Photoplay (2 page)

Click.

The piano began again–“That's Amore,” never mind that Tito was from Argentina, not Italy—­and the pair began to descend.

Click.

They made a striking ­couple. Tito, his dark hair a shiny pompadour with a lock that curled over his forehead, was all in black. His formfitting silk shirt was open halfway down his muscular chest, and light glinted from the medallion that hung from a thick gold chain around his neck. Bunny was in a flaming red gown with ropes of pearls around her neck, her dark hair pulled to the side and cascading over one shoulder.

Click.

As Bunny and Tito rounded the bend in the staircase, the light from the chandelier created an aura behind them. Bunny's dangly diamond (or maybe good-­quality paste?) earrings glittered. Duane zoomed in on her. Close up, it was clear that something was off. Bunny was leaning heavily against Tito. Each step seemed like it took great effort.
Click.
Her smile was a tense mask.
Click.

Duane's camera was winding when the guests standing around him gasped. A few steps from the bottom, Bunny had lost her footing. In what felt like slow motion she toppled forward, a blur of red and flashing jewels. Moments later she was on her hands and knees at the foot of the stairs. She looked back over her shoulder at Tito, who just stood there staring at her with a thin smile, not making a move to help.

Duane raised his camera and was about to snap the shutter when the viewfinder went black and he heard, “
Nyet!
” Sy Sterling was next to him, his hand over the camera lens.

Joelen pushed her way through the crowd. “Bunny, are you okay?” She helped her mother right herself. “Are you hurt?” She sat on the bottom step next to her.

With the pair of them side by side, Duane realized mother and daughter had those same eyes, like Persian turquoise, and their satin gowns were the same silhouette, formfitting, off the shoulders with a plunging sweetheart neckline. Duane's fingers itched, and it was all he could do to keep from raising his camera and shooting the pair of them. But Sterling was right there making sure he didn't.
Later
, he told himself. Sterling couldn't babysit him all night.

“Oh, dear,” Bunny said. “Not very graceful.” She reached down for her foot and grimaced. “It's my ankle. I'm afraid I've twisted it.”

Tito crouched beside mother and daughter, and an odd look passed between him and Bunny, another moment Duane desperately wished he'd been able to capture on film. Had the fall had been staged? But why? Bunny didn't need to twist her ankle in order to be center of attention.

“Let me have a look,” said a man Duane didn't recognize. He unbuttoned his suit jacket and crouched in front of Bunny, who raised the hem of her dress and extended a bare foot. The ankle was clearly injured. Already it was black and blue and twice its normal size. How could it have swelled up so fast, and where was Bunny's shoe? Had she come down the stairs barefoot? Maybe it had come off in the fall. Duane looked around but didn't see it.

“I'm okay,” Bunny said to the man.

“Really?” he said, gently flexing her foot and examining her ankle. He looked like he knew what he was doing. “This does not look okay.” To Joelen, he said, “Honey, can you fetch some ice and a dish towel?”

Joelen raced off, and the man wrapped his hand around Bunny's ankle, letting his other hand slide partway up her leg. Gently he pressed her foot back.

“Ow,” Bunny said. “That hurts. Is it broken?”

“I don't think so. Badly sprained, I'd say. I'm afraid you won't be doing much dancing tonight.” The man helped Bunny to her feet, took her arm, and walked her over to the couch. She sat on one end, raised her legs, and leaned back. Joelen returned with a bowl of crushed ice and a dish towel.

“You need to stay off it. Keep it elevated and iced,” the man said, wrapping some ice in the towel and setting it on her foot.

Bunny winced and reached out for Joelen's hand. “Don't worry, darling. I'll live. But be a dear and turn off that light, would you?” She indicated the lamp next to the couch.

Joelen turned off the light, and shadow fell across Bunny's face, but not before Duane realized that Bunny's face makeup, which had seemed fine from a distance, was thickly applied. Like war paint. And even at that it didn't completely hide a bruise and swelling over her famously high cheekbone.

The fall might have been staged, but Bunny's injuries were not. Duane remembered the door slamming.
Puta.
Whore. He wondered if Bunny had been hurt before the party, if the fall had been faked in order to account for her injuries. That so-­called doctor might even have been in on it.

