West of Paradise (15 page)

“Without what?” said Wendy.

“Without horses,” he said, and laughed. “An old joke but a bad one.”

Wendy laughed.

“Don't encourage him,” Samantha said, getting into the other side. “You laugh at that, he'll start telling jokes all the time.”

“I like jokes,” said Wendy. “Not many of the people I knew told jokes. They just played them.”

“You mean like shorting the sheets?” asked the bodyguard. “Putting frogs in your bed?”

“I didn't know she was French,” said Morton, and turned on the ignition.

“How could you do that?” Samantha asked Wendy, fuming, not knowing how to show anger to fallen royalty, knowing she oughtn't to show it at all, but seething inside. “How could you offer clothes and give your address to a perfect stranger?”

“You knew her.”

“I only met her yesterday,” Samantha said, as the car pulled up the ramp into the blazing sunlight and they all put on their sunglasses at once. “And I didn't even remember her.”

“You said she was Larry Drayco's granddaughter. She's just suffered a loss.” Her voice was filled with an understanding of loss, compassion for those who had experienced it.

“Not
his
granddaughter. Fitzgerald's. The American writer.”

“Then it's even more meaningful,” Wendy said. “You told me I was put on the planet to guide my fellow feminines.” As questionable as Wendy's intelligence might have been, as negatively publicized for the purpose of making the house look better than one of its tenants, she had mastered the gift of remembering speeches to the letter, since she'd been forced to make so many of them, and had had so many made to her. “To inspire those who might, without my presence, and discernment, not know how to conduct themselves. Certainly it should be that way with clothes.”

“I intended for you to have a line of clothing, not to give yours away,” said Samantha.

“But she seems quite a nice girl, and pretty. I would only have given them to … what do you call it here? Good Will.”

“You would have been better off,” said Samantha, raging inside, fearful of something she couldn't quite pinpoint.

*   *   *

“This would be quite comely on you,” Wendy was saying, holding out a beige cocktail dress with subtle gold threads and a chocolate weave through it. “To bring out your coloring.”

Byron sat nearby, his jacket open so his gun would be easily accessible, as Samantha had cautioned him to do, unable to be present herself, since she did still have a job. The apartment was decorated with upscale rental furniture that Samantha had had an interior designer friend pick out in a day, so Wendy would feel comfortable till the good antiques arrived from home, once the in-laws had conducted the estate sale. She had wearied of the suite at the refurbished Beverly Hills Hotel, where there were always reporters waiting in the lobby for the arrival of Claudia Schiffer, or the reported return of Roman Polanski, incognito, always said to be in the offing.

“But what if I spill something on it?” Kate was saying.

“Then you shall send it to the cleaners. It's yours to keep anyway. I shan't want to wear it again. I might remember where I'd worn it last.” Her blue eyes misted, the whites showing underneath, melancholy, silent movie portentous. “What's your shoe size?”

“Seven,” Kate said.

“How lucky. Mine, too. I have matching shoes. Well, not matching exactly. That would be, what's your wonderful American word … tacky?” She was on her knees in the bottom of her walk-in closet. “But coordinated.” She sat back on her haunches, holding them out.

“I couldn't.”

“Of course you could. And must. I even have the perfect purse.” She stood now, foraging through her well-stacked shelves of purses. “Bags are very much in again, according to Samantha, largely because of how well I carry them.” She held the appropriate one she had chosen by the handle, at her hip, clutched it to her side, looped it over her arm, demonstrating. “Isn't that fashionable? A little superficial and trivial of course, but that's what people think I am.”

“But you're not,” said Kate. “You're so thoughtful. Aldous Huxley said, ‘In the end, all that matters is to be kind.'”

“Did he say that?” Wendy asked. “No wonder he had to move to California. It must be so reassuring to come from people with genuine gifts, instead of those who give them to restrict you.”

