Based on a True Story (13 page)

twenty-two

A girl ran by them up the hill, turning to smile at Charles as he moved closer to the edge of the path to let her by. The boy’s eyes followed her as she disappeared around a bend.

Kenneth put a hand over his side to ease the pain of a stitch. “You know what my father used to say when he saw an arse like that? ‘Two cats fighting in a pillowcase.’”

“You are a terrible pervert, Ken.”

Kenneth stopped, dropped his hands to his knees, let his head hang down. So this is what it felt like to have a heart attack. He saw a bead of sweat fall from his forehead onto the cement path and sizzle there. When it felt like he could breathe again, he stood up and glared at the boy who stood above him on the steep path, unmelted.

He gasped, “Nice thing to say to your old man on his deathbed.”

He hadn’t changed from the suit he’d worn to the radio station that morning, and now it hung from him like a sodden sail. He wore handmade loafers from Lobbs of St. James’s, which had not gone out of style once in twenty years. Passing joggers gaped at the indecency of his dress.

“I thought,” he said when he’d caught his breath, “that we were going for a drink.”

Wordlessly, Charles thrust a bottle into his hand and Ken held it at arm’s length, squinting.

“Goji berry and kale smoothie. Now I know you’re trying to kill me.”

There was a bench at the edge of the path and he collapsed onto it with a grunt of relief. With a professional eye, he watched the hikers trundling up the canyon: dogwalkers and incognito actors, baseball caps pulled low over their eyes, couples with liver-spotted hands and ageless foreheads.

The boy had come to sit next to him. “How’s your book coming, anyway? Sorry. I know you’re never supposed to ask a writer that.”

Kenneth closed his eyes against the setting sun. “It’s not coming. They’re ready to kill me, though in a completely non-violent Buddhist way.” He squinted over at the boy. “They want it to be more personal. Stories of love and loss.”

“Well, you’d be good at the loss part.”

“Have I ever mentioned you’re a miserable little twat?”

They sat for a minute, quietly, until Kenneth no longer felt he needed
CPR
. He knew he probably shouldn’t say anything.

“I think I saw your mother,” he said.

Charles stared at him for a moment, mouth open. “Augusta?”

“Yes, your mother,” Ken said testily. “Augusta.”

“Here?”

“In Burbank.” The ridiculousness of the idea struck him, and he began to laugh. “Your mother, in a hire car, in Burbank.” His laughter turned into a roar. “Now that’s humiliating.”

The boy slumped against the back of the bench. The setting sun turned his hair gold. Ken thought, for the thousandth time, how beautiful he was, how unmarked by everything that had happened. How was the lad still single? The failure felt like a weight on his chest. Mr. Romance can’t find a girlfriend for his son, what a joke. But the truth was, the boy had never been interested in love.

Gingerly, he said, “Maybe we could try to see her.”

Charles was watching a hawk wheeling overhead. He said nothing, but after a minute he took out his phone and began checking his messages.

“To see how she’s doing.” Kenneth reached over and covered the phone’s screen. “Charles,” he said. “It’s been such a long time.”

Finally the boy turned to look at him. “You go if you want, Ken. You’re the family exorcist. I’ve no interest.”

twenty-three

She was alone in the airless dark. Why was there no one else on the Tube? And why was the train stopped at the station with the doors closed? Frances pressed herself against the glass, peered out onto the empty platform: Tooting Bec. She was going to die alone and friendless at Tooting Bec.

It would be in her obituary, the final indignity of her life. Except her obituary would never be printed, because obituaries were reserved for people who’d actually done something memorable with their time on earth. In the sinister hush of the train something stirred and Frances shrieked, slamming her fist against the train door.

“Open up,” she cried, pressing her face to the small area of glass not covered in alien grime. “Can anyone hear me? Open up!”

There was an echo: “For God’s sake, open up!”

Something grabbed her legs. Terrified, she kicked out, and then heard the voice again: “Don’t make us use force!” A burst of laughter in the dark.

Frances sat up, heart hammering, and reached for the light by her bed. She wasn’t at Tooting Bec Tube station; she was in a hotel in Los Angeles. She kicked at the sheet that trapped her legs. At her door there was a renewed pounding.

