Eve's Men (17 page)

“Did I wake you?” he asked.

“What do you think? With a business to run and a husband who’s off somewhere playing cops and robbers with psychos?”

“Donna, I’m safe and snug here in Denver.”

“But you’re still going out to L.A.?”

“For forty thousand bucks—you bet. And remember—the psycho cowboy’s out of the picture. I sent him to Seattle.”

“So now you’ve just got your psycho brother to worry about.”

Charley sighed. “Donna, I didn’t call to fight. I just wanted to tell you—remind you—that I do care about my home—and you—and I do want to get back there as soon as I can.”

“You called to say you ‘care’ about me?” She made it sound like an insult.

“Oh, come on, Donna, I love you. You know that.”

“Do I?”

“You should.”

“All right, then, you love me,” she said. “So can I get back to trying to fall asleep now?”

“Sure. Have at it.”

“Goodnight, then.”

“Yeah, goodnight.”

After he’d hung up, Charley lay there in bed thinking about the conversation he’d just had and how dispiriting it was, how dispiriting they all seemed to be lately, even with three martinis humming in his blood. He didn’t know what the answer was: whether he should never phone Donna late, never phone her after drinking, or simply never phone her at all.

He slept poorly that night, anxious for morning, when he would check out of the hotel and get on his way to California.

Chapter Seven

Eve could not believe she was standing still for such treatment, accepting it almost as her due. It was late afternoon and she was alone in the twins’ room upstairs, supposedly lying down and resting before dinner. Instead she found herself pacing and smoking in front of the doors to the balcony, which looked down not only on the pool and patio but a good part of Los Angeles as well.

At the moment Brian was in the pool doing his passable impression of Mark Spitz, zipping from one end to the other, turning and pushing off underwater, taking a breath about once every lap. The Hodges, mother and daughter, were his audience. Terry, still in jeans and a sweatshirt, was standing back in the shadows, her pale eyes unblinking and her mouth slightly parted in an expression of almost reverential awe as she watched Brian stroking smoothly through the water. Stephanie meanwhile looked both proprietary and pleased, as if a horse she’d bought was having a good afternoon workout. She was once again sitting in the shade of an umbrella table, still wearing lounging pajamas and holding a lit Marlboro in one hand and a glass of champagne in the other, like the dual components of her life-support system.

Disgusted, Eve turned away from the doors only to face the walls of the room, which were festooned with
Playboy
centerfolds, school pennants, and posters of Metallica and other rock bands. The twins, as Brian had explained, were Stephanie’s by her second husband, a studio lawyer to whom she had granted custody in exchange for clear title to the house. The boys were now at Stanford Law, and though they hadn’t visited their mother in years, she still kept their room exactly as it had been a decade earlier, a place for teenage boys—and now for Eve.

When Brian had carried her bags upstairs for her, helping her settle into the room, he had tried to explain things, saying that he thought she should have been able to understand Stephanie’s feelings, not wanting to put him and Eve together in the same room, sleeping together
in her house
, where he and Stephanie once had been lovers.

“Of a sort,” he’d added. “I mean, nothing like us. I mean, there just wasn’t much choice, you know? She let me stay here—kept the goddamn reporters off my back—so I just kind of went along. But it was no big deal, believe me. She was a lot like now, in no shape to do much of anything but drink and talk. And that’s all she wants from me now, to stay up and gab all night with her. That’s why she wants me in the room next to hers, for convenience, that’s all. She runs down at about dawn and then sleeps till one or two, and then manages to get up only with Terry’s help. The poor kid.”

Eve gave him a wry look. “Maybe the poor kid could use a bit of your time too.”

“Well, she needs something, all right. Stephanie works her like a coolie. Not just the cooking and cleaning, but the shopping too. Stephanie claims she has agoraphobia and can’t leave the place.”

“I’m not surprised.”

