Belinda Chapter 24

I didn't look directly at her. That was out of the question. I was too

stunned for that.

But I'd glimpsed a soft clinging beige dress and a loose cape of the same

color over her shoulders. Cashmere it probably was, and all her jewelry was

gold-layers of it around the high-rolled neck of the dress and on her wrists.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw her hair was loose. Scent of dark, faintly

spiced perfume filled the car.

The limousine turned right onto Market and went back towards downtown.

"Could we go to my hotel, Mr. Walker?" she asked unobtrusively. Thick mellow

Texas accent. "There everything would be very quiet."

"Sure, if that's what you want," I said. I couldn't hear any anxiety in my

voice, just the sharp edge of suspicion and anger. But I could feel the fear

in my head.

The limousine picked up speed, seemed to bore through the more sluggish

traffic. The ugly car lots and characterless buildings of upper Market

gradually gave way to the congestion of porno theaters, cafes, shop fronts

crowded with army surplus, blaring stereos. The yellow streetlamps poured a

merciless light on the trash-littered sidewalks.

"What is it exactly you want to talk about, Miss Blanchard?" Couldn't keep

silent any longer. Panic rising. Had to keep it out of my voice.

"Well, my daughter, naturally, Mr. Walker," she said, the drawl not as

pronounced as it had been years before in the pictures. "I hear she's been

living with you now for three months or more."

So the mother doesn't know, Dan? And what would you advise me to do now? Ride

this one out in silence? Or jump out of the car?

"Hear you've been taking very good care of her," she said in the same

lusterless tone, her eyes obviously fixed on me, though I still didn't turn

to look at her.

"Is that really what you've heard?" I asked.

"I know all about you, Mr. Walker," she said gently. "I know you've been

taking good care, of her. And I know all about who you are and what you do.

I've read your books, used to read them to her."

Of course. When she was a little girl. And she's still a little girl, right?

"I always liked your work. I know you're a very nice man."

"I'm glad you think so, Miss Blanchard." The sweat was getting worse. I hated

it. I wanted to open the window, but I didn't. I didn't move.

"Everybody thinks that about you, Mr. Walker." She went on with it. "Your

publishing friends, your agents down south, all those business people. They

all say the same thing."

The car was taking us all the way to the end of Market. I saw the gray tower

of the Hyatt Regency rising on the left. Ahead the nighttime emptiness of

Justin Herman Plaza. Cold, overcast down here.

"They say you're decent, all of them say that. You've never done harm to a

living soul. Nobody says anything but that you're sane and you're sober and

you're a nice man."

"Nice?" Just slipped out, didn't it? "So what is this about, Miss Blanchard?

You're saying you're not going to call the police and have me arrested?

You're not going to have your daughter picked up and brought home?"

"Do you think she'd come with me, Mr. Walker?" she asked. "Do you think she'd

stay if I got her all the way back down there?"

"I don't know," I said. Try to sound as calm as she sounds.

The limousine was sliding into the shadowy covered driveway of the Hyatt.

Cabs, limos all around us. Bumper to bumper we moved towards the curb. Flocks

of people, porters hustling the luggage. "I don't want my daughter back, Mr.

Walker."

The car came to a halt. I found myself staring right at her.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

She had taken off her glasses and she looked at me with the vague, musing

expression that the nearsighted often have. Then she put on a pair of dark

glasses, and her full red mouth came into focus as if I were the one who had

been blind.

"I don't want my daughter anywhere near me, Mr. Walker," she said quietly.

"That's why I hope you and I can come to a little arrangement so that she'll

be all right."

The chauffeur opened the door behind her and she turned away from me and

raised a soft shapeless hood from the folds of wool over her shoulders and

brought it down carefully around her face.

In shocked silence I followed her into the lobby and towards the glass

elevators, heads turning everywhere as she made her way through the

summertime tourist swarm. Just like walking with Alex through another lobby

only hours earlier. And she had that same nearly preternatural gleam.

The cape flowed beautifully from her shoulders, and the layers of plaited

gold at her wrist flashed in the dull light as she pressed the button to

bring the elevator down.

Within seconds we were rising over the main lobby.

I stared numbly through the glass at the dazzling expanse of gray tiled floor

below. Water shimmering in massive fountains, couples dancing sluggishly to

the music of a small orchestra, concrete terraces climbing like the fabled

gardens of Babylon to an unreachable enclosed sky above.

And this woman in the glass box with me, as glossy and unnatural as the world

around us. The elevator stopped. She moved like a phantom past

"Come on, Mr. Walker," she said.

How like a goddess she was. And how petite and delicate Belinda was compared

with her. Every detail of her her long hands, her beautifully turned legs

half hidden by the folds of the cloak, her long exquisitely shaped lips-

seemed too vivid for real life.

"What the hell do you mean you don't want her near you?" I said suddenly. I

was still standing in the empty elevator. "How can you say this to me about

her?"

"Come on, Mr. Walker."

She reached for my arm, closed her fingers around my sleeve, and I followed

her out and along the railing of the terrace. "Tell me what the hell this is

about!"

"All right, Mr. Walker," she said, as she put the key in the lock.

She moved slowly in the large low-ceiling living room of the suite, with the

cloak flaring gracefully around her. The hood had slipped down, and her

voluminous hair was frozen in the illusion of free-fall. Not a strand was out

of place.

Expensive emptiness. Formless new hotel furniture, rough new hotel carpet.

Beyond the floor-to-ceiling window an overgrown thicket of downtown buildings

without grace or design.

She let the cloak drop on a chair. Breasts beneath the pale-beige wool truly

unbelievable, not just in size but in proportion to the tiny waist. Hips that

swung from side to side with almost arrogant glamour under the plain narrow

skirt.

What must it be like to live night and day with this much woman? How could

there be any room for anyone else? Ah, but Belinda's was such a different

brand of beauty. How to explain it? Comparisons of nymph to goddess, bud to

rose, just did not come close.

She had taken off the dark glasses, and for a moment her eyes swept the room

slowly, as if they wanted to drink in the muted light before the assault of

sharp edges. Then the clear glasses came up again. And as she looked at me, I

was startled to see the resemblance to her daughter. Same cheekbones, yes,

same spacing of the large eyes, something vaguely similar even in the

expression. But age would never give Belinda this chiseled nose and mouth,

this Technicolor lushness.

"I can see why she likes you, Mr. Walker," she said with the same maddening

politeness. Almost sweetness. "You're not just nice, you're a real good-

looking man."

She took a cigarette from her purse, and instinctively I picked up the hotel

matchbook from the table and offered her a light. Ever see Belinda's match

trick? I thought. It's priceless.

"You're much nicer looking than you are in your pictures," she said exhaling.

"Kind of old-fashioned sort of man."

"I know," I said coldly.

She had the same flawless tan skin I'd noticed that first moment in Belinda,

positively shining white teeth. Not a line to indicate either age or the

character that often comes with it. Now that, Alex did have.

"Come on, Miss Blanchard. I love your daughter, and you know it. Now tell me

what this is all about?"

"I love her, too, Mr. Walker. Or I wouldn't have come. And I want you to take

care of her till she's old enough to take care of herself."

She sat down on the small red sofa and I took the chair opposite. I lit a

cigarette of my own, and then realized it was one of Belinda's. Must have

picked up the pack instinctively when I left the house.

"You want me to take care of her," I repeated dully.

I was getting over the shock, and the panic was going with it. But the anger

was getting worse.

She looked tired suddenly. Something played at the edges of her eyes

revealing strain. I might never have seen it without the magnification of the

glasses. No laugh lines there. Positively unearthly. But again I was struck

by her irrepressible voluptuousness. The wool dress was positively spartan,

the gold jewelry as severe as it was brilliant, yet she was almost monstrous.

To make love to her, what would it-?

"You want a drink, Mr. Walker?"

Bottles on the tray on the nameless piece of trash furniture, that might have

been a sideboard.

"No. I'd like to get this straight. What you want, what you're talking about.

You're playing some kind of strange game."

"Mr. Walker, I'm one of the bluntest people I know. I just told you

everything. I don't want my daughter near me. I can't live with her anymore.

And as long as you keep her and take care of her and see that she's safe and

not out somewhere on the streets, I'll leave you alone."

"And what if I don't?" I asked. "What if I hurt her? Or she decides to walk

out?"

She studied me for a moment, her eyes absolutely without expression, and then

she looked down. Her head dipped just a little. And then she remained that

way, so still that it was slightly unnerving. For a moment I thought she

might actually be sick.

"Then I'll go to the police," she said, her voice more hushed than before.

"And I'll give them the pictures you've taken of her, of you and her in bed

together, the pictures I have from your house."

Artist and Model. The pictures taken with the timer.

"That you have from my house!"

Her head remained lowered, but she was looking up at me now, and it created a

suggestion of timidity, which maddened me as much as her subdued voice.

"You had somebody break into my house?"

It seemed she swallowed, took a deep breath.

"Only the negatives were taken, Mr. Walker. And there are thirty-three of

them to be exact. None of your paintings of her has been touched. What are

you so mad about, Mr. Walker? You have my little girl in your house."

"The little girl you don't want back, Miss Blanchard. And it is my house."

"I'll give you three of the negatives now. And then another batch when she's

eighteen. I believe that is a year and a couple of months from now. I haven't

figured it with a pencil. But you get the idea. You keep her till she's

nineteen, I'll give you more of them. If you can take care of her till she's

twenty-one, you can have the rest. Course, you can't show those paintings of

her either. But then you'd be cutting your own throat if you did that."

"And suppose I tell you to go to hell, Miss Blanchard."

"You won't do that, Mr. Walker. Not with the pictures I've got." Her eyes

moved off again, the lower lids puckering slightly. "And all the other

information I have about you, too."

"I don't believe you have those negatives. If someone had broken into my

house, I'd know it, I'd sense it. You're lying to me."

She didn't answer right away. She sat frighteningly still, as before, like a

mechanical doll that had wound down, like some kind of beautiful computer

processing the question.

Then she got up slowly and went to the chair where she had dropped her purse.

She opened it and I could see the top edge of a manila envelope as she

reached inside. My writing on it, I could see that, my notation in the upper

right-hand corner. She was taking a little strip of negatives out.

"Three negatives, Mr. Walker," she said. She put them in my hand. "And, by

the way, I'm real familiar with the subject matter of those paintings you've

done. I know all those things the police would find if they came to get her.

I know what the press would do with the story, too. But no one else will ever

know, not if we make our little agreement, like I said."

I held the strip of negatives up to the lamp. They were the most

incriminating ones, all right. Belinda and I embracing. Belinda and I in bed.

Me on top of Belinda.

And a stranger had walked through my house to get these, a stranger had

broken into the darkroom and into the attic, gone through my things. But when

had this happened? What was the precise date of the violation? How long ago

had we lived with this false sense of security, Belinda and I both, while

this other watched her, waited for his chance to break in?

I put the negatives in my inside pocket. I sat back making all those nervous

little gestures you make when you are about to blow. I was rubbing the

fingers of my left hand together, rubbing my chin with the back of my hand.

I tried to remember everything Dan had told me. OK, they weren't covering it

up for Bonnie. But they had covered it up nevertheless.

She had returned to the couch, and I was glad she wasn't close to me. I did

not want her to touch me. I didn't like it that our hands might have touched

when she gave me the negatives.

"Mr. Walker, you can have money from me in any reasonable amount that you

need to take care of her-"

"I don't need money. If you investigated me, you know I don't need money."

"Yes, that's true. Nevertheless I want to give it to you, because she is my

child and it's my wish to provide for her, of course."

"And what is the bottom line on time with this blackmail, this little sales

arrangement, this-"

"It's not blackmail," she said, frowning slightly. But at once the few lines

created by the frown disappeared. Her face was bland again, as devitalized as

her voice. "And I told you, till she's twenty-one is best. Until she's

eighteen, well, that is kind of imperative. She's a child till she's

eighteen. No matter what she might think, she can't take care of herself."

"She's been with me three months, Miss Blanchard."

"Just a year and two months till she's eighteen, Mr. Walker. You can do that

much. You can keep her and those paintings of yours where no one will find

them, no one will make a big fuss about it all-"

She stopped. The inner switch had been thrown again. But something was

different. I thought maybe she was going to cry. I had seen Belinda's face

change suddenly, crumple almost magically into tears. But that didn't happen.

Instead her face remained listless, blank. And her eyes appeared to fog over.

She was looking at me, but I could have sworn she didn't see me. And the

tears that did come were so slow that they were only a film. The light seemed

to have gone out inside her.

"You're a sane man," she murmured, the words slower. "You're rich, you're

steady, you're good. You'll never hurt her. You'll look out for her. And you

don't want to hurt yourself."

"Three months, Miss Blanchard, that's how long I've known her. Anytime she

gets tired of it, she can walk out."

"She won't do it. I don't know what she told you, but I'd bet every cent I

have that it was hell for her before she met you. She's not going back to it.

She has what she's always wanted. And so do you."

"And so you go back down to LA and you tell yourself everything's hunky-dory,

is that it? That your daughter is safe in my hands?"

The film appeared to settle where it was, glimmering behind the lenses of the

glasses, and her expression dulled even more. Her mouth was half open. Slowly

she looked away from me, as if she'd forgotten me. She just stared beyond me

at the sterile emptiness of the room.

"What happened?" I asked. "What made her run? And why the hell would you do

something like this-virtually turn her over to a man you don't even know?"

No answer from her. No change in her.

"Miss Blanchard, since the moment I laid eyes on your daughter, I've been

asking those kinds of questions. They've obsessed me night and day. Just last

night I went behind her back into her private belongings. I found the movies

she'd made with you. This morning I read your life story in one of those

cheap paperbacks. I know about your marriage, the shooting, this television

series-"

"And your lawyer," she said in the same dead voice. "Don't forget about your

lawyer, Mr. Dan Franklin, asking all those questions in LA." Beautiful. And

didn't it figure?

"All right." I nodded. "I had my lawyer trying to find things out, too. But I

still don't know what made Belinda leave the way she did. And if you think

I'm leaving this room without the whole story-"

"Mr. Walker you can't really bargain with me. I've got the negatives,

remember? All I have to do is pick up that phone and call the police."

"Do it," I said. She didn't stir.

"Call the police just like you did when she left, Miss Blanchard. Call the

papers, too."

Very slowly, impossibly slowly, she lifted the cigarette to her lips. The

tears were caught in her long black eyelashes, flashing for an instant like

crystal beads. And there was a faint flush to her delicately shaded oval

face, a faint quivering to her lips.

"Why didn't you report it when it happened? You might have picked her up in a

week if her picture had been in the papers. But you let her roam the streets

for nine months."

She laid the cigarette down in the ashtray as carefully as if it were a bomb

about to go off. Then her eyes drifted to me again and settled and the glaze

of tears shimmered so that for one moment her eyes were nothing but light.

"We had our people looking for her all over," she said. "Night after night I

went looking for her on my own. I went down myself on Hollywood Boulevard and

I walked miles looking for her, and asking the kids about her, and showing

them her picture. I went in flophouses and crash pads looking for her that

you wouldn't believe."

"But you don't want her back now that you've found her."

"No. I don't. I never wanted her back. Before she left I tried to send her

off to school. I had her packed and ready to leave, but, no, she wouldn't go.

She was past all that. Nobody was going to lock her up in a school. When she

was little, that's all she ever talked about, wanting to be like other kids.

But now she wouldn't hear of it."

"Was that the unforgivable crime, Miss Blanchard, that she had grown up?

Enough to unwittingly attract your husband into trying something he shouldn't

have tried?"

"The unforgivable crime, if you must know, Mr. Walker, is that she seduced my

new husband in my house. And I caught her with him. And I tried to kill her

for it. I aimed a gun right at her, and my husband got in front of her. Five

bullets he took. Or I might have killed her the way I planned."

My turn to stop moving as if a switch had been thrown.

Panic returning, the rapid heartbeat, the blood rushing to my head.

She was watching me. Her face was a little more deeply colored. The tears

were gone. But everything else was locked inside.

"You don't know the relationship there was between her and me," she said,

voice even as ever. "She wasn't just my daughter, she was my closest kin."

She smiled bitterly. "Don't faint on me, Mr. Walker. She did it. Your

Belinda. She'd been sleeping with him all along. I heard them talking to each

other. I tell you, it was more that than the sight of it, the way they were

talking. And I didn't even understand the words, Mr. Walker. I'm referring to

the tone of their voices. I'm referring to those little sounds coming through

that door. I got the gun out of the night table and I went in there and I

emptied it into that bed."

I took out my handkerchief and slowly wiped the sweat from my forehead, my

upper lip.

"Are you sure that she did it the way you-"

"Oh, she did it, Mr. Walker, and I know why she did it, too. It was all new

to her, being a woman"-the smile became broader, more bitter-"you know,

having the magic, the charm. Well, it's old as the hills to me, Mr. Walker.

I've been selling it one way or another ever since I can remember. Before I

was a movie star, I sold it for a date to the prom. When we came back from

the hospital, I said: 'You get out of my house. You'll never live under any

roof with me again. You aren't my child, you're a stranger. And you're

going.' And she said: 'I'm going, but I'm going where I please.' "

"Maybe it didn't happen the way you think."

"She did it." The smile faded. The voice slowed a little, though it had never

been very rapid or loud. "And I know what she was thinking, what she was

feeling. I remember being that young and that stupid. I remember doing things

like that just to see what would happen, going after another woman's husband

just to see if I had the power to get him, to make a fool out of her. She

became a stranger to me, all right, but she became a stranger that I

understood real well."

I shook my head. "Did you listen to her side of it?"

"She said if I tried to make her go off to school, she'd go to the police,

she'd say he molested her. That's what she said to me. She said she'd send

him to prison for the rest of his life. She was leaving and better nobody try

to stop her. She said just get out of her way or she'd go to the papers with

it. She'd ruin everything."

"And what if that's what happened? He did molest her?"

"Not a chance, Mr. Walker. Not my daughter, Belinda. She was on the pill when

she was twelve years old."

"But you're living with him after his part in this? She has to go, but he can

stay?"

"He's just a man," she said. "I didn't know him from Adam this time two years

ago. All her life she lived with me. She came out of my body. He's nothing.

Put him in the right place, push the right buttons-he's easy to forgive.

Nothing to it."

"A moral idiot, you're talking about. A live-in animal."

"What are you, Mr. Walker?" she asked. "What were you thinking when you took

her to bed?"

"I wasn't married to her mother," I said. "I wasn't living in her mother's

house. I wasn't trying to make a mint off her mother in a television series.

And that's the crux, isn't it, Miss Blanchard?" No answer.

"It was either side with him," I said. "Or 'Champagne Flight' crashes on

takeoff, right? It was a package deal the whole time, wasn't it?"

"You don't know anything, Mr. Walker," she said calmly. "There's a thousand

lackeys like Marty Moreschi down there in Hollywood. But there's one Bonnie.

And Bonnie has made 'Champagne Flight.' Your idea isn't even interesting."

I studied her, confused by her seeming honesty, the way to her it all made

sense. There was no defensiveness or bravado in her words.

But her face softened as I watched, becoming even more listlessly beautiful,

like a portrait shot taken with a filter, all loveliness with quiet fire.

Then her dark eyes brightened slowly, and the imploring look I'd seen a

thousand times in her old films was suddenly there.

"I didn't need to forgive Marty," she whispered intimately. "I wanted to

forgive him. And it meant a whole lot more than just having him or 'Champagne

Flight.' It meant keeping a way of looking at things, Mr. Walker. Of caring

about them." She paused, and her expression became even more intense, more

poignant. "It meant wanting to wake up again in the morning," she said,

"wanting to take the next breath. It meant caring about being alive, Mr.

Walker, just to be with Marty and be working on that show. Soon as he gave me

any means to make it up, I took it. I grabbed it. It was real easy, like I

said."

I saw the movement of her throat as she swallowed. I saw her eyes mist again.

The full sculpted softness of her breasts and hips beneath the cashmere dress

gave her a look of almost irresistible vulnerability.

"I don't care who started it between them," she said. "I don't care whose

fault it was. I don't ever want to see her again."

She stated at the carpet in front of her. She had folded her arms and bowed

her head as if someone had struck her.

I didn't answer her, and nothing could have made me answer. But I understood

just what she was asking me to understand. I hated seeing it her way, but she

had made me see it. And I couldn't have lied to her. I knew just what she

meant.

When Alex had tried to explain it, I had not heard it. But she brought it all

home.

I had the strong feeling, too, that I would understand even better as the

years passed, as I got older, when more battles had been lost and there were

fewer and fewer things that had any true importance.

Yet I watched her without conceding. And my loyalty to Belinda never wavered.

Dear God, she was fifteen when it happened. How much could she have

understood?

I didn't try to think it through. I just imagined myself on the highway

driving south to Carmel and coming up to the little house at morning and

Belinda being there.

And I felt a new terror for Belinda, that she seemed now more than ever

alone. I ached for her. I ached to protect her from the hurt and the despair

in this room. And maybe for the first time since I had laid eyes upon

Belinda, I understood her, too. I did.

I knew now why she would never talk about any of it. And it really didn't

matter whose fault it was or who started it, just as her mother said. It was

a disaster, that is what it was, a disaster for mother and daughter, and

maybe only the two of them would ever know how bad it had been.

But this was not over. Not by any means. It would have been too convenient

for me to walk out the door. And I'd be damned before I'd play this lady's

game. It was as dark and convoluted as everything about her. "What if you

talked to Belinda now?" I asked. It was impossible to tell if she had even

heard. "I could go get her, bring her here," I said.

"I've seen all I want to see of her," she said.

The particular brand of silence in the room filled the void between us.

Distant traffic. A faint music from the lobby of the hotel, which must have

been there all along.

"Miss Blanchard, she's your daughter!"

"No, Mr. Walker. You take care of her." She looked up as if roused from a

stupor, eyes red and sad.

"What if she needs you, really needs you?"

"Too late for that, Mr. Walker." She shook her head. "Too late." And her

hushed voice had a chilling finality.

"Well, I can't do what you're asking me," I said with a little finality of my

own. "I can't be a party to this little blackmail scheme. I won't cooperate

with you."

Frozen again in her thoughts. Silent. Helpless.

"What's it matter, Mr. Walker?" she said, looking up. "Nobody's going to the

police. You know that, don't you? If she runs away, you call me. You'll do

that much, won't you?"

"What if you're wrong about all of it-"

"Take her away somewhere, Mr. Walker. Someplace where nobody will find her or

those pictures you're painting of her. Keep her out of the bright lights. Two

years, three, it won't matter. Then you can both do as you damn well please.

I'd never use the negatives against you. Can't you see that?"

"Then I'll take them now, Miss Blanchard, if you don't mind."

I stood up. She did not move. She looked at me as if she didn't even know who

I was, let alone what I meant to do. "I'll get them myself," I said.

I went to her purse. I took out the envelope. Checked the contents. They were

there, all right. I counted them. Then held one up to the light. Artist and

Mocel. OK. I looked in the purse. Brush, wallet, credit cards, makeup.

Nothing else of mine in there.

"You're some blackmailer, Miss Blanchard," I said. "Your thugs take anything

else?"

She was staring at me. And I thought I saw her smile, but I couldn't be

certain. So many little things, indescribable things, can happen in a still

face. Then very slowly she stood up. But it seemed for a moment she couldn't

remember her intention. She appeared lost.

I reached out to steady her. But she moved past me to the desk by the floor-

length window and she sat down and bent over slightly, leaning on her left

elbow, as she wrote something on the hotel message pad.

"That's my address and my private number," she said, as she turned to give it

to me. "If anything goes wrong, anything bad happens, you call me there and I

answer, not some studio employee or some brother of mine who doesn't think I

can add two and two. You call me night or day if she ever runs away."

"Talk to her."

"And about that brother of mine-be careful."

"He doesn't know where she is?"

She shook her head. "He'll never give up on finding her. Wants her locked up

till she's twenty-one."

"For her sake or yours?"

"Both, I imagine. He'd lock up Marty, too, if I let him."

"That's consoling," I said.

"Is it, Mr. Walker? What do you think he'd do to you?"

"But he wants it all kept quiet just the way you do, doesn't he? No police

and, God forbid, any newspapers."

"Can't say he does," she said wearily. "He'd call in the French foreign

legion and NBC and CBS if he could. But he does what I tell him to."

"Good old Brother Daryl," I said.

"Blood means a lot in my family, Mr. Walker. You don't betray your own. And

he's my brother, not hers."

"Well, since you tracked her right to my door, what's to stop him from doing

it?"

She didn't answer right away. Then she smiled the little bitter smile again.

"Well, let's just say I have connections that Daryl doesn't have," she said.

"Like what?"

Not Alex. Alex wouldn't have betrayed me for the world. And George Gallagher?

He wouldn't betray Belinda, from all I'd heard.

"Daryl thinks she's in New York," she said. "He thinks she's headed for

Europe, to try to hook up with a director named Susan Jeremiah to make a

picture. But even if he does find out about you, he'll come to me before he

does anything. If you don't show those paintings of yours, that is. You do

that, you bring everybody down on you. I'd have to come after you myself."

"Even after this little meeting?" I asked. "Attempted blackmail's a crime,

so's breaking and entering, didn't anyone ever tell you that?"

She gave me another one of those long slow takes. Then she said: "Mr. Walker,

let me tell you something about this whole situation. The way it's set up, no

one really has anything on anyone else."

"I'm not sure you're right, Miss Blanchard," I said. "Maybe we've all got the

goods on one another at this point."

She appeared to think that over-or merely to drift.

"Take care of Belinda," she said finally. "And don't you show those paintings

to a living soul."

I didn't want to hear any more. I didn't want to say any more either. I only

knew I wanted to get down to Carmel before morning. I turned to go.

"Mr. Walker."

"Yes?"

"Call me if anything goes wrong. Night or day, if anything happens, if she

leaves-"

"Of course, Miss Blanchard," I said. "Why wouldn't I? I'm a very nice man,

right?"
[25]

It was just getting daylight when I climbed out of the van and went up the

gravel walk to the little cottage in Carmel.

The air inside was warm and full of the smell of the smoldering logs on the

hearth. The milky light grew brighter as I watched, illuminating the

flagstone floor, the comfortable old chairs, the cottage table, and the high

dark beams above me.

I climbed the wooden ladder to the loft bed. Smell of perfume, of Belinda.

She lay curled on her side in a snarl of cotton sheets, her naked shoulders

golden brown against the whiteness. Strands of yellow hair were caught on her

cheek and on her moist lip. I brushed them aside, and she turned over on her

back, the sheet slipping off her naked breasts, her eyes moving beneath her

smooth closed eyelids.

"Wake up, Sleeping Beauty," I said. I kissed her. Her mouth was lifeless at

first and then it opened slowly and I felt her body quicken under me.

"Jeremy," she whispered, and her arms went around my neck, pulling me close

almost desperately.

"Come on, little girl," I said. "I've got everything in the van. Last night I

called my housekeeper in New Orleans. She'll have everything ready for us. If

we start now and drive on through, we'll be in my mother's house day after

tomorrow."

Her eyes were glazed. She blinked to drive away the layers of sleep.

"You love me?" she whispered.

"Adore you. Now come on down. I'll make us breakfast. There are one or two

things I want you to know, and then we'll get on the road immediately."

I got the groceries out of the van, put on the eggs and bacon and the coffee,

and when she came down to the table, I kissed her again. A lot of her long

hair was gathered up in the barrette, flowing down her back like a shaft of

light. And she had put on her white jeans and one of those baggy white cotton

sweaters I especially loved. She looked like a long-stemmed white flower.

"Sit down," I said when she tried to help. I dished out the food, poured the

coffee. "I'm never asking you anything again, like I told you," I said, as I

sat down across from her. "But I want you to know what I've done. I read the

paperback trash I could find on you and your mother. I read the mags I could

find. I even had somebody snoop into it down south. I know all about it. I'm

confessing that now, up front."

Her eyes were staring past me. She had a listless expression too much like

her mother. But underneath there was the threat of tears.

I reached across the table and took her hand. No resistance.

She looked as defeated as she had ever looked.

"I want to close the book on all of it, just the way I promised we would," I

said. "No questions. Not a one. But there are some things you have to know.

Susan Jeremiah's been looking for you. She wants you to make a picture."

"I know that," she whispered. "It can wait."

"You're sure? You want to see her, I'll help you. But your uncle Daryl, he's

watching her. He's figuring on catching you if you try."

"I know that, too."

"OK. This is the last thing. The biggie. And I don't want this to hurt you,

and I don't want this to make you hate me. But I have to tell you. There

can't be any more secrets or lies."

So much like the mother in her listlessness and silence, and I had not

thought of it last night in that room, though I'd seen it in Belinda

countless times.

I took a deep breath.

"Your mother came to see me," I said.

No response.

"I don't know how she found us-it may even be that my own lawyer snooping

around actually tipped her off. But whatever the case, she came to see me,

and she told me to take care of you. She's worried about you, and she doesn't

want her brother to find you and make trouble for you. She just wants you to

be all right."

She stared at me, as if she couldn't absorb it, couldn't respond.

"I know this is a shock, an ugly shock, and I wish I didn't have to talk

about it, but you have to know. I told her I loved you, I told her I'd let

her know from time to time that you were all right."

I could not read her expression. Had the sadness deepened? Was she on the

verge of tears? She just remained the same, and she looked so old suddenly

and tired and alone.

I took her by the shoulders. She was so soft she might have fallen. But her

eyes were fixed on me.

"OK. That's it," I said. "And if you can forgive me for the snooping,

Belinda, then you've got to see that the worst has already happened, and

we're OK."

She frowned a little, and her lip quivered, and, yes, she was going to cry.

But even that seemed to take more will than she had.

"Don't, honey, everything's fine, honest it is," I said. "There are no more

secrets to hurt us, Belinda. It's going to be better than it ever was. We're

really free."

"I love you, Jeremy," she whispered. "I would have never let them hurt you. I

swear to God. It's true."

It cut to my heart the way she said it, as if I were the one to protect.

"Yes, honey," I said, "and I won't let them hurt you either. And we're going

far far away from them."
[26]

I don't know when the doubts started. Certainly not in those first few weeks.

We drove straight through, one of us sleeping while the other took the wheel,

so that we came into New Orleans late in the morning on the second day after

we left California.

I thought I was exhausted when I turned off the freeway onto Saint Charles

Avenue, but the old landmarks-the giant sprawling oaks, even the rusted

squalor of the dreary midtown stretch-brought me to life immediately.

As we passed Jackson Avenue and moved into the domain of the Garden District,

I felt an extraordinary sense of peace. Even the smell of the warm air was

working on me.

Then I saw the high iron fence of the old house stretching back the side

street. I saw the garden growing wild as ever against the screen porches and

the white Corinthian columns. I saw the old Rose of Montana vine lacing

itself around the high shuttered windows. Home.

I was in a daze when Miss Annie came out to meet us and to put the keys in my

hand. The sense of the familiar was magical. I was overwhelmed by a flood of

small sensation I had utterly forgotten.

The enormous rooms were cool as we stepped inside. The overhead fans churned,

the old window air conditioners grinding away in that sound which becomes in

time a good substitute for silence. There was the awful old painting of

Lafayette, which Alex had remembered, and the pirate's head at the foot of

the stairs, the worn oriental rugs still scattered about.

I stood for a moment in the door of the library looking at the table where

I'd studied, the shelves still full of the nineteenth-century books in which

I'd first learned about the paintings and drawings of the masters. Belinda

was quietly and obviously enthralled.

I took her hand and led her to the second floor. We went into Mother's

bedroom. The blinds were closed with their slats open on the surrounding

trees, just as Alex had long ago seen them.

I opened the French doors to the screened porch. I explained how we'd watched

the Mardi Gras here unseen from the street. These porches were now a thing of

the past, people thought they looked ugly on the old antebellum facades, but

there was nothing quite like them for that feeling of fresh air and veiled

privacy.

She looked small and fragile as she drifted around, examining the old

mahogany pieces, the giant four-poster.

"Ah, Jeremy, this is a dream place," she said. She flashed one of her

exquisite smiles.

"You like it, baby?"

"Can we sleep in this bed?" she asked.

My mother's embroidered pillow cases were still there, and the crocheted

bedspread, all the same.

"Of course, we can," I said. "Yes, this should be our room." In the cool of

the night we'd shut off the air conditioners and open the doors to the porch.

We could hear the streetcar passing.

She helped me unpack the van. We trudged back and forth down the flagstone

path through the melting heat until we had brought all twelve paintings into

the back porch studio where I'd worked for so many years.

The porch was now enclosed in glass instead of screens. But the old green

bamboo blinds were still there and I remembered Alex Clementine in his white

linen suit lowering them all around as he said, "I'll make love to you, you

know."

My old easel was there, the stool, everything. Even the cot on which Alex and

I had sat together that afternoon.

But the garden had grown so high and wild that the light was only dappled.

The roses grew in menacing arcs above the thick clumps of banana tree and the

white and the pink oleander. Purple althaea on their stiff stems by the back

steps. Morning glory climbing all the way to the roof.

Ah, nothing grows in California the way it grows here. Not even love

probably. The pink Rose of Montana ran out along the telephone wires that cut

through the branches of the pecan tree. The calla lilies threw up their giant

blooms against the brick foundations. Even the purple flags had their layer

of velvet green moss. And far out in the overgrown grass the old iron lawn

furniture was now half overturned amid the towering weeds and bracken.Home.

She helped me with the luggage until we had it all upstairs. Carpet soft, as

if it were growing into the polished risers. Smell of dust, mothballs, cedar

when I opened the old armoires.

An absolute silence fell suddenly. We were standing together on the edge of

the Brussels carpet. "Love you, darling-"

I shut the door and carried her to Mother's bed. She let her head fall back

as I unbuttoned her blouse. There were ribbons threaded in her braids.

Her hand went down between the rise of her breasts and snapped the clip of

the bra so that the cups fell open on either side of her like two white

shells. Her hips rose slightly as I pulled the jeans off her, then the

panties. I pulled the pink bows off the ends of the braids. I ran my fingers

down the braids roughly, loosening them, so they fell apart, the hair in

ripples.

She slipped her arms around me, her lips pressed against my shoulder, my

neck.

On top of the counterpane we did it. I turned over after and fell into the

deepest easiest sleep I'd ever known it seemed.

California just slipped away into darkness. Out of California Gothic we go

into Southern Gothic, I thought.

I heard Alex at a crowded supper table: "And then who should show up in her

black limousine right outside his house but Bonnie!" No. Stop it. Wake up.

Shift gears. Down south. Drifting. Bonnie's soft Texas slur: "I don't care

who started it. I don't care whose fault it is. I don't ever want to see her

again."

Sounds of New Orleans outside. Five o'clock.

The air conditioning was off. And the katydids were going-great sweeping

choruses of grinding song from the trees. Ah, I'm home. I'm safe. I'm in New

Orleans. Chimes in the house from one place and another, and then another.

Mother always said, Set the clocks thirty seconds apart and the music will

continue. Miss Annie must have known the trick. Belinda!

She was sitting out on the porch in the white rocker. Breeze carrying the

scent of dust and rain. She was wearing only a white silk slip and her feet

were bare.

"It's so gloriously warm," she said. Slight sheen on her face. Her hair was

parted in the middle, sort of tangled over her shoulders, kink from the

braids still there. "Ah, Jeremy, let's never leave here. If we go off for a

while, let's come back. Let's let this be home."

"Yes, darling baby, forever."

I stood at the edge of the railing looking down through the mesh of oak limbs

at the silver streak of car track on the avenue. At Mardi Gras time they

always came and clipped the branches back so the big papier-mâché parade

floats could go by safely underneath. It hurt me to think of it.

Now the deepening green of the grass melted into the green of the trees, and

beyond there was no glare of sky, only the muted colors of the houses far

across the way, flash of pink crepe myrtle glowing in the gloom, white

magnolia, bits of shining glass, translucent blue, wrought iron. The world

woven in a net. There was no end, no beginning. Sunset and cloud were no more

than tiny burning pieces.

"We'll go out to the lake tonight," I said. "Some old place at West End out

over the water. Or the French Quarter downtown. What do you say?"

"Anything you want." Glisten of moisture on her breasts, her naked thighs

under the lace border of the slip. Beautiful thing, the slip, all sculpted to

her flesh, and such thick lace, and her feet on the dusty floor naked.

But first the photographs.

I turned on the lamps.

"Lie on the bed," I said to her gently. "On the embroidered pillows. No, keep

on the slip."

"Now that's a change," she answered drowsily.

No tripod unpacked but I could hold the camera steady enough. Very grainy

these would be, light terrible, but good enough. The painting would come

blazing out of them soon enough.

Her legs were spread apart, the left knee raised to one side, her pink

nipples clearly visible under the silk cloth.

I saw her fall into the usual trance as the shutter clicked. I thought of all

those films she'd made. And the last, those exquisite love scenes in the

sand. But this was too this for thinking of that.

Out of her suitcase I got one of her bras, a pink satin one with lace, and a

tiny pair of pink bikini panties.

"Put on these for me, would you?"

I watched her peel off the slip. The bra closed in the front like the other.

Ah, my teeth clenched seeing her tighten the clasp, breasts gathered like

that. Then she smoothed the flesh into the cups, lifted each breast, dropped

it, her fingers casual, rough. I got hard watching it. Then the panties came

up stretched sheer over her pubic hair. I could see the silk seal itself over

her secret lips. Little crack. Hair a dark shadow underneath.

She sat down on the bed again, scooting back to the pillows, letting the

counterpane catch under her heel. "Perfect."

I stood back looking at her, loving her. Knowing who she was-it changed

nothing and it changed everything. It made all the difference in the world.

That night we walked all over the old French Quarter.

We caught the jazz at Preservation Hall, roamed the shops, the garish Bourbon

Street clubs, drifted past the old historical places-Pirate's Alley, Jackson

Square, the cathedral.

She talked softly about the things she missed about Europe. Not Saint Esprit.

That had been a prison. She talked about Paris and Rome mostly. She had so

loved Rome. She had ridden all over Rome on a Vespa with Susan Jeremiah when

they were doing the postproduction work at Cinecittá on Final Score. Susan

was six feet tall and always did wear her cowboy boots and her cowboy hat.

The Italians had loved her.

This place had those colors, she said. Stained walls, stone streets, the dark

smells of Rome. Not like any place in America that she had seen. New York,

LA, San Francisco-that was America to her.

