Cheat and Charmer (78 page)

He had moved in on Veevi like a coyote, at the end of the summer, plying her with booze whenever she asked for it, drinking with her. But he had a hollow leg, while she got smashed on the first drink, her blood already soggy with the sleeping pills he procured for her from who knows how many Beverly Hills doctors. He was a “serious actor,” no less, who came to Veevi’s house for lessons with Dorshka twice a week. When he couldn’t pay, he did favors for her and Veevi, yard work, handyman stuff, in tight jeans and a sweaty T-shirt.

Veevi wouldn’t have looked at him twice, but in the miserable days after Mike left, in August, when she was literally unable to get out of bed, he made himself indispensable to her. When she woke up, he got her orange juice laced with gin. A transplanted New Yorker, he claimed to be a photographer as well as an actor, said he had been a painter in the late forties, dropped every name in the book, and, immediately after he started sleeping with her, began referring to himself as the latest in the line of Veevi’s consorts: Stefan, Mike, and Me. Dinah hated his lewd blue eyes, hated the way he would lean over the sofa at the Laskers’ and, in a coarse display of ownership, tweak Veevi in the crotch, hated the sweat that broke out on his upper lip when he drank beer, hated the tight bathing suits he wore around the pool, hated the way he talked about the “art” of acting, and hated the way he played in to Veevi’s disdain for everything that wasn’t New York or European. Above all, she hated him for taking possession of Veevi.

Thinking about him, Dinah remembered the argument she and Jake had had over the phone before she left L.A. in early November for the last out-of-town tryouts and the opening. She had wanted to stay, worried about Cole’s grip on Veevi, but Jake had put his foot down: “I’m sick of your putting her first. This is the biggest risk of my career, and I want you with me.” Ordinarily, she would have been thrilled, but his words now left her with a sickening uneasiness. Veevi was drunk so often when she called on the phone that Dinah simply held the receiver to her ear, listened to Veevi’s sodden slurring and weeping, and could only murmur in response, over and over: “Yes, Vee … sure, Vee … I know, Vee.”

Now, flying into L.A., knowing only that whatever she had to face in the coming hours would be worse than anything she had ever experienced in her life, she cursed herself. If only I hadn’t left. If only I hadn’t accepted Dorshka’s version of things last summer—that Veevi was fine, that she had accepted it completely when Mike went back to Paris, that they had parted as friends, with an understanding about everything, that Byron Cole was a dear, kind man and a stabilizing and calming influence on Veevi. Wrong. All of it wrong. It appalled her, the whole situation. She was mad at Dorshka, whom she had always thought so wise, because she had accepted Byron Cole into the house as if he were one of her beloved refugees and refused to see what he was doing to Veevi. Of course, having him there made things easier for her; Dinah understood that. It meant that she didn’t have to burden herself with Veevi and could devote herself to Coco, who had no one except Dorshka. She did have her passport back, thanks to Veevi, but Mike hadn’t insisted that she move to Paris. In fact, he had told her that it was best for her to stay with Veevi and the girls (though Claire, fortunately, spent most of her time with her boyfriend and was hardly ever at home). Because he seemed so eager for her to have Coco, she had refused to acknowledge his cruelty to Veevi.

Dinah had bought more newspapers at Idyllwild, intending to reread the morning reviews on the plane. Jake had tried to read them out loud to her as she packed, and later in the limousine, hoping to distract her—and capture some small particle of her attention for himself—but she couldn’t concentrate on listening to him. Still, she knew that she had been right. The reviews were great, and despite the Quincy Bradford verdict last night, the show was a hit—a big one, in fact—and would be running for a long time to come. But it didn’t matter to her now; it meant nothing at all, and she had shoved the newspapers unopened under the seat in front of her
and forgotten them. She had been silent, unresponsive, tense as she packed, listening to him as he lay on the bed taking calls of congratulations from people whose excited voices she could hear through the phone even though she was on the other side of the room.

Byron was waiting for her, his swarthy face unshaven, a roll of tanned hairy belly visible under his T-shirt. She barely nodded hello, and ducked away from his attempt to embrace her; she nearly outpaced him in her rush to get to the car. Arrangements had been made in New York to have her baggage delivered to the house, so there was no need to claim it. She fired questions at him: Was Veevi conscious? What about the pain? Was she getting morphine?

That, more than anything, was what she couldn’t bear—the thought of Veevi’s pain from the burns. When she reached the left side of the green MG, Veevi’s car, which she and Jake had bought for her with its British right-hand drive, she saw that the top was down and the front seat soaking wet. Dinah didn’t want to sit down in a puddle of water, and she looked around for something to wipe the seat with.

Byron was already starting the ignition and seemed not to notice that she was still standing.

“I’m not driving to C-C-C-Cedars in the rain, with the top down,” she said, trying to steady her voice. “I need something to wipe the seat with.”

He gave her a doleful look with his hooded eyes, as if he’d been startled by emotions too deep for her to fathom. “She’s in agony, Dinah.”

You prick, she thought. You fed her booze and pills day after day, and then you drive her MG here in the rain with the fucking top down and get the seat soaking wet because you’re so overcome with grief. Dinah turned swiftly and began to walk in the other direction. “Fine. I’ll get a t-t-t-taxi,” she said furiously.

