Belinda Chapter 7 - 8
There was time to hit the Union Street boutiques afterwards. She didn't want
me to spend money, she kept protesting, but it was too much fun taking her
into one fancy store after another, buying her all the things I wanted to see
on her. Little pleated wool skirts, blazers, delicate cotton blouses.
"Catholic school forever," she teased me. But pretty soon she was having fun,
too, forgetting to protest the high price tags.
We drove on downtown and made Neiman Marcus and Saks. I bought her frilly
dresses, pearls, the lovely froufrou stuff that the new female rock stars had
made popular. But it was clear that she had a good eye, was used to good
things, and thought nothing of the attentive saleswoman clucking over her.
Slacks, bikinis, blouses, suede coats-all the interseason things you can wear
year-round in San Francisco-went into the fancy boxes and garment bags.
I even got her perfumes-Giorgio, Calandre, Chanel-sweet, innocent scents that
I liked. And silver barrettes for her hair, and little extra things she might
never have bothered with, like kid gloves and cashmere scarves and wool
berets-finishing touches, you might say, that would make her look like one of
those beautifully turned-out little girls in an English storybook.
I even found a lovely princess-line coat with a little velvet collar. She
could have been seven or seventeen in that. I made her buy a mink muff to go
with it, although she told me I was crazy, she hadn't carried a mug since she
was five years old and that had been in the dead of winter in Stockholm.
Finally we ended up at the Garden Court of the Palace Hotel for dinner.
Service slow, food not great, but the decor absolutely lovely. I wanted to
see her in that setting, against the mirrored French doors, the gilded
columns, the old-world elegance. Besides, the Garden Court always makes me
happy. Maybe it reminds me of New Orleans.
It reminded her of Europe. She loved it. She looked tired now, last night
finally catching up with her. But she was excited, too. She stole sips of my
wine, but otherwise her table manners were exquisite. She held her fork in
the left hand, Continental style. She asked for a fish knife-and used it,
which I had never actually seen anyone do before. And she hardly noticed my
noticing it.
We talked easily about our lives. I told about my marriages, how Andrea, the
teacher, had felt small on account of my career, and Celia, the free-lancer,
was always traveling. Now and then they got together in New York, had a few
drinks, and called me to tell me what a bastard I was. It was what
Californians call family.
She laughed at that. She was listening in that marvelously seductive way that
young women can listen to men, and my realizing it didn't make me feel any
less important.
"But did you really love either one of them?" she asked.
"Sure, I loved them both. Still do in a way. And either marriage could have
lasted forever if we hadn't been modern Californians."
"How do you mean?"
"Divorce is de rigueur out here once the marriage is the least bit
inconvenient. Psychiatrists and friends convince you that you're crazy if you
don't split up for the smallest reasons."
"You're serious, aren't you?"
"Definitely. I've been watching the action out here for twenty-five years
now. We're all proudly enjoying our acquired lifestyles, and pay attention,
the key word is acquire. We're greedy and selfish, all of us."
"You sound like you regret the breakups."
"I don't. That's the tragedy. I'm just as selfish as the rest of them. I
never gave my wives an emotional fifty percent. So how can I blame them for
walking out? Besides, I'm a painter." She smiled.
"Such a mean guy," she said.
"But look," I said, "I don't want to talk about me. I want to talk about you.
I don't mean about your family, all that. I've got the rules down, relax on
that." She waited.
"But what about you right now?" I asked. "What do you want besides wearing
punk clothes and not getting busted?"
She looked at me for a moment, almost as if the question excited her. And
then a shadow passed over her face.
"You talk in big crayon-style print, you know it?"
I laughed. "I didn't mean to sound so harsh," I said. "I mean, what do you
want, Belinda?"
"No, it wasn't harsh. I like it. But it doesn't make much difference what I
want, does it?" she asked.
"Of course, it does."
"Isn't making you happy enough?" She was teasing. A little.
"No, I don't think so."
"Look, what I mean is, I can't do what I want till I'm eighteen. I can't be
anybody. You know, I'd get caught if I really did anything." I thought about
that for a moment. "What about school?" I asked.
"What about it?"
"You know there are ways we could fix it. I mean, get you into some private
school. There have to be ways, names, lies, something-"
"You're crazy," she laughed. "You just want to see me in one of those pleated
skirts again."
"Yeah, I'll cop to that. But seriously-"
"Jeremy, an education I have, can't you tell that? Nannies, tutors, the
works, I had it. I can read and write French, Italian, and English. I could
get into Berkeley now, or Stanford, just by passing an examination." She
shrugged, stole another drink of my wine. "Well, what about Berkeley or
Stanford?" I asked.
"What about them? Who would I be? Linda Merit, my fake person, she'd rack up
the credits?"
Her voice trailed off. She looked very worn out. I wanted to wrap her in my
arms and take her home to bed. The long day was obviously telling on her.
"Besides," she said, "even if I wasn't on the run, I wouldn't go to college."
"Well, that's my question. What would you do? What do you want? What do you
really need right now?"
She looked at me in a slightly distrustful way. And I sensed a defeat in her
again, as I had in the car on the way to Union Street. It was a sadness
bigger than being just tired, bigger than not knowing me very well.
"Belinda, what can I give you besides pretty clothes and a roof over your
head?" I asked her. "Tell me, honey. Just tell me."
"You crazy guy," she said. "That's like the moon and the sky right now."
"Come on, honey, this whole thing is a little too convenient for me. I'm
getting what I want and what I need but you-"
"You still feel guilty about me, don't you?" She looked as if she was going
to cry, but then she smiled in the sweetest, gentlest way. "Just ... love
me," she said. She shrugged and smiled again, her freckles showing for a
moment in the light, very pale, very cute. I wanted to kiss her.
"I do love you," I said. Catch in the throat. Catch in the voice. Did she
think it was like some sixteen-year-old telling her?
We looked at each other for a long private moment, oblivious to the crowded,
brightly lighted room, the waiters moving among the white-draped tables.
Candles, chandeliers, reflected light-it was all melded around us.
She formed her lips into a silent little kiss. Then she grinned and cocked
her head.
"Can I listen to rock music real loud and put posters on the walls of my
room?"
"Sure, you can have all the bubble gum you want, too, if you'll lay off the
Scotch and cigarettes."
"Oh, boy, here it comes."
"Well, wasn't it bound to sooner or later? You want a lecture on nutrition
and the needs of the teenage female body?"
"I know what this teenage body needs," she purred, leaning over to kiss me on
the cheek. "Why don't we get out of here?"
Halfway home I remembered I had to send Celia five hundred dollars right
away-that phone message I'd never answered. We drove back downtown to Western
Union.
As soon as we got in, she hit the Scotch. Just one drink, she said. Half a
glass, going down her gorgeous young throat as I watched. Well, bring it up
to bed, I said.
Afterwards I made a fire in the grate and went downstairs for a bottle of
sherry and two crystal glasses. I mean, if she had to drink, at least it
wouldn't be the Scotch. I poured her a glass of sherry and we sat snuggled up
against the pillows in the four-poster, watching the fire in the darkness.
I told her again she could do anything she wanted with the room down the
hall. We should have taken her movie posters out of the Page Street dump.
She laughed. She said she'd get some more. She was all soft and warm and
drowsy beside me.
"You want a stereo, go get one," I said. I'd set up a bank account for her,
for Linda Merit. She said quietly that Linda Merit had one. Good, I'd put
money in it for her.
"You got a VCR?" she asked. She had some videotapes, hadn't been able to
watch them in a long time. Yes, two, I said, one in the back den up here, one
down in my office. What were the tapes? Just old things, odd things. I told
her about the big rental places on Market.
We sat there quiet for a while. I was running a mental tab of all the things
she had said about herself. Quite a puzzle it was.
"You have to tell me something," I asked. I was reminding myself to be
gentle.
"What?"
"What you meant last night when you said you'd bombed as an American
teenager."
She didn't answer for a while. She drank another half glass of sherry. "You
know," she said finally. "when I first came-to America, I mean-I thought that
just being an American teenager for a while would be wonderful. Just being
with kids here, going to rock concerts, smoking a little grass, just being in
America-"
"And it wasn't like that?"
"Even before I ran away, I knew it was a crock. It was a nightmare. Even the
shiny-faced kids, you know, the rich brats who were going on to college,
they're all criminals and liars."
Her voice was slow, no teenage bravado.
"Explain."
"Look, I had my first period at nine. I was wearing a C-cut bra by the time I
was thirteen. The first boy I ever slept with was shaving every day at
fifteen, we could have made babies together. And I found out the kids here
are just as developed. I wasn't any freak, you know? But what is a kid here?
What can you do? Even if you're going to school, even if you're a goody-two-
shoes who hits the books every night, what about the rest of your life?"
I nodded, waited.
"You can't legally smoke, drink, start a career, get married. You can't even
legally drive a car till you're sixteen, and all this for years and years
after you're a physical adult. All you can do is play till you're twenty-one,
if you want to know. That's what life is to kids here-it's play. Play at
love, play at sex, play at everything. And play at breaking the law every
time you touch a cigarette or drink or somebody three or four years older
than you."
She took another sip of the sherry. Her eyes were full of the red light of
the fire. "We're all criminals," she went on. "And that's the way it's set
up, that's the way people want it. And I'll tell you this much, you play by
the rules and you're a shallow person, a real, real shallow person."