I listened to all this quietly, sensing the change, that she could have her

past now, that her life could extend backwards in time as well as forward

with dreams and plans. Everything was going to be fine. It was going to be

all right.

But I didn't push her. When we had coffee later in the Cafe du Monde, I asked

about making Final Score.

"Well, you know I'd made movies all my life," she said. "I was in them before

I can remember. I've seen films in which I was just a baby. And then the ads,

too. I did some kind of baby shampoo ad when I was fifteen months, something

like that. The pictures are somewhere. I'll show you. But then we went to

Saint Esprit and everything was over, dead. Well, no, that's not true, there

was one other picture maybe. I don't remember. But it was like prison or

something, Saint Esprit."

"But in Final Score you had a big part."

She nodded. Then she was uncomfortable. "There's time for all that," she

said. "It's OK, having to wait."

Afterwards, when we were walking back to Canal Street, she brought it up

again:

"You know, one thing I learned about actors and actresses-I mean the big

stars. They can be the most ignorant people if they get caught up in it very

young. Some of them are damn near illiterate. And emotionally they're like

people who have grown up in the penal system. I mean, they can not control

their emotions at all. I want to make pictures-I know I'm going to do it-but

it doesn't hurt to live a little more life of some other kind before it

starts."

Seemed like she was arguing with herself, trying to make it acceptable. It

wasn't clear.

"Two years, honey," I said. "Two years and nobody can do anything to either

one of us then."

I thought of Bonnie threatening me with those negatives, I thought of some

faceless creature making his way through my empty house. When had it

happened? When we were in Carmel that last time, the stranger flashing his

light on my paintings? Scalding anger. Let it go, Jeremy. She gave the

negatives to you without the slightest resistance. The woman is tragic.

"Leave her to heaven," as the old poetry goes.

By midnight she was asleep in Mother's bed-our bed-and I was painting

downstairs in the old place again. I was racing, trying to finish the last

rough spots in the old canvases. Tomorrow I'd get the darkroom supplies, use

the servants' bathroom by the kitchen. Everything would be perfect.

When I finally knocked off, I went outside and felt that embrace of

motionless night you never never know in San Francisco.

The great hulk of the house seemed to list like a ship in the dark, its twin

chimneys swallowed in ivy. And scents of the flowers rose-the thick dizzying

perfume you encounter everywhere here. Oh, why did I ever leave? I just took

it with me in all the work I did. Charlotte and Angelica, even Sleeping

Beauty, yes, especially Sleeping Beauty under her gauze of spiderwebs. But

now everything is different. The past is alive. I am alive.

I looked up. She'd come to the back screen door. She wore just the slip

again. And the kitchen light behind her burned through her hair.

Not a child. A woman standing there.

By the weekend she was getting around just fine in the van, she knew the

whole city. She went out to the shopping centers just to feel America down

here-sometimes hard to do. And the Quarter she loved, of course. And there

were several good movies in town we hadn't seen. We had to see those, she

said. And from what she gathered, the list of restaurants was endless.

I had started Belinda in Mother's Bed two canvases that I was working on

simultaneously. One was silk slip, the other bra and panties. And these were

clearly the most erotic works I'd done so far.

I'd known the new direction would present itself, just as it had when I did

the Cafe Flore painting, but now the mystery deepened. I was a man in the

middle of a waking dream.

I could hardly keep at it when I was painting in her breasts and the panties.

I'd knock off, go out into the yard, and let the heat lay me out flat.

September in New Orleans. Summer still.

But it was working out, oh, so fine. Continuation of the grown-woman series.

And if I'd doubled my usual speed in California, well, I was at hurricane

speed here. I was back to five hours sleep a night at the most. Sometimes

only three.

But the afternoons were perfect for napping. Miss Annie slept then. Belinda

went riding in Audubon Park, hung around Tulane catching a class or two. She

started a diary and sometimes wrote in it for hours in the library. I dozed

on Mother's bed.

She was busy and content just the way she'd been before. The books were

piling up. The new television sets and the VCRs and the cassettes were

proliferating. We were set up in the bedroom and her room down the hall and

the library downstairs.

On Wednesday night she watched "Champagne Flight." I was soaking in the

bathtub. The door was open. She never said a word to me about it. She just

sat on Mother's settee, in a pair of tight white shorts and a pink halter-the

kind of casual clothing she had never worn in San Francisco-and stared at the

screen. I heard Bonnie talking. Then Alex. Then Bonnie. This must have been

Alex's big bow-out for the young punk lover. Bonnie crying. Loathed the sound

of it. I don't ever want to see her again.

A few more days passed before I remembered Dan. I had to call Dan! Everything

else was going splendidly. I'd checked with New York from a pay phone

downtown.

Rainbow Productions had paid the $350,000 for the rights to Angelica. My

accountant was already allocating taxes, investment. Rainbow wanted me to

come to LA for lunch, but that was out. No phone calls either. Take her away,

gentlemen, please.

And now Dan. And having to tell him the last chapter, the awful chapter, that

woman in the sterile room at the Hyatt with the cigarette like a prop in her

hand.

But Dan deserved a call. Probably going crazy.

I went to a phone booth up on Jackson and Saint Charles. And I got his

personal answering machine in San Francisco. "Leave a message of any length."

Well, for the first time in my life I could take advantage of that. I began

recounting the whole thing in veiled terms. "Not two hours after I talked to

you I look out the window and-" I think that's when it started. The doubts.

That moment when I was telling it.

I was standing in the booth and I was watching nothing outside, just the long

brown wooden streetcar gliding by, the domed top all wet from rain uptown

that wasn't falling here.

And I heard myself saying: "-like I was being kidnapped in a black limo, if

you can believe it-" and "somebody had broken into the house, got the

negatives and-" It hit me right then that it sounded preposterous.

"Well, this is really the capper," I went on, "but I got them back from her,

the negatives, and-" No, that didn't make a whole lot of sense either, did

it?

And the dream came back, the one I'd had the first afternoon in Mother's bed,

of Alex telling everybody the story. What had been the feeling in the dream?

I don't believe it.

"Well, Dan-" Mumble mumble. I found myself recounting how I'd checked the

locks when I got back home in San Francisco. I could not figure out how the

bastard got those negatives, even knew how to sort them out of the rest and

-"You know, these guys are professionals, crack professionals, I guess." Is

that true? "And the lengths these people will go to."

Better wrap this up.

"But you see, whatever happened with her and the stepfather put the cards in

little B's hands. I mean, they didn't dare have the police pick her up,

naturally-" Hmmmm!

"And that's what it's like, a house of cards. Because everything is so

precariously balanced. They screw me. Little B screws them. We all go down.

Nobody's going to do anything to us until I decide to show those paintings-"

Had I told Dan about the paintings? "Later on the paintings, old buddy. I'll

call again."

Glad to be finished with that. Very glad. I hadn't told him where I was.

Nobody would know that.

Whenever the phone rang in the old house, it was Belinda calling me or it was

for Miss Annie-her son, the drunken cab driver, or her brother Eddie, the

wraith of an old man who hammered nails in rotting boards on the side of the

house.

I went down to the bar of the Pontchartrain Hotel and bought a drink. Had to

get out of this muggy green weather for a little while.

Disgusting to have to backtrack like that even for Dan. But I couldn't cut

Dan loose without a word, that was unfair.

But the story. It didn't make sense, did it?
[27]

[bad scan] dreams. I checked the lock on the darkroom again. The negatives

were in the metal file cabinet in the darkroom. That's where I put things

when I'm finished. Don't want them to burn if the house burns. Did I put them

there? Thousands of sets of negatives in white envelopes. Marked what? Don't

remember.

I was trying to pry loose the dead bolt and the oak door wouldn't even

splinter. Like chipping at stone. No marks on the door. None.

Wake up. Eyes wide. Heart racing. The dream gone totally. And Mother's

bedroom with the gold wallpaper, stained from the dampness, stains gleaming

like snail tracks in the moonlight.

The streetcar passed outside. Smell of the jasmine coming through the French

doors. Flash of headlights from Saint Charles Avenue. Where was she?

I went downstairs. Light in the kitchen. Sound of the ice box. She was

sitting at the white metal table eating ice cream right out of the carton.

Barefoot. Shorty baby-doll nightgown, V of violet panties underneath. "Can't

sleep?" She looked up at me.

"Rather paint for a while."

"It's four o'clock in the morning."

"You still feel that way, that when you're eighteen, I can show the paintings

and you don't care?"

"I love you. You're insane. You never talk like other people. Other people

slide into their subjects. You just come right out with it. Like chalk

strokes on a blackboard."

"I know. You said it before. My friends call it naiveté. I call it stupid-

"Show the paintings when you're ready. And for your information, Jeremy, I

care passionately because I love the paintings, and I can't bear to think of

waiting two years if you want to know it. In November, however, on the

seventh, to be exact, I will be seventeen. One year from then, Jeremy. Or

sooner, if you decide to just take it on the chin-" Big spoon of strawberry

ice cream.

"Think I should?"

Eyes hard for a moment.

"What would they do?" she whispered. Then she shook her head, shuddered,

closed her eyes for a second. "Leave them out of it. You do what's right for

you."

Another spoon of strawberry ice cream. Teenage shrug. "I mean, you know, be

careful and all." Pure teenager. "I mean, you know, down here-" She looked

around the high-ceiling kitchen. "I mean, down here you think you've just got

God to worry about or something. The world's just gone."

"Yeah, God and ghosts, and truth and art," I said.

"Chalk strokes again!" She giggled. Then serious. "Those two In Mother's Bed

are going to drive them crazy."

"What's so good about them?"

"Come on! You want some ice cream?"

"No."

Talking with another mouthful: "You realize I grow up in the pictures, don't

you? I go from Charlotte's nightgown and the First Communion and-"

"Yes, of course. But you're not the one who grows up. I am."

She broke up. Soft laughter. Shaking her head.

"I'm living with a madman. And he's the only sane person I ever met."

"That's got to be an exaggeration."

I went out onto the glassed porch. Turned on the overhead bulb. Good God,

these canvases. Something-what? In the first few seconds I always see new

things. What?

She was standing behind me. Shorty top so sheer and short it wasn't even a

garment really. Violet panties trimmed in lace. Good thing nobody from the

outside world could have ever seen through the domestic jungle around us.

"I don't look so innocent anymore, do I?" she asked, looking at the canvases.

"How do you mean?"

But I knew. It was in the shadows around the eyes, the subtle lines in the

face. The young woman was ripe as a peach is ripe underneath the white slip,

arm resting on naked knee. Even the toes looked sexual, pushed into the

wrinkle of the spread. I felt a little tremor of fear. But the painter in me

was ruthlessly delighted.
[28]

Four o'clock. It was getting regular. And the dream right before was getting

longer.

I wasn't just examining the darkroom door anymore. I was trying to force the

lock on the attic. Or was I trying to make it so nobody could get in? No, I

was trying to prove that nobody could have gotten in without my knowing it.

Hidden keys. Where had they been? In the spice jar on the rack in the

kitchen. The one marked rosemary, that was made of white opaque glass.

One chance in a million the bastard would have found them. I counted the jars

in the dream: rosemary, thyme, oregano, on and on it went. Most of them

empty. One had the keys to the darkroom and the attic.

And I always locked the doors, didn't I? Always. The thieves could take the

dolls, the toys, the trains, the crap. But not the paintings upstairs or the

pictures in the basement.

And I had shown her the white spice jar. "Here are the spare keys. If there

is ever a fire, don't use them. Call the fire department and give them the

keys when they come."

"Well, I'd try to save them," she said.

"No, no. But I just want you to know where the keys are."

And she had laughed. "You're always here. When am I here that you're not

here?"

Had that been true?

And when was the house empty? When we had gone to Carmel? I had locked up and

double-checked. Always. Or had I? What about that last time, when she had

been so anxious and we had hurried. No, I checked.

Four o'clock. I went downstairs. The old black phone was in the little room

beneath the stairs. That was where you had to go to talk on it when I was a

child. You had to sit at the little wicker table and hold the stem in your

right hand and the earpiece in the left. And the little room smelled like

phone. No smell now. Just one of those smooth white things with buttons.

I imagined myself calling California. She'd answer in that slow Texas voice.

Too sophisticated to be called a drawl. I'd say, "I just want to know, how

did your man get into my house? How did he find the negatives?"

At five o'clock I was sitting in the living room when she came down. "What's

happening?" she asked. "You can't sleep at all anymore?"

"Come here," I said. She sank down on the couch next to me. "When you're here

with me, everything is OK," I said.

But she looked afraid. She started brushing my hair back from my face,

sending little chills over me with the touch of her hand. "You're not...

worrying again."

"No... just a little adjustment," I said. "My clock's off. It's on Pacific

time... something."

"Let's go out, go downtown. Find that coffee place on the river that stays

open all night. Have breakfast down there."

"Sure. OK. We'll take the streetcar, OK?"

"Come on." She tugged my hand. "Ever miss it, the movies? Susan?"

"No. Not right now. Come on. We're going downtown. I'm going to wear you out

today, then you can sleep tonight."

"I'll tell you how you can do that," I said. I put my hand inside the elastic

band of her panties. My knuckles grazed her pubic lips. Immediately hot.

"Right here in the parlor?"

"Why not?" I asked. I pressed her down on the velvet pillows. The light was

seeping through the lace curtains, getting caught in the baubles on the glass

shade of the lamp. "Artist and Model," I whispered.

Something changed in her face. Her eyes locked. All the expression went away.

Then she lowered her lids.

My heart was pounding. I felt a tightening in my belly.

She was staring at me in this cold, listless sort of way. Much much

resemblance to Bonnie. So much resemblance to the last moment in Carmel, when

I had told her everything, and she had broken my heart with her sadness.

"Kiss me," she said, her voice deep and beautiful. And there it was, the

imploring look, so like her mother. Am I losing my mind? I am.

I had pulled her up before I could stop myself.

"What is it?" she asked. Flash of anger, red cheeks. She jerked back away

from me, glaring at her arm where my fingers had left white marks in her tan.

The blue of her eyes went dark, the first sun making her squint as it came

through the blinds.

"I don't know," I said. "I don't know. I'm sorry."

She had her mouth set in an angry way, lower lip jutting slightly. And the

color pulsed in her face. Then she looked sad, hurt, as if she was going to

cry. She looked desperate. "What's wrong now?"

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

"Is it this house, Jeremy?" So worried. So sweet. "Is it, maybe, all the old

things-"

"No, darling. I'm OK."

That afternoon I took her walking in the old neighborhoods. We went through

the quiet shady streets of the Garden District past the fantastical Greek

Revival mansions and across Magazine Street to the barren crowded Irish-

German waterfront neighborhood, where my mother had been born.

I took her to see the magnificent churches built by the immigrants-Saint

Alphonsus in the Romanesque style with its gorgeous paintings and stained

glass windows-this built by the Irish from whom my mother had been descended.

And Saint Mary's, the more delicate Gothic church with its splendid wooden

statues of the saints and its soaring arches. The high narrow steeple was of

curved brick, a craft now lost-this built by the Germans right across the

street from the great gray facade of Saint Alphonsus.

Like treasuries, these were in the narrow treeless street, doors opening on

sanctums of astonishing beauty.

I told her about the rivalry of the two groups and how the same priests had

tended both churches. And once there had even been a French church on Jackson

Avenue only blocks away. But that was gone before my time.

"The old parish was really dying by the time I was a boy," I explained.

"There was always a sense of things passing, of the moment of high vitality

being only a memory."

Yet there had been the May processions, yes, and the splendid feast days and

the liturgical Latin still, and the daily masses in both churches to which

you could go early in the morning and sit alone and in quiet until time for

communion.

You didn't have to speak to other Catholics then. Old ladies scattered

throughout the giant nave said their rosaries with lips moving in silence.

Far off at the white draped altar where the flowers stood in shimmering banks

amid the candles, the tiny bell tinkled in the altar boy's hand when the

priest raised the host. You came and went in blessed privacy without a word

uttered.

Not the way it was now with Catholics shaking hands and giving the "kiss of

peace" and singing saccharine English lyrics.

We walked together back the narrow streets towards the river.

I told her about the old aunts who had died one by one throughout my boyhood.

Dim memories of narrow shotgun houses, as we called them, with their rooms

opening one upon another, and the oilcloth on the kitchen table, and cabbage

and ham cooking in a big pot. A small painted plaster holy water fount fixed

to the doorframe. You dipped your fingers and made the sign of the cross.

Faded napkins, many times mended, smelled still of the hot iron that had

pressed them.

Always people dying, though. Funerals. An aunt sick in an enameled iron bed

in a rented room. Stench unbearable. My mother washing the plates patiently

in a corner basin. Sitting patiently beside an iron bed in the charity

hospital ward.

Finally only Mother was left.

"But, you know, it died for us when Mother moved out. I mean, it was never

more than obligation, her taking me to visit. She had left it all behind when

she went to night school and got her degree, and then marrying a doctor with

a house on Saint Charles Avenue, well, that was the stratosphere to her

people. And the novels? They'd go downtown and just stand there looking at

her books in Maison Blanche department store. They wanted her to use the name

Cynthia O'Neill Walker. But she wouldn't. She didn't like the three names.

Yet we didn't even know the Walker family, never knew them at all."

"And you felt you didn't belong to anyone."

"No. It was an invented life. Used to dream I was poor, if you could believe

it, and that I lived back here in one of these little houses. At

Christmastime the kids talked of giving King parties. You baked a cake, there

was a ring in it; whoever got the ring gave the next party. I wanted to be

part of all that. I told my mother I wished we were rich enough to live in

the government housing project."

We were walking at sunset past rows of the double cottages, the front porch

divided by a wood partition so that each family can sit in privacy and peace.

The little gardens burst with four-o'clocks. And the cracked pavements were

alive with grass and the green moss that grows over everything. And the sky

above was shading to a deep magenta. The clouds were tinged with gold.

"Even this is beautiful here," she said with her arm around me. She pointed

to the white gingerbread eaves on each house and the long green shutters that

covered the front doors.

"You know, one of the things I wanted to do in painting was to create a

narrative of it-the Irish-German life that had been here. You know how I

believe in narrative painting," I said. "I don't mean the exhibits where

people write up long diatribes about the photographs or the pictures. I mean

where the narrative is in the work itself. I believed that realism-

representationalism-could embrace all this. And yet there would be remarkable

sophistication."

She nodded, squeezing my hand lightly.

"I mean, when I look at the realists of our times, the photorealists, for

example, I see such disdain for the subject matter. Why did it have to take

that path? Why did the exact rendering have to focus upon vulgarity and

ugliness? With Hopper, of course, it is coldness, utter coldness."

She said, yes, you always felt that. And even with Hockney you felt it.

"American artists are so embarrassed by American life," I said. "So

contemptuous of it."

"It's as if they're afraid," she said. "They have to be superior to what they

represent. They are embarrassed even that they do it so well."

"Why?" I asked.

"It's like a dream, American life. It frightens you. You feel you have to

make fun of it, no matter how much you secretly love it. I mean, here is

everything you want. You have to say it's horrible."

"I want the freedom of the primitive painters," I said, "to focus with love

on what I find inherently beautiful. I want it to be hot, disturbing. Yet

gorgeous always."

"And that's why they call you baroque and romantic, like that church back

there," she said gently. "When I looked at the murals on the ceiling, I saw

your work in them, your colors and your skill. And your excess."

"Ahh! Well, I'll make them think of better words than that with the Belinda

paintings."

She laughed the softest, most delighted laugh. Her arm tightened around me.

"Make me immortal, Jeremy."

"Yes, darling dear. But you have things to do yourself, you know, you have

films to make, roles to play."

"When you show the pictures, you should be really sure, really sure-" she

said, suddenly serious. "It's easy in a place like this to be carried away."

"Yes, you've told me that. But isn't it why we came here?" I asked. I stopped

and took her face in my hands and kissed her.

"You know you'll do it now, don't you?" she asked. "No doubts at all

anymore."

"Haven't been for a long time. But if we don't wait that full year until your

eighteenth birthday-"

Her eyes clouded. She frowned, closed her eyes, opened her mouth to be

kissed. Ah, heat and softness.

"You know, you've changed towards me," she said.

"No, honey, no, I haven't," I protested.

"No, I don't mean for the bad," she assured me. "I mean, you hardly ever

talked to me like this before."

It was true. I didn't say so, but I knew it.

"Why did you leave here, Jeremy? Why did you let the house stay the way it

was all these years?"

We went on walking hand in hand. And then I started to tell her. The Big

Secret. The whole thing.

I told her about writing the last two books for Mother, I told her about

those heady days the last spring of Mother's life when Crimson Mardi Gras was

made into a movie and I had gone out to Hollywood in Mother's place for the

premiere.

"It was so strange, you know, knowing I wrote it and no one else even

guessing. And the party afterwards, I mean not the big one at Chasen's but

the little one at Alex Clementine's house, with Alex taking me up to all

those people and introducing me. They would look right through me, thinking

just for one split second before they turned away, how nice, her son."

She was staring at me silently.

"Alex didn't know then. But she told him later, when he came down to visit

her, and he's known all these years. But it wasn't Crimson Mardi Gras that

drove me away. It was what happened after, when they read Mother's will.

She'd left her name to me. She fully expected me to go on using it. She

expected me to write Cynthia Walker novels forever. She did not see why her

death should be made known. And in the event it did become public knowledge I

was to say the novels had been found in filing cabinets, that they were all

finished by her before the final illness, that kind of thing-"

"That's ugly," Belinda said.

I stopped, startled by her word.

"Oh, she meant it with the best intentions. She thought I could use the

money. She wanted me to have it. She'd even made arrangements with the

publisher, gotten me guarantees. Her editors knew all about it. She'd exacted

promises. It was really for me she did it. She didn't know anything about

painting. I guess she'd thought I'd be broke all my life."

"So that's what all the little girls in your paintings are running from," she

whispered. "And we're in the old house they can never escape."

"Are we?" I asked her. "I don't think that's true now, do you?"

We had come to the riverfront, and we were walking slowly over the deserted

railroad tracks to the empty wharf. Evening stillness. Thump of juke box from

a darkened barroom doorway. Smell of hemp.

My heart was tripping. I tightened my grip on her hand as we neared the edge

of the wharf right over the river.

"I don't believe she meant well," Belinda said to me gently. She was watching

me, almost with alarm. "I think she wanted to be immortal, no matter what it

meant to you."

"No, honest. She just never thought I'd do much on my own. She was always

frightened for me. And I was a dreamer, you know, one of those really

absentminded kids."

"It was annihilating what she did." Touch of protective anger. Flame in her

cheeks.

The breeze came strong across the broad expanse of brown water. It lifted the

curling edges of her hair.

"You are so lovely," I said to her.

"You didn't write any more of the books, did you?"

"No, of course not," I said. "But, you know, it all happened because of her

in the end really."

"How so?"

"Because when her editor came out to San Francisco to argue with me-you know,

to get me to reconsider-well, she saw the Sleeping Beauty canvases. And she

offered me a contract for a children's book on the spot. I'd never even

thought about a children's book. I just wanted to be a painter, a weird,

crazy, unclassifiable painter. And there it was in all the windows on Fifth

Avenue by the end of the year."

Just a trace of a bitter smile crossed her face. Something fragile in her

expression.

"We're well matched, aren't we?" she said. And the smile turned to full

bitterness, the worst bitterness I'd ever seen in her until now.

She turned and looked off to the far side of the river, at the great steel

gray ship that was gliding south, the wind carrying away all sound.

"How so, baby darling?" I asked her. I felt a strange intensity, as if a

light had touched something deep within me.

"We keep their secrets," she said, watching the progress of the ship. "And we

pay the price." Her eyes flashed on me with uncommon vibrancy. "I hope you

show the paintings, Jeremy! But don't you let me push you into it. I'm

warning you. Don't you let me hurt you. You do it when it's right for you."

I was watching her, and the feeling of closeness to her I knew at this moment

was greater than any I'd ever known. It was everything. It was everything to

live for and die for. And I found myself thinking, as if I had forever to do

it, how truly beautiful she was. Youth itself had always seemed so

irresistible in her that she could have been homely and still beautiful-but

she wasn't homely; she was as beautiful as Bonnie in her own way.
[29]

I worked until four a.m. That's how to fool the nightmare-paint, not sleep,

at the usual time that it comes. I sketched Belinda standing on the wharf,

her back to the river. I got the wind in her hair. I got the white shoes

she'd been wearing and the little seersucker jacket and skirt. I got the bit

of cotton lace at her neck. I did not try to remember the details. I just

looked up and made the photograph of her appear in the air. I told my hand

"Do it!" And by four o'clock she was standing on the edge of the wharf

looking at me, and the river was a great flood of dark brown behind her

beneath the charcoal sky, and she was saying, "Don't you let me hurt you."

"Don't you let me hurt you."

I lay back exhausted on the cot, Mother's clocks chiming, one after another.

The insects circled the naked bulb beyond the screen door.

I saw it all clearly from the nightgown picture on the carousel horse to this

figure standing on the edge of the river: twelve paintings from child to

woman. The nudity was no longer important. She could have her clothes now.

Four thirty.

I got up, began working again, filling in the brown that was the river, the

charcoal gray that was the sky.

When the sun came shafting through the green leaves, she was glowing against

the river, and the great sweeps of darkness behind her seemed menacing in the

way the dolls and the toys and the wallpaper and the Holy Communion veil had

never never been.

Miss Annie brought me coffee. The traffic was roaring along the avenue. "Turn

on the cool air, Mr. Walker," said Miss Annie. She went round the room,

reaching carefully behind each canvas, to shut the glass windows, and then

the silence came in a flood of coldness. And I wiped the sweat off my

forehead with the back of my hand.

Now that's one way to fox a nightmare, I thought, staring at the picture.

Outside in the tall grass Belinda sat in one of the wrought iron chairs

writing in her new diary.

"Come here and see this," I said.

The next night the nightmare came again. I found myself staring at the clock.

I was thinking I locked the attic and the darkroom doors instinctively when I

knocked off work. I locked up everything.

"Since you tracked her to my doorstep, why shouldn't Daryl do it?"

"Well, let's just say I have connections Daryl doesn't have."

"Like what?"

What connections? How did he get in?

Had he jimmied a window? What window? I'd checked them all again before I

left San Francisco. Every lock in place and no scratch marks.

Paintings in the attic, she said she knew. How? But the negatives in the

darkroom, that was still the toughest. Good Lord, what did he do, examine

everything with a magnifying glass? "Where are you, baby darling?"

"In Carmel."

"I want to come get you."

"No, not tonight. Promise me not tonight."

In the white envelope marked A and M for Artist and Model. Nothing more on it

than that. A and M. In the manila folder marked B. She'd been standing there

with me in the darkroom. I'd been showing her how I did it. Filed everything.

A for the Angelica photographs. B for Belinda. How did he find it? I mean her

detective, whoever it was, whoever the stranger was who came into my house.

She was a stranger.

"Promise me you'll wait until morning."

Black limousine out there at the curb, one, two, three hours. "-before my

daughter comes along."

Her face across the breakfast table in Carmel, her eyes when I said, Your

mother came to see me. Her eyes. Not a flicker.

I got up, half asleep, went down to the back porch studio and started to

work. Her face was perfect.

"Don't you let me hurt you."

"I would have never let them hurt you, Jeremy." Was that what she had said to

me in Carmel?

I'm not that drunken woman, honey, that grand overblown Hollywood cliché of a

woman, you don't have to take care of me, I will take care of us both.

The next night it came sooner. Three a.m.

Saint Charles Avenue like a stage set down there. Streetlamps in the heavy

lace of the tree branches. Rain turning the flagstones out front purple under

the light.

"I want to talk to you before my daughter comes along."

The limo was parked right in front of the damned house for three hours.

Belinda would have seen it if Belinda had not-

"-stranger."

I went down to the library and turned on the TV. Not a chance she could hear

it upstairs over the air conditioner. Some old black-and-white film was what

I needed. And there was a good one, too, with Cary Grant talking very fast

and saying wonderfully clever things. Lovely patterns of light and shadow.

Before I'd left the house in San Francisco, I'd checked the spare keys. Still

in the spice jar. Jar dusty. How clever was the son of a bitch?

Early in the morning before I'd left to go downtown and read that paperback

bio of Bonnie in the Saint Francis Hotel, she had come down and asked me to

run away, no, begged me.

"Promise me you won't come down to Carmel tonight."

Nobody broke into that house! You know it! Nobody picked that dead bolt on

the darkroom door!

My head was pounding. The people on the television screen were chattering.

Slick black hair of Cary Grant like the slick black hair of Alex Clementine.

"People don't want the truth, they want lies. They think they want the truth

but they want lies." I shut off the TV. I went upstairs.

She was sound asleep. Light from the hall on her face. I shook her.
Shook her again. Her eyes opened. "You did it, didn't you?"

"What?"

"You called her! You gave her the negatives!"

"What?"

She sat up, shrank back against the pillow. The sheet was covering her

breasts, as if she was hiding from me.

"It had to be you," I said. "Nobody could have found them but you, gotten

into the darkroom but you. The keys were in the spice jar, and nobody knew

they were there but you. You did it!"

She was shaking. Her mouth was open. Not a sound coming out. She moved across

the bed away from me.

"You did it. You told your mother where you were!"

Her face was white with fear. My voice was rising over the air conditioner.

"You did it. Answer me."

"I did it for you, Jeremy!" Her lips were quivering. Tears, yes, tears, of

course, streaming down her face, her arms thrown up to cover her breasts

under the pajama top.

"For me! Oh, my God!"

"You wouldn't stop worrying! You wouldn't stop asking! You wouldn't stop

feeling guilty, damn it! You wouldn't just trust me!" Pillows filling off the

bed, her heels dug into the rumpled counterpane. "You went into my things and

found out who I was!"

"Oh, my God, you really did it. You really did. You called her and you got

her to come up there and do this to me!"

She was sobbing as she got out of the bed and backed into the French door.

"Goddamn you, how could you do that!" I came around the bed towards her. She

screamed when I grabbed her arm.

"Jeremy, let me go!"

"I didn't care about you and that man, her husband. I didn't care about

anything she said. I just wanted to protect you! And you pulled this one on

me-that woman in that room and those negatives, you did this to me!"

"Stop it!" She was screaming loud enough for them to hear her outside.

She was shrieking. She was scratching at my fingers, trying to get loose.

"How could you do it!" I was shaking her, shaking her.

"Stop it, stop it!"

"Get away from me then," I said. I shoved her against the dresser. Clatter of

bottles. Something spilled, something broken on the marble. She stumbled, as

if she was going to fall. Her hair was covering her face and a low choking

sound was coming out of her, as if she couldn't breath. "Get away from me!"

She ran around the foot of the bed and past me into the hallway. Then she

stopped at the head of the stairs. She was crying uncontrollably. I watched

her slide down till she was sitting on the top step. She went to the side,

curling up against the wall. Her crying echoed down the long hall, like a

ghost crying in a haunted house.

I stood there helpless looking at her. The sound of the air conditioner was

like a whine, an ugly grating whine. My body felt hot and shaky and the

inevitable headache had started pounding inside my skull. I wanted to move,

to say something. I could feel my mouth working, nothing coming out.

She was crying and crying.

I saw her getting up, steadying herself, her shoulders bent, hair fallen away

from the nape of her neck.

"No, don't come back in here, don't come near me!"

"Oh, God," she said, the tears just spilling off her cheeks.

"I don't care who started it... whose fault it was, I don't ever want to see

her again."

"Keep away from me!"

But she kept coming towards me.

"Jeremy," she whispered. "Jeremy, please!"

I saw my hand go out, heard it hit the side of her face, saw her swing

towards the doorframe.

"Damn you, damn you, damn you!" I slapped her again. She was screaming. She

almost fell, and I grabbed her arm with my left hand, hit her again with my

right. "How could you lie to me like that, how could you! How could you play

a trick like that on me, how could you!" Miss Annie's voice came from the

stairwell, "Mr. Walker!"

Belinda tried to pull away. The back of her head hit the wallpaper in the

hallway. She turned around as if she were trying to go through the wall

itself.

"Look at me!" I was screaming. "Answer me!" She turned and kicked at me with

her bare foot.

"Let me go," she sobbed.

"Liar, liar. To do that to me. I would have done anything for you, gone to

the ends of the earth for you, all I asked you was to tell me the truth!"

I had slapped her again. She was going down on her knees, and Miss Annie had

a hold of my right arm.

"Mr. Walker, stop it." This tiny bit of a woman in a white bathrobe trying to

hold onto my fist.

"Let go of me!"

"Mr. Walker, you'll kill her. Mr. Walker, she's just a child!"

I turned and doubled my fist and slammed it into the doorframe. I slammed it

into the plaster. Saw the plaster give under the wallpaper. A great gaping

hole broke in the pattern of leaves and roses. Stench of rottenness. Of rain

and rats and rottenness.

Miss Annie was saying, "Come on, dear, come on," to her. I could hear their

footsteps. Belinda gasping.

I hit the doorframe again. Saw the smear of blood on the lacquer. Then, thank

God, I heard the lock on her door turn.
[30]

Five days after she left, the notebook came in the mail.

I had tried to talk to her after the fight. But it had been ghastly, going

into that room, trying to tell her I was sorry, so sorry, and the words

sticking in my throat. There had been bruises on her face, on her shoulders,

and her tender naked arms. I had said: "We'll work it out somehow, we'll talk

about it. This can not be the end of it, not for us." And from her nothing

but the silence. The same old silence and her eyes like the eyes of a dead

person staring past me, at the leaves of the trees against the glass.

In the middle of the night she had left. I had stayed awake as long as I

could, pacing back and forth, with only Miss Annie now and then coming to

say, yes, she was all right. The truth was, I'd been afraid that if she

started to leave, I wouldn't be able to stop her, that I would watch her go,

unable to bring myself to say or do anything at all.

But I had stayed awake as long as I could.

I did not even remember lying down on the bed, only that when I awoke at

three, it was no nightmare that woke me. And she was gone. The closets were

empty, all of her things gone. The rain was coming in the open windows onto

the floor of her room.

Through the entire house I searched for some note from her, but there was

nothing. And only later that morning did I find the tape of Final Score on

the marble top bedside table in my room.

She must have come in while I was sleeping and put it right beside me. If

only I had awakened then.

Then five days later, after I had called Bonnie and called that damned son of

a bitch Moreschi and called Alex and called George Gallagher in New York, the

notebook came in the mail.

I was sitting on the settee in Mother's room and I was thinking how hideously

old everything was, how beyond restoration. The rain was blowing right into

the room through the French doors to the porch. Bonnie's private number was

now disconnected. What the hell did I want of him? Moreschi had said, she was

on her own, she'd always been. No, no detectives anymore. George had promised

to call me if he heard from her. Alex kept begging me to tell him where I was

and I wouldn't. Didn't want anyone to come now. Just wanted to sit here in

the ruined room in the ruined house and listen to the rain fall.

Cold the breeze already in late September. And why had she left me Final

Score? What had been the meaning? How had she looked at me when she laid the

tape on the bedside table? Had there been hatred in her eyes then, too?

Three dozen times I'd watched the tape. I knew every movement, every word of

dialogue, every angle of her face.

That and the rain falling were my only interests. And now and then the Scotch

in the glass.

Then Miss Annie came up the stairs with a flat brown package. A messenger

service had brought it. She had signed the receipt. There was no return

address on it, no name to indicate the sender. But I knew her writing

instantly from those old notes: "Came, went-Belinda."

And I had torn it open to find the notebook with its fifty ruled pages full

of that small, careful writing. And on the front label the words that struck

the deepest pain:

FOR JEREMY, THE WHOLE STORY, WITH LOVE.

AND INTRODUCING BELINDA

Well, first off this is no sob story about Mother. I mean, about growing up

with her drinking and her pill taking and her general craziness and all the

things she did or did not do. I am not ready to lie down on a shrink's couch

and say this was all bad.

The truth was, I had a ball. I traveled all over Europe with Mom, I was doing

bits in her pictures even before I can remember. And I'm glad that it was the

Dorchester in London or the Bristol in Vienna, or the Grande Bretagne in

Athens rather than a tract home in Orinda, California. I can't say that I am

not.

And I'm glad it wasn't Hockaday private school or Hollywood High instead of

the college kids that traveled with us too. I loved those kids, and they came

from all over the world and they had terrific energy. And they gave me more

than any school ever could.

I mean, it was no picnic cleaning up vomit off the floor or calling a hotel

doctor at four in the morning or getting in between Mom and Leonardo Gallo

when he was pouring whiskey down her throat trying to make her go from crazy

drunk to passed out. It was no fun dealing with her moods and her rages. But

Mom, for all her problems, is a generous person. She gave me everything I

ever asked for, everything I could ever use.

But to understand what happened here, Jeremy, you have to understand

something about Mom. For Mom there really isn't anybody else but Mom.

She tried to kill herself at least five times that I know of, and two of

those times, if she had succeeded, she would have killed me, too. The first

time was when she turned on the gas in the guest house on the ranch in Texas.

I was playing on the floor. She came in and sort of passed out on the bed.

The second time was when she tried to drive us over a cliff on Saint Esprit.

The first time I didn't react much. I was too little. My uncle Daryl came,

turned off the stove, and got us out of there. I understood what happened

because I heard what everybody said afterwards, about her being depressed and

about her having to be watched. And several times Uncle Daryl said: "And

Belinda, Belinda was in there, too." I guess I filed it away somewhere to

understand later.

But on Saint Esprit I got furious after it happened. I mean, Mother would

have driven us both over the cliff.

But Mother never saw that aspect of it. She never said one word about me

being in danger. She even asked me later, "Why did you stop me? Why did you

grab the wheel?"

When you see that side of Mother, you see craziness. I have seen it many

times.

When she broke up with Leonardo Gallo, I had been in school, in Switzerland,

for maybe a couple of weeks. They called from the hospital. Mom had taken an

overdose but she was OK, and she wanted me to come. It was four o'clock in

the morning and she had them wake me up and take me to the airport. And when

I got to Rome, she was gone. She had checked out that morning and gone on to

Florence because her old Texas friend Trish had come to get her. I didn't

even know where they had gone for two days.

I was going crazy, all alone in the flat in Rome, with Gallo calling every

hour and the reporters banging on the door.

But most of all I was embarrassed. I was embarrassed when the school called

and the neighbors came over. I was embarrassed that I was there all alone.

