Loe raamatut: «Coldheart Canyon», lehekülg 8

‘We’re perfectly capable of looking after Mr Pickett here,’ Burrows said. ‘There isn’t a hospital in California that could give him better care.’

‘Yeah, well, maybe,’ Donnie said. ‘Seems to me he’d still be better off in Cedar Sinai.’

‘I really resent the implication –’ Burrows began.

‘Will you just shut the fuck up?’ Donnie said wearily. ‘I don’t give a monkey’s ass what you resent. All I care about is getting my brother properly fixed up and out of here.’

‘And as I say –’

‘Yeah. As you say. Tell you what, why don’t you and Nurse Karyn there step out for a few minutes and let me have a private word with my brother?’

Burrows didn’t attempt any further self-justification, and Todd knew why. He could imagine Donnie’s expression in perfect detail: both brothers got colour in their faces when they were riled up; and a cold eye. Burrows duly retreated, which was the wisest thing he could have done.

‘I want to get you out of here, Kiddo,’ Donnie said as soon as they had gone. ‘I don’t trust these people as far as I could throw ’em. They’re full of shit.’

‘I need to talk to Maxine before we do anything.’

‘What the fuck for? I don’t trust her any more than I trust these sons of bitches.’

There was a long silence. Todd knew what was coming next; so he just waited for it.

‘Just so you know,’ Donnie said, ‘you’ve done some damn-fool things in your life, but this whole deal is the stupidest idea I ever heard. Gettin’ yourself a fuckin’ facelift? What kind a thing is that? Christ. Does Momma know about this?’

‘No. I put you down as next of kin. I thought you’d understand.’

‘Well I can’t say I do. It’s a mess. It’s a goddam mess. And I’ve got to go back to Texas tomorrow.’

‘Why so soon?’

‘Because I’ve got a court appearance at eight o’clock on Thursday morning. Linda’s tryin’ to take away my weekends with Donnie Junior, and if I’m not in court her lawyer’s going to get the judge to rule against me. I’ve been up before him a couple of times, and he doesn’t like me. So, I’m going to have to love you and leave you, which I don’t much like doin’. I guess I could call Momma and –’

‘No! No, Donnie, please. I don’t want her here.’ Todd reached out blind; caught hold of Donnie’s arm. ‘I’ll be okay. You don’t have to worry about me. I’ll be just fine.’

‘All right. I hear you. I won’t call Momma. Besides, the worst’s over. I’m sure that’s right. But listen to me, you get yourself the hell out of here and go to a proper hospital.’

‘I don’t want the press finding out about this. If Maxine thinks –’

‘Have you heard a fuckin’ word I said?’ Donnie said, his voice getting louder. ‘I don’t trust that bitch. She’s out for herself. That’s all she cares about. Her piece of the action.’

‘Don’t start shouting.’

‘Well, what the fuck do you expect? I’ve been sitting here for seventy-two hours straight wondering how I was going to tell Mom that you died having plastic fucking surgery on your fucking face –’ He paused for a breath. ‘Christ, if Dad was alive … he’d be so damned ashamed.’

‘Okay, Donnie. I get the message. I’m a fuck-up.’

‘You’re surrounded by so many ass-kissers, you’re not getting good advice. It makes me wanna puke. I mean, these people. They’re all puttin’ on some show – tellin’ me this, tellin’ me that – and meanwhile you’re lying there at death’s door.

‘And will they give you a straight answer? Will they fuck!’ He paused to draw sufficient breath to launch in afresh. ‘What happened to you, Kiddo? Ten years ago you would have laughed your butt off at the thought of getting a face-lift.’

Todd let go of Donnie’s arm. He drew a deep, sorrowful breath. ‘It’s hard to explain,’ he said. ‘But I got to stay on top of the heap somehow. Younger guys keep coming along …’

‘So let ’em. Why do you need to stay on top? Why not walk away from it? You’ve had a good run, for Christ’s sake. You’ve had it all, I’d say. All and more. I mean fuck! What more do you want? Why do this to yourself?’

