On the day Catherine broke the mirror in the Edgars’ living room Llewellyn was sitting in his car parked on Cañon Drive. A New Jersey photographer he knew named Larry Crow was walking up the sidewalk, and Llewellyn sank down into his seat so Crow wouldn’t see him. He closed his eyes and the next thing he heard was the car door on the passenger side opening and closing; he could feel the weight and heat of someone sitting next to him. Crow, he said, his eyes still closed. Crow was a man of such odious self-assurance that no amount of hostility or indifference could discourage him. He’d been in Los Angeles eighteen months pushing very hard; unfortunately he was a very good photographer, and he was good at persuading the magazines and agencies for whom he worked what it was they really wanted and believed. He understood that he lived in a world where the arbiters of taste and trend and image had no idea what they wanted or believed; they were in a race to discover what their competitors wanted and believed before their competitors discovered it for themselves. Crow had been introduced to Llewellyn by Eileen Rader six months before at a party. The acquaintance of the two men had gone through three stages. The first was the stage in which Crow learned Llewellyn was the writer of Toward Caliente and had received an Academy Award nomination for it. The second was the stage in which Crow learned Llewellyn hadn’t worked in two years. The third was the stage in which Crow learned Llewellyn had just gotten the Nightshade Part II assignment. The first and third stages found Crow very interested in Llewellyn, and the second stage found him not the least interested. If Nightshade II is a disaster, Lew thought hopefully, I won’t have to put up with this asshole sitting in my car anymore.
Llewellyn opened his eyes. He was always disconcerted to find Crow a more pleasant-looking man than he appeared in Llewellyn’s mind. Crow had a large envelope with him filled with photographs; they were all pictures of women. Crow had found working in Los Angeles exactly the same as working in New York except that there were more beautiful women in Los Angeles and the venality of the city was closer to the surface; in Los Angeles, Crow could identify more readily what he was dealing with. All the women Crow showed Llewellyn in the car were predictably gorgeous, in all hues and variations of gorgeousness. “Check this one out,” Crow said. “This one here.” He moved through the photographs. “This one. This one.”
He looked at Llewellyn. Llewellyn looked back at him with something resembling superior benignity. “They’re nothing,” he said to him.
“Shit,” said Crow in disbelief.
“I know a face that will crack your lens like a diamond.”
“All right,” said Crow, “let’s see her.”
Lew was disgusted with both of them. “I gotta go.” He motioned to the door.
“Maybe another time,” said Crow, out of the car and leaning in the window.
“I gotta go.” Llewellyn pulled from the curb and headed up Wilshire.
I think you’re right we can’t afford her, Maddy said in a rush before he’d gotten in the door; her voice expanded and tottered. He saw the mirror. What happened? he asked calmly. She broke the mirror with her hands there’s blood on the carpet: our good mirror, said Maddy. Forget the carpet and the mirror, Llewellyn said, what about the girl? Is that all you care about, Maddy cried; she could hear the sound of Catherine’s blood in her voice. I think she’s disturbed, Maddy said.
Then let this disturbance pass, he said, before we deal with it.
Catherine fell asleep still naked on the bed, the remains of the dress unraveling from her hands and her white kitten asleep on her thighs. She was awakened in the middle of the night by something moving like a web across her eyes. It was several moments before she realized her face was alive. It was inching slowly, almost imperceptibly across the front of her head, a large flesh spider attaching itself to her and spinning its web in her hair. She panicked, believing her own face would smother her. She wrestled with it and soon fell back in exhaustion from the effort. When she slept again she was aware of the face slithering off her and crawling across the bed and floor to the other side of the room. It settled over the fragments of glass still lying at the bottom of the sink, and there in the night she could hear it breed, until the room was filled with them.
In the mornings Catherine took a small bowl of cold water from the kitchen and dabbed at the blood on the living room carpet. Maddy found her doing this after two days of avoiding her completely. It doesn’t matter, she said to the girl, the frenzy of her expression barely containing itself. Catherine looked up at her and continued what she was doing. Maddy began staying more and more in her bedroom upstairs and kept Jane upstairs with her.
Llewellyn would not look at Catherine. After years of knowing nothing but men’s looks Catherine was now con fronted with a new phenomenon, a man who always looked away. As Catherine spent her mornings slowly but surely removing the blood from the carpet, the entire Edgar family situated itself on her perimeters. Every day Maddy remained upstairs, every day Llewellyn went out driving. Two months had passed since he had gotten the film assignment from Eileen Rader. In the past weeks the studio had called each afternoon, only to be told by Maddy that Llewellyn was working. Llewellyn never returned the calls; he had not written a single word of the script.
The less he saw
