Belinda (52 page)

The Artist Grieves For Belinda. That's what remained to be done. Blank canvas. And hour by hour in this unforgivable stupor I painted it in my mind as I lay here, Scotch or no Scotch. The artist with torch in hand and the toys blazing-trains, dolls, tiny lace curtains on plastic windows. The end of the world.

OK. You can have your slothful misery until Saturday. You know the phone is not going to ring.

"Listen, asshole, you want my advice?" Marty had said, and she was so right about the sincerity. "Forget her! I did it. You do it. You got off light, asshole, don't you know it? Her mother was that close to hanging you up by the balls."

Thunder so low I could hardly hear it. The gods moving their wooden furniture around a giant kitchen up there. The oak scrapes the side of the house, everything in motion, leaves, branches, metallic light.

G.G. in that soft boyish voice over the phone from New York: "Jeremy, [ know she wouldn't do anything crazy. She'd call me if she wasn't OK." Time for hallucinations?

I could have sworn I'd just heard Alex Clementine's voice in this house! Alex talking to another man, and it couldn't be Rhinegold because Rhinegold had left days ago for San Francisco as planned. The other man spoke very softly. And Miss Annie was talking to them, too.

Got to be an hallucination. Had refused to give Alex my number, no matter how drunk I was. I'll see you in San Francisco, I told him. I'll be just fine, perfectly fine.

It was only to G.G. and to Alex and to Dan that I told the whole story: her letter, Bonnie and the blackmail attempt, and how I had hit her and hit her and hit her. And that Marty and Bonnie would no longer look for xxx.

Belinda, Come Back. This is not the end of our story. It can't be.

Dan had been so angry. "Where the hell are you! You're drunk, I'm coming to get you!" No, Dan. No, Alex.

Lightning again. Everything gorgeously visible for a fraction of a second. The settee and the petit point pillows. Framed cover of Crimson, Mardi Gras, letters faded under sported glass. This was the smoothest Scotch. After years of white wine or a beer now and then, it was like mainlining. I mean, the furniture was moving.

Then Miss Annie said very firmly: "Please let me tell Mr. Walker that you are here!"

Light spray of rain hitting my face and hands. Glistening on the arch of the telephone receiver. Call, Belinda. Please, honey. It's going to take so long. Two weeks before I can even leave here, and then taking them all back across country and everything else that has to be done. I still love you. I always will.

Goddamn it, that was Alex's voice.

The rain shook the screens. The wind was cold for only a moment, as though something else in the house had been blown open. The oak branches were really thrashing out there. Like the hurricanes I remembered, when the magnolia trees came up and the tin roofs flew off the garages or flapped in the wind like the covers of books. Paint the hurricane. Paint it! You can paint anything you want to now, don't you know that?

Seems I had had a freeze-frame of Final Score on the television set. But that was hours ago, wasn't it? And when you leave it on freeze-frame for more than five minutes, the machine cuts off.

"You just leave it to me, dear lady," Alex was saying. "He'll understand."

"Mr. Walker, this is Mr. Alex Clementine from Hollywood. He insisted on coming up here, and this is Mr. George Gallagher from New York."

And voila Alex. Just like that. How marvelous he looked, mammoth and gleaming as always as he came striding into the cool damp gloom. And right behind him a tall boy-man with Belinda's eyes and Belinda's blond hair and Belinda's mouth.

"Good lord, you're both here," I said.

I tried to sit up. The glass was lying on its side on the table and the Scotch was spilling. Then G.G., this six-foot-four blond-haired boy-man, this god, this angel, whatever he was, came and picked up the glass and wiped at the spilled Scotch with his handkerchief. What an ingratiating smile.

"Hi, Jeremy, it's me, G.G. Guess this is kind of a surprise."

"You look just like her, really you do!" Dressed all in white, even the watchband was white leather, white leather shoes.

"Christ, Jeremy," Alex said. He was striding back and forth, looking at the walls and the ceiling, at the high wooden back of the bed. "Turn on the air-conditioning in this room and shut those damned doors."

"And miss this lovely breeze? How did you find me, Alex?" Thunder again. It broke violently over the rooftop. G.G. jumped. "I don't like that."

"It's nothing, doesn't mean a thing," I told him. "How the hell did you find-?"