Kate reddened. Another opportunity to tell the truth. Clear up the misunderstanding with this lovely spirit at least. But explaining was so complicated. And she had already seen what clout the ingenious lie had in this society, as opposed to the pedestrian truth. She had seen her own name brandished across slick trade papers, and from those onto envelopes of sleek invitations. It was as though deceit were the local fairy godmother, transporting you to the ball.

She was starting to imagine it might be possible in such an environment to be able to live with a falsehood. Might even be comfortable, like Wendy's shoes. So “What can I do for
you?
” was all she said.

“You can have a happy life,” Wendy said, the corners of her mouth suddenly pulled down, as though weights had been attached to them. “Excuse me.” She ran to the bathroom and shut the door.

*   *   *

When she got home, Kate tried on her new ensemble. It looked wonderful. Wendy had a perfect eye. Kate held the purse on her wrist, clutched it, let it fall from her arm against her hip, as Wendy had demonstrated. She opened the clasp. Inside was a letter. “My dearest darling,” it read, in a masculine hand. “It hurts my heart to see you, and not be able to speak because of all those who might be watching…”

Kate's mind raced, imagining who it might be from. She read no further, but folded it over, set it inside an envelope of her own, reached for notepaper.

“Dear…” She hesitated, and then wrote, “Wendy. I cannot thank you enough for your generosity of spirit and material both. I shall feel proud to be wearing something so lovely, especially remembering its source, and try to sport it with a portion of your grace.” She added a P.S. “The enclosed was in your bag. I return it, unread, in case you need it.”

She messengered it with an arrangement from her local florist, and her telephone number. She had no expectations that Wendy would ever call.

*   *   *

When Kate was in bed, in the darkness, the rustling started in the pantry again. Sanguine now about it, she went downstairs, and beamed her flashlight on the cereal box. There was movement, chomping, shaking. She took it to the freezer and shut it inside, without thought, without hesitation.

And in the night when she couldn't sleep and heard more rustling, she got up and dressed, and went to the twenty-four-hour market on the corner of Beverly. She bought Corn Flakes, Raisin Bran, and Cocoa Puffs, in case one of the rats was a chocoholic. Then she bought a Kellogg's variety pack, a cellophaned assortment of different cereals, in the event smaller members of the family had individual tastes.

That it was becoming cold-blooded, premeditated, was something she excised from her mind. There were rats in the place where she lived. What she was doing was inventive, like omission of the truth with people who didn't particularly want to hear it. Like a novel one might write pretending to be someone else, if one wrote well enough, and had a really good story.

Setting out the cereals in a neat little arrangement in the pantry, she felt more inspired than censurable. Wasn't it your own comic darkness, really, that gave you dominion over things you couldn't see, but were aware had the power to harm you? Resourcefulness was the key. Wit was the power. Dark humor was the salvation.

Hearing the shadowy rustle in the silence, being frightened by it, but finding a way to deal with it by discovering the cunning shadow in yourself, was the answer. Somehow managing both to take on the adversary, put him in his place (she knew what she would find in the morning in the freezer) and to find that part of you that, too, was capable of darkness. Somehow making it into a joke. That was the best part. Even unwitting wit would do.

Here she was now. What she had become. A cereal killer.

A Stalker's Daisy Chain

Flight 2 for New York left LAX at nine in the morning. Tyler went directly to the gate, as he had no luggage but the small rucksack he was carrying. The attendant checked him in, and let him pre-board. Although he wasn't traveling with small children, there was something so innocent about the young man. Big as he was, he seemed almost childlike, and the attendant wanted to take extra care of him.

So Tyler didn't see Helen Manning stumble up to the gate, loaded down with hand luggage, all the things she had considered at the last moment she might need and didn't want to lose in the event the plane went down. There were many who had offered to help her, from the driver of her car, to the porter at the curb, to those who checked her through security and marveled at what they saw in the X ray: hair blower
and
electric curlers, a cosmetics case filled to bursting with what appeared to be an arsenal of pills and medications, jewels enough for an auction at Sotheby's. Helen had declined all offers of aid, although she had never gone on a trip when there hadn't been at least two people to carry things for her, one of them usually a lover or a husband, the latter's status determining how many people there were to carry things for him so he could carry things for her. But this was the first time in all her life that she was in pursuit, and as he was young, and strong, and doubtless idealistic, he would want her to pull her own weight. So she started with her hand luggage.

