Belinda (53 page)

"It was just broadcasting, old boy," I said. "Just broadcasting. And as for Crimson Mardi Gras, he can have it."

"Yeah, well, you let your agents handle that," Alex said. "Now drink this stuff, this gumbo, what is it, you like this? Drink this coffee. Sit up. Where is your lawyer, by the way?"

"l am sitting up. And you're misunderstanding everything. Until Saturday, I told you, this is a planned interlude of drunkenness. And my lawyer is in San Francisco, where he belongs, thank you. Don't get any ideas about asking him to come here."

"Ollie said that in Sardi's everybody was talking about Belinda and Marty and Bonnie and the whole story," G.G. said.

"Good God," Alex said. He took out his handkerchief, mopped his forehead.

"I didn't say anything against Marty and Bonnie," I said. "Not even to Susan Jeremiah. But goddamn it, she is alone out there, and those people did something to me, they did it with their detectives and their cameras with the zoom lenses and their fucking pressure on her and, goddamn them, if they get hurt. We're coming out of the closet with it."

"G.G., turn off the bath water. Jeremy, you will not make any more calls."

"I'll get the bath water," said Miss Annie. "Mr. Walker, please eat the urnbo. I'm putting these fresh clothes in the bathroom for you on the back of the door."

"Alex, I completed two whole canvases since I spoke to you. Now I have vowed to drink until Saturday, and on Saturday I shall rise and finish everything. It is all going as planned."

"Jeremy, this is going to hurt," Alex said gravely. "But it's time I said it. Today is Saturday! It has been since twelve o'clock last night."

"Oh, my God, you don't mean it."

"It's true, Mr. Walker," Miss Annie said.

"Yes, it is," said G.G. "It's Saturday. Two o'clock, in fact."

"Get out of my way, I've got work to do. I've got to clean Annie, fix up the back bedrooms for my guests. What time is o'clock, you said?"

I got out of the bed and fell down immediately. The room just.

Alex caught me. Miss Annie had the other arm. I was about to xxx

"G.G., I think this is going to be a long one," Alex said, as hc me. "Madam, I will not trouble you to fix up the back bedrooms call the Pontchartrain Hotel down the street and arrange for a n, Care to join me, G.G.?"

"Oh, I'd love to, Alex," G.G. answered immediately. "Jeremy, don't mind if I hang around for a few days, do you? Just till you're OK?"

"Not at all," I answered. I was upright again, walking. "Stay finished and we'll leave for the Coast together. You can keep me 4, while I'm painting." I had my hand on the knob. My head was thr, "I'm chartering a plane to take the paintings back. God, I hope i: crash. Wouldn't that be horrible?"

"Not if you don't fly with them," Alex said.

Miss Annie was unbuttoning my shirt. The bathroom smelled of bath salts. I was not going to be sick, I was going to die.

Alex was looking at G.G. "One bedroom or two, G.G.?" He read the phone.

"Whatever you say, Alex," G.G. was beaming back. "I'll go with you to the lodgings. We'll take Jeremy to Antoine's for dinner and Brennan's for breakfast an the Court of Two Sisters for lunch. Then we'll Arnaud's and Manale's and K-Paul's and-"

"Count me out, gentlemen," I said. The water was hot, real hot. "I'll be in my studio working when you come back for your brandy and coils."

Miss Annie would have unzipped my pants for me if I hadn't stopped her.

Alex winked at me as I pushed her gently out the door.

"At least this part's working out well, isn't it?" he said, then he at G.G. "I'11 take care of everything, son, thank you, and let me say certainly are a nice polite Yankee boy."

II. CHAMPAGNE FLIGHT

THE story broke in the San Francisco Chronicle the week before the exhibit opened.

Jeremy Walker, "beloved" children's author and the creator of the indomitable "Saturday Morning Charlotte," might soon shock his forty million loyal readers with a one-man show in San Francisco consisting entirely of nude studies of a young adolescent girl. Even stranger than Walker's reported shift from wholesome children's art to erotic portraiture were the rumors concerning his blond blue-eyed model, that she was none other than sixteen-year-old Belinda Blanchard, daughter of "Champagne Flight" superstar Bonnie, a teenage runaway missing from her mother's multimillion-dollar Beverly Hills home for over a year. A separate feature article went on:

"Walker's catalog copy explains that Belinda came into his life as a mystery, that he did not learn her identity as Bonnie's runaway daughter until the paintings were almost completed, and that in a violent and regrettable argument he hurt Belinda and drove her out of his life. This exhibit is a tribute to Belinda as well as a declaration of Walker's 'artistic freedom.'

