Stars Screaming (19 page)

“Tell me about my tits,” she asked him.

“They’re great.”

“Great? That’s very descriptive. Are you sure you’re a writer?”

“They’re full and soft and—”

“Bigger than you expected.”

“As a matter of fact, they are.”

“Everyone tells me that.”

“Everyone.”

“Guys.”

“Guys you’ve fucked.”

Bonnie looked down and smiled. “If they saw my tits, yes, I probably let them fuck me. Are you jealous?” By now Burk was on his knees. Bonnie’s skirt and panties were down and his tongue was between her legs. “Wait,” Bonnie said, her body sinking slowly to the floor. “You don’t have to answer that right this second.”

In her bedroom later, Burk told Bonnie the truth when she’d asked him if he’d ever cheated on his wife. “Well, you have now,” she said, and laughed loudly. “Freddie cheated on me all the time. But cheating is the wrong word, because he didn’t hide it. More than once
I came home and caught him giving it to some tramp he’d picked up. In our bed, no less.”

Burk said, “I’m surprised you didn’t kill him.”

“If I’d loved him I might have.”

Daylight had vanished by the time Burk finished putting on his clothes. For several minutes he sat tense and alert on the couch, chain smoking Marlboros in the dark, listening to the clanging of pots and pans in the apartment below. From the same apartment he heard a woman sobbing loudly, a desperate sound that was followed by the howl of a dog.

Burk put out his cigarette and moved to the window. Outside, the leaves were darker than the sky, and down below, on Argyle, a boy of ten or eleven was bouncing a tennis ball underneath a streetlamp. His light-colored hair and his faded, ill-fitting clothes reminded Burk of Ricky Furlong and those late summer nights when they played ball in the street in front of their houses.

“How come Gene never plays ball with us anymore?” Ricky asked Burk one evening.

“He’s older. He’s got other things to do.”

“Is he mad ‘cause I’m better than he is?”

“You’re not that much better.”

“Yes, I am.”

“No, you’re not.”

But it was true: Ricky was the best. At twelve he could already throw a fastball so hard that Burk would feel the sting in his palm all through the following day.

In time the boy on the street was approached by a large, ungainly woman wearing a gray sweater and shapeless gray trousers. She carried two shopping bags under her arms and looked out of breath. They stood close for awhile, chatting, the boy staring down at his feet. Then the woman abruptly turned and looked up at Burk with a scolding smile.

Burk took a step backward and the phone rang, taking him by surprise. In the shock of the moment he picked up the handset. “Hello?”

“Steve?” A man’s voice, thick and tentative.

“I’m sorry,” Burk said, “Steve doesn’t live here.”

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know.”

Burk heard a disappointed sound. “Is this Duke?”

“No.”

“I need to get a message to Steve. Or Duke. Either one. It’s important.”

Burk said, “I can’t help you.”

“Listen, schmuck,” the man said, his voice flaring with anger, “don’t fuck with me.”

Burk counted to five, silently; then he said, “Steve moved.”

“Okay, I get it,” the man rasped. “He moved in with Duke, right? And that broad from Tulsa. What’s her name? Wanda or Ruby or something. Not Tulsa, Lubbock. Piece of truck-stop trash from the Panhandle. Fingering her was like putting your hand in a horse’s mouth. Goddamn Lake Erie between her legs.”

“I gotta get off,” Burk said, and he heard the man moan softly. “If I see Steve, who should I say called?”

“Tony,” the man said in a half whisper. “Tell him Tony. He can find me at the Spotlight Bar, on the corner of Selma and Cahuenga. Tell him to bring Wanda and her wet pussy.”

Burk hung up the phone, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. Sweat trickled down his ribs, and his insides were wrenched into a knot. He quickly lit another cigarette and kept the match burning while he checked his watch: 9:26. On what day? Tuesday? Wednesday? Thursday? Wednesday, that’s right. Louie arrives on Saturday. And Sunday night they will be on a plane back to Berkeley together. Home. Fuck this place. I’m gone.

The phone rang again and Burk seized the receiver, saying, “Listen to me, Tony! Okay? I just rented this apartment and the phone was left on by mistake. I don’t know Steve or Duke or this slut from Lubbock. I don’t know you or anyone else from the neighborhood. I drive, Tony. That’s what I do. And I rarely talk to people. Are you listening to me, Tony? Huh?”

There was a long, intense silence on the other end of the line. Then, in a concerned voice, Lillian Ohrtman said, “Are you all right, Mr. Burk?”