"I can find anyone when I have a mind to, Jeremy," Alex said solemnly. "Do you remember the insane things you said to me over the phone? I called G.G., and G.G. said it's a 504 area code. I see you trust G.G. with things like your phone number, though you don't trust your older friends."

"I didn't want you to come, Alex. I gave him the number in case Belinda called, that was all. Belinda hasn't called, has she, G.G.?"

"Then we get to the airport, and I tell these cab drivers, no, I want an old guy, somebody who's been driving for a couple of decades, and finally they bring up this colored man, you know, the Creole quadroon kind with the caramel skin and gray hair and I said, 'You remember Cynthia Walker, the woman who wrote Crimson Mardi Gras? She used to have a house up on Saint Charles, peeling paint, closed shutters, course they might have changed it.' 'Take you right to it, not changed at all.' It was simple enough."

"You should have seen him in action," G.G. said softly. "We had a whole crowd around us."

"Jeremy, this is sick," Alex said. "This is worse than what happened after Faye died."

"No, Alex, looks deceive you. I've made a bargain with myself and everything is under control. I'm merely resting, storing up energy for the final picture."

Alex got out a cigarette. Flash of G.G.'s gold lighter. "Thank you, son."

"Sure, Alex."

I reached for the glass, but couldn't reach it.

Alex was staring at me, as if I were wearing a blindfold and couldn't see it, the way he looked at my clothes, the Scotch, the bed. Dark spots from the rain all over his fedora and the cashmere scarf was white this time, hanging all the way down the front of the Burberry.

"Where is that little lady? Madam! Can you fix something for this gentle'man to eat?"

"Not till Saturday, damn it, Alex, I told you this is planned."

"Of course, I can, but can you get him to eat it, Mr. Clementine? I can't get him to eat a thing."

'TI1 feed him if I have to. And some coffee, madam, a pot of coffee, too."

I tried to reach the glass again. G.G. filled it for me.

"Thank you."

"Don't give him that, son," Alex said. "Jeremy, this place is exactly the way it was twenty-five years ago. There is an opened letter on the dresser, postmarked 1966, do you realize that? And a copy of The New York Times for the same year on this night table."

"Alex, you're getting excited over nothing. Did you see the paintings? Tell me what you think."

"They're beautiful," G.G. said. "Oh, I love them all."

"What did you think, Alex? Tell me."

"What did Rhinegold tell you? That you'd go to jail if you did this thing? Or is he just out to make a buck off it?"

"You're not really going to do it, are you?" G.G. asked.

"Jeremy, this is hara-kiri. What kind of a man is this Rhinegold? Get on this phone. Call it off."

"She hasn't called you, has she, G.G? You would have told me the minute you walked in."

"Oh, yes, Jeremy, I would have. But don't worry. She's all right. She wouldn't let things get too bad without calling me. And the phones are covered night and day."

"Speaking of phones, do you realize you called Blair Sackwell two nights ago at two o'clock in the morning," Alex thundered, "and you told him the whole thing?"

"And there're people at my place if she comes," G.G. said. "They're waiting for her."

"Not the whole thing, Alex," I said. "Just who she was and who I was and that she was on the run and that I hurt her. I don't have to tell the whole thing. I don't have to hang anyone. But the truth's got to come out, Alex. Goddamn it, she exists, she has a name and a past and those paintings are of her, and I love her."

"Yes," G.G. said softly.

"And that's why I called Susan Jeremiah in Paris and Ollie Boon, too. I called that woman who wrote the Bonnie biography, I called my wives. I called Marty at United Theatricals after Bonnie disconnected her private line. I called my editor and my publicist and my Hollywood agent and I told them all what was going on. I called Andy Blatky my sculptor friend, and my neighbor Sheila. And I called all my writer friends who work for the papers, too."

And I should have stuck it out, finished the last painting, done the program notes. I'd be out of here by now.

"Calling Blair Sackwell is like calling 'CBS News,' Walker!" Alex said. "What do you mean, friends who work for what papers, where? Do you think you can control what's going to happen?"

"Yes, that's true," G.G. murmured, shaking his head, "that's really true about Blair and he's in such a rage already."

"Why don't you just get a fucking thirty-eight, the way Bonnie did!" Alex yelled.

"You should have heard Blair on the subject of Marty," G.G. said. Look of distaste, like a baby tasting carrots for the first time. "Blair calls him the Gruesome Statistic and the Ugly Reality and the Awful Fact."