When Mom finally called, all she kept saying was, "Belinda, it was important

that I not see Leonardo, you know the way I feel."

I never forgot that, being embarrassed and bullshitting all those grownups,

trying to make them think somebody was taking care of me.

And I remember Mother said: "Belinda, I feel so much better. Trish and Jill

are taking care of me. Everything's fine, don't you see?"

Well, I could see all right. And even by that age, really, I knew not to

argue with Mom. Arguing only confused her. It hurt her. If you pushed Mom

hard enough on any subject, she would start crying uncontrollably and talking

about her own mother's death, how when she was seven, she had buried her

mother, and she should have died, too, right then. Her mother had died of an

alcoholic seizure, alone in a big mansion in Highland Park. Once Mom started

on that, there was no arguing or talking or anything. You just had to hold

her hand and wait it out.

Yet there were times when I lost my temper. I screamed at Mom about things.

But she would just stare at me with her large brown eyes, as if I were the

crazy one. And afterwards, well, I'd feel stupid for forgetting that Mom

couldn't ever really see what was going on herself.

She wouldn't hear of me going back to school after that. So my one and only

two-week try at school was over.

But from that day on, I made sure I always had money. I had a couple of grand

in traveler's checks always in my purse. I'd hide cash in places, too. I

never wanted to be broke and alone again like that.

When I finally ran away last year, I had maybe six grand with me. And I still

have some of that money, as well as money my Dad gave me later and money you

gave me, too. I hoard money. In the night I go to look and see if it's there.

Clothes, jewelry, the things money can buy, they don't mean that much to me,

I think you know that. But I have to have the money itself just in case.

But I don't want to jump ahead. And I want to say again that I wasn't

miserable as a kid. I guess there was just too much excitement, too many good

things happened, and during the early years Mom was always a very physically

affectionate person, very warm. Later her warmth came to seem rather

impersonal to me and even grasping. But not when I was little. Guess I needed

it too much.

Even when we settled on Saint Esprit, things were good. Lots of people came

to visit-Blair Sackwell of Midnight Mink, who is an absolutely wonderful

friend of mine, and Gallo, and Flambeaux, Mom's first real lover, and actors

and actresses from all over Europe.

And I was always taking off on shopping trips to Athens and Rome and Paris

with either Trish or Jill. Mom had the stables especially built for the

horses she bought me. She had a riding instructor come to live there, and I

had this very good English girl as a teacher and companion, the one who

really got me into reading. And I went on ski trips and tours to Egypt and

Israel and a couple of students from Southern Methodist came over to tutor

for a while. We had a ball on Saint Esprit. Pretty good for a prison, I have

to admit.

When Trish found out I was going to bed with this Arab kid in Paris, this

Saudi prince, I guess he was, the first affair I ever really had, she didn't

get angry or upset. She just took me to a doctor to get the pill and told me

to be really careful, and our talk about sex after that was just pure Texas

and pure Trish.

"You know, be careful and all, I mean not just about getting pregnant, but,

you know, sort of, you should like the boy and all (giggle, giggle). You

know, just don't (giggle) hop right in the sack."

Then she told me all about when she and Mom were thirteen and they went to

bed with these boys from Texas A&M, and they didn't have any birth control,

so afterwards they ran to the drugstore and got hot Seven-Ups and shook them

and then squirted them inside to wash everything away. What a mess! We almost

died laughing. "But, honey, don't get pregnant," she said.

I think you have to know Texas women to understand this, I mean girls who

grew up like my Mom and Trish and Jill. Somewhere way back in the family

there had been hard-shell Bible-reading Baptists, but by the time of Mom's

parents the code was a very simple: One of work hard, make money, don't get

caught going too far with the boyfriend, and keep everything looking nice. I

mean the Dallasires I met were never weighed down by any tradition. They were

materialistic and practical, and how things looked-well, you cannot

overemphasize the importance of this. It is Texas religion.

I mean Trish and Jill and Mom were all wild in high school, as they called

it, but they dressed beautifully and they talked nice and they had loads of

money and they drank only in private so that was all fine. Even Mom's mom had

never taken a drink outside her own home. She died in a silk negligee and

silk slippers. Mom was always saying things like, "She was not a flousy, you

understand, she never went to barrooms, not my mother, none of that kind of

thing." Appearances mattered, not sin.

And this, you see, is the freedom that I inherited, the way that I grew up,

too. And Mom was a superstar before I was born. So the ordinary rules never

applied to her. And I did not learn guilt about my body at all.

But to get back to the record, on Saint Esprit Trish and Jill took care of

everything, but they could put the beer away as well as Mother, and sometimes

it seemed I never went to sleep without hearing those drunken Texas voices

and the laughing and the carrying-on.

But underneath it all there was a sense of Mother deteriorating. Of Mother

getting further and further away from what Mother really wanted, which was to

be a big star again.

The advertisements she did made her feel better. And then there was that

fantastic Eric Arlington poster that sold all over the world. That was

something, OK, but there was a lot of Trish and Jill catering to Mom, to her

vanity and her fear. Of them sneering at the new movies they watched that

didn't have Mom in them, of proving to themselves over and over by watching

this or that new actress that nobody was as good as Mom. I mean, they acted

like something big was going on if they watched a movie by a director that

Mom had once turned down. I mean, nothing was happening but talk and drinking

and laughing, that's all.

And though they did watch Mom and make her eat and go to bed early, they

never told Mom the truth about a single thing. They were allies, that's what

they were right up till the end. And Mom needed something more than that if

she was ever to make her comeback, as you'll see.

Sometimes I got unnerved by it, the sense of Mom sinking, and I had to do

something. I bought a Vespa on Rhodes when I was twelve and brought it home

on the boat with me. And I rode all over the island at fifty-five miles an

hour on that little thing, thinking mad thoughts about the craziness of it,

that we were all trapped on Saint Esprit like in a French play.

When Blair Sackwell came to visit, he was really worried about me and he

jumped on the Vespa with me, complete with his Midnight Mink lined coat, and

we drove off together to the ruins of the temple of Athena, which is all

overgrown with grass now and neglected, and Blair tried to comfort me and

tell me I was just young and Saint Esprit couldn't last forever. Some day I'd

get away. Blair was a real buddy, but I was getting very sick of Saint

Esprit, feeling almost like running away.

Well, all this ended the day that Susan Jeremiah came. I know you know all

about her now, because you told me you did in Carmel. And I'm sure you

noticed the posters of her in my room.

Well, Susan and her film crew made an unauthorized landing on Saint Esprit,

which hundreds of people have done. But when Susan said she was from Texas,

Mom said, come right in.

Susan wasn't like any other woman I'd ever met before, and understand I'd

known actresses from all over the place since I was born.

Susan took my breath away. When I first saw her, I figured the cowboy boots

and the hat had to be an affectation. After all, we came from Dallas. I was

born in Dallas. We went back to Uncle Daryl's ranch all the time. And we

never dressed like that.

But it became obvious within twenty-four hours that these were Susan's

clothes. Susan went through sand and surf and high grass and up mountain

paths in her boots. She wore jeans and shirts only. She didn't even have a

dress.

When we finally went to Cannes months later, I kept thinking now Susan has to

get in female drag. But it didn't happen. Susan wore a rodeo outfit, I mean

strictly "Rhinestone Cowboy," with the satin shirt and pants and piping all

over, and she was a smash. Susan is not what you call conventionally

beautiful. But she is very good looking in her own way.

I mean, she is tall and narrow, and she has something of what I would call a

Texas country look to her, with her cheekbones close together and her eyes

deep-set. Her hair is short, but it's curly and full and it looks like

somebody worked on it getting it nicely shaped, but nobody ever did.

Susan leaves other people breathless, too. And she has a way with the press

which I found sensational. She looks right at the reporters and says, "I know

what you're driving at," like she is on their side and then she sticks up for

herself.

OK. That was the looks and the manner. But what was inside was even more

surprising. Susan believed she could do anything. Nothing could stop Susan.

There was maybe a second and a half between her deciding that she wanted

something and reaching out her hand to get it for herself.

As soon as she got to Saint Esprit she just sat down opposite Mom on the

terrace and she started describing her movie to Mom and what she needed to

finish it-and was Mom interested, and did Mom want to help a woman director

from Texas and all that?

She was going to make a big picture in Brazil afterwards, and she was going

to make a picture after that somewhere in Appalachia, and all these films she

was writing and directing herself.

She had plenty of money from her daddy in Texas, but she was over budget. Her

dad had sunk eight hundred thou into the flick and he wouldn't give her a

nickel more.

Well, Mother, as you probably know if you read the magazines, gave Susan a

blank check. Mother took on Final Score for a percentage, and Mother got the

film invited to Cannes.

And even before we left the terrace that first morning, Mother got me in the

picture just by pointing me out to Susan and saying, "Hey, put Belinda in it

somewhere if you can. Isn't she pretty? She is just real pretty, don't you

think?"

Mom had gotten me into movies all over Europe in just that way. "Hey, put

Belinda in this scene," she'd say, right when we were shooting. And I had

always loved it. But it never occurred to Mom to ask anybody to give me a

credit on a movie. So I'm in twenty-two films with no credit. And in some of

them I talk and I act, and in one I even get shot to death. No credit.

That is, until Final Score.

Susan took one look at me and decided she would use me. And overnight the

part started to grow in Susan's head. She woke me up at four in the morning

to ask me if I could speak Greek. Yes, I could, I told her, but I had an

accent. OK. Few words. Then the next morning we started shooting on the

beach.

Now understand I'd worked with all kinds of film crews but Susan's working

methods were a revelation to me. The entire crew was five people and Susan

herself got behind the camera. And she edited in her head as we shot so that

not much would have to be cut away. I mean, it was very deliberate,

everything that she did. And nobody had a script either. Susan just explained

things to us before every take.

When we got to the little house and Sandy Miller and I got into bed together,

I think the love scene really upset Sandy. She and Susan were lovers though I

didn't know it then. But Sandy wants to be a great actress, and Susan said

this was an important scene and Sandy had to play it and there couldn't be

any cheating, and Sandy did what Susan said.

I didn't actually make love to Sandy, I don't know if you noticed that. It

was Sandy making love to me. And Sandy is gorgeous, if you didn't notice.

Sandy makes you understand why men used to call women tomatoes. She is like a

big tomato. And frankly not a whole lot like anything else.

Later in Rome, however, I did make love to a woman, and it was Susan, of

course. And that was pretty wild for me. But Sandy and Susan turned out to be

inseparable really. And Susan had a hard time making Sandy overlook what

happened. And, of course, I hadn't known at all that they were lovers and I

was mad at Susan for a while.

But Susan and I only did it once. If you can call an entire afternoon once.

Susan was in bed in the flat in Rome smoking a cigarette and I came in and

sat on the bed by her. And then I saw that she was undressed. She kicked the

sheet off her and she sat there smoking her cigarette and just looking at me.

And I came closer and closer and then I reached out to touch her and she

didn't do anything and I slipped my hand down between her legs.

This was like touching a flame and not being burned. And I did it. And then I

kissed her breasts. I think it was very important to me to do it, after just

lying there with Sandy, and the truth was, I could have been Susan's lover,

at least for a while.

But it never happened after that on account of Sandy, and the truth is, I

didn't have to sleep with Susan to love her. We stayed the best of friends.

We got a Vespa, like the one I'd left at home, and we went everywhere on it

together. We went as far south as Pompeii riding all night.

Sandy is not the kind of woman to take off on a Vespa. I mean, Sandy would

not want to get her hair messed up. But she accepted me as long as there was

no sex anymore.

Sandy is like Mother actually. She is not only passive, she has almost no

language of her own. I could see that Susan not only did all the talking, she

did the expressing of ideas for Sandy. Sandy was one of those people like

Mother who can not think well on her own. I don't mean Sandy is dumb. She is

not. But I have met many Sandys. Susan was the new thing to me.

But it really didn't dawn on me until the picture was entered at Cannes that

Susan regarded me as something new, too. She saw me as her personal

discovery, and she wanted me for other pictures. Frankly I was so enthralled

with Susan that I didn't think much about how Susan saw me. There was always

that feeling of lightness and speed with Susan, like we had put on the five-

league boots of the fairy, tales when we were together.

Next time I had that feeling it was with you. When you are painting, you are

like Susan was in the editing room, you are just focused on that and no one

can distract you, but when you stop painting, there is a light feeling about

you as if you are very young and you don't care what anybody thinks of you,

and we could just walk and talk on the beach or go anywhere and it didn't

matter, just as long as you got back to the canvas at some point.

Now Mother is the very opposite. Mother is as professional an actress or

movie person as I have ever seen. I mean, everybody who has ever worked with

Mother loves her because she is just really perfect on the set and nothing

stops her from doing her job. She can repeat lines perfectly on cue, she can

find her mark always, she can go into a retake in exactly the right attitude

each time. She may be drunk and crazy by seven in the evening, but somehow

she manages to shut down before midnight. She is always on time.

But Mother has always been somebody's ticket to ride. Mother is as helpless

as she is valuable. You have to write the part for her, shine the light on

her, tell her what to do. She's no good without somebody else's energy at

all.

Well, Susan wasn't just a director. She was the producer, the writer, the

financier. She edited in twelve-hour stretches at Cinecittá with me watching

her, she set up places for us to shoot more footage and blend it in. Then she

was on top of the cinematographer in the lab getting the prints just perfect.

She put her own money into making four terrific prints. And the sound track,

that was almost entirely Susan, because we did not have a good sound

engineer.

When we talked about the next film, the Brazilian film, she wanted input. She

didn't need the total passivity of Sandy either. She could use you no matter

what way you were. She is sort of omnivorous. She consumes everything. And I

never made up my mind about the degree of ego in Susan. Is it possible to

have so much faith in yourself that you have no ego at all?

When I came back from Rome to Saint Esprit, I told Mother all about the

Brazil picture Susan wanted to make, and Mother said all that was just fine

but somebody ought to go to Brazil with me to look after me but sure it was

OK with her. She also said with a little bit of a sneer that if Susan didn't

find a distributor at Cannes, Susan was dead.

OK. Susan understood that, of course. That is what Cannes was about. It

wasn't just winning the awards or having fun at the Carlton, it was getting

the distributors to take the picture both in Europe and the United States.

And Mother said she would go to Cannes and she would hold a press conference

with Susan and she'd do what she could to launch the film.

Well, Mother had not been off Saint Esprit since I was twelve years old. I

was thrilled. This meant everything to Susan, and maybe with Mother backing

us and me being Mother's daughter we could at least get an independent

distributor in the States. Susan didn't think the film had enough

conventional impact for the studios to touch it, but an independent

distributor, that would be just fine.

The Brazil picture, that would be the big time. Sandy would play an American

journalist in Brazil sent there to write travel articles about the beaches

and the bikinis, and I'd be a prostitute that Sandy met, a white slave

shipped there by a big-time crime ring, and Sandy would be determined to save

me and get me out of Brazil. Of course, my pimp would be this big-time

gangster and Susan had a guy to die for to play the part, I'm telling you,

and he would really love me and all, sort of, I mean, Susan wanted things

complicated the way they are in Final Score.

Susan can not stand to have things black and white. Susan feels that if you

have a villain in a movie, then you have failed somewhere.

Anyway Final Score would be the debut film and then Of Will and Shame would

be the breakout film. And Susan started writing press releases about us and

about Cannes and sending them back to the United States.

My happiest memories of Saint Esprit are those last few days. Well, while we

were shooting the movie earlier, that too, I guess. But for some reason those

last few days are more vivid, things are better in focus for me, and I really

knew Susan and Sandy by then.

Nothing yet had changed with Mother and Jill and Trish. They were still

having the never-ending sorority girl beer bust on the terrace, and Susan was

in her room with the door open and all the lights on typing away on her

portable computer making up these press releases and then printing them out

on her little thermal-paper printer and sticking them into envelopes and

sealing them up.

I don't know what I was doing. Maybe brushing my hair and trying to be a

white slave prostitute in the mirror, trying to figure out how to project the

sensuality Susan wanted, I don't know, just grooving on the energy in the

house, the sense of people having a good time, of there being these areas of

light and happiness between which I could navigate. And, above all, the sense

that we were going, we were leaving Saint Esprit for Cannes and then Brazil

after that-and me on my own down there with Susan and Sandy. Oh, I couldn't

wait to get to Brazil. Well, let me tell you, Jeremy. I never got to Brazil.

OK. So Mother was going to get the cameras on us at Cannes. But Mother was

three sheets to the wind when she said all this. And about two weeks before

we were to leave for the festival, things began to happen, and it began to

hit Mother that she was going to Cannes.

First off Gallo, her old lover and most-admiring director, sent a telegram,

then her old European agent wrote, then Blair Sackwell, who'd started his

whole Midnight Mink campaign years ago with Mother, sent his usual white

roses and a note saying, "See you at Cannes." (By the way Blair knows that

white roses meant funerals to most people, but Blair just doesn't care; white

flowers are his signature and they are just fine.) Then a couple of Paris

magazines called to confirm that Mom was going, and finally the festival

people themselves called, wanting to know, was it true Bonnie was coming out

of hiding? Would she make an appearance? There were strong indications they

wanted to give Mother some special tribute, show one of her old Nouvelle

Vague films.

And somehow or other it got through to Mother: she was supposed to go to

Cannes.

I mean, one minute we had Mom snoozing and drinking as usual. And the next we

were pouring all the booze down the drain. Mother had to have vitamin shots,

a masseuse had to be flown in, there couldn't be anything but protein on the

table, Mother was going swimming three times a day.

Next a hairdresser had to be found and sent to the Carlton ahead of time. Now

my dad used to be my mother's hairdresser, because that is what he is by

profession, a very famous hairdresser, known to all the world as G.G., but

they had had a fight two years before I went to Saint Esprit, for which I

blamed myself. It is a long story, but the important thing is that Mom did

not now have a hairdresser and this is a very big thing to an actress like

Mom. I will tell you more about my dad later, but for now let me say this was

a crisis. And also Mom had to have new clothes.

When we finally checked into the hotel in Paris, she wanted me with her every

minute. Trish and Jill just weren't enough. She wasn't eating anything now.

She was half crazy. She'd wake me up at three and make me sit with her so she

wouldn't call room service for a drink. She'd talk about her mother dying and

how, when she was seven and her mother died, all the lights in the world went

out. I'd try to get her off that, talk to her, read to her even. And meantime

we couldn't find a decent hairdresser. As for the clothes, there was no time

to have anything specially made.

Well, all this worked out for Mother finally, but what happened to me

basically is that I couldn't get away from her long enough to get what I

might need. And finally Trish said, "Look, Bonnie, she's got to buy some

things, really," and while Mother was crying and saying she couldn't have me

wandering off now, Trish just shoved me out the door. And there I was,

running all over Paris in one rainy afternoon trying to find some clothes for

Cannes.

I honestly think that by the time we got on the plane Mother had forgotten

why we were going. I don't think she even remembered Susan or Final Score.

She kept telling me over and over that the big American directors would be

there and they were the ones who were important now.

We had booked a big suite on the front of the Carlton with a wonderful view

of the sea and the [bad scan]Croisctt. Uncle Daryl, my mom's brother, whom

you know of, had it filled with flowers, but he needn't have worried because

Gallo sent four-dozen roses and Blair Sackwell sent more white roses and then

there were a dozen arrangements easily from a Marty Moreschi at United

Theatricals, I mean, flowers everywhere that you looked.

I don't think Mother expected all this. Even with the talk of the tribute I

think she had expected to be patted on the head and no more. But as always

happens with Mom, the attention only made her more afraid. Trish and Jill had

to make her eat something and then she couldn't hold it down. The vomiting

started, and I had to be in the bathroom with her till it was over. Then she

tried again.

Finally I told her I had to find Susan. And she told me straight out that she

didn't know how I could think of things like that at a time like this.

I tried to explain Susan was expecting to hear from us, but she was crying by

this time, and that meant her makeup was ruined, and she told Jill that I was

changing towards her, that I wasn't my old self, and Jill said that was her

imagination and that I was not going anywhere, was I?

I didn't know what I would have done then, but Susan came at that moment,

knocking on the door. She looked terrific in her silver satin tasseled shirt

and silver pants, but Mother did not even look at her, she was sick again,

and I took Susan into the bedroom and found out from her that our showing was

tomorrow morning and we'd have a press conference right after and that is

when Mother had to be there.

I told Susan that everything was just going to be fine. Mother was sick right

now, but she'd be OK in the morning, that's how it was with Mother. She was

always on time. As for me, I'd meet her before the screening, but I couldn't

leave right now.

Meantime Trish had taken Mom into her room for her nap. And Uncle Daryl and a

new Hollywood agent named Sally Tracy were having a drink in the parlor of

the suite, and I brought Susan in to meet them.

They smiled at Susan but almost immediately told her very tactfully that they

didn't think Mother would be doing the press conference after all. Lots of

people wanted to see Mother. And the press conference about Susan's movie

just wasn't the kind of exposure that Mother should have. Surely Susan

understood that they have to orchestrate things.

Well, boy, did Susan not understand. Her face went dark as she looked at

these two. And then she turned and looked at me. I said immediately that

whatever the case I'd be at the screening and the press conference as

Bonnie's daughter, and we could get some mileage out of that.

Susan nodded, then she got up, said, Real nice meeting you, Texas-style, to

Daryl and Sally Tracy and she split. As for me, I was in a state of shock,

but not so much that I didn't snap out of it and light into Uncle Daryl.

Didn't he realize why we were here?

But he and Sally Tracy smoothly and almost cheerfully explained to me that

the sort of films that Susan did were not going to find an audience in

America and the smart thing to do was not get any deeper in. I said, Mom owes

Susan, you know that. There isn't any ethical way to back out on Susan. But I

could feel my face getting red.

What I was thinking basically was, this is my film, too, goddamn it, I'm in

it and, damn it, we came here to support it. But what stopped me from arguing

was realizing that this might make me sound just like Mother, as self-

centered as she always was. I was just silent thinking about that, not

wanting to sound like Mother, and then Uncle Daryl took me aside and told me

all kinds of people had been contacting him about Mother. He was sure I

understood.

Then Sally Tracy asked me about Susan's film, if there was a love scene with

me in it and what kind of scene. I told her it was tasteful and it was sort

of revolutionary because it was between two women, and she just shook her

head and said, "I think we have a problem."

I said, "What's the problem?" And then Daryl said I wouldn't be at that press

conference in the morning, no sir. "Like hell," I said.

I was just about to light out for Susan's room when out of the other room of

the suite there came this man. Now this is Marty Moreschi I'm talking about,

but at the time, of course, I didn't know him at all. And let me explain how

he came across.

Marty is not handsome, the way you are. He doesn't have your poise and cool,

and even when he is as old as you are, he will never have your charm. Marty

is self-made and what you call a loud, vulgar New York kid in a lot of ways.

He has rather ordinary features and plain straight black hair. Nothing

particular about him except everything seems particular, especially his deep,

kind of purring voice, coming out of his chest, and his eyes, very brilliant

and feverish eyes.

But like Susan, Marty is very impressive and very sexual, too. He is sinewy

and hard all over, one of those wiry guys who is incredibly strong. And he is

always suntanned black and is always in motion and always talking. So you

respond as much to the way he glides up and takes your hand and to the way he

laughs and says: "Belinda, honey! Bonnie's daughter, well, isn't this

sensational, this is Bonnie's daughter, come here, honey, let me look at

you?" - you respond as much to this as to his looks.

He is very hot. I mean, you feel it with everything. It isn't just sexuality

with Marty, though Marty is practically compulsive on that score, it is that

Marty just takes charge.

He was wearing an exquisite silver gray three-piece suit, and he had gold all

over him-gold watchband, gold rings, gold cuff links, and I have to say that

he looked very good to me, very good. He really has a fine body, really fine.

I mean, the chest and the way the pants fit him, he looked very good right

off.

Anyway, he came gliding out of Mother's room, and he said just what I just

said, and he gave me his immediate lock-on attention, which usually means

attraction, though, of course, it could have been flattery, just flattery. Of

course, Marty swore later that it was not. Whatever the case, he said my

mother was sensational, unbelievable, incredible, unreal, and all that and it

was the thrill of his life to meet her and she was the dream star, the

superstar, the star like they didn't make stars anymore and all that.

And by this time we were sitting on the couch together, and he was asking me

how I'd like to come to LA and see my mother be big again, bigger than

anybody. And he was throwing in all that crap like, "Hey, what's your sign,

no don't tell me, you're a Scorpio, aren't you honey, yes, I knew it,

terrific, you're a Scorpio, honey, and so am I. I am a double Scorpio. And I

knew you were a Scorpio the minute I saw you because you are independent."

And so forth and so on.

It sounds sleazy when I try to describe it, but there was this immense

conviction behind Marty as he poured this on. And he was holding my hand and

I could feel something coming through his hand. I mean, I felt a sort of

overwhelming physical thing for him, and I wondered how many other women felt

this, instantly, just from the touch, the way that I did.

I mean, I looked down at his hand and the way the dark hair was on his wrist,

coming out of the white cuff, and the way the gold watchband was there with

the dark hair. I mean, just this little thing was attractive to me. It was

driving me wild.

I could tell you things about you that made me feel the same way, the way

that you let your hair just grow loose and kind of wild, and the expression

on your face when you look down at me, and the way it feels to sleep against

your chest.

But the thing I am trying to describe here is the way that the attraction got

to me, and short-circuited me, and how unprepared I was for all that.

Marty was meantime tuning in to everybody in the room, saying: "Can't you see

that independence in her, can't you see that, Sally?" and the truth is, he

hardly knew Sally, he had just met her. And: "You don't mind if I smoke, do

you, ladies? Daryl, how about that Scotch now? You think the lady"-and that

was Mother-"would mind if we had a little, what do you think, Daryl?

Sensational!" And then he had his arm around Daryl and Daryl brought over the

glass.

"Listen, honey, you and I have to be good friends," he was saying. "And

you've got to let me make your mother big again in America, I mean big,

sweetheart. Belinda, Belinda, is it? Sensational! Daryl, where'd your sister

get that name for her? Talk to me, sweetheart. What can I do for you while

you're at Cannes? What do you and the lady need? You call me. This is my

number "Blah, blah, blah and all the time his eyes narrow and brilliant like

this is all earthshaking what is happening, then he says he has to blast off.

"So do I," I said. And I headed out the door, and before they could stop me,

I was gone to find Susan while he was still kissing Sally Tracy and shaking

hands and all that.

I thought Susan would be hysterical about Mother backing out. But she wasn't.

We got right into rehearsing for the press conference. And she had already

talked to two Continental distributors. It was a sure thing they'd take the

film in Germany and Holland. And United Theatricals was very interested and,

of course, United Theatricals was one of the biggest distributors worldwide.

That would be dream stuff to get United Theatricals. But she had the inside

track that they wanted it. They had heard the rumor that the film had a good

narrative line.

When I got back to the room, I found out they had sedated Mother because she

couldn't sleep. She was out cold. I went into her room and she was lying

there with all those flowers around her and, I tell you, it looked like a

funeral, this perfect statue of a lady lying there on the satin cover and the

flowers all over the room. She seemed to be scarcely breathing. And it always

scared me to see her drugged like that.

But they were going to show her most famous film at the Palais des Festivals,

and there would be a supper and the tribute afterwards, and United

Theatricals was somehow involved.

Well, that's it, I thought, and Susan's right. We might get United

Theatricals to distribute after all.

The screening of Final Score the next morning was one experience I'll

remember forever, in spite of everything else that went on. I mean, we really

had the audience. You could feel it. And when those scenes came on and I saw

the brand-new me up there-not the kid who had been in Mom's films years and

years agog-well, what can I say? I had never seen the final cut either. And I

was really stunned and grateful for how good Susan had made us all look.

When we got the standing ovation, Susan was holding my hand and Sandy's hand.

And she was squeezing my hand so hard it hurt, and it felt just great at the

same time.

The press conference was in the lobby at the Carlton and right off Susan got

into the sexual issue, that this was a picture by a woman about women and the

sex was clean. The idea was that the woman in the film had a private

experience and it made her see the shallowness of the life in the fast lane

and all that. The Texas band of dope smugglers had risked everything for the

cocaine score. And yet, as they hid out on the island, they realized that

they had no idea what to do with the money. The final dope score wouldn't

change their lives at all. But the interlude between the two women, that had

made for a change in the heroine. And to say it was a gay film would have

limited it. It was about a new kind of woman, who tries a variety of

experiences in life, a woman who had the pressures and freedoms of a man.

From there it went right on to women in film, did women get a fair shake? And

did Susan see herself as an American filmmaker, which of course she did. Her

dope smugglers were Texan Americans. And then Susan threw in the fact that

Bonnie had helped produce the film, and this was one woman helping another,

the way Coppola had once helped his friend Ballard to make the Black

Stallion, and so forth and so on.

That threw the focus right to me. And then the questions started about

Mother's financing. And I tried to keep my voice steady while I explained how

much Mother believed in the film of integrity, like the ones she had made in

the past.

Then it was: Did I feel the love scenes in the film were tasteful and in the

tradition of Mother's films?-and, of course, I said yes. Did I want to make

more films? Yes, definitely. How did I feel about playing in a film that

maybe I wasn't old enough to see in the United States? And Susan stepped in

immediately and explained that no way would the film be Xrated. Had the

reporters just been to the screening? What did they see? Final Score would

get an R-rating, of course. And then she talked about me and Sandy as two of

the most exciting actresses on the current scene.

Then came Sandy's moment, and she probably got as much mileage out of

monosyllabic answers as any beautiful woman ever did. Susan rescued her a

couple of times, and there was a lot more about America and Europe and Texas,

but by that time it was repeating itself.

I'd say even now that it went wonderfully well. Susan was natural and

convincing, and the reporters were never hostile to us. After all, we were

the underdogs at Cannes. Nobody expected us to win anything. Nobody was out

to get us. It was our moment of glory, and everyone was on our side.

Rumors were all over about United Theatricals distributing. But Susan wasn't

going to lose her Continental people. She holed up in the room with the

phones as the talk about United Theatricals brought more and more offers in.

Reporters attacked us when we went out for drinks. We were mobbed with

questions. Did I have any new offers? Would Susan work in Hollywood? We told

everybody about Of Will and Shame, the Brazilian film.

I was floating when I got back to the suite, but something was brewing in me,

too. I was hurt by Mother in a way that I had never been hurt in the past. I

could look back on many terrible things, but no matter what Mother had ever

done to me, Mother had always suffered worse.

But this time Mother had hurt me, and it didn't involve her self-

destructiveness or her carelessness. It involved something else. She hadn't

come to the showing! And that hurt me as bad as her not coming to the press

conference. Mother had not seen my film.

Yet again, when I came into the suite, I didn't flip over it. I couldn't. I

was blocked again by the thought that I would be acting like Mother if I

flipped over it. I'd be drawing attention to myself as Mother always did.

When I walked in, nobody even noticed me. Nobody even knew I was there. The

whole place was in confusion. The showing of Mom's film had turned into a

special evening of clips from all Mom's best. And Leonardo Gallo, who by the

way had made a lot of garbage with Mom, was going to make the address. Well,

he needed that all right. And maybe everyone would remember his younger days

and not the garbage that killed Mom's career.

Anyway Mother was on the couch with Marty, and Marty was making her eat some

cold cuts and some cold fish from a china plate. Mom looked wonderful, she

really did. She looked fragile and just about ageless. And Marty was

absolutely feeding her, putting the bites right into her mouth. And he was

telling her in a hushed voice that television was easier than film. They had

to shoot so many pages in so many days and you never got involved in

extensive rehearsals or retakes. Her kind of professionalism would be

perfect.

Mother was trying to eat. She kept saying that she didn't know if she could

do this television thing, and, of course, I had seen this routine a thousand

times before. I had seen her do it with Gallo on every picture and in Germany

and in Denmark, and each time the director would take over, inspired by her

vulnerability and humility and all that.

So this sexy guy, Marty, is some kind of director, I thought, and it is

television of all things. Well, for a major role in an American film Mom

would have done anything. But for TV? I almost laughed. Poor Marty what-ever

-your-name-is. You better wipe your hands on a napkin and give up.

I went in to shower and change for dinner, and I tried not to think about the

screening, that nobody, not Mom or Uncle Daryl or Trish or Jill had come.

Don't think about it, Belinda, I kept thinking. You had all those strangers

cheering for you. So what if these guys didn't even care? But I was getting

more and more upset and finally crying, and I just let the shower run and

run.

Then Trish was banging on the door. "Hurry, Belinda'." she said. "There's a

press conference in the lobby right now."

Well, the crowd down there was easily five times what it had been for our

conference. There was no comparison at all. Mother had really brought them

out. And the whole thing was to announce that she'd be going back to the

States to work for United Theatricals on a nighttime soap called "Champagne

Flight."

Now if you know anything about movie people, Jeremy, you know that they

really look down on television. You ask Alex Clementine. They disdain it

utterly. So why the hell was this happening at Cannes?

Within seconds the answer was clear. Mom was the American Brigitte Bardot,

Marty was saying, and the American Brigitte Bardot was coming home. On

"Champagne Flight" she would play herself as Bonnie Sinclair, the émigré

actress returning to take over the Florida airline empire of her father, and

Mom's old films would be used in episodes of "Champagne Flight." Clips from

Gallo, Flambeaux, all Mom's Nouvelle Vague successes would be used in this

brand-new concept series, that would have the thrust of "Dynasty" and the

style of Mom's old films.

In sum, Marty had made television news into film news and he had used the

moment, on the moment, maybe better than anyone else could have done.

Now we were off to the special tribute and the dinner. I had to find Susan

and Sandy. Surely they had been invited. Then somebody took my arm. It was

this handsome young man from United Theatricals, I don't even remember his

name if I ever knew it, and he said he was my escort, I was to go with him.

We made a triumphal march out of the lobby, and, of course, somewhere under

the noise and the glare of the lights and all the madness there was this

little voice saying, "Not one word was said in Mom's press conference about

Final Score."

But frankly, as we left the lobby, I was pretty damned horrified not by their

not mentioning us but by the idea of TV. I mean, what the hell was Mom doing

in a nighttime soap?

But I didn't understand then what big business these nighttime soaps were. My

mind really was on films. I didn't know that people all over the world

watched "Dallas" and "Dynasty," that the stars of these shows even have their

voices recognized by the overseas operators when they make long-distance

calls. I didn't understand the immediate fame and money that this sort of

thing conveyed.

I just thought, OK, if Mom wants to do this, this means we're going to the

States and that's terrific, and what kid my age doesn't want to be in the

States right now? And then Mom can make United Theatricals distribute Final

Score. We are really doing just fine. Like hell we were doing just fine.

Susan was not at dinner. No Sandy, no Susan at all. It was eleven o'clock

before I finally found Susan in the bar. I never saw anything like the change

in her. It was worse than the change in you when you hit me, because that was

really the other side of the same coin.

Susan said, "Do you know what your mother b. as done? She's killed our

picture. United Theatricals dropped us. We've got nothing. It's all over

Cannes that the film's unmarketable. Everybody has backed off."

I said that couldn't be true. Mother was all wrapped up in herself, of

course, but she would never have gone that far to hurt somebody else. But in

my heart I knew Mom could let something like this happen. I had to find out

what was going on.

I ran upstairs. I said I had to talk to Mother, and I practically shoved

Uncle Daryl out of the way. But it turned out Mother's door was locked. She

was in there with Sally Tracy, the American agent, and Trish, and they

wouldn't answer when I knocked. They were talking over all the details, it

seemed, little things that had to be worked out. Uncle Daryl told me there

was really no problem, of course, with "Champagne Flight." The money part was

done.

Then I started screaming. What about Susan? What about our film? Susan and

Sandy and I had gotten a standing ovation out there.

"Now you calm down, Belinda," he said. "You know perfectly well if I had been

there you would never have been in any such film."

"What are you talking about?" I asked him. "Mom made all her money off 'such

films' and you know it."

"She wasn't fourteen when she did it," he told me.

"Well, I was playing bit parts in them when I was four," I said.

He yelled back, "That's got nothing to do with it. We are making the deal of

the century in there, Belinda, and this is as much for you as for your

mother, and I cannot believe that you would come here at this moment and...

You get the drift.

I don't know what I would have said next. I could see already I was against a

wall. Uncle Daryl is forever loyal to Mom, and no matter what anyone has ever

told him, Mom is his only concern. When she nearly drove me off the cliff on

Saint Esprit, Uncle Daryl said to me long distance, "And why did you let her

drive, Belinda? Good Lord, on the ranch you'd have been driving at twelve

years old. Don't you know how to drive a car?" That is Uncle Daryl. There is

but one cause for Uncle Daryl and that cause is Bonnie, and, of course,

Bonnie and Uncle Daryl have made Bonnie and Uncle Daryl very rich.

But to get back to the story, I didn't have a chance to say anything to him,

because Marty Moreschi appeared right behind him. And when I saw this big

mogul from United Theatricals, I just shut up.I went into my room and slammed

the door.

I am telling you that at this moment I felt alone. I couldn't reach Mom, I

didn't really want to, and I had lost Susan. Susan had looked at me with

coldness in her eye.

Then comes a knock on the door. Marty Moreschi. Can he come in? I said,

"Later," but he begged me, "Please, sweetheart, let me come in."

OK, suit yourself, buster, I was thinking. But if you start that bullshit

again, I'm going to scream.

But this was where Marty's intelligence came into play.

The look on his face was very serious when he walked into the room. "I did

it, kid," he said. "I killed your film."

I looked at him for a minute, I guess. Then I burst into tears.

"I understand how you feel, kid. I really do. But you gotta believe me. That

film would have done nothing in the U.S. And this, what I am doing now with

your mother, is for you, too."

Now, as I am telling you this, I know I am not able to get across the way

this was done. The sincerity of it and the way that he looked. Like he was

going to cry suddenly, too. Like he really felt rotten about what was

happening, too.

And I know what you think, Jeremy, that I probably fell for this, that it was

just crap. But I think I will believe to my dying day that Marty was the only

one there who really understood. I mean, he knew I was disappointed, at least

he knew.

So this is how it happened that Marry and I were sitting on the bed and he

was telling me in this emotional way that I had re trust in him, that there

would be big deals for me in America, too.

Of course, I hated the way he said it. But that is movie talk, deals. You may

mean art and beauty, but when you're talking the bottom line, you say deals.