“Mrs. Ohrtman?”

“Yes, it’s me,” she said, her voice rising over the applause building in the background. “I’m at the Bowl, in the manager’s office. I
was worried. I’d forgotten that the electricity was off. I didn’t want you sitting in the dark. Is that what you’ve been doing?”

“Part of the time, yes.”

“There are some candles in the cupboard over the sink. On the left.”

“I was just on my way out,” Burk said.

“Oh, you’re not,” Lillian Ohrtman said, sounding disappointed as the orchestra began to play “Everything’s Coming Up Roses,” Ethel Merman’s show-stopping number from the Broadway show
Gypsy.
"Are you all right?” she asked once more.

Burk stood up. The phone cord was wrapped around his foot, and he kicked it away. “I don’t know,” he said weakly. For an instant, in the air around his face, he could smell the unmistakable odor of Bonnie’s perfume and the minty taste of her breath.

“If it gets too chilly, there’s an extra blanket in the closet next to the bathroom.”

“I can’t spend the night.”

“Where would you go?”

“I have a place.”

There was a brief silence, then Lillian Ohrtman said, “Mary Martin performed tonight, as a surprise guest. She sang, ‘I Won’t Ever Grow Up’ from
Peter Pan.
I thought Mark and Drew were going to die.”

Burk said, “Someone named Tony called for a Steve somebody.”

“Pay no attention.”

“But—”

“Steve Caudabeck did not pay his rent,” Lillian Ohrtman said in a clipped voice. “That’s why he was evicted, plain and simple. If Norman Swain was not so ill he would’ve been gone weeks ago. I’m sorry, Mr. Burk, but I have no sympathy for deadbeats.”

“I’ll pay my rent,” Burk said defensively.

“Of course you will,” she assured him. “You’re a fine young man. Writers are wonderful tenants.”

“But I won’t be here all the time.”

“That’s up to you. Now I must get back to my seat,” she said, in a more genial tone. “Mark will be concerned. I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”

“I’m fine.”

Not long after Lillian Ohrtman clicked off, Burk heard a car door slam, followed closely by the sound of footsteps moving swiftly up the
stairway to the second floor. A woman’s shadow passed by the curtains and Burk whispered Bonnie’s name, forgetting for the briefest of moments that she was no longer alive.

Three police cars were parked in front of the Beverly Hills Hotel when Burk drove up at 2
A.M.
“Crumpler was arrested. He beat the shit out of the room service waiter,” Eddie Bascom told Burk as they rode up together on the elevator. Eddie’s eyes blinked rapidly as he spoke, and he nervously began to clench and unclench his fist.

“Was he hurt bad?”

“The homo? Crumpler fractured his cheekbone,” Eddie said, looking pleased. “The story’s all over town. It made the eleven o’clock news but they botched it. It’s gonna be the lead in Joyce Haber’s column on Friday. She’ll get it right,” he said, winking, an admission that his job at the hotel included selling gossip as well as cocaine. The elevator opened and Burk stepped into the hallway. “Ciao, baby.”

Burk examined the phone message slips he was holding. Maria Selene had called three times, at 4:35
P.M.
and twice between eleven and eleven-thirty, when, Burk guessed, she’d heard about Crumpler’s arrest. There was also a message from Timmy, with Louie’s flight information, and one from Gene. None from Loretta.

As he approached Crumpler’s room, Burk heard a voice say, “We can’t do anything about the assault. That’s a done deal. The fag’s already filed charges. The rest of the stuff can be finessed.”

Crumpler’s door was cracked a few inches, and Burk could see Jerome Sanford leaning against the fireplace. His beefy face sagged with fatigue, but even at this late hour he was dressed immaculately, in a style that some young executives at Paramount had begun to imitate: gray flannel slacks and a dark blue blazer worn over a light or dark blue polo shirt left unbuttoned at the throat. The edge of the bed hid the lower part of his legs, but Burk assumed that his sockless feet were snug inside his brown suede moccasins.

Burk had met Sanford only once, for drinks at Musso & Frank a few days after Paramount purchased his screenplay. That evening Sanford wore khakis and a light pink button-down shirt with the cuffs folded above his elbows. He ordered back-to-back extra-dry martinis, straight up, and with a low, intense voice he confided to Burk
that he’d recently separated from his second wife, Ruthie Galan, a young actress who was a regular on
Eden Valley
, a nighttime soap that was NBC’s answer to
Peyton Place.

