Dreams Are Not Enough (23 page)

“Jesus, what a way to choose to die, water filling your lungs—it takes five minutes.”

They had reached her room. Visualizing Diner’s last five minutes, his frantic, animal-instinct struggles growing feeble, she shook her head.

“I saw him getting the car. I should’ve gone over…. Stopped him.”

Hap put both his arms around her, holding her. She was shamed by the comfort she got from the cotton shirt that smelled of him, his warmth, the beat of his heart, then horrified that a faint fringe of desire stirred within her.

“I love you.”

The words were a low rumble, and she wasn’t positive if he had spoken or if she had heard a nonexistent voice.

Pulling away, she said clearly, “I never stopped loving you.”

He gazed down at her, the overhead light gleaming in his questioning eyes. Had he actually spoken? If he hadn’t, then her remark must be an embarrassing non sequitur to him. The exterior door at the end of the corridor opened and a heavy-hipped woman in purple slacks tramped inside, peering at them, showing recognition. She halted a few doors away, dawdling with her key as if she hoped to hear their conversation.

“You must be hungry, Alyssia,” Hap said in a friendly, offhand tone.

“Want me to have them bring you milk?”

“Please—oh, and a candy bar.”

“A Hershey with almonds,” he said.

“You remembered,” she said.

“I haven’t,” he said, “forgotten anything.”

Alyssia, more tired than she could remember, her leg aching ferociously, sipped the milk but found it impossible to eat more than one square of chocolate. Fully clothed, she stretched on the bed,

attempt N

ing to consider the significance of her brief conversation with Hap.

But instead she kept seeing Diner’s corpse hobbling, drifting.

She blinked in surprise at the yellow sun flooding between the un drawn drapes. Last night it hadn’t seemed feasible that she’d sleep, but she had.

A rap on the door had wakened her, and another sounded now. Positive that Juanita had arrived, she called, “Just a sec.” Unhooking the chain, she turned the lock.

Maxim stood there.

Instinctively she pushed the door to close it.

He gripped the wood, wedging in his shoe.

“I need to talk to you.

Please? “

“If you don’t go away, I’ll scream.” In what Saint-Simon film had she said that line?

“I’m not wearing my Jack the Rapist suit, I swear I’m in no mood to attempt any assault or the least battery. But I haven’t slept. Been doing what you might call some heavy thinking. You’re the only person who’ll understand.”

“Me? As far as I’m concerned, you’re a complete mystery. I don’t understand one thing about you.”

“Alyssia, if I don’t get some of this garbage out, I’ll explode. / am begging.”

His eyes were mapped with red veins, and the shadows beneath were nearly black. Diner asked me not to hate him. Warily she released the door.

He crossed the room, sagging into the chintz love seat.

“What happened on the cliff?” he asked.

“The scene we played isn’t exactly clear in my mind.”

“You really can’t remember?”

“I yelled a lot of ugly things about Diner, and you yelled back. Then suddenly you were on the ground. Did I hit you or what?”

“You held me over the cliff.”

“I what?” His bloodshot eyes were incredulous.

“You lifted me off my feet and dangled me over the edge of the cliff.”

“Jesus.”

“It seemed like a year, but was probably less than a minute. One of my crutches dropped into the sea.”

“I knew I went bananas, but I didn’t realize it was that bad.”

“It still doesn’t ring a bell?”

He shook his head.

“I felt something inside me snap—it actually sounded like a bursting balloon—when I saw him floating and rocking like some sort of aquatic animal in that damn car.”

“It was horrible.” She shivered.

“He meant too much to me,” Maxim said.

“And that frightened the hell out of me. I’d had guys before him, lots of them. During the act I was both titillated and terrified by how my honored sire would react if he could see me. When I met Diner, he became the only person I wanted . and I wanted him excessively. I don’t mean just sex, although God knows I was insatiable. I wanted to be around him every second. So there I was, trapped in a form of involuntary servitude and scared shitless by it. I couldn’t stop hurting him. But you’ve got to believe this, Alyssia. Even though he kept telling me he couldn’t bear any more of what I was slinging at him, I never, repeat never, thought that he’d drive any cars over any cliffs.”

“Neither did I.”

“Does this sound like a laying off of guilt? When I said I was terrified of what I was, maybe I wouldn’t have been if it weren’t for Dad.”