"So you broke them?"
"All the time. I came here breaking them. And all I saw when I tried to join
in and be one of the crowd is that everybody else was breaking the rules. I
mean, to be an American kid you had to be a bad person."
"So you ran away."
"No. I mean, yes, but that's not why." She hesitated. "It just... came to
that," she said tentatively. "It all blew up. There was just no place for
me."
I could feel her stiffening, drawing away. I took another drink. Ought to
hold off, I thought, take it very easy. But she started to talk again.
"I'll tell you this," she said. "When I first hit the streets, I did think,
well, it would be an adventure. I mean, I thought I'd be with the really
tough kids, the real kids, not those rich slick little liars. That was
stupid, let me tell you. I mean the rich kids were adults pretending to be
kids for their parents' sakes. And the kids on the streets are kids
pretending to be adults for their own sakes. Everybody's an outcast.
Everybody's a faker."
Her eyes shifted anxiously over the room, and she bit a little at her
fingernail again, the way I had seen her do last night.
"I didn't belong on the street any more than I did with the others," she
said. "I mean, guys who stole car radios every day to score food and dope,
girls selling themselves in the Tenderloin, and the hustlers, my God,
convincing themselves it was a big deal if some gay guy took them to a fancy
hotel for an hour and bought them dinner. It was the world, sixty minutes in
the Clift Hotel, imagine! Same as the rich kids, everything unreal. Unreal.
And the cops, they don't really want to bust you. They don't have any place
to put you. They hope you'll up and disappear."
"Or Daddy will come-"
"Yeah, Daddy. Well, all I want is to grow up. I want my name back. I want my
life to begin. I want this shit to be over."
"It is over for you," I said. She looked at me.
"Because you're with me," I said. "And you're OK now."
"No," she said. "It's not over. It just means you and I are criminals
together."
"Well, why don't you let me worry about that part of it?" I bent forward to
kiss her.
"You crazy guy," she said. She lifted her glass. "Here's to your pictures in
the attic."
[bad scan]. I saw the glowing numbers on the face of the bedside clock before
I was even awake. Now the grandfather clock was chiming the hour, and in the
vibrating silence that followed I heard her voice very far away. Downstairs.
Talking to someone on the phone?
I got up slowly and went to the top of the stairs. The hall light was on down
there. And I could hear her laughing, an easy cheerful little laugh. "Prince
Charming," she was saying, and then the words were lost. Car passing in the
street, even the ticking of the grandfather clock came between us. "Just
don't let them hurt you!" she said. Anger? Then the voice went down to a
murmur again. And I heard her say: "I love you, too." And she hung up the
phone.
What was I doing? Spying on her? Should I sneak back to bed as if I hadn't
come this far?
I saw her come into the lower hallway, and then she saw me.
"Is everything all right, baby darling?" I asked.
"Oh, sure!" She came up towards me with her arms out, slipped them around my
waist. Her face was open, full of simple affection. "I was just talking to an
old friend of mine, had to tell him I was OK."
"It's so early," I said sleepily.
"Not where he is," she said, offhandedly. "But don't worry, I made the call
collect."
She led me back to bed, and we climbed under the covers together. She was
nestled in my arms.
"It's raining in New York City right now," she said, her voice low, already
drowsy.
"Should I be jealous of this friend?" I asked her in a whisper.
"No, never," she said. Slight scoffing tone. "Just my oldest buddy in the
whole world, I guess..." Voice trailing off.
Silence.
The warmth of her; and then finally her deep, even breathing.
"I love you," I said softly.
"Prince Charming," she whispered, as if from the deepest sleep.
[8]
By noon the next day she had posters all over the guest room walls: Belmondo,
Delon, Brando, Garbo, as well as the new faces, Aidan Quinn, Richard Gere,
Mel Gibson. The radio blared Madonna by the hour. She played with all the new
clothes, neatly stacking sweaters on the closet shelves, ironing blouses,
polishing old shoes, experimented with new bottles and jars of expensive
makeup.
I only looked in now and then on my way down from the attic to the coffee
maker in the kitchen. The three carousel pictures were almost complete, and I
was lettering in the titles at the bottom of the canvases, as I'd done years
ago with my first paintings: Belinda on the Carousel Horse One, Two, and
Three. The effect of the trio, set up to dry, was making me giddy.
I cooked dinner for us around six-steaks, salad, red wine-the only meal I
know how to cook. She came down with her hair braided and the braids tied
across the top of her head. I kissed her a lot before we started eating.
"Why don't you watch those videotapes tonight?" I asked. I told her she could
have the den to herself. I almost never went in there. Maybe, she said. She'd
watch some TV, if I was going to work, or read some of my books on painting.
She went down to the basement library after we cleaned up, and I could hear
the click of the pool balls down there as I sat at the kitchen table with my
coffee letting the wine wear off, gearing up to go to work again. Last bit of
background, then done on those three up there.
The whole house smelled like her perfume.
She was sound asleep in my four-poster when I came down. She had taken off
the flannel gown and pushed the covers away, and she lay on her face, her
mouth only a little open, her long slender hand limp beside her face on the
pillow.
Her naked bottom was small, almost boyish, a glint of gold pubic hair showing
there. I touched the silky backs of her knees, the little crease that was so
sensitive to touch when she was awake. I touched the silky soles of her feet.
She didn't move. She slept with the perfect trust of childhood. "Who are
you?" I whispered. I thought of the all the things she'd said. At dinner
she'd mentioned something about a trip to Kashmir, traveling by train across
India with two English students, her companions for that summer. "But all we
talked about was the States. Imagine there we were in one of the most
beautiful spots on earth, Kashmir, and all we talked about was LA and New
York City."
I bent down and kissed the back of her neck, the little bare patch of skin
that showed through her thick hair. Sixteen.
But how can you give me permission. And how can I give myself permission? If
only there was no one else, no one who cared. But then you wouldn't be
running, would you?
Dark in the hallway.
The guest room, her room. All these new faces staring at each other across
the dark, the brass bed glimmering, her purse open, things spilled out. A
hairbrush.
Closet door open.
Videotapes. [bad scan] else? A sack, a suitcase. Something to do with a past
life? What was in the suitcase?
I was standing in her doorway. Of course, I wouldn't pry a lock, wouldn't
even lift a suitcase lid. I mean, these were her things. And what if she woke
up, came down the hall, discovered me here?
Just look in the closet. Crammed now with new clothes.
But there was the suitcase on the floor, and it was locked. And the
videotapes now stood in a neat stack on the shelf behind an empty purse,
folded underwear, a hair dryer.
I examined them in the light from the hall. Strange labels on these
cassettes. Only the name of a dealer in New York: Video Classics. And on one
a check mark had been scratched in the black plastic as if with a ballpoint
pen or a bobbie pin. Nothing else to say what they were or why she would want
them.
Her magazines: quite a stack. And many of them foreign. Cahiers du Cinema on
top, L'Express, copies of German Stern, more French, some Italian. And film
the theme always. What she had in English was Andy Warhol's Interview, Film
Arts, American Cinematographer.
Fairly sophisticated for a girl her age it seemed. But then with her
background, maybe it wasn't so unusual.
Many of these journals were old. In fact, they had second-hand store price
labels on them. Only the Film Arts was new, with a picture on the front of
"Up-and-Coming Texas Film Director Susan Jeremiah."
Inside was tucked an article torn out of Newsweek, also on Ms. Jeremiah
-"Thunder in the Southwest"-a tall, lean dark-haired Houston woman with deep
-set black eyes, who actually wore a cowboy hat and boots. I didn't think
Texans really did that.
As for the older mags, there was no immediate clue to why she had bought
them. Film and film and film. Some went back ten years. No marks anywhere
that I could see.
I put all of this back carefully. And only then did I notice an old TV Guide
under the tapes. And when I pulled it out, I saw Susan Jeremiah again,
smiling under the shadow of her white cowboy hat. Handsome woman. The issue
was two months old. I scanned quickly for the article.
Ms. Jeremiah's first television movie, something called Bitter Chase, had
premiered in April. The article was short, said she was one of the new
generation of talented women in film. Her first theatrical feature, Final
Score, had gotten a standing ovation at last year's Cannes festival. She'd
grown up on a Texas ranch. Ms. Jeremiah believed American film was wide open
for women.
There was more, but I was getting nervous. Suppose Belinda woke up. I thought
I heard a noise, and that was it. I put the magazine back and closed the
closet.
The key to the suitcase might be in her purse. Her purse was on the brass
bed. But I had done enough. And I could not bring myself to snoop in her
purse, no, there had to be a limit to this.
But these little discoveries were tantalizing. Just like her chatter about
Europe. Just like her, whoever she was.
No surprise that a girl her age was interested in film, no surprise that her
tastes would be good. But why this focus on a female film director?
Of course, it was just the sort of thing to interest a modern girl-the strong
independent Texas woman not out to be an actress but a filmmaker. Rather
irresistibly American. The press certainly liked the hat and the boots, that
was obvious.
The fact was, none of this explained anything much about Belinda. It only
added to my questions.
I locked up the house for the night, put out the lights, went into the
bathroom, and felt my face. Real scratchy beard, as always this time of
night. I decided to shave.