"Will the public find these canvases obscene? The five by seven color photographs in the handsome exhibit catalog leave nothing to the imagination. This is representational art at its most literal. No camera could reveal more of the girl's endowments. But one week from today, when the exhibit opens in two Folsom Street galleries, handsomely refurbished entirely for this event by New York art dealer Arthur Rhinegold, the public can judge for itself."

Dan was beside himself. Why the hell wouldn't I let him hire a criminal lawyer right now?

Alex threw up his hands and said: "Let's all go to dinner at Trader Vic's while we still can."

Only G.G. was smiling as we sat around the kitchen table drinking our coffee and reading the article.

"Soon as it hits the wire service," he said, "she'll see it and she'll call, Jeremy."

"Maybe, maybe not," I said. I had visions of her walking along windswept streets in Paris, never glancing at the papers on the stands. But my heart was thudding. It had begun!

Rhinegold called an hour later. The press was driving him insane to get early glimpses of the pictures. But nobody was getting through that door until the museum people had seen the work on Sunday night as planned. Ten thousand copies of the catalog had just arrived in the warehouse. The bookstore at the Museum of Modern Art had just called to place an order. We were going to sell the catalog, weren't we? Wouldn't I reconsider putting a price on it.

"It will help us to print more copies!" Rhinegold insisted. "Jeremy, be reasonable."

"All right," I said. "But you keep mailing them all over. You keep giving them away."

By noon we knew the LA papers had carried their versions of the story, with added material about the "suppression" of Final Score. I was called the Rembrandt of children's book illustration. "Saturday Morning Charlotte" was praised as an oasis in the desert of children's TV. Belinda was called "mesmerizing" in her first performance by the reviewer who had seen her debut at Cannes. Another story was devoted entirely to Marty and Bonnie and United Theatricals' decision at Cannes not to distribute Final Score. "The fully illustrated exhibit catalog is every bit as hefty as any of Walker's children's books," said a feature writer in the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, "and it is only when measured against the earlier adventures of Charlotte or Bettina that the obscenity here can be fully understood. Belinda appears to be Walker's heroine unclothed. Would Bonnie have ever permitted such exploitation of her daughter had she known of it? Where is Belinda now?"

The telephone started to ring.

From one o'clock to six I answered reporters' questions. Yes, I had lived with her, yes, I was trying desperately to find her, no, Bonnie and Marty were not to my knowledge looking for her any longer. Yes, I knew the paintings might jeopardize my reputation, but I had to go with the paintings. The paintings were my most important work to date. No, my publishers had not commented. No, I was not worried about negative reactions. An artist has to follow his obsessions. That had always been my way.

Dan gave up and went back to his office to arrange for his secretary, Barbara, to come over and field these calls.

Alex was getting a little tired of the house, just as I knew he would, what with my cooking and the one Victorian bathroom. I wouldn't be offended, would I, if he went on up and got a suite at the Clift?

"Of course not, Alex, go ahead. I wouldn't blame you if you lit out of here altogether, I told you that, you and G.G. both."

"Undiscussable," Alex murmured. "I'll be five minutes away if you need me, and you call me and tell me what's happening. I'll never get through on that phone!"

G.G. was worried about the phone, too. It was ringing nonstop by seven. The operators were cutting in with "emergencies" when I was on the line.

"I'm going with Alex," G.G. said. "I'11 call New York and give them the number of the hotel room, and that way she can reach me if she can't reach you."

My ex-wife Celia called from New York after dinner. She was hysterical. She'd been trying to get through for an hour and a half. It was in the columns: WALKER WALKS OFF ON YOUNG FANS.

"Celia, I told you, I wouldn't do another children's book if somebody chained me in a dungeon and said I had to do it or I'd never be let out."

"Jeremy, that sounds like a children's book! What's this girl got, to make you flip out like this over her? Jeremy, you need help."

"Celia, from the first moment I saw her, it was for me!"

The Dallas papers had it on Tuesday morning, concentrating on Bonnie, their hometown girl. She and Belinda had been photographed together five years ago at their last press conference in Dallas. Could a rift have separated mother and daughter for over a year?