Duane wondered, too, if Bunny's daughter was so easily duped. He thought not, as he followed Joelen's gaze across the room to where Tito was now standing in the shadow of a tall potted palm, eyes hooded, a cigarette hanging from his lower lip, doing a swell Robert Mitchum imitation.

Tito took two martini glasses from the tray of a passing waiter, and made his way over to where Joelen's friend Deirdre was standing. He offered her a glass. At first Deirdre shook her head, but after some back-­and-­forth she took the glass, sipped, coughed, and laughed. Tito rubbed her back and then slipped his arm around her waist. She gazed up into his eyes, her cheeks pink. Duane glanced about to see if Deirdre's parents were in the crowd to witness this scene unfold. They weren't, but Bunny was watching with bottled rage. With a flick of her finger, Bunny gestured Sterling over and said something in his ear. He stood, shot his jacket sleeves, charged over, and inserted himself between Tito and Deirdre.

Duane took advantage of Sterling's absence to pull out his second camera and snap picture after picture of Bunny and Joelen, one seated and the other standing, both of them watching drama play out between Tito and Sterling. Joelen looked increasingly distressed. Her mother's hand clamped on her arm seemed to be the only thing keeping her from rushing over to her friend. The anger on Bunny's face faded into uncertainty and finally into grim satisfaction. She pulled Joelen down on the sofa beside her, drew her close, and kissed the top of her head. Mother and daughter. They looked so vulnerable, both of them. Duane almost couldn't bring himself to take another shot.

When he lowered his camera, both Tito and Deirdre were gone. Deirdre reappeared about an hour later, wobbly on her pins, her bouffant deflated, laughing and dancing about until she started to slow down like an overwound toy. By then the girl's parents had gone home. At one in the morning when the party ended, Tito still hadn't put in another appearance.

D
UANE WAS THE
last to leave. He'd packed away his equipment and started to walk down the driveway back to his car when he heard girlish singing dissolving into laughter. Shrieks and giggles.

Deirdre and Joelen were on the lawn, silhouetted in the spotlights mounted at the corners of the house. Joelen had her arms out and her head pitched back as she spun around. She caught her foot on the hem of her dress and sat down hard. Meanwhile, Deirdre twirled, her arms forming an arch over her head as her skirt floated around her. She looked like an ethereal ballerina.

Duane rummaged in his bag for his camera, but before he could get it out, Deirdre had staggered to a halt. She doubled over, sank to her knees, and just hung there.

“Are you okay?” Duane heard Joelen ask.

Deirdre hiccupped. “I'm—­” She put her hand over her mouth. Burped. Spasmed. And threw up, vomit exploding from between her fingers. Even from a hundred feet away, Duane could smell it.

Doubled over, Deirdre vomited again. And again. Finally she just hung there for a few moments before falling over and lying facedown in the grass. “He said—­” The words came out in a croak. Duane moved closer so he could hear better. “He said they were Shirley Temples.”

“Tito?” Joelen said, crawling over to Deirdre.

Duane couldn't hear the answer. Only Joelen's next question. “Were they pink?”

“Huh?”

“The drinks. Were they pink?”

Duane didn't need to hear the answer. After long pause, Joelen said, “The bastard. Did he do anything else?”

Deirdre started to cry.

Duane fought the urge to rush over and comfort her. If anything like this had happened to Susan, he'd have wanted to be there. To tell her that whatever had happened, it wasn't her fault. Not that he'd ever let Susan dress up and swan about at a Hollywood party like some ingénue. But now that Susan was turning sixteen, soon she'd be driving and God knew what her mother would let her to get into in the back-­of-­beyond Maine. Reality was, Duane was going to miss the rest of his daughter's firsts: good and bad, triumphs and traumas. He started to weep, and that's when he realized just how soused he was. He'd lost count after the fifth shot. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose.

