"Why the hell would he want to please me?"
"You know why, Todd. He's in love with you."
Todd shook his bandaged head, which was a mistake. The room around him swam for a moment, and he had to grab hold of the table.
"You okay?" Maxine said.
He raised his hands, palms out, in mock surrender. "I'm fine. I just need a pill and a drink."
"You've had so many pills. Are you sure—"
"I sent Marco out to get some liquor."
"Todd, . . . it's not even noon."
"So? If I stay here and get shit-faced every day for the next month who's going to care? Find me something to drink, will you?"
"What about Jerry? We didn't finish—"
"We'll talk about Jerry some other time."
"Am I telling him or not?"
"I said I don't want to talk about it anymore."
"All right. But if he starts to gossip, don't say I didn't warn you."
"If he tells the fucking National Enquirer it's my fault. Happy?"
Todd didn't wait for a reply. Leaving Maxine to search for the liquor, he wandered out to the back of the house. The lawn—which lay at the bottom of a long flight of steps from the house, their railings entirely overtaken by vines—was the size of a small field, but it had been invaded on every side by the offspring of the plants, shrubs and trees which surrounded it, many of them in premature flower. Bird of Paradise trees twenty feet tall, sycamore and eucalyptus, rose bushes and fox-gloves, early California poppies shining like satin in the grass; meadowfoam and corn lily, hairy honeysuckle and wild grape, golden yarrow, blue blossom and red huckleberry. And everywhere, of course, the ubiquitous pampas grass; soft, fleecy plumes swaying in the sun. It was uncommon, even uncanny, verdancy.
Todd strode across the lawn, which was still wet from the rain, down to the pool. Dragonflies flitted everywhere; bees wove their nectar trails through the balmy air. The pool was a baroque affair, descending from the relatively restrained style of the main house into pure Hollywood kitsch. The model, perhaps, was Cecil B. DeMille Roman. A large mock-classical bronze fountain was set at the back of the pool, the intertwined limbs of its figures—a sea-god and his female attendants—rendered more baroque still by the tracery of living vines which had crept up over it. A sizable conch in the sea-god's hands had once been a source of rejuvenating waters for the pool, but those waters had ceased to flow a long time ago. Todd was mildly disappointed. He would have liked to see sparkling blue water in the pool instead of the few inches of bottle-green rain-water that were there at the bottom.
He turned and looked back toward the house. It was still more impressive from this side than it had been from the front, its four floors rising like the tiers of a wedding cake, its walls lush with ivy in places, and in others naked. Beyond it, further up the hill, Todd could just see a glimpse of one of the guest-houses that Maxine had mentioned. Altogether, it really was an impressive parcel of land, with or without the buildings. Had Jerry shown it to him as part of the grand tour Todd might well have been tempted to invest. The fact that Jerry hadn't done so probably meant that it had not belonged to anyone of significance, though that seemed odd. This wasn't just any Hollywood show-place: it was the creme de la creme, a glorious confection of a residence designed to show off all the wealth, power and taste of a great star.
By the time he'd made his way back inside, Marco had turned up from Greenblatt's with a car-load of supplies. He welcomed his boss with his usual crooked smile and a generous glass of bourbon.
"So what do you think of the Old Dark House?"
"You know ... in a weird way I like it here."
"Really?" said Maxine. "It's nothing like your taste." She was plainly still mildly irritated by their earlier exchange, though for Todd it was past history, soothed away by his wanderings in the wilderness.
"I never really felt comfortable in Bel Air," he said. "That house has always been more like a hotel to me than a home."
"I wouldn't say this place was exactly cozy" Maxine remarked.
"Oh, I don't know," Todd said. He sipped on his bourbon, smiling into his glass. "Dempsey would have liked it," he said.
SEVEN
On Thursday, the 18th of March, Maxine got a call that she knew was coming. The caller was a woman named Tammy Lauper, who ran the International Todd Pickett Appreciation Society, which despite its high-falutin title had its headquarters, Maxine knew, in the Laupers' house in Sacramento. Tammy was calling to ask a very simple question, one that she said she was "passing on" to Maxine from millions of Todd's fans worldwide: Where was Todd?
Maxine had dealt with Tammy on many occasions in the past, though if she possibly could she ducked the calls and let Sawyer deal with them. The trouble was that Tammy Lauper was an obsessive, and though in the eight years she'd been running the Appreciation Society—(she'd once said to Maxine she hated to hear it called a fan club. "I'm not a hysterical teenager," she'd said. This was true: Tammy Lauper was married, childless, and, when last spotted, an overweight woman in her middle thirties)—though in that time she'd done a great deal to support Todd's movies, and could on occasion be a useful disseminator of deliberately erroneous information, she was not somebody Maxine had much time for. The woman annoyed her, with her perpetual questions about trivia, and her unspoken assumption that somehow Todd belonged to her. When she was obliged to speak to the Lauper woman—because there was some delicate matter in the air, and she needed to carefully modulate the flow of news—she always aimed to keep the exchanges brief. As courteous as possible—Tammy could be prickly if she didn't feel as though she was being given her due—but brief.
Today, however, Tammy wasn't about to be quickly satisfied; she was like a terrier with a rat. Every time Maxine thought she'd satisfied the woman's curiosity, back she'd come with another inquiry.
"Something's wrong," she kept saying. "Todd's not been seen by anyone. Usually when he goes away, members of the Society spot him, and they report to me. But I haven't heard one word. Something's wrong. Because I always hear."
"I'm sure you do."
"So what's going on? You've got to tell me."
"Why should anything be going on?" Maxine said, doing her best to maintain her equilibrium. "Todd's tired and he needs a break, so he went away for a few weeks."
"Out of state?"
"Yes. Out of state."
"Out of the country?"
"I'm afraid he asked me not to say."
"Because we've got members all over the world."
"I realize that, but—"
"When he went on his honeymoon to Morocco," Tammy went on, "I had six reports of sightings." (This was a reference to the event which had caused Maxine more publicity problems than any other in Todd's life: his short-lived marriage to the exquisitely emaciated model Avril Fox, which had been strewn with potentially image-besmirching scenes: adulteries, a ménage-a-trois involving Avril's sister, Lucy, and a spot of domestic violence.)
"Sometimes," Maxine said, a trace of condescension creeping into her voice now, "Todd likes to be out in public. Sometimes he doesn't."
"And right now?"
"He doesn't."
"But why would he mind being seen?" Tammy went on. "If there's nothing wrong with him . . ."
Maxine hesitated, wondering how best to calm the suspicions she was clearly arousing. She couldn't just drum up an excuse and jump off the phone; that would make the Lauper woman even more curious than she already was. She had to maneuver the conversation away from this dangerous area as carefully as possible.