Magic Hour (25 page)
"Why would he ask his assistant to find something nice to say?"
"Busywork, maybe."
"No."
"When did he ask his assistant to read it?"
"A couple of months ago."
"I'd just handed in my second draft then. Sy
said
he liked it a lot but that he wouldn't have time to really go over it until
Starry Night
wrapped."
"This was the rewriting you did based on his suggestions?"
"Yes."
"Knowing Sy, was it possible he didn't like it, even though he told you he did?"
She considered the question. "Knowing Sy, yes. Maybe he—I don't know—wanted me back in his life for a while." She looked disheartened, as if she'd just gotten a brusque rejection letter in the mail. "But he did write me this nice note. Something like: 'Skimmed it. Adore it. Can't wait to
really
read it.' "
This could be another one for the good guys; if Sy had liked the screenplay, and if she had written proof, she'd have every motive for wanting him alive; a dead executive producer can't make a movie. "He wrote you a note?" I demanded.
"Yes. He has little three-by-five note cards with his name. He used one of them."
"Typed or in his own handwriting?"
"I think he wrote it."
"Did you save it?"
"It should be in my
Sea Change
file. In my office." She stopped cold. "Oh, wait a second. You want proof that he liked it originally too. Right? Fine. Look in that same file. There's his original memo, the one he wrote after he read the first draft. Typical Sy. Eight pages, single-spaced, multisyllabic. Talking about everything from character arc to how I misused the subjunctive mood. But filled with 'brilliant' and 'trenchant' and 'poignant.' "
"What does 'trenchant' mean?"
She chewed her lip for a second. "I don't know, to tell you the truth. It's one of those words that nobody in human history has ever said out loud, and you don't see it written that often. He also wrote it was 'au courant.'
That
must have been a shock to him. Sy had always told me I was born too late, that I belonged under contract to RKO—if there still was an RKO—because my writing talent was for great 1941 movies. He couldn't get over that I'd finally written a screenplay that would appeal to someone besides my Aunt Shirley, and a perverse USC film professor. An eastern, not a western." She got off the bed and began to pace, which isn't easy when you can only pace three steps forward and three steps back. "You know, you had a search warrant. How come you didn't read that file?"
"Robby Kurz probably looked at it and decided it wasn't important." I took out my notebook and jotted down: "Bon's Sea file."
"Not important? You're hearing from people that Sy hated my work, that he rejected me—which would give me a motive to kill him if I was a homicidal maniac, which I'm not. And you say it's not important?"
"It's not our job to dig up exculpatory evidence."
"No. It's your job to railroad people."
"Sit down."
"I don't want to sit down," she snapped. "God, I feel so cooped up in here."
I was pissed. I wanted her to like being with me. "Want to try a jail cell?"
"Do you? Maybe you can have the one next door. You know, when you go up the river for your Class D felony." Bonnie's pacing got faster, more desperate. Suddenly she stopped short. Smiled. That phony, movie-biz smile, falsely warm, fraudulently agreeable. "Listen, I have a great idea. We can share a cell! Have a hot affair after lights-out. Not just your conventional hot affair. I mean, a
love
affair. We'll actually talk! Tell each other our life stories. The true ones, even when they hurt. Not the slick ones we make up to entertain people. And sex! We'll do it standing up, sitting down, frontways, sideways—"
"Bonnie, stop it!"
"Why? I'm telling you, it could be magic. Like we were creating something the world had never known before. And then the next day—"
"I asked you to stop it."
"—the next day you'd be free. You could forget it happened. You could forget it meant something." She hoisted an imaginary glass. "Hey, I'll drink to that!"
"I'm sorry if I hurt you," I began. "That time of my life, I was a mess."
I got up and walked into the bathroom. Moose followed. No tissues, so I brought her a wad of toilet paper, knowing she was going to cry. I came back and put my arm around her shoulders, ready to absorb her sobs. But she pulled away and turned from me; she wasn't crying, and she didn't want me comforting her.
