Belinda Chapter 18 - 23

"I don't understand," I said. "I thought you'd like to meet him. He isn't

just famous, he's charming. And besides, he's my best friend."

"I'm sure he's terrific, I've seen him on television, I've seen him in the

movies, but I don't want to go." Temper rising. "And I wanna make this

concert, I told you I wanna make this concert, you won't go to rock concerts

with me, you absolutely refuse, and so I have to go by myself."

"I don't like it. I don't want you going. And you've never done this before,

besides!"

"But I wanted to! Look, I'm sixteen, aren't I?"

"Look, are you angry that I'm going to dinner with a friend?"

"Why would I be angry!"

"Look, you wouldn't go to the museum reception, you skipped out when Andy

came to set up the sculpture, you disappear into your room if Sheila comes.

You never pick up the phone when it rings. And here we're talking about Alex,

one of the most famous stars in the history of the movies, and you don't

even-"

"And what the hell are you going to tell all these people? I'm your niece

from Kansas City who just came to visit? I mean, Christ, Jeremy, get some

sense! You're hiding the best work you ever did in the goddamned attic, and

at the same time you want to show me off to your friends?"

"But the point is Alex Clementine is the one person I don't have to explain

anything to! Alex never tells the truth about anybody. He just wrote an

entire book in which he didn't tell the nit-grit truth about a single person

he knew."

But he'll tell everybody over dinner and cocktails forever, won't he? "You

should have seen the little jailbait Jeremy had with him in S.F.-yes,

Jeremy."

No, not if I tell him not to. "Go without me-"

"Look," I said. "All you care about is movies and-"

"Film, Jeremy, film, not movies and not movie stars either."

"OK, film. But he knows plenty about film. Not just gossip column stuff. He's

worked with the best, you get him talking on-"

"I won't go, Jeremy!"

"Then stay home. But don't go to this damned rock thing. I don't want you

going. I don't want you seeing the street kids, because if somebody is

looking for you-"

"Jeremy, you're acting crazy. I'm going!" Bedroom door slammed.

I stomped downstairs. Sticky scent of hair spray in the air, clatter of junk

jewelry as she went back and forth between her room and the bathroom.

"I don't want you taking the car to this thing alone," I called up to her.

"I can take a cab," she said with maddening politeness.

"I'll drive you."

"That's dumb. Go have dinner with your friend and forget about me."

"Ridiculous!"

She came to the bottom of the stairs wearing black jeans, flaming silk

blouse, rhinestone heels, leather jacket. Hair a torrent of red and gold

spikes, eyes black holes in space, mouth like a war wound. "Where's my

leopard coat, you seen it?"

"Good God," I said. "Not that coat."

"Jeremy, come on!" Flash of sweetness. She threw her arms around my neck.

Musky perfume, rattle of beads. Unbearable softness of breasts under silk.

Bra or no bra? Her hair felt like a century plant. Her mouth smelled like

bubble gum.

"Suppose somebody's out there looking for you?"

"Who?" she asked. She went rummaging in the hall closet. "Here it is. God,

you had it cleaned. You are the strangest person, Jeremy."

"Suppose there's some detective out there hired to find you." I could [bad

scan]its or just warning her? She did have a right to know, didn't she?

"There just might be somebody looking for you."

Flash of her glittering eye. False eyelashes? Probably just sticky gunk. She

put on the coat, adjusted the collar, looked at herself in the mirror.

High heels and jeans: kiddie tramp. I swallowed, took a deep breath.

"A rock concert is a place he might look," I said. "If you were my kid, I'd

have somebody looking for you."

"Jer, he would never recognize me under all this, now would he?"

We were halfway to the auditorium before I said anything more. She was

humming some little song to herself, tapping the dash with one hand.

"Would you be smart in there? Don't smoke any grass. Don't try to buy a beer.

Don't do anything to get busted." Laughter.

Slumped against the door, facing me, one knee up, arch of foot over

impossible high heel shoe. Toenails polished bright red peeping through the

lace stocking. Bracelets like armor on her wrists.

"I don't want them to find you, you know, whoever they are."

Did she sigh? Did she murmur something?

She moved forward with a new gust of perfume and put her arms around my neck.

"I've done all that-grass, acid, ecstasy, coke, you name it. All that's

past."

I winced. Why weren't these clothes the past?

"Don't do anything to attract attention," I said.

In the flash of passing headlights she seemed to be burning up beside me. She

popped her gum loudly when I glanced at her. "I'll just fade into the

woodwork," she said.

She caught me in another soft silky clinch, then she was out of the car while

it was still moving. Click of heels on the asphalt, throwing a kiss back over

her shoulder. I watched her all the way through the crowd to the doors.

And what if we went some place where we could get legally married? Some

southern state where she was old enough? And I could just say to everyone in

the whole world-?

And it would be over right then and there, wouldn't it? CHILDREN'S AUTHOR

TAKES TEENAGE BRIDE. You wouldn't even have to show the paintings. And her

family, what would they do when they finally put it all together: kidnapping,

coercion. Could they have it annulled and take her away to some private

asylum where rich people stash their family troublemakers? Goddamn it all!

Alex had a head start with the wine when I got there. He had been up in the

Napa Valley all day shooting a champagne commercial. And we were dining

alone, in his suite, which was just fine with me. The place was jammed with

flowers, big showy red carnations in glass vases. And he had on one of those

glamorous full-length satin-lapelled robes I always associate with English

gentlemen or black-and-white forties pictures. Even a white silk scarf tucked

inside at the neck.

"You know, Jer," he said, as I took my place across from him, "we could have

shot this whole champagne thing in my backyard down south. But if they want

to fly me to San Francisco and take me on a tour of the wine country and put

me up in a nice little old-fashioned suite at the Clift, who am I to object?"

The waiters had just set out the caviar and the lemon. Alex went to work with

the crackers at once.

"So what's happening?" I said. "You're locked in on 'Champagne Flight' or

what?"

Try not to think of her in that mead hall full of barbarians. Why wouldn't

she come with me?

"No, they wrote me out of the plot. Bonnie takes a young lover, some punk,

the masochistic angle you know, and I go off into the sunset accepting it

philosophically. That way they can always bring me back. And they might. But

so what? This champagne commercial's just one of the fringe benefits. We're

shooting eight spots, and the figures are perfectly ridiculous. There'll be

magazine ads too. And there's talk of some automobile commercial. I tell you

it's madness, the whole thing."

"Good for you," I said. "Take them for everything they're worth and you're

worth."

"You got it. Here, have some of this champagne, [bad scan]"

"And by the way, what's the big secret you've been keeping from me?"

"What are you talking about?" I said. I think my face went red.

"Well, first off you're wearing a very expensive shaving lotion, which is

just the kind of thing you never bother with, and this is the first time in

my entire life that I've seen you in a decent suit. So who's the mystery

girl?"

"Oh, yeah, well, I wish there was some big secret I could tell you." (And she

did buy the suit and the shaving lotion.) "Fact is, all I want to tell you is

I'm right about what I said last time I saw you-about the truth."

"What? Truth? We had a conversation about truth?"

"Come on, Alex, you weren't that drunk."

"You were. Did you ever read my book?"

"I'm telling you, the truth is the big pie in the sky. And it's time I used

all the lies I've told as the platform for it."

"You crazy kid. This kind of inanity is exactly what I come here for. Nobody

down south talks like you. You mean, you're going to stop doing little kids

in nightgowns?"

"Yes, I've kissed them good-bye, Alex. I've kissed them all good-bye. If I

make it now, it will be strictly as a painter."

"So long as you've got the royalties coming in," he said. "But if it's all

those horrible things, those roaches and rats you used to paint-"

"In a beautiful way," I said. "It's worse than that. My life's been taken

over by something, Alex. And I'm glad the revelation happened now and not

twenty years down the road when I'm-"

"As old as I am."

Yes, I'd been going to say that when I caught myself. But it was them

suddenly that awful thought, what if I were lying there dying and all I saw

when I looked back was Charlotte, Bertina, Angelica?

He gave me a big generous smile, even white teeth positively glistening.

"Jer, shut up about art, will you? You taste this champagne? I just said to a

potential seventy-five million viewers that it was superb. What's it taste

like to you?"

"I don't know and I don't care. Get me some Scotch, will you? And hey,

there's something I want to know. Susan Jeremiah. Movie director. Does that

name mean anything to you?"
-,,

"Yeah, up-and-coming if United Theatricals doesn't ruin her life with

television movies. You can't learn anything in television. The standards are

too low. These people are crazy. They go out to shoot so many pages a day and

they do, no matter what happens."

"Any dish on Jeremiah that nobody else would know?"

He shook his head. "That thing she did at Cannes, Final Score, whatever it

was, was full of lesbian scenes, real steamy. But now that's all hush-hush.

You know, your bit about truth versus what the public wants? Well, nobody

straightened out faster than Jeremiah did for a contract at United

Theatricals. Right out of the art house class into prime time. Why are you

asking me about her?"

"I don't know, just thinking about her. Saw her picture in a magazine

somewhere."

"Oh, the press loves her. It's the hat and the cowboy boots and she really

wears them. Quite a swagger, too."

"And they love you right now, don't they?"

He nodded. "In a real way, Jer, things were never better. Now let's really

get down on this subject of truth for a second. My book's right up there in

the fifth slot, you know that? And after this champagne commercial, two

teleplays in the works, one a three-hour Sunday night special. I play a

priest who's lost his faith and gets it back when his sister dies of

leukemia. Now can you look me in the eye and tell me I should have told all

in my book? What would it have done for me?" I thought about it for a minute.

"Alex," I said, "if you had told all, I mean all, maybe they'd be feature

films and not teleplays."

"You upstart kid!"

"And they'd want you for a French champagne instead of an American one that

tastes like soda pop."

"You never give up."

The caviar was being removed now, and the main course was being served from

those heavy silver dishes that the old hotels still use. Roasted chicken,

Alex's favorite. It would do fine, but I wasn't really hungry. I kept

thinking of her in that punk garb, rushing through the doors of the

auditorium.

Sense of foreboding. I realized I was looking at us in the mirror. In the

cream-colored satin robe Alex looked wonderfully decadent. No salt-and-pepper

gray at his temples. He had never looked more like a wax museum monument to

himself.

"Hey, Jer, come back," he said. Unobtrusive little snap of the fingers. "You

look like somebody walked on your grave."

"No, just thinking. It doesn't make a damn bit of difference whether or not

the truth sells. The truth just is the truth, that's all, even if it brings

you right down to the bottom."

He laughed and laughed. "You're a scream," he said. "Yeah, the truth, and God

and the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus."

"Alex, tell me, do you know any of the top execs at United Theatricals?"

I mean, almost any teenager in America would want to meet Alex Clementine.

And she wouldn't even hear of it, wouldn't even... something about the

expression on her face when I said his name.

"What the hell has that got to do with truth, Jeremy?"

"Do you?"

"Know all of them. Assholes. They come out of TV. I am telling you, TV

stinks, Jer. That Moreschi, the producer of 'Champagne Flight,' that kid

might have really been something in life if it hadn't been for TV."

"Any dish on anybody... family problems, kids missing, runaways, that kind of

thing."

He stared at me. "Jer, what is this about?"

"Seriously, Alex. Have you heard anything? You know, any stories about

teenage kids vanishing, that kind of thing?"

He shook his head. "Ash Levine's got three boys, all good kids, as far as I

ever heard. Sidney Templeton doesn't have any kids. He's got a stepson he

plays golf with. Why?"

"What about Moreschi?"

Shook his head. "Just his stepdaughter, Bonnie's kid, she's socked away

somewhere in a Swiss school. I heard about that enough from Susan Jeremiah."

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, Susan used that kid in a movie at Cannes. She was pretty crazy about

her, wanted her for a new TV thing, but the kid's bricked up in a Swiss

convent, nobody can get to her. Jeremiah threw a fit."

I leaned forward. An alarm bell had just gone off inside my head.

"This is the kid you told me about, the one with the hairdresser father-"

"Yeah, beautiful little girl. Blond hair and baby face, like her daddy,

George Gallagher-now you talk about somebody irresistible, that's George

Gallagher. Hmmmmm. Can't stand it. Eat something, Jer, your food's getting

cold."

"How old is she?"

"Who?"

"The kid! What's her name."

"Teenager, fifteen, sixteen, something like that. I don't think I ever heard

her name."

"Are you sure she's in a Swiss school?"

"Yeah, everybody's been wanting that kid since Cannes, and the name and

address is top secret. Marty even threw Jeremiah out of his office for

bugging him about it. But he didn't fire her, and I can tell you that means

the lady is hot."

