"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."
"Do you care?"
"It's funny. It used not to hurt. In fact, I used to positively wallow in being people's worst nightmare. But that was when Todd was still alive ..." She let the thought go unfinished. "What's the use?" she said at last, getting up from beside the bed. "We can't control any of this stuff. They'll write whatever they want to write, and people will believe what they want to believe." She leaned in and kissed Tammy on the cheek. "You take care of yourself. Doctor Zondel—is that it, Zondel?"
"I think so."
"Sounds like a cheap white wine. Well, anyway, he thinks you're remarkable. And I said to him: 'this we knew.'"
Tammy caught hold of her hand. "Thank you for everything."
"Nothing to thank me for," Maxine said. "We survivors have got to stick together. I'll see you tomorrow. And by the way, now that you're compos mentis—I warn you—there's a chance you're going to have nursing staff coming in to ask you questions. Then selling your answers. So say nothing. However nice people are to you, assume they're fakes."
Maxine came every day, often with more magazines to show. But on Wednesday—three weeks and a day after Tammy had returned to consciousness—she had something weightier to place on her bed.
"Remember our own Norman Mailer?"
"Detective Rooney?"
"Ex-Detective Martin Ray Rooney. The same. Behold, he did labor mightily and his gutter publishers saw that it was publishable and they did a mighty thing, and put it in print in less than three weeks."
"No!"
"Here it is. In all its shoddy glory."
It wasn't a big book—a mere two hundred and ninety-six pages—but what it lacked in length it made up for in sheer bravura. The copy described it as a story too horrific for Hollywood to tell. On the cover was a photograph of the house in Coldheart Canyon, with the image of a glowering demon superimposed on the clouds overhead.
"He says you, I and a woman called Katya Lupescu were in it together. Like the three witches in Macbeth."
"You mean you actually read it?"
"Well, I skimmed. It's not the worst thing I've read. He spells all our names right, most of the time, but the rest? Oh God in Heaven! I don't know where to begin. It's a big sticky mess of Hollywood myths and
Manson references and completely asinine pieces of detective work. Basically, he's convinced everyone is in on this massive conspiracy—"
"To do what?"
"Well. . . that's the thing. He's not really sure. He claims Todd found out about it, so he was murdered. Same with Joe. Same with Gary Eppstadt, though of course everybody in Hollywood had a reason to murder Gary Eppstadt."
"I didn't know books could be published so fast."
"Well it's just hack-work. It'll be off the shelves in a month. But Rooney got a quarter of a million dollars' advance for it. Can you believe that?"
Tammy picked up the book—which was called Hell's Canyon—and flicked through it.
"Did he interview Arnie?"
"Well I didn't read it that closely, but I didn't see his name."
"Oh, there's pictures," Tammy said, coming to the eight-page section in the middle of the book. To give him his due, Rooney—or somebody working on his behalf—had done a little research. He'd turned up two photographs from the archives of some silent-movie enthusiast. One was a picture of Katya Lupi, dressed in a gown so sheer it looked as though it had been painted on, the other a much more informal photograph which showed Katya, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Theda Bara, Ramon Navarro and a host of other luminaries at a picnic in the shadow of the dream palace in Coldheart Canyon. At the back of the crowd—separated from Katya by several rows of smiling, famous faces—was Willem Zeffer. Tammy closed the book.
"Don't want to see any more?"
"I don't think so. Not today."
"I've been thinking . . . Doctor Zinfandel"—Tammy laughed at Maxine's perfectly deliberate error—"has told me you'll be out of here in a week, ten days at the most. I don't want you going back to Rio Linda, at least not yet. I want you to come and stay with me at the house in Malibu, if it doesn't have too many distressing memories."
Tammy had been worrying about how she'd cope when she was released from the hospital; the offer made her burst with tears of relief.
"Oh Christ, I hadn't realized you hated the place that much!"
Laughter appeared through the tears. "No, no, I'd love to come."
"Good. Then I'm going to send Danielle—she's my new assistant—to Sacramento and have her pick up some of your things, if that's okay with you."
"That would be perfect."
Nine days later, Tammy moved out of Cedars-Sinai and Maxine ferried her down to the beach-house. It looked much smaller by day; and somehow more ordinary without the twinkle lights in the trees, and the cars driving up, full of the great and the good. Perhaps it was simply that she'd come to know Maxine so well in the past few weeks (and how strange was that—to have become so fond of this woman she'd despised for years, and to have her sentiments so sweetly returned?), that the house didn't seem at all alien to her. It was very far from her taste of course (or more correctly, far from her pocketbook) but it was modestly stylish, and the objects on the shelves were elegant and pretty. Sitting on the patio on the second or third evening, sipping a Virgin Mary, the wind warm off the Pacific, she asked Maxine if she'd decorated the place herself, or had it done professionally.