"Bonnie," I said to her back, "in AA, one of the things we do is to make a list of all the people we've harmed. Then we've got to be willing to make amends. I know I harmed you. I'm not going to make excuses—"
"Gideon said you didn't remember what happened."
"I didn't. But later, after he left ... I remembered some of it. I know I'll never be able to know what really went on between us—what we talked about. But let me just say how sorry—"
She turned back and gazed at me so straight I looked away. "No amends, okay? I don't want any magnanimous Twelve Step gestures that will make you Feel Good About Yourself. Yes, you hurt me. But I let myself get hurt. I was playing a raunchy sex scene, and I tried to score it with violins. Well, I was the dope."
"You know it wasn't any scene."
"I know it's history." She sat down on the bed again, feet on the floor this time, hands in her lap. Mormon schoolmarm posture, not Bonnie posture. There was a long silence. It was broken by the screech of a gull flying toward the water. Bonnie finally said: "I apologize for the outburst."
"No problem."
"I don't want to be a bitter person. I lost control for a second. I'm exhausted. I haven't been sleeping, not since Sy was killed. Not since you rang my bell. I'm scared. I wake up and the sun is shining and I yawn and stretch—and suddenly I'm overwhelmed with terror. I'm trapped inside a nightmare, and the sunshine doesn't give me any light. And you: I can't resolve my memory of you and my fear of you. It's very hard being here in your house."
"I understand, and I just want to say how sorry—"
"Let's drop it now."
"Can't I—"
"Please, don't."
It was getting dark. I knew I had to call Lynne. I walked into the kitchen, but instead of picking up the phone, I put Moose's dog chow in a bowl and got her some water. Then I took the dinners out of the oven and brought them back into Bonnie's room on plates, with forks and napkins. I thought she'd say, No, thanks, I'm much too upset to eat, but by the time I got back again with Cokes, she'd woofed down a drumstick and half the mashed potatoes and corn.
I sat there holding a wing, like I couldn't figure out what to do about it, thinking that there were approximately a million subjects I wanted to talk to this woman about: what teams she liked, although I had a dread suspicion she would be a Mets fan; what Mormons were all about; whether she read about stuff like Eastern Europe and the national debt in the paper or just articles about movies and saving marsh grasses; what was her favorite running route; how had she hurt her knee; did she only like the John Wayne and Katharine Hepburn stuff or did she ever watch a good horror movie; did she believe in God and did she feel guilty or only regretful about her abortion; had it simply been the sex—amazing, all-star sex—or had she fallen in love with me in the course of that night.
What I asked her was: "When did you begin sleeping with Sy again?"
"That last week."
"Why?"
" 'Why?' "
"What was it, a casting couch kind of thing? You thought if you slept with him, he'd make your movie?"
"You know," she said, and reached for another napkin, "there's an old show-business joke: A gorgeous, talented actress walks into a producer's office and says, 'I want that part. I'll do anything, and I mean
anything
, for that part.' She gets down on her knees and says, 'I'm going to give you the world's most incredible blow job.' And the producer looks down at her and says, 'Yeah, but what's in it for me?' " Bonnie wiped the bread crumbs from the chicken off her hands. "So what was in it for Sy? Nothing. There was nothing I could do for him that would entice him into doing anything he didn't want to do."
"But how could you sleep with such a bastard? Okay, he let you have the house, but other than that, he left you broke. He made you get an abortion—"
She cut me off. "No one held a gun to my head."
"Maybe he didn't, but he gave you the clap, didn't he? Forget that it's proof positive of adultery. It took away the chance for you to have the one thing you wanted more than anything in the world."
I'd just hit her most painful spot. She didn't wince; she just stood, holding out her plate. "Why don't I bring this into the kitchen?" Her voice was artificially high, as if she were being stretched too tight.