There would be deals for Susan, he was telling me now, yes, Susan, he hadn't

forgotten Susan. Susan was sensational. But Final Score had to be sacrificed.

It wasn't the way to introduce me to the American public, and it wasn't the

way to introduce Susan either. United Theatricals could do better making a

deal with Susan to do a picture, just on the basis of how Final Score did at

Cannes, without it ever being seen at home.

"But will you do that deal with Susan?" I asked him.

He said he had it very, much on his mind.

He said that once we got "Champagne Flight" underway, I'd be in a position to

do whatever I wanted. Just wait and see.

He said, "That Susan, she is the real thing. And you are the real thing."

"You've got to trust me, Belinda," he said. And there was a kind of frankness

to all this. He had his arms around me and he was very close to me, and I

guess about halfway through I realized that his physical presence was sort of

confusing me. I mean, he was very attractive and I wasn't so sure he knew it

or was even attempting to be.

Well, whatever the case, I didn't let him off the hook. I just didn't say

things that made it OK.

I went out looking for Susan. And this time she was back in the room and she

was really knocked down. She was for leaving the festival that very night.

Everything was finished, she said.

"Kiddie-porn, that's what they're calling it. They're saying everything is

wrong politically now for our film."

"That's where you fucked up," Sandy said, "using her at her age and all."

But Susan shook her head. She said there was all kinds of stuff being shown

in the teen exploitation flicks in the U.S. It was a matter of labels and

word getting around and people being deliberately frightened off. Even the

smallest distributors had left her high and dry. Yet everybody said Final

Score was a wonderful film.

I was crying. I was miserable. But she hadn't really turned against me, that

was clear. She said she was going right on with the Brazilian film.

"Are you for that, Belinda!...You better believe it," I said. I told her then

what Marty had said.

"Marty Moreschi's television," she said. "But I think I can get the backing I

need, even with Final Score in the can, when I get to LA."

When I left Susan, I knew I was too angry and disappointed and confused to go

back to the suite. I couldn't have gone to sleep.

I went back to the lobby and out to the Croisette. I didn't know where I was

going exactly, but just being in the twenty-four hour crowd and the

excitement of Cannes was helping me. I could not calm down.

I had money in my purse, I figured I'd get a sandwich or something or just

walk around. People were looking at me. Somebody recognized me and came over

and took my picture. Yeah, Bonnie's daughter, and suddenly out of the blue

there was my dad. My adorable dad.

Now one of the worst parts of the secrecy between us, Jeremy, was that I

could never tell you about my dad. His name is George Gallagher, but, as I

said, he is known all over the world as G.G., and he is very big in New York,

having one of the most exclusive salons. Before that, he had one in Paris,

which is where he met my mom.

Now there had been a big fight between my mom and my dad, as I already

mentioned, and this was before I went to school in Gstaad. I'd spent a lot of

time with G.G.-G.G. had always been wonderful to me. G.G. would fly to a city

and wait for hours just to see me for lunch or dinner or take me for a walk

in the park. We'd done quite a few advertisements together when I was little

-his blond hair and my blond hair, shampoo ads, that kind of thing. We even

did one with both of us naked which was in magazines all over the Continent,

though in America they only showed us from the shoulders up. Eric Arlington

photographed us for that one, the same guy who does the Midnight Mink

pictures exclusively and who later did the famous Bonnie-with-dalmatians

poster of Mom.

Anyway, when I was nine, G.G. and I went to New York on vacation, promising

Mom we'd be back in ten days. We did a lot of work for a line of hair

products Dad was marketing, and we also had an absolutely wonderful time. One

week stretched into two, then three, and pretty soon we were gone a month. I

knew I should have called Mom to ask her if it was OK to stay, I should have

known how insecure she could be, but I didn't call because I was afraid she'd

say, Come home. Instead I just sent messages back by cable and ran around

with G.G., going to musicals, plays, hitting Boston and Washington, D.C., for

tourist weekends, that kind of thing.

The upshot was, Mom got terrified she was losing me to G.G. She got

hysterical. She finally reached me at the Plaza in New York and told me I was

her daughter, G.G. wasn't my legal father, that she had never even intended

for me to know G.G., that G.G. was breaking their original agreement for

which by the way G.G. had been paid. She was incoherent finally, talking

about her mother's death and how nothing in life was worth it and how she'd

kill herself if I didn't come home.

G.G. and I were terribly upset, but the worse was yet to come. When we got

off the plane in Rome, G.G. was hit with all kinds of legal papers. Mom took

him to court to force him to stay away from me. I felt horrible for G.G. I

felt I should have known Mom would flip like this, and there was G.G.,

spending a fortune on Roman lawyers and not even understanding what was

happening. I could have died. But I couldn't leave Mom for a minute. She was

in a state of nervous collapse. Gallo was in the middle of a picture and

furious on account of the delay-and so was Uncle Daryl. Blair Sackwell was

there, but nothing he said helped. I always Named myself.

After that, G.G. left Europe. And I had always feared that Mom had something

to do with the closing of his Paris salon. But I was just turning ten when

these things happened, and the subject couldn't be mentioned without Mom

starting to cry.

Now, as the years passed on Saint Esprit, I became a little bitter about G.G.

Of course, G.G. and I kept in touch. I knew G.G. had become lovers with Ollie

Boon, the Broadway director, and that he was very happy in New York, and

sometimes when I went to Paris, I tried to call G.G. from there, which was

easier than calling from Saint Esprit. But I felt horribly guilty for what

had happened. And I was scared to know how bad for G.G. it had really been.

G.G. and I finally drifted apart.

I don't know if you ever saw the shampoo commercials he did or the big

magazine pictures we did together that time. If you did, then I think you

will agree G.G. is very goodlooking, and he will look young forever with his

snub nose and little-boy mouth and blond curly hair. No matter what the style

his hair is always cut real short with just the curls on top. He looks like

the all-American boy actually. He is six feet four. He has the bluest eyes in

the world.

Anyway there he was on the Croisette in Cannes. And Ollie Boon was with him-

and so was Blair Sackwell of Midnight Mink, who has always been a real good

friend of G.G.'s, too.

And G.G. was all dressed up in a black dinner jacket and a boiled shirt and

so was Ollie Boon (I will describe Blair in a minute) and they were on their

way to a party when we just collided on the Croisette.

Now I had never met Ollie Boon. He came across as very sweet like rny dad. He

is past seventy, but he is charming and goodlooking, too, with white hair and

pretty teeth and silver-rimmed glasses and darkly tanned skin. As for Blair,

well, he is what I would call divinely elegant, even though he is not over

five feet one and has very little hair and a nose that is enormous and a

voice so loud you would swear there is a mike in his chest. His dinner jacket

and pants were lavender, his shirt silver, and. of course, he had a mink-

lined cloak over his shoulders, which made him look absolutely insanely

gorgeous at the moment that he screamed, "Belinda, darling!" and brought us

all to a halt.

Anyway they just showered me with kisses, and Dad and I hugged and hugged,

and Blair said that I should come with them, they were going to a party on

the yacht of a Saudi Arabian and I would love the guy and do come right now.

I was crying and Dad was crying. And we just hugged each other over and over

till Ollie Boon and Blair decided to make fun of us and they started hugging

each other and making fake sobs, too.

"Come on to the party with us now!" Dad said.

But I was not about to dump all this misery on my dad. In a big rush I told

him only the good things. About Susan and our standing ovation and that Mom

was going to do "Champagne Flight."

Dad was so disappointed that he hadn't seen the film. "Daddy, I didn't know

you'd be here," I told him.

"Belinda, I would have come to Cannes to see it," he said.

"Well, how do you think I feel that I didn't see it!" Blair yelled. "Your

mother told me she was going to Cannes! She didn't say anything about this

film!" It turned out Ollie had heard of it, heard it was terrific, and he

congratulated me very formally while Blair fumed.

But then seriously Blair wanted to know why Mom hadn't told him when he had

spoken to her long-distance in Paris, and a funny thing happened. I wanted to

answer him, make some excuse, and I opened my mouth but nothing came out.

"Come on to the party with us, Belinda," G.G. said.

Then Blair got excited about Mom doing "Champagne Flight." What if she did

Midnight Mink again? Did I think she would do it?

I didn't say anything, but secretly I thought, It's starting already, this

"Champagne Flight" madness. Mom had been Blair's first Midnight Mink girl.

But in all these years Blair had never never mentioned Mom doing Midnight

Mink again.

Anyway Dad started pulling me towards the yacht.

"I'm not dressed up, Dad," I told him.

And he said, "Belinda, with that hair, you are always dressed up. Come on."

The yacht was posh all right. The Saudi women, the very same who wear veils

when they get home to Arabia, were all walking around the low-ceiling

ballroom in knockout fashions, and the men all that had deep burning look in

their eye that meant they could carry you off to a tent. The food was

fabulous and so was the champagne. But I felt too disheartened to enjoy it. I

was just putting on a good face for Dad.

Blair wouldn't stop talking about Mother doing Midnight Mink again until

Ollie Boon told him gently that he was talking shop and to shove it. And then

Dad and I danced. The best part.

The band was playing Gershwin, and Dad and I just danced very slow together

to some sad song. I almost cried again thinking about what happened and then,

while we were dancing, I realized I was looking at this guy on the sidelines

of the dance floor, another dark Arab I must have figured until I realized it

was no Arab, it was Marty Moreschi of United Theatricals and he was watching

me.

As soon as the song came to an end, he cut in on Dad and we dancing before I

could say no.

"What the hell are you doing here?" I asked.

"I could ask you that. Doesn't anybody care about you? Where you go, what you

do?"

"Of course not," I said. "I'm fifteen years old. I take care of myself.

Besides, the guy I was dancing with was my father, if you want to know."

"No kidding," he said. "You mean that's the famous G.G.? He looks like a high

school kid."

"Yeah," I said, "and he's an awfully nice guy."

"What about me, you don't think I'm nice?" he asked me.

"You're OK, but what are you doing here? Booking a prime-time called 'Sheiks

on the Riviera' or what?"

"There's money here. Can't you smell it? But if you want the truth, nobody's

taking tickets at the door and I just followed you in."

"Well, you don't have to follow me or worry about me," I said.

But the chemistry was started between us. I was feeling something so strong

that it was embarrassing. I mean my face must have been sort of flushed.

"Come back to the hotel with me and have a drink," he said, "I want to talk

to you."

"And leave my dad? Forget it." But I knew right at that very second that I

was going. And when the number ended, I introduced Marty to Dad and Ollie

Boon and Blair, and there was a lot of kissing and hugging again between me

and Dad and swearing to see each other in LA.

Dad was pretty smashed. He whispered as we were hugging. "Don't tall Bonnie

you saw me, OK?"

"Are things really that bad?" I asked.

"I don't want to tell you all of it, Belinda," he said, "but I'm coming LA to

see you this summer, of that much you can be sure."

Ollie was yawning and saying he wanted to go now, too. And Blair meantime had

glommed on to Marty and was pitching the idea that Midnight Mink coats could

be used on "Champagne Flight." Marty was doing a diplomatic number of

noncommittal enthusiasm, which I was to see a thousand times in Hollywood

later on.

I kissed Dad. "In LA," we said.

I was very nervous leaving with Marty. When I think about it now, I realize

that the physical attraction you feel to a person can make you feel that

something momentous is happening. It can create the illusion that nothing

else matters at all.

It was the same thing I felt with you later on. But I was more prepared for

it then, and that's why I did the disappearing act over and over in those

first few days with you.

This time was the first time, and I didn't know what was happening, except I

liked the touch of this man very much. And we did not even speak to each

other as we went back to the Carlton and up to Marty's suite.

Now this was part of United Theatricals quarters at Cannes, and it was even

more fancy than Mom's rooms. There was a buffet there, all kinds of wine, and

the same clutter of flowers everywhere you looked. But except for a couple of

waiters, the place was empty. And nobody saw Marty and I go into Marty's

room.

Well, something is going to happen, and I do not know why I am letting it

happen, I figured. I am as unimpressed with this guy's credentials as a girl

could be. I mean, he killed my picture, didn't he? And I don't even know what

or who he really is. Yet I was going into his bedroom with him and trying to

be very cool to him and saying, "OK, you wanted to talk?"

Well, what happened is, he started to talk. No big putting the make on me. He

just talked. He lit a cigarette, poured me a drink, poured himself a drink,

which he never drank by the way, successful producers almost never drink, and

then he started asking me all about myself and life in Europe and what I

thought about coming back to the States and saying how weird all this was for

him, this Cannes number, and how he had grown up in a fifth-floor walk-up in

Little Italy in New York. He looked around this fancy room with the damask

wallpaper and the velvet couches and chairs, and he said, "I mean, like,

where are the rats?"

I had to laugh, but he was fascinating me, really fascinating me, he was like

a New York stand-up comedian, making his own connections one after another

and talking about how Los Angeles was "Dedicated Surface" and how he felt

like a gorilla in his five-hundred-dollar suits and he had to sneak off to

get hot dogs after he left the fancy restaurants where the United Theatricals

execs ate tiny portions for lunch.

"I mean, a plate of marinated mushrooms and a piece of dead fish at Saint

Germain? This is lunch?"

I thought I would die of the giggles, absolutely die. I mean, I was utterly

utterly hysterical listening to him.

"You can do anything, can't you?" he says to me. "I mean, I told you that

junk out there on the buffet was squids in ink and you ate it. You just ate

it. I saw them introducing you to some prince or something on that yacht and

you just smiled. What's it like to be you?" he asked. "And that Blair

Sackwell guy, all my life I've seen his ads in magazines, and you just put

your arm around him and kissed him, just pals. What's it like to live the way

you live?"

And when I started telling him a few things, I mean answering his questions,

explaining how I'd always envied the school kids I saw in Europe and America,

how I wanted to be part of something and all, he really listened. He did. His

eyes got this gleam and he asked little questions that showed me he was

responding to what I had actually said.

But I was also getting a pretty good fix on Marty during all this. He is not

that untypical of LA at all. He does not believe that television is terrible.

He lives with gradations of badness, and they are for him his standards. He

defends TV by saying it is by the people, for the people, of the people and

so was Charles Dickens. But he has never read one page of Charles Dickens.

The pinnacle for Marty is what he calls hot. In hot everything comes

together-money, talent, art, popularity. Marty has not sold his soul for hot

-hot is his religion. He is the saint of hot.

Yet what gives Marty his force is New York street desperation and a sort of

gangster style. He speaks in threats and ultimatums and pronouncements almost

exclusively when he is not relaxed.

Like: "And I told them, 'Look you motherfuckers, you either give me that

eight-o'clock slot or I walk,' and ten minutes after, the phone rings and

they say, 'Marty, you've got it,' and I say, 'Damned right.' " It is forever

like that.

But it has a naiveté to it. I mean, it is charmingly crude because Marty is

so sincere about it. And Marty is a success at being this way.

Yet you only act like this when you are really afraid you are nobody, and

that, too, is Marty all the way.

He will never forget where he came from, as he puts it, and it is not like

being poor on the Coast, where the waitresses on Sunset Boulevard speak

perfect English, where you drive through clean middle-class neighborhoods in

San Francisco and they say this is the ghetto. Poor in New York is really

poor.

I guess what I am trying to tell you, what I want you to understand, is that

this was the beginning of a big affair, this conversation. That I talked for

two hours to this guy before we went to bed, that bed wasn't the only thing

he wanted. And to tell you the truth, I had been hating myself for the fact

that going to bed was just about the only thing in my head.

Anyway it was pretty exciting. It did not and never did have the mystery that

we had together, you and me. There wasn't the sense I had with you, that this

is a once-in-a-lifetime great romance. It wasn't wonderful like that.

But I liked him, I really liked him. And then after about an hour of all

this, something happened that really tipped the scales. Marty had been to the

screening of Final Score.

This I never expected. I mean, these people in Hollywood they don't have to

see a picture to kill it. They'll buy a book for the movies when nobody has

actually read the book.

But Marty had gone to see Final Score.

And when we got to talking about it, he said some amazing things. He said

Susan had guts and vision. She was damned professional. And my part was

dynamite, all right. I stole the picture from Sandy. No experienced actress

would have let that happen. But what was wrong with the picture was that I

looked more American than anybody in it. I had G.G.'s snub nose and little

mouth and all that.

"So this chick goes to a Greek island and she finds a high school

cheerleader?" he asked me. It did not work. The Texas dopers, they were

terrific, the writing first-rate. But the Greek island and my looks? It was a

like foreign film. It didn't work.

Well, I don't know to this day whether or not this is true. But it surprised

me coming from him, this kind of thought. But even more surprising was that

he cared enough to think about the picture at all.

Anyway Susan was better off without this being her first release, he

repeated. And this is when I jumped in and said, "OK, what are you going to

do for her in the States?"

"I can't promise anything earthshaking," he said. "But I'll give it my

damnedest." And then he reached out and shook my hand. "Now that's that

whether you stay or go," he said. "May I kiss you?"

"Yeah," I said. "It's about time."

The lovemaking was terrific. It was truck-driver bang, but it was great

truck-driver bang, probably the best there ever was. And why do I tell you

this? Because you have to know to understand everything that happened. You

have to know that although this guy never had your skill or your timing, I

did eventually love him very much. And, of course, I had only been to bed

with boys at that point. I didn't know what timing was.

Meeting you ended that love for Marty. It really did. You were a dream man to

me when I met you-you are serious like the people I knew in the old days when

Mom was still making a few good films and I would fall asleep at the table

listening to arguments about life and art. You are elegant and refined and

you are beautiful in your own neglected and easy way. [bad scan]touched each

other, those times in bed when you were more purely physical than any man I'd

ever been with.

But you see, Jeremy, that's what it took to kill the love for Marty. Love for

Marty was very strong. That night at Cannes was serious stuff.

When he woke up in the morning, he was scared. Probably people looking for

me, he said. He didn't believe me when I told him to relax.

"Get on the thing with Susan," I said to him. "It isn't why I went bed with

you. I would have done that anyway, but Susan is what I'm worried about right

now."

Now to tell the truth I didn't think he could influence United Theatricals

where Susan was concerned. He was television. So why would anyone in movies

listen to him? I mean, sure they killed a movie for his TV but that was easy.

How would he ever get a deal for the woman whose picture he killed?

But what I didn't realize was that United Theatricals, like all big studios,

was owned by a conglomerate, in this case CompuFax. And Fax had appointed two

studio heads, Ash Levine and Sidney Templeton, right out of daytime TV in New

York. Daytime TV. Let that sink in mean, who would have thought people like

that could run a movie studio?-but they were running it, and they were

Marty's old New York buddies, they had put Marty where he was. Marty had

worked for Sidney Templeton as an assistant producer, in New York City, and

Ash Levine had grown up with Marty. Marty had actually hired Ash Levine for

first job.

Now let me say here that there is a Hollywood story about Marty and Ash

Levine-that one time in New York they got into a real jam fighting some kids

on a rooftop and, when the kids ganged up on Ash, it was Marty who grabbed

one of them and literally threw him off the roof. The kid died when he hit

the pavements, and the gang scattered, and that is the only reason Ash is

alive right now-and maybe Marty, too. I don't know whether that is really

true. Marty would only smile and wave it away when I asked him. But I heard

it in several places in Hollywood, and it was always given as the reason why

Marty could have asked anything he wanted of Ash Levine.

By noon Marty and Susan and I were in the United Theatricals suite with these

guys, Templeton and Levine. And these three men in their impeccable three-

button suits were giving Susan the great rolling LA soft soap about the

talent she had as a director and what a miracle it was that even with Mom's

backing she had brought in that film.

Now Susan was sitting there with her white cowboy hat on, in her silk shirt

with the fringe on the sleeves, and the white jeans, just listening to these

guys, and I thought, She knows, surely she knows they screwed her and Marty

is the one who did it-I know she knows and she is going to blow. But then

something happened, which gave me to know that Susan would make it in

Hollywood.

And, by the way, Susan already has.

Susan said not one word about the past but went right into her pitch for the

Brazilian film. She told them the whole thing first off in one line, you

know, what these guys call "high concept," probably one of the worst terms to

ever come down the pike. American teenager saved from Brazilian white slavers

by courageous American female reporter. Then she went into detail, calmly

handling every objection they raised no matter how dumb it was. I mean, she

took this film we had worked out in a frenzy of creativity, and she was

willing to spoon-feed it to these fools.

And take it from me, these guys are fools. They really are fools. I mean,

they said things to Susan like, How are you going to make Rio interesting?

And what made her think she could write the script herself?

But it was when they talked about avoiding the lesbian overtones that I

really got scared. But Susan didn't bat an eye at that one. She said Of Will

and Shame was completely different from Final Score in that it was

puritanical basically. I'd play an exploited prostitute, not a free spirit.

All the sex we'd show would be bad.

I almost fell over dead when Susan said this. But they understood exactly.

The moral hook would be there. The American woman reporter would take me away

from sex, not go to bed with me. No lesbian overtones at all.

They were nodding, saying, Sounds good, and when could she let them see the

script? They wanted to talk when she got to LA.

Finally it was over and she and I went out together and I was scared to death

that she was going to ask me if I'd gone to bed with Marty and didn't know

what to do if she did. But she just said: "They're assholes, I think we sold

them. Now I have to go and get Final Score shown if ever I can."

Susan left Cannes immediately. But she had really impressed everybody. That

night Ash Levine asked me to tell him all about her. Sidney Templeton liked

her. And Marty liked her, too.

And she did get Final Score shown in art houses and festivals all over

Europe. It was penny-ante stuff. But she gave it a life. And months later,

when I was on the run, I was able to get a tape cassette of it from special

mail order house because Susan had given it that life.

Anyway after the meeting I went back to the suite, and Mom hugged me and

kissed me and said, Wasn't it terrific that we were going to Hollywood and

this time they really wanted us. Just pure Mom. She got me the bedroom, and

she started sobbing, saying how this was like some dream and she still wasn't

sure it was happening, and she looked around at all the flowers and she said,

"Is all this really for me?"

I didn't say anything to her. And she acted just as if I'd answered her. She

just went on talking about how great it all was, as if I was saying, Yes,

Mom, the whole time. I was not saying a word. I was watching her, and thought

she really doesn't know what happened with Final Score, doesn't know at all.

And something happened inside me. It was as if I lost interest in her in a

way. I mean, the rage I'd felt earlier was gone, thought she had lost her

ability to hurt me, that maybe once and for all I had really learned. Mom

would never change. I had to change. I had expected nothing from Mom.

Of course, I was wrong. I hadn't learned. What had happened was that I had

Marty, and that felt so good and so warm and so special that I was protected,

that's all.

We went right from Cannes to the U.S. although Trish and Jill went back to

close up the house on Saint Esprit. Marty had to start shooting with Mom

almost immediately to have everything ready for the fall season. I mean,

"Champagne Flight" had to be completely rethought and rewritten with Mom.

And Marty wanted Mom to go to the Golden Door in San Diego and take off more

pounds right away. Mom was actually perfect, if you want my opinion, but not

by the anorexic standards of today.

So anyway Uncle Daryl went on to Beverly Hills to get our house ready-we had

owned this house for years but never lived in it-and Marty and I checked Mom

into the Golden Door and five minutes later were making love in the limousine

on the return drive to LA.

For the next three weeks Marty and I were together constantly, either at my

room in the Beverly Wilshire or in his office at United Theatricals or in his

penthouse apartment in Beverly Hills. Of course, he couldn't believe nobody

was checking on me, that the only "supervision," as he kept calling it, was

Uncle Daryl having breakfast with me each morning at the Bev Wilsh and

saying, "Here, go buy yourself something pretty at Giorgio's." But that is

exactly the way it was. And I did tricks to keep it cool, too, I have to

admit that, like leaving messages for Uncle Daryl about hairdresser

appointments and things that made it sound like I was checking in when I was

not.

And in a way this was the best time for Marty and me.

He took me all through United Theatricals. He had a big corner office there,

and I watched for hours while Marty was at work.

In April he had already shot a complete two-hour season opener for "Champagne

Flight," and now he was scrapping it and doing a whole new thing with Mother,

and he had to get the network to go along. As producer-director of the show,

he had a huge hunk of it-it was his life, as you can imagine-and I watched

him write the script for the first show while he ate lunch, talked on the

phone, and screamed at his secretary all at the same time.

At absolutely any minute Marty would want to drop everything and make out.

If we weren't doing it on the leather couch in his office, we were doing it

in the limo or in my room.

Even when Trish arrived, nothing changed. Though, of course, I never provoked

anybody's attention. If Marty stayed over, he hid in the bathroom when Trish

came in.

But it was strange the effect this freedom had on Marty. At first I thought

he was just scared of being caught with me. After a while I saw he did not

like it. He did not approve of it. He actually thought Uncle Daryl and Trish

were negligent. I got a kick out of that. "Leave well enough alone, OK?" I

said.

And this affair was really love to us, I swear that it was. You understand, I

didn't sit there and think, well, this guy really loves me and I love him. It

was just happening very intensely all the time. We would talk a lot about my

life in Europe. Marty was really stage-struck. He really wanted to hear my

stories about meeting Dirk Bogarde or Charlotte Rampling when I was four

years old. He wanted me to tell him what skiing felt like. He was very

worried about his table manners. He wanted me to watch him when he ate and

tell him what he did wrong.

He talked a lot too about his Italian family, how he hated school, how he'd

wanted to be a priest when he was little, how he hated his return trips to

New York. "Things aren't real out here," he'd say about California, "but God,

they are too real back there."

What came clear was that Marty really wanted to analyze things and didn't

know how. He'd never taken a college class or talked to a psychiatrist, but

he had a terrific drive to figure things out.

Telling the woman in his life his inner feelings, well, that was a real trip

for Marty. The dam broke for him in those days. Suddenly talk meant something

for him it had never meant before. And I came to realize that although he was

very uneducated, he was also very smart.

Susan had been to the University of Texas and film school in LA after that.

You are a highly educated man. Mom had even taken college courses. Jill and

Trish had done their four years at SMU. But Marty had quit in the junior year

of public high school in New York. Every day Marty heard remarks, references

to things, even jokes he didn't understand.

I mean, we would watch the old reruns of "Saturday Night Live" on TV and he

would grab my arm and say, "Why are you laughing, what does that mean?...

Monty Python's Flying Circus" was totally unintelligible to Marty. Yet Marty

could go to see a film like Last Year at Marienbad and pay close attention to

everything and come out and tell you just what went on.

Well, all that is not important now. Except to say that I know Marty and I

loved him, no matter how it might look to anyone else. Things happened

between us, things that no one may ever understand.

But as soon as Mom checked out of the Golden Door and we got on the plane for

LAX from San Diego, Marty pretty much had to be devoted to her. Mom took over

just as she had taken over in Cannes.

And much as Mom loved Trish and Jill and wanted them to stay in the new

Beverly Hills house, Marty pretty well pushed them out of the way. It wasn't

deliberate on Marty's part. He was simply more forceful. Mom really listened

to Marty. Jill and Trish were her sisters. I was her sister. But Marty was

the boss.

Marty supervised everything from the start. And he moved into his own rooms

in the Beverly Hills house five days after Mom came back.

Now let me describe this house. It is in the flatlands of Beverly Hills, and

it is enormous and old with the screening room in the basement, and the

billiard room and the forty-foot pool outside and the orange trees all

around. Uncle Daryl had bought it in the sixties for Mom. And Mom had never

wanted to live in it. And Uncle Daryl had rented it out all these years. He

had gotten the tenants to carpet it, furnish it, redo the pool, as part of

various rental deals. As a consequence, Mom now owns a three-million-dollar

hunk of California real estate with an all-electric kitchen, wall-to-wall

carpets, mirrored dressing rooms, automatic sprinklers to water the gardens,

and electric eyes to turn on the outside lights at dusk.

But it is not a great house. It does not have the beauty of our apartment in

Rome or our villa on Saint Esprit. It does not have the charm of your narrow

cluttered Victorian in San Francisco. It is in fact a string of cubicles done

in decorator colors with a special faucet in the kitchen that gives you

boiling water for coffee night or day.

Yet we enjoyed it. We wallowed in padded luxury. We lay on the patio under

the filthy blue sky in smog-ridden Los Angeles and told ourselves it was OK.

And those first few weeks we did have a damn good time.

Marty took Mom to work every morning and stayed with her every minute through

the shooting, often rewriting lines for her on the spot. Then he sat with her

through dinner, making her eat everything on her plate. Only at eight did

Jill and Trish take over, making her get in bed to talk or watch television

so she'd be sure to be asleep by nine.

That's when Marty and I were together, locked in his bedroom or mine. We sat

in bed together, reading scripts for "Champagne Flight" and talking about

them and what was good and bad and all that.

Marty had a guarantee for at least thirteen one-hour episodes, and he was

determined to do as much as he could before the big premiere in September. He

often entirely rewrote the scripts himself.

By July I was helping him with this. I was reading material out loud to him

during lunch or while he was shaving, and sometimes rewriting scenes myself.

I advised on little details about the movie star character that Mom was to

play. I wrote a whole scene for the third show of the season. I don't know if

you ever saw it, but it was OK.

Finally Marty would say, Hey, Belinda, knock this down to two pages, will

you? And I would do it, and he would just pass the scene on.

I loved all this. I loved working and learning things and watching how the

show was done. Marty had very clear ideas about how things were to look and

sometimes he didn't have the vocabulary to explain it. I went through

magazines, showed him things, until he said, "Yeah, that's what I want,

that's it." And when he finally got the right designer, well, things really

took off.

Sometimes we left the house right after Mom had dinner. We went to the studio

together and worked till two or three. And nobody seemed to take much notice

of what was happening between us, and I was so involved in it I didn't think

much about doing any acting of my own.

Understand, only a couple of months had passed since the Cannes festival and

we were so busy.

Then one afternoon when I came home, Blair Sackwell was there, dressed in a

silver jumpsuit and silver tennis shoes, nothing out of the ordinary for

Blair actually, and looking like an organ grinder's monkey, and he jumped up

off the couch and asked me why I was turning down everything after my big

smash debut at Cannes.

Trish and Jill just looked confused. But Trish and Jill were always looking

confused now.

Blair said some producer had even called G.G. in New York, he was so

desperate to get in touch with me, and didn't I think I could stop being

Greta Garbo? I mean, I was only fifteen.

I told Blair nobody had offered me anything, at least not that I knew of, and

he just scoffed at that. He said Dad sent his love to me. Ollie Boon had a

musical opening in New York right now or Dad would have been here, too.

But Blair's main concern was getting Mother to do the Midnight Mink thing

again. Would I kindly talk to her? She'd be the only one in the entire world,

he said, to do Midnight Mink twice.

I went into the other room and called Marty at the studio. Did he know

anything about me being asked to do any movie roles? He said, no, he

certainly did not, but I knew, didn't I, that my uncle Daryl had said a flat

-out no to my being in "Champagne Flight." But I knew that, didn't I? He

thought I knew that. Was I unhappy? What was going on? Tell him right now.

"Calm down, Marty," I said, "I was just asking you." Then I called Uncle

Daryl, who was back in Dallas at his law office and he told me right off that

Mom's agent, Sally Tracy, had orders to keep producers away from me. He had

given Sally strict instructions that Bonnie wasn't to be bothered by people

calling for me. Bonnie had no time to be worried about this. And he wanted

all that Final Score business to just wither and blow away.

I called Sally Tracy. "Belinda, sweetheart!"

"You're not my agent, are you?" I asked her. "Are you turning down parts for

me?"

"Well, darling, Bonnie doesn't want you pestered by these people. Darling, do

you know the kind of offers you're getting? Sweetheart, have you seen these

teen exploitation pictures?"

"I would like to know if somebody calls for me. I would like to know if I

have an agent. I would like to be told these things."

"Well, if you want, darling, I'll have my secretary let you know everything,

of course."

I put down the phone and I had a very funny feeling in me, a cold feeling,

but I didn't know what to do. The fact was, I was happy working with Marty. I

had not wanted to be anyplace else. But they should have told me what they

were doing. I felt mad, but I did not want to be mad.

But that night I told Marty about it. "Did you want me to do bits in the

series?" I asked.

"Yeah, at first," he said, "but bear with me, Belinda. Just listen to what I

say. I'm building your Mother right now. And why waste you in the background

while that's happening? The smart thing to do is bide our time, see how the

show does, and then build an episode around you." I could see the wheels

turning as he was talking. "Got a couple of ideas already. But we're talking

deep into the season, say, November, and I think I know just what I want to

do."

As I said, it was confusing, because I was really happy working on the

production end of it and, besides, I didn't know about being in the series. I

mean, I wanted to make movies. I felt funny about the whole thing.

Next day on the way to the studio I asked Mom if she minded if I did

something in the series. We were in the studio limousine and Marty sat next

to her with his arm around her as always and I was across from them on the

little jump seat beside the TV that nobody ever turned on.

"Of course not, honey," she said in her sleepy morning voice. She was staring

out the window at the tacky pastel stucco apartment houses of Los Angeles as

if it was not one of the most ugly, boring sights in the world. "Marty, let

Belinda be in the show, OK?" But then she said, "You know, honey, you could

go to school for a while now. You always wanted to. You could meet boys your

own age. You could go to Hollywood High now if you wanted to. Doesn't

everybody want to go to that school?"

"I don't know, Mom, I think I'm past all that. When September comes, I'm not

sure what to do. Maybe I want to be in movies, Mom, you know what I mean?"

But she had drifted off just looking out the window. It seemed to me none of

it mattered to her. She would look sleepy like this till she stepped on the

set of "Champagne Flight."

"You do what you want, honey," she said a moment later like the last message

had just gotten through. "You be in 'Champagne Flight' if you want to, that's

just fine."

I said, Thanks, Mom, and Marty leaned forward and put his hand on my leg as

he kissed me. And maybe I never would have thought a thing about it except

that, as he drew back, I got a glimpse of Mom's face.

Mom looked at me in a very steady way. It seemed all the drug haze cleared

for a second. And when I smiled, she did not smile. She was just staring at

me like she was going to say something, and then slowly she turned and looked

at Marty, who did not even notice because he was looking at me. Then she

looked out the window again.

Not too cool, I was thinking, like don't get everybody on your case, Belinda,

for being lovers with Marty. Leave well enough alone. But Mom probably hadn't

even noticed-he'd been thinking of something else most likely when she was

staring. I mean, Mom noticed almost nothing where I was concerned. Right?

Well, let's just say it was what I thought at the time.

Susan hit town a couple of days later. She came roaring into the Beverly

Hills driveway in a white Cadillac convertible, in which she'd driven all the

way from Texas because she had to think, she said, and talk to herself out

loud while she was driving, about the Brazilian film.

I was very confused about Of Will and Shame. I didn't want to leave Marty,

but no sooner had I gotten in the car with Susan to drive down to Musso and

Frank's than I got fired up again. I'd have to leave Marty for this picture,

no question. If I didn't, what the hell was I? An actress or nothing. I

didn't tell Susan about Marty naturally. And I didn't tell her that Uncle

Daryl might try to stop me either. After all, Mom would let me go, I was

sure.

All through lunch at noisy Musso and Frank's, Susan talked about this

picture. It was going to be terrific. They'd go for me all right. It was the

ingénue part and I was Bonnie's daughter. Her big problem was Sandy. They

would want a bankable actress for Sandy's role.

"So will you give in on that?"

"I'll have to. Sandy will ride it out, and I'll make Sandy when I have the

power to make Sandy. She knows."

That night Marty listened to Susan's pitch very patiently. He set her right

up for a meeting at United Theatricals. And when the bedroom door closed, he

said, "You gonna be faithful to me in Brazil?"

"Yes," I said. "And you're going to be faithful to me back here in

Starletville, aren't you?"

"Do you ever have any doubts about that, honey?" He looked very sincere at

that moment and very loving and I felt that he was really on my side and had

always been.

But they turned down Susan at United Theatricals. It was too risky, this

picture. And Susan was too young to produce and direct herself. But they had

an offer for Susan, a contract to direct three movies for television and they

had the scripts right there.

Susan was crushed as I'd expected. When I went over to the Beverly Hills

Hotel to see her, she was reading the scripts in the bungalow, drinking ice

tea and smoking and making notes.

"Strictly formula," she said, "but I'm taking it. I mean Spielberg did his TV

movies for Universal. OK. I'll go this route. They've agreed to Sandy in one

of them. So that's settled. But there's nothing here for you, Belinda,

nothing decent, nothing like what I was planning at all."

"I'll wait for Brazil, Susan," I said. And she looked at me for a minute,

like she was trying to figure something out or thinking of saying something.

But then she just said, OK.

Later on the phone Marty told her she did the smart thing. "Everybody's

watching her," he said to me. "When she's got a real commercial idea, they'll

listen. She just needs to be careful, you know. Don't pitch anything till

it's dynamite and those three films are done."

I was kind of speechless through it all but watching everything down to the

last detail. Susan would make it all right with these people. And I had my

time now with Marty and didn't have to tell Susan about that and the

Brazilian film might yet be made.

"Don't forget about it, Belinda," Susan said to me before she left. "We'll do

that thing." I told her she could count on me whenever it happened. If she

wanted to go tearing off without any money, well, I had enough cash in

traveler's checks to carry myself down there. She just smiled at that.

"But there's something else," she said, "that I want to tell you before go.

You watch yourself with Marty."

I just stared at her. I thought, I will die if she knows I am sleeping with

the man who killed our picture. How can I ever explain?

"You had them screaming at Cannes," she said, "and now look what you're

doing, you're making this guy's coffee for him and emptying ashtrays and

riding to and from work with him and hanging around to hand him a Kleenex to

wipe his nose."

"Susan, I've only been here two months. And you don't understand."

"Don't understand what?" she asked. "That you're hooked on this and you've

been balling him since Cannes? I'm not putting you down for that, Belinda. I

know this guy. He's straight with you, though he's scared shitless your

mother or those two sorority sisters in there are going catch on. But I'm

just telling you, Belinda, to remember who you are, OK, you're just a kid and

you've got time, but what do you want to do with your life, Belinda? You want

to be somebody or somebody's girl?"

Then she roared off in her Cadillac digging the wheels into the gravel and

barely missing the electric gateposts, and I was just standing there

thinking, well, she knew all the time.

And I will tell you something. The next time anybody asked me what I wanted

to do with my life, what I wanted to become, well, it was almost a year later

and it was you, in San Francisco, when we were having that first dinner

together at the Palace Hotel. You looked at me the way Susan had, and you

asked me what I wanted for myself.

