Dreams Are Not Enough (24 page)

Barry swallowed his Scotch and soda the wrong way. He burst into a coughing fit, hacking uncontrollably for nearly a minute. By then the spasms had affected his vocal cords so that he spoke in a high-pitched squeak.

“Hap? Him too? I don’t believe this. Hap? He’s the cleanest guy I know.”

“We were going to tell you. But your uncle found out… he didn’t want Hap and me” — “That I can believe. I vividly remember that day in Newport when he tried to pry me away.”

“He fixed me up with Saint-Simon. I was a kid, I was terrified … there’s no excuse. I bolted.”

“And began spreading your legs for Frenchmen.”

“Oh, Barry, will you stop it? The only time I’ve cheated on you is years ago with Hap. I loved him then and I still love him. Look, we made a mistake when we were very young, and now’s the time to put it right. A divorce isn’t the end of the world.”

“Divorce? Who’s talking about a divorce?”

“We are, Barry.”

“No! The answer is no!”

Barry’s face was crimson. Alyssia could not know it, but Hap had always been the person in this world that her husband most admired, most envied. In his incoherent shock (Alyssia and Hap? ) Barry’s reason fled utterly while his lifelong jealousy spoke.

“If you’re both expecting me to meekly fold my tent and steal away, you can just forget that goddamn idea!”

“But you and Whitney” — “We divorce!” he screamed, slamming the front door.

Juanita, accustomed to their marital eruptions, asked no questions, walking to the nearby McDonald’s, bringing home supper. Alyssia, who normally relished fast food, grew nauseated at the aroma of the hamburger and fries. Though the evening was warm, she shivered and put on extra covers. / must be coming down with the bug, she thought.

That night she slept heavily and woke feeling nauseated again. The constant darting pain in the leg had spread to her torso. When Juanita brought in a breakfast tray, she shook her head.

“I have some kind of flu.”

She was dozing off again when the door opened. Barry stepped inside.

“Hi,” he said in a quiet voice.

“Hi.”

“Ankle still bothering you?”

“A bit.”

“The pain should have stopped by now. You really ought to have it looked at.”

“You know me and doctors. I’ll go when it’s time to take off the cast.”

He sat on the end of the bed. The mattress shifted and the pain in her leg intensified. She bit her lip and rested her head back on the pillow.

“I’m sorry about last night,” he said penitently.

“That scene I put on was petty and vindictive.”

“Barry, one thing you should know. When I married you, I truly thought I loved you. It might not have worked out well for us. But always I’ve cared, cared very much. And I still care.”

“So do I. Listen, I’m going to move out.”

“Where?”

“Whitney’s place.”

“Then we’re separating?”

“I guess. For the time being, though, hon, let’s not make any permanent decisions.”

“But if you and Whitney are living together, why not?”

“It’s better this way,” he muttered. He was mad for Whitney, who aroused his never-strong libido. Yet at the same time his deeprooted and jealous inferiorities toward Hap prevented him from relinquishing Alyssia.

“No need to rush out of marriage the way we rushed in.”

Alyssia closed her eyes, engulfed by a sickening rush of pain.

“I’ll be in touch,” he said, kissing her forehead.

“Hon, you’re burning up.”

“I’ve got the flu,” she whispered faintly.

Juanita helped him stow his suitcases and typewriter in the trunk of the low-slung, yellow Corvette that he’d borrowed from Whitney.

Alyssia slept, mumbling and tossing.

By four thirty, when Juanita tried to waken her, she was delirious.

Terrified, Juanita searched for Barry’s number, but he hadn’t left one.

PD’s business card lay on the coffee table.

In a high, rushed voice, she told PD that Mrs. Cordiner was sick, really badly sick.

Galvanized by the terror in the maid’s voice, PD left Matty Gorlick, a big CBS honcho, to rush over to that dump Barry and Alyssia were renting. One glance at the beautiful, ravaged face, one whiff of that strange, meaty odor, and he carried Alyssia screaming to his car.

While Juanita wept over her, he broke the speed limits consistently on the few miles’ drive to Mount Sinai, the nearest big hospital. Acting with instinctive good Samaritanism, he didn’t realize until he watched Alyssia being wheeled swiftly away that he might just have given himself the wedge that he desperately needed with her—if she made it.

