my doctor,” he said, in an anguished voice. “I don’t know Marx.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Rheingold, Dr. Schlumberger is not available.”

“Find him.”

“Mr. Rheingold—”

“Find him. Have him call me.” Max Rheingold dropped the receiver on the floor and lay motionless, fighting a scream as the brutal pain circled slowly through his body, leaving him dizzy and breathless.

How did I get here? Max wondered through clenched teeth. How did I end up like this: a fat, pathetic old man dying of butt cancer in a hotel cabana that smells like wet towels? They took away my home; they didn’t have to do that. I was only four months behind in the mortgage. Jack could’ve fronted me, that sonovabitch!

Max Rheingold suddenly moaned, not from the pain this time but from the memory of the phone call he’d received on Saturday afternoon. Jack Rose had called him from the card room at the Friars’ Club, and his voice was filled with disappointment. “I got the hotel bill today, Max. You’re spending way too much on food.”

“I gotta eat, Jack.”

“You eat like a pig,” Jack said. Then he passed along what Burt Driscoll had told him earlier that day. “He said you were getting drunk, acting nuts, pushing people around in the lobby, and kicking over their luggage. Burt said a little girl complained to her mother about you. She said you were being overly friendly by the pool. He says it happens again and you’re out. Nothin’ I can do about it. I can’t protect you,” Jack said sternly.

“Protect me?”

“That’s right, Max. You’re a pervert.”

“Don’t fuckin’ say that to me. We’ve been friends for thirty years. We went to Del Mar together, Jack. Tijuana. I watched you fuck two women in Vegas at the El Rancho Hotel. We were that close.”

“We were never close.”

“I was in the bed next to you. I could’ve reached out and slapped your bony ass. That’s how close we were.”

“I hardly know you.”

“I started you out.”

“You helped. I helped back.”

“This is a business of friends, Jack.”

“Friendships end.”

“You can’t put me out on the street.”

“I’m hanging up.”

“No.”

“We’re done here.”

Click.

Burk drove east on the Pomona Freeway, steering the car with one hand while he fiddled with the radio until he found the signal for KIEV, the soul station in San Bernardino. Directly ahead of him, above the foothills, silver clouds were rushing across the sky like sheep through a blue pasture.

“Lookit this one,” Louie said from the backseat, where he was sorting through a packet of snapshots his grandfather had given him that morning. “It’s you and Uncle Gene.”

“I’m driving, Louie.”

“Here.” Louie leaned forward, their cheeks almost touching as he displayed the photograph in front of Burk’s face. “See, look.”

In the picture Gene wore a holster and chaps and boots with silver spurs. His head was bent slightly, his eyes sighting down the barrel of a toy pistol that he pointed at the camera. Burk was dressed normally, in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt that was open at the neck. A leather football was tucked underneath his right arm. In between them stood their mother, her face set, determined. One hand was on Gene’s shoulder, the other was shading her eyes against the watery sunlight.

“How old were you, Dad?”

“I’m not sure. Nine, maybe.”

“You look angry,” Louie said, and it was true: He was scowling, probably to hide the wide space between his teeth.

Louie held up another photograph of Burk’s mother. She was wearing the same outfit—white slacks and a white sweater—but standing alone, her smile not quite hiding the sadness in her eyes. Behind her an open gate led into a tennis court where a game was in progress.

“She looks pretty,” Louie said.

“I know.”

“That’s probably how my mom looks.”

Burk didn’t say anything.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I was just trying to remember when these were taken.”

Burk sifted through his memory until he found the year: 1951. It was in December, the week before Christmas, and his mother had arrived on their doorstep unannounced. “I’m only in town for one day,” she’d said. “Just a surprise visit. So we can’t tell anyone. Agreed?”

“Not even Dad?” Gene asked.

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because it will make him sad.”

Once they were sworn to secrecy, Burk remembered a taxi ride to Playland, a small amusement park on the outskirts of Beverly Hills. While their mom made a series of calls from a pay phone on the corner, he and Gene spent the rest of the morning riding the ponies and the bumper cars. Around noon, they bought soft ice cream and walked down La Cienega until they reached the municipal tennis courts on Olympic. There they watched a tanned but overweight teaching pro lose a match in straight sets to Buddy Jacobs, an itinerant gambler and tennis hustler from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Esther Burk’s latest traveling companion. After money was exchanged in the clubhouse, they all piled into Buddy’s 1947 Buick Roadster and drove up Fairfax to the Farmers Market. And that’s where they bought the cowboy gear and the football, Burk recalled, and the camera, and the new tennis sweater his mother was wearing in the photograph.

“Are we getting close, Dad?”

“A few more miles.”