“We know you’re in there. Open up!”

Grabbing her bathrobe where she’d dropped it, Frances stumbled the few feet to the door.

“Augusta,” she whispered, “I’m sleeping.”

“I would expect nothing less. Open the door, darling.”

Frances did as she was told. Augusta stood in the doorway, blue suede stilettos in one hand, a light sheen of sweat on her face. Behind her, slumped against the wall, was a stocky young man, eyes closed, arms folded across a Dark Knight T-shirt. There appeared to be a tiny cocktail umbrella woven into his beard. He may have been snoring.

“I want you to meet a friend of mine . . . Tony.”

“Thane,” the boy muttered, without opening his eyes.

Augusta swung to face him, putting a hand on the wall for support. “You can say that as many times as you like. I’m still not going to believe you.”

Shoving her way past Frances, she flopped down in the room’s one armchair. Thane, roused, followed her, and as he smiled apologetically at Frances she noted he was dragging an orange traffic cone behind him.

“Good night?” she said, though the sarcasm drifted over their heads.

Augusta half-fell from the chair to crouch in front of Frances’s minibar.

“Dear God,” she muttered. “Untouched. Mine, for some reason, is empty as Old Mother Hubbard’s cupboard.”

She reached in and grabbed two tiny bottles of Johnnie Walker Red. She held one out to Thane, but he shook his head. The movement seemed to unbalance him and he fell backward on Frances’s bed like a giant redwood axed at the roots. He lay there, burbling.

“Join me?” asked Augusta.

“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” Frances said. “Tomorrow’s your big day . . .”

“Nonsense. It’s the evenings that are big.”

Frances was still shaken by the residual terror of the nightmare. She sat on the edge of the bed and took the bottle of whisky from Augusta, wrestling with its tiny, stubborn cap. Augusta’s was already half gone, and she sat with her eyes closed, the bottle resting in her cleavage.

“This your new boyfriend, then?” Thane’s jaw hung open, revealing a liverish purple tongue, and Frances reached over with two fingers to push his head to the side. She plucked the tiny yellow cocktail umbrella from his beard and left it on the bedside table. “He can’t be more than seventeen, Augusta.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, darling. I made him show me his driver’s licence. He was twenty last week. I’m not making that mistake again.”

“Which mistake was that?”

But Augusta was looking at the sleeping boy. “One forgets how beautiful they are at this age. Even the unfortunate ones. How fragile.”

She reached behind her into the fridge, groped blindly for a bottle, and held it up to her eyes: tequila. “The truth is, there was something rather sweet about him that reminded me just a bit . . .” She sat staring at the bottle, and then, abruptly tipped its contents into her mouth.

The clock said 4:47 a.m. Not sanity’s best hour. All hope of sleep faded. All Frances wanted was to fall back into bed, into Stanley Pfeffer’s dream arms, and here she was, watching Augusta pull an envelope the size of a postage stamp from her bag.

“A flat surface, darling . . . this will do.”

Frances watched as she tapped the edge of the doll-sized envelope on the tabletop. She had been in enough late-night pubs to recognize the sight of a cocaine wrap. How on earth had Augusta managed to find drugs in such a short period of time? Then she remembered the web site she’d consulted: Never underestimate the resourcefulness of the addict.

Augusta squeezed the edges of the envelope and tipped a small pile of white powder onto the cover of the hotel’s in-house magazine. It drifted like a beard of snow onto Tori Spelling’s chin. Frances’s eyes darted to the ceiling. What if they had cameras in the room? Could she be arrested merely for watching someone take drugs?

Augusta had rolled a bill, and held it out to Frances. “You?”

“It’s almost morning, Augusta. You have to be ready for your Fantasmagoria™ panel in a few hours.”

Augusta glared. “All the more reason, darling.”

She bent over the magazine, a curtain of hair obscuring her face, and sprang back up with a small sound of contentment.
Why hasn’t she passed out yet?
Frances thought. Thane was at least twice her size, and he’d gone down like a six-year-old girl.

“He’ll be there when we arrive.” Augusta’s speech was sharp-edged again. “He’ll get there early. I know he’ll want to see me for as long as possible, even though he’ll be lurking in the back row. Coward.”

