Stars Screaming (5 page)

“Where?”

“I don’t know . . . driving.”

Burk hung up the phone and drove back to his house. Before he went to sleep, he walked into Louie’s bedroom and turned off the light. After he closed the door, a car moved slowly down Valley View Lane, and twin beams of light pierced the darkness inside his son’s room—and the bars on a baby’s crib were shadowed on the wall.

The next day, the day after the Rolling Stones came to California, Burk met Bonnie Simpson.

Burk was parked on the corner of Beverly and Rampart with the hood up and the motor running. He gunned the engine. The rpms started to build up, and he heard the same thin whine that had worried him a few minutes earlier, right after he pulled away from Ernie’s Stardust Lounge. It definitely wasn’t the transmission or a valve—he knew that—and the temperature gauge was normal, which ruled out the radiator and the water pump. It’s either a wheel bearing or a worn-out belt, Burk decided, as he switched off the ignition and got out of the car.

“It’s the torque converter or the power steering.” Burk was looking under the hood when he heard her voice. “That’s my guess, anyway.”

“I think it’s a belt,” Burk said.

“It’s not a belt sound,” she said.

Burk turned around: She had a wide face, suntanned and freckled, and when she smiled—as she did when Burk looked her way—thin lines were splintered in the delicate skin next to her eyes.

“That’s a whine, like a kid crying. A belt sound is more like a singing noise.”

“Then it’s the torque converter?”

“Maybe,” she said, reaching into her purse for an apple. “But I’d lean toward the power steering. You want an apple?”

“No, thanks.”

“You sure? I got tons.”

“I just ate.”

Inside her purse, along with several red and green apples, was a map to the movie stars’ homes.

“Apples are a wonderful source of energy,” she said. “Low on calories, easy to digest.” Burk started to lower the hood. “Wait,” she said. “Let me check something first.”

Before Burk could stop her, she ducked underneath his arm and unscrewed the top of the power-steering unit. “I
knew
it,” she said triumphantly.

“Knew what?”

“You’re almost out of fluid. Check it out.”

Burk leaned forward. He could smell lilac perfume on her neck, and when he dropped his eyes he could see the tops of her breasts through the neck of her blouse. “What does it mean?” he said.

“Could have a leak. Only one way to find out.”

“How?”

“How?” she repeated, rolling her eyes. “By looking under the car, dummy.” She took a large bite out of her apple, and with her mouth full she said, “If nothing’s dripping, that means you’re probably okay. Just gotta add some fluid.”

Burk dropped into a crouch. The ground underneath the engine was dry.

“Well?” she said, and Burk saw his car sag as she hopped up on the fender.

“I don’t see anything,” he said.

“Good.”

Burk stood up. She took another bite of her apple and pointed to the movie-star map that was unfolded on her lap.

“Where’s Tigertail Road?”

“In Brentwood.”

“Is that far?”

“Ten miles.”

“That’s where Henry Fonda lives,” she said, with a mysterious smile. “I just loved him in
Mister Roberts.
”

“Yeah, he was pretty good in that,” Burk said, although he preferred Fonda’s performances in his earlier films, especially Westerns like
The Ox Bow Incident
and
My Darling Clementine.
"You like the movies?”

She nodded; then she crossed her legs and her loafer dropped off her foot and fell into the gutter. “Would you mind getting that for me?” she said.

Burk reached down for the shoe, and she stretched out her leg. Underneath her plaid pleated skirt he could see her bare thighs and, farther up, shaded, a triangle of black hair. “My name’s Bonnie Simpson,” she said.

Burk gripped her calf for support. “Ray Burk,” he said, and he slipped on her shoe.

Burk bought a can of power-steering fluid at the Chevron on Melrose and Wilcox. On their walk back, Bonnie told him he reminded her of someone she knew in Detroit, an engineer friend of her first husband. “Rick Hardesty,” she said. “Same build, and you wear your hair the same way. Over to the side.” And a few minutes later, while they were approaching Burk’s car, she told him why she got divorced. “It’s the same old story,” she said. “He stopped loving me and he stopped touching me, and after awhile the parts of my body became as obsolete as the fins he designed on the ‘sixty-five Bonneville. But, hey, that’s all in the past.” Bonnie took Burk’s hand, but when he gazed at her she turned her head away slightly, her eyes solemn and her lips pursed in concentration. After a few steps she let his fingers slip away. “The past doesn’t mean anything now. Isn’t that right, Ray?”

