The Cutting Room (15 page)

“You,” Dick Burke told me, “keep moving.”

The poolhouse was a modest affair, the female equivalent of Ben Williams’s Malibu hideaway. Needlepoint pillows sat on an elegant white couch, which was covered by a quaint country quilt. A rocking chair, still moving, stood in a corner. Paintings of fishing families adorned the wall. It looked like the most expensive room in a Southern bed-and-breakfast.

Rosie Bryant paced before us, smoking a cigarette. She was wearing a short and tight black dress, which accentuated her shapely legs and augmented breasts. Her dark hair was perfectly cropped in a modern pageboy. All-gal, as Ben had said.

Even without speaking, Rosie seemed steely. When she did talk, her faint Arkansas accent made her appear more a canny young matron than a major movie star. Which, as most of America knew, was the case in her movies, too.

“This is the one?” she asked Dick Burke.

“This is him.” He nodded.

“Where’s the girl?”

“She got away. Sorry.”

Rosie looked once, with great disapproval, at her husband’s bodyguard. But it was his last day on the job, and she knew it.

“All right, whatever.” She sighed. Then she turned to me. “Look, I’ve only recently got wind of the whole thing with He-Man or whatever it—”

“Her-Man,” Dick Burke said.

“I wasn’t involved in that,” I said.

“So I’ve heard, and good for you. I’m willing to give you more money than any tabloid could, to say nothing about it, or anything else. How does that sound? Please reply quickly, I’ve got a funeral to run.”

Rosie sounded more the harried hostess than a bereaved widow or concerned mother. But she couldn’t have been indifferent. Her gravy train had run aground, derailed by her errant husband, and she was a pro at damage control. Trying desperately to limit the casualties, her first order of business was to eliminate the rats around the wreckage.

But this rat surprised her.

“I don’t want money,” I said.

“No? Then what do you want?”

“The Magnificent Ambersons.”

Rosie paused. Then, impatient fury rising in her face, she looked away from me, to Dick Burke, to translate.

“What the
hell
is this guy talking about?”

“The girl tried to tell you—” Dick Burke started.

But they were interrupted. A high-pitched female laugh came from another room, one at the back of the room we were in. Incensed, Rosie shot Dick Burke a fast, hard glare.

“I thought you took care of her,” Rosie said.

As Dick Burke only shrugged, his time on the job ticking down, Rosie strode to a closed door and opened it.

She pulled out a hysterical Beth Brenner. Beth had on her own funeral garb, her long legs demurely covered by black tights. But she was worse for wear, her red hair half undone from its proper perch. She looked like a well-dressed version of the crazy wife in
Jane Eyre
, locked inside the attic. Come to think of it, Orson Welles starred in that movie, too.

Giggling, skidding her heels on the carpet, Beth tried to keep Rosie from pulling her ahead. But the assistant was no match for the wife. Beth ended up on the floor before us.

“My gawd!” She pointed at me. “Look who’s here!”

“I thought we told you to keep quiet,” Rosie said.

Beth subsided. I could see that her laughter was caused by fatigue and fear, and not amusement or insanity.

“It’s what I was trying to tell you,” she said. “But you’ve been too angry to listen!”

“What is?” a steamed Rosie asked. “What is?”

“
The Magnificent Andersons
. That’s what all this was about,
okay
?!”

I felt a by now familiar chill of discovery.

Rosie closed her eyes and tried to control herself. Then it was her turn to be a schoolteacher, one in a bad school district. “I’ve had just about enough of this.”

She advanced on Beth, and Beth cowered, as if knowing what to expect. Surprisingly, Dick Burke stepped forward, and Rosie stopped in her tracks.

Beth said, quickly, “Stu’s delivery boy. The Spanish one. The kid who did imitations. He stole
The Magnificent Andersons
.”

Taking a deep breath, Rosie retreated. It was clear that her incomprehension had been from denial and not stupidity. She decided to quit fooling around and accept the whole awful truth about Ben. There was a funeral to run.

“Apparently, my husband had a few bad habits,” she told me, of all people, with a small smile.

