American Blonde (37 page)

I leapt to the ground, but it was too high a jump. In the dark, I misjudged the distance, and I landed hard, my ankle throbbing. I ran on, telling myself it didn’t matter and I didn’t care about pain. There would be worse pain if I didn’t run.

Where was the water tower? I’d lost track of it, and then, somehow, I was on New York’s Fifth Avenue, and it was immediately quiet. It was too quiet. She might be aiming that gun at me right now. I couldn’t remember if I needed to go right or left or up or down, and then there was no time to decide because Babe was there again and she was running, looking for all the world like someone who just loved to run, who could run forever and ever.

At the end of the street, I turned a sharp right and I saw the open gate, the light still burning in the empty guard booth. The sight of it helped me go faster, and then I was inside, bending over the guard, who lay on the ground, still breathing. I shook him, but his head rested on his arm, as if he was sleeping. I picked up the phone and dialed the operator as I tried to unhook the gun from his belt. “Yes, I’m at MGM studio, Lot Two. Please send help.” I hung up, wondering if I should have said more.

I didn’t have time to worry or call again because something tapped against the window, and there was Edna Mudge smiling back at me. She stepped into the doorway and I picked up the first thing I saw—a half-drunk mug of coffee—and threw it in her face. She stumbled backward, and I took off, the guard’s gun in my hand, crossing Overland, through the gate onto Lot 1, past the half-acre lake, until I was, once again, in France. This time, it was a French village with shingled rooftops and gabled windows and balconies that stared, dead and vacant, onto the avenue. I paused just long enough to check the pistol, which wasn’t loaded.

At the foot of the water tower, another shot was fired, this one from close range. I waited to feel it go through me, but when it didn’t I rested a hand on the rung of the ladder, wet with rain. I looked up at the underside of the tower, shoved the gun in my belt, and started to climb.

“How are you feeling now, Kit Rogers?”

The voice came from ten or fifteen feet beneath me, maybe more, maybe less. I glanced down and there she was, pulling herself up steadily, gun in her hand.

I didn’t say anything because I was concentrating on climbing. For some reason, I knew if I reached the top everything would be all right. I would be up above the overcast. I would be beyond the keep. I couldn’t go backward or stand still. I had to keep going, as high as I could, maybe up into the clouds and all the way to heaven, where Mama was waiting. My body didn’t want to stop moving. I felt tired, lost, numb—but unafraid.
I should feel afraid.

Babe might have been able to keep up for a while, on the ground, but we were in the air now, and that was my territory. I kept going.

I slipped, caught my breath, and then steadied myself and thought, How did I get here? I looked below and there was nothing but open space and air and, at the bottom of this, many miles down, pavement.

Babe said, “I hope you enjoyed the berries. I’m told they taste sweeter than blueberries, even if they do look just like them. I dropped them off yesterday, gave them to your friend. Helen, I think she’s called? I said they were from Nigel, told her I was his secretary, and delivered the message that he wanted to meet you.”

This stopped me for a moment. I hung on to the side of the water tower and tried to focus on what she was saying.

“You know you can buy directly from the belladonna farms, make your own medicine, or just feed your pet rabbit. They’re immune to the plant. Unlike humans.”

I went lightheaded, maybe from the height or the sight of the pavement. Maybe from the poison. The symptoms were there—the confusion, anger, fever, dry mouth, headache, the wild desire to laugh. Enough poison to kill me. I tried to remember how many of the berries I’d eaten. I told myself, If they can’t figure out on their own what’s been done to me, I can tell them the antidote.
If I can remember. If someone finds me in time.

Down below, the street was nearly empty. No sign of the police. A taxicab stopped outside the bar and grill, and a passenger climbed in. A man walked by, his dog on a leash. A motorcycle went roaring past. No one looked up. No crowd collected. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t have an audience, and this might have been the best thing—the only good thing—about being up there.

The wind tugged at my hem. Even though I was only wearing a dress and bare feet, I was burning up.
Is this how it feels before you die? Or is it one of the earlier symptoms?

I wanted to dance, but I held myself back—gripping the rung so tightly I could literally feel the metal hitting bone. The ladder was barely wider than my waist. My fingers dug into the hard, wet surface. My mind wouldn’t turn over, even though I was trying to think. I suddenly wanted to get back down, but I didn’t know how to get there, and besides, someone or something had chased me up here.

I don’t want to die.

A voice was saying, “I actually thought of you as my friend. Maybe that’s the hardest part of all of this. I liked being your friend, Kit. I wasn’t just putting that on. This isn’t personal, although I know it seems that way. It’s just what has to happen now.”

Here is the strange thing: I feel calmer than I have in months, probably because I am doing something to fix this, once and for all. My mind feels far away, as if it has wandered off, free-falling all those miles onto the street, and from there speeding its way toward the ocean. I am waiting to see what it will do next.