When she woke up in the morning in my arms, I didn't want any face scratching
her babycheeks.
As I lay there in the dark, I kept thinking: Who is looking for her? Who is
crying over her? Dear God, if she were my little girl, I'd move heaven and
earth to find her.
But then, she is my little girl. And do I want them, whoever they are, to
find her?
No, you can't have her back. Not now.
At nine A.M., I was sitting in my office and she was still asleep. I picked
up the phone on the desk and called my lawyer, Dan Franklin. He wouldn't be
back from court till eleven, his secretary said, but, yes, he could probably
see me then. Come on over.
Now, my lawyer and I went to school together. He's probably as good a friend
as I have, and the one person in the world I trust more than any other.
Agents, no matter much they love you and how hard they work for you, are
really go-betweens. And they often know the movie people and the publishers
better than they know their authors. Often they like the movie people and the
publishers better. They have more in common with them.
But my lawyer worked only for me. When he went over a contract or an offer
for rights, he was on my side completely. And he was one of the few really
good entertainment lawyers who did not make his office in New York or Los
Angeles.
Not only did I trust my lawyer, I also liked him, personally. I trusted his
judgment, I considered him a nice guy.
And I knew now that I'd avoided him at Andy Blatky's exhibit the other day
because I hadn't wanted to explain Belinda.
I made the appointment to see him at eleven. Then I showered, shaved again,
put two good head shots of Belinda in a manila envelope, and put that in my
briefcase.
I had hoped to have more for a start. But the more could come later.
Belinda was eating potato chips and drinking a Coke when I came down. She'd
gone across the street to the corner store for them while I was in the
shower.
"That's breakfast?" I asked.
"Yeah, cuts through the smoke," she said. She gestured to the lighted
cigarette.
"That's trash," I said.
"Cereal's got just as much salt, do you know that?"
"What about eggs and toast and milk?" I said. I went to work fixing enough
for both of us.
Yeah, gee, thanks for the eggs, but she was full of potato chips. She opened
another can of Coke and sat down to tell me how wonderful it was being here.
"I slept last night, I mean, really slept without thinking somebody was going
to climb in the window or start playing the drums in the hallway." I got an
idea.
"Have to see my lawyer downtown," I said. "Some stuff about one of my
mother's books, a movie deal."
"Sounds exciting. I loved your mother's books, you know."
"You're kidding, you never read them."
"Not so! Read every one, absolutely loved Crimson Mardi Gras." We stared at
each other for a moment. "What's wrong?" she asked.
"Nothing," I said. "just business on my mind. I'm taking the van downtown. Do
you really know how to drive a car?"
"Of course, how do you think I got the fake license? I mean, the name's fake,
but I was driving on... driving in Europe when I was eleven."
"You want the keys to the MG, then?"
"Jeremy, you don't mean it." I tossed them to her. Bait taken.
She was down not ten minutes later, dressed in a new pair of snow white wash
pants and a white pullover. It was the first time I'd seen her in pants since
she wore the cutoff shorts around the house, and I was unprepared for my
reaction. I didn't want her to venture out the front door like that.
"You know what that makes me want to do?" I said giving her the eye.
"What?" She missed the point. "How do I look?" She was brushing her hair in
front of the hall mirror.
"Rapeable."
"Thanks."
"You going to wear a coat?"
"It's eighty degrees out there, you must be kidding. First time this city has
warmed up to a civilized temperature since I got here."
"It won't last. Take a coat."
She threw her arms around my neck, kissed me. Soft hot crush of arms and
cheeks. Babymouth succulent, sweet. "Don't need a coat."
"Where are you going?"
"Tanning studio for fifteen minutes under the hot lights," she said tapping
her cheek with one finger. "It's the only way to stay brown in this town.
Then riding, Golden Gate Park stables. I called from upstairs. I've wanted to
do it since I got here."
"Why didn't you?"
"I don't know. Didn't seem appropriate, you know, the way I was living." She
was digging in her purse for a cigarette. "You know, I was on the street. All
that. Didn't seem to mix with horses."
"But it mixed with the tanning studio."
"Sure." She laughed. Her hair was beautifully full from the brushing. No
paint, just the cigarette on her lip.
"And now you can go riding again."
"Yes!" She laughed in the most open, delighted fashion.
"You are truly beautiful," I said. "But the pants are too tight."
"Oh, no, they feel fine," she said. Snap of her lighter.
I took out several ten-dollar bills and gave her that with the keys to the
car and the house.
"You don't have to, really-" she said. "I have money-"
"Look, don't bother saying that ever again," I said. "It's like when I ask
you questions about your parents. Don't mention money. I hate it."
Another sweet soft tight hug and she was off, just dashed out the front door,
in fact, like an American teenager.
And probably with the key to the suitcase in her purse. But-
I waited till I heard the car roaring up the street before I went upstairs
and opened her closet.
The key was in the damn suitcase and the suitcase was open.
I took a deep breath, then knelt down, laid back the lid, and started going
through it.
Fake Linda Merit passport! My God, she was thorough. Two New York Public
Library books, one a Vonnegut novel, the other a Stephen King. Typical
enough, I figured. Then there was my signed copy of Bettina's House and a
picture of me over a notice of the booksellers autograph party cut out of the
San Francisco Chronicle.
Lingerie-even that looked second-hand-old-fashioned midnight blue taffeta
slips, lace brassieres with wire, which I don't think girls wear much
anymore. Cotton panties, beautifully plain. A brown paper sack and in it
programs from several recent Broadway musicals. Cats, A Chorus Line, Ollie
Boon's Dolly Rose, other things. The Ollie Boon program had been autographed,
but no personal note above the signature. Absolutely nothing here that was
personal.
I mean, not a clue to who she was. And for some reason this made me feel all
the more guilty for what I was doing.
Had she deliberately obliterated her past? Or had she bolted on the spur of
the moment?
I went over the clothes in the closet-the old things she brought with her.
Except for the school uniforms, of which there were three, it was class in
every case, as I had figured. Tweeds were Harris or Donegal. Skirts and
blazers were Brooks Brothers, Burberry, Cable Car. Nothing frivolous as we'd
bought yesterday on our little downtown spin. Even the shoes were
respectable.
But all of it was used, definitely, some of it probably made before she was
born. Not likely any of it had been hers before she had hit the streets. This
was too puzzling.
In the pockets I found New York theater ticket stubs, something from a recent
concert in San Francisco. Matchbooks from the big hotels. The Fairmont, the
Stanford Court, the Hyatt Regency.
It troubled me, this. I didn't want to think about what she'd been doing in
all those hotels. But maybe she was simply roaming the lobbies, going to
places like those in which she'd once lived. Looking for some way back into
the adult world.
But her recent past wasn't the point. We were going to destroy all that
together. It was the real past that mattered. And there was nothing here to
tell me the slightest thing about her. It was downright scary. Even the tapes
had only those commercial labels. The best clue so far was Susan Jeremiah.
I got out the magazines, sat down on the side of the brass bed, and read
through them.
Well, this was an interesting woman all right. Born on a Texas ranch, went to
school in Dallas, later in LA. Was making movies with a home camera when she
was ten. Worked in her teens for a Dallas TV station. Final Score, which had
won accolades at Cannes, was described as atmospheric, fast-paced,
philosophical. Done on location in the Greek islands, it concerned a gang of
nihilistic young Texan dope smugglers. Film buff talk about handheld cameras,
artistic debts to Orson Welles, the Nouvelle Vague, philosophical approach,
that sort of thing. All too short. On to another woman director, New Yorker,
featured in the same article.
The Newsweek piece wasn't much better. Focus on the April television film
Bitter Chase, praised for a "a high quotient of visual beauty, something
often altogether absent from films made for television." Jeremiah would make
two more for United Theatricals, but didn't want to be stigmatized as a
television director. Heavy praise for the star of the film, Dallas girl Sandy
Miller, who had also starred in Jeremiah's "arty and often self-indulgent
erotic film," Final Score, never released in this country. But oddly enough,
the only picture in the magazine was of Jeremiah. I think that Texas getup
and that lean frontier face really got them. Too bad for Sandy Miller.
I sat there more confused than ever and feeling pretty damned guilty. I
wanted to take those videotapes down, run them through the machine in my
office. Or better yet, the machine in the den. The den door had a lock on it.
And that way if she came in-
Oh, but how would she ever forgive me if she found out what I was doing? And
what if I just brought up the tapes in conversation? She might explain
everything. No need to betray her at all this way, because maybe this stuff
had nothing to do with who she was.
It was ten forty-five. I had to get going.
Dan didn't show until noon. I apologized for keeping him from lunch. "Look,"
I said. "This is client-lawyer privilege."
"What's that supposed to mean? You kill somebody?" He sat down opposite me
behind the desk. "You want some lunch? I'm sending out for a sandwich."
"No. I'll make this as quick as I can. I want you to do some detective work."
"You're kidding."
"You have to do it yourself. You can't hire anybody from an agency. You have
to do what you can by phone, and then if you have to travel, I'll pay for
it."
"Do you know what that will cost you?"
"Doesn't matter. You have to find out something for me."
"Which is what?"
"The identity of this girl," I said. I handed him my photos of her. He
studied them for a moment.