Brian mistakenly read that as a sign of sympathy and acquiescence. Taking her by the shoulders, he moved as though to embrace her. But she pulled back. He frowned in consternation.

“Anyway, just a little patience, okay, babe? A couple of days and we’ll be on our way. And at night don’t think that because I’m down there with her alone that anything’s happening. All you have to do is sneak downstairs and listen. All you’ll hear is Stephanie running on about her miserable life, that’s all. If I touch her, it’ll only be to give her one of her precious massages. Nothing else.”

Smiling slightly, Eve shook her head. “Well, that sure is a relief to hear. I just can’t wait to get up every few minutes and sneak downstairs to make sure you’re not fucking the lady.”

Brian looked crestfallen. “Aw, come on, baby, give me a break. Can’t you see I’ve got enough other shit to deal with right now? Jesus Christ.”

“You’d better leave,” she said. “I think I hear our hostess calling.”

At the door, Brian had turned and looked back at her. “And fuck you too,” he’d said.

So now here she was, in her
assigned
room, alone with her twin beds and rock stars and acres of silicone breasts. Lying down, she lit another cigarette and thought again about leaving on her own, how she would go about it. Just call a cab, pick up her things and the money—and leave? Could it be that simple? Soon, though, her mind began to wander and she found herself thinking again about Charley, wondering where he was, what he thought of her now, running off the way she had, leaving him holding the bag, all without a word of apology or explanation, to all appearances every bit as selfish and thoughtless as his little brother. And the worst of it was that she could never explain. It was too late for that. There was simply no way she could ever make him understand how it had happened, how torn she had been, having to decide so quickly between him and Brian, between decency and love. Well, the least she could do was make sure he got his money back. And she would, she vowed. One way or another, she would see to it.

Still, that in no way eased her feelings of shame and remorse. It continued to surprise her, how deeply she resented the idea that Charley probably thought of her now as his brother’s perfect little soulmate, just another selfish, heartless jerk. “But I’m not like that!” she wanted to cry out. “I’m not like that at all.”

Having smoked her cigarette down almost to the filter, she looked about for an ashtray. Seeing none close by, she flipped the cigarette out through the balcony doors, hoping it would clear the bougainvillea below and drop into the pool, maybe right in front of Mr. Spitz himself.

Terry came and got her at five-fifty, saying that Stephanie wanted everyone in the game room for the six o’clock news, followed by
Hard Copy
, the tabloid show, both of which had been following Brian’s story.

“She’s been taping them,” Terry said, then looked away in unexplained embarrassment. “We both think it’s really great, what Brian’s done. I mean trying to shut down the movie like he has. We know he didn’t shoot Jolly.”

Eve said nothing.

The game room was situated next to the living room, near the front of the house. There was a handsome old pool table, a Wurlitzer, and a large leather sectional sofa arranged about the fireplace, with a television and a VCR off to the side. Brian and Stephanie were sitting together, facing the TV, Brian in chinos and a USC sweatshirt and Stephanie in her same pajamas, a lit cigarette in one hand and the other resting on an end table, her fingers fondling the stem of her champagne glass.

“Well, it’s about time you came down,” she said to Eve. “That long a beauty sleep, you certainly don’t need it, you know.”

Eve smiled coolly. “You should have told me.”

“Anyway, you want to keep up with your fella’s exploits, don’t you?”

“Not particularly.” Sitting, Eve too lit a cigarette.

Brian explained. “To her, they’re not exploits, they’re crimes.”

“Oh, come on,” Stephanie scoffed. “I can’t believe she feels that way.”

She
, Eve thought. It was as if she weren’t even there. “Crimes against himself,” she said, and immediately wanted to kick herself for going along with them, letting them set the rules of engagement.

“How against himself?” Terry asked.

“Because he’s the one hiding out. Because he’s the one headed for prison.”

Stephanie laughed. “Well, nothing like standing by your man, I always say.”

“And I always say, fuck off.”