From the direction of the ground, I heard my name. At first, I thought it was Babe, but then, just barely, I could make out a face. It was a good face, a friendly one. It was a face I loved.

Babe was also looking down. I hooked my arm through the rail, so that I was latched on, and then I pointed the empty gun at her head. When she turned back to me, she was staring down the barrel. I said, “Bang,” and pulled the trigger. The gun made a clicking sound, and in that instant, Babe lost her grip. Too late, I reached for her hand, dropping the gun. Babe fell through the air, her eyes on mine as she went. I pulled myself in, shut my eyes tight, clinging to the ladder. I was suddenly frozen. I couldn’t look. I couldn’t go higher. I couldn’t go down.

A voice hollered at me to come on. “Everything is okay. You’re safe.” But I couldn’t move. I was still frozen, eyes still closed, by the time Johnny Clay reached me.

The next thing I knew, I was on the ground, looking up at the water tower as if it were a giant beanstalk. My brother wrapped a blanket around my shoulders, and Flora held out something foul-smelling and told me to drink every last drop of it. I didn’t want to drink it, and I told her this, and she and my brother made me drink it anyway.

The guard was there, or one of them, and Butch Dawkins handed me a hot cup of coffee and told me to drink this down too. I heard the wail of a siren on the next block, and I closed my eyes just for a second, sending up a short, sweet prayer of thanks because it was important to be thankful, even at a time like this. “Nigel,” I said, though I couldn’t hear my voice. “He’s by Grand Central Station.”

The next thing I knew, I was staring at a dingy white ceiling. The part of my mind that was working and with me thought, What am I doing on the floor?

And then I saw that I was on a bed and not the floor at all, and a man in a white coat leaned over me and said very slowly, “Can you hear me, Miss Hart? Do you remember what happened?”

“Yes,” I said, but my voice sounded thin and raspy, like an old man’s. “There has been a murder.”

“But you are alive. . . .”

“Not me. My friend. Although someone tried to kill me. The same person. They were getting away with it, you see, but not now.” I started to laugh like a villain in a movie. I laughed and laughed, the sound of it echoing off the white, white walls of the room. The only decoration was a large framed painting of horses grazing in a valley, placid and dull and hanging too high on the left side. I stared at it, fascinated.

Then, as I watched, the horses galloped out of the painting, toward my bed. I covered my head, and my shoulder shot through with pain so sharp, I caught my breath.

The man in the coat told me to relax, to be calm, to concentrate on breathing. Behind him, through the window in the door, I could see a dark-haired man in a suit and another man beside him with a face like a bulldog and his hat pulled low, like a gangster. Before my eyes, they multiplied until thirty or forty of them crowded in the doorway, reaching for me.

“Don’t let them in here,” I said. “Call Dr. Murdoch.” I clutched at the doctor’s coat, my hands opening and shutting like mouths. For a moment, I thought my hands were talking, and so I waited politely, letting them go first. When they only sat dumb and silent, I repeated, “Call Dr. Murdoch.” Then I pulled the doctor close and whispered, “Tell him I’m the evidence he needs. I am the evidence.”

I
woke up in a white room, my brother sitting beside me. I blinked at him, but he was out of focus, as if there were two of him sitting very close together. When he saw that my eyes were open, he stood up and frowned in a worried way. He looked like he hadn’t slept for days.

“How long have I been here?” My voice was garbled and strange, my throat raw. That’s not my voice, I thought. They’ve replaced my voice with someone else’s.

“Since Sunday.”

“What day is this?”
Where did my voice go?

“Tuesday.”

My shoulder was throbbing a little. My head ached, as if it had been split in two. I closed my eyes and opened them again. “You look blurry.”

“It’s the belladonna. You’ve still got it in your system. The doctor says it’ll take about ninety-six hours before it’s out of you. Your vision should clear up in a few days. You had us worried, little sister.”

I tried to sit up, but it hurt too much, so I stayed still and contented myself with smoothing down the covers. “What happened?”

“Don’t you remember?”

“I remember parts of things.”

“It’s probably better that way.”

Images of scenes and places drifted in and out like clouds. I remembered the rain first. But I had a memory of snow as well. A French village. A Paris street. A waving flag. The world from much too high. And Nigel. Something about Nigel. The harder I tried to focus and think, the more my head pounded.

Finally, I said, “Nigel.” Johnny Clay would know whatever there was to know and why I was asking.

“He’ll be okay. He lost a lot of blood, but he used his tie as a tourniquet. Bastard saved his own life.” I could hear the admiration in his voice, in spite of himself.

“He was shot.” That part was coming back to me. “More than once.” Something else came back—Babe’s face floating toward me through the hazy, foggy mist of my brain. “Babe King. Babe King shot him?”

“And you. She was the one who gave you the belladonna. It was the blueberries, which weren’t really blueberries.”

“She fell.” I could suddenly see her face, the wide eyes, the open mouth as she dropped away into nothing.