"This is absolutely confidential," I said. "You cannot let anyone know who
wants to know all this."
"Come on," he said impatiently, shaking his head. "Fill me in. What am I
looking for?"
"She's sixteen," I said.
"Uh huh." He was studying the picture.
"Till two days ago she was on the street. She says her name's Belinda. That
may or may not be true. She's been all over Europe, grew up in Madrid, she
said, spent time in Rome, Paris. She was in New York this winter, I'm pretty
certain of that. I don't know when she got here." I described the theater
programs, the top-price tickets.
"She's maybe five foot four. No taller than that. One hundred pounds, maybe a
little more. Hair, face, you can see. Her body is very grown-up. Full
breasts. Her voice is grown-up, too, very grown-up, but no accent except for
a touch of something I can't place. I don't know if that would help anyway."
"What's your connection with her?"
"I'm living with her."
"You're what!"
"I don't want to hear about it. I want to know who she is, where she came
from-"
"-You don't want to hear about it! She's sixteen? And you don't want to hear
about it!"
"-But I want to know more than that. I want to know why she ran away, what
happened. I'm pretty sure there's money mixed up in it. She's too well
educated, her taste is too good. There has to be a family somewhere with
money. Yet it doesn't add up. It's strange. I want to know everything you can
possibly-"
"Jeremy, this is crazy."
"Don't talk, Dan. I'm not finished."
"Do you know what this could mean if you're caught with this kid?"
"I want to know how she got to be where she is. Who she's hiding from? I'll
tell you the strangest thing. I went through her belongings and there's not a
single clue to her real identity."
"You crazy son of a bitch. Do you realize what this could do to you? Jeremy,
do you remember what happened to Roman Polanski?"
"I remember."
And what was all that rot I had told Alex Clementine about scandal not
hurting anyone anymore? And he had said the right dirt in the right measure.
Well, I knew in my case this was the wrong dirt, never mind the measure.
"Polanski got nailed for one lousy afternoon with a minor. You're telling me
you're living with this one?"
I told him quietly and calmly about the Page Street address, the police, them
writing down my address and the fake name Linda Merit in their notebooks.
"I wish the cop hadn't recognized me."
"Put her on a plane for Katmandu. Immediately! Get her out of your house, you
idiot."
"Dan, find out who she is. I don't care what it costs. There must be people
you can ask, on the qt, without revealing anything, maybe some way to ask
around at the street down there. I am almost one hundred percent sure someone
is looking for her."
"So am I. Europe, money, education-" He picked up the picture. "Christ!" he
muttered.
"But remember, I have to know everything, who are her parents, what did they
do, why did she take off?."
"Suppose they didn't do anything and she's a rich bitch who decided she
wanted some excitement."
"Out of the question. You wouldn't say that if you talked to her. In fact,
the funny thing is, she's too poised to be rich, yet she's gotta be."
"I don't get it."
"Rich kids are sheltered. They're soft. There's always a little naiveté
shining through, no matter how precocious they are. The girl's poise is deep
and almost hard. She makes me think of the poor girls I knew when I was a
kid, I mean, the ones who had big diamond engagement rings on their fingers
by sixteen and two kids by a piano mover husband by the time they were
twenty. You know the kind of girl. She can hardly read or write, but she can
run the cash register in the all-night drugstore for five hours without ever
breaking one of her long manicured fingernails. Well, there is something sad
and tough about this little girl which is like that, something old. But she's
too educated, too refined for the rest of the image."
He was giving me angry glances in between studying the picture. "I've seen
this girl somewhere," he said.
"At Andy's exhibit the other day," I said. "She was with me."
"No, I didn't even know you were there. Missed you completely-"
"But she was wandering around, in a pair of pink sunglasses-"
"No, no, I mean I know this girl, I know this face, I know her from
somewhere."
"Well, then, get on it, Dan. Because I have to know who she is and what
happened to her."
"And she won't tell you."
"Nothing, not a word, made me promise never to ask or she'd walk out. I know
it's something terrible."
"You mean, you hope it's something terrible to get you off the hook with your
conscience!"
"Maybe. Maybe so."
"You think it will get you off the hook with anyone else, you're crazy."
"Dan, I just want to know-"
"Look, I'll get on it. But in exchange you listen. This could demolish your
career. Demolish, as in obliterate, annihilate, disintegrate, do you
understand me? You're not a European film director. You're a children's book
author."
"Don't remind me."
"You are putting it on the line, every nickel of it, if this gets to the
press. And if her parents are rich, it could be kidnapping on top of
everything. There could be charges I haven't even thought of. I gotta look
this up. I gotta-"
You should see the paintings, I thought. But I said:
"Dan, that can wait. Find out all about her."
Yes, definitely the wrong dirt in the wrong measure.
So why did I feel this exhilaration, this warmth all over, this sense of
being alive suddenly? It was like that day when I walked onto that jet plane
at the New Orleans airport and knew I was headed for California.
"Look at me, Jer! You'll get the Lewis Carroll Kinky Old Man Award of the
Year, you hip to that? They'll pull your books off the library shelves and
burn them. The bookstores in the South and Midwest won't even stock them. And
any Disney movie deals you can kiss good-bye forever. You're not listening to
me. You're not listening!"
"Dan, I have an imagination. Imagining things is what I get paid for. I love
this little girl. And I have to know if somebody is out there looking for
her, I have to know what they did to her."
"This is not the sixties, Jeremy. The flower children are gone. The feminists
and the Moral Majority are joining ranks these days to get the child
molesters and the pornographers. This is no time for-"I had to laugh. It was
Alex Clementine all over again.
"Dan, we are not in court. I am impressed. My rights have been read to me.
Call me when you have something-anything?"
I locked the briefcase and started towards the door. "They'll cancel the
Saturday morning show!"
"Lawyer-client privilege, Dan."
"Disney is bidding right now against Rainbow for the rights to Angelica?"
"Oh, you reminded me. Belinda's interested in movies, very interested.
Cahiers du Cinema, magazines like that. Film buff stuff."
"She's sixteen, she wants to be a star, so did Lolita. Get rid of her, the
little bitch."
"Come on, Dan. Don't talk like that about her. I mean, she reads serious film
things. And she has a special interest in a woman director, someone named
Susan Jeremiah."
"Never heard of her."
"Up-and-coming Texas woman. Did a TV film in April for United Theatricals.
There just might be a connection."
"I'll get on this all right, you better believe I'll get on this, just to
show you how dangerous this is!"
"Be careful, whatever you do, when you call me. She's there all the time."
"No shit."
"If you leave a message on the machine, make it sound like book business."
I stopped in the lobby long enough to take a deep breath. I felt like an
absolute traitor. Please, let it be something rotten. Let them be corrupt.
Let her belong to me.
I went to a phone booth on Market Street and looked up the address of a
riding apparel shop. It was on Divisadero.
I knew her sizes from the day before, and the woman assured me I could bring
back anything she didn't like. So I bought her everything. A red wool hacking
coat, and a black hunting jacket, and two beautiful black velvet hard hats
with chin straps. Breeches, gloves, a couple of quirts. Some very pretty
little shirts and things. I knew it was the sort of thing people didn't use
everyday for riding. It was for shows. But I wanted to see her in it, and I
hoped she would like it.
Then I went home, put all of this out on the bed, and went upstairs. The
palette was still loaded with wet paint from last night, and the brushes were
still wet, too, so I went right to work instantly. Last bit of gold on the
lettering of the last picture: the punk-waif picture.
I scarcely looked at the work I'd done. I got paint all over my wool pants,
but it didn't matter.
Only when I looked at the shadowy little V between her legs did I have to
stop, have to detach. She was too alive for me. I stood back, and when I saw
the amount that was done-the size of the three canvases, the detail all
finished-I was a little overawed. Even for me this pace was wondrous.
About four I went out for some beer, milk, the dumb little things I needed
from the corner market. I got her five different brands of foreign
cigarettes. Jasmine, Dunhill, Rothmans, anything unusual that she might like.
I also got plenty of apples, oranges, pears, good things she might eat on the
run instead of garbage. I mean, here I was buying a kid cigarettes. I doubled
up on the milk, grabbed a few boxes of dry cereal. The car was in the drive
when I came back.
When I shut the front door, I saw her standing at the top of the staircase.
There was only a weak light from the stained-glass window there, and my eyes
had to get used to the shadows before I could really see her.
She had on the black velvet riding hat and the high leather boots. And she
was posed like an old-fashioned portrait, with one hand on her hip and the
other holding the black leather riding quirt. She was otherwise naked. She
smacked the side of the boot with the quirt.
I went down on my knees at the bottom of the stairs. I shoved the groceries
aside.
She held the pose for as long as she could, but then she was shaking with
half-repressed giggles. I doubled over with laughter before I got to her.
I climbed on top of her at the top of the stairs and started kissing her.
"No, in the bed," she said. "In the bed. It's too good in the bed."
I picked her up and carried her. She was still laughing when I set her down.
I kissed her, cradling her chin with the little leather strap, and feeling
her boots against my legs-the hard leather and the soft thighs.
"Tell me you love me, you little witch," I said. "Come on, tell me."
"Yes," she said, kissing me back. "It's going to be just perfect, isn't it?"