She seemed to have forgotten Frances was there, lost in a monologue that required no audience. Rooting in the fridge again, she retrieved a bottle that looked like chocolate milk. Baileys Irish Cream. The alcohol of last resort.

“Who, exactly?” Frances asked, and immediately regretted asking.

“Mr. Romance,” Augusta sneered, and poured the creamy liquid into a tea cup. “What a goddamned fraud. I suppose if a takeaway followed by a pimply white arse pumping away in the bins behind Tesco is your idea of romance, then fine.”

“Maybe,” said Frances, as she tried to crawl under the duvet, “he just wants to say hello.”

“The last time we met,” Augusta said, “I tried to cut off his finger with a steak knife.” Her head dipped over the magazine again. “He was jabbing it at me. ‘You don’t deserve to be anyone’s mother,’ he says.”

Somehow, Augusta had leveraged herself to her feet and tottered back to the window. The sky had brightened to violet.

If I close my eyes
, Frances thought,
maybe she won’t notice I’ve fallen asleep and she’ll just go on talking.
Thane rumbled like a beached whale alongside.

“My maternal failings. Well. He wasn’t entirely wrong for once.” She turned over her shoulder to speak to Frances. “Do you know when I first realized I wasn’t meant to be a mother?” She was a dark silhouette against the brightening window. “It was too late, of course. Charlie must have been five or six. He was in Year 1, and his class was studying dinosaurs or planets or something that interests small children. I’d agreed to go on one of those dreadful school trips. He’d been pestering me for ages. It was the first and last time.”

Frances thought,
She’s forgotten I’m here.

“We took a bus to the dinosaur museum. The whole place smelled of cheese sandwiches and sick. The other mothers avoided me the entire time, which was a small mercy. At the end, we’d stopped at the fountain in the courtyard, thirty children screaming for pennies to throw in, you can’t imagine the noise. It did my head in. I remember my wish very clearly. I threw in a coin and I closed my eyes and I thought,
I hope I’ve got enough Valium to see me through the week.

“One of the other mums chucked her coin in, and she turned to me. I can still see the smile on her face. She said, ‘Do you think there will ever come a day when we’ll make a wish that’s about ourselves, and not about our kids?’”

Augusta drained the tea cup, set it on the desk. She walked over to the door and stood with her hand on the knob. “I’d never made a wish for Charlie before, not once. It had never occurred to me. But by the time I got home it hardly mattered, because my own wish had come true, and I slept like the dead.”

She opened the door and looked back at Frances, huddled on one side of the bed. “I’ve never told anyone that story before. I think I’d forgotten it.”

The door closed and she was gone.

twenty-four

“And joining us from London, the star of
The Blood Bank
— Augusta Price.”

Augusta nodded at the audience, narrowing her eyes against the glare of the stagelights. A bottle of orange juice sat on the table next to her and she took a sip, grimacing. Horrid, pulpy stuff. Her hangover hurled itself at the walls of her skull.

Tyson Benn, Fantasmagoria™ host, held out a hand in her direction. A ripple of applause — a smattering, truth be told — greeted his introduction. He smiled encouragingly at her. He had a round, angelic face that he’d tried to make sinister with a pointed Vandyke beard.

“I’d like to welcome everyone to ‘Type-A Personalities: The Evolution of the Vampire Medical Drama.’”

In the darkness, the audience settled itself. Frances was out there somewhere, still miffed about the Thane incident. She’d been deliberately frosty in the taxi on the way over. More important,
he
was out there somewhere. Augusta strained to see into the gloom, but all the faces were one blur. All she could see were the glowing red eyes of countless cameras. He was there, though. She could smell his treachery.

From the centre of the stage, Tyson Benn introduced the last of the actors on the panel: “I’m sure he needs no introduction to you folks here today. For ten years he was the star of
Koenig
, which one critic called ‘the
Berlin Alexanderplatz
of the vampire drama.’ All the way from Germany, please welcome Christoph Frank.”