Burk shrugged. “I guess.”

They walked the next block without speaking, and when the silence became awkward, Burk said with grave seriousness, “You don’t remind me of anyone I’ve ever met.”

Bonnie stopped and turned to look at him, studying his face with a faint grin. “Really?”

“You don’t,” Burk said. “Really. It’s the truth.”

As Burk drove west, toward the ocean, he tried to explain to Bonnie what it was like to grow up in LA during the fifties, how it was no big deal to put five hundred miles on your car every weekend when you were sixteen or seventeen years old, especially in the summertime.

He said, “You could knock off half of that just by tooling up and down the Sunset Strip or Hollywood Boulevard on Friday and Saturday nights. A side trip out to San Bernardino or Riverside for the drag races or a quick shot down to the Pike, this sleazy amusement park in Long Beach, and you could clock another couple of hundred
miles on your speedometer, easy. And sometimes, if the waves were right, me and Timmy Miller used to get up before dawn on Sunday mornings and surf down the coast, beginning near the county line and following the swell south until we finally ended up just below San Diego.”
Just below
meaning just below the border at the Blue Fox Saloon in Tijuana, where a pretty Mexican whore would give Burk and Timmy simultaneous hand jobs while they threw down shots of tequila and watched a large dog and a naked woman pretend they were falling in love.

After they passed Beverly Hills and UCLA, Burk took a right on Bundy, and they began to climb into the hills above Sunset. Outside, the light was failing, and the overcast sky was beginning to darken. “Not much time left to see houses,” Burk said.

“That’s okay,” Bonnie said. “Just as long as I get to see where Henry Fonda lives. If we’re lucky we’ll see him in person, because sometimes he stands outside and washes his car in his driveway.”

Burk laughed. “Who told you that?”

“This lady I knew back in Detroit. Her cousin took one of those Hollywood Fantasy Tours, and the driver mentioned it.”

“That,” Burk said, “is one of the most ridiculous things I ever heard.”

“It’s true, really.” Bonnie gave Burk a smile out of the side of her mouth. Then she unhooked her safety belt and said, “You’ll see.”

Burk turned left on Carmelita, and the narrow road grew steeper. Bonnie turned in her seat, letting the hem of her skirt rise over her knees. “Are we getting close?”

“I think so,” Burk said, and he felt the front of his jeans begin to bulge. “I haven’t been around here since high school, when me and my buddies used to drink beer up on Mulholland Drive.”

“Mulholland Drive. That’s a lovers’ lane, isn’t it?”

“Used to be.”

“Did you ever bring girls up there when you were in high school?” There was an awkward pause, and Burk had to fight down the impulse to reach out and touch her pale, smooth thighs. “Well,” Bonnie said with a playful smile, “did you?”

“Sometimes.”

“Back in Michigan everyone used to go out to this golf course near the lake. My best friend’s sister—this girl named Jane
McDowell—had sex for the first time on the fourteenth green. Talk about freezin’ your buns off. Of course the word got out, and for the rest of the semester all she heard was ‘McDowell is the easiest par three in the county.’ Hey, listen!” Bonnie’s head was cocked toward the engine. “Do you hear it?”

“Hear what?”

“The whine,” she said. “It’s gone.”

Burk grinned. “You’re right.”

“Stick with me, Ray, and you’ll go places,” Bonnie said, making a fist and chucking him under the chin. Then she winked and said, “Pull over.”

“Pull over?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Why?”

Bonnie reached out and turned the key, killing the engine. “Because we’re taking a break,” she said, and she started to unbutton her blouse. “Okay?” Burk sat, saying nothing, surprised by her frankness. “Okay?” she said again.

“It’s not even dark.”