As he walked to his car, he thought, Poor kid, and said a prayer for her.

She was on fire.

Her left leg was the igniting flame that sent fire blazing through her body. The inferno raged the hottest within her skull, and once she actually saw a horde of tiny, crimson-clad demons bending and swaying as they stoked the conflagration, miniature devils that were frighteningly real. Another time, a huge grower with slab like features stood over her, forcing her to pick an endless row of lettuce under a white-hot sun even though sweat poured from her and strange whistling hoots sounded against her eardrums.

The figures in white who came and went were equally hallucinatory torturers. She knew they were doctors and nurses because May Sue had told her. Her frizzy blonde hair a halo around her raddled face, May Sue had perched on the bed.

“What are you doing in a hospital, Alice?

Don’t you know hospitals are the place they take people to die? Listen to your momma and get away while the getting’s good. “

She tried to escape. A faraway voice warned her not to move. After that she was pinned down.

Afloat in fever and pain, Alyssia drifted with the hours and days-or was it weeks and months?

“Mrs. Cordiner. Mrs. Cordiner. Alyssia.”

She opened her eyes, peering up at the fuzzy outline of a man in a white coat.

“Ahh, that’s better. You’re awake. Do you know where you are?”

“Hospital… ?”

“Yes. You’ve been in Mount Sinai for nearly three days. You have an infection in your leg.”

“Want to … go home….”

“Alyssia, you must try to concentrate. This is very important. You have the fever because the infection is extremely serious.”

“Take off … cast.”

The doctor sat near her, talking intently and clearly.

“Unfortunately the infection appears to be spreading. We’ve been discussing amputation.”

“We” Who were “we” to cut off her leg? Obviously “we” were ranged with the hostile, ominously all-powerful authorities. May Sue was right, she should have escaped.

She tried to shout no! The word came out a feeble whisper.

“You have to realize how gravely ill you are. We want to save your life.”

“Never….”

“Alyssia, we’d cut below the knee. It wouldn’t interfere with your acting. You could even learn to dance.”

“No….”

“Your husband agrees with us.”

“He’s … not my husband.”

The doctor turned to a hazy figure at the window.

“Barry, I’m afraid there’s no point in this. You’ll have to sign the consent for surgery.

She’s delirious again. “

“She might not be.” A nervous cough.

“We’d, uhh, we’d just agreed to separate.”

“You’re her nearest relative.”

“Hap….” she repeated.

“There, you see. She’s really out of it.”

“Hap’s my cousin. She wants to see him.” Another nervous cough.

“He directed her in the movie. She has, uhh, a lot of respect for him.”

“Oh? Is he around?”

“You met him in the corridor.”

“The big guy with the blond hair who hasn’t left since the day before yesterday? It’s worth a try. Maybe he can convince her.”

The masculine voices moved away. Alyssia knew that she must not sink back down into timelessness. If she so much as catnapped she would be mutilated. With stubborn difficulty she fought to hold her eyes open, staring at a dark, wavery blob that was the television screen.

“Alyssia,” Hap said. She tried to focus, but saw only the oval above her. Then a strong hand clasped hers, and cool lips rested on her forehead. / must smell awful.

“Hap… ?”

“I’m here, love.”

“Everything’s blurry….”

“It’s probably all the antibiotics and drugs they’re dripping into you.”

“No … amputation.”

“Love, they’re worried the infection in your leg might spread and kill you.”

“Don’t let them … please?”

“But if you die” — “I won’t.” Her voice was louder.

“Stop being brave, Alyssia, I couldn’t bear it if you die.”

“Don’t let them…. Hap, promise?”

His grip on her hand tightened.

“Hap?”

His sigh cooled her cheek.

“I’ll tell Barry to have them wait on the decision as long as possible.” He released her hand.

“Stay….”

The large hand enfolded hers again. The fever seemed to lift a bit, and she saw a funny vision of Hap in a fireman’s red hat battling the blaze with her. Then she tried to remember coming here. Nothing was clear except a memory of consuming pain when PD lifted her into his car.