Just before I stopped thinking altogether of anything rational, I thought: I
have my next picture.
me to spend money, she kept protesting, but it was too much fun taking her
into one fancy store after another, buying her all the things I wanted to see
on her. Little pleated wool skirts, blazers, delicate cotton blouses.
"Catholic school forever," she teased me. But pretty soon she was having fun,
too, forgetting to protest the high price tags.
We drove on downtown and made Neiman Marcus and Saks. I bought her frilly
dresses, pearls, the lovely froufrou stuff that the new female rock stars had
made popular. But it was clear that she had a good eye, was used to good
things, and thought nothing of the attentive saleswoman clucking over her.
Slacks, bikinis, blouses, suede coats-all the interseason things you can wear
year-round in San Francisco-went into the fancy boxes and garment bags.
I even got her perfumes-Giorgio, Calandre, Chanel-sweet, innocent scents that
I liked. And silver barrettes for her hair, and little extra things she might
never have bothered with, like kid gloves and cashmere scarves and wool
berets-finishing touches, you might say, that would make her look like one of
those beautifully turned-out little girls in an English storybook.
I even found a lovely princess-line coat with a little velvet collar. She
could have been seven or seventeen in that. I made her buy a mink muff to go
with it, although she told me I was crazy, she hadn't carried a mug since she
was five years old and that had been in the dead of winter in Stockholm.
Finally we ended up at the Garden Court of the Palace Hotel for dinner.
Service slow, food not great, but the decor absolutely lovely. I wanted to
see her in that setting, against the mirrored French doors, the gilded
columns, the old-world elegance. Besides, the Garden Court always makes me
happy. Maybe it reminds me of New Orleans.
It reminded her of Europe. She loved it. She looked tired now, last night
finally catching up with her. But she was excited, too. She stole sips of my
wine, but otherwise her table manners were exquisite. She held her fork in
the left hand, Continental style. She asked for a fish knife-and used it,
which I had never actually seen anyone do before. And she hardly noticed my
noticing it.
We talked easily about our lives. I told about my marriages, how Andrea, the
teacher, had felt small on account of my career, and Celia, the free-lancer,
was always traveling. Now and then they got together in New York, had a few
drinks, and called me to tell me what a bastard I was. It was what
Californians call family.
She laughed at that. She was listening in that marvelously seductive way that
young women can listen to men, and my realizing it didn't make me feel any
less important.
"But did you really love either one of them?" she asked.
"Sure, I loved them both. Still do in a way. And either marriage could have
lasted forever if we hadn't been modern Californians."
"How do you mean?"
"Divorce is de rigueur out here once the marriage is the least bit
inconvenient. Psychiatrists and friends convince you that you're crazy if you
don't split up for the smallest reasons."
"You're serious, aren't you?"
"Definitely. I've been watching the action out here for twenty-five years
now. We're all proudly enjoying our acquired lifestyles, and pay attention,
the key word is acquire. We're greedy and selfish, all of us."
"You sound like you regret the breakups."
"I don't. That's the tragedy. I'm just as selfish as the rest of them. I
never gave my wives an emotional fifty percent. So how can I blame them for
walking out? Besides, I'm a painter." She smiled.
"Such a mean guy," she said.
"But look," I said, "I don't want to talk about me. I want to talk about you.
I don't mean about your family, all that. I've got the rules down, relax on
that." She waited.
"But what about you right now?" I asked. "What do you want besides wearing
punk clothes and not getting busted?"
She looked at me for a moment, almost as if the question excited her. And
then a shadow passed over her face.
"You talk in big crayon-style print, you know it?"
I laughed. "I didn't mean to sound so harsh," I said. "I mean, what do you
want, Belinda?"
"No, it wasn't harsh. I like it. But it doesn't make much difference what I
want, does it?" she asked.
"Of course, it does."
"Isn't making you happy enough?" She was teasing. A little.
"No, I don't think so."
"Look, what I mean is, I can't do what I want till I'm eighteen. I can't be
anybody. You know, I'd get caught if I really did anything." I thought about
that for a moment. "What about school?" I asked.
"What about it?"
"You know there are ways we could fix it. I mean, get you into some private
school. There have to be ways, names, lies, something-"
"You're crazy," she laughed. "You just want to see me in one of those pleated
skirts again."
"Yeah, I'll cop to that. But seriously-"
"Jeremy, an education I have, can't you tell that? Nannies, tutors, the
works, I had it. I can read and write French, Italian, and English. I could
get into Berkeley now, or Stanford, just by passing an examination." She
shrugged, stole another drink of my wine. "Well, what about Berkeley or
Stanford?" I asked.
"What about them? Who would I be? Linda Merit, my fake person, she'd rack up
the credits?"
Her voice trailed off. She looked very worn out. I wanted to wrap her in my
arms and take her home to bed. The long day was obviously telling on her.
"Besides," she said, "even if I wasn't on the run, I wouldn't go to college."
"Well, that's my question. What would you do? What do you want? What do you
really need right now?"
She looked at me in a slightly distrustful way. And I sensed a defeat in her
again, as I had in the car on the way to Union Street. It was a sadness
bigger than being just tired, bigger than not knowing me very well.
"Belinda, what can I give you besides pretty clothes and a roof over your
head?" I asked her. "Tell me, honey. Just tell me."
"You crazy guy," she said. "That's like the moon and the sky right now."
"Come on, honey, this whole thing is a little too convenient for me. I'm
getting what I want and what I need but you-"
"You still feel guilty about me, don't you?" She looked as if she was going
to cry, but then she smiled in the sweetest, gentlest way. "Just ... love
me," she said. She shrugged and smiled again, her freckles showing for a
moment in the light, very pale, very cute. I wanted to kiss her.
"I do love you," I said. Catch in the throat. Catch in the voice. Did she
think it was like some sixteen-year-old telling her?
We looked at each other for a long private moment, oblivious to the crowded,
brightly lighted room, the waiters moving among the white-draped tables.
Candles, chandeliers, reflected light-it was all melded around us.
She formed her lips into a silent little kiss. Then she grinned and cocked
her head.
"Can I listen to rock music real loud and put posters on the walls of my
room?"
"Sure, you can have all the bubble gum you want, too, if you'll lay off the
Scotch and cigarettes."
"Oh, boy, here it comes."
"Well, wasn't it bound to sooner or later? You want a lecture on nutrition
and the needs of the teenage female body?"
"I know what this teenage body needs," she purred, leaning over to kiss me on
the cheek. "Why don't we get out of here?"
Halfway home I remembered I had to send Celia five hundred dollars right
away-that phone message I'd never answered. We drove back downtown to Western
Union.
As soon as we got in, she hit the Scotch. Just one drink, she said. Half a
glass, going down her gorgeous young throat as I watched. Well, bring it up
to bed, I said.
Afterwards I made a fire in the grate and went downstairs for a bottle of
sherry and two crystal glasses. I mean, if she had to drink, at least it
wouldn't be the Scotch. I poured her a glass of sherry and we sat snuggled up
against the pillows in the four-poster, watching the fire in the darkness.
I told her again she could do anything she wanted with the room down the
hall. We should have taken her movie posters out of the Page Street dump.
She laughed. She said she'd get some more. She was all soft and warm and
drowsy beside me.
"You want a stereo, go get one," I said. I'd set up a bank account for her,
for Linda Merit. She said quietly that Linda Merit had one. Good, I'd put
money in it for her.
"You got a VCR?" she asked. She had some videotapes, hadn't been able to
watch them in a long time. Yes, two, I said, one in the back den up here, one
down in my office. What were the tapes? Just old things, odd things. I told
her about the big rental places on Market.
We sat there quiet for a while. I was running a mental tab of all the things
she had said about herself. Quite a puzzle it was.
"You have to tell me something," I asked. I was reminding myself to be
gentle.
"What?"
"What you meant last night when you said you'd bombed as an American
teenager."
She didn't answer for a while. She drank another half glass of sherry. "You
know," she said finally. "when I first came-to America, I mean-I thought that
just being an American teenager for a while would be wonderful. Just being
with kids here, going to rock concerts, smoking a little grass, just being in
America-"
"And it wasn't like that?"
"Even before I ran away, I knew it was a crock. It was a nightmare. Even the
shiny-faced kids, you know, the rich brats who were going on to college,
they're all criminals and liars."
Her voice was slow, no teenage bravado.
"Explain."
"Look, I had my first period at nine. I was wearing a C-cut bra by the time I
was thirteen. The first boy I ever slept with was shaving every day at
fifteen, we could have made babies together. And I found out the kids here
are just as developed. I wasn't any freak, you know? But what is a kid here?
What can you do? Even if you're going to school, even if you're a goody-two-
shoes who hits the books every night, what about the rest of your life?"
I nodded, waited.
"You can't legally smoke, drink, start a career, get married. You can't even
legally drive a car till you're sixteen, and all this for years and years
after you're a physical adult. All you can do is play till you're twenty-one,
if you want to know. That's what life is to kids here-it's play. Play at
love, play at sex, play at everything. And play at breaking the law every
time you touch a cigarette or drink or somebody three or four years older
than you."
She took another sip of the sherry. Her eyes were full of the red light of
the fire. "We're all criminals," she went on. "And that's the way it's set
up, that's the way people want it. And I'll tell you this much, you play by
the rules and you're a shallow person, a real, real shallow person."