“Hey, come on, you two,” Brian said. “Let’s just cool it, okay? And it’s news time anyway. Let’s see what lies the bastards are spreading tonight.”

For the next five or six minutes the networks kept Stephanie busy, switching from one to another, looking for Brian’s story. But to that point there wasn’t any coverage, and this seemed almost more than she could bear.

“Goddamn pissant liberals!” she complained. “In a couple minutes they’ll all run some phony story about some ghetto school where the fuckin’ minorities are supposed to be doing just fine. But the real news, like Brian’s cause, they just totally ignore it! What assholes!”

She had barely finished her tirade when Dan Rather came back on, sweaterless now that it was summer. “This morning,” he reported, “motion picture director Damian Jolly was seriously wounded by rifle fire while standing on the deck of his house in Colorado Springs. The immediate suspect in the shooting is this man, Hollywood hanger-on Brian Poole, who was arrested last Saturday night for bulldozing the outdoor set of
Miss Colorado
, the movie Jolly has been filming. The movie reportedly is based on the life of the late country music star, Kim Sanders. Four years ago, while in the company of Poole, the singer died of a drug overdose in Colorado Springs. Out on bail, Poole is reported to have fled to California in the company of his present girlfriend, Eve Sherman.”

As Rather covered the story, there were brief intercuts of Jolly before the shooting, then wounded and being wheeled from his house on a gurney, then of Brian being brought to jail, followed by shots of the bulldozed set and finally a still photo of Eve.

“Wow, from the lips of Dan Rather, no less!” Stephanie cried. “You’re famous, kiddo, and for a lot longer than fifteen minutes, I’ll bet.”

Brian grimaced. “Infamous, you mean. And that hanger-on bullshit—is that what we call stuntmen these days? And what I can’t figure is why they’re not onto little Chester yet. What the hell is Charley doing? He knows the truth.”

“Maybe he’s just getting even,” Eve said. “Can you blame him?”

“Yes, I can blame him! Jesus Christ, I could be charged with attempted murder.”

Stephanie meanwhile was busy flipping back and forth between the other networks, looking for more of the story. And finally she found it on ABC too, where the substitute anchor merely mentioned the shooting before turning the story over to a reporter in Colorado, an earnest young black man who covered the same material as Rather had, adding nothing.

Later, though, on the tabloid show
Hard Copy
, their reporter Diane Dillon was characteristically scooping the competition. Already in Colorado Springs, the stylish young brunette was standing outside Penrose Hospital, with Pike’s Peak rising scenically in the background. First, she reported the details of Jolly’s wound: a glancing shot off his skull, cracking it and causing a blood clot on the brain. The surgeons had opened the skull and removed the clot, an apparently simple operation that nevertheless had left Jolly in intensive care, heavily sedated. Dillon then went on to her scoop.

“From sources close to the FBI, I’ve learned that Brian Poole might not have been the shooter after all. Reportedly there is another man—a cowboy, I was told—who was either paid to do the shooting by Poole or did it for reasons of his own. Whether the FBI already has this man in custody, I don’t know. But I assume we’ll learn more by tomorrow.”

Brian smiled with relief. “Way to go,
Hard Copy!
”

“More like, way to go, Charley,” Eve said.

“Whatever, I’ll take it. Better than the thin gruel CBS had to offer.”

“True. I especially liked that part about you traveling with your girlfriend Eve Sherman. Sort of like Bonnie and Clyde. My lifelong ambition.”

Little Terry evidently thought her hero wasn’t getting the respect he deserved. “Well, it wouldn’t bother me any. I mean, considering what Brian’s trying to do. I’d think any woman would be proud to be with him.”

Stephanie laughed, briefly moving her champagne glass away from her lips. “That’s my girl,” she said.

Eve bit her tongue. She was after all Stephanie’s guest and would soon be eating Terry’s cooking. If they didn’t quite see the whole picture, so be it, she thought. She knew from experience that they were not the first females to be taken in by Brian Poole.