“I didn’t really think about that, but I guess it’s another plus.”
“There may be expenses.”
“I’m fine with that.” She sat forward eagerly. “We have a deal then?”
“I’ll need a cashier’s check for the advance.”
“We can go straight to the bank this morning, if you’d like.”
“Also, a contract.”
“I’ve already taken care of that.”
She rummaged in her tote bag again. Half a minute later, a formal contract lay before me on the table, setting down the terms in precise detail.
“You come prepared, Charlotte.”
She nodded toward the accordion file.
“You’ll find several more individual files in there that should help you get started, along with various notes and documents, arranged by subject. I’ve also tucked in a card of my own, with my home address and phone number. I’ll be available for whatever you need.”
“I can see you’re very organized.”
“I try to be, especially when a project means so much to me.”
She paused as her left hand formed her signature neatly on the bottom of the contract, then leveled her eyes on mine.
“You do understand how important this is to me, don’t you, Mr. Justice?”
I told her that I did. Then I suggested she take a stroll through the neighborhood, checking out the quaint little houses along the tree-lined streets of the Norma Triangle, while I cleaned up and changed clothes before we went to the bank.
*
When Charlotte Preston was gone, I climbed into the shower and let the hot water stream down on me, and began to shake all over.
I’d tested positive for HIV roughly a year before and still hadn’t pulled myself back together—still hadn’t come to terms with the stark realization that the virus was in my system, that there was nothing I could do to turn back the clock, undo the damage. When the test results came back on that life-changing afternoon, my reaction had been to plunge into a six-month drinking binge of blindness, fury, and fear. My tequila holiday had ended abruptly half a year later with the death of Harry Brofsky, once my editor and mentor at the
Los Angeles Times,
whose career I’d ruined along with my own. He’d withered away after a paralyzing stroke and finally died in his sleep without my saying good-bye because I was locked up in my apartment with the shades drawn and my phone off the hook, feeling sorry for myself while I worked my way to the bottom of another bottle. The shame of that had jarred me off the booze, but when the blessed alcohol was gone, I was left with little more than the growing awareness of the virus inside me, slowly devouring my immune system cell by cell, and a life in front of me that veered wildly in my fevered imagination between hopelessness and horror.
So I’d remained locked up in the same apartment where my lover Jacques had slowly died not quite a decade ago, from the same virus that now coursed through my veins. Month after month I’d stayed shut in alone, losing weight, enduring minor rashes and low-grade fevers, unwilling to seek treatment. The new therapies for HIV worked for many but not for all and came with potentially debilitating side effects, but that wasn’t the reason I avoided getting help. Starting treatment would be an acknowledgment that I’d finally joined the legions of the infected, and I wasn’t ready to face that truth just yet.
The hours after midnight were always the worst, when every possible manner of suicide ran through my mind. Over and over the suicide tapes played in my head, until I’d envisioned every method, every move, down to the last detail, giving me options for escape, a sense of control. Each time I closed my eyes, the tapes began playing automatically, as if rewound and cued up from the night before. It had gone on like that, through the winter and into spring, until this morning, when Charlotte Preston had come tapping on my door, turning upside down my already darkly unsettled life.
*
I shaved in the shower, breaking the rules about water conservation, then brushed my teeth, combed back my thinning hair, and put on the cleanest decent clothes I could find. Half an hour later, I was standing in the Bank of America at the corner of Hilldale Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard in the heart of Boy’s Town, as the gay section of the city was widely known, watching Charlotte Preston turn away from a teller’s window and place a cashier’s check for $25,000 into my hand. It didn’t feel real but somehow it fit neatly into the strange and serendipitous pattern of my life.
We’d already signed the contract, and her amber eyes were bright the way they’d been when I first met her. She was positively beaming.
“I feel like everything’s going to be OK, now that you’re going to help me set the world right again.”
“Let’s take it one step at a time, Charlotte. See how it develops.”
“I’m an optimist, Mr. Justice. I prefer to see the glass half full.”
My lips formed a crinkled smile.
“I’ll drink to that.”
It was almost one on a Saturday, and the bank was within minutes of closing. Charlotte told me she was driving up the coast to Montecito, to visit her father’s estate, and asked if I wanted to go along. I demurred, needing a little time to let the impact of my new circumstances settle in.
“Another time, then. You’ll want to see Father’s place at some point, before you write the book. He called it Equus, after that famous play. You know, the one by Peter Shaffer, about the sexually conflicted boy who blinds all the horses.”
“And the analytical psychiatrist who tries to understand him, to unlock his troubling secrets.”
“Father loved that play. He wanted desperately to portray the psychiatrist when the film was made, but it went to someone else.”
“Richard Burton, I think.”
“Yes, Burton. They thought Father was too lightweight for the role, I suppose, too Hollywood. He’d hoped the part might revive his career. After he was turned down, he lost interest in acting. He spent more and more time up in Montecito with his horses.”
Sadness passed like a shadow across her face.
“He loved his horses, his solitude. Even I wasn’t too welcome at Equus. I always had to phone ahead, let him know I was coming. I hope he was happy up there these last few years.”
I asked her why she was going up now. She told me she wanted to put the estate up for sale but had encountered problems.
“Father’s longtime caretaker, a man named George Krytanos, is opposed to me selling the place. Father left him the horses and a generous pension, but he’s tried to sabotage my attempts to put the property on the market.”
“He’s let it get run down?”
“That and padlocked the gate, so the agent can’t get in to show it.”
“Seems like you could have him evicted.”
“I may have to, if it comes to that. He’s a strange man, rather sad. He was devoted to Father, though. I’d hate to be mean to him, but I do want to sell the house before the end of summer. They say it’s the best time, when the weather’s so nice.”
“How do you intend to get in?”
