‘Well, no, as a matter of fact, I’m not OK. In fact I’m devastated. I don’t know what you’re trying to do to me, Frank. I always thought you were cynical. I thought that was par for the course for comedy writers. But I never realized that you were cruel.’
He couldn’t understand what she meant. Not until he stepped into living room and she waved her arms at the walls all around her. Her eyes were blurry with tears.
Every one of her Impressions In White had been defaced with red aerosol. One of them had been marked with a swastika, another had the word BITCH scrawled across it. A third had a crude vagina sprayed on to it, and yet another said FORGIVE?? The used aerosol can had been dropped on to the white leather couch, leaving splatters and smears.
‘Christ – who did this?’
Margot stared at him in disbelief. ‘Who did this? You’re asking me who did this?’
‘Hey, you don’t think that it was me?’
‘Who else, Frank? Nobody else has a key, nobody else knows the alarm code. Nobody else knows how much my paintings mean to me. Nobody else despises them like you do, and nobody else thinks that I’m a Nazi and a bitch because I blame you for what happened to Danny.’
Frank opened and closed his mouth and simply couldn’t think what to say to her.
‘I want you out of here, Frank. I don’t care where the hell you go. You can come to the funeral but after that I don’t want to see you. Not until we’ve sorted this out.’
‘Margot, I swear to God I didn’t do this! I wasn’t even here last night. I went to Carol’s.’
She stood still for a moment, with one hand on top of her head, as if she were making one of the most important decisions of her life.
‘Margot . . . can you really see me doing something like this? Sure, I got angry with you the other night, but that was frustration more than anything else. I need you, Margot, and you need me. We have to talk all of this out.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘No, we don’t. All you want to do is hurt me, because I won’t forget what you did to Danny. I could have forgiven you, yes. I started to forgive you. But that isn’t enough for you, is it? You want me to pretend that it never happened at all.’
‘Margot . . .’
‘I’m going out, Frank. I’ll be back around three. When I come back, I don’t want to find you here. Please.’
She walked out and left Frank standing in the middle of the living room, with the red-smeared paintings on every side. He felt as if he had woken up this morning in a parallel universe. He had stayed round at Carol and Smitty’s last night, hadn’t he? The dog had licked his face and he had stood in the moonlit yard. Or maybe he hadn’t. Maybe he had driven around here and spray-painted Margot’s Impressions In White.
He approached the painting with the swastika on it, and touched it. The red paint was still slightly tacky, so it couldn’t have been sprayed more than three or four hours ago. He knew for an absolute certainty that he hadn’t done it. He couldn’t have done it.
But if it wasn’t him, who had?
Ten
‘Joe says they’re not going to cancel under any circumstances but one more bomb and I think they’re going to cancel,’ Mo said.
‘This is insane. What are they going to do? Put on endless repeats of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm?’
‘Frank, everybody’s running scared. What’s going to happen if they let off a bomb right in the middle of Wheel of Fortune? What if they blow up the new Mission Impossible movie and kill Tom Cruise? The insurance companies are pulling out of movies and television like Napoleon pulling out of Moscow.’
Lizzie Fries lit another More and blew smoke out of her nostrils. ‘Maybe we could introduce a sympathetic Taliban character and have all our women dress in burkas.’
‘In Iowa?’
‘It was only a suggestion,’ said Lizzie. She was sixty-two and skeletally thin, with a puffball of dyed orange hair and a face with striking bone structure but lizard-like skin. She always wore pant suits and frilly blouses, and enormous dangly earrings. In her twenties she had been a comedienne and a singer, and even Lucille Ball had said she was going to be the next Lucille Ball. But drink and pills and four failed marriages had destroyed her looks, even though they had never diluted her corrosive sense of humor.
‘So what’s the score?’ asked Frank. ‘Is there any point in us finishing the next script? If they’re going to cancel, we might as well go play some golf.’
‘You shouldn’t even be here,’ Mo told him. ‘Lizzie and I can manage. We’ll send you the first draft by email and you can tear it to shreds in the privacy of your own home.’
‘I wish. Margot’s thrown me out.’
‘She’s what?’
‘She’s thrown me out.’ Frank explained about the séance and Impressions In White.
Lizzie waved aside a cloud of smoke. ‘Are you sure you didn’t deface those paintings? Me, I can’t tell you how often I wake up in the night with an insatiable urge to paint swastikas and vaginas all over the wall.’
‘It wasn’t me, Lizzie. I don’t know who the hell it could have been, but it wasn’t me.’
‘What about this séance?’ asked Mo. ‘I got to tell you, Frank, it sounds to me like you’re very close to cracking up. Why don’t you stay with Naomi and me for a while, just until you’ve got your head back together?’
‘Oh God, just what he needs,’ said Lizzie. ‘Chicken soup and old Zero Mostel jokes.’
‘Thanks for the offer,’ said Frank. ‘I think I need to spend some time on my own.’
‘You’re not going to do anything stupid?’
‘What, like sit in the bath and drop a hairdryer in it? No, Mo, I’m not going to do anything stupid. I just need to rearrange my head.’
He drove to Venice. On the car radio, the chief executive of NBC was repeating his determination not to be intimidated by terrorists.
‘The very first amendment to the American Constitution guarantees freedom of expression and a free media. We at NBC value this freedom beyond the price of gold or rubies. We are not going to allow a maniac minority to destroy the legacy that our founding fathers handed down to us.
‘On the other hand, we are taking every precaution to protect our employees and our property. Everybody who enters an NBC office or studio for whatever reason will be thoroughly searched, and if this causes delay and disruption – well, I’m afraid that’s the price we have to pay for vigilance.’
Newscaster Will Chase said, ‘In spite of these redoubtable words, a wave of blind panic continues to sweep through Hollywood. Extra police and deputies have been brought in to guard all major TV networks and movie studios, including Fox, Universal, Sony, Warner Brothers, MGM/Pathé and Disney at Burbank.
‘Fashionable restaurants and nightspots frequented by movie and TV celebrities are reporting that business has fallen off overnight. At the Beverly Hills Hotel, the Polo Lounge was described today as a “mausoleum,” and Rodeo Drive as a “ghost town.” Personal protection companies are reporting a desperate shortage of bodyguards and security experts available for hire, and Armet, the Florida-based company which produces “discreetly bomb-proofed” cars and SUVs, say they have been inundated with inquiries from Hollywood’s rich, famous and scared.
‘There is no question about it, the TV and movie industry is living in fear, and nobody doubts that there will be another bomb outrage very soon. The only questions are when, and where.’