“Tight pussy but a room temperature IQ,” he had said, winning from Burk a slightly embarrassed laugh. “Right now I’m staying with my first wife, or more correctly in her guest cottage, where my daughter generally stays when she isn’t spreading her legs for whatever rock-and-roll band she’s chasing around the country.” Sanford mumbled something inaudible and shook his head. “I’m not usually this crude,” he said apologetically. “I’m sorry.”

Burk said, “She’s a teenager. She’s rebelling. It’s a phase.”

“No,” Sanford said, stabbing an anchovy in his Caesar salad. “No. I wish that were true. She’s a slut.”

They each had three more martinis before Maria arrived, as planned, for dessert. By then the discussion had switched back to Burk’s script, which Sanford drunkenly described as a “goddamn brilliant piece of work.”

A man with his back to Burk was sitting on Crumpler’s unmade bed. He and Sanford were listening to another man, who was standing behind the door, out of Burk’s vision. He said, “Look, the last thing we want to do is make it hard for the studio. As far as we’re concerned it was a simple assault. Crumpler thought the kid was making a pass and he belted him.”

Sanford said, “So what you’re saying is we can work together on the drugs business.”

“Absolutely,” said the man behind the door, keeping his eyes on Sanford as he moved into the center of the room. He was short and blond, around forty, and his shirt and coat were pulled tight against his broad chest. His Scandinavian face was both serious and serene. “We don’t make promises we can’t keep.”

“Give me a figure,” the man on the bed said, as he produced a large vial of cocaine and flipped it into the air. His partner reached out and let the bottle fall into the palm of his hand. “Say, five big ones.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Two and a half each. That work for you, Jerome?”

Sanford nodded his head, his face showing no expression as he reached for his wallet. “Yes,” he said. “I think that works fine.”

* * *

At some point before he went to sleep, Burk switched on the radio. The news ended, and Ray Moore took a call from John Beal. He told Radio Ray he was working the graveyard shift at the Norm’s on Vermont and Sunset. “I’m bussin’ tables and washin’ dishes, but I plan to be workin’ on the grill by Christmas. They seen my resume,” he said. “Two years at Chloe’s in Omaha. Three at Shoney’s in Stillwater. Another eighteen months at the Stuckey’s on the Ohio Turnpike. I can cook some food, Ray. You can count on that.”

Radio Ray said, “I bet you make a dandy club sandwich.”

“If the turkey’s fresh I do.”

“At home I use fresh tomatoes from my garden.”

“Only way, Radio Ray.”

“You miss Omaha, John Beal?”

“I miss the sky.”

Burk tuned out the next caller, a cabbie named Fred who told a series of idiotic jokes involving women and fish. The caller after him, a man with a voice full of pain, spoke only three words, “Love the doomed.”

Following a Chevy commercial, a woman who chose to remain anonymous called in to complain about her husband. “I got varicose veins and he says my legs are unsightly. What can I do? He knew I wasn’t Betty Grable when he married me, for cryin’ out loud. I mean, come on, he ain’t no Cesar Romero himself. He’s only five foot four,” she said, keeping her voice low. “Just a little bitty man with a potbelly and a wrinkled butt. Sometimes it’s hard for me to keep a straight face while he’s undressin’. But, hell, I love him, so I try to make the best of it.”

Burk listened to Radio Ray take two more calls, the last from a man named Ted who said he’d been drinking nonstop for three days. “Seventy-two hours straight. I need help,” he said, pleading. “If I don’t stop I’ll crumble up and die.”

Radio Ray said, “The best I can do is give you the number of Alcoholics Anonymous.”

“Oh, really,” Ted said dubiously. “Is that the
best
you can do? I need compassion, someone to care about me.”

“I care about you, Ted.”

“No, you don’t. If you did, you’d offer to come over and be with me, to put a damp washcloth on my forehead and tell me everything’s going to be all right.”

“You sure you’ve been drinking?” Radio Ray said.

“Why would I lie?”

“You don’t sound drunk.”

“Did I say I was drunk?
No
, stupid. I said I’ve been drinking. Four quarts of Scotch and a case of beer in three days. I’ve been coughing up blood for a week.”

Radio Ray said, “I think Alcoholics Anonymous is the place for you, Ted.”

Ted suddenly lost his temper. “I am not an alcoholic! Don’t call me that name! Forget about me! Butt out! I don’t need your help. My neighbor will help me,” he assured Radio Ray. “Mrs. Otis. Mrs. Candace Otis will care for me.”