“Maxim, so you’re afraid of your father. Who isn’t?”

“Dad’s why I needed marriage plus the signed affadavit of every starlet in the greater Hollywood area that Maxim Cordiner is the stud of studs.”

“What could be more natural than trying to cover up?”

“Nothing I’ve done in my life has ever been perfectly natural, Alyssia. Unless you count falling in love with Diner. I went to France to sign you for Wandering On, and when I saw you in that drafty barn, all dolled up in your blue velvet and fake sapphires, I thought to myself, This chick’s something else. Maybe playing around with her will cure me of Diner. But then I began to see something of him in you. It was the eyes. His eyes and your eyes have mysterious depths. I did care about you. Not like Diner, you understand—I never could love a woman that way. But a genuine emotion flickered. And you rejected me.”

She sighed.

“The flicker wasn’t there for me.”

“Yes, your interest is in the noblest Cordiner of them all.” He paused.

“Anyway, on my part, rejection or no, I began to view you as the sexual savior of my reprehensible life. I kept building up what I felt for you. And crushing down what I felt for Diner. God, the things I did to him. And said to him. I told him he swished, I told him he ought to come to the set in drag. I told him—ahh, fuck, what didn’t I tell the poor dead bastard?”

He bent his head into his hands.

She moved to the love seat, sitting close to him.

“It’s over.”

“Over?” Maxim said, his voice muffled.

“At this very instant they’re on the rocks dredging up the car, taking him out of it.”

“Oh, Maxim.” She put an arm around his shuddering back.

“Maxim, Maxim.”

“… How am I going to live?”

Diner had asked this same question in this same room. Her answer then had been that people survive. She didn’t offer this cold and disputable comfort now. She let Maxim cling to her, and when he buried his wet face between her breasts, she kissed his russet hair.

“How am I going to live?” he gasped out.

BEVERLY HILLS, 1986

A breeze stirred across the patio, rippling the heart-shaped pool.

Maxim gazed broodingly at the wavelets.

“Without Alyssia,” he said finally, “Wandering On would have been long strips of celluloid running through a machine.”

“Exactly.” Barry nodded.

“But I’ve never quite understood how you convinced her to do it.”

“If you’ll recall, Barry-boy,” Maxim replied, “in those days your career had not reached its current splendor, and you were panting to earn your first buck. I spelled out to her that you and she were a package deal. If she didn’t play Cassie, no script for you.”

“I should’ve guessed it was something like that,” Barry said.

“She’s always had a fine generosity of spirit.”

“Are the two of you crazy or what?” Beth’s voice rose from its natural, pleasantly modulated level.

“She came back for one reason.

Hollywood is where it’s at. You didn’t convince her. Maxim, she used you. And she used Barry and she used Uncle Desmond and she used poor Hap. She used all of us. “

“It’s bad enough she’s a driving bitch,” PD added, “but educated word is that she had a hand in Diner Robert’s death.”

Maxim took off his dark glasses, staring at PD for a long moment.

“She didn’t,” he said harshly.

PD turned away, gulping at his Campari. Though estranged from his cousins, he had joined with Barry and Beth in vehement condemnation of Diner Roberts and Montgomery Clift: The Inside Story of Two Actors, the 1981 smirky dual biography that had devoted a full chapter to a supposed affair between Maxim and Diner. In defense of Maxim’s heterosexuality, they cited their cousin’s four marriages and numerous well-publicized affairs. At publication, though, Maxim had issued no denials, filed no libel suits, remaining incommunicado on his island off the Gulf Coast of Mexico.

“If Alyssia’s so marvelous, why did we all come rushing over to N

day? ” Beth’s aging, pretty face was pink.

“You both know the answer as well as I do. We’re terrified of what she can do to us.”

Barry glanced nervously at the inscrutable windows with their sun protective coating, saying in a low voice, “Maxim and I weren’t canonizing my ex-spouse, merely pointing out she’s hardly a reincarnation of Jezebel.”

“Bull,” PD said.

“That’s exactly what she is.”

“Why so rough on the lady, PD?” Maxim inquired.

“Time was when you would have gone up the length of California on your knees like a penitente to represent her.”

“She was my client, yes. And I always say the agent knows a client best.”

