meet you.»
Larry moved her around a corner and said, «Christ.»
Susan said, «Larry, I can't see you anymore.» Her body began to feel as though it were rising upward like a helium balloon. A string had been cut.
He wiped his forehead with a paper doily from a table of mineral waters. «We'll talk about this tomorrow.»
«Yeah, we will.»
Larry stood still and appraised Susan's face. «You're young. It'll pass.»
«But I don't want it to pass.»
«It's called getting older. I'll send you the coverage on it.»
«Ryan O'Neal's here,» Susan said to change the conversation.
«I'll introduce you.»
And so the evening went on. Susan drank German mineral water — Sprudel-something, with a name like a pastry — and swished the water about inside her mouth, almost burning her tongue with bubbles — it tasted geological. She watched Larry squirm and lie to the people around him who were squirming and lying right back.
«Susan, this is Cher.»
«Hello.»
«Susan, this is Valerie Bertinelli.»
«Nice to meet you.»
«Susan, this is Jack Klugman.»
«Great. Hi.»
«Susan, this is Christopher Atkins.»
«Hey.»
«Susan, this is Lee Radziwill.»
«Hi.»
The party felt like it went on all night, when, like most film industry functions, it actually ended around nine. She couldn't have known that the party was to be her high-water mark within the entertainment world's social structure.
The morning after the giraffe party, a car from the production company picked Susan up at 6:30A .M. She sat in the back seat, memorizing her lines for the day. She performed her role. She stood for publicity photos with her TV parents and siblings. She had a fight with Larry and dead-bolted him out of the Kelton Street apartment. Days passed. Her strength passed. She let Larry in. She disgusted herself. She'd built no other substantial friendships during her TV blitzkrieg. It was either back to Larry or careen into outer space, and she couldn't face that. Any discussion of Jenna or divorce led to a brick wall which Susan acknowledged with the ever more edgy tag line, «Excuse
Susan was never a particularly good actor, but at the start of the TV series, she did have a naturalness that stood out and looked good against her actor-since-birth costars. But the naturalness began to wear thin and she became increasingly self-conscious about her body, her face, the words that came out of her mouth and the overall effect she had on people. The scrutiny was a thousand times more intense than any pageant. Her encounter with Jenna at the giraffe party opened some inner sluice of her conscience, and her acting became abysmal almost overnight. She told Dreama: «It's like the part of my brain that used to allow me to do an okay acting job got all warped. It's merging with the part of my brain that makes up lies. I can just
Susan guested on
Chapter Twenty-five
John sat beside his rescuer, Beth, in a security office adjacent to the private jet facility at Flagstaff's airport. Outside the wired-glass windows, in the warm gray air, hydro and aviation towers blinked rubies and diamonds. John was wearing clothes Beth had assembled from her husband's castoffs. His pale aqua shirt was crisply ironed and his skin was brown as if he were baking on the inside, like a bird just removed from the oven. His hair had been hacked off a few weeks before with a hunting knife in a Las Cruces, New Mexico, Shell station rest room. His eyes were clear and wide like a child's. Beth said to him, «I'm sorry about Jeanie and that tape. She's a wild one. I've never known what to do with her.»
«It doesn't matter.» said John.
Beth bought two weak coffees from a grumbling vending machine. «Here,» she said, «take one.»
«Oh — no thanks.»
«Go on.»
John held on to his coffee with the same unsureness he'd felt when holding a baby for the first time, Ivan and Nylla's daughter, MacKenzie. A fuel truck drove by in a mirage of octane. Beth said, «Your friends really have their own private jet, then?»
John nodded.
«Jeanie never would have done it if she hadn't found out about that jet.»
«It doesn't matter. Really. It doesn't.»
Beth's daughter, Jeanie, had sold the tape of John's naked climb from the ditch and the hour that followed to a local network affiliate. It would be a lead story on a nationally broadcast tabloid show the next night.
«What makes me mad,» said Beth, «is that she's going to use the money to pay for her boyfriend's car, not even her own. Dammit, she doesn't have to do
«Young people.»
«You said it.»
A shrillness called out from the black air, and John, staring at the floor, placed it as quickly as a dog recognizes the firing pattern of the cylinders in his master's engine. It was Ivan and the G3. John heard it land and then taxi. He heard the heavy metal staff doors opening, footsteps and voices: Ivan, Nylla, Doris and Melody.
«John-O?»
John stood up and tried to raise his head, but his eyes were too heavy. «John-O?» Ivan crouched down and looked up at John. «We're here, John-O.» But John couldn't speak or look up. The coffee dropped from his hand and the cheap plastic cup rattled on the floor. Nylla, Doris and Melody kissed him on the cheek and John could smell their perfumes, so kind and decent that he choked.
Ivan looked over at Beth, who was holding John's laundered clothes inside a paper grocery bag. «Are you … ?»
«Yes, I'm Beth.»
Ivan handed John over to Melody and Nylla. «Thank you for your …»
«It was nothing. But your friend here, he's in a bad way.»
Ivan handed Beth an envelope from which she pulled out a stack of hundreds. «Jeremy from my office got your address and numbers?»
«He did.»
There was nothing left to do but go out onto the tarmac and into the plane and head west. Beth said good-