Herr Frank smiled in gratitude as the audience roared a welcome. Augusta had never met the actor, indeed had never seen
Koenig
, but what she saw now astonished her: Frank, a wiry man in his early fifties with tattoos blanketing both arms, had a vampire’s smile. His canine teeth, glistening on his lower lip, had been filed to sharp points.
The fucker’s actually got fangs
, she thought. She had once succumbed to a barbaric haircut to play Saint Joan, but to disfigure one’s self permanently seemed an act of madness. Then she noticed, as the actor brushed a hand along his bottom lip, that his fangs wiggled. She shook her head in disbelief. Poseur.

There were three other actors who’d played vampire doctors on the panel, two of them balding. All wore reading glasses. Only Herr Frank had maintained a commitment to undead gauntness. Each one of them spoke about what had drawn them to the vampire medical drama. When it was Augusta’s turn, she said simply, “I was craving blood,” drawing an uneasy laugh from the audience.

The other actors droned on interminably, responding to questions from Benn and the audience. Augusta muttered an occasional response, but her attention was directed out into the dark, undifferentiated mass of the audience. The sound of the other actors was a muted buzzing in her ear.

“Perhaps you can explain to us,” Tyson Benn was saying to the star of
Koenig
, “why the vampire metaphor was so powerful for you, growing up in East Germany?”

Christoph Frank began explaining the motivations behind his character, a Nosferatu doctor who’d assisted the Nazis with their deadly experiments. The sibilants whistled through his sham fangs and she tried to tune him out. Her threshold for bullshit was perilously low; one drink would have sorted her out. But she’d chosen to face the day cold, wanting to feel the full force of her rage.

Of course he was out there. Sitting in the audience, watching her, imagining the lies he would tell . . .

“Don’t you agree, Augusta?” Tyson Benn’s question shook her from the reverie. The entire panel had turned to look at her. Herr Frank’s winged brow was raised expectantly.

“Possibly,” she said. She had to unstick her lips to speak. “About what?”

Herr Frank spread his pale hands. “That
Koenig
, and the programs that emulated it — even your show, for example — work best at the level of the unconscious. But for the richness of the subtext, they would never have lasted more than one week.”

God, if she had a stake she’d do him herself. The other panellists were nodding, waiting for her reaction. Augusta tore her eyes away from the audience. Had she heard a familiar cough?

“I don’t know, darling. Maybe things are different in Berlin, but in Newcastle I think people watch because they want to forget work for an hour. A bit of sex, a bit of terror, a bit of a cuddle on the sofa.”

Herr Frank frowned at her, his eyebrows drawn together. “But surely we demean an entire genre if we think it is merely . . .” — his narrow shoulders shrugged — “escapism. Where we connect with our audience is in the power of this uniting metaphor.”

“Most people watching television don’t give a sailor’s weeping cock about metaphor,” Augusta said.

Tyson Benn drew a breath in sharply and consulted his question cards. Underlying the nervous titters in the audience, she heard a low bass laugh, a familiar sound.
There you are
.

A hand had shot up in the audience, and the moderator, glad for the distraction, nodded.

“This is a question for you, Miss Price.” A man’s nasal voice, about halfway up the auditorium. He was invisible in the gloom. Augusta rubbed her temple against the throbbing. “I’ve not seen
The Blood Bank
, so I can’t talk about it. But
Koenig
is a masterpiece. It shattered perceptions.” Out of the corner of her aching eye, she saw Christoph Frank bow his head in humble thanks. “I guess I just want to know why you wanted to act in a genre that you’re clearly so dismissive of?”

People in the audience began to stir, roused at the scent of hostility.

Augusta had been scanning the crowd, but snapped to attention: “I beg your pardon?”

“It’s just that Mr. Frank is clearly committed to his role, and to his fans. I mean, you only have to look at the physical transformation he’s been prepared to undergo —”

“Do you mean the teeth?” Augusta said, astonished. “They’re not real, darling. Fake as a tranny’s tits.”

Now there was a genuine hubbub. Frank whipped around to her and said something furious in German. A ripple of laughter swept through the audience, and the moderator tried to interrupt.

“This is what I mean,” the questioner continued from the floor of the auditorium, his voice rising. “Why would you insult a respected actor like that? Especially since . . . well, what are you? Like, a soap star.”