"So you broke them?"
"All the time. I came here breaking them. And all I saw when I tried to join
in and be one of the crowd is that everybody else was breaking the rules. I
mean, to be an American kid you had to be a bad person."
"So you ran away."
"No. I mean, yes, but that's not why." She hesitated. "It just... came to
that," she said tentatively. "It all blew up. There was just no place for
me."
I could feel her stiffening, drawing away. I took another drink. Ought to
hold off, I thought, take it very easy. But she started to talk again.
"I'll tell you this," she said. "When I first hit the streets, I did think,
well, it would be an adventure. I mean, I thought I'd be with the really
tough kids, the real kids, not those rich slick little liars. That was
stupid, let me tell you. I mean the rich kids were adults pretending to be
kids for their parents' sakes. And the kids on the streets are kids
pretending to be adults for their own sakes. Everybody's an outcast.
Everybody's a faker."
Her eyes shifted anxiously over the room, and she bit a little at her
fingernail again, the way I had seen her do last night.
"I didn't belong on the street any more than I did with the others," she
said. "I mean, guys who stole car radios every day to score food and dope,
girls selling themselves in the Tenderloin, and the hustlers, my God,
convincing themselves it was a big deal if some gay guy took them to a fancy
hotel for an hour and bought them dinner. It was the world, sixty minutes in
the Clift Hotel, imagine! Same as the rich kids, everything unreal. Unreal.
And the cops, they don't really want to bust you. They don't have any place
to put you. They hope you'll up and disappear."
"Or Daddy will come-"
"Yeah, Daddy. Well, all I want is to grow up. I want my name back. I want my
life to begin. I want this shit to be over."
"It is over for you," I said. She looked at me.
"Because you're with me," I said. "And you're OK now."
"No," she said. "It's not over. It just means you and I are criminals
together."
"Well, why don't you let me worry about that part of it?" I bent forward to
kiss her.
"You crazy guy," she said. She lifted her glass. "Here's to your pictures in
the attic."
[bad scan]. I saw the glowing numbers on the face of the bedside clock before
I was even awake. Now the grandfather clock was chiming the hour, and in the
vibrating silence that followed I heard her voice very far away. Downstairs.
Talking to someone on the phone?
I got up slowly and went to the top of the stairs. The hall light was on down
there. And I could hear her laughing, an easy cheerful little laugh. "Prince
Charming," she was saying, and then the words were lost. Car passing in the
street, even the ticking of the grandfather clock came between us. "Just
don't let them hurt you!" she said. Anger? Then the voice went down to a
murmur again. And I heard her say: "I love you, too." And she hung up the
phone.
What was I doing? Spying on her? Should I sneak back to bed as if I hadn't
come this far?
I saw her come into the lower hallway, and then she saw me.
"Is everything all right, baby darling?" I asked.
"Oh, sure!" She came up towards me with her arms out, slipped them around my
waist. Her face was open, full of simple affection. "I was just talking to an
old friend of mine, had to tell him I was OK."
"It's so early," I said sleepily.
"Not where he is," she said, offhandedly. "But don't worry, I made the call
collect."
She led me back to bed, and we climbed under the covers together. She was
nestled in my arms.
"It's raining in New York City right now," she said, her voice low, already
drowsy.
"Should I be jealous of this friend?" I asked her in a whisper.
"No, never," she said. Slight scoffing tone. "Just my oldest buddy in the
whole world, I guess..." Voice trailing off.
Silence.
The warmth of her; and then finally her deep, even breathing.
"I love you," I said softly.
"Prince Charming," she whispered, as if from the deepest sleep.
[8]
By noon the next day she had posters all over the guest room walls: Belmondo,
Delon, Brando, Garbo, as well as the new faces, Aidan Quinn, Richard Gere,
Mel Gibson. The radio blared Madonna by the hour. She played with all the new
clothes, neatly stacking sweaters on the closet shelves, ironing blouses,
polishing old shoes, experimented with new bottles and jars of expensive
makeup.
I only looked in now and then on my way down from the attic to the coffee
maker in the kitchen. The three carousel pictures were almost complete, and I
was lettering in the titles at the bottom of the canvases, as I'd done years
ago with my first paintings: Belinda on the Carousel Horse One, Two, and
Three. The effect of the trio, set up to dry, was making me giddy.
I cooked dinner for us around six-steaks, salad, red wine-the only meal I
know how to cook. She came down with her hair braided and the braids tied
across the top of her head. I kissed her a lot before we started eating.
"Why don't you watch those videotapes tonight?" I asked. I told her she could
have the den to herself. I almost never went in there. Maybe, she said. She'd
watch some TV, if I was going to work, or read some of my books on painting.
She went down to the basement library after we cleaned up, and I could hear
the click of the pool balls down there as I sat at the kitchen table with my
coffee letting the wine wear off, gearing up to go to work again. Last bit of
background, then done on those three up there.
The whole house smelled like her perfume.
She was sound asleep in my four-poster when I came down. She had taken off
the flannel gown and pushed the covers away, and she lay on her face, her
mouth only a little open, her long slender hand limp beside her face on the
pillow.
Her naked bottom was small, almost boyish, a glint of gold pubic hair showing
there. I touched the silky backs of her knees, the little crease that was so
sensitive to touch when she was awake. I touched the silky soles of her feet.
She didn't move. She slept with the perfect trust of childhood. "Who are
you?" I whispered. I thought of the all the things she'd said. At dinner
she'd mentioned something about a trip to Kashmir, traveling by train across
India with two English students, her companions for that summer. "But all we
talked about was the States. Imagine there we were in one of the most
beautiful spots on earth, Kashmir, and all we talked about was LA and New
York City."
I bent down and kissed the back of her neck, the little bare patch of skin
that showed through her thick hair. Sixteen.
But how can you give me permission. And how can I give myself permission? If
only there was no one else, no one who cared. But then you wouldn't be
running, would you?
Dark in the hallway.
The guest room, her room. All these new faces staring at each other across
the dark, the brass bed glimmering, her purse open, things spilled out. A
hairbrush.
Closet door open.
Videotapes. [bad scan] else? A sack, a suitcase. Something to do with a past
life? What was in the suitcase?
I was standing in her doorway. Of course, I wouldn't pry a lock, wouldn't
even lift a suitcase lid. I mean, these were her things. And what if she woke
up, came down the hall, discovered me here?
Just look in the closet. Crammed now with new clothes.
But there was the suitcase on the floor, and it was locked. And the
videotapes now stood in a neat stack on the shelf behind an empty purse,
folded underwear, a hair dryer.
I examined them in the light from the hall. Strange labels on these
cassettes. Only the name of a dealer in New York: Video Classics. And on one
a check mark had been scratched in the black plastic as if with a ballpoint
pen or a bobbie pin. Nothing else to say what they were or why she would want
them.
Her magazines: quite a stack. And many of them foreign. Cahiers du Cinema on
top, L'Express, copies of German Stern, more French, some Italian. And film
the theme always. What she had in English was Andy Warhol's Interview, Film
Arts, American Cinematographer.
Fairly sophisticated for a girl her age it seemed. But then with her
background, maybe it wasn't so unusual.
Many of these journals were old. In fact, they had second-hand store price
labels on them. Only the Film Arts was new, with a picture on the front of
"Up-and-Coming Texas Film Director Susan Jeremiah."
Inside was tucked an article torn out of Newsweek, also on Ms. Jeremiah
-"Thunder in the Southwest"-a tall, lean dark-haired Houston woman with deep
-set black eyes, who actually wore a cowboy hat and boots. I didn't think
Texans really did that.
As for the older mags, there was no immediate clue to why she had bought
them. Film and film and film. Some went back ten years. No marks anywhere
that I could see.
I put all of this back carefully. And only then did I notice an old TV Guide
under the tapes. And when I pulled it out, I saw Susan Jeremiah again,
smiling under the shadow of her white cowboy hat. Handsome woman. The issue
was two months old. I scanned quickly for the article.
Ms. Jeremiah's first television movie, something called Bitter Chase, had
premiered in April. The article was short, said she was one of the new
generation of talented women in film. Her first theatrical feature, Final
Score, had gotten a standing ovation at last year's Cannes festival. She'd
grown up on a Texas ranch. Ms. Jeremiah believed American film was wide open
for women.
There was more, but I was getting nervous. Suppose Belinda woke up. I thought
I heard a noise, and that was it. I put the magazine back and closed the
closet.
The key to the suitcase might be in her purse. Her purse was on the brass
bed. But I had done enough. And I could not bring myself to snoop in her
purse, no, there had to be a limit to this.
But these little discoveries were tantalizing. Just like her chatter about
Europe. Just like her, whoever she was.
No surprise that a girl her age was interested in film, no surprise that her
tastes would be good. But why this focus on a female film director?
Of course, it was just the sort of thing to interest a modern girl-the strong
independent Texas woman not out to be an actress but a filmmaker. Rather
irresistibly American. The press certainly liked the hat and the boots, that
was obvious.
The fact was, none of this explained anything much about Belinda. It only
added to my questions.
I locked up the house for the night, put out the lights, went into the
bathroom, and felt my face. Real scratchy beard, as always this time of
night. I decided to shave.