“Why not? You guys imbibe ten percent of their blood,” Barry said, then forced a laugh.

“In this particular case, let me tell you, my client was the one who fucked me over.” Mopping a linen handkerchief over his forehead, PD moved to sit in the shade.

Alyssia had been difficult, yes, but inwardly he had to admit that she quite literally had saved his life.

Because of Diner’s death, Maxim and Hap had to stay in Mendocino, taking charge of what the local undertaker called “the sad remains,” but the rest of the Wandering On ensemble departed on a chartered

DC3.

An August hot spell engulfed Los Angeles. PD, who picked up Alyssia, Barry and Juanita at LAX, kept the air conditioning in his Cad roaring all the way to their furnished rental in West Hollywood.

It was three blocks from their original bachelor apartment and nearly as shabby. Barry had written to Beth from France requesting that she rent them a house in a nice neighborhood. But Los Angeles rents had shot up, and though she searched long and conscientously, this was the best she could find.

Barry and Juanita sweated copiously as they hauled in the luggage. PD helped Alyssia to the couch, responding with alacrity to her murmured request for water.

She downed two more codeines: she had taken two on the plane. The typed instructions on the brown phial read one every four hours, but the pain was unbearable. She told herself it was the heat.

“First thing tomorrow,” PD said, “you have an orthoped look at that leg’” “Doctor Shawkey said the cast should be on for a month,” she responded weakly.

“Shawkey’s fine for the boonies, Alyssia, but now you’re back in civilization.” He took a Tiffany silver card case from his pocket, writing a number on one of his cards.

“This is my guy—Uncle Desmond uses him, and so do Liz, Marion and Natalie.”

“Thanks, PD.” She dropped the card on the coffee table.

“You’re not in shape for socializing right now, but let’s do lunch before you go back to France.”

“France is on the shelf.”

“Good girl! My professional advice is to hold off until October. I heard today that the premiere’s set for the fifteenth.”

“That’s less than two months.” She shifted on the couch, wincing at the shooting pains.

“Why is Magnum pushing so hard for the release?”

“Here’s the situation. Uncle Desmond is enthusiastic. And Uncle Desmond is in urgent need of a hit.”

Barry puffed through the front door, setting down the biggest suitcase.

“What’ve you got in here? The Rosetta Stone? I’m acquiring a goddamn hernia.”

“Don’t you remember? You asked Juanita to save the drafts of the script.”

“Oh,” he said without contrition.

“PD, a drink’s your reward for picking us up.”

“Nothing, thanks.” PD glanced at his watch.

“I’m due at the 1” Orangerie to meet with a friend—he’s producing the new Redford. ” It was in actuality a friend of Frank Zaffarano’s.

As PD’s Cadillac backed out, Barry went into the kitchen to pour himself a drink. The phone rang. He picked up the extension.

“Hello,” he said. Then his voice grew inaudible.

Alyssia knew Whitney was on the other end.

When he returned to the living room, he said, “That was Beth. She’s on her way home, and’ll drive me to see the folks.” He didn’t look at Alyssia.

“I said I’d walk down the block so she won’t have to make the detour.”

“Barry, why’re we playing games?” Alyssia asked quietly.

“We both know you’re meeting Whitney.”

He flushed.

“Is that your hypothesis?”

“I’m not accusing you, Barry. Just saying there’s no point in all this covering up we’ve been doing.”

“We? Am I correct in assuming you’re referring to your little fling with Maxim?”

“Maxim’s got nothing to do with this.”

“But Whitney does?”

“Can’t we make this a reasonable conversation?”

“All right,” he said loudly.

“I’m admitting there’s somebody who cares about me, somebody whose top priority isn’t a multinational career.

Whitney has total belief in my writing. She thinks Wandering On is a fine piece of work. “

“Barry, I made so few suggestions for changes.”

“Yes, but we both know how Maxim arrived at his complaints.”

“Will you stop dragging in Maxim,” she sighed wearily.

“It was a great script, Barry. From now on things’ll be good for you.”

“But not so hot for you. Maxim changes women like he changes shirts.”

“Maxim’s my friend, nothing more.” She spoke with a hint of exasperation.

“Yes—your fidelity’s intact.”

She drew a breath, then said, “Before we went to France I had an affair with Hap.”