“It will be.”

“But—”

“Shhh.” She was on her knees now, leaning forward, kissing his forehead, his eyes, and the corners of his mouth. “Everything’s going to be fine. I promise. Just relax.”

Burk was still breathing hard, so he didn’t hear the first drops of rain when they started to patter on the roof of his car. Later, when his voice came back, he said, “I guess we can forget about visiting Mister Roberts tonight.” Bonnie smiled and leaned back in the seat. She had the window down partway, and droplets of water sparkled in her hair like silver beads.

“Yeah,” she said, her smile now becoming secretive. “Only some kind of fool would be washing his car on a night like this.”

The rain had stopped, and flower children in their bright gypsy garb crowded the crosswalk as Burk pulled up to a stoplight on Sunset and Larrabee. Across the street was the Whiskey A Go-Go, where the Flying Burrito Brothers were third-billed to Elvin Bishop and the
British rock group Traffic. A truck was parked outside the front entrance, and two sweat-streaked roadies were unloading an amplifier the size of an icebox.

On the corner, a pale thin girl dressed like a zen archer was hawking an underground newspaper. “Death all day in the USA,” she said over and over, in a singsong voice, as she pointed to the bold red-lettered headline that screamed A
LTAMONT.

When the light turned green, Bonnie said, “I was in LA once before. Twenty years ago. I was thirteen, and I came out here to visit my mother. She died while I was here.”

“How?” Burk asked her.

Bonnie frowned and looked out the window. “She burned to death in a fire.”

“When she was twenty-four she entered this statewide beauty contest and she won. And guess what: A talent scout saw her and offered her a chance to take a screen test in Hollywood. All expenses paid. Just like you read about. But it really did happen to her.”

Burk and Bonnie were parked in front of the Argyle Manor, a two-story mustard-colored apartment house on the northwest corner of Argyle and Franklin. While Bonnie was speaking, Burk could see a yellow-haired woman in a bathrobe standing by a window on the second floor. She was nursing a baby as she talked on the phone. When the woman hung up, Bonnie said, “No one knew she had a six-year-old daughter. I was like this big secret.”

“Where was your dad?”

“Overseas. In the war. I ended up staying with my grandparents.”

Burk didn’t say anything. Somewhere in the neighborhood a dog began to bark, and his hand involuntarily closed into a fist.

“What’s wrong, Ray?”

Burk shook his head. “Nothing. I was just thinking about my kid’s dog. I bought him this beagle puppy last week,” he said, staring off, “and Monday it disappeared. It jumped out of my wife’s car while she was driving Louie home from nursery school.” Burk turned and looked at Bonnie. “Out the window. It jumped out the window, into the traffic on the freeway. Louie screamed at her to stop, but she had the radio turned up so loud she didn’t hear him until it was too late. I told him the dog would find its way home, but he didn’t believe me.”

“Of course he didn’t.”

“I don’t think he’ll ever forgive me.”

Bonnie hunched forward a little, and Burk felt her hand gently touch his leg. “You feel trapped, don’t you, Ray?”

Burk waited a moment, then he nodded his head. “Yeah, I do.”

“I know what that feels like,” Bonnie said. “I was trapped too. Trapped and scared and alone. But I’m not alone now,” she said into his eyes. “I’m with you.”

“Make yourself at home. There’s some paper cups under the sink,” Bonnie said, and she walked into the bathroom and closed the door.

Burk looked around. Except for a couch that folded into a bed, her apartment was totally bare. No furniture. No dishes. No pictures on the walls. No books or magazines. Not even a radio. She could have moved in that very day—and it occurred to Burk that maybe she had.

After he found the cups and poured himself a drink, Burk leaned against the breakfast bar and listened to the conversation coming from the apartment next door. “I didn’t come all the way out here from Tulsa to sing backup for no one,” a girl snarled. “Sheryl, honey,” a man casually replied, “you’ll fuck the dude if that’s what it takes to make the rent.” “
That
I might do,” the girl said, and Burk heard a shrill laugh followed by the sharp sound of a hand striking flesh.