When she woke up in the morning in my arms, I didn't want any face scratching
her babycheeks.
As I lay there in the dark, I kept thinking: Who is looking for her? Who is
crying over her? Dear God, if she were my little girl, I'd move heaven and
earth to find her.
But then, she is my little girl. And do I want them, whoever they are, to
find her?
No, you can't have her back. Not now.
At nine A.M., I was sitting in my office and she was still asleep. I picked
up the phone on the desk and called my lawyer, Dan Franklin. He wouldn't be
back from court till eleven, his secretary said, but, yes, he could probably
see me then. Come on over.
Now, my lawyer and I went to school together. He's probably as good a friend
as I have, and the one person in the world I trust more than any other.
Agents, no matter much they love you and how hard they work for you, are
really go-betweens. And they often know the movie people and the publishers
better than they know their authors. Often they like the movie people and the
publishers better. They have more in common with them.
But my lawyer worked only for me. When he went over a contract or an offer
for rights, he was on my side completely. And he was one of the few really
good entertainment lawyers who did not make his office in New York or Los
Angeles.
Not only did I trust my lawyer, I also liked him, personally. I trusted his
judgment, I considered him a nice guy.
And I knew now that I'd avoided him at Andy Blatky's exhibit the other day
because I hadn't wanted to explain Belinda.
I made the appointment to see him at eleven. Then I showered, shaved again,
put two good head shots of Belinda in a manila envelope, and put that in my
briefcase.
I had hoped to have more for a start. But the more could come later.
Belinda was eating potato chips and drinking a Coke when I came down. She'd
gone across the street to the corner store for them while I was in the
shower.
"That's breakfast?" I asked.
"Yeah, cuts through the smoke," she said. She gestured to the lighted
cigarette.
"That's trash," I said.
"Cereal's got just as much salt, do you know that?"
"What about eggs and toast and milk?" I said. I went to work fixing enough
for both of us.
Yeah, gee, thanks for the eggs, but she was full of potato chips. She opened
another can of Coke and sat down to tell me how wonderful it was being here.
"I slept last night, I mean, really slept without thinking somebody was going
to climb in the window or start playing the drums in the hallway." I got an
idea.
"Have to see my lawyer downtown," I said. "Some stuff about one of my
mother's books, a movie deal."
"Sounds exciting. I loved your mother's books, you know."
"You're kidding, you never read them."
"Not so! Read every one, absolutely loved Crimson Mardi Gras." We stared at
each other for a moment. "What's wrong?" she asked.
"Nothing," I said. "just business on my mind. I'm taking the van downtown. Do
you really know how to drive a car?"
"Of course, how do you think I got the fake license? I mean, the name's fake,
but I was driving on... driving in Europe when I was eleven."
"You want the keys to the MG, then?"
"Jeremy, you don't mean it." I tossed them to her. Bait taken.
She was down not ten minutes later, dressed in a new pair of snow white wash
pants and a white pullover. It was the first time I'd seen her in pants since
she wore the cutoff shorts around the house, and I was unprepared for my
reaction. I didn't want her to venture out the front door like that.
"You know what that makes me want to do?" I said giving her the eye.
"What?" She missed the point. "How do I look?" She was brushing her hair in
front of the hall mirror.
"Rapeable."
"Thanks."
"You going to wear a coat?"
"It's eighty degrees out there, you must be kidding. First time this city has
warmed up to a civilized temperature since I got here."
"It won't last. Take a coat."
She threw her arms around my neck, kissed me. Soft hot crush of arms and
cheeks. Babymouth succulent, sweet. "Don't need a coat."
"Where are you going?"
"Tanning studio for fifteen minutes under the hot lights," she said tapping
her cheek with one finger. "It's the only way to stay brown in this town.
Then riding, Golden Gate Park stables. I called from upstairs. I've wanted to
do it since I got here."
"Why didn't you?"
"I don't know. Didn't seem appropriate, you know, the way I was living." She
was digging in her purse for a cigarette. "You know, I was on the street. All
that. Didn't seem to mix with horses."
"But it mixed with the tanning studio."
"Sure." She laughed. Her hair was beautifully full from the brushing. No
paint, just the cigarette on her lip.
"And now you can go riding again."
"Yes!" She laughed in the most open, delighted fashion.
"You are truly beautiful," I said. "But the pants are too tight."
"Oh, no, they feel fine," she said. Snap of her lighter.
I took out several ten-dollar bills and gave her that with the keys to the
car and the house.
"You don't have to, really-" she said. "I have money-"
"Look, don't bother saying that ever again," I said. "It's like when I ask
you questions about your parents. Don't mention money. I hate it."
Another sweet soft tight hug and she was off, just dashed out the front door,
in fact, like an American teenager.
And probably with the key to the suitcase in her purse. But-
I waited till I heard the car roaring up the street before I went upstairs
and opened her closet.
The key was in the damn suitcase and the suitcase was open.
I took a deep breath, then knelt down, laid back the lid, and started going
through it.
Fake Linda Merit passport! My God, she was thorough. Two New York Public
Library books, one a Vonnegut novel, the other a Stephen King. Typical
enough, I figured. Then there was my signed copy of Bettina's House and a
picture of me over a notice of the booksellers autograph party cut out of the
San Francisco Chronicle.
Lingerie-even that looked second-hand-old-fashioned midnight blue taffeta
slips, lace brassieres with wire, which I don't think girls wear much
anymore. Cotton panties, beautifully plain. A brown paper sack and in it
programs from several recent Broadway musicals. Cats, A Chorus Line, Ollie
Boon's Dolly Rose, other things. The Ollie Boon program had been autographed,
but no personal note above the signature. Absolutely nothing here that was
personal.
I mean, not a clue to who she was. And for some reason this made me feel all
the more guilty for what I was doing.
Had she deliberately obliterated her past? Or had she bolted on the spur of
the moment?
I went over the clothes in the closet-the old things she brought with her.
Except for the school uniforms, of which there were three, it was class in
every case, as I had figured. Tweeds were Harris or Donegal. Skirts and
blazers were Brooks Brothers, Burberry, Cable Car. Nothing frivolous as we'd
bought yesterday on our little downtown spin. Even the shoes were
respectable.
But all of it was used, definitely, some of it probably made before she was
born. Not likely any of it had been hers before she had hit the streets. This
was too puzzling.
In the pockets I found New York theater ticket stubs, something from a recent
concert in San Francisco. Matchbooks from the big hotels. The Fairmont, the
Stanford Court, the Hyatt Regency.
It troubled me, this. I didn't want to think about what she'd been doing in
all those hotels. But maybe she was simply roaming the lobbies, going to
places like those in which she'd once lived. Looking for some way back into
the adult world.
But her recent past wasn't the point. We were going to destroy all that
together. It was the real past that mattered. And there was nothing here to
tell me the slightest thing about her. It was downright scary. Even the tapes
had only those commercial labels. The best clue so far was Susan Jeremiah.
I got out the magazines, sat down on the side of the brass bed, and read
through them.
Well, this was an interesting woman all right. Born on a Texas ranch, went to
school in Dallas, later in LA. Was making movies with a home camera when she
was ten. Worked in her teens for a Dallas TV station. Final Score, which had
won accolades at Cannes, was described as atmospheric, fast-paced,
philosophical. Done on location in the Greek islands, it concerned a gang of
nihilistic young Texan dope smugglers. Film buff talk about handheld cameras,
artistic debts to Orson Welles, the Nouvelle Vague, philosophical approach,
that sort of thing. All too short. On to another woman director, New Yorker,
featured in the same article.
The Newsweek piece wasn't much better. Focus on the April television film
Bitter Chase, praised for a "a high quotient of visual beauty, something
often altogether absent from films made for television." Jeremiah would make
two more for United Theatricals, but didn't want to be stigmatized as a
television director. Heavy praise for the star of the film, Dallas girl Sandy
Miller, who had also starred in Jeremiah's "arty and often self-indulgent
erotic film," Final Score, never released in this country. But oddly enough,
the only picture in the magazine was of Jeremiah. I think that Texas getup
and that lean frontier face really got them. Too bad for Sandy Miller.
I sat there more confused than ever and feeling pretty damned guilty. I
wanted to take those videotapes down, run them through the machine in my
office. Or better yet, the machine in the den. The den door had a lock on it.
And that way if she came in-
Oh, but how would she ever forgive me if she found out what I was doing? And
what if I just brought up the tapes in conversation? She might explain
everything. No need to betray her at all this way, because maybe this stuff
had nothing to do with who she was.
It was ten forty-five. I had to get going.
Dan didn't show until noon. I apologized for keeping him from lunch. "Look,"
I said. "This is client-lawyer privilege."
"What's that supposed to mean? You kill somebody?" He sat down opposite me
behind the desk. "You want some lunch? I'm sending out for a sandwich."
"No. I'll make this as quick as I can. I want you to do some detective work."
"You're kidding."
"You have to do it yourself. You can't hire anybody from an agency. You have
to do what you can by phone, and then if you have to travel, I'll pay for
it."
"Do you know what that will cost you?"
"Doesn't matter. You have to find out something for me."
"Which is what?"
"The identity of this girl," I said. I handed him my photos of her. He
studied them for a moment.
"This is absolutely confidential," I said. "You cannot let anyone know who
wants to know all this."
