He was urinating and said, ‘A little privacy, please.’ He had never been shy with her before, nor she with him.
But now she reddened as if she had walked in on a stranger, and went to the bathroom off the study. When she returned to the master bedroom, he was almost dressed.
She couldn’t believe he had turned off so completely! She walked toward him, seeing herself in the mirrored closet doors, big breasts bouncing, rear end rolling, pubic hair trimmed close in a neat dark triangle . . . and knowing how men reacted and how he had reacted, she was excited by her own image.
His voice weary, he said, ‘What is this? Show time?’
She began dressing quickly, not looking at herself, feeling nothing for herself because the man in the room felt nothing for her. And the man in the room had been the man in her life.
He left the room.
She fought back the tears. She checked the digital clock on the nightstand. Not quite eight. Still time to call Rob Cerjak and ask if his invitation was open. He was going into production with a mystery pilot for NBC and had offered to let her read for a ‘strong supporting role that could develop into a continuing part’. But there was a definite string attached.
She used the phone on the nightstand, spoke to him, and they were on for nine. She went down the hallway to the front door, and saw that the kitchen light was on. She hesitated, then walked in. Dave was sitting at the table in his suit, shirt and tie, as if waiting for the party to begin. Just sitting there, hands folded in his lap.
She was suddenly filled with pity. Why, she didn’t know. He had everything this town could give, including his pick of women. He had simply tired of her.
But looking at him, she felt it went much deeper than that and was afraid for him.
‘Dave, I’m going now.’
‘Drive carefully,’ he said, as always.
‘Why don’t you relax? Have a few drinks? Get out of that suit?’
He was looking down at himself. ‘I didn’t realize I’d put it on again.’ He leaned back, unfolding his hands, crossing his legs. He was wearing highly shined black dress shoes. ‘I believe it’s a classic childhood tie-in. When I was a kid in Brooklyn, my clothes were worn hand-me-downs. I did have a dress suit, blue serge, stiff and heavy, for funerals, weddings, bar mitzvahs. I’d gotten it for my own bar mitzvah, and then was forced to wear it for years, altered, growing as I grew. I hated it. So now I wear suits, good ones, whenever . . .’
He stopped and she realized she’d glanced at her watch. ‘I have an appointment,’ she muttered guiltily.
‘Yes. Don’t keep Rob waiting.’
She said, ‘Oh Dave, bunny,’ voice breaking.
He again folded his hands in his lap. ‘Let’s not be dramatic. I can’t get it up for you. The end.’
She turned and walked out of the house. The end.
She got in her car and drove down the winding canyon road towards the city. She was crying. She wanted to turn around and go back to him and say, ‘Forget the sex’ and ‘I’ll stay with you forever.’
She reached Sunset Boulevard and turned west. Rob was waiting. A good guy, ethical in his way. He would help her forget her hurt.
She came into the quiet, the order, the lushness and richness of Beverly Hills. She came into the town that epitomized showbiz success. She turned onto Elevado and pulled up before Rob Cerjak’s home and told herself that he had more projects, more money, was more important in the industry than Dave.
But her career didn’t help her this time.
The first thing she did when Rob let her in was to ask if she could use a phone. ‘A private phone, please.’
He showed her to a little powder room. She shut the door and dialled Dave’s number. It rang and rang, but he didn’t answer.
So he’d gone out. So she was worrying about nothing.
She and Rob had a drink, then went to bed. He was a powerfully built man, a good ten years younger than Dave, and he made up for all the action she’d missed in the past months. Not that it worked for her, but it almost did, and she knew it eventually would.
He didn’t feed her any bullshit, but he did hold her afterwards, did say, ‘I enjoyed the hell out of you,’ did want her to spend the night. ‘Just to sleep together, babe.’ She felt his liking for her and was comforted by it. But it wasn’t time for that yet.
She dressed and went downstairs, leaving him dozing in bed. She used the phone in the powder room to call Dave.
Still no answer and she wondered if he was out with a new woman, one for whom he could ‘get it up’.
She asked herself what difference it could possibly make. The end.
It did make a difference. It hurt like hell. She wanted to find him, scream at him, threaten him, beg him on her knees. She wanted to tell him what she called ‘the Impossible Secret’ and make him pity her (though she didn’t pity herself, didn’t accept the doctors’ diagnosis), and make him love her again. ‘Please, please . . .’
She heard her voice wailing in the car and couldn’t believe it.
She raged at his giving her that bullshit about childhood hardship to explain why he was wearing his suit and sitting there as if waiting for the party to begin.
Because he was waiting for the party to begin, the bastard! Waiting for her to leave so he could go to one of the young whores who called themselves starlets and would do anything to get next to a producer.
As she had done.
But logic and fairness couldn’t help her now. She was raging and hurting in a way she had thought never to experience again. Like Billy had raged and hurt when she’d said she was going to divorce him and work full time at an acting career. Like Drew had wept and threatened when she’d dumped him and his coke-snorting and vodka-belting and fast slide from reasonably good TV director to simply awful derelict. As other men would have suffered over her had she allowed it to go that far.
Six years with Dave had allowed it to go that far . . . for her.
And Vanessa Brooks was Mary Bjorn again, back in San Diego and fifteen, and madly in love with Steve Franklin, who read so much and knew so much and looked so fantastic on the basketball court even though he was only second string. Mary Bjorn, who had been so hurt at sixteen when he stopped seeing her that by seventeen she was married to Bill Dinunzio, the mechanic who worked on her father’s car – and divorced at not quite nineteen. And in Hollywood to become Vanessa Brooks and never allow herself the folly of romantic hurt again, telling herself it was stardom and money and fame that counted, nothing else . . . including ‘the Impossible Secret’, which she kept secret even from her own mind and which couldn’t be true because it was a full year now and she was still fine, wasn’t she?
She drove over Laurel Canyon to Studio City and her apartment in the complex near the Hollywood Freeway. She showered and brushed her teeth and opened the convertible couch and lay down. But she was still thinking of Dave, raging at Dave.
He couldn’t get away with it!
David sat at the kitchen table. It was late and the phone had rung four times in the past few hours. He hadn’t bothered answering. He was reading yesterday’s Times, the story about the California Nazi groups. He had kept the paper in his case and read it twice tonight. He wished there had been more information about the group so near, in the San Joaquin town of Bethills, a father and two sons, ‘the nucleus,’ they claimed, ‘of a state-wide organization.’ But the reporter said he hadn’t seen more than a few neighbours at the meeting.
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