Belinda (19 page)

"What do you make of it?"

"Money, Jer, lots of it. Maybe a big name. These people want her back bad, and they're spending a bundle on it, but they won't go public. I checked and rechecked with missing persons, missing juveniles, absolutely zilch."

"Crazy."

"They aren't about to hang a sign on her that says 'Kidnap me.' But that doesn't mean they won't pour their money into hauling you into court on every conceivable morals charge from-"

"We've been through that."

"And I checked out this Sampson by the way, and he's not an agent, he's a lawyer, in the business affairs end of the agency. People like that don't scout."

"The funny thing is-"

"What?"

"It's not impossible. She could be some kind of movie star. I mean, it wouldn't be out of the question at all."

"Then why doesn't he have a name for her? No, it's bullshit all the way."

"What about the director I mentioned, that Susan Jeremiah?"

"Dead end. Oh, she's hot, real hot, did some arty thing that got raves at Cannes, turned in a good TV flick, so she's the genius of the week down there. But she's got no missing sisters, cousins, nieces, or daughters. Big Houston family. Just plain folks with loads of real estate money. She's Daddy's girl, drives a big shiny Cadillac, if you can believe it. She's really on her way."

"But nothing-"

"Not a thing."

"OK. You did your best. Now we should drop the whole thing."

"What? Are you out of your head? Get out of this mess, Jeremy. Give her some bucks, send her on her way. Burn everything she leaves behind her. Then get on a plane for Katmandu yourself. Take a nice long vacation where nobody can find you. If the shit hits the fan and she tells all, it's your word against hers, you never heard of her."

"You're getting carried away, Dan. She's not Mata Hari. She's a little girl."

"Jer, this Sampson hands out hundred-dollar bills to anyone on the streets that gives him even a clue to this little girl's whereabouts."

"Does he have clues?"

"If he did, you'd be dead in the water. But he's been here twice this month! All he has to do is connect with the kids in that Page Street address or the cop who put your name in his little book-"

"Yeah, but that's not as easy as it sounds, Dan."

"Jer, the cops down there saw her with you! They wrote down this address. Pick another runaway, Jer, some waif from the sticks that nobody ever wants to see again. The police don't even bother picking them up unless they can nail them for shoplifting. There's lots of free kids out there for the taking. Just go down to the Haight-Ashbury and stick out your hand."

"Look Dan. For now I want you to call it quits."

"No."

"You like working for nothing? I'm telling you it's closed."

"Jeremy, you aren't just a goddamned fucking client to me, man, you're my friend."

"Yeah, Dan, and she's my lover. And I can't sneak behind her back again on this. I can't. I don't even want to know this much and not tell her, but how can I tell her that I snooped?"

"Jer, this guy may very well trace her to your door!"

"Yeah he might. And if he does, well, she's not going anywhere with him or anyone else unless she wants to."

"You're flipping out! You've fucking lost your mind. I ought to have you committed for your own sake. You think this is one of your storybooks, you've-"

"Look, Dan, you're my lawyer. I'm saying you're off the case. Tear up the picture and forget everything I told you. When she gets ready, she'll tell me herself all about who she is. I know she will. Until then ... well, we've got what we've got just like anybody else, I guess."

"You're not hearing me, old buddy. Your agents have been trying to get you all week about this Rainbow Productions deal for Angelica and you're blowing it. Blowing everything. They don't make animated cartoon movies of books by kidnappers and child molesters."

"I am hearing you. I love her. That's what matters to me right now." And what is happening to me matters, the painting that is up in the attic right now matters, goddamn it, and I want to get back to it.

"Don't give me this song and dance, Jer! My God, is this kid a witch? What are you going to do next, the plastic surgery routine, dye on the g~ [,~t~, %t9.rt
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b_ shirts open to the waist and gold chains and hiphugger jeans and doing cocaine 'cause it makes you feel as young as she is?"

"Dan, look, I trust you, and I respect you. But you can't change what's happening here. You've done your duty. You're off the hook now."

"Like hell."