"No. I don't have curtains or anything on the windows. I can't risk having you seen. I'll take it in later." I took the plate from her and put it down on the floor. "You're going stir-crazy, aren't you?"
"And this isn't even stir," she said softly.
"Put on your sneakers." When she did, I turned off the lamp, took her arm and steered her out of the bedroom, through the dark main room and out the back door. It was nearly night; the sky, already dotted with stars, was a uniform blue. Dark, indigo, like my Jag. I sat her down on the back step and murmured, "Keep your voice down."
"You're worried about nocturnal farmers, plowing out there, right past those bushes, listening in?"
"I always worry about nocturnal farmers. Or a friend could drop over. So what do you want? To sit out here or go back inside?" In response, she leaned against the doorframe and took a deep breath. Whatever she'd had in mountains, this had to be better. The bracing salt of the sea, the fragrance of pine, the deep, musky smell of the earth. "More questions, Bonnie."
"Okay."
"Why did you sleep with Sy after what he did to you?" She didn't answer; I think she was still with that lost baby. "Come on," I pushed her. "You don't strike me as one of those masochistic broads who lets herself be used. You seem to play more by men's rules than women's rules. You have a good time, you say thank you and that's it. You don't wake up the next morning feeling like a piece of shit; you wake up and say to yourself, 'Hey, I got laid. It was good. Cleared my sinuses.' And that's that."
"That is never that."
"But it's not that far from the truth, is it? You're not saying, 'Sweet Jesus, help me. I hate myself.' "
"People of my persuasion generally don't say 'Sweet Jesus.' "
"You know what I mean."
"Am I one of those women who sleeps around to degrade herself? No. I sleep around—or slept around—for sex. Sometimes to be held."
"So answer my question."
"I slept with Sy because he was there, a real, live person who
knew
me. He came to the house to go over his memo on my screenplay, and we wound up talking about my brother Jim's wife, who Sy had always had a little crush on, and about his Uncle Charlie's bypass surgery, and about all the movies he wanted to make after
Starry Night
."
Talk about stars. The night was so clear that the stars were not cold, distant lights but twinkling points of warmth: Hi! Welcome! Nice universe we've got here!
Bonnie went on: "When Sy saw the pitchers on the mantel, he reminisced about the trip we'd taken to
"Why you? Look, I'm not putting you down, but he was living with Lindsay Keefe."
"I'm sexier than Lindsay Keefe." She wasn't being falsely immodest. She was being matter-of-fact. She meant it. Then she stretched out her legs and got busy doing toe touches again. She couldn't sit still; she had too much energy. I wondered how she sat for two hours to see a movie. It was such a dark, sedentary passion for someone who seemed all daylight and outdoors. "It wasn't just sex for Sy," she was explaining. "He was screwing me literally to screw Lindsay figuratively. He was always so much happier when he was cheating. Somehow, his women always suspected, and he liked their scrambling to hold on to him. He liked their anguish too. And he
loved
the logistics of sneaking around. But with Lindsay, it was more than his usual infidelity. He
was furious
at her."
"Why? Because she wasn't good in the movie?"
"Because she wasn't good—and she wasn't trying. See, Sy had his own money, the bank's money and some of his friends' money invested. It was a real risk. He knew this kind of sophisticated adventure-romance doesn't do fabulous business unless there's something very special about it. But he felt he had that in the
Starry Night
script. For all Sy's baloney, he truly believed in what he did."
I remembered that Germy had liked the screenplay. "Did you read it?"
"Yes. It was terrific. But Sy needed box office clout
and
ecstatic reviews: 'An American classic! See it!' And Lindsay Keefe was his ticket. She's a star. Men, especially, love her. But more important, she's made quality movies. The critics take her seriously. Also, Sy knew that with the wrong stars, actors with a limited emotional range,
Starry Night
would be just another one of those 1950s Eastman Color-style rich-adventurers-on-the-Riviera movies, except set in the Hamptons and