West of Paradise (19 page)

“That's right, you don't. But you owe Larry.”

“I never even met Larry.”

“But you like to think you're smart. And fair. You can't just walk away from him now. You can't just leave the record how it is, with those shitty articles and books they wrote about the money scandal. And now this crap with the prostitutes. He deserves better.”

“Why?”

“Because there was nobody like him. He could charm the birds out of trees, even in places where there were no trees. Because he was brilliant, and he knew how to make things happen. Because there was nothing he wanted to be that he didn't become.”

“Except a nice guy,” said Kate.

“How do you know, you little
momser?
You said yourself you didn't know him. If he wanted to, he could have wound you around his little finger.” She looked at Kate intensely, and the whitish fluid in her eyes seemed to clear. “What were you doing at his funeral, if you never even met him?”

“I have to go,” Kate said. “You have my number.”

“I certainly do,” said Lila.

*   *   *

Once, in between wives, in between pictures and pretensions, Larry had flown Lila out in his private plane to show her L.A. Nothing of the nightlife, of course, because they both understood without bringing it up that she would not be good publicity, and the business he was in was a lot about publicity.

But he had shown her the physical beauty of the place, passed on the overblown, overexposed Beverly Hills and Bel-Air and toured her through the hills and canyons of Pacific Palisades. He had pointed out the movie star mansions of this would-be Riviera with its Capri and Amalfi Drives. “Amalfi,” he'd pointed out the sign to to her. “That's just below where Gore Vidal lives in Italy.”

She didn't tell him she didn't know who Gore Vidal was.

They'd kept on going till they reached Santa Monica, and that had been her favorite. They'd walked on the pier, eaten corn on the cob, had their fortunes told. And he'd been fearless, himself, laughing the whole time, totally at ease, because nobody he knew who was anybody would be on the Santa Monica pier, trashy as it was, low class. She'd absolutely loved it. It was just like being in Rockaway.

She walked on the pier now without him, remembering that golden, butter-drenched afternoon. Somehow she had managed to connect with a network of buses that had gotten her to Santa Monica, although it took a good part of the day. The sun was at a leaving angle, like it was saying good-bye, almost down to the water. There was a bright orange radiance to it, the fire that came before it sizzled into the sea, as it did the day they spent there together.

There were five saloons in between the gypsies and the merry-go-round and the deep-fried shrimp. She stopped in every one, had a glass of red wine, and lifted it to him. In the last one she had three glasses, and forgot to make the toast, or let it breathe. Or let herself breathe.

And now the sun was sinking so low it gilded the sea. Half-blinded by the glare, the other half by the wine, she staggered towards the place she intended to jump from. She had not planned on leaving a note or anything, because who the fuck cared? Who would even note her absence, now that he was gone? Maybe her landlord, but she didn't much care for him. It wasn't like she needed to give notice. When she never came back, he'd probably have a garage sale of her clothes, sell the furniture, and get another tenant.

But all at once she came to a fence. A chain-link fence, with some half-assed apology on it, pardon the inconvenience kind of thing, we're building a better end to the pier. Frustrated and confused, she narrowed her eyes and struggled to see the completion date, as though planning to return to accomplish her mission then.

But even days away, much less months away, would be far too long. She wanted to die now. Maybe he was still just a layer above the sunset, and she could get to him before he reached his final destination.

So she turned back and looked for a way down to the beach. Hitting the water from the pier would have at least put her in shock. From the sand she would have to wander in and drown. But she had never been much of a swimmer. And there probably was a good undertow, the pilings of the pier creating their own dangerous currents, like the places they warned you not to go near in Rockaway, Coney Island.

She thought she had seen some steps down to the ocean. Recalled a glass lifted to the then still-bright day, where she'd noted through the window the slatted wooden stairs to the beach. So much sand in comparison to the beaches of her girlhood, three boulevards wide it had seemed to her, instead of the sidestreet widths you got in New York. She searched for the steps now as twilight silvered the air.

She found them and started down, gripping the wooden siderail. Seagulls squawked their gratitude for garbage.

A single set of lovers strolled arm in arm on the darkening sands. For a moment Lila saw in their slender forms, heads nodded inward, crowns meeting, arms entwined, who she had once been, how she had once walked with Larry. And she reached for them, as though she could touch them across the distance, and touching them, would be able to feel her vanished self, contact the flesh of Larry. And so stretching, she lost what balance she had, and fell.

*   *   *

When the phone rang, Kate was halfway through the script Victor Lippton had sent over, hopeful she would want to do it and rope in Jake Alonzo. Jake Alonzo himself had shown some signs of wanting to be roped, sending a single rose, wrapped with red ribbon around an answering machine. It was all too much for Kate, being courted for who she wasn't, what it was assumed she could do because of genes that weren't really hers. She'd written Jake a note to thank him, afraid to call him, but didn't know where to send the note. Still, she didn't imagine formal good manners were the mode in this town any more than honesty was. So she didn't worry about seeming rude to Jake, since she'd already seen that a show of indifference worked better than a beating heart would.

Besides, the script was terrible. She had called Mel by page fifteen and told him it was really god-awful. He'd said, “Good.” The worse it was, he'd explained, the more impressively she could harangue the powers at Cosmos with what needed to be done. The fact that the writer could not write a sentence of believable dialogue, that the characters had no character, that the lead, a hired assassin, had no charm in addition to no psychic core were all, Mel insisted, plusses.

But it was like wading through quicksand for her to read that level of—could she even call it prose? So when the phone sounded, it was a reprieve. She was already grateful to whomever was on the other end, receptive, friendly. It took her a minute to absorb the fact that it was the fire department.

“Lady broke her leg, and maybe her hip,” the man said. “She's still up in X ray.”

“What lady?”

“Lila Darshovitz,” he said, slowly, as though he were reading it.