I could feel my heart racing. I tried to keep my voice normal.

"You didn't see the movie at Cannes?"

"Nah, I can take a little Fellini or Bergman if I'm drunk enough, but...

what's the matter with you, Jer? You look positively sick."

"Do you know anyone who does know the kid's name, somebody you could call

right now, somebody-"

"Well, I could call Marty or Bonnie, of course, but that wouldn't be cool. I

mean, with agents bugging them about that kid-"

"What about Gallagher or Jeremiah?"

"Hmm, I could maybe do it tomorrow. Let's see, Gallagher's in New York

somewhere, living with some Broadway director, Ollie Boon, I believe it is,

yeah, Ollie-"

New York. My oldest buddy... It's raining in New York City.

"Jeremiah's in Paris, could probably find out where. Hey, Jer, snap out of

it, this is Alex, remember?"

"I have to make a phone call," I said. I almost upset the table as I stood

up.

Alex shrugged and gestured towards the bedroom. "Help yourself. And if it's

your girlfriend you're calling, give her my thanks for getting you to a

decent barber. I never could."

I rang the Beverly Wilshire. Dan was out but would be back at nine. "Give him

this message," I told the operator. " 'Champagne Flight' Bonnie-check out her

daughter's name, age, pic, and whereabouts right away. Sign it J."

I hung up. My heart was skipping. I stood in the doorway for a moment just

trying to get straight. It wasn't Belinda-of course, it wasn't. The Swiss

school, I mean this little girl whoever she is... why were my legs shaking

like this? What the hell damn difference did it make?

"Do me a favor, son," Alex was saying to one of the waiters, a very cute one

of the waiters, "go into the refrigerator there and take out all those

bottles of champagne. Keep'm, give'm away, I don't care what you do with

them, but get me a nice cold bottle of Dom Perignon right away, OK? That

stuff's trash."

I'll leave if you mention my parents again... it's the easiest way to get rid

of me. No hard feelings. I will just go.

I chained the front door after me and went straight up to her room. Same

posters, mags, empty purses, old suitcase. Susan Jeremiah squinting under the

brim of her cowboy hat. Susan Jeremiah standing with one foot inside her

mile-long Cadillac, same hat, same boots, same squint, beautiful smile.

Tapes under the sweaters. One of you has got to be Final Score!

I gathered them all up, though my hands were shaking (I mean, these are her

things, buddy!) went downstairs to my office and locked myself in.

The television on my desk was small but new, and the video tape player there

was as good as any of the others in the house.

I hated this, hated it, but there was no turning back now. I had to know the

answer, no matter what I did or did not ever say to her. I had to know for

myself.

I slipped the first tape into the machine, then sat back with the remote

control in hand.

Old movie. Half the credits were gone, and the quality was dreadful. Almost

certainly a pirate or a film recorded off television.

Director Leonardo Gallo. Ancient Roman streets, full of half-clad muscle men

and cheesecake beauties. Melodramatic music. Most certainly this was one of

those ugly badly dubbed Franco-Italian productions.

I touched the scanner and started to move through rapidly. Claudia Scartino,

OK, I recognized her, and a Swedish starlet whose name I couldn't remember.

And Bonnie, yes, there was Bonnie, of course!

I felt a tightening in my chest. It was true, I knew it was true, no matter

what Alex had said about the Swiss school, and suspecting was one thing,

knowing was another. Bonnie right there. And why else would Belinda own this

piece of trash? I took it out, tried the next one.

Another mess. [bad scan] Gallo. Claudia Scartino again, two old Hollywood

stars, the Swedish cutie-whose name was Eve Eckling-and Bonnie again. But

what else did these tapes mean to her? Did she care that much about her

mother's old films?

Scan a little. OK. Lots of international breasts. Good lesbian scene between

Bonnie and Claudia in a Roman bed. Some other time I'd have a hard-on.

Scan again.

Barbarians overrun the villa. Square-jawed American actor in animal skins and

horned helmet grabs tender upper arm of Claudia Scartino, fresh from bath,

clad only in towel. Slaves scatter, scream. Vase bounces on the floor.

Clearly made of rubber. Little girl in flimsy Roman gown drops stick doll and

puts hands to her head. Arm comes down around her waist, lifts her out of the

picture.

Little girl. Little girl! I backed it up until she was there again, more,

close-up, freeze-frame. No, not-yes, Belinda.

I sent it back another frame, then another, bigger close-up, froze it again.

Belinda at six, maybe seven. Hair parted in the middle as now. Oh, yes, the

eyebrows, the poochy little mouth, definitely Belinda.

For a moment I was too stunned to do anything but look at the blurred grainy

image on the screen.

If there had been the slightest doubt, it was gone now.

I pressed down on the button and watched in silence as the thing rolled to

its finish. She didn't appear again. There was no name in the credits. I had

a strange taste in my mouth.

I got up mechanically, poured myself a glass of Scotch, came back and sat

down again.

I felt like I had to do something, but what? Call Alex? Call Dan? It was

true, I knew that now for certain. But I couldn't think what it meant to me

or to her. I just couldn't think.

For a long time I didn't move, not even to drink the Scotch, and then I

slipped the next cassette into the machine and started to scan.

OK, the same international gang. And this time in Renaissance drag and the

Swedish woman is really putting on weight. But it's all right if you're

playing a Medici. All right, come on. Where is Belinda?

And finally there she was again for a precious few moments, one of two little

children brought in to be kissed good night. Ah, the roundness of her little

arms, the sight of her dimpled hand clutching the doll.

I cannot stand this. The rest of the film rolled out in silent fast forward

without her. Go to the next.

More junk. A Western this time, with a different director, Franco Manzoni,

but Claudia was there again and Bonnie, too, and the same old American boys.

I was tempted to skip it. But I wanted to find out everything I could. And it

looked newer, the color sharper. I didn't have to wait long. Ranch house

living room scene, girl of ten or eleven with braids, embroidery in hand,

yes, Belinda. Simply lovely Belinda. Neck longer, waist very small. But hands

still have dimples. Claudia Scartino sits beside her on couch, embraces her.

Belinda speaks. I slowed it down. Not her voice, dubbed in Italian. Awful.

I indulged myself for a couple of minutes just drinking in one freeze-frame

close-up after another. Breasts already, yes, and with those baby hands.

Irresistible. Fingers positively pudgy still, and her eyes enormous because

the face is thinner, slightly longer. Scan again.

Belinda is in the dirt street during the shoot-out. She grabs Claudia, stops

her from running to stop the duel. Bonnie appears in black hat, black boots,

very de Sade, shoots Claudia. Men stopped in their tracks. Belinda goes into

hysterics.

Is this acting? I couldn't calm down long enough to come to any opinion. She

looked too much like a little bonbon in her gingham dress with the big sash,

arms up, thick veil of hair flying. As she went down on her knees, I saw the

pooch of her breasts again. Again no credit.

But the fact is, this little girl, my little girl, my Belinda, has been in

movies all her life. The teenybopper with the posters on the walls has been a

starlet herself.

Next two Franco-Italian Westerns, lousy, she about the same age, same kind of

part, Claudia and Bonnie again, but in the second of these she has a precious

five minutes of being chased by a cowboy bent on rape whom she hits over the

head with a water pitcher. If this isn't acting, it's something. Star

quality, is that the vulgar phrase? Alex Clementine would know if he saw all

this. Couldn't be objective. She was utterly adorable. Yet no credit, unless

her real name is not Belinda at all.

Was seeing oil paintings of all this, of course. Belinda in Franco-Italian

Movie.

But what am I thinking of? That we just go on from here?

Two more cassettes.

And suddenly everything changes. Grainy texture as before, but the color is

brand-new, subtle. Extreme European look, but the title in English:

FINAL SCORE

All right!

American names I don't know are sliding gently down a backdrop of seaside

cliffs, the unmistakable white buildings of a Greek island village.

AND INTRODUCING BELINDA

I could hear my heart pounding in my head. The shock spread all through me

like a chill. It is her name, all right, just that, Belinda, no last name,

the same way they always used Bonnie. OK.

DIRECTED BY SUSAN JEREMIAH

Through a state of shock bordering on catatonia I kept watching. Let it roll

at normal speed.

A Greek island. A gang of Texans, accents authentic, amateur cocaine

smugglers, it seems, hiding out on the island until the right time to bring

home the stash. Two men bitter and Sophisticated, women same, but all bid for

our sympathy with dreams of what they will do with the money. Arty, fast-

paced, acting excellent, lots of talk. Extremely professional look. Texture

awful, probably because it was shot originally in sixteen millimeter, or the

videotape is just bad.

I can't stand it. Where is she? Scan:

Quarrels, sex. Relationships not quite what they seem. Red-haired woman

fights with man, walks off alone at dawn. Beach. Sunrise. Exquisite. Stops,

sees tiny figure riding towards her along the edge of the surf..

Yes, please come closer. Stop scan. Sound of surf. "And introducing Belinda."

Yes. No mistake about it. There she is in one of those tiny white bikinis,

which is infinitely more seductive than pure nakedness. Worse than the one

she wears around here.

And she is riding the horse bareback.

She is so luscious as she comes smiling towards the redhead. The redhead is

still pretty, very pretty. In fact, she is quite beautiful. But now she is

utterly eclipsed by my darling.

The redhead talks to her in English. Belinda only shakes her head. The

redhead asks her if she lives here. Again, Belinda shakes her head. Then she

says something to the redhead in Greek. Lovely accent, the language soft as

Italian yet somehow even more sensual. Touch of the East in it. It is the

redhead's turn to shake her head now. But some sort of friendship is being

struck.

Belinda points to a little house up on the cliff, extends an unmistakable

invitation. Then she helps the redhead to climb up on the horse behind her.

Gracefully the horse picks its way up the steep path.

Hair blowing in the wind, smiles, attempts at speech that fail. Unbearable,

the easy sway of Belinda's hips as she moves with the horse, the light on her

belly. Her hair is longer than it is now, almost covers her bottom.

In a small white house Belinda puts food on the table. Bread, oranges.

Everything has the starkness and beauty of a Morandi painting. The sea is a

rectangle of blue through the perfectly square window in the white wall.

Camera on Belinda's face as it creates a skilled impression of naiveté and

simplicity which in real life Belinda simply never suggests. The red-haired

woman is content for the first time in the film.

I don't think you have to be in love with Belinda to find her utterly

captivating, to watch paralyzed as she points out things in the room, teaches

the woman the words for them, as she laughs softly at the woman's miserable

pronunciation, as she does the simple thing of pouring milk from a pitcher,

buttering the bread.

Everything has become sensuous. The redhead wipes her hair back from her face

and it is dance. Then the trouble comes back to her expression, the tension.

She breaks down, and Belinda caresses her, strokes her red hair.

The fullness of Belinda's breasts beneath the childish face is too much. I

can't stand it. Want to peel off the little triangles of white fabric, see

the nipples in this new frame.

The redhead looks up, and then that shift happens that you see a thousand

times between men and women in a film: intimacy chemizes into passion. They

are embracing, and now suddenly they are kissing. No intrusive music. Just

the sound of the surf.

Why didn't I see this coming? Between a man and a woman it would have been a

cliché. They rise from the table, go into the bedroom, off comes the bikini,

the redhead's blouse, pants. They do not seem entirely sure what to do, only

that they mean to do it.

And there is none of the urgency of the standard erotic film, and none of the

fuzzy mysticism of the popular cinema either. The redhead is kissing

Belinda's belly, kissing her thighs. Demure. Not very explicit at all. Close

-up of Belinda's face gorgeously flushed. That's the X-rated part, that

flush.

Cut. Back to the drug amateurs, and the redhead coming in. Man glad to see

her, wants to make up, feels awful. She comforts him, no rancor. He's

relieved. Distant expressions on her rice.

I hit the freeze-frame and sat there for a moment trying to get my

temperature to drop. I have been living with this girl, and this is her

secret? She is an actress, and the audiences at Cannes applauded her, and the

director wants her and the agents want her, and I take her out of a sleazy

dump on Page Street, where the cops are questioning her, and I get on her

case for going to a rock concert and I-Scan again. Don't think.

Fights among the Texans, craziness, man beating woman, redhead intervening,

getting smacked, smacking man back. Stop, scan again, stop. On and on it

seems to roll, the true body of the film, with much smoking, drinking, and

bickering. They don't really know what they want to do with the money from

the cocaine. That's it. They are beyond being saved by the "final drug

score."