"Come on," he said impatiently, shaking his head. "Fill me in. What am I
looking for?"
"She's sixteen," I said.
"Uh huh." He was studying the picture.
"Till two days ago she was on the street. She says her name's Belinda. That
may or may not be true. She's been all over Europe, grew up in Madrid, she
said, spent time in Rome, Paris. She was in New York this winter, I'm pretty
certain of that. I don't know when she got here." I described the theater
programs, the top-price tickets.
"She's maybe five foot four. No taller than that. One hundred pounds, maybe a
little more. Hair, face, you can see. Her body is very grown-up. Full
breasts. Her voice is grown-up, too, very grown-up, but no accent except for
a touch of something I can't place. I don't know if that would help anyway."
"What's your connection with her?"
"I'm living with her."
"You're what!"
"I don't want to hear about it. I want to know who she is, where she came
from-"
"-You don't want to hear about it! She's sixteen? And you don't want to hear
about it!"
"-But I want to know more than that. I want to know why she ran away, what
happened. I'm pretty sure there's money mixed up in it. She's too well
educated, her taste is too good. There has to be a family somewhere with
money. Yet it doesn't add up. It's strange. I want to know everything you can
possibly-"
"Jeremy, this is crazy."
"Don't talk, Dan. I'm not finished."
"Do you know what this could mean if you're caught with this kid?"
"I want to know how she got to be where she is. Who she's hiding from? I'll
tell you the strangest thing. I went through her belongings and there's not a
single clue to her real identity."
"You crazy son of a bitch. Do you realize what this could do to you? Jeremy,
do you remember what happened to Roman Polanski?"
"I remember."
And what was all that rot I had told Alex Clementine about scandal not
hurting anyone anymore? And he had said the right dirt in the right measure.
Well, I knew in my case this was the wrong dirt, never mind the measure.
"Polanski got nailed for one lousy afternoon with a minor. You're telling me
you're living with this one?"
I told him quietly and calmly about the Page Street address, the police, them
writing down my address and the fake name Linda Merit in their notebooks.
"I wish the cop hadn't recognized me."
"Put her on a plane for Katmandu. Immediately! Get her out of your house, you
idiot."
"Dan, find out who she is. I don't care what it costs. There must be people
you can ask, on the qt, without revealing anything, maybe some way to ask
around at the street down there. I am almost one hundred percent sure someone
is looking for her."
"So am I. Europe, money, education-" He picked up the picture. "Christ!" he
muttered.
"But remember, I have to know everything, who are her parents, what did they
do, why did she take off?."
"Suppose they didn't do anything and she's a rich bitch who decided she
wanted some excitement."
"Out of the question. You wouldn't say that if you talked to her. In fact,
the funny thing is, she's too poised to be rich, yet she's gotta be."
"I don't get it."
"Rich kids are sheltered. They're soft. There's always a little naiveté
shining through, no matter how precocious they are. The girl's poise is deep
and almost hard. She makes me think of the poor girls I knew when I was a
kid, I mean, the ones who had big diamond engagement rings on their fingers
by sixteen and two kids by a piano mover husband by the time they were
twenty. You know the kind of girl. She can hardly read or write, but she can
run the cash register in the all-night drugstore for five hours without ever
breaking one of her long manicured fingernails. Well, there is something sad
and tough about this little girl which is like that, something old. But she's
too educated, too refined for the rest of the image."
He was giving me angry glances in between studying the picture. "I've seen
this girl somewhere," he said.
"At Andy's exhibit the other day," I said. "She was with me."
"No, I didn't even know you were there. Missed you completely-"
"But she was wandering around, in a pair of pink sunglasses-"
"No, no, I mean I know this girl, I know this face, I know her from
somewhere."
"Well, then, get on it, Dan. Because I have to know who she is and what
happened to her."
"And she won't tell you."
"Nothing, not a word, made me promise never to ask or she'd walk out. I know
it's something terrible."
"You mean, you hope it's something terrible to get you off the hook with your
conscience!"
"Maybe. Maybe so."
"You think it will get you off the hook with anyone else, you're crazy."
"Dan, I just want to know-"
"Look, I'll get on it. But in exchange you listen. This could demolish your
career. Demolish, as in obliterate, annihilate, disintegrate, do you
understand me? You're not a European film director. You're a children's book
author."
"Don't remind me."
"You are putting it on the line, every nickel of it, if this gets to the
press. And if her parents are rich, it could be kidnapping on top of
everything. There could be charges I haven't even thought of. I gotta look
this up. I gotta-"
You should see the paintings, I thought. But I said:
"Dan, that can wait. Find out all about her."
Yes, definitely the wrong dirt in the wrong measure.
So why did I feel this exhilaration, this warmth all over, this sense of
being alive suddenly? It was like that day when I walked onto that jet plane
at the New Orleans airport and knew I was headed for California.
"Look at me, Jer! You'll get the Lewis Carroll Kinky Old Man Award of the
Year, you hip to that? They'll pull your books off the library shelves and
burn them. The bookstores in the South and Midwest won't even stock them. And
any Disney movie deals you can kiss good-bye forever. You're not listening to
me. You're not listening!"
"Dan, I have an imagination. Imagining things is what I get paid for. I love
this little girl. And I have to know if somebody is out there looking for
her, I have to know what they did to her."
"This is not the sixties, Jeremy. The flower children are gone. The feminists
and the Moral Majority are joining ranks these days to get the child
molesters and the pornographers. This is no time for-"I had to laugh. It was
Alex Clementine all over again.
"Dan, we are not in court. I am impressed. My rights have been read to me.
Call me when you have something-anything?"
I locked the briefcase and started towards the door. "They'll cancel the
Saturday morning show!"
"Lawyer-client privilege, Dan."
"Disney is bidding right now against Rainbow for the rights to Angelica?"
"Oh, you reminded me. Belinda's interested in movies, very interested.
Cahiers du Cinema, magazines like that. Film buff stuff."
"She's sixteen, she wants to be a star, so did Lolita. Get rid of her, the
little bitch."
"Come on, Dan. Don't talk like that about her. I mean, she reads serious film
things. And she has a special interest in a woman director, someone named
Susan Jeremiah."
"Never heard of her."
"Up-and-coming Texas woman. Did a TV film in April for United Theatricals.
There just might be a connection."
"I'll get on this all right, you better believe I'll get on this, just to
show you how dangerous this is!"
"Be careful, whatever you do, when you call me. She's there all the time."
"No shit."
"If you leave a message on the machine, make it sound like book business."
I stopped in the lobby long enough to take a deep breath. I felt like an
absolute traitor. Please, let it be something rotten. Let them be corrupt.
Let her belong to me.
I went to a phone booth on Market Street and looked up the address of a
riding apparel shop. It was on Divisadero.
I knew her sizes from the day before, and the woman assured me I could bring
back anything she didn't like. So I bought her everything. A red wool hacking
coat, and a black hunting jacket, and two beautiful black velvet hard hats
with chin straps. Breeches, gloves, a couple of quirts. Some very pretty
little shirts and things. I knew it was the sort of thing people didn't use
everyday for riding. It was for shows. But I wanted to see her in it, and I
hoped she would like it.
Then I went home, put all of this out on the bed, and went upstairs. The
palette was still loaded with wet paint from last night, and the brushes were
still wet, too, so I went right to work instantly. Last bit of gold on the
lettering of the last picture: the punk-waif picture.
I scarcely looked at the work I'd done. I got paint all over my wool pants,
but it didn't matter.
Only when I looked at the shadowy little V between her legs did I have to
stop, have to detach. She was too alive for me. I stood back, and when I saw
the amount that was done-the size of the three canvases, the detail all
finished-I was a little overawed. Even for me this pace was wondrous.
About four I went out for some beer, milk, the dumb little things I needed
from the corner market. I got her five different brands of foreign
cigarettes. Jasmine, Dunhill, Rothmans, anything unusual that she might like.
I also got plenty of apples, oranges, pears, good things she might eat on the
run instead of garbage. I mean, here I was buying a kid cigarettes. I doubled
up on the milk, grabbed a few boxes of dry cereal. The car was in the drive
when I came back.
When I shut the front door, I saw her standing at the top of the staircase.
There was only a weak light from the stained-glass window there, and my eyes
had to get used to the shadows before I could really see her.
She had on the black velvet riding hat and the high leather boots. And she
was posed like an old-fashioned portrait, with one hand on her hip and the
other holding the black leather riding quirt. She was otherwise naked. She
smacked the side of the boot with the quirt.
I went down on my knees at the bottom of the stairs. I shoved the groceries
aside.
She held the pose for as long as she could, but then she was shaking with
half-repressed giggles. I doubled over with laughter before I got to her.
I climbed on top of her at the top of the stairs and started kissing her.
"No, in the bed," she said. "In the bed. It's too good in the bed."
I picked her up and carried her. She was still laughing when I set her down.
I kissed her, cradling her chin with the little leather strap, and feeling
her boots against my legs-the hard leather and the soft thighs.
"Tell me you love me, you little witch," I said. "Come on, tell me."
"Yes," she said, kissing me back. "It's going to be just perfect, isn't it?"
Just before I stopped thinking altogether of anything rational, I thought: I
have my next picture.
posted by Karly at
11:10 AM
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