When PD had left MCA to open his own office on the Sunset Strip, only six of the clients in his charge went with him. These half dozen were old buddies of Frank Zaffarano’s, but they did not leave the prestigious agency out of friendship. Self-interest was their motive.

All were on the sharp downward curve of a major career, with only PD between them and the Motion Picture Retirement Home in Woodland Hills.

At his parents’ parties, at his Uncle Desmond’s Sunday barbecues, at screenings, on private Bel Air tennis courts and the fairways of Los Angeles Country Club, PD never ceased flashing his white smile and spreading his considerable charm on anyone who might possibly give his clients a part.

Nevertheless, every month the PD Zaffarano Agency went deeper in the hole. It was impossible to remain solvent on ten percent of the earnings of his half dozen, difficult-to-place geriatric clients. He needed young blood. Not the pretty, talent less nobodies of both sexes who waited tables while hoping for the one in a zillion chance of making it in the Industry, but a star who would bring in big bucks and also put a stamp of authenticity on the agency. Nobody of stature would talk business. PD kept trying—he was a born hustler.

Last January his innate drive had become near pathological.

From early puberty he’d been drawn to his opposite, the calm-voiced, conventionally pretty cousin who looked at him adoringly. In a not altogether unpleasant attempt to break the attachment, he entered the sexual arena early, screwing his way through a brigade of flamboyantly attractive females. Nothing helped. Finally, on the morning after New Year’s Eve, he had succumbed to an affair with Beth.

They were on his living room couch, Beth sitting, PD stretched out with his head on her lap, she wearing his beige silk robe, he in his black robe. The aroma of broiled lamb chops surrounded them. Several nights a week she would drive from Magnum to his apartment, which was furnished with expensive, oyster-white hand-me-downs acquired when his parents redecorated their Beverly Hills house. First they would use the low white king-size bed, then Beth would broil a big porterhouse or chops, tossing a salad. After dinner they would sometimes return to the bedroom. Beth, who still lived in her parents’ Westchester tract house, invariably left before eleven. These unpretentious evenings formed a serene oasis in PD’s striving life. Beth had been a virgin when he took her to bed. And for him it was a first, too. Never before had he experienced the honest passion and wondrous ease of being with a woman he loved, a woman who loved him in return.

He longed to marry her. He had never discussed marriage. He wasn’t making a living. But even if he were, the mammoth impediments of their blood relationship and their religions barred the way.

Beth was irrevocably bound to her jewishness And she was a completely devoted daughter. She often said with no hyperbole in her tone, “It’d kill Mother if I didn’t raise my children to be Jewish.”

PD, on his part, was also a believer. With Beth, his unbaptized cousin, he could never have a marriage performed on the altar of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills—or any other Catholic altar.

Beth stroked back PD’s hair. He was telling her about his most recent visit to Mount Sinai.

“So Alyssia’s that bad?” she asked.

“She’s in terrible shape. I’m surprised Barry didn’t tell you about it.”

“He hardly ever mentions her to me.”

“To save her, they’re talking amputation.”

“Amputation! God.”

“Can you imagine a sex symbol with a wooden leg?” PD asked, sighing.

His heartfelt prayers for Alyssia’s recovery were entwined with his own problems.

“There goes the perfect client.”

Beth smoothed his hair again. She understood him completely.

“It’s not that she’s talented,” he mused.

“She is, but that and a dime’ll get you a cup of coffee. With those small, delicate features and knockout eyes, she photographs well, but so do a lot of other girls in town. She’s luminous. But it’s something more than her looks.

Beth, those Wandering On rushes floored me. Nobody can explain that certain something, but she’s got it. She reaches out from the screen and grabs up in your gut—and other places. “

“They certainly are high on her at Magnum.” Beth paused.

“I feel rotten, not knowing her better. But Mother and Dad were so upset about the marriage that Barry’s been paranoid about getting us together.”

Because PD loved Beth, he didn’t say that in his opinion her twin had turned out to be a real loser, and neither did he mention that Barry wasn’t racking up much time at the hospital.

“Poor kid, she was too gutsy for her own good, working with that broken ankle. The way they’re talking, the doctors, it might be curtains.”

Beth’s eyes filled with horror.

“But what about the amputation? Won’t that save her?”

“They don’t sound all that certain about anything.” PD sighed deeply.