You're getting more coverage now than an embassy bombing.»
«Is that all you care about? Coverage? What if I
Marilyn paused a fraction before saying,
«And what if I never let you see them. Ever. What if I told them you were dead and they'd never know their grandma?»
«You wouldn't do that.»
«Wouldn't I?»
Don cut in, «Guys, maybe we should take a break — »
«Shut up, Donald,» said Marilyn. «Go ahead, Susan. Tell me more. What would you do to hurt me?»
Susan, suddenly aware of how well Marilyn could read her, pulled back. «All I'm saying is that I'm not over it, Mom. The money. The lawyers. Those scenes we had. The
Marilyn's index finger clickety-clicked the rim of her empty glass. «Fair enough.»
«You own the house?» Susan asked.
«The bank.»
«You're going to have to sell it now. And all those chichi outfits I can just imagine you pigging out on and buying in New York.»
«Yeah, we probably will. Make you happy?»
«It does. I lived on bulk yogurt and three-day-old vegetables for years after the show ended. Larry didn't foot the bills. He dumped me pretty quick. I don't know what would have happened if the Chris gig hadn't come up. Everybody was laughing at me behind my back, and it was you who put me through all that.»
Marilyn looked at her coldly. «Been practicing that one a long time, dear?»
Susan decided to cut it off there. «I'm going to leave,» Susan said. «The airline's going to fly me to Los Angeles.»
Susan paused and looked at Don with a question that came to her just then. «Did you ever meet Chris?»
«He's an asshole.»
Susan laughed. «Yeah, well, you're pretty well right on that score. But there's nobody can trash a hotel room as well as he can.»
Susan blew Don a kiss and then paused in front of Marilyn. She shrugged, turned around and left. It hadn't been the triumphant touchй fest she'd hoped for, but not much in life ever was.
Three hours later she was back in Los Angeles; four hours later she was in Chris's house, alone; Chris was in South America. The house on Prestwick had been emptied after the crash, her things sold or given away.
In just a year, the city Susan had known was gone. Larry Mortimer had quit managing Steel Mountain weeks after Susan's crash. He'd divorced Jenna and was living with Amber in Pasadena, producing CD-ROM games for preteens. She called and left a message that she was back, and he drove over to visit her, cutting through the gaggle of press people on the street.
«Sue? Sue! It's me, Larry — open up.»
«Larry …» Susan opened the door and was stilled as always by Larry's resemblance to Eugene. But this time she'd known Eugene the man, and Larry was a pale match for Eugene's quirky, arty crustiness. Larry was … just another Hollywood manager unit. Susan found herself trying to mask the flood of emotion she was feeling for Eugene. Larry mistook this for Susan's pleasure at seeing him and came toward her in a slightly seductive manner. Susan in turn gave him the most sisterly of hugs. He asked how she was feeling and they exchanged small talk.
«How's Amber?»
«Pregnant. The show dropped her because they didn't want to fit it into the script.»
«Well, congratulations. You finally left Jenna, huh?»
«Oh, you know.»
«No, I
«The
«I checked, but there's no hope in hell of you getting any, how shall we say, “back wages,” from the Steel Mountain Corporation. There's nothing there to pay you with. And by the way, you'll have to do a photo-op with Chris and sign some divorce papers. I can make it a one-stop deal. He's back from Caracas on Monday.»
«Adam Norwitz is supposed to be managing my life these days.»
«Adam's become a bigger fish since you were here. Two pilots he was connected with got picked up.»
«Life's so rich, isn't it, Larry?»
«Snippy, snippy.» Larry found a can of house-brand cola. He looked at it, paused, and asked Susan, «Can this stuff go bad?»
Susan shrugged and said, «Go nuts. Live dangerously.»
Larry opened it, poured two glasses, they toasted her return and he soon left. An hour later Dreama came over. She was deeply lonely, without a focus and was only too eager to enter the new family fold. She was given instructions to meet Randy and Eugene Junior at the airport. Randy by then had officially changed his name from Montarelli to Hexum. He and the baby moved in with Dreama that night, and would hunt for a Brady Bunch house the next day. It was all Susan could do not to abandon all her plans, run to Dreama's and inhale Eugene Junior's sweet baby smell.
Public interest in Susan's reappearance, at first blazing, died down to near nothing. Susan did nothing to encourage publicity, and at first Adam saw this as a clever device to jack up her price for an exclusive interview. But Susan rested firm, and Adam had a hard time forgiving her for blowing the chance to sell at the peak of public interest.
Susan was able to rent her old Cape Cod house from the Steel Mountain Corporation, who'd bought it after the plane crash. It was eight minutes from Eugene Junior. She landed Randy a job in a music PR office as an assistant. He used this money to rent the agreed-upon house in the Valley. The Cape Cod house existed almost purely as an elaborate ruse to deflect any possible public awareness away from Eugene Junior. Susan was still trying to think of the lowest-profile manner possible of «taking Eugene public,» but finding a solution was proving difficult, as any solution meant a media deluge.
Susan slept in her Cape Cod house at night. Otherwise it was useful only as a shell for her answering machine. It received calls, almost all from Adam Norwitz, to inform Susan of offers for the rights to tell-all cable network dramatizations of her life. These were offers she had to refuse because she publicly stood by her amnesia story, and technically she
«Christ, Randy, these losers think that ambushing me on my private line somehow predisposes me to like them. Whatta buncha lepers.»
Randy agreed. His job had given him a small measure of media savvy. His office handled what press remained for Steel Mountain, and he brought back reports that the band's five members had succumbed to road fatigue, catastrophic drug use, hepatitis C, assault-and-battery lawsuits, and musical irrelevance.
«My days are only a little bit starfucky. Mostly they're spent photocopying legal documents and fetching arcane health-food products from halfway across town. Starfucky's more fun.»
Susan was cutting melon wedges into zigzag shapes for a barbecue at the Brady house. «Steel Mountain's really over now, isn't it?»
«I don't want to be disloyal — they pay the bills,» said Randy, «but how much more energy is it worth to make five grizzled Liverpudlians with teeth like melting sugar crystals look like sexual and moral outlaws for kids maybe two decades younger than themselves? It's obscene past a point.»