‘Because I like the life, Donnie. I like the fame. I like the money.’

Donnie snorted. ‘How much more money do you damn well need? You’ve got more than you can spend if you –’

‘Don’t tell me what I’ve got and I haven’t got. You don’t know what it costs to live. Houses and taxes.’ He stopped his defence; took a different track. ‘Anyhow, I don’t hear you complaining –’

‘Wait –’ Donnie said, knowing what was coming. But Todd wasn’t about to be stopped.

‘– when I send you money.’

‘Don’t start that.’

‘Why not? You sit there tellin’ me what a fuck-up I am, but you never said no to the cash when you needed it. Which is all the time. Who paid your last legal bills, Donnie? And the mortgage on the house so you could start over with Linda, for the third time or fourth time or whatever it was? Who paid for that mistake?’

He let the question hang there, unanswered. Eventually, very quietly, Donnie said: ‘This is so fucked. I came here –’

‘– to see whether I was dead or alive.’

‘– to look after you.’

‘You never cared before,’ Todd said, with painful blunt-ness. ‘Well did you? All these years, when have you ever come out here and spent time with me?’

‘I was never welcome.’

‘You were always welcome. You just never came because you were too fucking jealous. Why don’t you admit it? At least once, between us, say it: you were so fucking jealous you couldn’t stand the idea of coming out here.’

‘You know what? I don’t need to hear this,’ Donnie said.

‘You should have heard it years ago.’

‘I’m outta here.’

‘Go on. You did your gloating. Now you can go home and tell everyone what an asshole your brother is.’

‘I’m not going to do that,’ Donnie said. ‘You’re still my brother, whatever you do. But I can’t help you if you surround yourself –’

‘– with ass-kissers. Yeah. You said that.’

Todd heard Donnie get up and cross to the door, dragging his feet as he always had.

‘What are you doing?’ Todd said.

‘I’m leaving. Like I said I would. You’re going to be fine. That faggot Burrows will take very good care of you.’

‘Don’t I get a hug or something?’

‘Another time. When I like you better,’ Donnie said.

‘And when the hell will that be?’ Todd yelled after him.

But all he got by way of reply was the echo of his own voice off the opposite wall.

Chapter 3

Maxine turned up a little after seven, and after a few perfunctory expressions of relief that Todd was ‘back from the dead’, as she indelicately put it, quickly moved on to the news she was here to debate.

‘Somebody in this place has a big mouth,’ she said. ‘I got a call from the editor of the Enquirer this afternoon, asking if it was true that you’d been admitted to a private hospital. I told him absolutely not; this was a lie, garbage etc. etc. And I said that if he published that you were in hospital or anything vaguely resembling that, we’d sue him and his wretched rag. Ten seconds later I’ve got Peter Bart calling from Variety, asking the same damn question. And while I’m on with Peter, trying not to tell him an out-and-out lie ’cause he has a nose for bullshit, I have a call from People on the other line, asking the same question. Coincidence? I don’t think so.’

Todd moaned behind his mask of bandages.

‘I’ve told Burrows we have to move you,’ Maxine went on.

‘Wait, Donnie said yesterday you told him that you wanted me to stay here.’

‘That was before I got the calls. Now it’s just a matter of time before some photographer finds his way in here.’

‘Shit. Shit. Shit.’

‘That would make a nice little picture, wouldn’t it?’ Maxine said, just in case Todd hadn’t already got a snapshot in his mind’s eye. ‘You lying in bed with your face all bandaged up.’

‘Wait!’ Todd said, ‘They’d never be able to prove it was me.’

‘The point is: it is you, Todd. Whoever’s put out the word about your being here is working in this building. They’ve probably got access to your records, your charts –’

Todd felt a spasm of the same panic that had seized him when he’d first woken up. The horror of being trapped. This time he governed it, determined not to let Maxine see him losing control.

‘So when are you getting me out of here?’ he said.

‘I’ve got a car coming at five tomorrow morning. I’ve told Burrows I want the security in this place tripled ’til you leave. We’ll take you to the beach house in Malibu until we find somewhere more practical.’

