Fay stepped back, the water pitcher shaking in her hand. “Vince Baker,” she said.
No reporter likes to have his name blurted out in public, it’s like hanging a fly strip over roadkill on a hot day. Baker leaned in closer, hoping to stifle her volume. He could smell her breath. Two-hour-old cigarette smoke, flat coffee, and the unsuccessful blanket of something minty. She still smelled of this morning, with yesterday’s tastes settled into a ubiquitously sensuous and repulsive brew. “Jesus Christ, Fay.”
Fay’s nose winced as she forced her eyes to comply with her smile. The almost sandy perfection of her hair was pulled back and pinned to her head with just three symmetrical but renegade strands touching her neck. Her pure blue eyes that radiated simplicity and honesty with a real-world edge looked as though they would explode in either tears or rage.
Baker sighed as he leaned back in his chair. The booze, the lack of sleep, and the adrenaline push were all starting to catch up. At another moment he might have panicked, but at this particular instance, in the brightly lit hub of L.A. life, where careless youth seemed to live out an infinite eternity, he just looked at her and said she should relax. It really was just work.
Fay placed the water pitcher on the table. “Boy, oh boy. I am really touched. You know how to melt a girl’s heart.” She looked at him, a smile half-broken, with a hand on her hip. Her eyes darted over the slowly refilling room. “I better get back to the floor. And you better get to
The volume inside C. C. Brown’s began to rise, scored by the teenage girls’ high-pitched screams of recognition and the slurring growl of their male escorts, occasionally punctuated by imitation country club laughter. The shrill was nearly unbearable. The second wave of the afternoon washed in on the coattails of barely contained hormones, a gut-wrenching glimpse of the future, and a sad reminder of the past in which the ghosts of their parents spooked loud and clear. The curse was in getting older. Give or take the notion of predisposition, there wasn’t a kid on this earth who wasn’t open to new ideas, where ideology and politics and pedagogy and ethics don’t cloud every perception. But with each year, judgments begin to fog those ideals until the child begins to see the world through one of the four or so available sets of adult perceptions. It is only the rare ones, the cracks in the gene pool, who break through. Someone, it occurred to him, like Sarah Bernhardt.
Baker left C. C. Brown’s, having escaped Fay’s petulant glare reflected in the copper kettles that cooked the chocolate sauce. He caught the red car back home, with a plan for an all-day stop at Willie’s, sure to escape whatever chase Fay might be calculating. He wished he could hide out all week. Scott was not going to let up on him until he handed in a Bernhardt piece. And he still had no strategy. By tomorrow, he supposed, he would have to take a ride out to Venice. Hoping he could catch some story.
Baker arrived back at his Pico apartment at five minutes before eleven, if his clock was to be trusted. He lit the room, still shadowed in meticulously placed clutter. The bed was tossed by rumpled sheets that had been kicked in the corner from last night’s tryst. He thought about Bernhardt. He had not seen her up close. But from the distance on the pier, her eyes had looked weighted down in exhaustion, but her shoulders poised in pride. He supposed he had to admit that there was something intriguing about her. The sun’s golden glow traced the edges of her form, but still he hardly saw her elevated to a level of immortality, something unearthly akin to the progeny of Leda and Zeus as the Scotts of the world would have you believe.
Baker sat in his overstuffed chair, upholstered in a mysterious green fabric that was fraying in such a way that it resembled a shedding dog. The seat was cluttered with tossed clothes. Some had been partially folded and appeared to have been forgotten. He reached down and pinched a handful of T-shirts and trousers, and then quickly flung them onto a pile of boxes. He wondered what he might eventually say to her, and if she would even talk with him. He would be forced by professional integrity to identify himself as a reporter, and she undoubtedly would scream bloody murder for her people to get him the hell out of there. He had to be careful about making eye contact with Bernhardt. He could tell she was the type who had a spell. The kind of hold that would take you prisoner, locked into the cell of her world, where you quickly relinquished all your strength and stature. Sublimated by her power. When she said
He stayed in his chair into the early morning, listening to a light rumble of thunder that sounded as natural as a distant train. Then he heard the beginning of the rain. Large, heavy drops that fell dumbly down, splattering against the concrete with the first coating of wet. The rain began to scratch against his window with paw print remnants, and then pick up into the fast but steady rhythms of Mexican maracas. He kept his eyes closed while he listened. The rain was cleansing. Reassuring. Today was being whitewashed, and tomorrow morning when he finally did go outside, Los Angeles would sparkle. The bushes would glisten green. Sparkling lawns. The leaves twinkling off the trees. It would be the city of angels. And he would remember the power of being here. The place where anybody can make anything possible.
Sarah Bernhardt kept crossing his mind. A lot, considering that he didn’t really care about her. He wasn’t thrilled with having to lower himself to talk with her. But he was curious to see her again. He would catch some story tomorrow.
He kept his eyes closed. And listened to the rain.
THE RAILCAR WAS STILL and dark, and though tightly sealed, the barks of seagulls and the low groans of thunder rumbled throughout the train’s narrow passage as though part of the atmosphere.
She dropped her head back and began to hum “Sur le Pont d’Avignon.” The childhood song rarely came into her head. Often she would try to summon it during insomniac nights, but the simple melody could never compete with the thundering thoughts that banged through her mind. It was only the rare times like these when the lyrics and melody just appeared free and uncluttered. When all became pure, and she heard her mother’s sweet voice singing peacefully and calmly of dancing on the old bridge of Avignon.
She stopped humming for a moment, and loosed a content, sleep-filled sigh.
She leaned her head back and began to hum again.
Henriette-Rosine was ready to go to sleep. She closed her eyes. The side of her face turned against the softened upholstery.
The smell of sweet butter washed over her.
CHAPTER FIVE
MAX thought she looked at peace in the morning light. Her body in a deep slumber, something that eluded her almost every night since she had arrived in America. Now she slept soundly. Tucked into the railcar bed, lying on her back with her head propped up by a pillow set just below her neck. To some she might have looked like a perfect specimen at a viewing. He sat down next to her and stroked her hair. He froze when she had startled for a moment, twitching her head and making mumbling half-words. There were all those stories about waking people from sleepwalking, and how they never again recovered from the disorientation. Shocked into mental illness, permanently placed in a state of anxious melancholia. Max felt the warmth of her breath cross his cheek. It had floated with dandelion ease, stopping just before his skin in pure intoxication.
Kinney had arranged a brunch with certain patrons of the area. They had paid charitable prices for the front- row seats and had been promised an intimate brunch with the star. Although it was not for another hour and a half, Max needed to wake her. Most of her clothes, and the comfort of her bath, were in her room at the King George. She was not one who rose quickly in the morning, nor was she especially brisk with things like changing locations.
“You have come to kidnap me.” Her voice was gravelly. Her eyes only half open. She crossed her arms over