“Witz,” said Kate. “How come you're calling me?”

“Well, she's pretty … out of it. Drunk. Besides being in shock. We asked her who we should call, and she couldn't tell us. Just kept crying. We went through her purse and found your number.”

“What am I supposed to do?” Kate said, imposed upon, instantly hearing how selfish she sounded.

“Well, we thought you might be a friend, or a relative. Do you know where we could find a relative?”

“Her husband is in the Westwood Mortuary,” Kate said. Maybe Lila had been right about her. Maybe she wasn't as sweet as she pretended. How fast did that happen? Not even a full twenty-four hours on the fast track, and she sounded tough. Maybe the humanity didn't ooze out of you in this setting, it just imploded. “Will she be alright?”

“Yes. But she's going to need help. They've got her in emergency now. But she doesn't seem to have any coverage for hospitalization, or insurance for nursing care…”

“Can she travel?” Kate said, mentally putting her on the plane.

“Not for a while, I don't guess,” the fireman said.

“Where is she?” Grudgingly.

The fireman gave Kate the address. As she was going out the door, the phone rang, and she let her new machine pick it up. It was Jake Alonzo, asking what she thought of the script.

*   *   *

“You hate me,” Lila said from the back of the car, where the ambulance crew had positioned her, the broken leg in its splint raised to the back of the passenger seat. Fortunately her hip had turned out not to be broken. “You wish I had died.”

“No I don't,” Kate said.

“Well, I wish I had died. I went there to throw myself off the end of the pier, but the fuckers put a fence up. I was trying to get down to the ocean to drown, when I fell.”

“Maybe you could sue them,” Kate suggested.

“That's what they're afraid of. That's why they fixed me for nothing,” she said. “Larry would have liked that, my beating the city. Except I'd rather be dead.”

“Don't be silly,” said Kate, not knowing what else to say.

“What reason do I have to be alive?”

She couldn't think of any. “There's the book,” Kate said, remembering how only a few days before she'd had mercy in her.

“You're going to write it?” Lila asked.

“I'm going to try.”

“Well, good,” Lila said, a great whoosh of air coming out of her with the words, like a bellows. “I remembered some other stories.”

“What's
momser
mean?” asked Kate.

“It means a person who doesn't deserve what they get,” Lila said. “A bastard if you want to be literal. Usually it's a man, but I suspected you were one of those feminist people. So I gave you equal status. But if you like, I could call you a
courvah.
”

“What's that?”

“A whore.”

“Let's leave that for the ones who wrote the other book,” Kate said.

*   *   *

The broadcast studio for the Ralph Robertson show was rented from a local New York station on East Seventy-first Street. Arthur Finster hired a limousine service to take him there. He made sure that the stretch had a phone in it, so he could call his office as he already had countless times that day, just in case he remembered anyone else who ought to be alerted he was on the show.

“And you'll call the producers at Larry King to watch?” he asked and ordered into the phone.

“They've already passed,” the PR woman said.

“And Oprah?”

“We've called everybody,” she said.

“And don't forget my mother.”

“We called her.”

“But you didn't tell her I was in New York?” Even as he said it, he slumped down deep into the seat, a counterspy, just in case anyone who knew her should see the limo. The windows were darkened, shaded, opalescent, giving him the protection of a rock star. But she could see through walls and bathroom doors, so her friends would only have to notice a limousine passing to know that Arthur was inside and hadn't been to visit her.

“Well, she knew where the show was broadcast from, so I had to talk very fast. I told her they were linking you up by satellite.”

“You get a raise as soon as the book hits number one,” Arthur said.

“It's number one in the L.A.
Times
next Sunday.”

“Nationwide,” he said. He hung up the phone.

*   *   *

“But what about the accusations of blood money?” Ralph Robertson was asking him. He was blond, with elegant posture and the clipped accent of Johannesburg, where he had lived until moving to the States and becoming, as he often said, smiling, on the lecture circuit, an African American. “What about the people who are calling you a vampire?”

“What about them? There will always be jealousy. The publishing business is notoriously stodgy, slow-moving. They can't help resenting how fast it's happened for me. How much money I've made.”

“But these are people many of whom are a great deal richer than you. And they call you a blight on the industry.”

“Free country.” Arthur shrugged. “First Amendment. They can say anything they like, and I can publish anything I like. And readers like.”

“Readers?” Robertson gave his famous chuckle, the only well-known laugh on the air that seemed to have a British accent. “This has been called a nonbook, by nonwriters, in what many are calling non-English.”

“These girls have been through terrible ordeals,” said Arthur. “They speak from the heart.”

“Is that what they call it?”

Ignoring the barb, Arthur plowed on. “The writing of this book has been a cleansing for them, a kind of therapy, where they have learned the foolishness of their ways, and now will lead a life of spiritual values.”

“Sort of like the
Confessions of St. Augustine?
” Robertson said.

“You could say that.”

“But I won't,” said Ralph. “I don't need mail from the Vatican. How do you feel about the death of Larry Drayco?”

“I feel bad when anyone dies.”

“Especially reading about himself in your book.”

“That is an unconfirmed rumor. Natalia, that's the former call girl who hung out with Larry, Natalia has already apportioned part of her royalties to a headstone.”

“Really. I heard your authors don't get royalties. That you have them sign away all rights in exchange for protection.”

“From what? They haven't done anything wrong.”

“Then why is there a class action libel suit against you and the … what did you call them? Former call girls? Filed on behalf of some of the biggest names in Hollywood by Fletcher McCallum, the most respected attorney in entertainment law? The suit alleges, besides libel, invasion of privacy, and malice, that you have deliberately vilified celebrities in order to promote the sale of
By Hook or by Crook.
Linus Archer, Rick Flinders, Jake Alonzo—”