When the noise of the demolition ceased and Tammy looked back, a haze of plaster dust had replaced the fog. She inhaled and it caught in her throat, reducing her to a coughing, tearful mess. Jerry was in the same, or worse, condition.
Tammy spat out a mouthful of the white soot, and wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand. Not the smartest thing to do. She felt plaster particles scrape between her irises and her lids; a new flood of tears came. As she wiped them away she felt Jerry catch hold of her arm, seizing her so hard that she stopped coughing, and blinked the tears out of her eyes to cleanse them. Then she looked round at him.
The ghosts who'd demolished the wall were now tearing at the exposed sub-structure of the wall, reducing it to splinters. But it wasn't the scene of destruction Jerry was looking at. He was staring ahead, back toward the center of the room.
"She always knew how to make an entrance," he whispered.
Tammy followed his gaze.
The drapes of mist were beginning to close again slowly. But walking up between them, like a diva preparing to take her place center-stage, and armed for this final scene with the knife she'd used to stab Todd, was Katya Lupi.
THREE
"Hello, Tammy," she said. "I suppose you thought you were going to get out of here alive. Well you're not. Sorry to disappoint you."
"Enough's enough, Katya," Jerry said, doing his best to sound authoritative.
"Oh you know me better than that, Jerry," Katya replied. "Enough's never been enough for me." She looked at Tammy. "Did he tell you I took his virginity? No? He didn't. Well I did. He was a sad little thirteen-year-old, with a dick about as big as this." She waggled her pinkie. "Do I exaggerate, Jerry?"
Jerry said nothing. She went on, her tone darkening. "All that I've done for you, and you're ready to creep away, ready to leave me alone. That's all you men ever do, isn't it? You creep away."
"Not Todd," Tammy said. "Todd wanted to trust you."
"Shut up. You couldn't possibly understand what was between us." She pointed the bloody knife at Jerry. "But you. You understood. You knew how I'd been deserted in the past."
This was the big scene, Tammy thought; no doubt about that. And she was playing it for all she was worth, as though she could finally be absolved of all she'd done, in the name of deserted womanhood.
"You're pathetic!" Tammy cried. "Why don't you do something useful with that knife and slit your fucking wrists!"
"Oh no. This isn't the end for me," Katya replied calmly. "This is the end for him. And for you—" She poked the knife in Tammy's general direction. "Your miserable lives are certainly over. But not me. I was always a chameleon. Wasn't I, Jerry? From picture to picture, didn't I change?" He didn't reply to her, but she pressed the point, as though she simply sought verification of the truth. "Well didn't I?" she said. "Grant me that much."
"Yes . . ." he said, as though to silence her.
"So I'll change again. I'll go out into the world and I'll be somebody new. There's a whole new life, still waiting to be lived."
"Not a hope in Hell," Tammy said.
"What?"
"Let it go, Tammy," Jerry said.
"Why? She may look like a million dollars but she's just a slice of the same stale ham that she always was. You know what? I love movies. Even the silent ones. Like Broken Blossoms. I love Broken Blossoms. It still makes me cry. There's some heart in it. Something real. But your . . . flicks?" She laughed, shaking her head. "They're dead. You see, that's the paradox. Mary Pickford's gone, and Fairbanks and Barrymore. They're all gone. But they live on because they made people laugh and cry. Whereas you? You're alive, and the shit you made isn't worth a damn."
"That's not true," Katya said. "Jerry, tell her."
"Yes, Jerry," Tammy said, quietly. "Tell her."
"The truth is that you're not remembered quite as well as I may have—"
"Let's not tell any more lies," Tammy said grimly. She looked at Katya. "Nobody knows who the fuck you are."
Katya looked at Tammy for a moment, and then back to Jerry, who shook his head.
"If they knew," Tammy said, "don't you think somebody would have recognized you when you came to get Todd?"
Katya looked down at the cracked floor. She was absolutely still, except for her right hand, which was idly judging the heft of the knife. When she looked up again, her face carried a radiant smile.
"All right. Enough recriminations. We've said our hard words. Now we must begin to forgive."
Tammy looked at her with incredulity. How many faces did this woman have? "There's going to be no forgiving here," she said.
"Will you shut up," Katya snapped, passing her hand over her brow. The smile dropped away for a moment, and there was a terrible vacuity in its place. As though the masks, however many there were, concealed nothing at all.
But she put the smile on again, a little more tentatively, and looked at Jerry.
"I'm in need of your help," she said. "Your help and your forgiveness. Please." She opened her arms. "Jerry. For old times' sake. I gave you a life. Didn't I? Being up here with me, wasn't it something to live for?"
Jerry took a long time to answer. Then he said: "You smell of death, Katya."
"Please. Jerry. Don't be cruel. Yes, I've hurt a lot of people. I realize that. Nobody regrets that necessity more than I do. But right from the beginning, I was trapped. What could I do? Zeffer was the one who brought the Hunt into this house, not me. I knew nothing about it. How can I be blamed for that?"
"I think they blame you," Jerry said, nodding past Katya at the now-stilled fog; or rather, at what it concealed.
At some point in this exchange, the revenants had left off their demolition, their fury momentarily calmed as they listened to Katya's self-justification. Many of them had been physically intertwined earlier, but they had separated themselves from one another, and, shrouded by the fog, listened to the woman play her parts.
"They were your guests," Jerry said to Katya. "Some of them were great actors."
"If they were so great, why did they become addicted so easily?"
"So did you," he reminded her.
"But the room was mine. They were just people who passed through. Yes, some of them were casual friends. Some of them were even casual lovers. But once they were dead? They were nothing."
"I knew you were going to say that eventually," Tammy said. "You selfish bitch."
"Jesus," Katya said. "I have heard enough from you."
She lifted her knife and came at Tammy. In two seconds she would have had the blade buried in Tammy's heart, but before she could reach her target somebody stepped out of the mist and knocked the knife from her hand. It spun on the tile, but Katya was quick. She ducked down and snatched it up again, her gaze going to the figure who had stepped into her path.
He had opened his arms, as though to formally present himself to her.
"Rudy?" she said.
The man in front of her bowed his gleaming head.
"Katya," he replied.
Tammy couldn't see his face but she thought there was some sorrow in the syllables; whether for Katya, or for himself, who could say?
He'd no sooner spoken than from another spot, close to the door, somebody else spoke her name. This second voice was heavier than Valentino's; there was more anger in it than melancholy. "Remember me?" he said. "Doug Fairbanks?"