As for Walker, who "claims" to have lived with teenage beauty Belinda as he painted her, his books were in every library in the state. Walker's last appearance in Forth Worth in 1982 had been a triumph, with two thousand books sold.

Then the call came from Houston that the Chronicle and the Post had also run it with the focus on Jeremiah saying, "There are hin Texas-size scandal here."

There was a picture of Susan in the de rigueur cowboy hat. "For a tried to reach her for a part in a movie," Susan had told the paper long distance from Los Angeles. "They kept telling me she was away at xxx. Now it turns out she was in San Francisco living with Jeremy. It's a good thing somebody was taking care of her."

No, Susan hadn't seen the catalog, though she'd try to be in San Francisco for the opening. "Look, he doesn't have to prove his integrity as artist. Go in any bookstore. Open one of his books."

Her Dad was quoted as saying he was proud of her Final Score. He had tried to get it shown at a film festival in Houston and had run into the suspicious difficulties. "I mean, I think United Theatricals killed this picture for highly personal reasons. I think we have a case of ego and temperament, an old-style Hollywood prima donna who didn't want competition from an ingénue who just happened to be her little girl then there are a lot of things about it that puzzle us."

"I can tell you this much," Susan added. "If and when I find her I'm offering her the lead in my next picture. It's real nice and all that she's the subject of eighteen paintings by Jeremy Walker, but her career's been on ice a little too long."

Jeremiah had wrapped up her commitments to United Theatricals. Galaxy Pictures was bankrolling her new venture, Of Will and Shame, Limelight to distribute worldwide.

OK, Susan, take it and run with it, honey. Everything was working just fine.

Now those guys with the British accents were calling from the Enquirer. They were so surprised when I agreed to talk to them.

"I love her. I quarreled with her because I didn't understand all the things that had happened to her. She had starred in this wonderful movie, and then it was never distributed. Ask Susan Jeremiah. And in Hollywood she'd had a tragic romance. She'd been in terrible shape when she ran away from home. She was in New York for a while when detectives started looking for her. Then she came to San Francisco where we met. But, you see, the important thing is that I find her. She's out there somewhere all alone."

Stringers from the Globe and the Star came right to the front door. In .fic~ .v~he. ta J wes~r ro answer the bell, I saw a number of people standing around out there. A flashbulb went off when I stepped onto the porch. My neighbor Sheila was talking to a man on the curb.

"Way to go, Jeremy!" Sheila shouted. She waved a cot of the xxx.

The reporters tried to get in the door.

"Nobody inside," I said, "now what do you want to know?"

We were still talking when another stringer showed up from People magazine. Come on, if I just let her in, it meant she could sell her story. She needed the money. I said no. I noticed there was a guy up on the balcony of the wooden apartment house on the corner, shooting pictures with a telephoto lens.

G.G. called from the Clift at eleven thirty. "The phone situation is almost impossible. How could Belinda possibly get through?"

"Dan's working on that. The phone company may be able to put in another line. But at the rate it's going, that won't help very much."

"Well, I just got a call from friends in Boston. It's in the papers there, and it was in the Washington Post, too."

"And Belinda has not called," I said dejectedly.

"Patience, Jeremy," G.G. said. "By the way, Alex is coming up in a while to have a nightcap with you."

"Who's going to bed after the nightcap?" I asked. "I'm sitting here by the phone."

"Yeah, me too."

But I was asleep on the studio floor with the answering machine up loud when G.G. shouted to me through it on Wednesday morning:

"Jeremy, wake up. USA Today just ran it. So did The New York Times. That's bound to reach her in Europe. The Herald Tribune over there must be carrying it by now."

By Wednesday noon the local news radio station was running items about us constantly. We were getting calls from friends in Aspen and Atlanta and even Portland, Maine.

Then Dan came in with the Los Angeles Times. Marty Moreschi and Bonnie had issued a statement denying all knowledge of Belinda's whereabouts or activities for a year. "Bonnie is shocked and horrified to learn of this bizarre exhibit of paintings in San Francisco. Through private agencies Bonnie has been searching night and day for Belinda since the girl's disappearance. Bonnie's first and only concern is for her daughter's welfare. Bonnie is on the verge of nervous collapse."