“Here, let me help you on board with that,” said three flight attendants simultaneously. Everybody laughed, including Helen, who'd been very close to tears because she'd never realized how much all that shit weighed.

They took it from her, and saw her to her seat. It was right behind his. Already she could recognize Tyler from the golden crest of his hair, a sign of infatuation she hadn't experienced since her thirteenth year, when they were schooling her at the studio as part of her contract, and she'd gotten a crush on the back of her tutor's neck.

“Do you mind sitting by the emergency door?” the flight attendant asked her, as he stuffed one of her bags, the one that wouldn't fit in the overhead bin, under the seat in front of her. “We might need your help during an emergency procedure. Is that all right?”

“Actually, I'd like it,” Helen said, her mind going to the moment when the plane flipped down in the water and she had to be the one in charge of abandoning ship, opening the door, easing everyone past her. She would exchange a a meaningful look with him just before he slid down the chute. He would say, “I can't leave you like this,” and pull her after him, so their bodies were entwined, pressed hotly together in that chilling moment before they hit the life raft.

She was already exhausted from the ordeal of packing, which always involved an oath not to take so much next time, and the carrying, and the settling into the seat, and the relief of seeing he was, in fact, on board, not to mention the fantasy of their being in a crash together. So as soon as she fastened her safety belt, she fell sound asleep.

Sarah Nash boarded the plane and saw who was sleeping beside her assigned place. “If you don't mind,” she said to the flight attendant, “I think you'd better change my seat.”

“You object to having to deal with the door in the event of emergency?”

“Let's just say that's it,” Sarah said, not wanting to go into an explanation about what might happen if Helen awoke and saw who she was sitting next to. She had not been one of the most pilloried—nothing in Sarah's book being worse than what Kitty Kelley might have revealed, and probably had. But with various friends, Helen had joined in an
entente
less than
cordiale
not to have anything to do with Sarah. So waking up next to her might have caused a scene, and Sarah wasn't up for it.

“I'll be glad to change seats with you,” said a fiftyish man, a look of renewal in his eyes, unconcealed joy at his good fortune.

“You're very kind,” said Sarah, pleasantly, waiting till she was in the other seat and buckled to add, under her breath, “and optimistic.”

*   *   *

Behind them, in business class, Arthur Finster regretted now that he had not traveled first. His life was filled with little economies, most of them at the expense of other people. There were writers who, in their desperation, waived royalties for a quick advance, and saw their books become mass market bestsellers, the profits all going to Arthur. There were the subjects of the tawdry publications, who had also signed away all future claims in exchange for airfare and someplace to hide. And not least, there were the physical publishers, the printers, with their Central American presses, compared to whose factories sweatshops would have seemed Carnival cruises.

But this was the first time, since he had money, that he had stinted on himself. And seeing who was up there in first, he was sorry not to have flown the same. All the more so since it would have been tax deductible.

He was on his way to New York to do a TV show and find a lawyer. Any attorney with stature, anyone decent in L.A., was refusing to take him as a client. Not that he would have minded someone without integrity, a no-holds-barred sleazeball, like (he was nothing if not honest) himself. But as the world now understood, what the law was about was not justice, but lawyers. Juries voted not on the issue or the evidence, but according to which lawyer they liked better.

So he was sorry not to have flown first class, less so when the plane hit terrible turbulence and his primary concern became not who you spent time with socially, but who you died with. Jesus Christ. Helen Manning, of course, would get the headline. Sarah Nash coming in second. If the L.A.
Times
front-paged it, which they certainly would, he might not get any more than a mention one column down. “Also lost in the crash was Arthur Finster, the controversial publisher,” it would probably say. “The despised publisher,” perhaps. He didn't mind. As long as he was remembered.