He was really steaming. He glanced around at the hallway, the living room crowded with toys. His eyes were moving critically over stuff he'd seen a thousand rimes before. "Jet, I'm going after this guy Sampson, I'm going to crack this little story of his, if I have to go down south to do it in person."

He opened the front door. Blast of traffic noise from Seventeenth Street. She might be coming around the corner any minute.

"Look, Dan. I realized something a long time ago. I don't really want the truth about Belinda. I just want to hear something that will make me feel OK about having her with me."

"I'm hip, Jer, I caught that the first time around."

"Well, Dan, when you can handle only one kind of answer to a question, it is really better not to ask."

"When I find out something else, I'm calling you," he said. "And you answer your damn phone. And you call your agent, for God's sakes. She's been trying to reach you for three days!"

[16?]

THE house was still vibrating from his voice it seemed. I stood there holding the brush. OK. One call. It had been almost three weeks.

I went in and called Clair Clarke. Break out the champagne. The deal was all set with Rainbow Productions for the eight Angelica books to be made into two feature animated films. They had agreed to all our terms. Movies to be substantially based on the plot of the books, all character rights retained by us. Contracts in a week.

"How's it coming by the way?" she asked.

"What's that?"

"The new book."

"Oh, I don't know about that, Clair. Let's celebrate this little turn of events for a while, not rush things."

"Nothing's wrong."

"No! Everything's fine actually, better than ever." Over and out.

I went back to the attic and the six panels of number seven: Belinda in Brass Bed.

Belinda, always seen through the bars, slept in a nightgown in the first. In the second she had shifted position, nightgown pushed up. Third, nightgown draped over her, breasts bare. Fourth, full nude. Fifth, close in on her profile waist up. Six, very close full face turned to us, only framed by the bars, asleep on the pillow.

My brush was moving as if my right hand had a mind of its own. I'd say, Do it. My hand would do it.

Don't think about anything else.

Four o'clock in the morning. She was down in the kitchen again. I could hear her faraway voice.

I went to the railing, the way I'd done that first time. I kept thinking of the things Dan had said.

I could hear her laughing a little. Cheerful, intimate like before.

I made my way down slowly until I stood at the yule post at the bottom of the stairs and I could see her through the kitchen door. She said something quickly in the phone and then hung up.

"I woke you up again, didn't I?" she asked, as she came towards me. "Don't tell him where you are," I said.

"Who?" A shadow falling over her face, her lip quivering slightly, look in her eyes I've never seen before.

"The guy you were talking to, the oldest buddy in the world, the one in New York. It was him, wasn't it?"

"Oh, yeah. I forgot I told you." Eyes dulling, distracted. If she is a liar, she gets the Sarah Bernhardt award.

"Somebody could be looking, a private detective. He could question people. They could tell."

"You're half asleep," she said. "You sound like a bear. Come on back upstairs." She looked tired, as if her head hurt her, that kind of dullness in her eyes.

"You didn't tell him the address, did you?"

"You're getting excited over nothing," she whispered. "He's my buddy, he'd never tell what I told him."

"Just stay away from the street kids, will you? Don't see them anymore or call them, OK?"

She didn't look at me. She was tugging, trying to get me to go back up the steps.

"I don't want to lose you," I said. I took her face in my hands and kissed her very slowly.

She closed her eyes, letting me kiss her, opening her mouth, her body becoming limp in my arms.

"Don't be afraid," she said in the softest whisper, her eyebrows knitted. "Don't be guilty and don't be afraid."

ON August 15 I was out of stretched canvas. I took out the bucket of flat white paint and went over the two I had started for the Angelica book.

Odd to see those images covered up by the thick white coat, to see Angelica disappearing. I had to stop, stare at the whole process for a moment. Angelica through a veil of white. Goodbye, my darling. Inventory of what has been done.

One, two, and three, The Carousel Horse Trio.' Belinda in nightgown on the horse; Belinda nude on the horse; Belinda with punk hair and makeup nude on the horse.

Four, Belinda with Dollhouse. Five, Belinda in Riding Clothes. Six, Holy Communion. Seven, Belinda in Brass Bed. Eight, Belinda with Dolls.

