Coldheart Canyon: A Hollywood Ghost Story

friends with several of the Hospital Board, and made it clear that she would unleash all manner of legal demons if anyone even thought of moving Mrs. Lauper when she was in such a delicate state. The hospital authorities responded quickly. Tammy kept her bed, complete with a private room, at Cedars-Sinai. Maxine made it her business to be sure that the room was filled with fresh orchids every day, and that fresh three-layer chocolate cake from Lady Jane's on Melrose was brought in at three every afternoon.

'I want you well,' she instructed Tammy during one of her first visits after Tammy had been released from the ICU. 'I have a list of dinner parties lined up for the two of us that will take every weekend for the next year, at least. Shirley MacLaine called me; claimed she'd had a vision of Todd passing over, wearing a powder-blue suit. I didn't like to spoil the poor old biddy's illusions so I told her that was exactly what he was wearing. Just as a matter of interest, what was he wearing?'

'Jeans and a hard-on,' Tammy replied. 'He'd torn up his T-shirt for bandages.' Her voice was still weak, but some of its old music was starting to come back, day by day.

'Well, I'll leave you to tell her that. And then there's all these friends of Todd's who want to meet you—'

'Why?'

'Because I told them about what an extraordinary woman you are,' Maxine said. 'So you'd better start to get seriously well. As soon as you're ready to be moved I want you to come down and stay with me in Malibu.'

'That'd be too much trouble for you.'

'That's exactly what I need right now,' Maxine replied, without irony. 'Too much trouble. The moment I stop to think ... that's when things get out of hand.'

Luckily, Tammy didn't have that problem. In addition to the heavy doses of painkillers she was still being given, she was getting some mild tranquilizers. Her thoughts were dreamy, most of the time; nothing seemed quite real.

'You're a very resilient woman,' her doctor, an intense, prematurely-bald young fellow called Martin Zondel, observed one morning, while scanning Tammy's chart. 'It usually takes people twice as long as it's taking you to bounce back from these kinds of injuries.'

'Am I bouncing? I don't feel like I'm bouncing.'

'Well perhaps bouncing is too strong a word, but you're doing just fine!'

It was a period of firsts. The first trip out of bed, as far as the window. The first trip out of bed, as far as the door. The first trip out of bed as far as the en suite bathroom. The first trip outside, even if it was just to look at the construction workers on the adjacent lot, putting up the new research block for the hospital. Maxine and Tammy ogled the men for a while.

'I should have married a blue-collar worker,' Maxine said when they got back inside. 'Hamburgers, beer and a good fuck on a Saturday night. I always overcomplicated things.'

'Arnie's blue-collar. And he was a terrible lover.'

'Oh yes, Arnie. It's time we talked about Arnie.'

'What about him?'

'Well for one thing, he's a louse.'

'Tell me something I don't know. What's he been up to?'

'Are you ready for this? He's been selling your life-story.'

'Who to?'

'Everyone. You're hot news, right now. In fact I had a call from someone over at Fox wondering if I could sell you on the idea of having your life turned into a Movie of the Week.'

'I hope you said no.'

'No. I just said I'd talk to you about it. Honestly, Tammy, there's a little window of opportunity in here when you could make some serious money.'

'Selling my life-story? I don't think so. I don't have one to sell!'

'That's not what these dodos think. Look at these.'

Maxine went into her bag, brought out a sheaf of magazines and laid them on the bed. The usual suspects: The National Enquirer and The Star plus a couple of more up- market magazines, People and Us. Tammy was still too stiff to lean forward and pick them up, so Maxine went through them for her, flicking to the relevant articles. Some carried photographs of Todd at the height of his fame; the photographs often emblazoned with melodramatic questions: Was Fame Too Much for the World's Greatest Heart-throb? on one; and on another: His Secret Hideaway Became a Canyon of Death. But these lines were positively restrained in contrast with some of the stuff in the pages of The Globe, which had dedicated an entire 'Pull-out Special your family will treasure for generations' to the subject of Haunted Hollywood; or, in their hyperbolic language: 'The Spooks, the Ghosts, the Satan-worshippers and the Fiends Who Have Made Tinseltown the Devil's Fanciest Piece of Real Estate!'

There were pictures accompanying all the articles, of course: mostly of Todd, occasionally of Maxine and Gary Eppstadt, and even—in the case of The Enquirer and The Globe—pictures of Tammy herself. In fact she was the subject of one of the articles, which was led off by a very unflattering picture of her; the article claiming that 'According to her husband, Arnold, obsessive fan Tammy Jayne Lauper probably knows more about the last hours of superstar Todd Pickett's life than anybody else alive—but she isn't telling! Why? Because Lauper (36) is the leader of a black magic cult, which involves thousands of the dead star's fans worldwide, who were attempting to psychically control their star, when their experiment went disastrously and tragically wrong.'

'I was of two minds whether to show you all this,' Maxine said. 'At least yet. I realize it probably makes your blood boil.'

'How can they write such things? They're just making it up . . .'

'There were worse, believe me. Not about you. But there's a piece about me I've got my lawyers onto, and two pieces about Burrows—'

'Oh, really?'

'One of them was a very long list of his . . . how shall I put this? His 'less than successful' clients.'

'So Todd wasn't the first?'

'Apparently not. Burrows was just very good at buying people's silence. I guess nobody really wants to talk about their unsuccessful ass-lifts, now do they?'

Maxine gathered all the magazines up and put them into the drawer of the bedside table. 'That's actually put some color back into your cheeks.'

'It's indignation,' Tammy said. 'It's fine to read all that nonsense in the supermarket line. But when it's about you, it's different.'

'So shall I not bring any more of them in?'

'No, you can bring 'em in. I want to see what people are saying about me. Where are the magazines getting my photographs from? That one of me looking like a three-hundred-pound beet—'

Maxine laughed out loud. 'You're being a little harsh on yourself. But, you're right, it's not flattering. I guess the photographer himself gave them the picture. And you know who that was?'

'Yes. It was Arnie. It was taken last summer.'

'He's probably gone through all your family photographs. But look, don't get stirred up. He's no better or worse than a thousand others. Believe me, I've seen this happen over and over. When there's a little money to be made—a few hundred bucks even—people come up with all these excuses to justify what they're doing with other people's privacy. America deserves to be told the truth, and all that bullshit.'

'That's not what Arnie thought,' Tammy said. 'He just said to himself: I deserve to make some money for putting up with that fat bitch of a wife all these years.'

There was no laughter now; just bitterness, deep and bleak.

'I'm sorry,' Maxine said. 'I really shouldn't have brought them in.'

'Yes, you should. And please, don't apologize. I'm not really all that surprised. What are they saying about you ... if you don't mind me asking?'

Maxine exhaled a ragged sigh: 'She was exploitative, manipulative, never did anything for Todd except for her own profit. That kind of stuff.'