The girls were getting to their feet. With Joelen holding Deirdre up, they started for the house. Now that was a picture. But before Duane could get out his camera, the outdoor lights went out and the girls disappeared in shadow. A few moments later, a rectangle of light flashed—­the front door opening and closing. The lights in downstairs windows of the house went out. At last only a bank of upstairs windows was lit.

Duane sat on the lawn. He yearned for sleep. He lay down and closed his eyes. He'd rest just for a few moments, until the world stopped spinning and he'd regained his bearings. Then he'd drive home and close himself into his darkroom to develop the proofs he'd promised for tomorrow.

He shut his eyes. Past a cricket's chirp, Duane heard raised voices. Sounded as if Bunny and Tito were picking up where they'd left off.

A
T FIRST
D
UANE
thought the headlights that woke him were searchlights, strafing the sky—­he'd been dreaming that he was taking pictures at a movie premiere.

He propped himself up on his elbows and watched as a sports car with its top down turned around in front of the house. Tires screeched as it peeled off down the driveway, close enough for him to see that the driver was a man before its taillights winked out over the horizon. Moments later, a dark sedan came up the driveway and pulled around to the back of the house. A car door slammed.

Duane sank back down onto the grass. The moon, which had been directly overhead, was now midway to the horizon and seemed much larger. What was the word for that? Parallax. Of course. He knew full well how much camera angle mattered.

He lay there a few minutes longer. Not completely sober but nearly there, he lumbered to his feet and rubbed his face. God, what he would have given for a glass of orange juice. His mouth tasted like old tires. It took him a moment to remember that his own car was parked down the driveway by the pool. He picked up his camera bag, yawned, and gazed across the stretch of lawn at the house.

That was when he noticed that the front door was wide open, and lights were on in all the upstairs windows. Duane checked his watch. It was three in the morning. Were Bunny and Tito still fighting? He made his way up to the house. At the open front door, he listened for voices.

What he heard were sirens, far away and growing louder. He turned his back to the house, facing down the hill and looking in the direction of Sunset Boulevard, the direction from which the Beverly Hills PD or Fire would be coming. The sirens grew steadily louder until strobes lit up the horizon.

Duane thought of the photo ops he'd missed. He'd been out drinking with friends and arrived too late to capture the fires that engulfed a block of houses in west Beverly Hills where Howard Hughes crashed a prototype army plane. He'd been in Vegas when Eddie Fisher headlined at the Tropicana, but it hadn't occurred to him to get a picture of the singer with Debbie Reynolds on one arm and Elizabeth Taylor on the other. He'd raced north from Encino but arrived too late to get a picture of the wreckage of James Dean's lethal crash.

The tops of the cypress trees that lined the driveway flashed light and shadow. Any moment emergency vehicles would be at the house. Something had happened to call them here, and this time Lady Luck had anointed him cameraman. Maybe he'd capture the final act in Tito Acevedo's and Bunny Nichol's tumultuous affair. Tito Acevedo being led off in handcuffs. Bunny in tears.

Duane slipped inside. The downstairs was dark, the only voices from overhead. He raced up the stairs, taking them two at a time, his camera bag banging against his side. At the top landing he paused and listened. A man's voice was barely audible from behind the nearest bedroom door. Duane caught just the occasional word. “
Keep . . .”
“
Do not
. . .”

The voice grew louder. The door to the room started to open. Duane dashed down the hall, around the corner, and let himself into the first room, closing the door quietly behind him. For a moment, he pressed his back against the door and hugged his camera bag to his chest. When he didn't hear anyone coming after him, he relaxed a notch and looked around.

He was alone in what he knew right away was Bunny's daughter's bedroom. The room smelled of hairspray and shoes and vomit. A wall closet was open and clothing cascaded out onto the plush wall-­to-­wall carpeting. No one was sleeping in either of the twin beds with white headboards. The bedding on one of the beds, a rumpled quilt patterned in yellow-­and-­white daisies, was pushed back. The other bed had been stripped down to a bare mattress.

Lights flashed outside the window and the siren cut off. Duane looked out. Two police cars were pulled up in front of the house. Officers got out and entered the house. All Duane had to do was wait a bit and then creep back to the top of the stairs. From there he'd be able to figure out what was going on and determine the best camera angle.