“Hold on, hold on.” He jumped out of the car and grabbed some rags in the back to wipe off the seat. As they raced downtown on the Hollywood Freeway, Dinah asked questions. What were Veevi’s chances? The next six weeks would be crucial, he said. How badly was she burned? (She knew the answer to this, but had to ask again.) Third-degree burns, over fifty percent of her body. How did it happen? She was feeling bad that day, he said. A letter had arrived from Mike saying that he couldn’t live without Odile,
after all, and that it was best if they went ahead with the divorce after all. He had left L.A. promising to think everything over. He’d always love her, he said, but the marriage was no go anymore.

“I took her out for a drive, down to the beach,” Byron said.

Yeah, you got her good and crocked first, Dinah said to herself.

“She seemed to accept it all. I asked her to marry me when the divorce was final. You know how much I love her,” he said with a sob.

Dinah turned away and looked out the window. Everything was freeways now, looping in and around one another, the palm trees hanging over them breathing in the exhaust. He kept talking. They had had dinner that night with Dorshka and Coco, then a couple of drinks, and gone to bed. A couple of drinks my ass, Dinah said to herself. They must have gotten tanked. It was just a freak thing, he said. He was asleep when it happened. It was Dorshka who woke him up, because she’d smelled the smoke rising, and the other smell—the hideous smell of Veevi burning, Dinah knew. Then they went into the bathroom and found her on the floor, moaning.

“Prepare yourself,” he said to her. “It’s bad.”

Indeed, it was worse than anything she could have anticipated. It was the worst thing she had ever seen. When she was finally allowed into the room, swathed in a sterile cap and gown and mask, and the smell hit her nostrils, she gagged and gagged again, and her mouth watered, and she had to swallow quickly, to keep her spit from running into the mask. Then, oddly, she was standing so close to Veevi’s bedside and watching her so intently that the smell ceased to matter and all she was aware of was Veevi herself.

Everywhere that the fire had bitten deep into Veevi’s flesh, including the two patches on her cheeks, there were thick white dressings. From her neck down to her knees, Veevi was encased in layers of white gauze through which Dinah could see seeping yellowish fluids. Her lips, unburned but dry, were covered with petroleum jelly. The hair that had been burned had been cut, and what was left lay thick and luxuriant against the pillow. There were tubes everywhere that flesh remained—in her ankles, up her nose, in her hands, her back. A nurse, covered head to toe in white, stood on the other side of the bed, checking the tall poles with bags of fluid suspended from them, a clipboard in her hand, writing down numbers.

The nylon nightgown that Veevi had been wearing ended just above her knees, and had melted on her and burned her wherever it touched her. Third-degree, Dorshka had said on the phone, and Byron again in the car,
and again she had heard the phrase from the nurse in the burn unit who had given her the green gown and the cap and the mask.
Third degree
. The
third degree. Give him the third degree
, ran through her mind as she draped herself in the regulation coverings.

“Vee?” Dinah spoke through the mask. What she saw amazed her: Veevi, her eyes closed and only semiconscious, raised her right arm, brought her fingers to her mouth as if she were holding a cigarette, pressed her lips together, as if taking drag after drag, and smiled with pleasure—the pleasure of smoking, of putting something good into her mouth.

That first day, Dinah was instructed not to stay long, because the risk of infection was too great. But she said everything to Veevi she could think of: I’m right here, I’ll be back tomorrow, I love you, you’re going to be fine, Uncle J. sends his love, we all love you. Over and over, the same plain words. Over and over: I love you. Veevi smiled, it seemed to Dinah, then again made the smoking gesture.

“What about her lungs?” Dinah asked the nurse outside in the hall. “Did she breathe in the smoke?”

“Yes. There’s tissue damage there, and diminished pulmonary capacity,” the nurse answered. Dinah could see only her eyes above the mask, but they were intelligent and thoughtful. She was young, Dinah thought, but she knew how to take care of the worst kind of injury that exists. Her name was Kirsten Fisk, and burns were her specialty. It comforted Dinah to see how calmly she tended to the poles and tubes while never seeming to take her eyes off Veevi.

Dinah had asked Byron to let her have some time alone with her sister, but after only ten minutes or so he came in, gowned as Dinah was, and stood by the bed. “Oh, baby, baby,” he said, crying. Beside herself with anger, Dinah left the room and waited in the corridor, listening to the soft padding of the nurses’ white oxfords on the linoleum floor.

She drove back and forth between the hospital and her house twice a day, day after day. She gave blood, and called friends, and they gave blood. She drove Claire to the hospital and back, and listened to her as she wept quietly, and was hurt when, at home, or at the hospital, the girl went stiff when Dinah tried to hug her. Soon Claire began driving to the hospital with her boyfriend—an older man of thirty-two named Vernon Ashby. He
was an ex–vice squad cop whom she had met out at Saul Landau’s dock at Trancas, where he was the captain of one of Landau’s three charter-fishing boats. Dinah was put off by him at first, and she couldn’t help thinking there was something wrong with a man of that age going out with a girl of seventeen. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that Claire was sleeping with him, and she had a feeling that her niece would marry him when she graduated from high school the following June.

But gradually she began to like him. He came to the hospital day after day with Claire, and he comforted her when she cried; and Dinah found out that he had been tireless about getting his cop buddies and fisherman friends and their wives to give blood. When he told her that he couldn’t stand Byron Cole and had told him to move out of Dorshka’s house and back to his own place, an apartment somewhere in West Hollywood, she thanked him and realized that she trusted him and was grateful he was there. He was an odd-looking fellow—tall and sinewy, with deep-set gray eyes that were a little too close together, and sharp-angled cheekbones. He told her his parents were Okies who’d come to California in the thirties and now had a pig farm near Fresno. When Vernon saw Byron at the hospital, his look became mean and hard—just like Pop, Dinah thought approvingly.