‘I can’t go home?’ Todd said, knowing even as he floated the idea that it was out of the question. That would be the first place the journalists and the paparazzi would come looking for him.

‘Maybe we should fly you out of state when you’re feeling a little better. I’ll call John; see if I can get him to fly you up to Montana.’

‘I don’t want to go to Montana.’

‘You’d be a lot more secure up there than here. We could arrange for round-the-clock nursing –’

‘I said no. I don’t want to be that far away from everything.’

‘All right, we’ll find some place here in the city. What about your new lady-friend? Miss Bosch? She’s going to be asking questions too. What do you want me to tell her?’

‘She’s gone. She’s shooting something in the Cayman Islands.’

‘She was fired,’ Maxine said. ‘“Creative differences” apparently. The director wanted her to show her tits and she said no. Though God knows some of her runway work has left little to the imagination. I don’t know why she’s got coy all of a sudden. Anyway, she wants to talk to you. What do I say?’

‘Anything you like.’

‘So you don’t want her in on this?’

‘Fuck no. I don’t want anybody to know.’

‘Okay. It’s going to be difficult, but okay. I’ve got to go. Do you want me to send a nurse in to give you something to help you sleep?’

‘Yeah …’

‘We’ll find a place for you, until you mend. I’ll ask Jerry Brahms. He knows the city back to front. All we need’s a little hideaway. It needn’t be fancy.’

‘Just make sure he doesn’t get wind of what’s going on,’ Todd said. ‘Jerry talks.’

‘Give me a little credit,’ Maxine replied. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow morning. You get some sleep. And don’t worry, nobody’s going to find out where you are or what’s happened. I’ll kill ’em first.’

‘Promise.’

‘With my bare hands.’

So saying, she was out of the room, leaving Todd alone and in the dark.

Donnie was right, of course. This was undoubtedly the stupidest thing he had ever done. But there was no going back on it. Life, like a movie, only made sense running in one direction. What could he do but go with the flow, and hope to hell there was a happy ending waiting for him in the last reel?

A storm moved in off the Pacific in the middle of the night; the seventh storm of that winter, and the worst. Over the next forty-eight hours it would dump several inches of rain along the coast from Monterey to San Diego, creating a catalogue of minor disasters. Storm-drains overflowed and turned the streets of Santa Barbara into white-water rivers; two citizens and seven street-people were swept away and drowned. Power-lines were brought down by the furious winds, the most badly struck area being Orange County, where a number of communities remained without power for the next three days. Along the Pacific Coast Highway, where the wildfires of the previous autumn had stripped the hillsides of vegetation, the naked earth, no longer knitted together by roots, turned into mud and slid down onto the road. There were countless accidents; fourteen people perished, including a family of seven Mexicans, who’d only been in the promised land four hours, having skipped over the border illegally. All burned up together, trapped in their overturned truck. In the Pacific Palisades, the deluge carried away several million dollar homes; in Topanga Canyon, the same.

Of course all this made the business of getting Todd from the hospital to Maxine’s beach house both more lengthy and frustrating than it would have been otherwise, but it may have helped to keep the endeavour secret. Certainly there were no photographers at the hospital door when they left; nor anybody waiting for them in the vicinity of the beach house. But that didn’t mean they were out of danger. Calls to Maxine’s offices inquiring about Todd’s condition had multiplied exponentially, and they were now coming in from further a field – several from Japan, where Gallows had just opened – as the rumours spread. One of the German reporters had even had the temerity to suggest that Todd was undergoing plastic surgery.

‘I gave him hell. Fucking Kraut.’

‘Aren’t you German on your mother’s side?’

‘He’s still a fucking Kraut.’

Todd was sitting in the back of Maxine’s Mercedes, with Nurse Karyn – who had been thoroughly investigated by Maxine and judged reliable – at his side. The nurse was a woman of few words: but those she chose to utter usually carried some punch.

