"I can't do it. I won't do it."
"Then I'll sue your ass, for every fucking cent you earned off me."
"You can try."
"And I'll win."
"Like I said, you can try. If you want all our dirty washing dragged out for everyone to see, then do it. I guarantee you'll come out looking worse than I will. I've covered for you so many times, Todd."
"And you signed a confidentiality agreement. If you break it, I'll sue you for breaking that, too."
"Who cares? Nobody gives a rat's ass about me. I'm just a professional parasite. You're the movie star. You're the all-American boy. The one with the reputation to lose." She paused. Then murmured, almost ruminatively: "The tales I could tell . . ."
"I can tell just as many."
"There's nothing anyone can call me that I haven't been called a hundred times. I know everyone says I'm a cunt. That's what they say, right? 'How can you work with that fucking cunt?' If I have to hear it in a courtroom one more time, I can take that, as long as when it's all over I don't have to hear your whining and complaining anymore."
"Okay," Todd said. "If that's the way you want to play it."
Maxine headed for the door. "For your information," she said, "I could go down to LAX right now, and I could fill a limo with kids who have ten times your talent. They're all coming here, looking to be the next Tom Cruise, the next Leonardo DiCaprio, the next Todd Pickett. Pretty boys with tight asses and nice abs who'll end up, most of 'em, selling their tight asses on Santa Monica Boulevard. The lucky ones'll end up waiters.
"If I wanted to, I could make any one of them a movie star. Maybe not a star like you. But then again maybe bigger. Right face, right time, right movie. Some of it's luck, some of it's salesmanship. The point is, I sold you, Todd. I told people you were going to be huge, and I said it so often that it became the truth. And you were so sweet back then. So . . . natural.
You were the boy next door, and yes—for your information—I was a little in love with you, like everyone else. But it didn't last long. You changed. I changed. We both got rich. We both got greedy." She put her hand to her mouth, and gently passed her fingers over her lips. "But you know what, Todd? Neither of us was ever happy. Am I right? You were never happy, even when you had everything you'd ever dreamed of wanting."
"What's your point?"
"I don't know what the point is," she said softly. "I guess that's the problem in a nutshell, isn't it? I don't know what the point is." She stared into the middle distance for a while. "You'll be fine, Todd," she said finally. "Things will work out better without me, you'll see. I'll find someone to take care of you, Eppstadt'll find a movie for you, and you'll be back in front of the cameras in a few months, looking perfect. If that's what you want."
"Why wouldn't I want that?" he said to her.
She looked at him wearily. "Maybe because none of it's worth a damn."
He knew he had a riposte for that; he just couldn't figure out what it was at that particular moment. And while he was trying to figure it out, Maxine turned her back on him and walked out.
He let her go. What was the use of a feud? That was for the lawyers. Besides, he had more urgent business than trading insults with her. He had to find Katya.
The afternoon sun was not just warm, it was hot, and the foliage was busy with hungry hummingbirds and the Canyon was quiet and perfect. He threaded his way through the overgrown bushes, past the tennis courts and the antique sundial, up toward the guest-house. The gradient became quite steep after a time, the narrow steps decayed by time and neglect, so that in some spots they'd collapsed completely. After a while, he realized the path had divided at some earlier point, and that he'd taken the wrong turning. The mistake took him on a picturesque tour of the garden's hidden places, bringing him first to a small grove of walnut trees, in the middle of which stood a large gazebo in an advanced state of disrepair, and then into a garden within a garden, bounded by an unkempt privet hedge. Here there were roses, or rather the remains of last year's blooms, the bushes fighting for space, and strangling each other in the process. There was no way through the thorny tangle to pick up the path on the other side, so he was obliged to try to get around the garden from the outside, staying close to the hedge. It was difficult to do. Though the plants he was striding through didn't have thorns, they were still unruly and wild; twigs and dead flowers scraped at his face, his shirt was quickly soiled, his sneakers filled with stony dirt. By the time he got to the other side of the garden, and took to the path again, he was short of breath and patience; and had two dozen little nicks and scratches to call his own.
His wanderings had brought him to a spot that offered a spectacular view. He could see the big house below him surrounded by palms and Birds of Paradise; he could see the baroque weathervane on the top of the gazebo he'd passed on his way here, and the orchid house, which he had come upon during one of his earlier trips around the garden. All this, bathed in clear warm California light; the crystalline light which had brought filmmakers here almost a century before. Not for the first time since coming to the house he had a pleasurable sense of history; and a measure of curiosity as to the people who might once have walked here, talked here. What ambitions had they plotted, as they ambled through these gardens? Had they been sophisticates, or simpletons? What little he knew about Old Hollywood he'd heard from Jerry Brahms, which meant he'd only ever really been half-listening. But he knew enough to be certain those times had been good, at least for a man like himself. Douglas Fairbanks and Rudolph Valentino, Charlie Chaplin, the Barrymore clan and all the rest had been like royalty, lording it over their new dominion in the West. A bean-counting prick like Eppstadt—with his demographics and his endless corporate maneuvering—would have had no power in the world this Canyon still preserved.
Having caught his breath, he now continued his ascent. The shrubbery became denser the closer he got to the guest-house. He would have needed a machete to hack through it efficiently; but, lacking one, had to do with a branch he picked up on his way. The flowers gave up their perfume as he beat his way through them, and he recognized their scent. It was her scent. The scent on Katya's skin. Did she walk naked among them, he wondered, pressing the flowers against her body? Now that would be a sight to see.
The thought of this had stirred him up; he actually had a hard-on. Not an everyday order of hard-on either, but the kind that was so strong it actually hurt. It was a long time since he'd had a woodie so fierce, and it added immeasurably to his sense of well-being. With the guest-house now in view he pressed toward his goal, feeling curiously, happily, adolescent. So what the hell if Maxine was deserting him? What the hell if he'd never be a Golden Boy again? He was still alive and kicking, still had a stick in his hand, and a woodie in his pants, and the thought of Katya's flower bath in his mind's eye.
The thicket had finally thinned, and he was at last delivered onto a small unkempt lawn. The house before him was a two-story affair, built in the same style as the main house, simply on a much more modest scale. Above the door, set into the stucco, was a single tile, with a man on a horse painted upon it. He glanced up at it for only a moment. Then he pressed his flattened hand down the front of his jeans to push his erection into a less obvious position on the clock, and knocked on the madwoman's door.
THREE
There was no reply from within, nor any sound of movement in response to his knocking. He knocked a second time, and then—after a short pause—a third. Still there was no response, so he tried the latch. The door was unlocked. He pushed it open, and stepped out of the sunlight into the cool interior of the house.