Anyway Susan was gone, Brazil was gone. And I was having a ball with Marty.

And having a ball just being in America, too. And very frankly I was having a

ball not having to take care of Mom anymore.

On Saint Esprit Jill and Trish had been wonderful, but there had been a

million little decisions they could not make. It had taken the three of us to

do the hiring, firing, managing of the household. One of us was always with

Mom.

Now Marty was taking over. And as he relieved us of more and more

responsibilities, one thing was coming clear. Marty was actually better for

Mother than we had been. It wasn't that we meant to support Mom in her

drinking. We just couldn't control it. Marty could. He had "Champagne Flight"

as the reason for every rule he laid down.

And he made Mom beautiful and kept her on the wagon. And the more he babied

her and controlled her, the more she blossomed. Mom was definitely what Mom

had thought she always wanted to be.

Of course, a lot of this was California self-improvement crap, you know, the

mania for exercise and health food and vegetarianism and meditating and God

knows what other garbage that is supposed to make you live forever and feel

like a good person while you're doing all that. But it turned Mom into an

amazon queen who could handle all the pressure of a TV series, the

interviews, the appearances, which was far worse than a movie, if you ask me.

By the week of the premiere Marty was dominating Mom's life. He was sitting

by her while she bathed, and reading her to sleep. He was picking her nail

polish for her and standing around to make sure the hairdressers didn't pull

her hair. He dressed her in the morning. He undressed her in the evening. And

Trish and Jill and I were of no use anymore at all.

I loved it, no matter how disloyal or guilty I felt. And I was very relieved

that the school year had started without anybody even noticing. I was having

a wonderful time.

I don't know if you saw the premiere of "Champagne Flight," so I will tell

you what Marty did. This was a two-hour special, of course. And in it Bonnie

Sinclair, émigré actress, comes home to Miami to take over the family airline

after her dad's mysterious death. A young devastatingly handsome cousin tries

to blackmail her about the old erotic European films she has made. She

appears to take the bait; she goes to bed with him; lets him think he's got

her; then after they have made out, she tells him to get dressed and come

into the other room. There's a surprise for him. Well, it's a big party and

the whole family is there. All the important people in international society,

too.

Then Bonnie introduces the young hunk cousin to everyone, just as he wants,

and then a screen comes down and the lights go out and everybody settles back

to watch scenes from Bonnie's old erotic films. The cousin is dumbstruck. I

mean, Bonnie shows the very scenes the kid thought he was blackmailing her

with. And Bonnie just smiles and tells him it has been a real wonderful

evening and he should come see her anytime. He leaves, feeling like a fool.

Mom played all this very sympathetically. She is sad and wounded and

philosophical as always, and when the young guy takes off in shame and

embarrassment, she looks at the screen where they are showing the love scenes

from her old pictures, and we see tears in Mom's eyes. That was the heart of

the plot. The show ends with her in control of the airline, getting rid of

the bad guys, including this cousin, and trying to find out who killed her

father, of course.

OK, TV, I know. But it was perfect for Mom, and, of course, the budget was

outrageous, the sets sumptuous, the costumes great. Even the sound track was

a cut above the usual thing.

The big hit "Miami Vice" had had a powerful influence on Marty. He was

horribly jealous of it. And he had sworn to make "Champagne Flight" stylish,

more sophisticated than the other nighttime soaps. He also wanted a cop-show

pace. The old "Kojak" was his model in that regard. And to tell the truth,

Marty did what he set out to do. "Champagne Flight" had a cop-show feel to it

and a rock-video look.

Actually there is an old cinema term for what Marty did, though I don't think

Marty would know it. The term is film noir. "Champagne Flight" is probably

the only film noir prime-time soap.

Marty waited like a maniac for the ratings. And within hours we knew

everybody in America had tuned in to see Mother. "Champagne Flight" was a

hit. It even made the news all over the country: Bonnie and Bonnie's old

films.

After that, the reporters were after us constantly. The tabloids hounded us.

And suddenly Marty could not be out of Mom's sight. Mom insisted he sleep in

the room next to hers, moving Jill out of it, and she kept waking up, in

spite of the sleeping pills, and getting confused about where she was. At

three o'clock in the morning he'd be feeding her a little breakfast and

telling her how good things were going and how they were all going to mop up.

Even getting Mom a full-time nurse didn't help the situation. Marty had to be

there. The masseuse, the hairdresser, the lady's maid who took care of Mom's

room and nothing else-they all took directions from Marty. Then one night

some reporter from a European paper got over the electric fence and started

photographing Mom with a flashbulb through the glass doors of her room. She

woke up screaming. And Uncle Daryl had to bring her a gun from Texas, though

everybody told her, You are crazy, you can not shoot that gun. But she had to

have it in the table by her bed.

Of course, they were still shooting all through these early weeks, revising

future episodes as reactions came in to what was already done. And Mom was OK

when she was working. She was OK acting or even reading a script. It was any

other time that Mom got crazy. Mom is one woman who has never minded working

late.

Maybe three weeks into the season I realized I had not been alone with Marty

since the night of the premiere. Then I woke up early in the morning and I

saw Marty standing at the foot of my bed.

"Lock the door," I whispered. I knew damn good and well Mom might get up and

start wandering around in a drugged-out state.

"I have," he told me. But he just stood there in his robe and pajamas and did

not get in the bed. I think I knew even in the dark that something was

terribly wrong with him. Then he sat down beside me, and he turned on the

lamp. The look on his face was awful. He looked embarrassed and cut up and

crazy.

I said: "It's Mom, isn't it? You went to bed with Mom."

His mouth was all out of shape. He couldn't seem to talk. He said in this

very strained voice that when a woman like that wanted you to go to bed, you

just couldn't say no.

"What the hell are you talking about?" I asked.

"Honey, I can't turn her down. Nobody in my position ever turned her down.

Don't you see?"

I just stared at him. I couldn't say anything. My voice was absolutely gone.

And right before my eyes he started to choke up, to cry.

"Belinda, I don't just love you, I need you!" he said to me in this choked

whisper. And he reached out to put his arms around me. He started to kiss me.

I couldn't do this. I didn't have to think about it. I knew it. And I had

gotten out of the bed and away from him before I even made up my mind what to

do. But he came after me, kissing me, and then I was kissing him, and this

chemical thing had taken over and, of course, the love, the real strong love,

that probably didn't even need the chemical thing anymore.

I did a lot of arguing and saying no, but we were already back in bed

together, and we did it, and I cried myself to sleep.

Of course, he wasn't there when I woke up. He was with Mom again. And nobody

even noticed me pack up and leave the house.

I went down to the Strip, to the Chateau Marmont, and I got a bungalow there,

and I made a couple of calls. I told Trish to cover the bills, I had to be

there right now, and please don't ask me why.

"I know why," Trish said. "I've seen this coming. Just be careful, Belinda,

will you?" She called the Chateau and took care of the credit. And that

evening she left the message that she had squared it with Mom, and Mom had

signed a nice check for my bank account.

And there I was, sitting on the side of the bed in the Chateau Marmont and

everything was over with Marty, and Susan was in Europe shooting a TV movie,

and my mom, of course, did not even care apparently that I had moved our of

the house.

Well, I went wild in the next few weeks. I roamed the Strip at night, talking

to the bikers and the crazies and the runaways. I called back all the Beverly

Hills kids who had called me when I first got here. I went to their houses,

their parties, even drove with them to Tijuana one afternoon. I hung around

Hollywood High sometimes when school let out. I made the sights of the city,

the studio tours and even Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm. I just ran

around. Anything not to be alone, not to be by the phone. But I made sure I

checked in with Trish at least once every afternoon. And the report was Mom

was just fine. Just fine.

Mom probably didn't even notice my absence. And I was being driven out of my

mind trying not to think about Marty, telling myself that it had to be over

with Marty, that I had to decide about my future right now.

Now when I look back on it, I wonder what would have happened if I had called

G.G. in New York. Mom might not have cared at all then if I had gone to G.G.

Mom did not need me the way she had years and years ago. But the truth was, I

could not bear the thought of losing Marty. I was in pain, just terrible

pain.

And so I just ran around town. And of course some rather irritating things

were happening, too. I was finding out I was a legal child.

For example, I'd known how to drive since I was twelve, but I couldn't get a

license in California until I was sixteen. I couldn't go into places that

served alcohol even if all I wanted was a Coke and the right to sit at a

table and listen to the comedian who was doing the show. And, of course, I

couldn't really confide in the kids I met. I wasn't about to tell them about

my affair with Marty.

And I wasn't like these kids. I didn't get their mixture of being grownup and

childish, real hard little LA kids on the one hand and babies on the other. I

could never never figure it out.

Who had my friends been in the past? Trish, Jill, Blair Sackwell, my dad.

That's who. Not kids.

Things stayed superficial, if not downright artificial. Nothing really

worked.

Well, of course, Marty showed up at the Chateau Marmont.

If he hadn't, I think my faith in life would have been crushed. I mean, not

even one visit to see what had happened to me? And I don't know what I wanted

then except maybe to see him and tell him that I would not sleep with him

while he was sleeping with Mom. But I tell you, I was not prepared for the

scene that Marty threw.

This was Marty's first big Italian opera number on me.

It was the middle of the night when he came to the door of the bungalow. And

he was in some state when he came in.

First off, he wanted to know what kind of family did I have? Didn't they care

that I was living down here on Sunset in a place like the Chateau with

absolutely no supervision? That word again. I laughed.

"Marty, don't give me this shit," I said. "Don't wake me up to tell me my

family doesn't give a fucking damn what I do. I've known that since I was two

years old."

What about school? he demanded. Didn't anybody in the whole family care that

I wasn't going to school?

"You dare suggest such a thing and I will kill you, Marty," I said. "Now get

out of my room and leave me alone."

Then he got very embarrassed and upset, and he was almost crying when he said

that Bonnie was asking for me. Bonnie didn't understand why I was never

there.

"You tell me that," I said. I was crying.

And without another word spoken we were in each other's arms. I said no, of

course, I said no over and over, but I didn't mean it and Marry knew it. And

we were in bed together and it was just as it had always been. I suppose in

some bittersweet way it was better, and then Marty was lying there holding me

and trying to tell me what a hell this had all been for him.

"You know, sweetheart, it makes me think of the old saying, 'Be careful what

you ask for, 'cause you might get it.' Well, I did. I asked for Bonnie, I

asked for a number-one show. And I've got both of them, sweetheart, and I've

never been so miserable in my entire life."

I didn't answer him. I was crying into the pillow. I was thinking mad things,

like what if we got married, ran away to Tijuana and did it and then came

back and told them, what would happen then? But I knew such a thing would

never never happen, and I felt this rage inside me, just burning up all the

words I might have said.

Marty went on talking. Marty went on saying things, until I realized what was

going on. He was telling me he needed me, that he couldn't do it without me,

that he couldn't get through the season the way things were. "You've got to

come back, Belinda, you've got to. You've got to think of this thing in a

different light."

"Are you putting me on? You think I'd live there in the house with you and

Mother and her not knowing that you were sleeping with me, too?"

"Belinda, a woman like your mother doesn't want to know things," he said.

"Honest to God, she does not. She wants to be taken care of, lied to. She

wants to be used and use everybody else at the same time. Belinda, I don't

really think you know your mother, not the way I do. Belinda, don't do this

to me, I'm begging you."

"Don't do this to you!"

If you think you ever saw me throw a fit, you should have seen me then. I got

up out of the bed and I started hitting him and screaming at him and telling

him to get out of there and go back to her. "Do this to you!" I kept

screaming. And then he grabbed me and he shook me and he sounded like a

madman.

"Belinda," he said, "goddamn it, I'm only human, that's all I am."

"What the hell's that supposed to mean?" I asked him.

He sat on the side of the bed with his elbows on his knees. He said that the

pressure was building and building and if he blew, Mom would blow, too.

"Look, honey, we're all in this together, don't you understand? She's banking

it hand over fist, and that's your money, and we're riding this wave. Just

please don't turn against me now, honey, please."

I just shook my head. Banking it hand over fist. What could I say? "Come back

to the house," he said, taking my hand. "Stick this out with me, Belinda. I

am telling you, honey, the time I have with you is all I've really got left."

"You really think I would do that, Marty?" I asked.

And then he just broke down. He cried and cried, and I was crying and then it

was time, he had to go back. If he wasn't there when she opened her eyes at

five a.m. all hell would break loose.

He got dressed, and then he said, "I know what you think of me. I know what I

think of myself. But Jesus, I don't know what to do. All I know is, if you

don't come back, I can't fake this much longer, I'm telling you the truth."

"So it's my job to hold it all together, is that what you're saying? Marty,

how many times do you think I have held it together for her? How many times

do you think I've just swallowed it all and did what had to be done to make

it OK for Mom?"

"But it's all of us, honey, it's you and me and her. Don't you see? Listen,

those Texas chicks, they're leaving soon, I know they are. And there'll be

nobody in that house but all those creatures, the nurse and the masseuse and

that crazy hairdresser-and her and me. I tell you, I'm going to take that gun

out of her dresser drawer and blow my brains out or something. I'm going out

of my head."

I didn't have any more to say. I expected him to go then. He was already

late. And I was thinking about calling G.G., asking if it would be all right

with Ollie Boon if I stayed with him and G.G., but I knew I didn't have the

courage to do that just yet.

Then I realized Marty wasn't leaving. He was just standing by the door.

"Honey, she and I... we're getting married," he said.

"What?"

"Big outdoor wedding by the pool at the house. The publicity's going out

today."

I did not say one word.

Then Marty made a speech. In a very quiet manner unlike himself he made a

speech.

"I love you, Belinda," he said. "I love you like I never loved anybody before

now. Maybe you are the pretty girl I never had in high school. Maybe you are

the fancy rich kid I could never touch in New York. I only know I love you,

and I have never been with anybody outside my own family back in New York

that I loved and trusted so much. But life's played a filthy trick on both of

us, Belinda. Because the lady has announced that she wants to get married.

For the first time in her whole fucking life she wants to get married. And

what the lady wants, the lady gets."

Then the door closed behind him. He was gone.

I think I was still lying there alone and in a state of shock, when Trish

came. If she knew Marty had been there, she never said so to me. She told me

the wedding was supposed to be Saturday, that Mom wanted to do it right away

and Uncle Daryl had already left Dallas and would be at the house sometime

this afternoon.

"I think you should go back to Europe," she said. "I think you should go to

school."

"I don't want to go to Europe, I said. "And I don't want to go to school."

She nodded and then she said I had to come and get my dress for the wedding

and it was best Uncle Daryl didn't know I'd been at the Chateau Marmont.

Well, I got through the wedding and the week before it. I smiled at

everybody. I did my part. Uncle Daryl was much too busy to even ask what I'd

been doing, and so was everybody else. But when I did find myself talking to

people now and then in the living room or at the reception itself, I said I

would be going to UCLA soon, that I thought I could pass the examinations and

start early. It ought to be fun.

The wedding itself was the big ticket in Beverly Hills. The tabloids offered

a flat $30,000 for any picture taken inside the grounds. And the police had a

hell of a time keeping people from blocking the streets. Mom was clearly in

love with Marty. I had not seen her this way since the days of Leonardo

Gallo. She was not just leaning on Marty or clinging to him, she was focused

on Marty completely. And they both looked wonderful that afternoon.

But I will tell you something, the wedding itself was a put-up job. The

minister was an overgrown flower child from the sixties, you know, one of

those long-haired fifty-year-olds who lives in Big Sur or someplace and got

his minister credentials in the mail, and the whole ceremony was sort of

dingy with shared wine cups and wreaths of flowers on everybody's heads and

all that. I mean, in the woods it might have been OK. But with this crowd,

whose vocabulary goes like 'We're talking major package' and 'What about the

bottom line' roaming around in the smog and the orange trees, it was a

scream. And Uncle Daryl took me aside right after and told me not to worry

about the money part of it, Marty had signed an airtight premarital

agreement, and this thing was, well, strictly for Mother to be happy, it

wasn't scarcely legal at all. "She's just lost her head over this New York

Italian guy, that's the truth of it," he told me. "But don't you worry. He'll

be good to her, I'll see to that."

I was dying. When I went inside to be alone for a little while, I found Trish

and Jill in my bedroom, just sort of hiding from everybody, and Trish told me

that she and Jill were going back to Dallas at the end of the week.

"She doesn't have any more use for us," Jill told me. "We're tripping on our

own feet around here."

"Time we did something on our own, too," Trish said. She went on to explain

that Daryl was willing to help them get started with a boutique in Dallas. In

fact, he was giving them plenty. And Mom was going to endorse the store, too.

I felt crushed that they were leaving. Saint Esprit had been over for a long

time now, but when they left, it would all be really gone.

I remembered what Marty had said about being alone in this house without

them. But I wasn't staying here. I couldn't. It was just out of the question.

Only I couldn't think about it right now with the music pouring in from the

patio and people moving through all the rooms, like zombies, making no sound

on the wall-to-wall carpet. I had to get away somehow.

"Belinda, come with us to Dallas," Trish said.

"Bonnie would never let her go," Jill said.

"Oh, yes she would. She's happy with her new husband. Honey, come stay in

Dallas awhile with us."

I knew I couldn't do that. What would I do fifteen hundred miles from the

Coast? Go to shopping malls and video arcades or take some nice class in

English poets at SMU?

The whole afternoon had been a nightmare, and yet the worst was yet to come.

After Trish and Jill went back out into the crowd, I decided to change and

get out.

Then Marty came and closed the door. The thing was over, he told me,

everybody was leaving. And he just fell into my arms.

"Hold me, Belinda, hold me, honey," he said. And for a moment that was just

what I did.

"It's your wedding night, Marty," I said. "I can't stand this, I just can't

stand it." But all the time I was feeling his arms around me and his chest

against me and I was holding him as tight as he was holding me.

"Honey, please, just give me this moment," he said. And then it started

again, him kissing me-and I just left in my long dress and all, and caught a

ride with one of the limos going out the gate.

On the way to the Chateau I asked this nice handsome man next to me, one of

Marty's staff, to run into a liquor store and get a bottle of Scotch for me.

When I got back to the bungalow, I drank the whole thing.

I slept for twelve hours straight and was sick for twenty-four after that.

The phone woke me up on Wednesday. It was Trish, saying Uncle Daryl kept

asking where I was.

"Just get down here till he leaves," she told me. "Then you can go back up

there on the hill."

I got to the house around four o'clock. And nobody was around. Nobody except

Mother, who was just telling her exercise coach and masseuse that they could

go for the rest of the day. She had been swimming and she looked all tan and

natural with her hair loose. She had on a simple white dress. Suddenly these

people were gone, and we were alone in the room.

It was so strange. I don't think Mom and I had been alone like this in ages

and ages. She looked amazingly clear-eyed and rested, and her hair was very

pretty because it had not been done.

"Hi, darlin'. Where you been?" she asked. Drugged-out voice, OK, very level,

but not slurred.

"I don't know, no place," I said. I shrugged. I think I started to move away

when I realized that she was really staring at me. Now for Mom this is not a

usual thing. Mom usually has her head down. She is usually looking away when

you talk to her. She is not ever very direct. But she was looking right at

me, and then she said to me in a very steady voice; "Darlin', he was too old

for you."

For a second the words were just there and I didn't know what they meant.

Then I really heard them and I realized we were still looking at each other,

and then she did something with her eyes that I have seen her do to other

people a thousand times. She looked me up and down slowly, and then she said

in the same flat drugged voice: "You're a big girl, aren't you? But you're

not that big."

I was numb. Something was happening between me and Mom in these few seconds

that had never happened before. I went down the hall and into my room. I

closed the door and I stood there against it, and my heart was pounding so

loud I could hear it in my ears. She knew, she knew all along, I was

thinking, she knew.

But what did she really know? Had she thought it was a crush, a little

teenage thing, that Marty had never reciprocated? Or did she really

understand what had gone down?

I was shaking when I came in for dinner. But she never once looked me in the

eye. She was really drugged by that time, murmuring and looking at her plate

and saying she was sleepy, and obviously she could not follow the

conversation at the table at all.

We all kissed Daryl good-bye and then I told them I was going, too.

I saw the darkest look of bitterness on Marty's face. But he just smiled and

he said: "OK, honey, good-bye."

I should have known it was too easy. Two hours later, when I was crying in my

room at the Chateau, he arrived. He was crying and I was crying, real Marty-

style Italian opera, and we did not even talk about it. We just made love. I

felt like something was broken in me by that little encounter with Mom. It

killed me. It killed me inside.

That wasn't the woman I had looked at in the Carlton and thought, Ah, well,

she doesn't know what she's doing. She doesn't know at all.

Something else had come out and, to tell you the truth, I had seen it come

out at other moments, much less important moments over the years.

After a long time I told Marty about it, what she had said, how she had

looked.

"No, honey, she doesn't know," he said. "She may think it was kissyface and

crushes, but she doesn't know. She wouldn't want you to come back to the

house if she did."

"Does she want that, Marty?"

He nodded. He was getting up to get dressed. He had told Mom's nurse that he

was going out to an all-night drugstore. It was a cinch Mom would wake up

sooner or later and ask for him.

"She keeps asking, 'Where's Belinda?' She just doesn't seem to understand why

you're not at her right hand."

I didn't argue with him, but I had a deep dark suspicion that Mom did know,

and still she wanted me to come back, because she thought sure she'd taken

Marty away from me. I mean, she was Bonnie, wasn't she? And what had she

said, "You're a big girl, but you're not that big"? Yeah, she thought she

could have both of us, all right; she'd just rearranged things a little,

hadn't she? Better to suit herself. Another one of those instances of

"Everything's OK now, Belinda, cause I feel fine."

And as of this day I think I read the situation right.

After Marty left, I got really drunk. I'd taken several bottles with me back

to the Chateau from the house, and I drank every drop over the next few days,

just lying alone in that room, and crying over Marty and wondering how I

could make this misery end.

I thought of Susan. I thought of G.G. But then I thought of Marty. And I

didn't have the strength to go to G.G. And the thought of telling anyone the

whole story, the thought of ever confiding to anyone what had happened was an

agony. I didn't want G.G. to ever ask.

I felt terrible and alone and I felt like a fool. I felt like Mom was right,

I should never have fallen for Marty, Marty belonged to Mom. But half the

time it was the booze thinking and I just drifted in and out of sleep like

I'd seen Mom do on Saint Esprit for years and years.

The only thing that broke the nightmare of those few days was a call from

Blair Sackwell one afternoon in which he told me furiously how Mom had dumped

him and Marty Moreschi had cut him off.

"I was willing to put three inches of white mink stole on every one of those

Bonnie dolls! My label! And the son of a bitch told me to back off. They

didn't invite me to the wedding, you realize that!"

"Oh, get off my case with it, Blair, goddamn it!" I shouted.

"Oooh, like mother like daughter!" he said.

I hung up. And then I was so sorry. I sat up and started calling around

trying to find him. I called the Bev Wilsh and the Beverly Hills. No Blair.

And Blair was my friend, my really true friend.

But an hour later I got a delivery, two dozen white roses in a vase with a

note saying, "Sorry, darling, please forgive me, love you always, Blair."

When Jill called the next day to say she and Trish were leaving, I had a hell

of a time even talking I was so drunk. But I slept it off, got through being

sick hung over, and took a cab to the house for the last dinner with them.

Mom was dopey but all right. Our eyes never met. She said how she was going

to miss Trish and Jill, but they'd be coming out for visits all the time.

Most of the talk was about the Bonnie dolls and the Saint Esprit perfume

campaign and the big fight with Blair Sackwell because Marty didn't think she

should do anything but "Champagne Flight" products right now.

I tried to put in a word for Blair. I mean, Midnight Mink was Midnight Mink,

for God's sakes, and Blair was our old friend.

Marty just dismissed it. Product identification was everything, blab, blah,

blah. This boutique of Trish and Jill's was going to be sensational, with a

life-size mannequin of Mom in the window. But why not Beverly Hills? he kept

asking. The whole world wanted to shop on Rodeo Drive, and he could start

them there, didn't they realize? Dallas, who goes to Dallas?

I watched them, the looks on their faces. They couldn't wait to get out. And

they had been buddies with Blair, too, after all. No, they wanted to go home

all right.

"Look, we're Dallas girls," Trish said. Then she and Jill and Mom looked at

each other, and then they all did some school cheer or something, and they

laughed, but then Mom looked real sad.

Time for more hugging and kissing, time for all the farewells. And then Mom

lost it. She really lost it. She was crying in that terrible way she does

before she really tries to hurt herself or something. Awful sound. And Marty

had to take her in the bedroom before Trish and Jill left. As soon as I

kissed them, I went in there.

"You stay with her, while I take them to the airport, I just can't let them

go like this," Marty said.

Mom was sitting on the bed crying. And the nurse was there in a white uniform

and she was giving Mom a shot.

Now this thing of the shot scared me. Mom had always taken drugs, all kinds

of drugs. But why an injection? I didn't like to see the needle going into

Mom's arm.

"What are you doing?" I asked the woman, and she made a little patronizing

sign to me like, Don't upset your mother. And Mom said in a real drowsy

voice:

"Honey, it's just for the pain. But it's not really pain." She put her hands

on her hips. "It's just like a burn there, you know, where they do it."

"Do what?" I asked.

"Doesn't your mom look beautiful?" the nurse asked.

"What did they do, Mom?" I asked her. But then I could see it for myself.

Mom's body had been changed. Her hips and thighs were much much thinner. They

were taking the fat off her, that's what they were doing. And then she

explained to me it was done in the doctor's office and they called it

liposuction and it wasn't dangerous at all.

I was horrified. I thought the world thought my mom was beautiful just the

way she was! Nobody had to re-sculpt Mom! These people are crazy, Marty is

crazy to let this happen. She cannot eat a full meal, she is doped

constantly, and now they are draining her body away from her. This is mad.

But the nurse was gone, and here we were alone, me and Mom. I felt this awful

terror that something would happen, that she would say something like she did

before. I didn't want to be in the room with her. I didn't even want to be

near her.

But she was too far gone to say anything. The shot was really taking effect.

She looked sad and terrible suddenly, just sitting there in her nightgown,

like she was lost. And I kept looking at her, and the strangest thought came

to me. I know every inch of this woman's body. I slept with her a thousand

nights when I was a little girl. She'd even leave Leonardo Gallo to sneak

into my bed and we would snuggle in the dark. I know what she feels like all

over, what it's like to curl up in her arms. I know what her hair is like and

what she smells like, and I know where they took the fat off her. I'd know

the places blindfolded by just feeling with my hands.

"Mom, maybe Trish and Jill would stay if you asked them to," I said suddenly.

"Mom, they'd come back."

"I don't think so, Belinda," she said softly. "You can't really buy people

forever. You can only buy them for a while."

"Mom, they love you," I said.

"And you have to go your way, too, don't you, darlin', you're never here

anymore at all."

She was staring forward and her words were coming so slow it was frightening.

"Mom, tell me," I said. "Is this what you want?"

She turned towards the pillows, but she was groping, her hands just stroking

the sheets, like she was looking for something invisible.

I pushed her back gently and moved the sheets down for her, and helped her to

get under them and then I tucked her in. "Give me your glasses," I said.

She didn't move. She was staring at the ceiling. I took the glasses and put

them on the bedside table right by her private phone.

"Where's Marty!" she said suddenly. She tried to sit up. She stared at me,

trying to see me, though she couldn't without her glasses on.

"He's gone to the airport. He'll be back right away."

"You won't leave till he gets back. You'll stay here with me?"

"Course. Just lie down."

She sank back, just like somebody had let the air out of her. She reached out

her hand for me to take it. She closed her eyes. I thought she was gone, but

then she reached out again, feeling for her glasses and then for the phone.

"They're there, Mom," I said.

It was still California daylight outside. I sat with her until she was deep

asleep. She felt cold. I looked around this bedroom, this long white chamber

with all the satin and mirrors and white carpet, and her dressing gown and

slippers made of the same things as the bedspread and the curtains, and it

all seemed horrible to me, horrible. Nothing in it personal. But the worst

part was her.

"Mom, are you happy?" I whispered. "Do you have what you want?" On Saint

Esprit she had dozed off day in and day out on the terrace with her books and

her beer and her television. Four years she had been like that-or was it

longer? Was that really so bad?

She hadn't heard me. She was sound asleep, and her hand felt icy now. I went

into my room and closed the door to the hall and I laid on the bed and looked

out the patio doors and the whole house seemed quiet and still. I don't think

I had ever been in it when it was so empty. The staff had disappeared into

the back cottages. There was no gardener prowling outside. All Beverly Hills

seemed empty. You would never have known the filth of LA was beyond these

orange trees, these walls.

I was crying. And mad thoughts were running through my head. I had to do

something! I had to leave Marty, no buts about it. I had to go to either

Susan or G.G., no matter how hard it was. But the pain in me was the worst

I'd ever felt.

I knew I was just a kid, a kid gets over these things, this isn't even

supposed to be love, love is illegal for a kid, I knew all that, oh, yes.

Until you're twenty-one nothing's supposed to be real. But God, this was

awful. This was so awful I couldn't move or think or even want to get drunk.

And, of course, I knew Marty was coming. I knew I'd heard the car in the

drive. I knew I'd heard a door open somewhere. I kept looking out over the

patio, through the orange trees, and I saw the California twilight coming,

and the only sound was me crying. Just that.

It got darker and darker, and then I realized that somebody was standing on

the other side of the patio doors. It was Marty, and he was opening the

doors.

I felt so defeated. I knew it was wrong to sit up and to put my arms around

him and kiss him, but I did not care. Just for this moment I did not care.

And I also knew that if I did it now with him in this bed, not ten steps from

Mother, that I would do it again and again. There'd be no going to G.G. There

would be just what Marty wanted, the three of us under this xxx.

But I kissed him and I let him kiss me. I let him start taking off my

clothes.

"Oh, honey, don't leave me, please don't leave me," he said. "Don't leave

her, honey, don't leave either of us. She means it when she says she wants

you to come home."

"Don't talk," I said.

"We're all she's got now, honey, you and me. You realize that?"

"Don't talk about her anymore, please, Marty," I said.

And then we weren't talking, we were just together, and I thought no, I will

never never be able to give this up.

Then I heard the loudest noise I have ever heard in my life.

I mean, it was positively deafening. And for a second I didn't have the

faintest idea what it was. Well, it was a .38-caliber pistol fired in a room

about fifteen by twenty feet. And Marty shoved me off the bed onto the floor

and screamed:

"Bonnie, honey, don't!"

And then the gun went off what seemed like twenty times. Everything was

breaking. The glass bottles on the dresser behind me, the mirror, the

electric clock by the bed.

But actually it was only five shots, and Marty had her by the hand and had

gotten the gun from her. She was screaming. He was bleeding. She struggled

and broke the glass in the patio door.

"Get out, Belinda, go!" he shouted. "Get out!"

She was screaming, "Give it back to me, let me finish it, there's one more

bullet, damn it, let me use it on myself."

I couldn't move. Then the nurse came rushing in and the cook was there, and

some other people I did not even know. And Marty said: "Get Belinda out of

here, now! Get her away, go!"

Well, I went as far as the pool and I listened while they called the

ambulance. I could see Marty was OK and that Mother was sitting on the side

of the bed. Then the nurse came running towards me:

"Marty says to go to the Chateau and stay there till he calls."

She had the keys to Marty's Ferrari and she drove me, telling me to crouch

down and stay down until we were out of Beverly Hills. Well, that night was

hell.

The nurse did call to tell me Marty was OK, he was in intensive care, but

he'd be out by noon probably, and Mom was sedated, not to worry at all. But

then the reporters started. They started on the phones first and then they

were coming to the door itself.

I was frantic. I opened the door once and six flashbulbs went off. Then I

heard somebody ordering them off the premises. But somebody was knocking on

the windows only minutes after that. I looked up and saw this guy who works

for the National Enquirer, a guy I brushed off constantly on the Strip. He

was holding up a matchbook with a phone number inside it. He was always

giving these to me, saying, Couldn't a kid like you use the spending money,

that kind of thing. I could use the matches, I always said. I pulled down the

shade.

Finally about eleven A.M. I heard Uncle Daryl's voice through the door. I let

him in and two flunkies from United Theatricals came with him and they

started to pack up everything I owned.

He said he had already checked me out, to come with him. There were reporters

all over the drive, but we managed to get into the limousine and on our way

to the house.

"I don't know what got into you, Belinda," he said, taking off his glasses

and staring at me. "That you could hurt your mother so much. It's all the

fault of that Susan Jeremiah, if you want my opinion, putting you in that X-

rated movie and all."

I was too disgusted to say anything to him. I hated him.

"You listen to me, Belinda," he went on. "You say nothing to nobody about

what happened. Bonnie mistook her husband for a prowler. You were not even

there, you understand? Now Marty has been shot in the arm and in the

shoulder, but he will be out Thursday and he will handle the reporters, you

are not to utter one word to a living soul."

Then he took out a handful of papers and informed me he had closed my bank

account and I had no more money and no more credit either at places like the

Chateau Marmont.

When we reached the house, he held my arm so tight that he hurt me as we got

out of the car.

"You're not going to hurt Bonnie anymore, Belinda," he told me. "No, you will

not. You are going to a school in Switzerland where you can't hurt anybody

anymore. You will stay there until I tell you that you can come home."

I didn't answer him. I just watched in silence while he picked up the phone

to call Trish in Dallas and tell her that everything was OK. "No, Belinda

wasn't there, absolutely not," he kept saying. I didn't say a word.

I turned around and I went into the den and I sat down and I wrapped my arms

around my waist. I felt sick. And it seemed I was thinking about everything,

I mean absolutely everything, that had ever happened between me and Mom. I

was thinking of the time she left me in Rome and that time on Saint Esprit

when she floored the gas pedal and headed for the edge of the cliff. I was

thinking about the time she had a horrible fight with Gallo and he was trying

to pour the whiskey down her throat to make her pass out. I had tried to stop

him and he had turned and kicked me across the room. His foot caught me right

in the stomach and the wind had been knocked out of me. I had been lying on

the floor thinking, If I can't breathe, I can't be alive.

Well, it was how I felt now. I could not breathe. The wind was gone out of

me. And if I couldn't breathe, I couldn't be alive. I could hear Uncle Daryl

talking to somebody about a school called Saint Margaret's and about going to

London on the five-o'clock polar flight.

This cannot happen, I was thinking, he can not make me go there, not without

seeing Marty, not without talking to Susan, not without G.G. This cannot go

down.

I stared at my purse for a moment before I opened it, and then all of a

sudden I was feeling around in it, making sure I had my passport and my

traveler's checks. I knew I had three or four thousand in checks at least.

Maybe a lot more than that. I had been hoarding them for years after all. I'd

saved them after every shopping spree in Europe, I'd bought them in Beverly

Hills from the money Uncle Daryl gave me to spend. I was just zipping up my

bag when Mom came in.

She had just come from the hospital and she had on her coat. She looked at me

and her eyes had the usual glazed drug look to them. And she spoke in the

flat drugged voice:

"Belinda, your Uncle Daryl will take you to the airport. He will sit with you

until it's time for the Pam Am flight."

I stood up and I looked at her, and through all the haze of drugs I saw the

hardness of her face, and the look in her eyes seemed absolute hatred as she

looked back. I mean, when someone you have loved looks at you with hate like

this, it is like seeing a stranger in that person's body, an impersonator

inside that person's skin.

So maybe I was talking to the stranger when I spoke up, because I don't know

how I ever could have spoken this way to Mom.

"I'm not going to any school in Switzerland," I said. "I'm going to where I

want."

"The hell you are," she said in the same fuzzy voice. "You're going where I

tell you. You're no kin of mine anymore. And you won't live under any roof

under which I live."

I couldn't answer for a minute. I couldn't do anything. I just swallowed and

tried not to cry. I kept staring at her face and thinking, This is Mom

talking. No, it can not be Mom.

"Look, I'm going," I said finally. "I'm leaving now. But I am going where I

want to go. I'm going to meet Susan Jeremiah and I'll make a picture with

her."

"You go near Susan Jeremiah," she said real slowly, "and I'll fix it so she

never works for any studio in this town. I mean, nobody will touch her.

Nobody will bank one nickel on her or on you." She looked just like a zombie,

the way she stood there, the way her voice was coming in that slow almost

slurred way. "No, believe me, you are not going to Susan Jeremiah with any

stories of what went on here. And don't you get any ideas about G.G. either.

I ran G.G. out of Paris and he remembers it. And I can run G.G. right out of

New York. You will not go to these people and tell them stories about Marty

and me. You will go to this school in Switzerland just like I told you. That

is exactly what you will do."

I could feel my mouth moving but nothing was coming out. Then I heard myself

say to her:

"Mom, how can you do this! How can you do it to me!" Dear God, how many times

had she said those words, to everybody-How can you do this to me!-and now I

was saying them. Oh, God, this was awful.

She went on looking at me like a zombie, and her voice came really low like

before:

"How can I do this to you?" she said. "Is that what you ask me, Belinda?

Well, I'll tell you how. When I had you, I thought you were the one thing in

all this world that was mine, my own baby, come out of my body. I thought,

when I had you, you were the one person who would always be loyal to me. My

own mother was dead before I was seven, nothing but a drunk, that's all she

was. Big fancy house in Highland Park. Might as well have a beer joint far as

she was concerned. Never gave a damn about me and Daryl, didn't care enough

about us just to keep herself alive. But I loved her. Oh, how I loved her. If

she had lived, I'd have given her anything, I'd have scrubbed floors for her,

given her every penny I ever made, done anything to make her happy, just to

keep her wanting to be alive. Just the same way I gave you everything,

Belinda, everything you ever asked for, things you never even had to ask for.

What did you ever want that you didn't get?"

Of course, Mom often talked about her mother, as I've mentioned. But this was

taking a new turn.

"Well, you don't need your mother, do you?" she asked me. "You're real grown

-up, aren't you? And blood and kin mean nothing to you. Well, I'll tell you

what you are. You're a tramp, Belinda. That's what we would have called you

in Highland Park. That's what we would have called you in Denton, Texas.

You're a cheap little tramp. And it's got nothing to do with spreading your

legs for every man you set your sights on, Belinda. A tramp is a woman who

doesn't give a damn about her own friends or her own kin. That's you,

Belinda. And you're getting on that plane now with Daryl or I will turn you

over to the California Youth Authority, so help me God. I will pick up that

phone and I will tell them that you cannot be controlled and they will take

you into custody and they will put you in a jail, Belinda, and they will make

you do what they say."