The redhead appears dominant, taking charge as things deteriorate. Finally

everybody is busy concealing the staggering abundance of cocaine in little

white statuettes. The bottoms must be sealed with plaster, then covered with

green felt. Peace at last with simple labor.

OK, makes good sense, good film probably, but right now all I want is

Belinda.

Finally they are packing up. The tape has nearly run out.

Are they going to leave this island and Belinda?

No. Before dawn the redhead goes out, finds the little house, knocks. Belinda

opens.

Sound up-the surf. Belinda gestures for silence. An old man is asleep in the

other room. The women go down to the water together. I freeze-frame it a

dozen times as they disrobe, embrace each other. And this time it goes on

much longer, is greedier, more heated, their hips grinding together, mouths

locked. but it is still demure. Faces as important as the anatomy. Belinda

lies back on her elbows. This is the look of ecstasy I have seen countless

times in my own shadow in bed. Sunlight.

The ferry carries away the doomed quartet of Americans. Belinda unseen

watches from the cliff. The redhead on the deck keeps her secret in weary

silence, face going gradually dead.

The phone rang.

Freeze it on [bad scan] copyright last year.

"Yeah." Why the hell didn't I let the machine answer it? But now I have it in

my hand.

"Jeremy, listen to me!"

"Dan-"

"Bonnie's daughter is named Belinda! Sixteen, blond, the whole bit. All I

need is the picture to be certain, but none of this makes sense."

"I know."

"Nobody's reported this kid missing! Agents all over this fucking town think

she's in some fancy European school."

Blood pounding in my head. Can't talk. Talk.

"Jeremy, this is worse than anything I imagined. These people will kill you,

Jer. Can't you see that? I mean Bonnie and Moreschi, they're front page

National Enquirer week in, week out!"

I wanted to say something, I really did. But I was just staring at the tapes,

just staring back into time, into that first moment when I saw her in the

bookstore. I was looking back over all of it. What had always been my worse

fear? Not scandal or ruin, no, I'd been courting that from the beginning. It

was that the truth would take her away from me, that the truth would mandate

some action that would divide us forever, and she'd be lost, like a little

girl I had painted out of the imagination, no more a warm and living being in

my arms.

"Jeremy, this is a fucking bomb that can go off any minute in your face."

"Dan, find out where the fuck this Swiss school is and if they really think

she's over there, goddamn it, if she's somehow pulled the wool over her

mother's eyes."

"Of course, she hasn't. It's a cover-up, it has to be. Sampson's got to be

working for Moreschi, and that's why he's sneaking around with these pix of

the kid, and it's all so hush-hush in LA?"

"Is that legal? Not even to report her missing? What kind of people are we

talking about here? She splits and they don't even call the LAPD?"

"Man, you are in no position to throw stones!"

"Fuck it, we're talking about her mother."

"Do you want them to call the LAPD? Are you crazy?"

"You have to find out-"

"And you have to get rid of her, Jeremy, before Sampson tracks her to your

door."

"No, Dan."

"Look, Jer. Remember I told you I thought I'd seen her before? It was

probably the news magazines, Jer, could have even been on the tube. This girl

is famous. The tabloids chase her mother all over this town. They might blow

the lid off it before Sampson finds her, don't you see what this could mean?"

"Zero in on the parents. Find out when she disappeared. I have to know what

went down."

I hung up before he could say anything more.

Seemed impossible to move then, to gather up the tapes, to carry them back

upstairs.

But I did it.

And I stood there dazed, heart still overloading as I stared at the closet

shelves.

The old film magazines were in a pile at the very bottom. And on the top of

that pile was Bonnie smiling up at me from the cover of Cahiers du Cinema.

And underneath that was Bonnie again on an old Paris-Match. And, yes, Bonnie

on the cover of Stern, and Bonnie on the cover of CineRevue. And all those

that didn't have Bonnie's face on the cover had her name somewhere there.

Yes, every single one of them had some connection to Bonnie.

And as I opened the most recent, the Newsweek that was over a year old, I

found immediately the big color picture of the dark-eyed sex goddess with one

arm around a gaunt black-haired man and the other around the radiant blond

woman-child I loved:

"Bonnie with producer husband, Marty Moreschi, and daughter, Belinda,

poolside in Beverly Hills as 'Champagne Flight' prepares for takeoff."
[20]

Six a.m. Gray sky. Chill wind.

I was walking up Powell Street towards Union Square from the metro stop, not

even sure where I was going, what I wanted to do. Looking for a place to

rest, to think.

Left her sleeping in the four-poster, the old-fashioned quilts piled on top

of her, her head to the side, her hair flowing over the pillow. Washed and

scrubbed, all traces of the rock concert and the punk street kid gone.

And I had left a note by the bed.

"Gone downtown. Business. Back late afternoon."

Business. What business? Words calculated to hurt and confuse. Nothing was

open except the bars and the dingy all-night restaurants. What was I going to

do? What did I want to do?

One thing was for sure. After last night I couldn't go on until I came to

some resolution.

Screaming fight when she walked in after the rock concert.

And I was the one drunk on Scotch by that time, and she sober and wary,

glaring at me through the mask of punk makeup. "What's the matter?"

"Sometimes I just can't stand it, that's all."

"Stand what?"

"Not knowing. Where you came from, what happened, why you ran away." Pacing

the kitchen. Anger in my voice, boiling anger. Goddamn it, you are a fucking

movie star!

"You promised me you'd never ask me about all that again." Chewing gum. Eyes

flashing like gaudy jewelry. Stop playing Lolita.

"I'm not asking you. I'm just telling you that I can't stand it sometimes,

that I feel sometimes like, like this is doomed, do you understand me?" Smash

of glass into the sink.

She had stared at the broken glass.

"What's doomed, why are you acting like this?"

"You, me. Because it cannot be right. It just cannot be right."

"Why isn't it right? Do I hound you about your wives, your old girlfriends,

the times you've been to bed with men? I go off to one rock concert by myself

and you flip out and we're doomed suddenly."

"That has nothing to do with it. I'm going crazy, like you've taken over my

life and yet I don't even know you, where you came from, how long you'll

stay, where you're going-"

"I'm not going anywhere! Why should I go?" Hurt suddenly. Break in the voice.

"You want me to leave, Jeremy? You want me to leave? I'll leave tonight."

"I don't want you to leave. I live in terror that you might leave. God-God

damn it, I'd do anything to stop you from leaving, but I'm just saying that

sometimes-"

"Nobody just says anything. I'm here, you can take it or leave it, but those

are the terms. For God's sakes we've been over and over this. This is us,

Jeremy. This belongs to us!"

"Just like your body belongs to you?"

"For the love of God, yes!" California accent dried up, elegant clipped voice

taking over, the real Belinda, Miss International-film-actress.

But she was really crying. She had bowed her head, rushed down the hall and

up the stairs.

I had caught her at the bedroom door, taken her in my arms.

"I love you. I don't care then, I swear it-"

"You say it, but you don't mean it." Pulling away. "Go up and look at your

damn paintings, that's what you feel guilty about, what you're doing, that

they're a thousand times better than the goddamned illustrations you did

before."

"To hell with the paintings, I know all that!"

"Let go of me!" Shoving me. I reached out. Her hand came up, but she did not

slap me. Let her hand drop.

"Look, what do you want of me, that I make something up for you, to make it

easy? I didn't belong to them, don't you understand? I'm not their fucking

property, Jeremy!"

"I know." And I know who them is, and goddamn it, how can you keep it secret?

How can you stand it, Belinda?

"No, you don't know! If you did, you'd believe when I tell you I am where I

want to be! And you'd worry about the damned paintings and why they're better

than all that slop you did before."

"Don't say that-"

"You always wanted to paint what was under the little girls' dresses-"

"Not true. I want to paint you!"

"Yes, well, that's genius up there now, isn't it? You tell me. You're the

artist. I'm just the kid. It's genius, isn't it? For the first time in your

fucking life it's not a book illustration. It's art!"

"I can handle that. I can handle what's happening to my life. What I can't

handle is not knowing whether or not you can handle what's happening to you!

I have no right-"

"No right!" She came closer, and I thought this time she would hit me, she

was so furious. Her face was positively scarlet. "Who says you have no right!

I gave you the right, goddamn it, what do you think I am!"

I couldn't endure it, the expression on her face, the pure malice.

"A child. A legal child. That's what you are."

She made some low sound as if she was going to scream. She shook her head.

"Get out of here," she whispered. "Get away from me, get away, get away!" She

started shoving me, but I wouldn't go. I grabbed her wrists, and then I

pulled her close to me and put my arms around her. She was kicking me,

digging the toe of her shoe into my shin, stomping the heel into my foot.

"Let me go," she was growling. And then she did get her hand loose, and she

slapped me hard over and over, hard stinging slaps that must have hurt her

hand.

I pushed my face into her neck. My ears were ringing. Her hair was scratching

me. Her hands were pulling at me. I just held her.

"Belinda," I said. "Belinda." I kept saying it until she stopped struggling.

And finally her body relaxed. The heat of her breasts was right against my

chest.

The tears had made the mascara run down her cheeks in black streaks. She was

trying to hold in her sobs.

"Jeremy..." she said, and her voice was small and fragile. It was positively

pleading. "I love you," she said. "I really do. I love you. I want it to be

forever. Why isn't that enough for you?"

Two o'clock. Must have been. I hadn't been looking at the clock however. I

had been sitting at the kitchen table smoking her clove cigarettes. Sober by

then, probably. Headache, that I remember. Bad headache. My throat had been

sore.

Why had I looked at the damn films? Why had I called Dan? Why had I talked to

Alex? Why hadn't I left it alone, done what I'd promised I would do?

And if I told her everything now, confessed the snooping, the prying, the

investigation, what would she do? Oh God, to think of losing her, to think of

her struggling to get away from me, to think of her going out the door.

And what about the other pieces of the puzzle? The damned Swiss school scam

and the jackpot question, yes, why, why did she leave all that? She had come

downstairs in her nightgown. Not Charlotte's anymore, just hers. And she had

sat down near me and reached out and touched my hand.

"I'm sorry, darling," I had said. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

But you still won't tell me, will you? Not one fucking word about any of it.

Bonnie, Susan Jeremiah, Final Score. And I can't look you in the eye.

Her hair had been loose and like foam over her shoulders in the light of the

overhead lamp, all clean and sweet from the shower.

"Jeremy," she had said. "Listen to me. What if we were to go away, you know,

really far away?" No answer.

"Like what if we were to go to Europe, Jeremy? Maybe some place in Italy.

Some place in the south of France."

"And you wanted so much to be in America," I whispered.

"I can wait for America, Jeremy. If we were in Europe, you wouldn't be

worried about detectives or cops or whatever the hell it is you keep worrying

about. We'd be safe and you could paint and we could just be alone."

"Darling, can't you just tell me who you are?"

"I'm me, Jeremy. I'm Belinda."

Our eyes had met and the heat had threatened, the awful, torturous heat of

the fight again, and I had gathered her to me. No more of that. No, no more.

She had allowed the kisses. She had allowed the tenderness and even yielded

to it for a moment.

But then she'd backed off. She had stood looking down at me, and her eyes had

an icy ageless expression that had nothing to do with her tears.

"Jeremy, I am telling you now for the last time, make your decision. If you

ask me one more time about the past, I will walk out the front door and you

will never see me again."

Six o'clock. Downtown.

Taxis in front of the Saint Francis. No cable cars sliding down the track.

And why are you so angry with her? Why do you stomp up Powell Street away

from her as if she had done something to you? The first moment you ever saw

her you knew she was no ordinary kid. You knew it. And that is why you love

her. Nobody had to point that out.

And never, never has she lied about any of it! Not like you've lied, about

Dan and about snooping in her room and watching her fucking videotapes. Her

terms were always: Do not ask me about it. And you accepted them, didn't you?

And you know damn good and well you wouldn't have missed it for the world.

But everything is coming apart. That's the bottom line right now. You can not

continue until you resolve it. Make your decision, that is what she said.

I went up the steps of the Saint Francis, through the dark heavy revolving

door into the gilded silence of the lobby. No night or day here. Enchanted

stillness. Image of her the way she had looked standing there by the

elevators that day, as coolly elegant as anything around her. Making movies

since she was six, maybe even before that. And superstar Bonnie for a mother,

imagine.

I went down the long right corridor past the shut-up flower stand, the dress

shop windows. Like entering a little underground town, this. What did I want?

The magazine store? Books, newspapers? Oh, it was too easy.

