Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

She laughed, as though perhaps this time she was inventing a little. 'You're in here,' he said, coming to some mentions of Katya Lupi. 'And there's a long list of men . . .'

'Oh that was a competition we had.'

'You had all these men?'

'It was my Canyon. It still is. I can do what I like here.'

'So you let people do what they wanted?'

'More or less.' She returned to the book. 'You see the symbols beside the names?'

Todd nodded, somewhat tentatively. The conversation had taken a turn he was by no means certain he liked. It was one thing to talk about freedom in Coldheart Canyon; it was another to have her boasting about babies sucking dicks. 'All the symbols mean something different,' she said. 'Look here. That squiggle there, that means snakes. That knotted rope? That means being bound up. The more knots in the rope the more bound the person likes to be. So . . . here . . . Barrymore ... his rope has six knots in it. So he liked to be very well tied up. And then there's a little flame beside him. That means—'

'He liked to be burned?'

'When he was sober. In the end, I stopped inviting him because he got so drunk and so abusive he wasn't any fun.'

'Ah! So you did make a judgment.'

She considered this for a moment. 'Yes. I suppose I did.'

'Did he spoil the secret? Once you didn't invite him anymore. Did he start telling everyone about what it was like up here?'

'Of course not. What was he going to say? Even he had a reputation to keep. Besides, half of Hollywood swam in that pool at one time or another. And the other half wished they could. Nobody said anything but everybody knew.'

'What . . . exactly? That there were orgies here? That women got fucked with snakes?'

'All of that, yes. But mostly that people came back from Coldheart Canyon spiritually changed.'

'You mean that? Spiritually?'

'Yes. Spiritually. Don't look so surprised. The flesh and the soul are tied together.'

Todd looked confused.

'Louise Brooks said to me once: there's nothing they can give that would be worth my freedom. She partied with the rest of us, but in the end she gave it all up, and moved away. She said they were trying to take her soul by boring her to death.'

'So she gave up making movies?'

'Indeed she did. But Louise was a rare example. You know what usually happens: you get addicted. And the studio knows you're addicted. You need your hit of fame every couple of years or you start to feel worthless. Isn't that right? So as long as they can keep giving you a little time in the spotlight, they've got you in their pocket.'

Todd continued to flip through the book as Katya spoke, as much because he didn't want to meet her gaze as because he was interested in the pages. All that she said was true; and it hurt to hear it: especially when he had done himself so much harm because of his appetite for the spotlight.

A sound, behind him. He looked up at the mirror behind the bar. It wasn't his wounded face that caught his eye, however, it was a motion of something, or somebody, passing by the door.

'I think there's somebody out there,' he whispered.

Katya looked unsurprised. 'Of course. They know we're here.' She took the book from his hand and closed it for him. 'Let me introduce you to them,' she said.

'Wait.' He reached for the photographs that Katya had also brought out of the safe. They still lay where she had put them, on the top of the bar.

'You don't need to look at those now,' Katya said.

'I just want to take a peek.'

He began to flick through the sheaf of photographs. There were probably forty or so; most in worse condition than the book, the prints made hastily, and poorly fixed, so that large parts of the image had faded to speckled sepia or to black. But there were still sizable portions of many of the photographs visible, and the scenes they depicted confirmed every obscene or outlandish detail she'd offered. They weren't simply images of men and women coupling, but pictures of the most extreme forms of sexual gratification. In one, a naked man was bound to a metal chain, the cords that held him biting deep into his flesh. A woman wearing just a black brassiere was flogging his chest and his groin. Assuming this wasn't a set-up (and something about the quality of all the photographs suggested that all of these were the real thing), then the woman was doing her victim some serious hurt. There was blood running down his chest and stomach from blows she'd delivered there; and there appeared to be welts on his thighs and his dick, which stood testament to the pleasure he was taking in this. In another picture, some way down the pile, the same man (his face seemed vaguely familiar to Todd, though he couldn't put a name to it) had been redeemed from his bondage and lay on the paving stone beside the pool while another woman (this second completely naked) squatted over him and loosed a stream of urine on his wounds. To judge by the expression on the masochist's face, this hurt more than the whipping. His teeth were gritted, his body locked, as though he were only just holding back an unmanly scream.

'Wait. I know who that is,' Todd said. 'That's—Christ! It can't be.'

'It is.'

'He was always the Good Guy.'

'Well, sometimes Good Guys like getting pissed on.'

'And her? She was always so sweet in her movies. What's her name? Always the victim.'

'Well, that was part of the game you got to play in the Canyon. Up here you do the things the studios wouldn't let you do. Rub your face in the dirt for a while. And then on Monday morning you could brush your teeth and smile and pretend you were all-American again. That's what people want. An illusion. You can do what the hell you like out of sight. Just don't spoil their dreams. They want to believe you're perfect. And it's hard to put on a perfect face every day without going crazy. Up here, nobody was perfect, and nobody cared.'

'Jesus,' Todd said, coming across a picture of scatology. 'Who's the pooper?' Katya turned the picture round to get a clearer view of the woman's face. 'That was Edith Vine. At least that was her real name. I can't remember what they called her. She had a seven-year contract with RKO, but they never made a star out of her.'

'Maybe they were afraid one of these would leak out and they'd lose their investment.'

'No, she just kept getting pregnant. She was one of those women who just had to look at a man and bam, she was eating anchovies and icecream. So she kept getting abortions. Two, three a year. And her body went to hell.'

'Where did she end up?'

'Oh she's here,' Katya said. 'We don't just take the famous up here in the Canyon. We take the failures, too.'

Without fully understanding what he'd just been told—perhaps not entirely wanting to—Todd moved on to another picture. A man who'd played cowboys most of his life was the center of attention, all laced up in a girdle that made his waist as narrow as any showgirl's.

'That's one for the family album.'

'He liked to be called Martha when he was dressed like that. It was his mother's name. In fact, I think it was his mother's corset.'

Todd laughed, though he wasn't sure where the laughter was coming from. Perhaps it was simply that the parade of perversions was so excessive there was nothing to do, in the end, but laugh.

'Christ. What's that?'

'A jar of bees, and Claudette's breast.'

'She liked to get stung?'

'She would scream like her lungs were going to give out. But then she'd have somebody pick the stings out with their teeth.'

'Fuck.'

'And she'd be so wet you could fill a shot-glass from what came out of her.'