It was like Gallo's foot hitting me in the stomach again. I was not

breathing, and yet I was feeling this rage inside me, like something filling

me up right to the roots of my hair.

"You do that, lady," I said to her, "and I'll put your husband in San Quentin

for statutory rape on account of what happened. I'll tell the juvenile

authorities everything that went on between him and me. It was unlawful

intercourse with a minor, in case you're interested, and if you think they

drove Roman Polanski out of this town for it, you wait and see what happens

to Marty. It'll bomb your fucking 'Champagne Flight' right out of the sky!"

I was dying inside. Dying. And yet I was saying these things to her. And she

kept staring in the same cloudy way and then she said:

"You get out of my house, Belinda. You will never ever again live under the

same roof with me."

"You got it!" I said to her.

But Uncle Daryl had come past her and he grabbed me by the arm. "Give me your

passport, Belinda," he said. He was pulling me out of the room.

"The hell I will," I said to him. He shoved me into the back of the

limousine. And I held my purse in both hands. "I mean it, don't you try to

take it," I said to him. He didn't answer. But he didn't let go of my arm.

I looked back at the house as we were pulling out. I didn't know whether Mom

was watching or not. Then I realized she would tell Marty the things I'd said

to her. And Marty would never understand what had happened, that I was trying

to fight her and Uncle Daryl and that I'd never hurt anybody like that.

I was crying again when we reached the airport. Uncle Daryl jerked me out

onto the pavement. People were staring. Everything I owned in the world was

being taken out of the trunk. I never saw so many suitcases. They must have

packed up everything at the house as well as the Chateau.

"Go inside," he said to me. And I went with him, but I was still holding my

purse tight. He is not going to do this, I was thinking. I am not getting on

any plane for London with him. No, sir, as he always says.

People were staring at me because I was crying. And my arm where he was

holding it had gone numb. The man who had driven the limo was checking my

luggage. He said they wanted to see my passport. I looked at Uncle Daryl and

I knew it was now or never.

"Let me go," I said. He dug his fingers in, and when I felt the pain through

the numbness, something snapped in my head. I turned and with my arms tight

around my purse I shoved my knee right into his groin with all I had.

I ran through the airport. I ran like I haven't run since I was a kid. I ran

through one set of doors after another and down escalators, and back up them

and finally out onto the pavement and right up to an open cab.

"Hurry please, mister," I was screaming, frantic. "I've got to get to the

Greyhound Station in Los Angeles. My mom's leaving from there. If I miss her,

I'll never see my mom again."

"Go ahead, take her," said this poor guy who'd been getting into the cab.

Just before we made the final turn, I saw Uncle Daryl come running out there

at the cab stand, but he had not seen me. At the bus station I switched cabs.

I did it again at the Union train station, and at the bus station one more

time.

And then I went right back to LAX and took the next plane to New York.

It had been six years since I had seen New York City, and I arrived there

tired, dirty, and very scared. I had on white jeans and a white pullover

sweater, which had been OK for California in early November, but it was

already freezing in New York.

I knew Dad's salon in Paris had been called simply G.G., but it had never

been listed in any book. Well, the New York phone directory didn't have it

either. As for going ahead to some big hotel, I didn't dare.

I bought some overnight things and a bag at the airport, and went to the

Algonquin and checked in with the cash I had on hand so I didn't have to give

them my right name. Then I tried to get some sleep.

But I kept waking up thinking somebody was breaking into the room. I was

terrified that Uncle Daryl had traced me and the police would come. And, of

course, I had no intention of ever carrying out my threat to testify against

Marty. That had been pure bullshit.

Which is why I had to be damned careful about G.G. when I found him, too.

Well, it was five o'clock New York time when I finally gave up on sleep

altogether. And I went out to look for Dad.

Everybody in New York had heard of G.G. naturally, but the doormen and cab

drivers I talked to did not know the location of his famous salon. One said

he worked strictly free-lance. Others that it was a private house. Finally I

took a cab to the Parker Meridien, just to cash some traveler's checks, went

back to the Algonquin, and set out to find Ollie Boon.

Now Blair Sackwell had said Ollie's show had just opened, so I asked the

hotel concierge what he knew. Yes, Ollie Boon's new Broadway opera, Dolly

Rose, was playing on Forty-seventh Street, just around the corner from the

hotel.

Forty-seventh Street was jammed with limos and taxis when I got there. Lots

of people were giving up and going the last two blocks to the theaters on

foot. I ran right up to the ticket taker at the door and said I had to see

Ollie Boon, I was his niece from Cannes, and it was a pure emergency, they

had to get word to him right away. I took one of the giveaway programs, tore

a page out of it, and wrote: "It's Belinda. Top Secret. Have to find G.G. Top

Secret. Help."

An usher came back almost immediately to take me down through the little

theater and out the side door to backstage. Ollie was talking on the phone in

a cramped little dressing room right under the stairs. He played some sort of

master of ceremonies figure in the musical, so he was already dressed in top

hat and tailcoat and completely made up.

He said: "G.G.'s at home, precious. Here, talk to him on the phone."

"Daddy, I have to see you." I blurted out at once. "It has to be top secret."

"I'll come to get you, Belinda. I'm so excited. Go down to Seventh Avenue in

fifteen minutes. Watch for Ollie's car."

The limousine was there when I got there, and in a second I was safe with

Daddy and holding on to him in the backseat. It took us fifteen minutes of

nosing through New York traffic to get to Ollie's SoHo loft. And during that

time I gave Dad the headlines, more or less, Mom's threat to ruin him if I

came to him, her story that she'd driven him out of Paris and how I'd gotten

myself into an awful mess.

"I'd like to see her do it again," he said. He was really fuming when we got

to the apartment. And to see Dad mad is strange. He is so gentle and so kind,

it is almost impossible to realize he is angry. He sounds like a child

playing angry in a school play. "She did it in Paris, all right, because she

owned the salon. She gave it to me, you know, but she never put it in my

name. Well, G.G.'s in New York is my apartment. And my appointment book is

the only thing that counts."

Then I knew it was true that she'd driven him out of Paris, and my heart

sank. But Daddy was so wonderful, so excited to see me. We were hugging and

kissing the way we had at Cannes. He looked perfectly wonderful to me, all

six foot four of him, and maybe there is that special thing between us, too,

because I see in Daddy's blue eyes and blond hair the genes that are in me.

But to tell you the honest truth, almost anybody would love G.G. G.G. is so

sweet and so kind.

Ollie's place was out of a magazine, an old warehouse with a million pipes

and ceiling braces all carefully gilded, and miles of hardwood floor as shiny

as glass. Rooms were arrangements of antiques on various carpets under spot

lights. Bits and pieces of wall existed just to hold paintings or mirrors or

both. We sat down on two brocade couches facing each other near the

fireplace.

"Now, tell me what really happened?" Dad said.

Now, as I mentioned before, I had not confided in anyone all these months. I

have by nature never been a conrider. Mom's drinking, the pill taking, the

suicide attempts-these were my life and they were secrets to be kept. But now

I started talking and things just poured out.

And it was agony to tell it, to range back and forth over Cannes and Beverly

Hills and try to put it all together, but once I started I could not stop.

And I began to see things in a different perspective, even with all the halts

and backtracking and crying and disclaimers. I mean, a big ugly pattern

started to come clear. But I cannot tell you enough how much this hurt me to

tell it, how against my nature it was to drag everything out.

I mean, I was lying to hotel clerks and doctors and reporters before I could

remember. And, of course, we had all of us always lied to Mom. "You go in

there and tell her she looks pretty, that she's just fine"-that's what Uncle

Daryl would say before her press conferences in Dallas, when she was shaking

and she looked awful and the makeup could hardly hide the hangover bruises

under her eyes. "You tell your mom not to worry, you don't want to go off to

school anymore, you're going to stay with her on Saint Esprit from now on."

"Don't you talk about the accident, don't you talk about the drinking, don't

you talk about the reporters, don't you talk about the movie, everything's

going to be just fine, just fine, just fine, just fine."

Lies, that's all it ever was. And in my head? Fragments, puzzle pieces that

were never fitted together. And this telling it even to my darling dad was

like the final betrayal, the final break from Mom.

What I am writing to you now is the second real telling, and it is not any

easier as I sit here thousands of miles away from you alone in this empty

room.

Anyway G.G. didn't ask many questions. He just listened, and when I was

finished, he said:

"I hate this guy, Marty, absolutely hate him."

"No, Dad, really you don't understand," I told him. And I pleaded with him to

believe me when I said that Marty loved me, that Marty had never meant to let

things go the way they did.

"I thought he was an Arab hijacker when I met him," G.G. said. "That he was

going to hijack that yacht at Cannes. I hate him. But OK, you say he loves

you. I can believe somebody like him could love you, but not because of him,

because of you."

"But, Daddy, this is the thing. I can't do what I threatened. I'd never tell

the police things about Marty. And I think Mom knows that. What I have to do

is lie low."

"Maybe she knows it and maybe she doesn't. And maybe if she calls your bluff

there are other things you can do. You've got a hell of a stop here, Belinda.

And she knows that. She always knows what's really going on."

I was puzzled by his words, hell of a story. And I was also scared of what

Mom could do. Maybe she couldn't bust Daddy's business in New York City, but

what about the question of custody? I was a minor here as well as in

California. Could she charge Daddy with harboring a runaway or something like

that?

Ollie got home at midnight, wearing only a pair of jeans and a pullover

sweater, a real after-theater switch. Dad cooked us all some supper and we

ate, sitting on cushions at a round table near the fire. And then G.G.

insisted we tell Ollie the whole thing.

"I can't go through this," I told him. But he said he'd been with Ollie for

five years, he loved Ollie, and Ollie would never tell a living soul.

Now Ollie is sweet and gentle like my dad. He is a tall wiry man. He used to

be a dancer but, now in his seventies, he cannot dance anymore. But he is

still graceful and very elegant with bushy gray hair, and he has never had

the plastic surgeons work on him, so his face is full of patience and wisdom,

too. At least it seemed that way to me. OK. Tell him, I finally said.

Dad started using some of my same language. Only thing was he started at the

beginning, the way I have in this written account. He started with Susan

coming to the island and then us going to Cannes.

"Some story isn't it?" G.G. said to Ollie. Ollie was sitting there with his

glasses pushed up into his hair. He was looking at me really kindly. For a

long while he didn't say anything, then he spoke in this very dramatic and

kind of theatrical voice.

"So they cut your movie," he said, "and they cut your career and then they

cut your love affair."

I didn't answer him. As I've already explained, it was so against my grain to

talk about Mom that I was raw all over. Ollie's sympathy was confusing me. I

don't think I will ever be much of a conrider. I don't have enough faith in

talking about things. The tension just builds.

"And then they wanted to cut you out completely," he continued. "The Swiss

school was the final exit. And you refused to be written out of the script."

"Yeah, I guess that is what happened," I finally said.

"Sounds like Mother suddenly found out you were competition and Mother could

not handle that at all."

"You can say that again," G.G. said. "Mother cannot stand competition."

I started arguing: "But it wasn't planned like that, Mr. Boon, really it

wasn't. She loves Marty and that is all she can understand."

Then Ollie made a sort of speech. "You're being kind to her, darling," he

said, "and please call me Ollie. And let me tell you something about your

mother, though I've never had the pleasure. I know this kind of person. I've

known them all my life. They get the sympathy of others with what passes for

insecurity. But what really motivates them is a vanity so immense most of us

can not conceive of it. Insecurity is simply a disguise. I don't think from

what you've told me that men mean much to your mother. You, her friends Jill

and Trish, a circle of dazzling acquaintances, I suspect this is what your

mother always wanted. And she only found it necessary to seduce and marry Mr.

Moreschi when she realized he was in love with you."

This rang true. Horribly true. Yet my loyalty to Mother made it hurt very

deep. But I remembered that time in the limo when Marty had kissed me. I

remembered the look on Mom's face. Had that been the death knell, that little

kiss?

But I argued. I told Ollie that Marty had taken care of Mom the way no other

man had ever done. I could still remember Mom's boyfriends in the early days,

demanding supper, asking where their clothes were, wanting money from Mom for

booze and cigarettes. Mom would cook for two hours for Leonardo Gallo, and

then he'd get up and throw the plate at the wall. Marty was the first man who

took care of Mom.

"Of course," Ollie said, "and the babying would have been enough for her

until you became a threat."

I was agreeing, but it was too ugly and too complicated still.

Then Dad said it really didn't matter what made Bonnie tick, I was here now,

and I could live in New York, near to him and Ollie and that he would handle

whatever Bonnie tried to do.

Ollie didn't answer, and then he said in a real small voice:

"That's all very nice except for one factor, G.G. United Theatricals is my

producer. They financed Dolly Rose."

I saw the two of them exchange looks.

Then Ollie made another speech like this:

"Look, darling. I understand your position. When I was fifteen, I was waiting

tables in Greenwich Village and playing bit parts on the stage every time I

had the chance. You're a big girl, and I'm not going to try to sell you any

bill of goods about going home and letting yourself be packed off to school.

But I won't lie to you either. United Theatricals is the biggest break I've

had in the last twenty years of putting it together with Scotch tape on

Broadway. Not only have they financed this musical, which doesn't make them a

whole hell of a lot of money by the way, they're talking about financing the

picture. And I would direct that picture, an opportunity I badly want.

"Of course, they wouldn't shut down Dolly Rose. They couldn't, but the

picture? And the picture after that? One word from your mother and her studio

executive husband and their interest in Ollie Boon would dry up overnight. No

cross words, no explanations, just, 'Thanks for calling, Ollie, we'll get

back to you.' And I'd never get a direct line to Ash Levine or Sidney

Templeton again."

And then something came up which seemed very small at that moment, but it was

to mean a great deal later on. Ollie went on with his speech. Dolly Rose was

a lavish antebellum New Orleans piece, real Broadway opera, but the property

he dearly wanted to make into a movie musical was Crimson Mardi Gras, a book

written by Cynthia Walker, the southern writer, and guess who owned the

rights? United Theatricals, which had made the straight movie in the fifties

with Alex Clemcntine, and the miniseries a few years back. Dolly Rose was

good Broadway, but it would never travel. The movie was iffy. But Crimson

Mardi Gras? It would run forever. And the movie would be a smash.

OK, I understood Ollie's position, I said. And I really did.

I had grown up on location in Europe. I knew what it meant to lose the

backing. I could remember a thousand arguments, phone calls, struggles to get

the food trucks and the wardrobe trucks and the cameras just to stay put. I

started to get up from the table.

But Ollie said: "Sit down, darling, I'm not finished. I've been frank with

you about my position. Now what about yours?"

"I'm leaving, Ollie, I'm going out on my own. I'll wait tables in Greenwich

Village. I can do that, too, you know. And besides, I've got some money of my

own."

"Do you really want to be running from the police or from your family's

private detectives? Do you want that kind of thing right now?"

"Of course, she doesn't, Ollie!" Dad said suddenly, and for the first time I

realized how angry he was with Ollie. He was glaring at Ollie.

But Ollie didn't seem to take this very seriously. He just took Dad's hand,

like to calm him down. Then he said to me:

"Then what you've got to do, dearest, is bluff these people. Bluff them hard.

Tell them you want your freedom here and now and you will use the story and,

believe you me, it is a terrific story, and you can use it not only with the

authorities but with the press. But you cannot be connected with me when you

do it, dearest, because I might very well lose my backers, no matter who wins

your little war."

This time when I stood up, he didn't tell me to sit down. And this is what I

told him and Dad both:

"You keep calling it my story. You keep saying what a hell of a story it is.

And you tell me to use my story. But it's not mine, you see, that's the awful

part. It's Mom's story and Susan's story and Marty's story, and I can't hurt

all those people. I mean, you can be sure that the press would bring Final

Score into it, and then this studio, this great big power we're all cringing

in front of, would cut Susan loose as well. I can't do anything, don't you

see that? Not anything. It's like I don't own the rights to my own story! The

rights belong to the grownups involved."

Ollie was very quiet, and then he said that I was a strange case. What did he

mean, I asked him.

"You don't really like having power over others, do you?"

"No, I guess not," I said. "I guess all my life I watched people play with

power-Mom, Gallo, then Marty and other people I hardly remember now. I think

power makes people act badly. I guess I like it when nobody much has power

over anyone else."

"But situations like that don't exist, darling," he said. "And you are

dealing with people who have used their power over you shamefully. They

aborted your career, darling. And they did it at a pivotal moment, and for

what-a prime time soap? If you do go out on your own, you had better toughen

up. You had better be ready to use their tools against them right from the

start."

Well, by that time I was too exhausted to say anymore. This night for me had

been a terrible ordeal. Confiding in them left me feeling awful. I was

drained.

But I think G.G. could see it. He went to get a jacket for me and to get his

own coat.

Then he and Ollie had a sort of conference, but I could hear them because

there were no rooms in this place. Ollie reminded G.G. what the last legal

battle with Mom had cost him. He'd left Europe flat broke. G.G. said, So

what, he'd been mobbed by offers to endorse products as soon as he hit New

York.

"This woman could get the studio lawyers on retainer to handle this! Your

costs could run you ten thousand a month."

"This is my daughter, Ollie!" Dad was saying. "And she's the only kid I will

ever have."

Then Ollie really got mad. He told Dad that for the last five years he had

done everything he could to make Dad happy. And Dad started to laugh.

In other words a real fight was coming on. Dad started sticking up for

himself in his own mild-mannered way.

"Ollie, I can't even work anymore without your getting mad about it. If I'm

not at the theater before the show and after the show, you throw a fit."

But understand, with these two men even this was highly civilized and mellow,

like they did not know how to scream at each other and never had.

"Look," Ollie said, "I want to help your daughter. She's a precious darling.

But what do you expect me to do?"

Nice words, I thought to myself, and he means them. But he's smart, and he's

right.

And they had forgotten all about Mom's brother, Uncle Daryl, who was himself

a lawyer, for Crissakes.

Next thing I heard was Dad on the phone making a call. Then he came and put a

coat over my shoulders, a real fancy mink-lined trench coat that Blair

Sackwell had given him, and he told me the plan.

"Now listen, Belinda. I've got a house on Fire Island," he told me. "And it's

winter now and everybody is gone. But the house is insulated, it's got a big

fireplace and a big freezer, and we can lay in everything that you need. It's

going to be lonely over there. It's going to be spooky. But you can hide

there till we find out just what Bonnie's doing, whether she has called the

police, or what."

Ollie was very upset. He gave me a big kiss good-bye. And Dad and I left in

Ollie's limousine immediately and we spent the rest of night getting stuff

together for me to take. We went to the all-night markets and bought the food

we needed and then Dad wrote down all my measurements and promised to bring

me clothes. Finally at about three A.M. we were cruising through the dismal

dark Astoria section of Queens out of New York City towards the town where

you take the ferry to Fire Island, and I remembered something and sat up with

a start. "What day is this, Daddy? Is it November 7?"

"Gee, Belinda, it's your birthday," he said.

"Yeah, but what good does it do me, Daddy? I'm still only sixteen." We nearly

froze on the early-morning ferry. And Fire Island was spooky with not a soul

anywhere, except the workmen who had come over with us, and the wind howling

off the Atlantic as we followed the boardwalks to Dad's house.

But once we were inside everything was all right. There was lots of stuff

still in the freezer, all the wall heaters were working, there was a lot of

wood for a fire. Even the television was OK. And there were books in the

shelves and lots of records and tapes. There was also a copy of Crimson Mardi

Gras right by the fireplace, and it was full of Ollie Boon's notes.

I enjoyed that first day there. I really slept OK. And at evening I went out

on the end of the pier. And I watched the moon over the black ocean and I

felt kind of safe and glad to be alone. I mean, maybe it was like being on

Saint Esprit or something.

But I tell you, this joy did not last.

I was entering one of the strangest periods of my life. G.G. brought back

lots of supplies the following day, he brought some nice warm winter clothes

for me, pants, sweaters, coats, that kind of thing. But he also brought the

news that there was absolutely nothing in the papers about my disappearance,

and he had not been contacted. Nobody was saying anything about my running

away.

I got that cold feeling again when I heard it. I mean, I was happy they

weren't looking for me, right? But it should have bothered me, shouldn't it,

that they were not worried enough to look?

Ah, I was so mixed up. And then with all my doubts and fears about it, with

the pain of missing Marty and wondering what Mom had told him, with the pain

of wanting so bad to see Susan, with all those pains I settled into the Fire

Island house for three months.

When the bay froze in December, Dad couldn't get there. And at times even the

phones sometimes went out.

And in this strange world of ice-cold glass and falling snow and burning

fires and loud tape-recorded music, I was more alone than I had ever been in

my life.

In fact, I realized I had never been alone really. Even at the Chateau

Marmont there was the hotel around me, the world of Sunset Boulevard down

there any time of night or day. And before that, the world had been a womb or

something with Mom and Trish and Jill and all that.

Well, no more. I could walk round this house talking out loud to myself for

hours. I could stand on my head. I could scream. Of course, I read a lot,

went through novels, histories, biographies, everything Dad had brought. I

read the libretto of every Broadway play ever written, since they were all in

the bookshelves, and I listened to so much Romberg, Rodgers and Hammerstein,

and Stephen Sondheim that I could have answered the sixty-four-thousand-

dollar quiz on Broadway musicals after that.

I read Crimson Mardi Gras twice. Then I read all your mother's other books

that Ollie had, and-guess what?-some of your books were there, too. Lots of

adults have your books, as I'm sure you realize, but I never realized it

until I saw all of them at Ollie's place.

I drank a lot, too, on Fire Island. But I was careful. I didn't want Dad to

call when I was drunk or, worse yet, to see me that way. So I kept it kind of

level, but at the same time I put it away. I drank the bar Dad had on Fire

Island. One week it was Scotch and the next few days gin and then rum after

that. I had a real party on Fire Island, and, you know, the funny thing was,

it made me think a lot of Mom. I understood Mom better when I was drinking

and listening to music and dancing the way I had seen Mom so often do.

The earliest memory I ever had of Mom is that way-Mom in the flat in Rome

dancing barefoot to a record of a Dixieland band playing "Midnight in Moscow"

with a glass in her hand.

But to return to the story, I went through a kind of hell on Fire Island. I

mean, when you are that alone, it is like solitary confinement and things

happen in your head.

Meantime Dad reported that the columns said Mom and Marty were lovebirds, and

no one, absolutely no one, had called him from the West Coast. "You think

they'd at least ask if I had seen you," he told me. But then he shut up when

he saw the look on my face.

"Come on, we don't want them looking," I reminded him.

Then Dad got a furious call from Blair Sackwell. All Blair wanted to do, he

said, was send me a Christmas present, for God's sakes, and he could not get

through to Bonnie and that pig Moreschi would not give him the name of my

school. "I mean, what is all this!" Blair raged. "Every year I send Belinda a

little something, a fur hat, fur-lined gloves, that kind of thing. Are these

people crazy? All they'll tell me is she isn't coming home for Christmas, and

they won't give me an address."

"I think they are," Daddy told him, "because I can't get the name of the

school myself."

By Christmas I was in a terrible way.

New York was under a terrible snowstorm, the bay had frozen, as I said, the

phones were down. I hadn't heard from Dad in five days.

On Christmas Eve I made a big fire and lay there on the white bearskin rug

beside it thinking of all the Christmases in Europe, midnight mass in Paris,

the bells ringing in the village at the foot of the cliffs on Saint Esprit. I

am telling you, this was my darkest hour. I didn't know what my life was

supposed to mean.

But at eight o'clock who should come banging on the door but Dad, with his

arms full of presents. He had hired a jeep to bring him onto the island at

the far end, and he had walked all the way on the wooden boardwalk through

the freezing wind to the house.

Till my dying day I will love Dad for getting to Fire Island that night. He

looked so wonderful to me. He had on a white ski cap and his face was ruddy

from the cold wind and he smelled so good when he took me in his arms.

We cooked a big Christmas feast together, with the ham he had brought and all

the wonderful delicacies, and afterwards we listened to Christmas carols

until midnight. And I guess it was one of the best Christmases I ever spent.

But I could tell something was going wrong for Dad with Ollie. Because when I

asked if Ollie would miss him, Dad's face got dark and he said, To hell with

Ollie. He was sick of spending every holiday backstage through a matinee and

an evening performance just so he and Ollie could drink a glass of wine in

his dressing room. He said his whole life had revolved around Ollie before my

arrival and maybe I'd done him a big favor and I should know.

But this was bravado. Dad was miserable. He and Ollie were breaking apart.

By February I couldn't stay on Fire Island a day longer. There was still no

word from Mom or Marty about me. When Dad had made a call around New Year's,

they'd given him the Swiss school spiel.

I told Dad I had to start living again. I had to move into New York, get a

place in the Village, get a job, something like that.

Of course, Dad helped me. He picked the place for me, paid the huge bribe you

had to cough up just to get a New York apartment, and then he got me some

furniture and plenty of clothes. And I was free all right, I could walk

through the streets and all and go to movies and do things like a human

being, but it was snowing in New York and I was scared to death of the city

every moment. It was bigger, uglier, and more dangerous than any place I'd

ever been.

I mean, Rome is dangerous, but I understand Rome. Paris I know very well.

Maybe I'm kidding myself, but it seems I'm safe in those places. New York? I

don't know the basic rules.

Even so, the first two weeks were OK. Dad picked me up all the time to take

me to musicals. We made every show in town. He took me to see his apartment

salon, which was really unbelievable, I mean, like another world inside.

Now in a very deep way Dad hates being a hairdresser. I mean, he hates it.

And if you could see this salon in New York, you'd understand what he has

done.

It looks like anything but a beauty salon. It is full of dark woodwork and

faded oriental rugs. There are parrots and cockatoos in old brass cages, and

there are even European tapestries and those old dusky landscapes from Europe

by people no one even knows. I mean, it looks like a gentlemen's club, this

place. It is Dad's defense, not only against being a hairdresser but being

gay.

For all Dad's gentleness, for all his sweetness, Dad really hates being gay.

All the men in Dad's life, even Ollie Boon with his kind of British

theatrical voice, are like this place. Dad would smoke a pipe if he could

stand it. Ollie does smoke a pipe.

Anyway, everything in the salon was authentic, except maybe the combination.

The ladies get tea on old hotel china and silver, the kind you use in your

New Orleans house. I mean, it is somber and beautiful, and the other

hairdressers are European, and the ladies do book six months ahead of time.

But there is no place to sleep there. I mean, Dad had long ago squeezed

himself out. And suddenly Dad was talking about getting another flat in the

same building and he and I living there together, and I realized, when he

started spending every night at my place, that Ollie Boon had thrown him out.

This was crashing news to me, absolutely crashing. I mean, was I poison? Did

I destroy every adult I touched? Ollie loved Daddy. I knew he did. And Dad

loved Ollie. But over me they had broken up. I was sick about it. I didn't

know what to do. Dad kept pretending he was happy. But he wasn't happy. Just

mad at Ollie, and being very stubborn, that's all.

Then it happened. Two men showed up at the salon and showed the other

hairdressers a picture of me and asked if I'd been around. Dad was furious

when he came in. These men had left a number and he called it. He told them

he had recognized his daughter in the picture. What the hell was going on?

The way he described them they were very smooth. They were lawyers. They

reminded him he had no rights over me. They said if he interfered with their

private investigation, if he even dared to discuss it with anybody or make it

public that I was missing, he was in for very expensive trouble indeed.

"Stay put in your apartment, Belinda," Dad said. "Don't you set foot out of

the door till you hear from me."

But it didn't take long for the phone to ring. And this time it was Ollie.

These lawyers had been to see him at the theater. They told him I was

mentally disturbed, had run away, might hurt myself, and that G.G. couldn't

be trusted to do what was right for me. If Ollie heard or saw anything of me,

he was to call Marty Moreschi directly, and by the way Marty admired Ollie.

He would fly out soon himself to discuss the upcoming Crimson Mardi Gras

production. He did think it was a better prospect for a film deal than Dolly

Rose had been.

What bullshit, as if Marty had time to fly to New York City over a movie

deal! It was a threat and Ollie knew it and I knew it.

"Darling, listen to me," Ollie said in his most theatrical voice. "I love

G.G. And if you want the bottom line I do not think I can live without G.G.

My little experiment of late of no G.G. has not worked out. But we're in over

our heads. These people are probably following G.G. They may already know

he's seen you. For God's sakes, Belinda. Don't put me in this role. I've

never played the villain in any play in my life."

Good-bye New York.

And where do you go when you're a kid on the run? Where do you go when you've

had enough of the snow and the icy wind and the dirt of New York City? What

was the place the kids on the street called paradise, where the cops didn't

even want to bust you because the shelters were full?

I called the airlines immediately. There was a flight out of Kennedy in two

hours for San Francisco. I packed one bag, counted up my money, canceled

phone service and utilities on the apartment, and split.

I didn't call Dad until I was ready to board. He was horribly upset. The

lawyers, or whoever they were, had been to Ollie's house in SoHo. They'd been

questioning neighbors. But when I told him I was at the airport and I had

only five minutes, he really came unglued.

I'd never heard Dad cry before, really cry I mean. But he did then. He said

he was coming. I was to wait for him. We'd go back to Europe together, he

didn't give a damn. He would never forgive Ollie for calling me. He didn't

care about the salon. He was really coming apart.

"Daddy, stop it," I told him. "I am going to be all right, and you've got

more at stake here than Ollie Boon. Now I will call you, I promise, and I

love you Daddy, I can never never thank you enough. Tell Ollie I'm gone,

Daddy. Do that for me." Then I was crying. I couldn't talk. The plane was

leaving. And there wasn't time to say anything except, "I love you, Dad."

San Francisco was beyond my wildest dreams.

Maybe it would have looked different had I come there direct from Europe,

from the colorful streets of Paris or Rome. But after New York in the middle

of winter it was the loveliest city I had ever seen.

One day I'd been in the snow and the wind and the next I was walking those

warm and safe streets. Everywhere I looked there were brightly painted

Victorians. I rode the cable car down to the bay. I walked through the misty

woods of Golden Gate Park.

I had never known there were such cities in America. Compared with this, the

smoggy stretches of Los Angeles seemed hideous; and Dallas with its towers

and freeways was hard and cold.

Immediately I met kids who would help me. And I got the room in the Page

Street commune the first night. I felt like nothing could hurt me in San

Francisco, which of course was a delusion, and I set about cooking up my

false identity and hanging out on Haight Street to meet other runaways and

roaming Polk with two gay hustlers who became my best friends.

The first Saturday we got a jug of wine and walked across the Golden Gate to

have a party at Vista Point. The sky was clear, and the blue water was full

of tiny seemingly motionless sailboats, the city beyond looked pure white.

Can you imagine how it looked to me? Even when the fog rolled in, it was like

white steam pouring down over the bright towers of the Golden Gate.

But, you know, the happiness didn't last. I got mugged about three weeks

after I arrived. Some guy hit me in the doorway on Page Street and tried to

steal my purse. I held onto it with both hands, screaming and screaming and,

thank God, he ran away. All my traveler's checks were in there. I was

terrified, and after that, I hid them under the floorboards in my room.

Then there was the drug bust upstairs on Page Street when the narcs tore up

every single thing that belonged to the kids who lived there, I mean ripping

the stuffing out of the furniture, pulling the wires out of the TV set,

tearing up the carpets, and leaving the doors with the locks broken as they

dragged the occupants out in handcuffs never to be seen again.

But through it all I was learning, I was determined to make it on my own. And

part of what I needed was some sense of who I had been before. It was for

that reason that I went to the second-hand magazines stores and bought back

issues of magazines with stories in them about Mother. I got the videotapes

of her old movies at the same time. And then the real piece of luck, finding

an ad in a video magazine that said they could get you any movie, even one

not released in the States. I sent off for Final Score and I got it. But, you

know, I never had a machine to see these tapes. But it didn't matter. I had

them. I had part of my past with me, even if I did tear off all the labels so

nobody else would ever guess.

And one of the things that came clear to me was that the girls on the street

were very different from the boys. The girls went nowhere. They got pregnant,

on drugs, maybe even became prostitutes. They were often fools for the guys

they met. They'd cook and scrub for some broke rock musician and then get

thrown in the street. But the boys were a little more smart. They got taken

nice places by the gay men they hustled. The gay men kind of romanticized

them. The boys could actually use these meetings to move up and out of the

world of the street.

Well, I puzzled over this a lot. How did the streets wear out girls, while

boys passed through them? Why did girls lose, while boys won? Of course, not

all the boys were smart. They lived hand to mouth, too, and kidded themselves

about the glamour of their adventures, but they had a kind of freedom that

women just never seem to have.

Whatever the case, I decided to behave like one of the boys. To look upon

myself as somebody pretty mysterious and special and expect other people to

be interested, that kind of thing.

And I found out something else, too. If I put aside my street clothes and

punk makeup and wore a Catholic school uniform-and you could get the skirts

second-hand on Haight Street-I was really treated quite well wherever I went.

I mean, sometimes I had to go to the big hotels. I had to splurge on

breakfast at the Stanford Court or the Fairmont. I had to be around the

places I'd left. I didn't do anything except eat a good meal and read Variety

as I drank my coffee, but I felt good doing that, just sitting there in the

restaurant off the lobby and feeling safe. I always wore the Catholic school

clothes when I did this. I wore them when I went strolling through the big

stores. Somebody's daughter, that was my disguise.

Then one afternoon I opened the paper and there was your picture and an ad

for the big book party downtown. Now even without Ollie talking about Crimson

Mardi Gras I probably would have noticed it. I'd read all your books when I

was a child.

But there was the added thing of reading Crimson Mardi Gras and finding all

the old picture books in the Fire Island house. I was really curious. I

wanted to see you. And I decided to play it the way a gay boy would have

played it, to just go there and make eye contact, as they were always doing

it, you know, cruise.

When I saw how handsome you were and how you kept flirting with me, I decided

to take this a step further. I heard them talking about the party at the

Saint Francis. I bought a book and went ahead to wait for you there.

Of course, you know exactly what happened. But let me tell you that it was

one of the strangest experiences I had ever had since I left home. You were

like some storybook prince to me, real strong but gentle, a kind of mad lover

who painted beautiful pictures, and your house full of toys, well, it

bordered on the outright insane.

Hard to analyze and perhaps it is too soon to try. I think you were the most

independent person I had ever come across. Nothing touched you, except you

wanted me to touch you, that was clear from the start. And as I said before,

you were the first older man I had ever made love to. I'd never come across

that kind of patience before.

And whereas everybody I had ever known had used their good looks, you didn't

even know you were a handsome man. Your clothes didn't fit. Your hair was

always messed up. Later on, it was fun transforming you, making you buy new

suits and decent jackets and sweaters. Getting you measured for those suits.

And you know what happened. You didn't care at all, but you looked terrific.

Everybody noticed you when we went out together.

But I'm jumping ahead. The first couple of nights I fell in love with you. I

called Daddy from a phone booth in San Francisco and I told him about you,

and I knew everything was going to be OK.

But it might have all died that day you showed me the first Belinda paintings

and told me that they would never be seen by anyone, that it would wreck your

career. I just went crazy when you told me that. You remember. And I really

meant to run away from you then, and maybe it would have been better for you

if I had. It wasn't that I didn't understand what you'd said about never

showing the pictures. It was just too much like what had happened with Final

Score.

"Here it goes again," I thought. "I am poison, poison!" And yet the rage in

me, the rage against everything was tearing me apart.

But you know what happened, the murder on Page Street and my calling you and

then we were together again, and it was like Marty all over again, because I

knew I loved you and I wasn't going to leave you, and whatever you did with

the paintings, well, that was your decision, or so I kept telling myself.

And I was so happy just to be with you, to be loved by you, that it seemed

nothing else mattered in the world.

I called Dad collect from your house, and this time I told him who you were

and gave him the number, though I warned him not to use it because you were

always there. And Dad was real happy with what was happening.

It turned out he knew your wife Celia, the one who works in New York City;

she had come into G.G.'s often, and he got her talking about you, and when I

called him the next time, he said you were very much OK from what Celia had

said. Celia said the marriage "failed" because you were always working. You

wouldn't do anything but paint. Well, that was fine by me.

But meantime things were not going well at all for Dad. He had not gone back

to Ollie. He was sleeping on a couch in the salon instead. Even the night of

the Tony Awards, when Dolly Rose walked off with everything, Dad would not go

back when Ollie called.

And these lawyer types were bothering him. They kept insisting I was in New

York and Dad knew where. Then strange things had started to happen. The rumor

went round that one of Dad's hairdressers was sick with AIDS.

Now you know what AIDS is-you can't get it through casual contact. But it's

scary, and people are just crazy on the subject. Well Dad had a whole slew of

cancellations. Even Blair Sackwell called to tell him about the rumors. And

Blair had helped to quash the whole thing.

But Dad was optimistic. He was winning the fight. He had made his move, as he

called it, the day before with the lawyers who had come to the salon again.

"Look, if she's really missing, we should call the police in on this," he had

said right in front of them, and then he had reached for the phone. He had

even asked the operator to connect him with the police department before one

of these lawyers took the receiver and hung it up. "I am telling you," Dad

said to them, "if I see you again and you still haven't found her, I am

calling the police without fail."

I had to laugh hearing Dad do this tough talk. But it was a terrible thing to

think of him up against these unpleasant men. But Dad kept insisting he was

happy:

"It's chess, I'm telling you, Belinda, you just have to make the right move

at the right time. And Belinda, the best part is this, they don't have the

faintest idea where you really are."

Now when I made these collect calls to G.G., when I gave him your number, it

never occurred to me in a million years that anyone would find that number on

the record of Dad's calls. But that is exactly what happened. And they traced

me in this fashion directly to your house.

And in July, after we had been together for almost six weeks, Marty appeared

on Castro Street, walking straight towards me in front of the Walgreen's

drugstore, and asked me to come with him in his car.

I was shocked out. I nearly lost it. What if you had come along right then?

But within seconds we were speeding away downtown to the United Theatricals

suite at the Hyatt Regency, the very one where Mother was later to meet you.

Well, Marty was trembling and throwing an Italian opera scene before we ever

got there. But I was not prepared for his immediately trying to put the make

on me as soon as the door of the suite closed. I had to fight him off and I

mean fight. But Marty is not mean. Truly he is not. And when he realized that

I would not go to bed with him, he kind of came apart Marty-style, as he had

done so many times at the Chateau Marmont and in Beverly Hills, and he told

me everything that had been going on.