There was the paperback bio of the goddess mother right there on the book

rack, one of those mass market quickie jobs with no bibliography or index,

and enormous print, all the information in it obviously gleaned from other

peoples' interviews and articles. That's OK. Got to have it. No quibbles

about that now.

Yes, grainy little black-and-white photos in the middle.

One, a grinning Bonnie in sunglasses on the terrace of her Greek island home.

Two, famous nude of Bonnie from Playboy of 1965. Yes, exceptional. What genes

to be inherited.

Three, the famous picture of Bonnie in glasses and man's white shirt open

down the front, advertising Saint Esprit perfume.

Four, Bonnie nude with dalmatians, by Eric Arlington, the poster that had

ended up on a thousand dormitory walls.

Five, Bonnie's Beverly Hills wedding last year to Marty Moreschi, producer of

"Champagne Flight," and guess who's there in a high-neck dress with filmy

sleeves, looking as lovely as the bride? Belinda.

Six, that picture again of mother and daughter by the de rigueur pool.

All of this right here in just the kind of book she knew that I would never

buy. She could have left it lying around the house! She could have read it

right in front of me. I would never have even looked over her shoulder.

And oh yes, seven and eight, Bonnie in scenes from "Champagne Flight," of

course, and with whom? Alex Clementine. My old friend.

I got out the three dollars to pay for this invaluable little piece of trash,

then checked the magazines. I had seen Bonnie's face so often in the past

year she was damn near invisible. National Enquirer, OK, big juicy cover

story: BONNIE SAYS ITALIAN AMERICAN LOVERS ARE BEST. AND I'VE TRIED THEM ALL.

Get that too. Can you believe this, you are buying the National Enquirer?

I also bought a toothbrush, a plastic razor, and some shaving cream and went

to the front desk and rented the most inexpensive room they could give me.

Luggage? "Painters redoing my house, fumes nearly killed me." Here are all

the credit cards known in the Western world. I don't need luggage!

Just room service breakfast immediately. And a pot of coffee please.

I stretched out on the bed and opened the stupid little bio. Just as I

thought, lots of facts, quotes, and no attribution anywhere. Publishing

houses who issue this sort of thing should be burnt down. But for the moment

it gave me exactly what I wanted.

Born Bonnie Blanchard in Dallas, Texas, in October 1942, Bonnie had grown up

in Highland Park, daughter of a well-to-do plastic surgeon. Mother died when

she was six. Went to live with brother, Daryl, on a ranch outside Denton

after her father's unexpected death. Majored in philosophy at North Texas

State.

"Everybody always thought Bonnie was just a big dumb pretty Dallas girl,"

said brother, Daryl Blanchard, Dallas lawyer and Bonnie's financial manager.

"Nothing could be further from the truth. She was an A-student at Highland

Park High. My sister always had her nose in a book. And she really can't see

without the famous glasses."

It was the famous Music Department at North Texas State that changed the

course of Bonnie's life.

"Here you have this dry college town," said her old Highland Park friend Mona

Freeman, "I mean, you have to drive thirty miles north or south to buy a can

of beer; yet here are these long-haired beatnik jazz musicians from New York

City come all the way down here to play with the lab band, they called it,

and don't you know they brought their beatnik poetry and their drugs with

them?"

"It was after the lab band had won the award at the Newport Jazz Festival,"

said brother, Daryl. "North Texas was very hot. Stan Kenton used to come to

recruit musicians for his band. The town was real proud of it. And, of

course, Bonnie had never listened to jazz before and suddenly she was wearing

black stockings and reading Kierkegaard and bringing home these writer

characters and these musicians. Next thing you knew they were all jamming, as

they called it, and then everybody was going to France."

"We were sitting in the Deux Magots when it happened," said sax player Paul

Reisner. "Up comes this gang of Frenchmen carrying all their equipment on

their shoulders. And it turns our it's this guy Andre Flarebeaux and he takes

one look at Bonnie and he goes down on one knee and he says in this thick

French accent: 'Brigitte! Marilyn! Aphrodite! I want you in my movie.' "

Sweet Darkness was to make Bonnie the rage of the Paris Nouvelle Vague, along

with Jean Seberg and later Jane Fonda.

"They were lined up all around the town square in Denton to see those first

two films," said Mona Freeman. "But, you know, you expect that in your own

hometown. It was when we heard about the billboard on Times Square that we

knew she had really made it. And then came that sensational ad in Vogue for

Midnight Mink."

"Bonnie really launched the Midnight Mink campaign," said Blair Sackwell,

president of Midnight Mink. "And that first picture launched Eric Arlington's

career as a photographer, whether Eric cares to admit it or not. We were

running around frantically trying to decide which coat, and should we show

her shoes, and what about her hair and all, and then somebody realized she

was taking off all her clothes, and she had put on the full-length coat, and

was letting it hang open all the way down, turned so you couldn't really see

anything, you know, except of course that she was naked, and then she said,

'What's wrong with bare feet?' "

"Of course, people reprinted the advertisement everywhere," said Mona

Freeman. "It was news, Bonnie barefoot in white fur. Midnight Mink was just

the rage after that."

Ten films in five years had made her a household word in the United States

and Europe. The New York Times, Variety, Time, Newsweek, they all loved her.

Finally after the Italian Mater Dolorosa, an American box office smash,

Hollywood finally did pay her enough to come home for two big budget all-star

disasters.

"Never again," Bonnie said, going back to France to make Of Love and Sorrow

with Flambeaux, the last of her "artistic" films to be released in this

country.

In 1976 Bonnie moved with six-year-old daughter Belinda to Spain, venturing

out of her lavish suite at the Palace Hotel only to make Continental films

for her sometime lover, director Leonardo Gallo.

"Why should a woman marry to have a child? I'll bring up Belinda to be as

independent as I am."

Gallo's pictures, though never released in the United States, have made a

fortune all over the Continent.

In 1980 Bonnie was hospitalized in London during the filming of a television

movie with American star Alex Clementine.

"It was not a suicide attempt. I don't know how those rumors start. I would

never do a thing like that. Never. You don't have to believe in God to

believe in life."

She made a dozen more international films after that. She worked in England,

Spain, Italy, Germany, even Sweden. Horror films, Westerns, costume

adventures, murder mysteries. She played everything from a gun-toting saloon

keeper to a vampire.

"No matter what you say about the films themselves," said United Theatricals

publicist Liz Harper, "Bonnie was always terrific in them. And remember, even

in the worst of times she was getting two hundred thousand to five hundred

thousand dollars a picture."

"It was crazy," said Trish, Bonnie's oldest friend and longtime companion.

"One time we visited her while she was making this picture in Vienna. We

couldn't even tell what the story was, whether or not Bonnie was supposed to

be sympathetic or somebody mean. But she always earned her money. She just

did what the director told her."

After two more mysterious hospitalizations, one in Vienna and one in Rome,

Bonnie finally retired for good to her private island paradise, Saint Esprit,

which she'd purchased years before from a Greek shipping magnate.

"More pictures of me have been taken by the paparazzi off the coast of Saint

Esprit in the last two years than in my entire life before that. I wake up

and walk out on the terrace and it ends up in an Italian newspaper."

Bonnie's former European agent, Marcella Guitron, reported that she would not

even look at scripts anymore.

"The quality erotic film she once made with Flarebeaux is now dead. Hard-core

porn had seen to that. And the great European directors she worked with were

no longer making pictures. Of course, if Polanski or Fellini or Bergman had

asked for her, that might have been different."

"Serious American directors had come into their own by that time," said New

York film critic Rudy Meyer. "Airman, Coppola, Scorsese, Spielberg, and

Lucas-those were the ones everybody was talking about."

"She was smart to quit when she did," said an actor who had worked with her

in Hollywood. "On Saint Esprit she became a mystery with a new market value.

That's when the big picture books on her started to appear in the chain

stores all over the country. 'The Legend of Bonnie,' you know, all that.

Course, she didn't get a nickel off it, but it kept her famous, especially

with the college kids. They had a Bonnie Festival in New Haven and one in

Berkeley and one in some little art house in LA.

Saint Esprit: a fifteen-room villa featured in Architectural Digest in 1982,

two swimming pools, a private stable, a tennis court, a yacht, and two sail

boats. Friends from Texas were flown in regularly for parties, dinners,

reunions. Jill Fleming and Trish Cody, old Highland Park classmates, came to

live there permanently in 1986.

Jill Fleming:
"You never saw anything like it. There we were in the middle of all that

luxury, and Bonnie was just the same Texas girl we'd always known and loved,

serving barbecue and beer on the terrace, making everybody feel at home. Her

idea of a good time was being with old friends, watching the tube, reading a

good book."

Texas friend Travis Buckner:
"Nothing could get Bonnie off that island. She had a closed system there.

Every week Daryl shipped her crates of videotapes, books, magazines. Jill and

Trish went to Paris or Rome to get Bonnie's clothes. The only way the perfume

company ever got the endorsement from her was through Daryl. Daryl brought

the company to her. Bonnie had her spot on that balcony, and she never moved

from it except to go to the bathroom or to bed."

Trish Cody:
"Bonnie was the commodity and Daryl the brains behind it. No matter how much

Bonnie ever made on a picture, half of it went to Daryl, and Daryl invested

every penny in Texas land. She even sent half her expense checks back home.

It was Daryl who had the foresight to buy the Beverly Hills house back in the

sixties before property skyrocketed. Bonnie didn't want a house in

California. And it was Daryl who rented it out to motion picture people all

those years, getting them to foot the bill for the new pool and the new

carpet and the new landscaping and the paint jobs, until it was a showcase

when Bonnie finally came home."

Jill Fleming:
"Of course, it was Daryl who was behind the famous dalmatians picture. Eric

Arlington could never have gotten Bonnie to pose if Daryl hadn't flown him

in. These people had to go through Daryl."

Eric Arlington, photographer:
"I hadn't laid eyes on her since old Midnight Mink days. Frankly I had no

idea what to expect. And there she was just lying there on the terrace, as

lovely as ever, and these gorgeous black-and-white dogs were there beside

her. And she said: 'Mr. Arlington, I'll pose for you if I don't have to move

from here.' "

" 'Just take off your clothes, ma cherie, the way you did last time,' I said

to her. 'And let the dogs come into your arms.' "

Trish Cody:
"Of course, Bonnie just loved those dogs. She didn't see anything unnatural

about letting them crawl all over her. Never occurred to her anybody would

find it kinky."

Daryl:
"The college kids just loved it."

Eric Arlington:
"She is the most naturally exhibitionistic woman I have ever photographed.

She adores the camera. And she trusts it completely. She lay down with the

animals, stroking them and crooning to them, letting them lie naturally with

her. It was done without the slightest contrivance. I never even asked her to

brush her hair."

Hollywood columnist Lauren Dalton:
"Calling her the dark-haired Marilyn Monroe, that was all wrong. Bonnie was

never used in her films as Monroe was used, to play a stupid woman who is

unaware of her power over men. On the contrary, Bonnie knew and used her

power. It was Rita Hayworth she admired and imitated. The sadness of Monroe

has nothing to do with Bonnie and never did."

New York critic Samuel Davenport:
"When they put that scandalous billboard on Times Square in the sixties,

Bonnie admitted that she had given approval. She didn't play games like the

other sex goddesses in those days. When they were filming La Joyeuse, it was

Bonnie who let the Playboy photographers onto the set. Even André Flambeaux

was shocked. Bonnie said, 'We need the publicity, don't we?' "

Brother Daryl:
"Texas has always loved Bonnie. I think they made fun of Jane Mansfield. She

embarrassed them. But my sister they absolutely adore."

Trish:
"Of course, she said she would never come back to Hollywood. You should have

seen the scripts they sent her agent. Every now and then Jill and I would

pick up a bundle of them in Paris and bring them back to Saint Esprit. They

were those all-star disaster pictures, or the big Arthur Hailey Airport-style

movies. They would have made her look like a fool."

Daryl:
"Hollywood never really knew how to use Bonnie. They were afraid of her-how

shall we say?-her feminine charms. She just looked like a big doll in those

pictures."

Joe Klein, Houston reporter:
"If it hadn't been for Susan Jeremiah, Bonnie would never never have gone to

Cannes. Of course, young filmmakers were always after Bonnie to finance

something, but here was a woman, and a woman from Houston, Texas, too, and

the film was like the old Nouvelle Vague pictures that Bonnie had loved. No

script, no plot. No lights even. And a hand-held camera. A thousand kids have

tried it, but Susan Jeremiah knew what she was doing. Always did."

