Maggie had been surprised. She thought she’d fluffed her lines and failed the audition.
The next morning, she came into school and found the note tucked into the seam of her locker. It read, Tomorrow at Crissy Field I will reveal my love.
Barbara and Louise and Susan had gawped at the scrawled, nervous handwriting, giggling, and then concocted the plan.
Out on the hot, dusty sand dunes of the Marina the following day, they’d played it out. While the rest of them walked with Miss Piper, making notes about the grass and the lizards and the birds, Maggie had detached herself, looking distracted, knowing full well what would happen.
Finally the teacher headed for the public washrooms, ordering them to wait. Maggie walked to one of the small huts owned by the park service and stood in its shadow, out of the burning sun. It took only a minute. Then he was there, staring at her, his plain face getting redder and redder, voice tripping over itself, his eyes, which were not unattractive, skittering over the pale, drifting sand, avoiding hers.
“Maggie …”
At that moment she didn’t even remember his name. He was just that boy. The one with the stutter and the cheap clothes, the one whose father was something big and famous, not that anyone was allowed to know his name.
“Oui?” she’d asked.
He bowed his head, held out his hands, and tried to speak.
All that came out was “I lu … lu … lu … lu …”
It happened so swiftly she didn’t have a chance to intervene, even if she’d possessed the courage. The three girls burst out from their hiding place and formed a ring round him, hands locked, eyes wild with glee, chanting, mocking.
Strapped to an old, hard bed in some place she thought was a shuttered movie theatre in the Marina, the adult Maggie Flavier could still hear that heartless song, see them dancing round him, a jeering circle of coarse, hard cruelty, eyes wild, voices cackling, taunting, chanting rhythmically …
I lu … lu … lu … lu …
I lu … lu … lu … lu …
I lu … lu … lu … lu …
She could see the way he’d stared at her, see how his bewildered eyes filled with tears.
Then the boy ducked beneath their arms and she’d watched, heart beating wildly in her chest, as he tore away down the beach towards Fort Mason, shrieking with shame and fury until his cries mingled with those of the gulls that hung in the sea air as if pinned to the too-blue sky.
She didn’t speak much to Barbara and Louise and Susan afterwards. She blamed herself for showing them the letter in the first place. She wished, more than anything, to apologise to the boy. But it was impossible. Mickey Fitzwilliam never came to school again. He had no friends, and the teachers, when she asked, refused to tell her where he lived. For a while he was a burden on her conscience. Then other things intervened. Trips to L.A. to the TV studios. Work. A career. Her mother’s growing frailty.
From that point to now …
She tried to imagine the distance, the journey, and couldn’t. Not for herself. Certainly not for Mickey Fitzwilliam.
8
I lu … lu … lu … loved you,” he stuttered, clutching the old school badge.
“We were thirteen. We were just children.”
“I loved you!” he roared.
She couldn’t think of anything to say.
“Did you never ask yourself why it was that day? Why then?”
“I was a child. I didn’t ask myself anything.”
“He was the p-p-producer. Roberto. My dad.” The head was shaking again but there was only one voice left now, a young, frail one that sounded hurt and damaged. “He gave us money. He came by from time to time. Didn’t want to see me. He just wanted my mom. That’s all.”
“I don’t understand …”
“He wanted to give me something. To ease his conscience. So I told him about you. About how you danced and acted and sang. About how beautiful you were. How your mom wanted to get you into show business. Everyone knew that. I got him to give you the audition. I begged him to give you that part. That was me.”
“Thank you,” she said simply.
“You were good, even then. Everyone wanted to look at you. They couldn’t stop.”
She whispered, “ ‘But ’oo can blame Françoise?’ ”
“Don’t play those games with me,” he snarled. “I saw you. On the TV. Going around town. You never even noticed me. I watched you.” He stared hungrily at her. “I watched you change. All those nice parts in the beginning. The good girl. Sweet dreams and apple pie. Then … That first time you … t-t-took off your clothes.”
“Mickey …”
“Do you know what that did to me? Do you even care?”
She shook her head and said, “I did not know you then. I do not know you now. If I had …”
“While you were banging half of Hollywood, I was there. Didn’t touch another human being. Not once. Waiting.”
“Mickey, please …”
“I stood outside the TV studio all night long sometimes. I knew what was going on inside. None of those bastards loved you. Not your actors and your rich guys and your pimps. Not some stupid Italian cop …”
“Stop this now!”
“I watched you every day of your life. On the screen. In the papers. On the Net. I was right there next to you in a store, an elevator, at the movies. You never noticed, did you? Never had a clue what you owed me. Why the hell do you think Roberto cast you for Inferno in the first place, huh? Some washed-up has-been dodging in and out of rehab so fast even the papers had given up on you? Why’d he pick you of all people?”
“Because I can do my job,” she insisted, mainly to herself.
“So can a million other pretty women, all of them younger than you. I asked him. I begged him. One more favour for the bastard son. Keep him quiet. Ease an awkward little situation. Got to say that about my old man. He still has a Catholic sense of guilt somewhere, even when he’s murdering people. You know when he came along and wanted someone else removed from that sweet scam of his, to keep up the coverage in the papers?”
She didn’t want to listen to this. She didn’t want to think about it.
“I screwed it up on purpose. I sent out Martin to get that almond stuff knowing you had that hypodermic handy.”
“I could have died.”
“If I’d wanted it, you would have. Don’t you see?”
It was the last thing she needed, but the tears were beginning to prick in her eyes. “In God’s name … what is it you expect me to do?”
“Fuck-you-kill-you …” he whispered. “Lu-lu-love you. I waited so long for this. Twenty years. I didn’t want you to hate me. I made you, Maggie. I rescued you. I still can. There’s just the three of us left now. Me, you, and my old man — and he won’t be around much longer. Millions and millions and millions of dollars. It could last a whole lifetime. For the two of us.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked, exasperated. “I don’t understand …”
“The scam, dummy. The one that jerk Harvey wrote you into when you were too bombed to notice. Once my old man’s dead, there’s a place in the Caribbean we can fly, walk in a bank, pick up the whole bundle, everything that was meant to go to him, to Harvey, Martin, those Lukatmi losers … It’s all ours, Maggie. No more work. No more worry. You don’t need to go down on some jerk in a director’s chair. I don’t have to slave away in construction until my old man calls and tells me to go do his dirty work. Everything will end perfectly. Don’t you see?”