“He doesn’t know it, but I ordered a key made. I’m picking it up from the locksmith on my way there.”
“Very resourceful.”
“I don’t like to leave anything to chance. You’ve probably noticed.”
“Back to work on Monday, or should I reach you at home?”
“Actually, I quit my job after Father died.”
She told me she’d worked as an anesthesiologist in the office of a prominent plastic surgeon, an old friend of her father’s.
“You got tired of all those nips and tucks?”
“I don’t really need to work now. Father’s living trust left me with more money and property than anyone rightly deserves.”
Her eyes fell.
“Although I’d trade every penny to have him back awhile longer.”
Then her mercurial smile returned, lighting up her face again.
“You’ll give him back to me, Mr. Justice, in the book you’re going to write.”
“I’ll do my best, Charlotte.”
She glanced at the sparkling Cartier on her wrist.
“I should be off. I want to get up to Montecito and back before dark.”
“And I’d like to get this check into my account before the bank closes.”
I watched her hurry out the door, where she turned and started up the hill, visible through a long bank of windows. She continued to move briskly, up on her toes, her chin held high, her bright knit cap perched confidently atop her bobbing curls. She struck me as one of those relentlessly optimistic people who feel a positive attitude can push them past any obstacle, propel them beyond any unpleasant truths—maybe even turn a washed-up movie hunk like Rod Preston into an actor comparable to Richard Burton in her never-never land of rose-colored memories. Relentless optimism isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I thought, although it can sometimes be as blinding in its own way as a fifth of Cuervo Gold consumed in deliberate haste.
When Charlotte was gone, I deposited her check into my nearly depleted savings account, keeping out a thousand dollars cash that went into my front pants pocket. As I left the bank, the ten crisp hundred-dollar bills felt miraculous there, almost sensual bulging in a roll against my thigh. Yet they also felt unearned, vaguely stolen.
*
To celebrate my new fortune, I ordered a bountiful lunch at Boy Meets Grill, a broiled chicken breast with sautéed vegetables and curly fries on the side and a tall lemonade for the extra vitamins. I managed to get down only part of the meal before I felt painfully stuffed and slightly nauseated; I’d been plagued by a lack of appetite on and off for months, and now I’d made myself nearly sick. Seeing my half-eaten plate being cleared away left me in a deep funk, feeling pessimistic about everything yet nothing in particular.
I returned to the apartment exhausted, both from my consuming depression and my enervating meeting with Charlotte Preston that morning. Within minutes, I fell into a rare deep sleep. When the phone rang shrilly I woke, thirsty and disoriented, to find that dusk had darkened the apartment.
It was Charlotte, calling from Montecito. She spoke rapidly in an agitated voice, telling me right off that she had changed her mind about the book deal. She told me to keep the money she’d already paid me and to forget that she’d ever had such a crazy notion, to forget that we’d ever met or spoken. I pressed her for an explanation, but she talked right past me, trying to seem upbeat but sounding badly troubled instead.
“I’ll need the files back that I left with you this morning. I’m leaving here shortly and should be back in Los Angeles sometime before eight. Will you be at home?”
“Yes, I’ll be here.”
“I’ll stop by my place first to feed and walk the dog. I’d rather you not open the files, since we won’t be writing the book after all.”
“What happened, Charlotte? What’s going on?”
“I’ll see you around eight.”
She hung up before I could speak another word, and I was left sitting alone on the bed in the deepening shadows, wondering if my world would ever stop imploding. I had the money; that was something. I had $25,000 in the bank for doing nothing more than spending an hour or two with an anxious young woman who didn’t seem to know her own mind and had plenty of cash to throw away on her whims and fancies. I sat there in the encroaching darkness, trying to count my blessings, trying to convince myself what a lucky fellow I was.
Eight o’clock came but Charlotte didn’t. She hadn’t arrived by nine, either, and when the hour of ten had come and gone, I opened the accordion file to get her phone number, then called her at home. I got her voice mail and left a message.
At eleven, with no return phone call, I pulled on a jacket and slipped Charlotte’s personal card into my pocket. I trotted down the wooden steps and along the gravel drive past the small house occupied by my elderly landlords, Maurice and Fred. There were lights on inside and I could see them in the cozy living room, entertaining friends, which they usually did on Saturday evenings. My old Mustang convertible was parked out front on Norma Place and the ignition kicked over without too much trouble. A minute later, I was accelerating up interlocking side streets, trying to avoid the Saturday-night crush of cars and club hoppers on the Sunset Strip. It took me another ten minutes to work my way up to the western end of Hollywood Boulevard among the old, faded mansions there, where I made a left turn onto Nichols Canyon Road, one of several that connect the west side of Los Angeles to the San Fernando Valley. The narrow, two-lane blacktop snaked its way up a deep ravine toward Mulholland Drive, with the houses wedged in tightly on either side, situated for the views. Halfway to the crest, along the twisting asphalt, the house numbers started edging closer to the one on Charlotte Preston’s card. When I saw the number I was looking for, I pulled in behind a new BMW convertible in a small carport poised on the steep hillside like the house that adjoined it.
The canyon was dark and quiet, and when I shut the creaky door of the Mustang behind me, dogs began barking. Charlotte’s house was a modern, rectangular structure of stucco and glass in the manner of architects like Richard Neutra and R. M. Schindler, all clean angles and lines, probably built in the late thirties or early forties. The exterior was designed for privacy, with narrow, horizontal windows near the low roofline that revealed the indistinct glow of lights inside but nothing more. Buildable land was at a premium here, and there was almost no yard between the road and the house. A walkway of perhaps forty feet led from the stunted drive of the carport to the front steps, through a rock and cactus garden that looked as carefully arranged as the stylish clothes I’d seen on Charlotte earlier that day.