Director Susan Jeremiah, from an interview at Cannes:
"When I came to see Bonnie on Saint Esprit, I fully expected to get thrown

off the island within the hour. We'd filmed half of Final Score on Mykonos,

and now we were flat broke and nobody would give us a dime. Of course, I'd

seen Bonnie's French films. I knew she was an artist. I hoped she would

understand what we were trying to do."

Cinematographer Barry Flint, Cannes interview:
"Well, for five days we were her guests, just eating and drinking anything we

wanted. Swimming in the sea, swimming in her pool. And this gorgeous Texas

woman, just sitting there in her lounger, drinking one beer after another and

reading her book and telling everybody to do what they wanted to do. The crew

was delirious. Then Bonnie agreed to put up the money to let us finish the

picture right there. 'Half our color film is ruined, got ruined by the heat

on Mykonos,' I told her. 'Well, here's some money,' she said. 'Go get some

more film and this time keep it on ice.' "

Those who saw Final Score at Cannes say the scenes with Bonnie's fourteen-

year-old daughter, Belinda, rival any explicit role ever played by her

mother. For twenty-four hours at least Susan Jeremiah and Belinda were the

talk of Cannes.

Houston producer Barry Fields
(who is no longer associated with Susan Jeremiah or the film): "Well, first

of all, we didn't know Belinda was fourteen when we shot that picture. She

was just there and she was absolutely stunning and Susan wanted to use her.

But anyone who calls it kiddie porn just hasn't seen that film. We got a

standing ovation at Cannes."

Final Score to date has not been released in America-and may never be

released.

United Theatricals executive Joe Holtzer:
"The legend of that film has really grown completely out of proportion.

Calling it Susan Jeremiah's master's thesis might be more realistic. I think

we can expect bigger and better things from Susan, certainly things that are

more suitable for the American market as time goes on. Susan is presently

doing some very good work for us in movies for television.

Bonnie in Beverly Hills:
"I just want Belinda to have a normal childhood, to go to school, to be

protected from the bright lights and the frenzy of Hollywood. There is plenty

of time for her to be an actress if that is really what she wants to be."

United Theatricals executive Joe Holtzer:
"The big news was the rediscovery of Bonnie. When word shot through the

festival that Bonnie was at the Carlton, it was Bonnie they all wanted to

see."

Bonnie in Beverly Hills:
"Of course, I wasn't expecting it. I'd met Marty Moreschi once before. He'd

come to Saint Esprit to try to get me to do a cameo in an American picture.

But I hadn't even heard of 'Champagne Flight.' He told me many of the big

film stars were doing the nighttime soaps, as he called them. Joan Collins

was world-famous as Alexis on 'Dynasty.' Jane Wyman was doing 'Falcon Crest.'

Lana Turner, Mel Ferrer, Rock Hudson, Ali MacGraw-they were all back in

business."

Marty Moreschi: ("tall, dark, hard-bitten but handsome with a heavy New York

street accent"):
"I called the studio, and I said, No way are you going to force Bonnie to do

a screen test. Don't tell me anything. I am telling you! Bonnie is Bonnie.

And she is on for 'Champagne Flight.' As soon as they had a glimpse of her

getting off the plane at LAX, they knew just what I was talking about."

Director Leonardo Gallo:
"All the reports about booze, pills, it is absolutely the sad truth. Why deny

it? Great actresses are often difficult, and Bonnie was touched with

greatness. So she must have her American beer, it is true. But Bonnie is also

the professional. For her the cocktail hour does not begin until work is

completed. Bonnie is an artist. But yes, this beautiful woman had indeed

tried to take her own life. More than once I alone stood between her and the

angel of death."

Daryl:
"My sister never held up the production of a picture in her life. Ask anybody

who ever worked with her. She was always on time, always knew her lines.

She'd help the young actresses when they were scared. Show them little

techniques to make it easier for them-how to hit their mark, that kind of

thing. Her favorite people on the. set of any picture were the young kids and

the female members of the crew. She'd always have the hairdresser and the

script girl and the makeup girl into her trailer after work for a glass of

wine or beer with her."

Jill Fleming:
"She had pneumonia that time in Rome. She almost died of it. Soon as I saw

the headlines, I told Trish we're getting on the next plane. We're going to

take care of Bonnie. All the rest of the trash they write is to sell papers

and magazines."

United Theatricals publicist Liz Harper:
"I'll tell you exactly what happened. We decided we'd do some research, find

out how many people out there actually remembered Bonnie from the sixties.

After all, 'Champagne Flight' was our big show for the coming season, and

Bonnie had not been in a major picture for over ten years. Well, we sent our

researchers into the field. We had them stop kids in shopping centers, talk

to ladies outside supermarkets. We had them interview an organized sampling

of viewers in our testing rooms here.

"At first, we could not believe the results. It turned out that everybody

knew Bonnie. If they hadn't seen her old pictures on late-night television,

they had seen the Saint Esprit perfume advertisements or the poster of her by

Arlington with the dogs. Midnight Mink had just done a best-selling book of

all their famous models. She was on the front page."

Trish Cody:
"It was Daryl's business sense absolutely. He said those ads had to read

'Bonnie for Saint Esprit.' And she had to have her glasses on, that was her

trademark. Those ads have run in every Conde Nast publication for the last

three years. And every poster from the Arlington picture had in the lower

right-hand corner: 'Bonnie.' When she did the other ads, it was the same way.

Daryl made her famous to a whole new generation of Americans."

Daryl:
"You can find that Arlington poster in some store in just about any shopping

center in the county. Very tasteful. Very artistic. Of course, now the old

Midnight Mink poster is out, too."

Jill Fleming:
"Bonnie knew what she was doing, telling them to name that perfume Saint

Esprit after the island. She had House Beautiful over there immediately, and

then Architectural Digest. Then People magazine came. It was the holy trinity

of Bonnie, the perfume, the island. And then there was the Vanity Fair piece

on her and Harper's Bazaar and that long feminist piece in Redbook about her

retirement. I lost count of the Continental magazine crews that came trooping

through. Seems somebody was always saying, 'Can we just put this little pink

pillow here?' or 'May we just fluff up this little ruffle?' And all she did

was sit there and drink her beer and read her books and watch her television.

And Saint Esprit became powder and lotion and bath soap. She came home to the

United States bigger than she had ever been."

Trish Cody: (who has now returned to her thriving clothing business in

Dallas, Texas):
"She and Marty Moreschi are the perfect couple. She has single-handedly put

'Champagne Flight' at the top of the ratings."

Unidentified neighbor in Beverly Hills:
"If you're going to marry a man ten years younger than you, then why not a

devastating Italian hunk from the streets of New York who is also a top

television wheeler-dealer? The only thing Marty knows better than prime time

is how to talk to a woman."

Gossip columnist Magda Elliott:
"The man's irresistible really. He's what you get when you ask Central

Casting for the gangster with the heart of gold. It's only by choice that he

is on the other side of the camera."

Jill Fleming (in business with Trish Cody):
"I told her why not dress as a bride! It's your first wedding, isn't it? You

wear white if you want."

Hollywood columnist Lauren Dalton:
"She spent three weeks at the Golden Door-diet, exercise, massage, the works,

you know. And when she walked off that plane at LAX with Marty, they couldn't

believe it."

Marty Moreschi:
"I fell in love with her the moment I saw her. And if I hadn't scooped her up

at Cannes, you can be sure someone else would have done it. All those

starlets all over the place standing on their heads to get attention. And

there she was: Bonnie, the superstar."

Trish Cody:
"It was a real Hollywood wedding. And everybody knows Marty will take care of

Bonnie, save her from the sharks in that town. Marty and Bonnie are

'Champagne Flight' now."

Blair Sackwell, Midnight Mink president:
"Of course, we were disappointed that we couldn't get her to do the second

Midnight Mink. And the idea we had for the wedding was gorgeous. We would

have underwritten everything. Of course, I think Moreschi made a mistake

there. He is her personal manager now, you know, never mind that Bonnie and I

have been friends for years, that I visited her constantly on Saint Esprit

before Marty was around."

Hollywood columnist Lauren Dalton:
"Blair Sackwell thought he could get her for the old price, of course, the

free white mink. And he wanted her to wear it at the wedding, mind you. But

everyone wants Bonnie. And sometimes old friends simply don't understand."

Marty Moreschi:
"My job is to protect Bonnie. She is besieged on all sides. After all,

'Champagne Flight' is launching its own line of products, and we've merged

with Saint Esprit perfume, and Bonnie's privacy is precious at this point."

Blair Sackwell, Midnight Mink president:
"If the show fails, and they all fail eventually, Bonnie will be calling us,

you can be sure. No one has ever been asked to do Midnight Mink twice."

Jill:
"Marty is a natural guardian angel. One of those guys who thinks of

absolutely everything."

Trish:
"We went home to Dallas with the assurance that Marty could handle

everything. For the first time even Daryl was satisfied."

Jill:
"Well, the men in her life have always meant trouble. But Marty is a father,

a brother, and a lover. He's the kind of husband who will end up being her

best friend."

Trish:
"Ah, but those days on Saint Esprit were heaven."

Although United Theatricals will not confirm it, Bonnie is rumored to be

making $75,000 a week for her role as Bonnie Sinclair, the émigré movie star

come home to take over the family-owned airline on "Champagne Flight."

"Her comeback has not changed her a bit," says an unidentified actress

friend. "She's the same sweet Dallas girl she always was, and Marty and she

are truly in love. It's a second life for her."

Daryl:
"Thank the Lord they didn't try to make her a nasty person like Alexis on

'Dynasty' or J.R. on 'Dallas.' My sister never could have done it. In fact,

it was genius to base the character of Bonnie Sinclair on her, to use the

clips of her old movies in the series."

Liz Harper:
"The night Bonnie shot Marty was a comedy of errors. Here was this woman used

to her own private island, and suddenly she is all alone in a big Beverly

Hills house and Marty is supposed to be in New York and, bang, in comes this

man, and Bonnie doesn't have time to reach for her glasses."

Trish:
"Bonnie could not see a thing, not a thing without her glasses."

Marty Moreschi:
"I'd edited the scripts for her, gone over her lines with her, picked out her

wardrobe for her. Even bought the damned gun for the bedside table so she'd

feel safe in big bad crime-ridden America. But I didn't think to call that

night before I came home."

The police were all over the house in five minutes. Bonnie was sobbing:

"Marty, Marty, Marty."

"It's as if an angel was watching over those two," said 'Champagne Flight'

assistant producer Matt Rubin. "Five bullets and none of them did any real

damage."

The rumor has it that he said: "Don't put me in that ambulance unless my wife

comes with me."

Marty and Bonnie threw a big party within a week. "It was beluga caviar and

Dom Perignon all around," said Matt Rubin. "Marty still had his right arm in

a sling."

Of course, Bonnie is open to the prospect of a feature film. Why not?

"Through Bonnie Sinclair I've discovered an entirely new dimension to myself.

She is me, but she is not me. She can do things I never thought I was capable

of."

A starring role in the new miniseries "Watch over Moscow" is more likely.

"But Marty handles all that," she said. "If Marty says do it, I will."

"She is ageless, she is enchanting, she is everything they say she is," said

Alex Clementine, who recently starred as an old lover of Bonnie Sinclair in

an episode of "Champagne Flight."

"She is a goddess."

END OF BOOK

The National Enquirer said essentially that Bonnie does not eat a bite, smoke

a cigarette, or drink a sip not approved first by husband Marty.

"Italian men are not macho, they are guardian angels," said Bonnie. Bonnie's

dress designers confer with Marty on color, cut, fabric. Bonnie is never out

of Marty's sight.

No mention of Belinda or the school she was supposed to have gone to. She was

obviously a bit player in this glitsy drama. But wouldn't somebody have

noticed when she left the stage?
[22]

For a long time I lay on the bed thinking. There are stages to knowing, to

absorbing. But the ugly thing was this: the answer to one question created

another, and I was more mystified right now than I had been when I knew

nothing about Belinda at all. I was more scared right now for her and for me

than when I had known nothing at all.

If I was to save us, if I was to reach that decision she talked about, then I

had to know and understand the whole thing. I couldn't go home right now and

fake it. I couldn't just put my arms around her and pretend I didn't care why

she'd walked off on Beverly Hills and United Theatricals and all that.

As for the Swiss school number, I was certain it was a cover-up.

But the essential thing was to know more.

I picked up the phone and called Dan Franklin at the Beverly Wilshire, gave

him my number at the Saint Francis, and then, after thinking about it for

exactly five minutes, I decided to see if I could lie over a telephone.

I mean, telephone liars are different in my book from those who can look you

in the eye and do it. It was worth a try.

