"Yeah, I guess."
"There's no people to fuck with them."
"Except us."
"We won't be here long," Todd said.
"You don't sound too happy about that."
"Well I guess I could get used to it here."
"Have you been up on the ridge yet?"
"No. I haven't had the energy."
"You should go up there. Take a look. There's quite a view."
The exchange, brief as it was, put the thought of a trip up the hill into Todd's head. He needed to start exercising again, as Maxine had pointed out, or he was going to find that his face was all nicely healed up and his body had gone to fat. He didn't believe for a minute that his face was anywhere near being healed, but he took her point. He was drinking too much and eating too many Elvis Midnight Specials (peanut butter, jelly, crispy bacon and sliced banana on Wonder Bread sandwiches, deep fried in butter) for the good of his waistline. His pants were feeling tight, and his ass—when he glimpsed it in the mirror—was looking fleshy.
In a while he'd have to get back to some serious training: start running every morning; maybe have his gym equipment brought over from the Bel Air house and installed in the guest-house. But in the meantime he'd ease back into the swing of things with a few exploratory walks: one of which, he promised himself, would be up to the top of the hill, to see what the view was like when you got to the end of the road.
Burrows and Nurse Karyn came every other day to change the dressings and assess the condition of his face. Though Burrows claimed that the healing process was going well, his manner remained subdued and cautious: it was clear that the whole sorry business had taken a toll upon his confidence. His sun-bed tan could not conceal a certain sickliness in his pallor; and the skin around his eyes and mouth, taut from a series of tucks and tightenings, had an unnatural rigidity to it, like a teak mask under which another, more fragile, man was trapped. Superficially, he remained unfailingly optimistic about Todd's prognosis; he was certain there would be no permanent scarring. Indeed he was even willing to chance the opinion that things were going to work out "as planned," and that Todd was going to emerge from the whole experience looking ten years younger.
"So how long is it going to be before I can take off the bandages?"
“Another week, I'd say."
“And after that. .. how long before I'm back to normal again?"
"I don't want to make any promises," Burrows said, "but inside a month. Is there some great urgency here?"
"Yeah, I want people to see me. I want them to know I'm not dead."
"Surely nobody believes that," Burrows said.
Todd summoned Marco. "Where are those tabloids you brought in?" he asked. "The doctor's not been reading the trash in his waiting-room recently."
Marco left the room and reappeared with five magazines, dropping them on the table beside Burrows. The top one had a blurred, black-and-white photograph of a burial procession, obviously taken with an extremely long-distance lens. The headline read: Superstar Todd Pickett Buried in Secret Ceremony. The magazine beneath had an unsmiling picture of Todd's ex-girlfriend, Wilhemina Bosch, and announced, as though from her grieving lips: "I never even had a chance to tell him good-bye." And underneath, a third magazine boasted that it contained Todd Pickett's Last Words! "I saw Christ standing at his death-bed, claims nurse." Burrows didn't bother with the others.
"Who starts bullshit like this?"
"You tell me," Todd replied.
"I hope you're not implying that it was somebody in my surgery, because I assure you we've been vigorous—"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Todd said. "You're not responsible for anything. I know. See? I finally got smart. I read the small print."
"Frankly, I don't see where your problem lies. All you'd have to do is make one call, tell them who you are, and the rumors would be laid to rest."
"And what would he say?" Marco asked.
"It's obvious. He'd say: I'm Todd Pickett and I'm alive and well, thank you very much."
"And then what ?" Todd said. "When they want to come to take a photograph to confirm that everything's fine? Or they want an interview, face-to-face. Face. To. Face. With this ?"
His face was presently unbandaged. He stood up and went to the mirror. "I look like I went ten rounds with a heavyweight."
"I can only assure you that the swelling is definitely going down. It's just going to take time. And the quality of the new epidermis is first-rate. I believe you're going to be very pleased at the end of everything."
Todd said nothing for a moment. Then, with a kind of simple sincerity he'd seldom—if ever—achieved in front of a camera, he turned and said to Burrows: "You know what I wish?" Burrows shook his head. "I wish I'd never laid eyes on you, you dickhead."
NINE
Tammy knew only a very few people in Los Angeles, all of them members of the Appreciation Society, but she decided not to alert anybody to the fact that she'd come into town. They'd all want to help her with her investigations, and this was something she preferred to do alone, at least at the outset.
She checked herself into the little hotel on Wilshire Boulevard, within a few hundred yards of the Westwood Memorial Park, where a host of stars and almost-stars were buried or interred. She'd made her rounds of the famous who rested there on her last visit. Donna Reed and Natalie Wood were among them, so was Darryl F. Zanuck and Oscar Levant. But the Park's real claim to fame—the presence that brought sightseers from all over the world—was Marilyn Monroe, who was laid to rest in a bland concrete crypt distinguished only by the number of floral tributes it attracted. The crypt beside it was still empty, kept—so it was said—for the mortal remains of Hugh Hefner.
Tammy had not much enjoyed her visit to the Park. In fact it had depressed her a little. She certainly had no intention of going back this time. It was the living she was concerned with on this visit, not the dead.
When she was settled in she called Arnie, gave him her room number in case of emergency, and told him she'd be back in a couple of days at most. She heard him pop a can of beer while she was talking—not, to judge by his slightly slurred speech, his first of the night. He'd be fine without her, she thought. Probably happier.
She ordered up some room-service food, and then sat plotting how she'd proceed the next day. Her first line of inquiry would be the most direct: she'd go up to Todd's home in Bel Air and try to find out whether or not he was there. His address was no secret. In fact she had pictures of every room in the house, including the en suite bathroom with the sunken tub, taken by the realtor when the house was still on the market, though of course it had been remodeled since and its layout had probably changed. She knew that her chances of even getting to the front door— much less of seeing him—were remote. But it would be foolish of her not to try. Maybe she'd catch him going out for a jog, or spot him standing at a window. Then all her concerns would be laid to rest and she would be able to go back to Sacramento happy, knowing that he was alive and well.
She'd hired a car at the airport, and had planned to drive up to Bel Air the evening she arrived, but after the hassles of the delayed flight she was simply too tired, so she went to bed at ten and rose bright and early. The room service offered at the hotel was nothing special—and she liked a good breakfast—so she crossed over Wilshire and went into Westwood Village, found herself a diner, and ate heartily: scrambled eggs, bacon, hash browns, white toast and coffee. While she ate she skimmed People and USA Today. Both had pieces about the up-coming Oscars, which were now only three days away. Todd had never won an Oscar (which Tammy believed to be absolute proof of the corruption of the Academy) but he'd been nominated four years ago for The Burning Year, one of his less popular pictures. She'd been very proud of him: he'd done fine work in the movie and she'd thought he had a crack at winning. Watching the ceremony had been nearly impossible. Her heart had hammered so hard as Susan Sarandon, who'd been presenting the award, had fumbled with the envelope; Tammy thought she was going to pass out from anticipation before the winner was even named. And then, of course, Sarandon had named the winner, and it hadn't been Todd. The cameras had been on him throughout the whole envelope-fumbling routine, and there'd been a moment between the naming of the winner and his applauding when his disappointment had been perfectly clear: at least to someone who knew the language of his face as well as Tammy.