Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

part of was playing out to its conclusion twenty minutes' drive away? Wasn't that just throwing more time away: waste on waste?

Damn it, he would go. He'd obey the summons of the dream and go back to Coldheart Canyon.

This course determined, he set about preparing himself for an audience with the Lady Katya. He chose something elegant to wear (she liked an elegant man, he'd heard her once say); his linen suit, his best Italian shoes, a silk tie he'd bought in Barcelona, to add just a touch of color to the otherwise subdued ensemble. With his clothes chosen, he showered and shaved and then—having worked up a bit of a sweat shaving—showered again.

It was late afternoon by the time he started to get dressed. It would soon be cocktail hour up in Coldheart Canyon. Tonight, at least, Katya would not have to drink alone.

TWO

About the time Jerry Brahms had been waking up from his dream of Katya and the snails—which is to say, just half an hour before dawn— Tammy and Todd were slipping—'quietly, quietly,' she kept saying— into the little hotel where Tammy had been staying. The last few days had provided Tammy with a notable range of unlikely experiences but surely this was up there among the weirdest of them—tip-toeing along the corridor of her two-star hotel with one of the most famous celebrities in the world in tow, telling him to hush whenever his heel squeaked on a board.

'The room's chaos,' she warned him as she let him in. 'I'm not a very tidy person . . .'

'I don't care what it looks like,' Todd said, his voice so drained by exhaustion it had no color left in it whatsoever. 'I just want to piss and sleep.'

He went directly into the bathroom, and without bothering to close the door, unzipped and urinated like a racehorse, just as though the two of them had been married for years and he didn't give a damn about the niceties. Telling herself she shouldn't be taking a peek, Tammy did so anyway. Where was the harm? He was bigger than Arnie, by a couple of sizes. He shook himself, wetting the seat (just like Arnie), and went to the sink to wash, splashing water on his face in a half-hearted fashion.

'I keep thinking—' he called through to her. 'Can you hear me?'

'Yes, I can hear you fine.'

'I keep thinking this is all a dream and I'm going to wake up.' He turned the water off and came to the door, towel in hand. He patted his wounded face dry, very gently. 'But then I think: if this was a dream, when did it begin? When I first saw Katya? Or when I first went up to Coldheart Canyon? Or when I woke up from the operation, and it had all gone wrong?'

He tossed the towel onto the floor of the bathroom; something else Arnie always did. It used to irritate the hell out of Tammy, forever chasing around after her spouse, picking up stuff he'd dropped: towels in the bathroom, socks and skid-marked underwear in the bedroom, food left out of the refrigerator, where the flies could get at it. Why were those habits so hard for men to change? Why couldn't they just pick things up and put them away in their proper place?

Todd was still talking about when his dream had begun. He'd decided it started when Burrows put him under.

'You're not serious?' she told him.

'Absolutely. All this . . .' he made an expansive gesture that took in the room and Tammy '. . . is part of the same hallucination.'

'Me, included?'

'Sure.'

'Todd, you're being ridiculous,' Tammy said. 'You're not dreaming this, and neither am I. We're awake. We're here.'

'Here, I don't mind,' Todd said, looking around the room. 'I can take being here. But Tammy, if this room exists, then so does all that shit we saw up at Katya's house. And I'm not ready to believe in that.' He bit his nails as he spoke, pacing the floor. 'You saw what was in the room?'

'Not really. I mean I saw the man who killed Zeffer—'

'And the ghosts. You saw the ghosts.'

'Yes, I saw them. And worse.'

'And you believe all that's real?'

'What's the alternative?'

'I've told you. It's all just some hallucination I'm having.'

'I think I'd know if I was having an hallucination.'

'Have you ever done LSD? Really good LSD? Or magic mushrooms?'

'No.'

'See, you do some of that stuff and it's like you never look at the real world the same way again. You can never really trust it. I mean it's all consensual reality anyhow, right?'

'I don't know what the hell that is.'

'It's a phrase my dealer uses. Jerome Bunny is his name. He's a real philosopher. It isn't just drugs with him, it's a way of looking at the world. And he used to say we all just agree on what's real, for convenience' sake.'

'I still don't get it,' Tammy said wearily.

'Well he used to explain it better.'

'Anyway, I thought you didn't do drugs. You said in People you were horrified to see what drugs had done to friends of yours.'

'Did I name anyone?'

'Robert Downey Jr. was one. A great actor,' you said, 'killing himself for the highs,' you said.'

'Well I don't fry my brains every night like Robert did. I know my limits. A little pot. A few tabs of acid—' He stopped, looking a little irritated. 'Anyway, I don't have to justify myself to you.'

'I didn't say you did.'

'Quoting me—'

'Well that's what you said.'

'Well it's bullshit. It's his life. He can do what the hell he likes with it. Where did all this start anyhow?'

'You saying—'

'Oh yeah, we're having this dream together, because that way Cold-heart Canyon doesn't exist. Can't exist. It's all something invented. I mean, how can any of that be real?'

'I don't know,' said Tammy flatly. 'But whatever you say about dreams or consenting reality or whatever it was: that place is real, Todd. It's up there in the hills right now. And she's there too. And she's planning her next move.'

'You sound very sure.' He was studying his reflection in the mirror of the dresser as he talked to her.

'I am sure. She's not going to let go of you. She'll find a way to get you back.'

'Look at me,' he said.

'I think you look fine.'

'I'm a mess. Burrows fucked it all up.' His hands went up to his face. 'It's gotta be a dream . . .' he said, returning to his old theme. 'I can't look like this in the real world.'

'I do,' Tammy said, considering her own unhappy reflection. 'I look like this.' She pinched herself. 'I'm real,' she said.

'Yeah?' he said softly.

'I know who I am. I know how I got here, where I came from, where my husband works.'

'Your husband?'

'Yes, my husband. Why? Are you surprised a woman with my dress size has got a husband? Well, I have. His name's Arnie, and he works at Sacramento Airport. And you don't know anything about him, do you?'

'No.'

'So you can't have dreamed him, can you?'

'No.'