I called the New York publisher of the Bonnie biography and told them I was a

San Francisco agent named Alex Flint who wanted to hire the author of the bio

to do a celebrity book for one of my clients out here. It took about fifteen

minutes and lots of bullshit, but I got the author's New York number and rang

her at once. So far so good.

"Ah, yeah, that Bonnie bio was a piece of shit. I can do much better stuff

than that, done work for Vanity Fair, Vogue, and Rolling Stone."

"You underrate the book, it's pretty solid. Only flaw I see is where Bonnie's

daughter, Belinda, is concerned. What ever happened to that little girl?

She's going to make more movies, isn't she?"

"They're crazy on the subject of protecting that kid, wouldn't give me five

minutes with the goddess unless I agreed to downplay the kid totally,

absolutely no stills from Final Score."

"You're talking about United Theatricals."

"Yeah, and Big Mama herself, who is drugged out of her head by the way, at

least she was when I saw her. It's a wonder she didn't walk right across her

backyard pool."

"And you never saw the daughter."

"Nope, locked up at school in Europe they told me. But you should have seen

the material I had to cut on that little girl."

"Yeah? What kind of thing?"

"Tons of stuff out of the European papers. Ever see the shampoo ads she did

with her father when she was eight, both of them naked in the surf off

Mykonos? I mean racy. But they wouldn't even let me mention G.G. That's her

father. And then she had a two-week Christmas holiday affair in Paris with an

Arab prince when she was thirteen. Photographers chased them all over the

city. But the juicy stuff is before that. She was the one who'd haul Bonnie

to emergency rooms all over Europe every time Bonnie overdosed. Talked her

mother's way out of a drug bust in London when she was nine. And Bonnie tried

to drive them both over a cliff the last summer they were on Saint Esprit."

"Some mother."

"Yeah, Belinda grabbed the wheel of the car and drove it into the side of the

hill. A bunch of tourists nosing around in the Greek ruins saw the whole

thing. Bonnie runs to the rail, tries to jump, screaming at the kid, 'Why did

you stop me?' The tour guide restrains her. All over the Italian papers.

After that no more tourists ever got to see the Greek ruins on Saint Esprit."

"No wonder they wanted it all covered up."

"Oh, yeah, real prime-time laundry job on Mama. But I shouldn't have played

ball for a lousy five-minute interview with the zombie. She could have been

reading her answers off cue cards. I got screwed."

"When did the kid go back to Switzerland?"

"No idea. What's this bio you want me to do? Who is your client?"

"Oh, yeah, right. Frankie Davis, an animal trainer from the silent film era,

dying to tell his story, just a real sweet nostalgic story. He's willing to

go five hundred dollars up front and one percent royalties-"

"You gotta be kidding. Catch you later." She hung up.

This lying was easier than I had figured.

I put a call in at once to William Morris in Los Angeles and demanded to know

did anybody there represent Belinda, Bonnie's daughter? Call Creative Artists

Agency, they represent Bonnie. I did. I wanted Belinda for a big picture in

New York, I said, all European money, this was important. The assistant to

Bonnie's agent told me to forget it. Belinda was in school in Europe.

"But I spoke to Belinda at Cannes about this!" I said. "When did she decide

to go back to school?"

"Last November. We're sorry, she has no plans to resume her career."

"But I have to reach her-"

"I'm sorry." Click.

I flipped open the biography. Bonnie had shot Marty on November 5 of last

year. There had to be a connection. Two events like that at the same time-the

shooting and her dropping out of sight-just couldn't be unrelated.

I tried Dan again. No luck.

I rang Alex Clementine at the Clift. His line was busy. I left a message.

Then I ate a little breakfast, though I didn't much want it, tried Alex

again, who was still busy, then I checked out.

In the lobby the shops were just opening. Sunshine glared on the roofs of the

cars lined up beyond the front doors. I went back to the newsstands, spotted

a couple more pieces on Bonnie. Same old trash, and nothing about Belinda.

I went out and walked around Union Square.

Gorgeous white cocktail dress in the window of Saks-floor-length white silk

trimmed in silver, sheer sleeves to the wrists, clinging skirt.

It was the kind of dress a girl could wear at Cannes, I imagined. Seemed to

go with the atmosphere of the Carlton, champagne in glistening silver

buckets, crystal glasses, suites crowded with pink and yellow roses, all

that.

I felt empty and rotten. Everything was ruined. No matter that I could not

fully understand why. It was all shot.

Intellectually I could remind myself that she had never lied to me. But what

difference did that make now? It was too enormous what she had kept secret.

So it was hers, and I had no right to be angry. It just did not work.

Yet I went into Saks, like somebody sleepwalking, and I bought the white gown

for her, as if I could somehow recapture everything.

It was like wrapping up bright light when they smothered it in tissue and

closed the box.

It was only eleven thirty when I left the store. And the Clift was less than

five blocks away. I hailed a cab and went up there and took the elevator up

to Alex's room.

He was all dressed up, even to an old-fashioned gray fedora, and a Burberry

raincoat over his shoulders, when he answered the door.

"There you are, you rascal," he said. "I've been trying to reach you all

morning. Just missed you at the Saint Francis. What in hell were you doing

down there?"

Two bellhops were packing his clothes for him in the bedroom. And one of the

handsomest young men I'd ever seen was sprawled on the couch in a pair of

silk pajamas reading a magazine with Sylvester Stallone on the front.

"Look, I know you're mad at me for being so mysterious last night," I said.

(The handsome kid didn't even look up.) "But is there some place we can

talk?"

"You weren't exactly a barrel of laughs either," Alex said. "But come on

downstairs with me, we'll have a little lunch, I want to talk to you, too."

He shut the door and guided me towards the elevators.

"Alex, I have to know something and you've got to keep it secret that I even

asked."

"My God, more Raymond Chandler," he said. (The elevator was empty.) "OK,

what?"

"Belinda," I said, "that's the name of Bonnie's daughter-"

"I know, I know. I got a hold of George Gallagher this morning in New York,

but he's not the one who told me."

He took my arm as the elevator doors opened and ushered me across the lobby.

I could feel people looking at him, feel them recognizing him. Or maybe it

was just the romantic fedora and the pink cashmere scarf around his neck or

the way he seemed to fill up the whole place with every step. Every passing

bellhop or desk clerk nodded to him or gave him a quick respecting smile.

The Redwood Room was shadowy and inviting as always, with its dark wooden

pillars and the small scattered tables each with its own muted light.

Alex's table was ready for him, and the coffee was poured into china cups at

once. Alex seemed to glow in the dark as he looked at me. As soon as the

waiter left us, I asked:

"What did George Gallagher say to you about her? Tell me every word."

"Nothing much. But I'll tell you something very strange, Jeremy, I mean,

stranger than stranger, unless the little boy is psychic."

"Which is what?"

He took a gulp of his coffee, then went on:
"Well, you know, I was telling him that a friend of mine and I were having

dinner and we were trying to remember his daughter's name, you know, playing

Trivia on the beautiful people and all that, yak yak, would he take a load

off my mind by just giving me the kid's name, you know, and G.G. asks, Who's

the friend. I say it's an author, old old friend of mine, children's author,

matter-of-fact, and he asks, Jeremy Walker? just like that."

Speechless.

"You still with me, kid?"

"Yeah. I want a drink, OK?" He signaled the waiter.

"Bloody Mary," I said. "Go on."

"Well, I say, How did you ever guess Jeremy Walker, and he says, That's the

only kid's author he's ever heard of who lives in San Francisco, but-guess

what, Jeremy?-I never told him I was calling from San Francisco. I know I

didn't." Speechless.

"I know I just said, This is Clementine here, because I was trying to sound

casual and all, you know. I've had a crush on G.G. for years. Anyway he says

his little girl's name is Rumpdstiltskin, and he starts laughing. You gotta

know G.G. to understand. G.G. is one of those little boys who will never grow

up. He's Ollie Boon's lover, you know, the Broadway director, and he and

Boon, well, they're like angels or something-I mean, both of them are sort of

gentle goodhearted flakes. They're people who have actually made a bundle off

being goodhearted. There's nothing bitchy or mean about them at all. So when

he laughs, it's just sort of sweet. I say, Come on G.G., come straight with

me. And then he says suddenly he's gotta go, he's really sorry, he loves me,

loved my last bit on 'Champagne Flight,' give Bonnie hell and all! And he

hangs up."

Speechless.

The Bloody Mary came and I drank it. And suddenly my eyes were watering.

"I mean this is weirder than weird, son. So I was sort of pissed. I mean, I

wanna know her name! So I call my agent down at CAA and I ask him, which I

should have done the first time round."

"Yeah."

"I mean, CAA handles Bonnie, you know. And he says Belinda. Her name's

Belinda. He knows it right off. And the Swiss school thing is absolutely true

by the way, she's been gone since November. Bonnie and Marty hustled her out

of the limelight for her own good, he says. But what do you make of all that

with G.G. in New York?"

"Can I have another drink?"

"Of course, you can!" He glanced towards the bar, pointed to my glass. "Now

what do you make of it, that's what I want to know."

"Alex, my friend," I said. "Tell me anything else you know about this girl,

anything at all. I mean, this is important, you can't know how much."

"But why, Jeremy? Now I mean it, why!"

"Alex, it's everything to me. I'm begging you-any dirt, anything-did you see

her in LA? Did you hear anything about her? Even the craziest gossip. I know

you're holding back. I knew you were the night of the dinner party when you

were telling all the book people the stories, you were holding back something

about Bonnie and Marty, we all knew it, something about that shooting, there

had to be more to it, you know something, Alex, and you've got to tell me."

"Pipe down, will you? You're only talking about my boss."

The waiter set down the fresh drink.

"Alex, this is strictly confidential. I swear it."

"OK," he said, "this is the big one, the big one that could cost me a

bankroll in Hollywood. Get me blackballed from every studio in town. Now can

you keep your mouth shut? I mean, you never tell anyone where you got this! I

mean, this is my career we're talking here, and I'm not going up against

Moreschi for-"

"I swear."

"OK. The scuttlebutt down there-and I mean secret scuttlebutt-is that Marty

Moreschi molested that kid. That's what happened. And Bonnie caught him and

bang, bang, bang." Silence.

"Next day they packed her off to Switzerland, poor baby. Bonnie was sedated,

Marty was in intensive care. Bonnie's brother from Texas flew in, took the

little girl to the airport, got her safely away from the whole circus."

"And Bonnie made up with Marty."

"She had to, son."

"You're putting me on."

"Jeremy, don't be too quick to judge these two. Take it from me. I've known

this lady for years. She's one of these beautiful women who's just a nobody

and a nothing, and when they make it big, they always fall apart. Money can't

do anything for them. Fame only makes things worse. You might say Bonnie's

been legally dead since the sixties. She believed all that Nouvelle Vague

stuff in Paris; she really did go around carrying books by Jean-Paul Sartre

under her arm. Flambeaux and those artistic types, they made her feel she was

somebody, something was happening, taught her things a woman like that should

probably never learn. Then ten years of making spaghetti Westerns and

gladiator epics killed that girl. I mean, she is a perfectly ordinary person

who is just beautiful enough to have been a doctor's wife living in a five-

bedroom ranch-style suburban house.

"Now Moreschi pumps enough embalming fluid in her to keep her from rotting

right on the spot. If she blows 'Champagne Flight,' she's finished. Pills,

booze, a bullet, what difference does it make? Besides, she's burned her

bridges. Even her old friends hate her now. Blair Sackwell, you know,

Midnight Mink, he made her famous, and the actresses she knew in Europe, they

can't even get her on the phone these days. So they sit around in the Polo

Lounge crucifying her. The lady's on borrowed time."

"And what about Moreschi?"

"If you really want it straight, he's not so bad. He's network TV and he

sucks and he doesn't know it, but he's not basically a vicious guy. In a real

way he's better than just about everyone around him. That's why he's top of

the heap at thirty-five years old. Story of his life most likely. He's done

more with what he's got than anybody he knows. These people are not like you

and me, Jeremy."

"What do you mean by that?"

"You've got your paintings, son. You've got this private universe of yours,

these values you're always talking about. There's somebody looking back at me

when I look into your eyes. And me, I'm happy. I'm always happy. I know how

to be happy. Faye taught me that, and even after Faye died, I bounced back.

But these people have never felt like you and me, not even for one moment of

their entire lives. Now, what has this got to do with you?"

"I know what you're talking about, but you don't understand what it is that

you are asking."

I drank the fresh Bloody Mary, and it made my eyes water again. The Redwood

Room seemed eerily quiet around us. Alex smiled sadly under the shadow of the

fedora. When he lifted his cigarette, two waiters moved to light it.