“That’s right,” Beth said, breathlessly, to me. “When Stu found out what the kid did, he came over, to apologize. He and Ben kissed and made up. Then Stu gave Ben a present of crack to smoke.” Then she turned to Rosie. “Do you understand
now
? Hello!”

Rosie turned away, with a look of disgust. “Maybe I always understood.”

As if forming a new alliance, Beth came over and stood by me, to continue her tale.

“I was with him—all night,
okay
?—but I didn’t use any of the stuff, though Ben wanted me to. And when I saw what happened to him, I called an ambulance. Then I got out of there.”

“So you never told the cops?”

Beth gave me a look that said, she was a ditzy white woman, and this was L.A. Feeling she was reaching, I only shrugged.

“Well, so what were you doing
here
?” Rosie asked then.

“I came to pay my respects,” Beth spat back. “And I thought you might want to know the truth.”

Dick Burke gave a little skeptical
pfft
, and Rosie actually laughed.

“You were here to shake me down,” Rosie said, “and you know it.”

Beth stared at Ben’s widow, her eyes narrowing in disbelief. “I can’t believe you,” she said, like a Valley high school girl.

Now Dick Burke started to chuckle, joining Rosie’s growing amusement.

“Well, maybe I
should
go to the police or the papers,” Beth said. “It would serve you right. Maybe America would love to know about the big action hero. And his B-movie wife.”

Rosie stopped laughing. Though she had achieved high-class status, she was originally white trash. And her rough roots meant she could wrestle in the mud a lot better than Beth.

Reaching into her pocket, Rosie hurled a shining object at Beth’s face. The assistant showed enough reflex to turn her head. The projectile—a string of gems—hit the wall behind her, shattered, and sent a dozen sparkling beams into the air, like fireworks.

“First,” Rosie said, “you’d have to explain what you were doing with my jewelry.”

Now Beth knew she was playing out of her depth. As so often happened, her bottom lip immediately began to tremble.

“Haven’t you ever been
nervous
?!” she cried out.

Beth fell silent, her mouth open, in too much incredulous pain to close it. Beth stole things; I recalled trivia; Erendira picked her fingers and kicked her feet. Everybody was nervous. Everybody but Rosie.

“Nice try,” she said.

Then Rosie turned and started adjusting her hair in a mirror. Her duties were at an end, and other people were waiting on her.

“Give this gentleman what we discussed,” she told Dick Burke, without looking at him. “And get her out of here.”

But Beth had more fight in her, more—I’ll be honest—than I would ever have expected. As Dick Burke reached out to take her elbow, she yanked it away.

“Well, do you know what this ‘gentleman’ was doing for your husband?” she said. “Ben was having him track down
another
chick, one he wanted to find so bad that he bankrolled his entire—”

Rosie turned, suddenly. Then she hauled off and slapped Beth once, twice, three times across the face. The force of the blows grew until the third and final one sent Beth flying off her feet, and she collapsed against the nice white couch.

Rosie’s strength made me reconsider her, suddenly. Her voice
did
sound a little like Andy Griffith’s. And there
was
that tiny line of dark above her lip. Nah, I thought, though still unsure.

It all happened so fast that even Dick Burke could do nothing to prevent it. He stood there, stunned, unsure as to whom he should be protecting now.

A colossus, Rosie loomed over the prone figure of Beth, her fingers clenching and unclenching.

“Go on,” she said quietly, her accent truly trailer park now. “Get your ugly ass outta here.”

She turned and included Dick Burke and me in her list of leeches, chislers, homewreckers, and lowlifes.

“That goes for you, too.”

She had a funeral to run.

“She’ll be sorry,” Beth said, rubbing her cheek in Dick Burke’s car afterward.

“No, she won’t,” Dick Burke said. “Not about this. Anyway, don’t worry about telling the cops about Stu Drayton and everything. They already know.”

In the backseat, where Beth and I sat like chauffeured criminals, the two of us looked at each other, surprised. Apparently, on his way out, Dick Burke was giving lots of information to lots of people, profiting from none of it himself. He had the air of someone cleansed.

“Well,” Beth said, relaxing, “at least there’s that.” She looked absently out the window. “Jesus. I never want to see another movie again as long as I live.”