Things had been terrible after I left, what with Uncle Daryl insisting on

hiring his own detectives to find me and Marty pursuing his investigation on

his own. Mom had been crazy with guilt in the weeks that followed, telling

him on the one hand not to look for me, then waking up screaming that she

knew I was in danger, that I was hurt.

Trish and Jill had come back, and they had to be let in on the secret that I

was missing, and they were real hard to control. Jill was for calling the

police, and she was angry with Bonnie. As for Daryl, he blamed everything on

me and had laid the legal groundwork to have me committed to a mental

institution in Texas as soon as I was found.

Marty kept insisting to all of them that it was a big mix-up, nothing had

happened between him and me, Mom had imagined it. If we hadn't all gone off

half-cocked before he came back from the hospital, everything would have been

OK. But the three Texans, as he called them, all believed Mom's version that

I had tried to seduce Marty, though Trish and Jill were very worried about me

and really thought the police should be called.

It was hell, Marty said, hell, hell, hell. But the worst part was that Mom

had now convinced herself that Marty was keeping me somewhere. He had tried

to reason with her about it, but it was useless. She was sure I was in LA and

Marty and I were still carrying on.

Last week her delusions had really gone into high gear. While he was in New

York, checking out my connections with G.G., Mom had decided he was really

with me. She had written a note telling Daryl everything and then slashed her

wrists, nearly bleeding to death before she was found.

Fortunately Jill got the note and destroyed it. And Marty had been able to

talk to Mother and get her trust back. But it was getting harder and harder

to keep on an even keel. If he left her for an hour, she was convinced he was

with me. Even this trip to San Francisco was risky. Trish believed him, so

did Jill, and they accepted it when he said he was going on with the search.

As for Daryl he could not be sure.

Of course, Marty had been frantic with worry about me. He'd been on pins and

needles while his men checked out this artist guy, as he called you, and made

sure I was truly OK.

"But the bottom line is, you have to come back, Belinda, you have to kiss

this guy good-bye and come back to LA with me now. She's drowning, Belinda.

And there are other problems down there as well. Susan Jeremiah's gone to

Switzerland to locate you. She is really breathing down everybody's neck.

Honey, I know how you feel about me, I know that. And I know you never meant

for all this to happen, but, good Christ, Belinda, the lady's going to off

herself, damn it. There is only one way out."

Now it was my turn for Italian opera. And the first thing I screamed was:

"How could you try to ruin G.G.? How could you start these rumors about his

salon in New York?"

He was immediately innocent. He hadn't done that, no he hadn't. If anybody

did that, it was Uncle Daryl, blah, blah, blah. Then he said he'd stop the

rumors. He would see to it personally, he would kill all that. Especially, of

course, if I would come back.

"Why the hell can't you leave me alone!" I said. "How can you tell me I have

to come back and let my uncle Daryl lock me up? Do you hear yourself? What

you're saying-that I have to come back for her sake and your sake, my God!"

Calm down, please, he said. He had a plan and I had to listen to him. He

would have Trish and Jill meet us at the airport, and we would go back to the

house together, and then he would lay down the law that there would be no

mental institution in Texas or convent in Switzerland or whatever the hell it

was. I was free to do what I pleased. I could go on location with Susan in

Europe, just the way I had wanted before. Setting me and Susan up with a

television film, that was no problem, Susan had something in the works now,

well, change it, one call to Ash Levine and he could do that. I mean, what

the hell were we talking about here, for Crissakes, wasn't he the goddamn

producer and director of "Champagne Flight"? Bonnie worked for him. He'd pull

rank.

"You're losing your mind, Marty," I said. "Mom is the show and you know it.

And what makes you think you could stop Uncle Daryl? For years he's bought

land all over Dallas and Fort Worth with Mom's money. He's not scared of you

and United Theatricals. And why would Mom let me go off to do what I want

with Susan when Susan works for you?"

He stood up. He was breathing fire, like I'd seen him a hundred times at the

studio, pointing to the speaker phone on his desk. Only this time he was

pointing at me.

"Belinda, trust me! I will get you in and out, I am telling you. But things

cannot go on as they are right now." I got up to go.

Then he softened, he was the quick change artist. "Don't you see, honey, I

will muscle this thing through. The tension's at the breaking point down

there. And I am going to relieve it when I bring you back alive and OK. You

can have whatever you want, a little apartment in Westwood, anything. I will

take care of it, I will do it, honey I am telling you-"

"Marty, I am staying in San Francisco. I am where I want to be. And if you

don't leave G.G. alone, so help me God, I'll do something, I don't know what

but.." I never finished.

He was screaming again. He didn't want to hurt me, the last thing in the

world he wanted to do was hurt me, but I just could not turn my back on what

was going on.

I was just staring at him. And I realized what I should have realized the

first time I laid eyes on him on Castro Street. I no longer loved him, and,

more than that, I was no longer really in sympathy with him. And though I

understood what was happening, I knew that I could not change it. I knew that

as surely as I knew the world was round.

Imagine me back in LA and Mother accusing me again of living with Marty,

imagine. Imagine Uncle Daryl getting doctors to just take me away. I didn't

know what the laws were in Texas. But I knew the legal jargon I heard on the

streets of New York and California. I was a minor in danger of living an

immoral and dissolute life. I was a minor beyond the supervision of an adult.

And the evidence went way way back.

"No, Marty," I said. "I love Mom. But something happened between us the day

after the shooting, something you'd never understand. I'm not coming down

there to see her or talk to her, or Uncle Daryl either. And if you want to

know the frank truth, nothing could get me away from San Francisco right now.

Not even Susan. Marty, you've got to handle this on your own."

He looked at me and I saw him toughen. I saw him get street mean. And then he

made his move, as Dad had done with the lawyers in New York.

"Belinda, if you don't do it, I'll have the police pick you up at Jeremy

Walker's house on Seventeenth Street, and I will have him arrested on every,

applicable morals charge in this state. He'll do time for the rest of his

life, Belinda. I mean it, I don't want to hurt you, honey, but you either

come with me now or Walker goes to jail tonight."

And now I made my move with no time to think it through.

"You do that, Marty, and you're making the worst mistake of your entire

career. Because not only will I tell the police that you pursued me, seduced

me, and molested me repeatedly, I will tell the press as well. I will tell

them that Mom knew it, that Mom was jealous, that Mom tried to shoot me and

never reported me missing, and I am talking everybody now, Marty, from the

National Enquirer to The New York Times. I will fill them in on Mom's drugs,

on her neglect of me, and your being in cahoots with it. Believe me, Marty, I

will bring you all down. And let me tell you something else, Marty. You do

not have one shred of evidence that I ever went to bed with Jeremy Walker,

not one shred. But I will testify in a court of law about the times I slept

with you."

He was staring at me, trying to be tough, really trying, but I could see the

hurt inside him, and I couldn't stand it. It was almost as bad as the fight

with Mom.

"Belinda, how can you say these things?" he asked. And he really meant it. I

know. Because I felt the same way that time with Mom.

"Marty, you are threatening us! Me and Jeremy! And G.G.!" I screamed at him.

"Marty, leave us alone."

"Daryl's going to find you, honey!" he said. "Don't you see, I'm giving you

what Daryl won't give you! I'm giving you a choice."

"We'll see about that, Marty. Daryl isn't going to hurt Mom, of that you can

be sure. You may find this hard to believe with all your wheeling and

dealing, but Daryl loves Mom the way you never have."

Then I tried to split out of there right then. But he was not going to let

that happen, and the scene that followed was a terrible thing. I mean, we had

been lovers, me and this man. And we were shouting and crying and he was

trying to hold me and I was fighting him and then I did get out and I ran all

the way down all the flights of steps in the Hyatt and out onto Market

Street.

But, you know, Jeremy, I was terrified. And all I could think was, Belinda,

you have done it again! You are dragging Jeremy into the muck and mire with

you, just as you dragged G.G. and Ollie Boon. And you don't know what these

people will do.

It was that night I begged you to go to Carmel. And I begged you to go down

to New Orleans and open up your mother's house again. I wanted to run to the

ends of the earth with you.

We drove to Carmel at midnight, as I remember. And all the way I kept looking

in the side mirror, trying to see if somebody was following us.

Next day I called Daddy from a phone booth on Ocean Avenue, using quarters of

my own, instead of calling collect, so there would be no record of the call,

and I told Dad how Marty had traced me through the collect calls to him.

Dad was very scared for me. "Don't go back, Belinda," he said. "Stand your

ground. Daryl has been here, Belinda. He insists he knows you were in the

city this spring. But I used the same damn bluff on him, you know the police

bit, and boy, did he back off. He's ashamed, Belinda. Ashamed nobody's called

the authorities, and you know what he finally did? He begged me to tell him

just if I knew you were all right. I played dumb, Belinda, but he's going to

find you, just like Marty did. Checkmate, Belinda. Remember, you can do it.

They will not do anything to hurt Bonnie. Bonnie's the one who matters to

them, all of them."

"But what about the salon, G.G.?" I was still frantic.

"I can handle it, Belinda," he insisted.

I never did and do not know to this day how bad it really got. I am only

hoping till this moment that Dad is really all right.

That final week in Carmel was the last peace I really had. It was wonderful,

our walks on the beach, our talks together. I tried hard to keep us from

going back. But in your nice agreeable way you insisted we return to San

Francisco.

And I was looking over my shoulder from then on out. I knew people were

spying on us. I knew it. And as it turned out, I was right.

Meantime Susan's second TV movie premiered in early September, and it got a

thirty percent share of the ratings, and it was damned good. Then "Champagne

Flight" had its season opener with your friend Alex Clementine, and I watched

it while you were upstairs working. I don't think you even knew.

Mom was terrific. No matter what happens to her she is always there for the

camera. And she seemed to be putting the pain in it all right. But there was

a new aspect to her. For the first time Mom looked gorgeously gaunt. She was

the ghost of herself on the screen and I mean she was a spellbinder. And so,

frankly, was the whole show. And technically, well, it was even more into the

rock-video dream mode, with hypnotic music and snappy camera work. Film noir

again all the way.

Then not two days after that, you told me Alex Clementine was coming, he was

your friend, and you wanted me to go to dinner, and you got very adamant

about it, which was not like you at all. Of course, I knew Alex Clementine. I

met him in London when Mom was working on a picture with him years ago. And

worse, I had just seen him last year at the Cannes festival. And, of course,

I'd almost run into him at that publishing party the very first afternoon we

met.

No way could I go with you. And if you brought him back to the house to show

him the paintings, it would be all over right then and there.

I was frantic. But I was hoping. If I couldn't get you to New Orleans, maybe

someplace else.

And then Marty showed up again. I had a very strong feeling someone was

following me when I hit the Golden Gate Bridge to go to the Marin stables and

then, when I was riding, I realized I'd been right.

Now you know what the riding meant to me. But I wonder if you ever realized

what an escape from worry it was. When I was on my horse, I felt I was away

from everything in the world. And one of my favorite roads to take out of the

hills of Cronkite was the one down to the ocean beach at Kirby Cove. It was

closed to traffic most of the time, and I would often be the only person down

there, riding in the surf, and it was a truly magnificent spot.

You could see the bridge and the city to the left of you and the ocean to the

far right.

Well, if I had known on this afternoon that it was the last time I'd ride at

Kirby Cove, I wonder how I would have felt.

I was halfway down before I saw a Mercedes on the road behind me, and then I

realized it was Marty and I took off, down one of the steep trails. Of

course, he came all the way to the campgrounds at the bottom, and there I

figured, well, OK, it's crazy to run away from him. He is not going to leave

me alone till we talk.

He wanted me to go to the hotel with him. I said hell no to that. But I did

tie up the horse and get in the car with him. The horse was scaring him. He

had never ridden in his life.

He said he had something pretty heavy to tell me. He had a manila envelope

with him, and he asked me if I could guess what was inside.

"What the hell are you talking about?" I said. "What is this?" If there had

been any lingering love last time, there was very little now. The envelope

scared me. He scared me. And I was afraid I was going to break down.

"Your boyfriend down there on Seventeenth Street, what kind of a man is he

that he paints pictures of you naked all over the place?"

"What are you talking about?" I asked him.

"Honey, I've had a couple of dicks watching you. They went on the roof of the

apartment house next door to you, strictly routine. They saw all this stuff

through the attic windows. Then they checked it out again from the balcony of

the house across the street. I've got photographs of the whole gallery-" He

went to open the envelope.

I said: "You son of a bitch! Just stop it right here."

I knew he could see how scared I was. He got right to the point. "Look, it

doesn't give me kicks to stick my nose in other people's business. But Bonnie

gave me no choice. Last week she said she knew for sure we were living

together, and she tried it again, pills this time, and enough to kill a mule.

OK, I figured, this lady's going to die if I don't stop it, and I'm the only

one in the world who can. I told her about you and Jeremy Walker. I gave the

name, the address, the whole works. I brought in the file on him, the

clippings my secretaries at the studio had rounded up. Still she didn't

believe it. Belinda in San Francisco living with an artist? Come on, did I

think she was as stupid as everybody else thought she was? She said she knew

I wouldn't let that happen, that I was keeping you someplace in Los Angeles

and I had been from the start. It was the lies that drove her crazy. The lies

that made her lie awake and all that. OK, I told her I'd prove it. I sent

these dicks up here to prove it. Get some pictures of you together. Catch you

on the street together, find a window, get you going through the front door.

Well, this is what they got, Belinda, three-hundred-sixty-degree angles on

the headquarters of Kiddie-porn West. This stuff makes Susan Jeremiah's film

look like Disney. It could make Humbert Humbert rise from the dead."

I told him to stop. I told him you could never show those pictures. It was

out of the question. It would be the end for your career. Those pictures were

our secret and to keep his filthy men from looking in our windows.

"Don't put me on," he said. "The guy's using you, Belinda! He's got nude

photographs up there with the paintings. He could sell that junk now to

Penthouse for a bundle. But that's not what he's after. Bonnie pegged him

immediately. She says he's got a nose for publicity that's better than that

Andy Warhol screwball in New York. He's going to make his big splash with

nude paintings of Bonnie's daughter and to hell with you after that."

I went crazy. I started screaming. "Marty, he doesn't even know who I am!" I

said. "Did Mother even stop to think that maybe this wasn't connected to

her!"

"She knows it's connected. And, honey, so do I. It's just like what happened

to you with Susan Jeremiah, don't you see? These people use you because

you're Bonnie's kid."

I was out of my head. I would have hit him, but I was too busy holding my

hands over my ears. I was crying. And trying to tell him that it wasn't that

way, it had nothing to do with Mother, goddamn it. "Don't you see what she's

doing!" I said. "She's making herself the center of it. And Jeremy doesn't

even know about her. Oh, God, what are you doing to me? What do you really

want!"

"The hell he doesn't," Marty said. "He's had a lawyer name of Dan Franklin

snooping all over Los Angeles, bugging my lawyers about a picture they handed

out in a couple of places when they were trying to locate you. Says he just

happened on the picture in the Haight-Ashbury, I mean, the guy is Walker's

lawyer, known him for twenty years. And he's trying to reach Susan Jeremiah.

He's been bugging people at United Theatricals night and day."

He went on talking. He went on and on and on. But I didn't hear what else he

said. I knew Dan Franklin's name. I knew he was your lawyer. I'd seen the

envelopes on your desk with his name on them. I'd heard his messages on the

answering machine.

I sat there crushed. I couldn't say another thing. Yet I couldn't believe

what Marty was saying. You couldn't be planning to use the whole thing for

publicity, not you!

Dear God, you were going through a battle that none of these people could

ever understand.

Yet all kinds of things were coming back. You yourself had said, "I'm using

you," those very words. And what about that strange conversation we'd had the

very first afternoon after I'd moved in with you when you had told me you

wanted to destroy your own career?

But nobody could be that devious, nobody could. Least of all you.

Finally I said again that you couldn't know, that Marty had somehow gotten it

all wrong. I told him you'd never show those pictures. You made thousands off

your books, probably millions. Why would you show the pictures?

But I stopped suddenly. You did want to show them. I knew you did. Marty

started talking again.

"I've checked this guy from every angle. He's harmless but he's weird, real

weird. He's got a house in New Orleans-did you know that?-and nobody but a

housekeeper has lived in it for years. His mother's stuff is just like she

left it in the bedroom. Brush, comb, perfume bottles, and all. It's like that

novel, that Dickens thing, you know, the one William Holden talks about in

the movie Sunset Boulevard with the old lady named Miss Havisham or

something, just sitting there and nothing being touched year after year. And

I'll tell you something else. Walker's rich, real rich. He never touches the

money his mother left him. He lives off the income from the income from the

capital he socked away himself, that kind of thing. Yeah, I think he would

show these paintings. I think he'd do it. I've been reading all the

interviews with him, the press file we made on him, he's a real art nut, he

says peculiar things."

It was hell listening to this. It was like seeing our world, yours and mine,

reflected in a carnival mirror. I couldn't stand it anymore. I told Marty he

was crazy. I called him crazy every way that I knew.

"No, honey, he's using you. And you know what his lawyer is doing? He's

getting the dirt on us. He's figuring out why you ran, what happened, you

know, that kind of thing. Why else would he be looking for Susan Jeremiah?

No, this artist guy is a fruitcake. And your mother's right. He'll show the

pictures and he'll use the dirt on us to keep us off his case and, of course,

you won't do a thing to him when it happens, will you? You won't accuse him

of anything any more than you accused me. And Bonnie and I will be left with

all the questions-how did we let it happen and all that?"

I told him I wouldn't listen anymore. You didn't know. I was trying to get

out of the car.

He pulled me back by the arm.

"Belinda, ask yourself, why am I telling you this? I'm trying to protect you,

too. Bonnie is for busting this guy now. She says if the cops pick you up at

his place, nobody will listen to anything you say about me. She's for calling

Daryl. She's for moving in right now."

"You burn in hell, you son of a bitch!" I told him. "And you tell Bonnie this

for me. I've got the number of a National Enquirer reporter in my pocket.

I've always had it, got it from him on Sunset Strip. And you better believe

he will listen to what I have to say about you both. Him and the social

workers and the juvenile judge will listen. If you hurt Jeremy, you'll go to

jail."

But by that time I was out the car and I was running down the road. But Marty

came after me. He grabbed hold of me, and I turned around and hit him, but it

didn't do any good.

Something really awful was happening. I had never seen Marty like he was now.

He wasn't just angry, the way you were the night we had our terrible and last

fight. Something else was happening that only happens to men, something I

don't think any woman on earth can understand.

He pulled me down onto the ground under the pine trees and he was trying to

pull off my clothes. I was screaming and kicking him, but there was not a

soul for miles to see or hear. And he was crying and saying terrible things

to me, he was calling me a little bitch and saying he couldn't take any more,

he had had enough. And then I started roaring, making sounds I didn't know I

could make. I scratched at him, I pulled his hair. And the simple fact was,

he could not do what he meant to do. Not unless he slugged me or something

that bad. It was just a brawl that was happening, and then at one point I got

him off balance and I threw him over on his back. I got away from him and

started running again, stopping only long enough to zip my jeans again before

I got on my horse.

I rode out of there like something in the Western movies. In fact I did a bad

bad thing. I went right up the trails on the sides of the hills, knowing it

was dangerous for the horse. She could have fallen, broken her leg, worse.

But she made it. We made it. We got back to the stables before Marty ever

did, if he was even following, and I just about stripped the gears on the MG

-TD making for the Golden Gate.

When I got into the house, I went in the bathroom. I had bruises on my arms

and on my back but none on my face. OK, you wouldn't notice in the dark.

Then I checked in your office. And sure enough, Dan Franklin's envelopes were

there. No doubt that he was your lawyer, so that part was true, OK.

I sat there stunned, not knowing who or what to believe, and then I went up

to my room. The tapes, the magazines, hadn't been touched as far as I could

see. But what was all over the walls? Susan Jeremiah. Five posters of her by

this time, from the pictures I had clipped out of magazines all year. Wasn't

it only natural that you thought I was related to Susan? I mean, good God,

you did want to know who I was.

About this time you came in. You'd been out shopping for dinner, and you had

a big bouquet of yellow flowers and you came up and put them in my arms. I'll

never forget the way you looked at that moment. I have a freeze-frame forever

in my head. You were so handsome. And you looked so innocent and honest, too.

You probably don't remember, but I asked you if you loved me, and you laughed

so naturally and you said I knew you did.

I thought then, This is the most special and truly kind man that I have ever

known. He has never hurt anyone. He is only trying to find out, and Marty has

twisted the whole thing.

I went upstairs with you and then I looked out the windows at the roof of the

apartment house next to us and then across Seventeenth at the balcony of the

other on the top floor. No one was there now. But from the big hills between

here and Twenty-fourth Street anybody could have photographed us through

these windows. There was no hiding from a thousand points of light.

I wonder if you remember that evening. It was our last good time in that

house. You looked so beautiful to me that evening, all distracted and lost in

the paintings and forgetting completely about dinner, by the way, as usual,

and no noise in the attic but the sound of your brush touching the palette

and then the canvas and you now and then murmuring something to yourself.

It got darker and darker. Couldn't see anything through the glass. Just the

paintings all around us. And it didn't seem possible that one man had made

them, that he had spun out all this complicated and detailed work.

I knew you did not know who I was. I knew it with all my heart. And I had to

protect you from Mom and Marty, even if that meant protecting you from

myself.

Your world was so alien to them. What did they know of what these pictures

meant?

One year and two months until I was eighteen, that's all we needed, but we

would never have it, not with Marty and Mom and Uncle Daryl-and now you. Yes,

you and Dan Franklin were our enemies now, too. Well, the following night was

the end of it.

I never went to the rock concert that caused us to fight. I went instead to a

phone booth and spent hours trying to get in touch with G.G. and then finally

reaching him and asking him what I should do. "Call Bonnie," he told me.

"Call her and tell her, she hurts Jeremy Walker and you hurt Marty. Tell her

you'll call that National Enquirer number. Chess, Belinda, and it's still

your move."

But something during that dinner with Alex Clementine tipped you off. Maybe

he made the connection for you between me and Susan Jeremiah. One line or two

about Susan's film at Cannes and the girl who starred in it would have done

that.

I don't know what happened. I only knew we fought that night as we had never

fought. And you were not the man Marty and Mom believed you to be when we

were fighting. You were my Jeremy, innocent and tormented and trying to get

me to explain it all so that everything would be all right.

How the hell could I explain it all so everything would be all right? Just at

least let me make that call to Mom, I was thinking, let me try for the final

stalemate, and then maybe, just maybe I can think of some way to tell you

something at least.

But I didn't really understand how far things had gone till the next morning,

after you had left the house and I found my videotapes on the closet floor.

The magazines were all messed up and you had left the Newsweek open. Yes, you

had your answers, or at least you thought you did, and you wanted me to know

you had them.

There was no turning away in silence anymore.

For an hour after you had gone, I sat at the kitchen table trying to figure

what to do.

G.G. had said call Bonnie. Stalemate. Ollie Boon had said use my power

against them, the way they used it against me.

But even if I held them off, what about you? What about your destiny with the

paintings? What about you and me?

It was out of the question that I draw you into this as it was, the way I had

done to G.G. and Ollie Boon. G.G. and Ollie had lived together for five years

before I separated them. And to hear of G.G. battling these lawyers of

Marty's was excruciating. With you it would have been even worse. After all,

G.G. was my dad, wasn't he? You had come into this so innocently, so

unsuspecting, and you had never given me anything but the purest love. If

worse came to worse, you might tell me to go back to them, your lawyer would

probably tell you to do exactly that.

And I have to admit, I felt pretty angry at you, too. I was angry that I

wasn't enough for you, that you had to know about my past, that behind my

back you'd sent your lawyer down south to check me out, that you would never

let the whole subject alone.

What did you want to do? Decide for me whether I had a right to run away from

home? Yeah, I was angry. I have to admit it. Scared and angry.

But I didn't want to lose you either. That we were once-in-a-lifetime, that

is what kept going through my head. Someday, somehow, I wanted to do

something like you had done with your paintings. I wanted to be like you/

Can you understand this? Do you know what it means not just to love a person

but to want to be like that person? You were somebody worth loving. And I

just could not think of life without you.

Well, I was going to get us both out of this somehow. There had to be a way.

A lot of things came back to me-jams I'd been in-my escape from Uncle Daryl,

sneaking down hotel fire escapes in Europe when the film company had stuck us

with everybody's bill. The drug bust in London when I stood in the door of

the hotel room holding off the cops with every line I could think of while

Mom flushed the grass. And then the time in Spain when she had passed out on

the stairway of the Palace Hotel and I had to convince them not to call an

ambulance, that she was just drowsy from her medicine and would they please

just help me to get her upstairs. Yeah, there had to be a way out, there had

to be, and what Ollie Boon had said about power kept running through my head.

But I didn't have the power, that was the problem. I had the stalemate, but

not the power. Who had the power? Who could call off all the dogs now?

Well, there was only one person who could do it, and she had always been the

center of the universe, hadn't she? Yes, she was the goddess, the superstar.

She could make them all do what she said.

l picked up the phone and I called a number that I had had with me in my

purse since the day I left. It was the number of the phone by Mom's bed.

Six thirty. Mom, be there. Don't have gotten up yet, don't have gone to the

studio. And three rings and I heard her same old low slurred voice barely

breathing the word, hello.

"Mom, this is Belinda," I said.

"Belinda," she whispered, like she was afraid someone else would hear.

"Mom, I need you," I said. "I need you the way I never have in my life." She

didn't answer me.

"Mom, I'm living with this man in San Francisco and I love him and he is a

gentle and kind man and I need you, Mom. I need you to make it all right."

"Jeremy Walker, is that what you're telling me?" she said.

"Yes, Mom, that's the one." I took a deep breath. "But it's not the way Marty

told you, Mom. Until yesterday, I swear to you, Mom, this man did not know

who I am. He may have had his suspicions and all, but he didn't know for

sure. Now he does know and he's terribly terribly unhappy, Mom. He's confused

and he doesn't know what to do and I need your help."

"You're not... really living with Marty?"

"No, Mom, never, not since the day I left."

"And what about the pictures, Belinda, all the pictures this man has done?"

"They are very beautiful, Mom," I said.

And here was a long shot, but I had to try it. I said:

"They're like the movies Flambeaux made with you in Paris. They are art, Mom,

really and truly that is what they are." I tried to hold steady in the

silence. "It will be a long time before anyone ever sees them, Mom. They are

not what is worrying me now."

Again she didn't answer. And then I took the biggest gamble of my whole life.

"Mom, you owe me this one," I said gently. "I am talking to you as Belinda to

Bonnie. And, Mom, you owe me this one. You know you do."

I waited, but she still did not answer. I felt like I was on the very edge of

the cliff. One mistake and I was over the edge.

"Mom, help me. Please help me. I need you, Mom?'

And then I could hear her crying. And she said so softly in a brokenhearted

voice:

"Belinda, what do you want me to do?"

"Mom, can you come to San Francisco now?"

At eleven a.m. the studio plane landed, and she looked like a corpse when she

stepped out the door. She was slimmer than I'd ever seen her and her face was

like a mask, every line smoothed out. But her head was down as always. She

never looked me in the eye.

All the way into the city I told her about you, I told her about the

paintings, I asked her if the snapshots she'd seen had given her any idea how

good they were.

"I know Mr. Walker's work," she said. "I used to read his books to you, don't

you remember? We had them all. We'd always look for his new books when we

went to London. Or Trish would send them from back home."

A knife went into me when she said this. I could remember us lying together

and her reading to me. The backdrop might shift from Paris to Madrid to

Vienna. But there was always a double bed and a bedside lamp. And she was

always the same with the book in her hands.

Now she was a stranger who looked like a nun all this time under the hood of

her cloak with her head down.

"But you're lying," she said, "when you say you never told him about me."

"No, Mom, I never told him. I never told him anything at all."

"You told him awful things, didn't you? You told him things about me and

Marty and what happened, I know you did."

Again I told her I hadn't. And then I told her just how it had been. How

you'd asked me and I made you promise and how maybe you had sent your lawyer

to check on Susan because I had those posters of Susan in my room.

I couldn't tell if she believed me. I went on to explain what I wanted her to

do. Just talk to you, tell you it was OK if we were together and we would

never bother her again. Just call off all the lawyers and the detectives.

Call off Uncle Daryl and let us alone. Then she asked: "How do I know you'll

stay with this man?"

"Mom, I love him. It's the kind of thing that happens once to some people,

and to other people never at all. I won't leave him unless he leaves me. But

if you talk to him, Mom, he won't do that. He'll go on with his painting.

He'll be happy. And we'll both be OK."

"And what will happen when he shows these pictures?"

"Mom, it will be a long time before he does that. A long long time. And the

art world is a thousand light years away from our world. Who would ever make

the connection between the girl in those pictures and Bonnie's daughter? And

even if they did, who would care? I'm not famous, Mom, the way you are, Final

Score never got released in this country. Bonnie is the one who is famous,

and what would it all matter to her?"

We had turned off on Seventeenth now, and we were passing the house, because

she wanted to see it, and then we drove on up the hill. We parked up there at

the lookout point on Sanchez Street, facing all the buildings of downtown.

Then she asked if I had seen Marty since the day I left LA. And I said only

when he came here to check on me, and we had only talked together. Marty was

her husband now.

She was silent a long time then. And then she said softly that she couldn't

do it, just couldn't do what I asked.

"But why can't you?" I was pleading with her. "Why can't you just tell him

it's OK."

"What would he think I was doing, just giving my daughter to him? And what if

he decided to tell somebody I'd done it, just handed you over to him. Suppose

you ran out on him tomorrow. Suppose he showed the paintings he's done. What

if he told the world that I had come and just given him my teenage daughter,

said take her, like I was turning her out like a pimp right on the street?"

"Mom, he would never do that!" I said.

"Oh, yes, he could do it. And he'd have something on me all my life. That

lawyer of his probably already knows plenty. He knows nobody picked up the

phone to the LAPD when you ran off. He knows something happened with you and

Marty. Maybe you've told them both more than that."

I begged her to believe me, but I could see it was no use. And then it came

to me. What if she thought she had something on you in return for what she

was doing? What if she thought she had the upper hand? l thought of the

Artist and Model pictures. I knew those pictures. I liked them. I'd been

through all the prints a dozen times. And I also knew that not a single one

of them proved a damn thing. You couldn't see who I was in them. And you

could hardly make out who you were either. They were just a real mess. Really

grainy, lousy light.

But would Mom know that? Mom could hardly see even with her glasses when she

was doped up.

I decided it was the best shot I had. She listened while I described them to

her. "You could tell him your detectives got them out of the house when they

tracked me down. You're doing it for my safety, holding the pictures over

him, you know, and that you'll send them all back to him when I'm eighteen.

By that time it won't really matter, Mom, whether or not I'm with him or

whether or not he shows the paintings. It will all be past. He'd never hate

you for it, Mom. He'd just figure you were trying to protect me."

The car took me back down to Sanchez and Seventeenth and I went up to the

house. I was hoping and praying I wouldn't find you there yet. The phone

rang, and it was Dan Franklin of all people. I just about died.

I almost brought her the prints for Artist and Model, but then she might see

that they proved nothing at all. So I got the negatives out of your file in

the basement, and I was just leaving when the phone rang again. This time it

was Alex Clementine. I thought my luck is really running low.

But I made my getaway then. And finally, after we went over and over it, Mom

had the plan pretty well clear in her mind. I'd go on down to Carmel, she

would wait for you and then use the argument we'd agreed on to get your

promise to take care of me.

Then a slight change came over her. She lowered the hood of her cloak for the

first time and she looked at me.

"You love this man, huh, Belinda? Yet you give me these pictures? You just

put his neck in the noose like that for your own little schemes." She smiled

when she said it, one of those real ugly bitter smiles that people do, that

make things so much worse.

I felt the breath go out of me. Back to square one, it seemed. Then I said

real carefully, "Mom, you know you can't ever really use your pictures.

Because if you did, I'd send Marty straight to jail."

"And you'd do that to my husband, wouldn't you?" She asked me, and she looked

at me very intently, as if she was trying to see something very important to

her.

And I thought for a moment before I answered, I thought about what she really

wanted here, and I said:

"Yes, for Jeremy Walker I'd do that. I really would."

"You're some little bitch, Belinda," she said. "You have both these men by

the balls, don't you? Back in Texas we would have called you slick."

I felt such a sense of injustice then, I started crying. But more important,

I could see by her eyes that I had said the right thing. Marty had no part in

what I was doing. I was in love with you. She was convinced at last. Yet she

was still looking at me, more and more dangerous. One of was right.

"Look at you," she said real low so I could hardly hear her. and I could feel

the moment getting those speeches again, I thought, and I

"All those nights I cried over you, wondering where you were, wondering if

maybe I was wrong about your being with Marty, maybe you were off all alone

out here. I think I kept accusing Marty of lying 'cause I couldn't face the

other possibility, that you were really lost and maybe hurt. But that wasn't

it at all, was it, Belinda? All the time you were in this fancy house with

this rich Mr. Walker. Yeah, slick is the word for you."

I held steady. I thought, Belinda, if she says the sky is green, agree with

her. You have to. That is what everyone else has always done.

"You don't even resemble me, do you?" she asked. Same flat voice. "You look

like G.G. You sound like G.G. It's as if I had nothing to do with it at all.

And here you are peddling your ass just the way G.G. always did since the

time he was twelve years old."

I held steady. I was thinking I had heard this side of her before. It would

come out in flashes when she talked to Gallo or when she told Trish or Jill

about somebody that was mean to her. But she had only shown it to me once

before now. Chilling it was to see her smiling and hear the vicious things

she was saying. But again, I thought, Belinda, get the job done.

"G.G. ever tell you how he got started," she asked, "hustling the old queers

for money on his way up? Ever tell you how he lies to those old ladies when

he curls their hair? That's what you are, aren't you, a liar like G.G. And

you're hustling Mr. Walker, aren't you? Got him tied up in ribbons and bows.

I was a fool not to think that G.G.'s blood would come through."

I was boiling inside. I think I looked out the window. I'm not sure. My mind

wandered, that much I remember. She was talking still and I could hardly

follow what she said. I was thinking to myself how hopeless this all of it.

The truth will never be known. And all my life I have lived with this kind of

confusion, everything mixed up, just giving up over and over again that

anything would ever be understood.

She and I might never see each other again after this. She'd go back to

Hollywood and live on drugs and lies until she finally did do it with a gun

or pills, and she'd never know what had driven us apart. Did she even

remember Susan or the name of our movie? Would anyone ever get through to her

about those times when she had almost killed me in trying to kill herself?

But then a terrible thought came to me. Had I ever tried to tell her the

truth myself? Had I ever tried for her sake to reach her, to make her see

things, just for a moment, in a different light? Everybody had lied to her

ever since I could remember. Had I gone along for reasons of my own?

She was my mother. And we were going our separate ways in hatred. How could I

let that happen without even making an effort to talk about what had gone on?

Good God, how could I leave her like this? She was like a child really.

Couldn't I even try?

I looked at her again. She was still looking at me. And that ugly smile was

there just like before. Say something, Belinda. Say something, and yet if it

goes wrong and you lose Jeremy-And then she spoke instead.

"What are you going to do, little bitch," she asked, "if I don't blackmail

your friend, Mr. Walker? Tell me, what you're going to do to us all, G.G.'s

daughter? Bring us all down?"

I was staring at her, kind of on hold, and stunned like she had hit me, and

then I said:

"No, Mom. You're wrong about me, all wrong. All my life I've protected you,

taken care of you. I'm still doing it. But, so help me God, you hurt me and

Jeremy Walker, and I will look out for myself and him."

I got out of the car, but I stood there with the door open. And then after a

long time I leaned back inside. I was crying. I said:

"Play this last role for me, Bonnie. I promise you, I'll never darken your

door again."

The look on her face then was terrible. It was heartbroken. Just heartbroken.

And in the most tired voice with no meanness at all she said:

"OK, honey. OK. I'll try."

I talked to her one time after that. It was close to midnight and I went out

to the phone booth in Carmel and I called her private line, as we had

planned.

She was the one crying then. She was stammering and repeating herself so

badly I could hardly make out what she said. She told me something about how

you took the negatives from her, that she hadn't pulled it off. But the awful

thing was that she'd tried to turn you against me. She said she didn't mean

it, really she didn't, but you kept asking her questions and she had said the

meanest things about me and Marty and all that.

"Don't worry, Mom, it's OK," I said to her. "If he still wants me after all

this, then I guess it's just really fine."

Then Marty came on the line. "The bottom line is this, honey. He knows we're

on to him. He won't use those pictures if he's got a brain in his head."

I didn't even answer that one. I just said, "Tell my mom I love her. Tell her

now so that I can hear it." And after he did, I heard him say, "She loves

you, too, honey, she says to tell you she loves you." I hung up.

But, you know, after I left the phone booth, I went walking on the beach,

letting the wind just sear me to the bone. And I kept seeing her when she

said: "OK, honey, OK. I'll try." I wanted so to run the tape back and be in

that moment again and just to hold her in my arms.

"Mom!" I wanted to say. "It's me, Belinda, I love you, Mama. I love you so

much."

But that moment would never come again. I'd never touch her or hold her again

ever. Maybe never even hear her voice speaking to me. And all the years in

Europe and on Saint Esprit were gone away.

But there was you, Jeremy. And I loved you with my whole heart. I loved you

so much you can not imagine. And I prayed and prayed for you to come. I

prayed to God you would not ask me anything else ever, because if you did, I

might spill everything and I could never never tell it and not hate you for

making me tell.

Please, Jeremy, just come. That was my prayer. Because the truth was, I'd

lost Mom a long time ago. But you and me-we were forever, Jeremy. We really

were once-in-a-lifetime. And the paintings would live forever. Nobody could

ever kill them the way they killed Susan's movie. They were yours, and

someday you'd have the courage to show them to everyone else.

Well, now you have it, Jeremy. We have come to the finish. The story is

finally told. For two days straight I have sat in this room writing in this

notebook, filling every page both sides. I am tired and I feel the misery I

knew I'd feel when all the secrets were finally revealed.

But you have now what you always wanted, all the facts of my life and past

before you, and you can make the judgment for yourself that you never trusted

me to make.