‘I don’t see why y’all give a damn. I mean, what does it matter if somebody gets wind of it? He just got a chemical peel and a few nips and tucks. What’s the big deal?’

‘It’s not something Todd’s fans need to know about,’ Maxine replied. ‘They’ve got a certain idea of who Todd is.’

‘So they’d think it wasn’t too masculine?’ Nurse Karyn said.

‘Shall we just move on from this?’ Maxine said, catching Nurse Karyn’s gaze in the driving mirror, and shaking her head to indicate that the conversation – or at least this portion of it – was at an end. Todd, of course, saw none of this. He was still bandaged blind.

‘How are you doing, Todd?’ Maxine said.

‘Wondering how soon –’

‘Soon,’ Maxine said. ‘Soon. Oh, by the way, I had a word with Jerry Brahms, and told him exactly what we needed. Two hours later he came back to me, said he had the perfect house for you. I’m going to see it with him tomorrow.’

‘Did he tell you where it was?’

‘Somewhere up in the hills. Apparently, it was a place he used to go and play when he was a kid. I guess this is in the forties. He says it’s completely secluded. Nobody’s going to come bothering you.’

‘He’s full of shit. They have fucking bus tours up in the hills. Every other house has somebody famous living in it.’

‘That’s what I told him. But he swore this house was ideal. Nobody even knows about the Canyon it’s in. That’s what he said. So we’ll see. If it isn’t any good for you, I’ll keep looking.’

Later that afternoon, Burrows came out to the beach house to change Todd’s dressings. It was a surreal ritual for all concerned: Todd semi-recumbent on the deco sofa in the large window overlooking the beach, Maxine sitting at a distance, nursing an early vodka stinger, Burrows – his confidence tentatively back in place after the prickly exchanges of the previous day – chatting about the rain and the mud-slides while he delicately removed the bandages.

‘Now the area around your eyes is going to be a little gummed up,’ he warned Todd, ‘so don’t try and open your eyes until I’ve done some cleaning.’

Todd said nothing. He was just listening to the boom of his heart in his head, and outside, the boom of the storm-stirred waves. They were out of step with one another.

‘I wonder,’ Burrows said to Maxine, ‘if you’d mind closing the blinds a little way? I don’t want it to be too bright in here when I uncover Todd’s eyes.’

Todd heard Maxine crossing to the window; then the mechanical hum of the electric blinds as they were lowered.

‘I think that’ll be far enough,’ Burrows said. A click, and the hum stopped. ‘Now, let’s see how things look. Hold very still, Todd, please.’

Todd held his breath as the dressing which the bandages had kept in place was gently teased away from his face. It felt as though a layer of his skin was coming away along with the gauze. He heard a little intake of breath from Maxine.

‘What?’ he murmured.

‘It’s okay,’ Burrows said softly. ‘Please hold still. This is a very delicate procedure. By the way, when I put the new dressing on, I’ll be leaving holes for your eyes, so you’ll be able to … very still, please … good, good … so you’ll be able to see.’

‘Maxine … ?’

‘Please, Todd. Don’t move a muscle.’

‘I want her to tell me what it looks like.’

‘She can’t see yet, Todd.’

Burrows said something to his nurse, half under his breath. Todd didn’t catch the words. But he heard the gauze, which had now been stripped from his face completely, dropped with a wet plop into a receptacle. He imagined it soaked with his blood, shreds of his skin stuck to it. His stomach turned.

‘I want to puke,’ he said.

‘Shall I stop for a moment?’ Burrows asked.

‘No. Just get it over and done with.’

‘Right. Well then I’m going to start cleaning you up,’ Burrows said. ‘Then we’ll see how you’re healing. I must say, it’s looking very good so far.’

‘I want Maxine to take a look.’

‘In a minute,’ Burrows said. ‘Just let me –’

‘Now,’ Todd said, nausea fuelling his impatience. He raised his hand blindly and pushed at Burrows. The man moved aside. ‘Maxine?’ Todd said.

‘I’m here.’

Todd beckoned in the direction of Maxine’s voice. ‘Come and look at me, will you? I want you to tell me what I look like.’