Her remark reminded me of what Erendira’s grandmother had written at the end of her diary. That reminded me of Erendira.
The Magnificent Ambersons
had become a pawn in a world of murder and drugs. It really needed someone to protect it.

“Speaking of movies,” I said, “where is it?”

Dick Burke slammed on the brakes in the middle of the street. Half annoyed, half tickled, he turned around and looked at me from the driver’s seat.

“You don’t give up, do you?”

As long as Dick Burke was half tickled, I felt safe. Not safe enough to mention that my crusade was less selfish than it had been at the start, however.

“Let’s just say I’m not the only one who wants it now,” I told him.

Shaking his head, he turned back and started driving again.

“Well, good luck,” he said, “and I mean that sincerely.”

I thought that any celebrity would be lucky to have Dick Burke as a bodyguard. As long as he didn’t tell him too much or make him do disgusting things. But I didn’t say that.

“Here you go,” Dick Burke said.

We had reached the motel above Swingers. The check from Rosie sat safely in my pocket. Dick Burke gave me one wink in his rearview, and that was enough. I turned to say goodbye to Beth, but she was still looking out the window blankly, as if at the ruins of her young life.

“Well, good luck in your next job,” I said.

She did not turn. I noticed that one of her hands was clutched tightly around something. Then her fingers relaxed and revealed several of Rosie’s jewels, collected from the floor.

I figured that Beth would do just fine, too.

That night, I went back to the Santa Monica Pier, but not to play Foosball.

It was the only place I knew to ask after Stu Drayton’s lad, the young movie fan who had made off with the most prized movie never made. How had he known to take it?

There was no way I could ask that question of the people I had come to find, the other gang members who hung out on the pier. Here in the arcades after dark, crowded with out-of-towners—as Jeanine and I had been—they hassled and bumped, picked fights and picked pockets or merely annoyed.

Tonight was no exception. While families and kids on dates played video games or classic games like ring toss, the wayward youths snaked in and out, shoving shoulders, pinching bootys, and blowing cigarette smoke. For once, I hoped that being a goofy white guy—I could have trademarked the look—would work to my advantage.

It did not take long. Standing haplessly at a pinball game, losing as badly as I knew how, I soon sensed a presence behind me. Then I felt a shoulder placed upon and pushed against my own. Feigning cluelessness, as if about to meet a new friend, I turned, with a stupid look that said
Wow, can you believe how much I suck?

I stopped. I saw the sweatshirt with the face-hiding hood, the hood from the ‘hood that was the uniform of those I sought. With a faint Latino accent, the mouth within its shadows made a helpful suggestion.

“Give somebody good a chance.”

My companion was as bone-thin as Stu’s boy had been. The only difference was that this boy was a girl, or so I was convinced from the shape of the mouth, and the delicacy of the hand that now pulled mine off the knob.

As Ur-dork, I answered just, “Excuse me?”

The girl gently hip-checked me away from the machine. I stood to the side as she finished the use of my fifty cents. With nearly superhuman skill, she knocked out a new ball and kept it in play for point after point after point. Her achievement was more impressive since, her hood pulled tight, she could hardly see a thing.

“Hey,” I said, “you’re really good.”

At last, the ball guttered out. Then she raised her gentle hand and gestured out a “gimme” with its long and elegant fingers.

“I need more for another game.”

Obediently, I dug into my small jeans pocket; this was how they did things in L.A. But before I handed her the coins, I asked, with innocence, “If I make it a dollar, will you do something for me?”

The girl turned with sudden speed. From their cave, hatred now lit and made visible her eyes. With horror, I realized what my question must have implied. I remembered that, when they showed the Elizabeth Taylor movie
Secret Ceremony
on network TV, they redubbed dialogue so that she was a wig model, not a whore.

I pfumpfered, “Uh, I meant—will you
tell
me something?”

The girl relaxed a bit, and, to appease her, I gave her the two quarters. But she did not turn back to the game. She placed one hand on her hip and studied me, as if seeing me for the first time.

“They’re making cops real skinny these days,” she said.

I couldn’t help it, I laughed. I should have realized that this is how I would appear; but the idea seemed absurd. Imagine a city patrolled and protected by trivial men! On this adventure, there had been a first for everything.