And what is your judgment? Did I betray Susan when I went to bed with Marty

the very night after he killed her picture? Was I a fool to want his love?

And what about Mother in those crucial weeks in Los Angeles? All my life I'd

cared for her, but I was so in love with Marty that I stood by and did

nothing as she starved herself, got hooked on the medications, the plastic

surgery, and all the other things that turned her life into sleepless nights

and bad dreams. Should I have gotten her out of it somehow to some place

where she could have taken stock? And was I guilty all along of a worse

betrayal of her, of never trying, for her sake and mine, to break through the

games we all played?

You called me a liar that night when you hit me. You were right, that I am.

But you can see now that I was lying before I could remember. Lie, keep

secret, protect-that was life with Mom.

And what about Dad? Did I have a right to go to him, to come between him and

Ollie Boon? Dad lost Ollie after five years of being with him. Dad loved

Ollie. And Ollie loved Dad.

You decide. Have I harmed every grownup who ever had any dealings with me,

from the day that Susan set foot on Saint Esprit? Or was I the victim all

along?

Maybe I had a right to be mad as hell about Final Score. And I did love

Marty, that I will never deny. Did I have a right to expect Uncle Daryl and

Mom to care about my life and what was happening? I was Mom's daughter, after

all. When they didn't, was I right to run away from them, to say, "I will not

be sent to Europe, I will strike out on my own"?

If I only knew the answers to these questions, maybe I would have told you

the whole thing before now. But I don't know the answers. I never did. And

that's why I hurt you with the stupid blackmail trick. And God knows, that

was a mistake all right.

I knew it was long before you ever suspected what happened. I knew it when I

called G.G. from New Orleans and I could not bring myself to tell him about

it, to explain to him how things had worked out. I was too ashamed of what

I'd done.

But then we were so happy together, Jeremy. Those New Orleans weeks were the

best of all. Everything seemed worth it. I knew in our last weeks that you'd

won your inner fight. And I told myself the blackmail trick had saved us

both.

Well. It is a hell of a story, isn't it, just as G.G. and Ollie Boon said it

was. But just as I said, it was not my story to tell. The rights really do

belong to the grownups. And you are one of them now. There will never be a

day in court for me where all this is concerned. Escape was my only choice

before. Escape is my only choice now.

And you must understand this. You must forgive it. Because you know you had

your own terrible secret, your own story, which belonged to someone else,

which for so long you could never tell.

Don't resent me for saying it, but the secret was not that you wrote those

last novels for your mother. It was the secret of the novels you wouldn't

write after her death. She didn't just leave you her name in her will,

Jeremy, she asked you for eternal life, and that you could not give. You know

it's true.

And in guilt and fear you ran away from her and left her house like a tomb of

olden times complete with every little thing that was hers. Yet you couldn't

get away from it. You painted the house in every picture in every book. And

you painted your own spirit running through it, trying to get free of your

mother and her hands that reached out in death.

But if I'm right about all this, you are out of the old house now. You have

painted a figure that finally broke free. With love and courage you opened

the door of your secret world to me. You let me come not only into your heart

but into your imagination and into your pictures, too.

You gave me more than I can ever give you. You made me the symbol of your

battle, and you have to go on winning the battle, no matter what you now

think of me.

But can't you forgive me for keeping my mother's secrets? Can't you forgive

me for being lost in my own dark house, unable to get out? I have made no art

that can be my ticket to freedom. Since the day Final Score was sold out, I

have been a phantom, a shadow compared with the images you painted of me.

It won't always be so. I am two thousand miles away from you already, I am in

a world I understand, and we may never see each other again. But I will be

OK. I won't make the mistakes I made in the past. I will not live on the

fringe again. I will use the money I have and the many things you gave me,

and I will bide my time until no one can hurt me or hurt the people I love

through me anymore. And then I will be Belinda again. I will pick up the

pieces and I will be somebody, not somebody's girl. I will try to be like you

and Susan. I will do things, too.

But, Jeremy, this is the most important part of all. What will happen to the

paintings now?

I want you so badly to show them for my sake that you must be wary of what I

say. But listen just the same.

Be true to the paintings! No matter how you despise me, be true to the work

you've done. They are yours to reveal when you are ready, and so is the truth

of all that has happened to you with me.

What I am saying is you owe me no secrecy and no silence. When the time comes

to make your decision, nothing and no one must stand in your way. Use your

power then, just as Ollie Boon told me to do. You have made art out of what

happened. And you have earned the right to use the truth in any way that you

want.

No one will get me to hurt you, of that you can be sure. This year, next

year.

Rain falling. Great slanted sheets of rain. They hit the screens with such

force the screens billowed, and the water swept the old floorboards, spraying

off the legs of the rocking chair, spraying into the room. Dark puddle

creeping into the flowers of the rug. Voices downstairs? No.

I was lying in bed with the Scotch on the table beside me. Next to the phone.

Been drunk since Rhinegold's visit, since I'd finished the new Artist and

Model. Would be drunk until Saturday. Then back to work again. Saturday

deadline for this madness. Until then the Scotch. And the [bad scan].

Now and then Miss Annie came with gumbo and biscuits. "Eat, Mr. Walker."

Flash of lightning, and a deafening crack of thunder. Then the echo of the

thunder, which was just the streetcar rolling by through the storm. Water was

coming in under the wallpaper in the upper-left corner, but the paintings

were all safe, Miss Annie had assured me of that.

Sound of people walking? Only the old boards creaking. Miss Annie wouldn't

call a doctor. She wouldn't do that to me.

I'd done all right till I'd finished the new Artist and Model, she and I

fighting, my slapping her, her falling back against the wall. Then I'd

started deceiving myself, one drink, two, it wouldn't matter, just the

background to finish. And the phone was not ringing. I was the only one

calling: Marty, Susan, G.G, somebody find her! My ex-wife Celia had said,

"This is awful, Jeremy, don't tell anyone!"

Bonnie's private line disconnected. "Leave me alone! I tell you I don't care,

I don't care!"

I'd been drunk when Rhinegold left actually. He had wanted to start shipping

the pictures immediately. "No," I said. I had to have them here with me until

it was all finished. One week from Saturday he would be back. One week to do

the last one, to write the program notes, to fight out the final

arrangements. No later than Saturday, sober up, begin.

Call, Belinda, give it one more chance. Once-in-a-lifetime remember? Already

two thousand miles away from you. Where? Across the Atlantic? A place I

understand.

Belinda in Final Score was done. Her profile and Sandy's perfect. No

cheating, as Susan Jeremiah would have said. And what a great voice that

woman had, Texas ham and soft at the same time. On the phone from Paris she'd

said, "Hang in there, old buddy, we'll find her. She's no nut case like Mama.

She isn't going to do that to all of us."

Yeah, Sandy and Belinda finished. And the block print one, Belinda, Come

Back, in the same somber colors as all [bad scan] Artist and Model only

needed a little more shading, a little more deepening. Put yourself on

automatic pilot, soul control, you ought to call it, and go ahead, old buddy,

and finish you hand hitting the side of her face right before she went down

to the floor.

"What more must you do?" Rhinegold demanded. "Belinda, Come Back is the

finish. Can't you see this yourself?" Sitting there hunched over in his black

suit, staring at me through Coke-bottle thick glasses, the specialist in

understatement.

I'd grabbed his sleeve as he was leaving, "OK, you've agreed to everything,

but you tell me, what do you really think!" They were all lined up in the

hallway, up the staircase, in the living room.

"You know what you've done," he said. "You think I'd agree to this lunacy if

it wasn't perfection?" Then he was gone. Flight to San Francisco to look for

the warehouse on Folsom Street. Madness, he had been ranting. "San Francisco

is a place where you buy mountain bicycles and running shoes. We should be on

West-Fifty-seventh Street or in SoHo with an exhibit like this! You are

destroying me!"

The Artist Grieves For Belinda. That's what remained to be done. Blank

canvas. And hour by hour in this unforgivable stupor I painted it in my mind

as I lay here, Scotch or no Scotch. The artist with torch in hand and the

toys blazing-trains, dolls, tiny lace curtains on plastic windows. The end of

the world.

OK. You can have your slothful misery until Saturday. You know the phone is

not going to ring.

"Listen, asshole, you want my advice?" Marty had said, and she was so right

about the sincerity. "Forget her! I did it. You do it. You got off light,

asshole, don't you know it? Her mother was that close to hanging you up by

the balls."

Thunder so low I could hardly hear it. The gods moving their wooden furniture

around a giant kitchen up there. The oak scrapes the side of the house,

everything in motion, leaves, branches, metallic light.

G.G. in that soft boyish voice over the phone from New York: "Jeremy, I know

she wouldn't do anything crazy. She'd call me if she wasn't OK." Time for

hallucinations?

I could have sworn I'd just heard Alex Clementine's voice in this house! Alex

talking to another man, and it couldn't be Rhinegold because Rhinegold had

left days ago for San Francisco as planned. The other man spoke very softly.

And Miss Annie was talking to them, too.

Got to be an hallucination. Had refused to give Alex my number, no matter how

drunk I was. I'll see you in San Francisco, I told him. I'll be just fine,

perfectly fine.

It was only to G.G. and to Alex and to Dan that I told the whole story: her

letter, Bonnie and the blackmail attempt, and how I had hit her and hit her

and hit her. And that Marty and Bonnie would no longer look for [bad scan.

Belinda, Come Back. This is not the end of our story. It can't be.

Dan had been so angry. "Where the hell are you! You're drunk, I'm coming to

get you!" No, Dan. No, Alex.

Lightning again. Everything gorgeously visible for a fraction of a second.

The settee and the petit point pillows. Framed cover of Crimson, Mardi Gras,

letters faded under sported glass. This was the smoothest Scotch. After years

of white wine or a beer now and then, it was like mainlining. I mean, the

furniture was moving.

Then Miss Annie said very firmly: "Please let me tell Mr. Walker that you are

here!"

Light spray of rain hitting my face and hands. Glistening on the arch of the

telephone receiver. Call, Belinda. Please, honey. It's going to take so long.

Two weeks before I can even leave here, and then taking them all back across

country and everything else that has to be done. I still love you. I always

will.

Goddamn it, that was Alex's voice.

The rain shook the screens. The wind was cold for only a moment, as though

something else in the house had been blown open. The oak branches were really

thrashing out there. Like the hurricanes I remembered, when the magnolia

trees came up and the tin roofs flew off the garages or flapped in the wind

like the covers of books. Paint the hurricane. Paint it! You can paint

anything you want to now, don't you know that?

Seems I had had a freeze-frame of Final Score on the television set. But that

was hours ago, wasn't it? And when you leave it on freeze-frame for more than

five minutes, the machine cuts off.

"You just leave it to me, dear lady," Alex was saying. "He'll understand."

"Mr. Walker, this is Mr. Alex Clementine from Hollywood. He insisted on

coming up here, and this is Mr. George Gallagher from New York."

And voila Alex. Just like that. How marvelous he looked, mammoth and gleaming

as always as he came striding into the cool damp gloom. And right behind him

a tall boy-man with Belinda's eyes and Belinda's blond hair and Belinda's

mouth.

"Good lord, you're both here," I said.

I tried to sit up. The glass was lying on its side on the table and the

Scotch was spilling. Then G.G., this six-foot-four blond-haired boy-man, this

god, this angel, whatever he was, came and picked up the glass and wiped at

the spilled Scotch with his handkerchief. What an ingratiating smile.

"Hi, Jeremy, it's me, G.G. Guess this is kind of a surprise."

"You look just like her, really you do!" Dressed all in white, even the

watchband was white leather, white leather shoes.

"Christ, Jeremy," Alex said. He was striding back and forth, looking at the

walls and the ceiling, at the high wooden back of the bed. "Turn on the air-

conditioning in this room and shut those damned doors."

"And miss this lovely breeze? How did you find me, Alex?" Thunder again. It

broke violently over the rooftop. G.G. jumped. "I don't like that."

"It's nothing, doesn't mean a thing," I told him. "How the hell did you find

-?"

"I can find anyone when I have a mind to, Jeremy," Alex said solemnly. "Do

you remember the insane things you said to me over the phone? I called G.G.,

and G.G. said it's a 504 area code. I see you trust G.G. with things like

your phone number, though you don't trust your older friends."

"I didn't want you to come, Alex. I gave him the number in case Belinda

called, that was all. Belinda hasn't called, has she, G.G.?"

"Then we get to the airport, and I tell these cab drivers, no, I want an old

guy, somebody who's been driving for a couple of decades, and finally they

bring up this colored man, you know, the Creole quadroon kind with the

caramel skin and gray hair and I said, 'You remember Cynthia Walker, the

woman who wrote Crimson Mardi Gras? She used to have a house up on Saint

Charles, peeling paint, closed shutters, course they might have changed it.

'Take you right to it, not changed at all.' It was simple enough."

"You should have seen him in action," G.G. said softly. "We had a whole crowd

around us."

"Jeremy, this is sick," Alex said. "This is worse than what happened after

Faye died."

"No, Alex, looks deceive you. I've made a bargain with myself and everything

is under control. I'm merely resting, storing up energy for the final

picture."

Alex got out a cigarette. Flash of G.G.'s gold lighter. "Thank you, son."

"Sure, Alex."

I reached for the glass, but couldn't reach it.

Alex was staring at me, as if I were wearing a blindfold and couldn't see it,

the way he looked at my clothes, the Scotch, the bed. Dark spots from the

rain all over his fedora and the cashmere scarf was white this time, hanging

all the way down the front of the Burberry.

"Where is that little lady? Madam! Can you fix something for this gentle'man

to eat?"

"Not till Saturday, damn it, Alex, I told you this is planned."

"Of course, I can, but can you get him to eat it, Mr. Clementine? I can't get

him to eat a thing."

"I'll feed him if I have to. And some coffee, madam, a pot of coffee, too."

I tried to reach the glass again. G.G. filled it for me.

"Thank you."

"Don't give him that, son," Alex said. "Jeremy, this place is exactly the way

it was twenty-five years ago. There is an opened letter on the dresser,

postmarked 1966, do you realize that? And a copy of The New York Times for

the same year on this night table."

"Alex, you're getting excited over nothing. Did you see the paintings? Tell

me what you think."

"They're beautiful," G.G. said. "Oh, I love them all."

"What did you think, Alex? Tell me."

"What did Rhinegold tell you? That you'd go to jail if you did this thing? Or

is he just out to make a buck off it?"

"You're not really going to do it, are you?" G.G. asked.

"Jeremy, this is hara-kiri. What kind of a man is this Rhinegold? Get on this

phone. Call it off."

"She hasn't called you, has she, G.G? You would have told me the minute you

walked in."

"Oh, yes, Jeremy, I would have. But don't worry. She's all right. She

wouldn't let things get too bad without calling me. And the phones are

covered night and day."

"Speaking of phones, do you realize you called Blair Sackwell two nights ago

at two o'clock in the morning," Alex thundered, "and you told him the whole

thing?"

"And there're people at my place if she comes," G.G. said. "They're waiting

for her."

"Not the whole thing, Alex," I said. "Just who she was and who I was and that

she was on the run and that I hurt her. I don't have to tell the whole thing.

I don't have to hang anyone. But the truth's got to come out, Alex. Goddamn

it, she exists, she has a name and a past and those paintings are of her, and

I love her."

"Yes," G.G. said softly.

"And that's why I called Susan Jeremiah in Paris and Ollie Boon, too. I

called that woman who wrote the Bonnie biography, I called my wives. I called

Marty at United Theatricals after Bonnie disconnected her private line. I

called my editor and my publicist and my Hollywood agent and I told them all

what was going on. I called Andy Blatky my sculptor friend, and my neighbor

Sheila. And I called all my writer friends who work for the papers, too."

And I should have stuck it out, finished the last painting, done the program

notes. I'd be out of here by now.

"Calling Blair Sackwell is like calling 'CBS News,' Walker!" Alex said. "What

do you mean, friends who work for what papers, where? Do you think you can

control what's going to happen?"

"Yes, that's true," G.G. murmured, shaking his head, "that's really true

about Blair and he's in such a rage already."

"Why don't you just get a fucking thirty-eight, the way Bonnie did!" Alex

yelled.

"You should have heard Blair on the subject of Marty," G.G. said. Look of

distaste, like a baby tasting carrots for the first time. "Blair calls him

the Gruesome Statistic and the Ugly Reality and the Awful Fact."

"Clementine, I'm going to find her, don't you get the message! I'm going all

the way with it, and I'm getting her back and we're going to be together,

that is, if she hasn't done something crazy out there."

"Blair's got this idea that he's going to find her," G.G. said. "He has this

wild idea she'll do Midnight Mink for him. He'll pay her one hundred grand."

"What the hell did Moreschi say to you?" Alex demanded. He was towering over

me now, his hair curling under the hat brim from the humidity, his eyes

burning in the shadowy light. "Are these friends of yours on the papers

really friends?"

"Blair's never paid anybody any money before," G.G. said. "He just gives you

the mink coat."

"It doesn't matter what Marty said. I was giving Marty a gentleman's warning,

that's all. It might get out of hand."

"Oh, terrific! That's like warning Dracula," Alex said.

"I'm not out to hang Marty or anybody! But this is for Belinda and me! Marty

has to understand it, that it's Holy Communion. I was never using Belinda.

Marty was so wrong about the whole thing."

"You using Belinda?" Alex demanded. "You're about to wreck your goddamned

life just to find her and-?"

"Oh, no, nobody's wrecking anything, can't you see it?" I said. "But that's

the beauty of it, there is no simple angle-"

"Jeremy, I am taking you back to California with me now," Alex said. "I'll

get that Rhinegold character on the phone and get these pictures shipped to

some safe place. Berlin, for example. Now that's a good safe place."

"Out of the question, Alex."

"Then you and I will go to Portofino, like we did before, and we will talk

this thing out. Maybe G.G. will come along."

"That's wonderful, but as of Saturday I start working again, and I've got two

weeks to finish that last canvas. Now about the house in Portofino, I'll sure

as hell take it for a honeymoon."

"Are you really going to get married?" G.G. asked. "That is so beautiful!"

"I should have asked her when we came down here," I said. "We could have gone

to Mississippi and done it with the age limit there. Nobody could have

touched us."

"Where is that woman with the food?" Alex demanded. "G.G., start him a bath,

will you, son? There is hot and cold running water in this house, isn't

there, Jeremy? Those clawed feet in there do belong to a bathtub!"

"I love her. Once-in-a-lifetime, that's how she put it."

"I can consent, you know," G.G. said. He went towards the bathroom.

"My name's on her birth certificate. I know right where it is."

"Make the water good and hot," Alex said.

"Stop it, Alex, I bathe every night before I go to bed, just the way my

mother taught me. And I'm not going anywhere till Rhinegold comes back and

takes over. It's all set."

Steam was flooding out of the bathroom. Sound of running water rising under

the roar of the rain.

"What makes you think she'll marry you after you beat the hell out of her?"

Alex demanded. "You think the press will like that angle any better?

With you forty-five and her sixteen?"

"You didn't read her story-"

"Well, you practically told me every word of it-"

"-she'll marry me, I know she will."

"They can't do anything to her if she's legally married," G.G. said.

"Jeremy, you're not responsible for your actions," said Alex. "You have got

to be stopped. Isn't there an air conditioner in this room?" He started

closing the French doors.

"Don't do that, Alex," I said. "Leave the doors open. I'll have Miss Annie

fix up the back bedrooms for you. Now calm down."

Miss Annie came in with a tray of steaming dishes. Smell of gumbo. The room

was too quiet suddenly. The rain was dying out there. Silent glimmer of

lightning. And G.G. like a ghost of the all-American boy in the bathroom door

as the steam poured out around him. God, what a good-looking man.

"I'll get you some fresh clothes, Mr. Walker," Miss Annie said. Drawers

sliding out. Smell of camphor.

Alex was sitting beside me. "Jeremy, call Rhinegold. Tell him the whole

thing's canceled."

"Do you want sugar in this coffee?" G.G. asked.

"Walker, we're talking felony, prison, maybe kidnap, and even libel."

"Alex, I pay my lawyer to say that stuff. I sure as hell don't want to hear

it for free."

"That is what Marty was screaming," G.G. said. "Libel. Did you know that

Blair called Ollie and told him everything?"

"I called Ollie myself and told him," I said. "I own the stage rights to

Crimson Mardi Gras. United Theatricals doesn't own them, never did."

G.G. laughed. "Don't talk business when you're drunk, Jeremy, not even to

Ollie," he said.

"It was just broadcasting, old boy," I said. "Just broadcasting. And as for

Crimson Mardi Gras, he can have it."

"Yeah, well, you let your agents handle that," Alex said. "Now drink this

stuff, this gumbo, what is it, you like this? Drink this coffee. Sit up.

Where is your lawyer, by the way?"

"l am sitting up. And you're misunderstanding everything. Until Saturday, I

told you, this is a planned interlude of drunkenness. And my lawyer is in San

Francisco, where he belongs, thank you. Don't get any ideas about asking him

to come here."

"Ollie said that in Sardi's everybody was talking about Belinda and Marty and

Bonnie and the whole story," G.G. said.

"Good God," Alex said. He took out his handkerchief, mopped his forehead.

"I didn't say anything against Marty and Bonnie," I said. "Not even to Susan

Jeremiah. But goddamn it, she is alone out there, and those people did

something to me, they did it with their detectives and their cameras with the

zoom lenses and their fucking pressure on her and, goddamn them, if they get

hurt. We're coming out of the closet with it."

"G.G., turn off the bath water. Jeremy, you will not make any more calls."

"I'll get the bath water," said Miss Annie. "Mr. Walker, please eat the

Gumbo. I'm putting these fresh clothes in the bathroom for you on the back of

the door."

"Alex, I completed two whole canvases since I spoke to you. Now I have vowed

to drink until Saturday, and on Saturday I shall rise and finish everything.

It is all going as planned."

"Jeremy, this is going to hurt," Alex said gravely. "But it's time I said it.

Today is Saturday! It has been since twelve o'clock last night."

"Oh, my God, you don't mean it."

"It's true, Mr. Walker," Miss Annie said.

"Yes, it is," said G.G. "It's Saturday. Two o'clock, in fact."

"Get out of my way, I've got work to do. I've got to clean up. Annie, fix up

the back bedrooms for my guests. What time is it, two o'clock, you said?"

I got out of the bed and fell down immediately. The room just [bad scan].

Alex caught me. Miss Annie had the other arm. I was about to [bad scan]

"G.G., I think this is going to be a long one," Alex said, as he me caught

me. "Madam, I will not trouble you to fix up the back bedrooms, call the

Pontchartrain Hotel down the street and arrange for a room. Care to join me,

G.G.?"

"Oh, I'd love to, Alex," G.G. answered immediately. "Jeremy, don't mind if I

hang around for a few days, do you? Just till you're OK?"

"Not at all," I answered. I was upright again, walking. "Stay finished and

we'll leave for the Coast together. You can keep me company, while I'm

painting." I had my hand on the knob. My head was throbbing, "I'm chartering

a plane to take the paintings back. God, I hope it doesn't crash. Wouldn't

that be horrible?"

"Not if you don't fly with them," Alex said.

Miss Annie was unbuttoning my shirt. The bathroom smelled of bath salts. I

was not going to be sick, I was going to die.

Alex was looking at G.G. "One bedroom or two, G.G.?" He [bad scan] the phone.

"Whatever you say, Alex," G.G. was beaming back. "I'll go with you to the

lodgings. We'll take Jeremy to Antoine's for dinner and Brennan's for

breakfast an the Court of Two Sisters for lunch. Then we'll Arnaud's and

Manale's and K-Paul's and-"

"Count me out, gentlemen," I said. The water was hot, real hot. "I'll be in

my studio working when you come back for your brandy and coils."

Miss Annie would have unzipped my pants for me if I hadn't stopped her.

Alex winked at me as I pushed her gently out the door.

"At least this part's working out well, isn't it?" he said, then he at G.G.

"I'll take care of everything, son, thank you, and let me say certainly are a

nice polite Yankee boy."
II. CHAMPAGNE FLIGHT

The story broke in the San Francisco Chronicle the week before the exhibit

opened.

Jeremy Walker, "beloved" children's author and the creator of the indomitable

"Saturday Morning Charlotte," might soon shock his forty million loyal

readers with a one-man show in San Francisco consisting entirely of nude

studies of a young adolescent girl. Even stranger than Walker's reported

shift from wholesome children's art to erotic portraiture were the rumors

concerning his blond blue-eyed model, that she was none other than sixteen-

year-old Belinda Blanchard, daughter of "Champagne Flight" superstar Bonnie,

a teenage runaway missing from her mother's multimillion-dollar Beverly Hills

home for over a year. A separate feature article went on:

"Walker's catalog copy explains that Belinda came into his life as a mystery,

that he did not learn her identity as Bonnie's runaway daughter until the

paintings were almost completed, and that in a violent and regrettable

argument he hurt Belinda and drove her out of his life. This exhibit is a

tribute to Belinda as well as a declaration of Walker's 'artistic freedom.'

"Will the public find these canvases obscene? The five by seven color

photographs in the handsome exhibit catalog leave nothing to the imagination.

This is representational art at its most literal. No camera could reveal more

of the girl's endowments. But one week from today, when the exhibit opens in

two Folsom Street galleries, handsomely refurbished entirely for this event

by New York art dealer Arthur Rhinegold, the public can judge for itself."

Dan was beside himself. Why the hell wouldn't I let him hire a criminal

lawyer right now?

Alex threw up his hands and said: "Let's all go to dinner at Trader Vic's

while we still can."

Only G.G. was smiling as we sat around the kitchen table drinking our coffee

and reading the article.

"Soon as it hits the wire service," he said, "she'll see it and she'll call,

Jeremy."

"Maybe, maybe not," I said. I had visions of her walking along windswept

streets in Paris, never glancing at the papers on the stands. But my heart

was thudding. It had begun!

Rhinegold called an hour later. The press was driving him insane to get early

glimpses of the pictures. But nobody was getting through that door until the

museum people had seen the work on Sunday night as planned. Ten thousand

copies of the catalog had just arrived in the warehouse. The bookstore at the

Museum of Modern Art had just called to place an order. We were going to sell

the catalog, weren't we? Wouldn't I reconsider putting a price on it.

"It will help us to print more copies!" Rhinegold insisted. "Jeremy, be

reasonable."

"All right," I said. "But you keep mailing them all over. You keep giving

them away."

By noon we knew the LA papers had carried their versions of the story, with

added material about the "suppression" of Final Score. I was called the

Rembrandt of children's book illustration. "Saturday Morning Charlotte" was

praised as an oasis in the desert of children's TV. Belinda was called

"mesmerizing" in her first performance by the reviewer who had seen her debut

at Cannes. Another story was devoted entirely to Marty and Bonnie and United

Theatricals' decision at Cannes not to distribute Final Score. "The fully

illustrated exhibit catalog is every bit as hefty as any of Walker's

children's books," said a feature writer in the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner,

"and it is only when measured against the earlier adventures of Charlotte or

Bettina that the obscenity here can be fully understood. Belinda appears to

be Walker's heroine unclothed. Would Bonnie have ever permitted such

exploitation of her daughter had she known of it? Where is Belinda now?"

The telephone started to ring.

From one o'clock to six I answered reporters' questions. Yes, I had lived

with her, yes, I was trying desperately to find her, no, Bonnie and Marty

were not to my knowledge looking for her any longer. Yes, I knew the

paintings might jeopardize my reputation, but I had to go with the paintings.

The paintings were my most important work to date. No, my publishers had not

commented. No, I was not worried about negative reactions. An artist has to

follow his obsessions. That had always been my way.

Dan gave up and went back to his office to arrange for his secretary,

Barbara, to come over and field these calls.

Alex was getting a little tired of the house, just as I knew he would, what

with my cooking and the one Victorian bathroom. I wouldn't be offended, would

I, if he went on up and got a suite at the Clift?

"Of course not, Alex, go ahead. I wouldn't blame you if you lit out of here

altogether, I told you that, you and G.G. both."

"Undiscussable," Alex murmured. "I'll be five minutes away if you need me,

and you call me and tell me what's happening. I'll never get through on that

phone!"

G.G. was worried about the phone, too. It was ringing nonstop by seven. The

operators were cutting in with "emergencies" when I was on the line.

"I'm going with Alex," G.G. said. "I'll call New York and give them the

number of the hotel room, and that way she can reach me if she can't reach

you."

My ex-wife Celia called from New York after dinner. She was hysterical. She'd

been trying to get through for an hour and a half. It was in the columns:

WALKER WALKS OFF ON YOUNG FANS.

"Celia, I told you, I wouldn't do another children's book if somebody chained

me in a dungeon and said I had to do it or I'd never be let out."

"Jeremy, that sounds like a children's book! What's this girl got, to make

you flip out like this over her? Jeremy, you need help."

"Celia, from the first moment I saw her, it was for me!"

The Dallas papers had it on Tuesday morning, concentrating on Bonnie, their

hometown girl. She and Belinda had been photographed together five years ago

at their last press conference in Dallas. Could a rift have separated mother

and daughter for over a year?

As for Walker, who "claims" to have lived with teenage beauty Belinda as he

painted her, his books were in every library in the state. Walker's last

appearance in Forth Worth in 1982 had been a triumph, with two thousand books

sold.

Then the call came from Houston that the Chronicle and the Post had also run

it with the focus on Jeremiah saying, "There are [bad scan] Texas-size

scandal here."

There was a picture of Susan in the de rigueur cowboy hat. "For a tried to

reach her for a part in a movie," Susan had told the paper long distance from

Los Angeles. "They kept telling me she was away at [bad scan]. Now it turns

out she was in San Francisco living with Jeremy. It's a good thing somebody

was taking care of her."

No, Susan hadn't seen the catalog, though she'd try to be in San Francisco

for the opening. "Look, he doesn't have to prove his integrity as artist. Go

in any bookstore. Open one of his books."

Her Dad was quoted as saying he was proud of her Final Score. He had tried to

get it shown at a film festival in Houston and had run into the suspicious

difficulties. "I mean, I think United Theatricals killed this picture for

highly personal reasons. I think we have a case of ego and temperament, an

old-style Hollywood prima donna who didn't want competition from an ingénue

who just happened to be her little girl then there are a lot of things about

it that puzzle us."

"I can tell you this much," Susan added. "If and when I find her I'm offering

her the lead in my next picture. It's real nice and all that she's the

subject of eighteen paintings by Jeremy Walker, but her career's been on ice

a little too long."

Jeremiah had wrapped up her commitments to United Theatricals. Galaxy

Pictures was bankrolling her new venture, Of Will and Shame, Limelight to

distribute worldwide.

OK, Susan, take it and run with it, honey. Everything was working just fine.

Now those guys with the British accents were calling from the Enquirer. They

were so surprised when I agreed to talk to them.

"I love her. I quarreled with her because I didn't understand all the things

that had happened to her. She had starred in this wonderful movie, and then

it was never distributed. Ask Susan Jeremiah. And in Hollywood she'd had a

tragic romance. She'd been in terrible shape when she ran away from home. She

was in New York for a while when detectives started looking for her. Then she

came to San Francisco where we met. But, you see, the important thing is that

I find her. She's out there somewhere all alone."

Stringers from the Globe and the Star came right to the front door. In [bad

scan] answer the bell, I saw a number of people standing around out there. A

flashbulb went off when I stepped onto the porch. My neighbor Sheila was

talking to a man on the curb.

"Way to go, Jeremy!" Sheila shouted. She waved a [bad scan] of the [bad

scan].

The reporters tried to get in the door.

"Nobody inside," I said, "now what do you want to know?"

We were still talking when another stringer showed up from People magazine.

Come on, if I just let her in, it meant she could sell her story. She needed

the money. I said no. I noticed there was a guy up on the balcony of the

wooden apartment house on the corner, shooting pictures with a telephoto

lens.

G.G. called from the Clift at eleven thirty. "The phone situation is almost

impossible. How could Belinda possibly get through?"

"Dan's working on that. The phone company may be able to put in another line.

But at the rate it's going, that won't help very much."

"Well, I just got a call from friends in Boston. It's in the papers there,

and it was in the Washington Post, too."

"And Belinda has not called," I said dejectedly.

"Patience, Jeremy," G.G. said. "By the way, Alex is coming up in a while to

have a nightcap with you."

"Who's going to bed after the nightcap?" I asked. "I'm sitting here by the

phone."

"Yeah, me too."

But I was asleep on the studio floor with the answering machine up loud when

G.G. shouted to me through it on Wednesday morning:

"Jeremy, wake up. USA Today just ran it. So did The New York Times. That's

bound to reach her in Europe. The Herald Tribune over there must be carrying

it by now."

By Wednesday noon the local news radio station was running items about us

constantly. We were getting calls from friends in Aspen and Atlanta and even

Portland, Maine.

Then Dan came in with the Los Angeles Times. Marty Moreschi and Bonnie had

issued a statement denying all knowledge of Belinda's whereabouts or

activities for a year. "Bonnie is shocked and horrified to learn of this

bizarre exhibit of paintings in San Francisco. Through private agencies

Bonnie has been searching night and day for Belinda since the girl's

disappearance. Bonnie's first and only concern is for her daughter's welfare.

Bonnie is on the verge of nervous collapse."

An hour later, the Cable News Network ran live footage of Bonnie and Marty

mobbed by reporters outside the offices of a lawyer on Wilshire Boulevard.

And there was Marty in his tight gray three-piece suit, gold watchband

flashing, stabbing his finger at the reporters:

"This is her daughter you're talking about! And now we find out she's been

living with this screwball painter in San Francisco? How do you think she

feels?"

Glimpse of Bonnie, dark glasses, head bowed as she passed through the glass

doors of the building with Marty behind her.

Then suddenly "Saturday Morning Charlotte" was staring at me from the screen.

I got the first hate call about three that afternoon. The speaker was on, so

Dan could also hear it.

"Child molester! You like painting little girls naked? Some children's author

you are!" Click.

I got chills all over. Dan crushed out his cigarette and walked out of the

room. After that, it was maybe one hate call to every five from friends or

reporters.

Around four I decided it was time to check out the Carmel house. I dreaded

going there, finding it cold and empty, but what if by some miracle Belinda

was there?

I picked up G.G. at the Clift and we drove south in the MG-TD, with the top

down. The wind felt good.

The radio told us that prominent Dallas attorney Daryl Blanchard, brother of

"Champagne Flight" star Bonnie, was on his way to Hollywood to see his sister

regarding Belinda's disappearance. Daryl refused to make a statement to the

press.

I wasn't surprised to find everything in Carmel the way Belinda and I had

left it-even the soft little loft bed still rumpled-and no evidence that she

had ever returned on her own to the place. Agony to come back to this little

house.

I sat down and wrote a long note to her and put it on the kitchen table. G.G.

wrote a note of his own, giving her the number at his hotel. Then I left her

some money in the loft upstairs-several hundred dollars in a white envelope

on the pillow. Then it was time to go.

The fog was rolling in. Carmel was ghostly. I felt a touch of fear. I stood

in the door of the cottage for a long time, looking at the scattered

primroses in the sandy garden, the great twisted limbs of the Monterey

cypress reaching up to the gray sky. The fog was blowing up the street. "God,

I hope she's all right, G.G.," I whispered.

He put his arm around my shoulder. But he didn't say a word. All through the

last week in New Orleans he had been so encouraging, so optimistic. But I

knew he made it his business to cheer up others. I'd seen the same trait in

Belinda. They smiled for others, said the right things for others. I wondered

how deep you had to dig to find out what G.G. really felt.

When I looked at him now, he gave me one of his subtle protective smiles.

"It's going to be fine, Jeremy. Honest. Just give her the time to find out."

"You say that like you really believe it," I said. "You're not just trying to

make things OK?"

"Jeremy, when I saw the paintings," he said, "I knew everything was going to

be OK. Come on, give me the keys, I'll drive back if you're tired."

Well, we got back, we had dinner in the kitchen with Alex and Dan. Alex had

brought a good bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon and some excellent steaks, the

kind you can hardly find in a market, and some cold lobster for salad. G.G.

and I were the cooks.

We ate in silence, with the machine on as the voices came one after another

into the room:

"Jeremy, this is Andy Blatky. Have you seen the Berkeley Gazette! I'll read

it to you, man, listen: 'Though the final judgment can only be made from the

canvases themselves, there is little doubt from the catalog that these

paintings constitute Walker's most ambitious attempt to date.' "

"People like you should be prosecuted, do you know that? You think just

because you call yourself an artist you can get away with painting filthy

pictures of a young girl?"

"Listen, you don't know me. I loved your books, but how could you do it? How

could you do something so dirty? How could you do that to us?"

"Turn if off." Alex said.

The New Orleans papers didn't run the story till Thursday and they were

rather polite. IN THE SOUTHERN GOTHIC TRADITION? asked the headline over the

grainy black-and-white newsprint photos of the top half of Belinda with Doll

House and Belinda with Communion Things. "Children viewing these remarkably

realistic rendered paintings of the nude Belinda should at least be

accompanied by adults."

The Thursday Miami Herald said the exhibit would destroy my reputation

forever. "This is smut, call it what you will, and the crassness with which

these so-called catalogs were mailed to the press represents a cynicism which

might leave even old-time big-city porn peddlers stunned."

A local commentator on one of the San Francisco television stations said

pretty much the same thing.

Network news reports showed a big, hefty dark-suited Daryl Blanchard landing

at LAX to a mob of microphones and questions. "We have been sick with worry

over my niece since her disappearance. I know nothing about this man in San

Francisco. Now, if you gentlemen will please excuse me-"

My ex-wife Andrea called late that night. She was both sarcastic and

genuinely concerned. Had I seen the San Jose newspapers? I'd always wanted to

destroy myself. Was I happy now? Did I know what I'd done to her and to

Celia? The San Jose papers had printed photographs of three of the Belinda

pictures with the headline: PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION-AN EMBARRASSING

CONFESSION. A local feminist, Charlotta Greenway, had blasted the work as the

"exploitation of teenage Belinda Blanchard," saying the exhibit, which hadn't

even opened yet, ought to be closed down.

Andy Blatky called again Friday from Berkeley to tell me that the story in

the Oakland Trib had featured a photograph of a book exhibit at Splendor in

the Grass on Solano Avenue, with the statement that my autograph party there

two months ago might be the last appearance as a children's author that I

would ever make. "Hang in there, man!" Andy said.