"Clementine, I'm going to find her, don't you get the message! I'm going all the way with it, and I'm getting her back and we're going to be together, that is, if she hasn't done something crazy out there."

"Blair's got this idea that he's going to find her," G.G. said. "He has this wild idea she'll do Midnight Mink for him. He'll pay her one hundred grand."

"What the hell did Moreschi say to you?" Alex demanded. He was towering over me now, his hair curling under the hat brim from the humidity, his eyes burning in the shadowy light. "Are these friends of yours on the papers really friends?"

"Blair's never paid anybody any money before," G.G. said. "He just gives you the mink coat."

"It doesn't matter what Marty said. I was giving Marty a gentleman's warning, that's all. It might get out of hand."

"Oh, terrific! That's like warning Dracula," Alex said.

"I'm not out to hang Marty or anybody! But this is for Belinda and me! Marty has to understand it, that it's Holy Communion. I was never using Belinda. Marty was so wrong about the whole thing."

"You using Belinda?" Alex demanded. "You're about to wreck your goddamned life just to find her and-?"

"Oh, no, nobody's wrecking anything, can't you see it?" I said. "But that's the beauty of it, there is no simple angle-"

"Jeremy, I am taking you back to California with me now," Alex said. I'll get that Rhinegold character on the phone and get these pictures shipped to some safe place. Berlin, for example. Now that's a good safe place."

"Out of the question, Alex."

"Then you and I will go to Portofino, like we did before, and we will talk this thing out. Maybe G.G. will come along."

"That's wonderful, but as of Saturday I start working again, and I've got two weeks to finish that last canvas. Now about the house in Portofino, I'I1 sure as hell take it for a honeymoon."

"Are you really going to get married?" G.G. asked. "That is so beautiful!"

"I should have asked her when we came down here," I said. "We could have gone to Mississippi and done it with the age limit there. Nobody could have touched us."

"Where is that woman with the food?" Alex demanded. "G.G., start him a bath, will you, son? There is hot and cold running water in this house, isn't there, Jeremy? Those clawed feet in there do belong to a bathtub!"

"I love her. Once-in-a-lifetime, that's how she put it."

"I can consent, you know," G.G. said. He went towards the bathroom.

"My name's on her birth certificate. I know right where it is."

"Make the water good and hot," Alex said.

"Stop it, Alex, I bathe every night before I go to bed, just the way my mother taught me. And I'm not going anywhere till Rhinegold comes back and takes over. It's all set."

Steam was flooding out of the bathroom. Sound of running water rising under the roar of the rain.

"What makes you think she'll marry you after you beat the hell out of her?" Alex demanded. "You think the press will like that angle any better?

With you forty-five and her sixteen?"

"You didn't read her story-"

"Well, you practically told me every word of it-"

"-she'll marry me, I know she will."

"They can't do anything to her if she's legally married," G.G. said.

"Jeremy, you're not responsible for your actions," said Alex. "You have got to be stopped. Isn't there an air conditioner in this room?" He started closing the French doors.

"Don't do that, Alex," I said. "Leave the doors open. I'll have Miss Annie fix up the back bedrooms for you. Now calm down."

Miss Annie came in with a tray of steaming dishes. Smell of gumbo. The room was too quiet suddenly. The rain was dying out there. Silent glimmer of lightning. And G.G. like a ghost of the all-American boy in the bathroom door as the steam poured out around him. God, what a goodlooking man.

"I'll get you some fresh clothes, Mr. Walker," Miss Annie said. Drawers sliding out. Smell of camphor.

Alex was sitting beside me. "Jeremy, call Rhinegold. Tell him the whole thing's canceled."

"Do you want sugar in this coffee?" G.G. asked.

"Walker, we're talking felony, prison, maybe kidnap, and even libel."

"Alex, I pay my lawyer to say that stuff. I sure as hell don't want to hear it for free."

"That is what Marty was screaming," G.G. said. "Libel. Did you know that Blair called Ollie and told him everything?"

"I called Ollie myself and told him," I said. "I own the stage rights to Crimson Mardi Gras. United Theatricals doesn't own them, never did."

G.G. laughed. "Don't talk business when you're drunk, Jeremy, not even to Ollie," he said.