Nine, Artist and Model-small canvas, not good, work in progress. Artist can not paint himself nude. Doesn't turn him on even minimally. Love scene is a fake, besides, because artist could not do it with camera clicking away. Belinda could.

("I don't understand your hang-ups about sex, just sex, you know. I wish I could make it go away, that I could kiss you the way the Prince kisses Sleeping Beauty and you would open your eyes and feel no more pain.")

Ten, Belinda Dancing-another small canvas, of her naked, hair in braids, beads around her neck, whirling on the kitchen floor to rock music. Bratlet. Very very good!

I'd continued painting in the titles themselves so that they were part of the work. And now I was going back and putting in the numbers. The continuity would be inseparable from the parts.

The miracle here wasn't merely the speed. I'd had bursts like this before, right after I was first published, when I created so many books that I became my own industry.

No, it was a deepening of the style. The pictures were cleaner, harsher, and utterly free of the Jeremy Walker clich6s that had encrusted everything before this. The automatic cobwebs, the inevitable dirt, the expected decay was not there.

Yet never had I painted anything as dark and frightening as these pictures of her. She burned like an apparition amid solid objects. Pure fire exploding suddenly in the claustrophobic gloom. She reproached the onlooker with her frankness, her cleanness, that was it. In the First Communion veil, she announced: This is the sacrament, this is clean; you don't like it, it's your problem. All of these pictures, really, said this.

But what is the next step? I kept staring at Belinda Dancing. Braids and beads. Bratlet, almost woman, except the braids pushed it in the other direction—

I had half a mind to call up Andy Blatky, say: Look, come over here and look at these damned pictures. Didn't.

But about an hour later I made another decision. Quit for the day and maybe plan to go ahead and do a book party somewhere out there, accept an offer for a signing. Yes, it was time to do that. Called Jody in New York.

"If they still want me at Splendor in the Grass in Berkeley, I'll do it." She was delighted, would set up a date. We were still number seven on The New York Times list.

"You know, if you went on tour right now, Jeremy, we could broaden that base-"

"Start with Splendor in the Grass, I'm pretty busy. And I'll take the limo, it's just so much easier-"

"Star treatment all the way."

I wasn't off the phone five minutes when Dan called from L.A. I almost didn't pick up. But Belinda was out, had been since morning. And he was uttering his usual threats into the answering machine. I picked up the receiver.

"Look," I said, "knock it off. I told you I don't want to play it this way. I want to wait until she tells me herself-"

"Do you want to know what I found out or not?"

"OK, what?" I said.

"This whole deal is getting weirder still. This guy Sampson honestly doesn't know who she is. He thinks the studio execs who sent him on this goose chase are wacko, but the order has come from the very top at United Theatricals. Find her and on the qt, no expense should be spared."

United Theatricals, a monster establishment. Old as Tinseltown. They'd done three of the movies made from my mother's books. They did TV shows, released foreign films, they did everything.

I'd been on the lots years ago with Alex, seen the famous Big City Street, a set where they had shot a thousand New York scenes that I had thought were done on location. And there was the tank where they did the boat scenes against an endless blue sky.

"I'm trying to get the name of the top brass involved," Dan was saying. "But even drunk this guy doesn't budge. The studio sends the check. He might not even know who he's working for. It's crazy as hell."

"Jeremiah, does she work for United Theatricals!" I said. "Somewhere, something I read."

"Yeah, but so do thousands of other people, and she isn't top brass, she's the Monday-night movie right now, she's nothing. And besides, Sampson doesn't know who she is, I ran that by him, on the sly, sort of. He never heard of her. And I can't get to her because she's off shooting the Monday-night movie in Europe. As for Sampson, he doesn't seem to have a clue as to where Belinda is."

"How do you know that?"

"He's headed for New York with more pix next Friday, then down to Miami, if you can believe it, Miami, and then up to Frisco again. He's canvassing LA too, that much I can tell you, but he is real sly about LA. I mean he says it's real hush hush down here. And he does not know why. I mean you don't hear of him going up to kids on Sunset. He says LA is a special aspect of the case."