"What I'm saying about Marty is this," he went on, "maybe it was like five

minutes of kissy-face with the little Belinda, and when she realizes, hey,

this is a man, not some kid in the backseat of a car, and she can't turn him

off that easily, so she screams for Mom[bad scan] ...a man can wind up...

like that all his life."

"Him or somebody else," I said.

"Jer, I don't want to be stalled anymore. What has this got to do with you? I

want to know now."

"Alex, you don't know how grateful I am for what you just told me," I said.

"You've given me exactly what I need."

"Need for what? Jeremy, I'm talking to you. Answer me."

"Alex, I promise you, I'll tell you everything, but you have to give me a

little time. And you wouldn't want to know right now, either, Alex, take my

word for it. If anybody ever questions you about it, you have to be able to

say you didn't know."

"What the hell-" I stood up.

"Sit down, Walker," he said. "Sit down now."

I did.

"Now you listen to me. We've been friends for years, and you are dearer to me

than just about anybody I know."

"Alex-"

"But there was one special time in my life, right after Faye died, when I

needed you and you came through. For that alone, son, I'd do almost anything

for you that I could."

"Alex, you never owed me anything for that," I said. It was true. After

Faye's funeral one of Alex's lovers, a young actor, had moved in on him,

slipped Libriums into everything he was eating or drinking and sold off half

his furniture and memorabilia before Alex caught on. In robe and pajamas Alex

had walked to a neighbor's to call me, because all the phones in the house

were locked up. I'd flown down at once, let myself in with my own set of

keys, and gotten rid of the kid with a couple of threats.

It was nothing as hard as Alex had imagined. The kid was a schemer and a

bully, but he was also a coward. And I was damned honored that I had been the

one Alex called. But the incident hurt Alex, really hurt him. We'd gone to

Europe immediately after that and stayed in his house near Portofino until he

felt he was OK again and could go back to work.

"Alex, I enjoyed playing hero that time, if you must know, and in Portofino

afterwards you treated me to the time of my life."

"You're in trouble, Walker, I know you are."

"No, I'm not, not at all."

"Then you tell me who the young lady was," he insisted, "the sweet young lady

who answered the phone at your place this morning when I called."

I didn't answer.

"It couldn't be the kid, could it? The one everybody thinks is away at the

Swiss school?"

"Yes, it was Belinda. And I promise you, one day I'll explain everything. But

for now don't tell anyone about this. I promise, I'll call you soon."

I got a cab in front of the hotel.

All I wanted in the world right now was to be with her, to hold her, and to

tell her I loved her. I was praying that George Gallagher hadn't called her

and hadn't alarmed her, that she'd be there when I got home.

I'd confess the spying. I'd confess everything and then I'd tell her I'd made

the decision, no more questions ever and this time I meant it. We were going

to leave San Francisco and head south tonight.

If she could only understand the prying enough to let it go, we'd be all

right.

Lovely to think about it suddenly, the van loaded, the long drive across the

country together through desert and mountains and finally emerging in the

sultry New Orleans heat.

Wouldn't matter, all the old memories associated with the house, Mother, the

novels, all that. We'd make our memories in it, she and I, and we'd go far

away from all of it. Nobody would ever find us down there.

As the cab moved up Market Street towards the Castro, I opened the Bonnie

biography again and looked at the photograph of Marty Moreschi-the dark eyes

shining behind the thick glasses, the thatch of black hair.

"Thank you, asshole," I said out loud. "You've given her back to me, you've

made it OK for me to be with her, you're worse than me."

He seemed to be staring right back at me off the pulp page. And for an odd

second I didn't hate him so much as I acknowledged we were brothers. We both

found her irresistible, didn't we? Both took a risk for her.

How he might have sneered at me. Well, fuck him.

I was too elated and too relieved right now to care about him.

I thought about the things the biographer had said, about the suicide

attempts and the car nearly going off the cliff on Saint Esprit.

Yes, it all made sense, it explained so much about her, the odd precocity,

the strange almost-proletarian hardness, and the elegance and the

sophistication, too.

She must have had a bellyful of it all before she even got to LA, and then

they exile her to Switzerland, she takes the fall after he molests her so

"Champagne Flight" can stay in the air. Damn them. And thank God for them and

their madness.

Because we have our madness, don't we, she and I.

Just be there, darling, when I get there, just don't have run off on me,

because of anything George Gallagher might have told you. Just give me a

chance.

She wasn't there when I got home. I went upstairs and into her room.

All her luggage was stacked on the bed-the new brown leather suitcases I had

bought her and also the old battered case she had brought with her from the

Haight.

One glance into the closet told me she had packed everything. Nothing left

but the fancy satin hangers and the smell of jasmine sachet.

But the luggage was still here! Even the overnight case was still here. And

everything was locked.

What a strangely affecting sight it was.

Made me think of another sight years and years ago-the bare mattress on my

mother's bed the afternoon of her death.

I'd just come in from classes at Tulane and hurried up the stairs to see her.

I guess I thought she'd be sick forever. And the minute I saw that bare

mattress I knew, of course, that she had died while I was gone.

As it turned out, they'd had to take her to the funeral parlor. It was too

hot that summer for them to leave her till I came home.

"Walk over to Magazine Street and see her," the nurse had said when she

finally caught up with me at the bedroom door. "They're waiting for you."

Five blocks through the flat quiet tree-lined streets of the Garden District.

Then Mother in a refrigerated room. Good-bye, my darling Cynthia Walker. I

love you.

Well, Belinda wasn't going anywhere. Not yet!

I brought up the box I'd brought from Saks, and I unfolded the white and

silver dress and hung it carefully in the closet on one of the padded

hangers.

Then I went up to the attic, leaving the door open so I could hear her if she

came in.

I took stock.

There were now twelve completed paintings of her, done over this the

strangest summer of my adult life.

The last picture completed was another Artist and Model, from the series of

timer photographs of us making love. I did better by this one than the first,

though I loathed painting my own naked body on top of Belinda. But the work

itself was terrific, I knew it, and I saw now, as I looked at it, the

resemblance of her profile here to the profile of her beneath the caresses of

the woman in Final Score.

Was she a woman or a child in this picture? Because you could not see her

baby face well, it was pure woman with the hair of a fairy princess, or so it

seemed.

Unfinished was another "grown woman" study, Belinda in the Opera Bar, nude as

always against the backdrop of gilded mirrors and cocktail tables, except

that she wore high-heel shoes and a pair of black kid gloves.

Macabre, the deeply detailed figure, the mouth almost pouting, the unwavering

gaze.

Ah, it gave me shivers to look at it. And when that happens, I know

everything, absolutely everything, is going to be fine. But no time to lose.

I started carrying the canvases down to the basement, first the dry ones,

then the moist ones, then the wet ones, and slipping them one by one into the

metal rack inside the van.

Some smudging to the very edges was inevitable, but no more than a half inch

on either side.

I could mend that when we got to New Orleans. The rack would keep them safe,

like so many sheets of glass, until we got all the way home.

And then I'd know the next step in the series. It would come to me when we

were in Mother's house. I knew it would.

Just come home, Belinda. Walk in the door now and let me hold you and talk to

you. Let us begin again.

After all the canvases and supplies were loaded, I packed up all my own

clothes.

I wanted to put her suitcases in the van, too, but I knew that was going too

far.

And she wouldn't just bolt without those things, she wouldn't do that. I

mean, she had left her own little sorry suitcase, too, and the overnight case

and-

But the grandfather clock was chiming three when I finished and she was still

not there.

Where to look for her? Where to call?

I sat staring at the phone on the kitchen wall. What if I called George

Gallagher, what if I asked-? And what if he wasn't the "oldest buddy in the

world" and hadn't told her anything? What if she was merely unhappy over last

night's argument, what if, what if?

No, he was the "oldest buddy," and he had put things together. Damn it,

Belinda, come home!

I went to the front windows to see if the MG-TD was parked out there. Why

hadn't I thought of that before? If she had the car with her, I'd know for

sure she was coming back, she wouldn't steal the MG, would she? But there it

was, damn it, parked where she frequently parked it, right across the street

-and not too far from a big long black stretch limousine, of all things.

Big black stretch limousine.

For a second I panicked. Had I forgotten some damned book signing or

something? Was that limousine here to pick up me? Frankly that was the only

time I ever saw a limo in this neighborhood, when they came lumbering into my

driveway to pick up me.

But, no, that was all over, Splendor in the Grass in Berkeley had been the

last one, the farewell one. And the driver of this limo was just sitting in

it, smoking a cigarette. Tinted glass in the back of course. Couldn't see who

was or was not there.

OK. Belinda's not driving the MG. That means she may be somewhere near and

she'll come walking in soon.

When the phone finally rang at three thirty, it was Dan.

"Jeremy, I'm going to say it again before you stop me. Get the fuck away from

her now."

"I'm way ahead of you. We're dropping out of sight for a while. You won't get

any mail from me, but you'll hear from me by phone."

"Look stupid. Saint Margaret's in Gstaad was asked on November 5 to accept

Belinda Blanchard though the semester had already started, and on November

8th they were told that she would not be coming as planned. She is not now

and has never been at Saint Margaret's. However, they have been asked to

forward all her mail back to a law firm in the States. It is a cover-up."

"Good work, but I knew it was."

"And the shooting took place the night before the call to Saint Margaret's."

"Right. What else?"

"What do you mean, what else?"

"The connection between the shooting and Saint Margaret's, do you have it?

Why did they send Belinda away?"

"Don't wait for the connection. The point is, if I could get all this simply

by calling a friend in Gstaad and wining and dining a United Theatricals

secretary, the Enquirer will eventually get it, too. Run for cover now."

"I am, I just told you."

"I mean without her. Jer, go to Europe. Go to Asia!"

"Dan-"

"OK, OK. Now listen to this. There are more detectives in this besides

Sampson's people."

"Fill me in."

"Daryl Blanchard, Bonnie's brother, he's got his own men on the case, working

just like Sampson. The mail goes from Saint Margaret's to his firm in Dallas.

The girl from United Theatricals says he's a real pain. He and Marty scream

at each other a lot long-distance."

"Not surprising."

"But, Jeremy, think again. The reason for this cover-up, what is it?"

"I can guess what it is. Something happened that night between her and this

stepfather of hers."

"Very likely."

"So they don't want the slightest hint of that to get to the papers, and it's

also what we figured in the beginning, she could be kidnapped. She's just a

kid."

"Maybe. But study the pattern here. Jer, Saint Margaret's deals directly with

Texas Uncle Daryl. Daryl deals with Moreschi. There is no evidence that

Bonnie even knows her daughter is not in school."

"Wait a minute." I was stunned. I had thought I was ready for anything at

this point, but that was too much.

"Bonnie may be the reason for the cover-up. They want to keep her working,

they don't want her to know the little girl took off."

"That would be too ugly!"

"But don't you see what this means? These guys stink to high heaven, Jeremy.

If they do get on to you and they do try anything, we can poleax them both."

What had she said to me that night? Even if they did find out about us, they

wouldn't dare do anything? Yes, that had been exactly what she said.

"Bonnie is absolutely the legal guardian," Dan said. "I checked that out.
She's been in court fighting the kid's natural father for years."

"Yeah, George Gallagher, the New York hairdresser."

"Exactly, and he's crazy about the little girl by the way. These guys

Moreschi and Blanchard will have to get busy covering up their asses with

him, too, if this gets out."

"You're keeping records of everything-"

"You better believe it. But I'm telling you, old buddy, these guys aren't the

enemy. What I'm really scared of is the press. This woman's in every tabloid

this week-"

"I know it."

"-and the story's too juicy. It's just lying there waiting to be discovered,

daughter of superstar on the run, holds up with children's author who paints

little girls. I mean, 'Champagne Flight' will keep you on the front pages for

two weeks."

"But how dumb is this Bonnie? Wouldn't she even call Belinda at school?"