Augusta felt the hot blood rush to her face, but before she could say anything, her tormentor disappeared, yanked back into his chair as quickly as if his legs had been kicked out from under him. And she heard a familiar voice in the audience, as clear as if it were in her ear: “I think it’s time you shut your gob.”

He stood in the empty front row, looking up at her. Augusta was still on stage, unwilling to surrender her advantage. He’d always towered over her, and she hated it.

“My knight in shining armour,” she said.

He said nothing, and for once she couldn’t read what was in his face. Disappointingly, he didn’t look quite as shit as she’d hoped. At least he hadn’t succumbed to the witch doctors — there was no sign of a needle’s work, no plumping or peeling. A cracked delta of lines fanned from the corners of his blue eyes, and two deep grooves ran from nose to mouth. The nose remained bent at an awkward angle; she’d always thought he was one punch away from handsome. There was no escaping the pull of genetics, though, and the extra weight around his chest and belly was only somewhat contained by a narrow-cut navy suit.

The rest of the panellists had filed off the stage, Herr Frank with a bitter glance in her direction. Tyson Benn was gesturing at her, his tiny beard quivering in fury, but she ignored him.

“You’ve turned into your dad,” she said.

“Yes,” Kenneth said. “But you haven’t.”

“Hmmm. You wouldn’t believe.”

“No, really, Augusta.” He moved toward her, resting his hands on the lip of the stage. Looking up her skirt, cheeky fucker. “How wonderful you look.”

From up here, she caught a glimpse of pink scalp through his wild yellow hair, and she felt a prick at the back of her eyes.
Dear God
, she thought.
I’m as bad as Frances
.

She was tempted to step on his hand to regain control of herself, but instead she said harshly, “I hear you’re keeping busy, Ken. Perhaps you fancy yourself a writer.”

“You hear such things, Augusta.” He rocked back playfully on his heels, hands gripping the stage, like a boy at the top of a climbing frame. Enjoying himself. Flirting. The phosphorescence of her rage was blinding; she could melt him with her eye-beams. But he seemed oblivious.

“You,” she hissed, aiming one trembling finger, “are not to write about me.”

“The same way you didn’t write about me?” He was laughing at her. She should have cut off his fingers when she’d had the chance. “I was hardly mentioned in your book. Nor the boy. As if we never existed.”

They regarded each other for a moment.

“Are you going to see your son?” Kenneth asked. “He knows you’re in town.”

She felt drained, limp as an old sock, her mouth dirt-dry. If he’d offered to take her out for a drink, she would have accepted. Pathetic. “I can’t imagine Charlie wants to see me.”

“I think you’d be surprised,” he said. “Charles is a young man now. He’s put away childish things. But I haven’t.” Kenneth smiled up at her, and it was as if she was seeing him in an old, half-remembered dream. “Come to lunch with me, Augusta. You can tell me off then. You always used to enjoy that.”

In the darkness, a throat was ostentatiously cleared. Augusta strained to see who it was, and Frances came into the light, a reluctant witness if ever there were one. She gave a stiff little wave.

“Hey, Augusta. That was . . . well, at least it’s over. Now you can relax.” She gave Kenneth a fleeting smile and stuck out her hand. “Frances Bleeker.”

“Ken Deller.”

Frances had already begun backing up the aisle. She lifted a hand to Augusta. “Well, I’ll leave you and your friend. See you back at the hotel.”

“
You’re
my friend,” Augusta called after her, but the girl had disappeared into the dark.

“You have a friend?” Kenneth said, and she could hear the mockery in his voice.

“That is Frances. My amanuensis, you could say. A charming girl, if a bit teary. She’s helping me with my second book.” Augusta put her hands on her hips, the spotlight warming her to her task. “Because the first was such a great success.”

“Ah,” he said. “I shall look forward to a second book in which I fail to appear.”

Now he was laughing at her. She felt her fists ball in rage. Nothing was going as planned. At this point he should be wailing like a whipped dog, begging her forgiveness. Not giving her that infuriating grin, like the past hadn’t happened, like they hadn’t burned each other’s houses down. Her leg tensed and she thought,
One good kick and I can at least smash in those teeth, the dental bill alone will send him to the poorhouse . .
.

“So,” he said. “Can I buy you lunch?”

“Fine,” she said.