Louie looked off down the road; then he sought out Burk’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “Do you remember the day the police came to nursery school because Mom was drinking wine in her car outside the playground? Your mom never did anything like that, did she?”

“No, not like that.”

“And I bet she didn’t make a bunch of jigsaw puzzles and glue them to the walls of the kitchen. Or go to the supermarket in her pajamas and slippers.” Louie giggled into his hands. “Nobody at school believes me when I tell them that stuff. They think I’m making up stories.”

“Sometimes you do.”

“Not about Mom, I don’t,” Louie said. He sat back in his seat and crossed his arms against his chest.

They were quiet for a moment and Burk gazed out at the cluster of low-roofed buildings that sat on either side of the highway: factories with their windows broken or boarded up, a coin laundry, a radiator shop, and a cheap motel where a mother and child splashed in the shallow end of a pool that was half hidden from the interstate by a ragged hedge.

The deejay on the radio introduced an oldie by the O’Jays. The song, “One Night Affair,” was the same song that was blasting on the radio back in the spring of 1968, when he came home sick one afternoon from his job at the network, surprising Sandra. He found Louie sitting on the front steps, rolling a toy truck across his lap. His next-door neighbor was pretending to water his lawn while his eyes scanned the windows in Burk’s living room. “Mommy’s dancing with her clothes off,” Louie said. “The music was so loud I couldn’t hear
Sesame Street
, so I came out here.”

Burk remembered walking inside and quickly closing the curtains that faced the street. When he snapped off the radio in the kitchen, Sandra continued to gyrate naked through the house with her eyes blazing.

Burk caught up with her in the narrow hallway leading to their bedroom. He seized her arm and pushed her hard against the wall. “You’ve got to calm down,” he said, but she continued to frug wildly, tossing her head from side to side. When he finally gave up and dropped his hands to his sides, Sandra stumbled backward for a moment, then breathing hard and, smiling contemptuously, she said, “This is my house too. I can do what I want.”

“You’re right, Sandra. But you can’t scare Louie.”

“I can drink. I can dance naked. I can play music loud. Anything.”

“No.”

“Yes, I can,” Sandra shouted, and Burk stood there paralyzed by anger and shame, while she turned and disappeared inside their bedroom and locked the door.

Later that night she came into the living room while Burk was sitting in the dark. She had a sheet pulled around her shoulders. The radio was on and Radio Ray Moore was speaking to John Beal, who was describing his wife. “She was tall and stately, and her hair was practically white by the time she was thirty. She had a bachelor of science degree from the University of Nebraska. In hydrology. That’s the study of water.”

Sandra said, “Is it okay if I sit with you? Do you mind?”

Burk remained silent but indicated that it was by shifting his body to make room. When she sat down, John Beal said, “She overturned her car comin’ back from her folks’ house outside Lincoln. The coroner said she never had a chance.”

Burk heard a door open and the soft tramp of footsteps in the hallway. In a moment Louie was standing in the doorway to the living room. Behind him his shadow was outlined on the wall, twice his size. “Dad?”

“Yeah.”

“When are you going to sleep?”

“Soon.”

“Are you guys friends again?”

“We sure are.”

“Good.”

Louie moved back into his bedroom, waiting a moment before he switched off the Snoopy lamp on his nightstand. From the living room he could hear his mother begin to giggle. “Crazy? How can you
say
that?” she said.

“You are.”

Louie crawled into bed and pulled the covers up to his chin. “Good night,” he called out.

Burk said, “Good night, Louie.”

“I love you,” Louie said.

Sandra said, “We love you too, sweetheart.”

Louie closed his eyes. A light rain begin to fall. It fell for an hour. Louie was asleep before it stopped.

Sandra had gained weight. Burk noticed that as soon as she was brought into the private room where he was waiting. At least twenty pounds. And her skin was the same grayish color as her shapeless prison dress.

She took a chair across from him at a small table and smiled. When he forced a grin back, she put her hand over his knuckles.

“Hey.”

Burk turned and looked at the female guard, who was standing by the door. She was a short, thick-bodied black woman in her early thirties.

“Holding hands,” she said in a warning tone. “That’s all.”

Burk nodded. Then to Sandra he said, “You look good.”

“No, I don’t. I look terrible.”

“You look fine.”

“Please don’t lie, Ray. I’m fat and dumpy. It’s all the starch I eat. When I was pregnant I was big, but my skin was tight. Not like this,” Sandra said, and she pulled at her face with her fingers. “I’m a pig.”

“Come on.”

“I am.”

Perspiration had broken out on Sandra’s forehead. She looked frightened. The guard said to Burk, “When do you want me to bring up your son?”

“Soon. In a couple of minutes.”