"Dumb's got nothing to do with it. Let me tell you what you're dealing with

here. This is a woman who for years has not answered a telephone, opened a

piece of mail, hired or fired a servant, even written a check. She does not

know what it means to handle a rude salesclerk or bank teller, to have to

pick out a pair of shoes for herself, to hail a cab. Her house has been

adding live-in personnel steadily for the last twelve months. She now has a

hairdresser, a masseuse, a maid, a cook, a personal secretary. She goes to

the studio every day of her life in a chauffeured limousine. And Marty

Moreschi is never out of sight. He sits and talks to her when she's in the

bathtub. She probably doesn't know who's in the White House. And this is not

a new condition for this woman. On Saint Esprit her brother, her agents, and

her Texas cronies maintained her in the same protective cocoon. And your

Belinda was no small part of that. By all reports she took her turn at sentry

duty whenever Mother was feeling panicky, right along with the rest. And

there was a roadside attempt at suicide that nearly killed Belinda-"

"Yeah, I know about that one. But it's illegal what they're doing-"

"Oh, you said it. And I'll tell you something funny, Jer, something real

funny. You know, if I just happened on this whole story without knowing the

kid was safe with you, I'd think she was dead."

"What are you talking about?"

"It's like the cover-up of a murder, Jer. She could be buried in the garden

or something. I mean the school scam, all that. What would happen if Susan

Jeremiah went to the LAPD and demanded an investigation? These guys could

wind up indicted for killing this kid." I laughed in spite of myself.

"Beautiful!"

"But, back to the matter at hand. We've got a counterstrategy if these guys

find you. With the press we do not."

And I've got a new problem, I was thinking. A stunning one.

"What if you're right," I said, "and they are keeping it from Bonnie but

Belinda doesn't know?"

"It's possible."

"Bonnie would call the cops, wouldn't she? Bonnie would call the goddamned

FBI to find her daughter, wouldn't she? I mean, there must be a bond between

mother and daughter here that's closer than just about anything else in this

woman's life."

"Could be."

"And what if Belinda thinks her mother doesn't even care? I am telling you

that would explain a lot of things, Dan. It really would. I mean, here is

this kid and something bad happens with this guy Marty and what do they do-

they try to pack her off to Switzerland and she runs. And then she realizes

her mother isn't even looking for her. No police, no nothing. I mean, this is

bad. Here she makes her big gesture, and these guys write her out of the

script."

"Maybe. Maybe not. She may know everything, Jeremy. I mean, the girl can put

two quarters in a telephone, can't she? She could call this Bonnie." Didn't

she call George in the middle of the night? "Could she get to Bonnie?"

"Hell, she could call Jeremiah. She could call the next door neighbors in

Beverly Hills, if she wanted to. She could call somebody! No. If you want my

guess, your Belinda's hip to everything that is going down. And just decided

she'd had it, that's all."

"OK, look. As I told you, I'm splitting tonight. I'm going far away from

here, and when you hear from me again, it will be by phone-"

"For God's sakes, be careful. You know how the Enquirer operates. They'll

give you some bogus reason for the interview, then run upstairs and

photograph her clothes in the damn closet."

"Nobody's interviewing me these days for any reason, believe me. I'll be in

touch. Oh, and Dan. Thank you. I really mean it, you've been great."

"And you're being stupid. They'll crucify you if this hits the papers, I mean

it, they'll make Texas Uncle Daryl and Stepdaddy Moreschi look like saints

who found her in the Child Molester's Den."

"Good-bye Dan."

"They'll come to court with the canceled checks to prove what they paid the

detectives, they'll say the cover-up was for her own good."

"Take it easy-"

"And you'll get fifteen years for molesting her, goddamn it."

"And what about Moreschi?"

"What about him? There's nothing on record says he touched her. She's living

with you!"

"Bye, Dan, I'll call you."

I checked and double-checked the house. Everything locked up tight, windows,

doors to the upstairs deck, dead bolt on the attic, dead bolt on the darkroom

downstairs.

All paintings, photographs, cameras, clothes loaded in the van.

Except her suitcases sitting there on the white counterpane of the brass bed.

Please come home, my darling, please.

I'll tell her everything at once. All I know, even about Bonnie maybe not

knowing. Then I'd say: Look, you don't ever have to talk about it, it doesn't

make any difference, but I want you to know I'm on your side, I'm here to

protect you, I'll protect you from them if it comes to that, we're in this

together, finally, don't you see?

She'd see. She'd have to. Or would she just gather up those suitcases and

carry them downstairs to the cab she had waiting for her, saying as she went

past me: You betrayed me, you lied to me, you lied all along.

If only she were a child, if only she were a "little girl," "just a kid," a

"minor." Then it would be so much easier.

But she's not a child. And you've known that from the start.

Four thirty.

I sat in the living room, smoking one cigarette after another. I looked at

all the toys, the carousel horse, all the trash we were leaving behind.

Should call Dan and tell him to sell this stuff better yet, donate it to some

orphanage or school. Didn't need it anymore, this lovely rubbish.

What I'd been feeling with her for the last three months was what people call

happiness, pure and sweet.

And it struck me suddenly that the misery I'd felt last night was almost

equal in intensity to the happiness I'd known before. These feelings had a

searing heat to them that was like the desire I felt for her. And these were

extremes I hadn't known for years before she came.

In my mind they were connected with youth really-the awful storms before

success and loneliness became routine. I had not known how much I missed

this.

Yes, it was like being young again, just that bad and just that magical. And

for one moment I found myself thinking of it all from an unexpected distance

and I wondered if I would miss this in the years to come, this second chance

at joy and misery. I was so alive at this moment, so alive with love and

foreboding, so alive with terror. Belinda, come back.

When the grandfather clock struck five, she had still not come home. I was

getting more and more frightened. The house was dark and cold, yet I couldn't

bring myself to turn the lights on.

I looked outside, hoping, praying to see her coming up the street from the

metro.

No Belinda.

But the limo was still there. The driver was standing beside it, smoking a

cigarette as if he had all the time in the world. Now what would that thing

be doing here?

Rather ominous it seemed suddenly. Downright sinister. Maybe those cars

always are.

Throughout my childhood they carried me to funerals, sometimes two and three

times a year. They had meant death then exclusively. And it had always seemed

an irony that these same luxurious black monsters carried me to television

and radio stations, to newspaper offices and literary luncheons and

bookstores, to all the inevitable ordeals of the standard publicity tour.

Didn't like the look of them, their heaviness, their darkness. Rather like

coffins or jewel boxes they seemed, all padded and silent.

A chill came over me. Well, that was stupid. Detectives didn't stake you out

in limousines.

Six o'clock came and went. California daylight outside.

I was going to give it one more hour, then track down George Gallagher

somehow. George was the only one who could have tipped her off.

Nothing respectable in the refrigerator to ear. Get some steaks. One last

meal together before the road. No. Stay here. Don't leave this house till she

comes.

The phone rang.

"Jeremy?"

"Belinda! I've been out of my mind. Where are you, baby darling?"

"I'm OK, Jeremy." Shaky voice. And noise surrounding her as if she were in an

outdoor phone booth somewhere, a dim rolling sound like the ocean behind it

all.

"Belinda, I'll come get you now."

"No, Jeremy, don't do it."

"Belinda-"

"Jeremy, I know you went into my closet." Voice breaking. "I know you looked

ar my tapes. You didn't even rewind them-"

"Yes, it's true, I'm not going to deny it, honey."

"You knocked my things all over the floor. And-"

"I know, darling, I did, I did. It's true. And I did other things, too, to

find out about you. I asked questions, I investigated. I admit it, Belinda,

but I love you. I love you and you have to understand-"

"I never told you any lies about me, Jeremy-"

"I know you didn't, sweetheart. I was the one who told the lies. But please

try to listen to me. We are OK now. We can leave tonight for New Orleans, the

way you wanted to, honey, and we will get far away from the people who are

looking for you, and they are looking, Belinda, they are." Silence. And a

sound that I thought was her crying.

"Belinda, look. My things are all packed, all the pictures are loaded in the

van. Just give me the word and I'll load your suitcases. I'll come and get

you. We'll get right on the road now."

"You have to think it over, Jeremy." She was crying. "You have to be sure

because-"

"I am sure, baby darling. I love you. You are the only thing that matters to

me, Belinda-"

"-I'm never going to talk about them, Jeremy. I don't want to ever explain it

or drag it all out or answer questions, I won't. I just won't."

"No, and I don't expect you to. I swear it. But please, honey, realize, on

account of what I did, the mystery can't divide us anymore."

"You still have to make your decision, Jeremy. You have to forget about them.

You have to believe in me!"

"I have made it, baby darling. I believe in both of us, just the way you

wanted me to. And we're going where this guy Moreschi and this uncle of

yours, this Daryl, will never track us down. If New Orleans isn't far enough,

we'll leave the country, we'll go to the Caribbean. We'll go as far as we

have to go." Crying.

"Where are you, honey? Tell me."

"Jeremy, think it over. Be real sure."

"Where are you? I want to come get you now."

"I will tell you, but I don't want you to come until morning. You have to

promise me. I want you to really really be sure."

"You're in Carmel, aren't you?" That sound was the ocean. She was in one of

the phone booths on the main street just a block from our house.

"Jeremy, promise me you'll wait until morning. Promise me you'll think it

over that long."

"But honey-"

"No, not tonight. Promise me not tonight." Crying. Blowing her nose. Trying

to get calm. "And if you still feel that way in the morning, well, then come

and we'll go to New Orleans and everything will be OK. Just fine."

"Yes, honey. Yes. At the crack of dawn, I'll be at the door. And we'll be on

the way to New Orleans before noon." Crying still.

"I love you, Jeremy. I really really love you."

"I love you, Belinda."

"You'll keep your promise-"

"At the crack of dawn." Cut off. Gone.

Probably already walking off from some phone booth on Ocean Avenue. Because

the little hideaway had no phone.

Oh, ache for Belinda. But it was all going to be OK.

I sat down heavily at the kitchen table and for a long time didn't do

anything except feel the relief course through me. It was really going to be

OK.

Well, the next few hours wouldn't be so hot, but the battle was over, and the

goddamned war had been won.

I should stop sitting here, shaking with relief, and get up and go out and

get something to eat now-that would kill a little time. I'd go to bed early,

set the alarm for four o'clock, and be down there before six. OK. It's OK,

old buddy. It's really OK.

Finally I did get up, and I put on my tweed coat. I combed my hair.

The air was bracing outside. Immediate slap of fresh wind.

The streetlamps had just come on, and the sky was fading from red to silver.

Lights twinkling on the surrounding hills.

"Take a good look," I said to myself in a whisper, "because it might be years

before you come back here." And that feels soooo good!

Limousine still there. Now that is really strange. I gave it the once over as

I moved towards Noe. The driver was back inside.Could it be someone watching

for her?

Well, you are too late, you son of a bitch, because she's two hundred miles

south and I'll shake you off on the highway within five minutes-Come on,

Jeremy, this is pure paranoia. Nobody stakes out a house in a limo. Stop.

But just as I reached the corner of Noe, the engine of the limo started, and

the big thing moved up to the corner and stopped.

I felt my heart tripping. This was mad. It was as if my staring at it had

moved it.

I crossed Noe and walked towards Market, feeling a funny weakness around the

knees. Wind stronger, cutting through the fatigue that had set in while I was

waiting at home. Good.

The limo had also crossed Noe and was moving alongside me over in the right-

hand lane. The sweat broke out under my shirt. What the hell is this?

Twice I glanced at the back windows, though I knew perfectly well I couldn't

see through the tinted glass. How many times had I seen people on the

sidewalk staring at my limo that way, trying to see in? Stupid.

It would go on at Market. It had to. It couldn't possibly turn left and

follow me up Castro. That was illegal and perfectly absurd besides. A steak.

Bring it home, throw it in the broiler. A little wine. Just enough to make

you sleep.

But I had forgotten about Hartford, the little street that intersects

Seventeenth just on one side. My side. The limo made a big awkward left turn

and pulled into Hartford and stopped right in front of me as I reached the

curb.

I stood still looking at it, at the blind glass again, and thinking, this

makes no sense. Some dumb chauffeur is going to ask me directions. That's

all.

And he's been waiting over three hours out there just to ask me personally?

The chauffeur was looking straight ahead.

There came the low electric hiss of the rear window being lowered. And in the

light of the streetlamp I saw a dark-haired woman looking up at me. Big brown

eyes behind enormous horn-rimmed glasses. In a dozen films I'd seen the same

faintly imploring expression behind those lenses, same rich wavy hair brushed

back from the forehead, same red mouth. Beyond familiar.

"Mr. Walker?" she asked. Unmistakable Texas voice.

I didn't answer. I was thinking in this strange hazy calm, with my pulse

thudding in my eardrums, she really is beautiful, this lady, really

beautiful. Looks just like a movie star.

"Mr. Walker, I'm Bonnie Blanchard," she said. "I'd like to talk to you, if

you don't mind, before my daughter, Belinda, comes along."

The chauffeur was getting out. The lady slipped back into the shadows. The

chauffeur opened the back door for me to get in.