Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

'Well I'll keep my mouth closed about this, I promise,' Jerry said, with a mischievous glint. 'But were you not once a married lady, Tammy?'

'I'm not getting into this,' Tammy said.

'All right, I will say no more on the subject. But I see what I see. And I think it's very charming. Men are such pigs anyway.'

Maxine gave him a fierce look. And beneath her makeup, Tammy thought, she was blushing.

'You said you had pictures to show us?' Maxine said.

'I did? Oh yes, I did.'

'Pictures of what?' Tammy said, her mind only a quarter committed to the subject at hand, distracted as she was by the exchange that had just taken place between Maxine and Jerry. She knew exactly what Jerry was implying, and although she couldn't remember thinking that she and Maxine had been nesting just like a couple of lesbians, she could see that his innuendo was not without plausibility, from the outside, at least.

And besides, men were pigs; or at least most of the men it had been her misfortune to become attracted to.

Jerry had brought out his pictures now, and passed them over to Maxine, who started to look through them.

'Oh my Lord . . .' she said softly. Maxine handed the photographs over to Tammy one by one, as she'd finished looking at them.

'They were taken by my old camera, so they're not very good. But I stayed all day, to watch the whole thing from beginning to end.'

'The thing' Jerry had watched, and had photographed (rather better than his disclaimer suggested), was the Los Angeles Public Works' demolition of Katya Lupi's dream palace.

'I didn't even know they were going to knock it down,' Maxine said.

'Well apparently there was a fierce lobby from your gang, Tammy—'

'My gang?'

'The Appreciation Society.'

'Oh.'

'—to keep the place as some kind of Todd Pickett shrine. You didn't hear about that?' Tammy shook her head. 'My, my, you two have had your heads in the sand. Well, there was a petition, saying that the house should be left standing, but the authorities said no, it had to come down. Apparently, it was structurally unsafe. All the foundations had gone. Of course we know why but nobody else can figure it out. Anyway, they sent in the bulldozers. It was all over in six hours. The demolition part at least. Then it took another five or six hours to put the rubble in trucks and drive it away.'

'Did anybody come to watch?' Tammy asked.

'Quite a few, coming and going. But not a crowd. Never more than twenty at any one time. And we were kept a long way back from the demolition, which is why the pictures are so poor.'

The women had been through all the pictures now. Tammy handed them back to Jerry, who said: 'So that's another piece of Hollywood history that's bitten the dust. It makes me sick. This is all we've got faintly resembling a past in this city of ours, and we just take a hammer and knock it all down. How sensible is that?'

'Personally, I'm glad it's gone,' Tammy piped up. Another wave of weakness had come over her as she looked at the pictures, and now she felt almost ready to pass out.

'You don't look too good,' Maxine said.

'I don't feel too good. Would either of you mind if I went to lie down?'

'Not at all,' Jerry said.

Tammy gave him a kiss and started toward her bedroom.

'Aren't you going to tuck her in, Maxine?' Tammy heard Jerry say.

'As it happens, yes.' And so saying, she followed Tammy into the bedroom.

'You know, you mustn't let anything Jerry says bother you,' Maxine said, once Tammy was lying down. She stroked the creases from the pillow beside Tammy's head.

'I know.'

'He doesn't mean any harm.'

'I know that too.' She looked at Maxine, seeking out her gray eyes. 'You know . . . just for the record . . .'

'No, Tammy. We don't have to have this conversation. You don't have a lesbian bone in your body.'

'No, I don't.'

'And if I do . . . well, I haven't discovered it yet. But, as you raised the subject, I could quite happily take care of you for as long as you'd like. I like your company.'

'And I like yours.'

'Good. So let's have the world believe whatever it wants to believe.'

'Fine by me.'

Tammy made a weak little smile, mirrored on Maxine's face.

'Who'd have thought?' Maxine murmured.

She leaned forward and kissed Tammy very gently on the cheek. 'Go to sleep, honey. I want you well.'

When she'd gone, Tammy lay beneath the coverlet, listening to the reassuring rhythm of conversation between Maxine and Jerry from next door, and the draw and boom of the Pacific.

Of all the people to have found such comfort with: Maxine Frizelle. Her life had taken some very odd turns, no question about that.

But somehow it still seemed right. After the long journeys of late, the pursuits and the revelations, the terrors that could not speak, and those that spoke all too clearly, she felt as though Maxine was somehow her reward; her prize for staying the terrible course.

'Who'd have thought?' she said to herself.

And with Maxine's words on her lips, she fell asleep.

'I want to go back to Rio Linda,' Tammy announced two days later. They were sitting on their favorite spot, out on the patio, and today there was a splash of vodka mixed the with tomato juice in Tammy's glass.

'You want to go home?' Maxine said.

Tammy took her hand. 'No, no,' she said. Then, more fiercely: 'God, no. That's not my home any longer.'

'So—?'

'Well, I had this huge collection of Todd Pickett memorabilia. And I want to get rid of it. Then I want to think about selling the house.'

'Meaning you'll move in with me?'

'If it isn't too sudden?'

'At our age, nothing's too sudden,' Maxine said. 'But are you sure you want to go through all that stuff yourself? Can't you get one of the fans to do it?'

'I could, I suppose,' Tammy said. 'But I'd feel better doing it myself.'

'Then we'll do it together.'

'It'll be boring. There's so much stuff. And Arnie's been using the house on and off so it'll be a pig-sty.'

'I don't care. When do you want to go?'

'As soon as possible. I just want to get it over and done with.'

Tammy tried to find Arnie, first at the airport and then at his new girlfriend's house, just to warn him that they were coming into town, but she didn't get hold of him. Part of her was glad that Maxine was accompanying her, when there were so many variables she couldn't predict; but there was another part of her that felt a little uncomfortable at the prospect. Maxine lived in luxury. What would she think when she laid eyes on the scruffed, stuffed, little ranch-house where Tammy and Arnie had lived out the charmless farce of their marriage for fourteen-and-a-half years?

They got an early plane out of Los Angeles, and were in Sacramento by nine-thirty in the morning. Maxine had arranged for a chauffeured sedan to meet them at the airport. The chauffeur introduced himself as Gerald, and said that he was at their disposal. Did they want to go straight to the address he'd been given? Tammy gave Maxine a nearly panicked look: the moment was upon her, and suddenly she was anxious.

'Come on,' Maxine said. 'We'll face the horror together. Then we'll be out of here by the middle of the