He shook his head, which meant Babe was dead.
Good-bye, Babe. Good-bye, Edna.

“No one will know what she did. I mean regarding Mudge.”

“They know. Your friend Sam is working on a piece about it
.
A nice little tribute to Edna Mudge, and the studio that created her.” His eyes went bright and sneaky. He smiled, and just like that, he looked like my brother again.

“Sam was here?” I glanced around the room, as if somehow I’d overlooked him.

“That’s right. We all were.”

“How did you find me?”

Johnny Clay shifted in and out of focus so that there was one of him, then two, then three.

“Flora got to the house and saw the note Helen wrote you about meeting Nigel. She called Helen at her hotel because she smelled a rat, and when Helen told her about the blueberry delivery from Nigel’s secretary, Flora called me. I guess Nigel Gray doesn’t have a secretary, just some business manager named Clarence So-and-so.” He kicked at the bed, studied the floor. When he looked up again, he was as serious as could be. “But I’ll always find you. You can count on that.”

I reached out my hand, even though my arm felt like a dead weight. He held my hand, gave it a squeeze, and smiled again. “Besides, I owed you one, little sister. I figure now we’re even.”

I slept for hours.

When I woke this time, it was evening or maybe late at night, and Butch Dawkins was propped in a corner chair, head tipped back, eyes closed.

I couldn’t remember ever feeling so tired. Everything about me ached and hurt, as if I were coming to life after a long, long sleep. My own eyes were heavy, and I watched Butch for a few minutes without saying anything. When I couldn’t keep them open any longer, I let myself drift, knowing he was there.

I woke up later—minutes or hours, it was hard to tell—and this time he was awake and sitting up, head resting on his hand. He was staring out the window, as if he were deep in thought.

“Hey,” I said.

He turned his head, dropped his hand. “Hey.” He walked over to the bed. In his eyes, I could see the worry. “How are you feeling?”

“Hungry.”

He laughed, shook his head. I could see the relief wash over him, loosening the tight, tense lines of his face. “You’re one down-home, girl, Velva Jean. That’s. Fo. Sho.”

I looked him right in the eye, fixing a stare on him so that he couldn’t get away. “When I had my accident at Camp Davis, when I nearly died, I had a dream that you were at the hospital.”

“Are you asking me if I was there?”

“Yes.”

“What do you think?”

“I think you were. And the song you wrote, the one I carried with me to England and France and Germany, ‘The Bluesman’—was that about me?” I could feel myself fighting to stay awake. I shifted a little, tried to sit up, but my eyes were so heavy. Why were they so heavy?

“What do you think?”

“I think it was.” As if he didn’t know his own song, I quoted it back to him. “‘It don’t matter where or when, or who or what or why—I’ll love you forever and on the day when we die.’”

“Sure sounds like words to me. And not much of a riddle.”

My eyes were closing again. I couldn’t remember ever feeling so tired. “Will you be here when I wake up?”

“Yes.”

I woke sometime Thursday feeling whole, as if I’d been put back together. Butch was still sitting in the chair, as if only minutes had passed. He said, “Helen’s here. She wants to see you.”

While he went to find her, I tried to take stock of things. My head felt good and clear. No headache. No pain. Maybe just a little twinge in the shoulder and ankle. I felt awake. More awake than I had in months and months. I smoothed my hair and for the first time wondered what on earth I must look like.

Helen hurried in, tears in her eyes. “Hartsie.” She put her arms around me and hugged me as tight as she could. Helen was not one to hug or cry, and she pulled away quickly. “This is my fault. I took the message. I put the blueberries in the salad. I believed her when she said she was Nigel’s secretary. She made herself up—wore a disguise. I didn’t recognize her.”

I took her hand. “You didn’t know.”

She shook her head and gave my hand a squeeze. “That is the last time I ever cook. Mark my words.” She wiped her eyes. “You had me frightened. Not just me, all of us. Your brother would have killed Babe King himself if she wasn’t already dead.”

“I thought you were supposed to go home with your parents.”

“I couldn’t leave until you were better. I’ve got a flight out this weekend. I need to go back and tell Sterling Archer Sanford the Third I can’t marry him.”

“Where’s Flora?”

“She’s here. She’s been so worried. I’ll get her for you, but first . . .” She pulled something from her handbag. “I don’t want to overwhelm you or take too much out of you, but it was one of the last books I searched.” She turned the spine, leather-bound and worn, so I could see it.
Ruth
by Elizabeth Gaskell. “It’s a story about an orphaned seamstress who meets a man and falls in love. He takes her in, but then he leaves her, and the girl is all alone. Until she gets a chance at a new life where she can have love and respect, as long as no one finds out about her secret—the illegitimate child she’s hidden away.”

She handed the book to me, and then she handed me something else. “This was inside.”

It was a faded photograph of two smiling girls, side by side, the older looking at the younger with love. On the back, someone had written, “Edna and Eloise, 1922.”