He heard Maxine’s heels on the polished wood floor.

‘Hurry.’ Her step quickened. Now she was close by him. ‘Well?’ he said.

‘To be honest, it’s hard to tell till he –’

‘Christ! I knew it! I fucking knew it! He fucked me up!’

‘Wait, wait,’ Maxine said. ‘Calm down. A lot of it’s just the ointments he put on you. Let him clean it off before we get hysterical.’ Todd reached out to her. She caught hold of his hand. ‘It’s going to be okay,’ she said, though her grip was clammy. ‘Just be patient. Why can’t men be patient?’

‘You’re not patient,’ he reminded her.

‘Just let him work, Todd.’

‘But you’re not. Admit it.’

‘All right. I’m not patient.’

Burrows set to work again, meticulously swabbing around Todd’s eyes, cleaning his gummed lashes. The stink of cleaning fluid was sharp in his nostrils, his sinuses ran, and his eyes, when he finally opened them, were awash.

‘Welcome back,’ Maxine said, unknitting her fingers from his, as though a little embarrassed by the intimacy. It took a couple of minutes for Todd’s sight to clear, and another two for his eyes to become accustomed to the dimmed light in the room. But part by part, face by face, the world came back to him. The large, half-blinded window, and the rain-lashed deck beyond it. The expensive ease of the room; the Indian rug, the leather furniture, the Calder mobile, in yellow, red and black, which hung below the sky-light. Burrows’ knitted brow, and fixed, nervous smile. The nurse, a pretty blonde woman. And finally Maxine, her face ashen. Burrows moved away, like a portrait painter stepping back from a canvas to check the effect he’d achieved.

‘I want to see,’ Todd said to him.

‘Give yourself a minute,’ Maxine said. ‘Are you still feeling sick?’

‘Why? Is it going to make me heave?’

‘No,’ she said. He almost believed her. ‘You just look a little puffy, that’s all. And a little raw. It’s not so bad.’

‘You used to be such a good liar.’

‘Really,’ she insisted. ‘It’s not so bad.’

‘So let me look.’ Everyone in the room remained still. ‘Will somebody get me a mirror? Okay –’ He started to push himself up out of the chair. ‘I’ll get one myself.’

‘Stay where you are,’ Maxine said. ‘If you really want to see. Nurse? What’s your name?’

‘Karyn.’

‘Go up into the bedroom, and you’ll find a little hand mirror there on the vanity. Bring it down.’

It seemed to Todd the girl took an eternity to fetch the mirror. While they waited, Burrows stared out at the rain. Maxine went to refresh her stinger.

Finally, the girl returned. Her eyes were on Burrows, not on Todd.

‘Tell her to give it to me,’ Todd said.

‘Go on,’ Burrows said.

The nurse put the mirror into Todd’s hand. He took a deep breath, and looked at himself.

There was a moment, as his eyes fixed on his reflection, when reality fluttered, and he thought: none of this is real. Not the room, nor the people in it, nor the rain outside, nor the face in the mirror. Especially not the face in the mirror. It was a figment, fluttering and fluttering and –

‘Jesus …’ he said, like Duncan McFarlane, ‘look at me –’

The strength in his hand failed him, and the mirror dropped to the ground. It fell face down. The nurse stooped to pick it up, but he said: ‘No. Leave it.’

She stepped away from him, and he caught a look of fear in her eyes. What was she afraid of? His voice, was it? Or his face? God help him if it was his face.

‘Somebody open the blinds,’ he said. ‘Let’s get some light in here. It’s not a fucking funeral.’

Maxine went to the switch, and flipped it. The mechanism hummed; the blind rose, showing him an expanse of rain-soaked deck, some furniture; and beyond the deck the beach. One solitary jogger – probably some famous fool like himself, determined to preserve his beauty even in the pouring rain – was trudging along the shore, followed by two bodyguards. Todd got up from his chair and went to the window. Then, despite the presence of strangers, he laid his hand against the cold glass and began to weep.