Burning Time (7 page)

He couldn’t believe it was her. Emma wouldn’t do that. She just wouldn’t. She was good. She wouldn’t do that. He thought he was wrong and just saw a resemblance. He wandered around thinking about it, how much he liked her, more than liked her. He hadn’t ever really liked anybody that way since. He remembered how perfect she was, really smart and nice. He had watched her carefully that whole year and knew she wasn’t just empty nice. She was really nice. Like all the way through. He knew she didn’t do anything bad like the rest of them. Wasn’t a liar. He loved her and saved her so she could go away to college. How could she betray him and turn out to be a whore?

“You’ve been by here twenty times. You want to buy a ticket?”

Troland turned around abruptly. “What?” He was back at the theater, didn’t know how he had gotten there, and was pacing back and forth in front of it without realizing what he was doing.

“You all right?” The kid behind the window frowned.

“What’re you looking at?” Troland snapped. He had a motorcycle chain over his shoulder.

The boy behind the window held up his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “Hey, what are you so ticked off about? Film doesn’t start for a half an hour, but it’s not full. You can go in any time.”

Troland looked through him. “I’ll wait for the beginning,”
he said furiously. The guy was crazy. He wasn’t ticked off.

“Suit yourself.” He tried again when Troland didn’t move away. “You want to buy your ticket now?”

“You deaf or something? I said I’d wait for the beginning.” Troland looked at the teenager. His hair was combed straight back. He was wearing a white polo shirt and looked puzzled. Troland shot him between his puzzled eyes and watched him slump forward in his chair. No, better to stab him in the chest. Yes, that was better. The heart kept going for a while pumping the blood out so it drenched the white shirt and splattered the walls and counter. He walked away. He wasn’t mad.

He thought about it as the movie started. Maybe he was mad. Yeah, he felt a cold rage. Really cold. He sat by himself way at the back. It was in his stomach like a big rock he couldn’t digest. Cold and then hot.

Fuck you
. How could anyone act in a movie like this? How could she? He watched it more intensely this time. It was her. Now it was more her. And more shocking, the guy was
him
. How could he do that to her?

He was appalled by the look on her face. She
liked
it. He hated her. Why was she letting him do that? This was no movie. She was really letting him do that. Him, Troland Grebs. That was him. He was confused. But they were in New York, and he was here in San Diego. He was aroused again, just as he had been the day before. No, he wouldn’t give in to it.

He looked at the people in front of him. No one could see him. He was in the back, the leather jacket on his lap. He was fascinated. He couldn’t look away from the screen. His dick was in his hand, both hands now. It disgusted him that she was doing that. How could she do that? The guy was sucking her off. It was gross. It was tremendous.
Maybe he was biting her. But he couldn’t be hurting her. She wasn’t screaming. Too bad. She deserved it. He rubbed up and down on his soft moist skin. It wouldn’t be bad to shove it in there. The screen went blank.

Shit. What was going on now? What was that sound? It was a sound he knew. What was it? The screen was white for a long time. The tension grew and then he saw it was a silvery tattoo needle. When it touched the guy who looked like him, he came in his pants.

As soon as it was over, the thrill was instantly replaced by a feeling of intense shame. He had befouled himself. His pants were sticky and wet. What a horrible thing he did. For some minutes he scolded himself for losing control. Then he pulled his shirt out of his pants to hide the stain, and thought again. Wait a minute. This wasn’t his fault. He had nothing to do with this. He didn’t turn an angel into a whore. He didn’t make the movie. He didn’t have anything to feel bad about. She did it. She was the one who did this to him. She should be punished. She would be punished.

He sat there for a long time waiting for his heart to slow down. When the lights came on, he got up. His rage was enormous. Why did she do this to him? He walked out holding the jacket in front of him. The fingers of one hand unconsciously caressed the tattoo on his arm, then moved to the many scars crisscrossing his chest where his father had taught him what fire felt like.

I’ll teach you not to set fires. I’ll show you what you get for being bad
. He held him down and burned Troland with a red-hot wire hanger so he could never take his shirt off in public again.

He hated the wet feeling in his pants, needed a drink. He unchained the bike and headed home.

“Do you know who this is?”

Ronnie, Emma’s agent of many years, leaned over excitedly as she pointed to the name on the cover of a script she had brought for Emma to read.

They were having breakfast at The New York Deli just around the corner from Ronnie’s office on Fifty-sixth Street and Sixth Avenue.

It was a big name. Emma took another bite of her eggs Benedict and grimaced. “Of course I do.”

“Well, this is it. This is how it happens. You do a nothing film, don’t have any expectations for it, somebody somewhere likes it. And suddenly you’re a
star
. I’ve seen it a million times.” Ronnie sighed. “It’s just never happened to me.”

Then she reached across the table and slapped Emma’s hand. “Are you crazy? We can’t eat that,” she said as if she had just noticed it.

Emma looked at the Canadian bacon smothered with Hollandaise sauce on her plate. “Why not?”

“It’s four-hundred-percent fat.” Ronnie raked a hand
through her blunt-cut red hair. The hair curled around her ears for a second and then fell back in its perfect circle around her plump face.

Ronnie was a compulsive eater. She wrinkled her freckled nose at Emma’s plate with disgust and longing.

Emma shook her head. Ronnie used to refer to her as You. You do this job or that job. Now when she talked about Emma it was We or I. “We’ll think about this,” or “I don’t want to do that.”

“We have to be more careful,” she said now. “You can’t just eat anything you want. You can’t just
do
anything you want. We have to think about what it means for our career.”

“It’s not our career. It’s my career,” Emma replied with a smile.

The pink blush lavishly applied to Ronnie’s cheeks stood out strongly against her pale skin, as she blanched.

“I just don’t want you getting fat,” she said defensively. “I wasn’t being pushy.”

Emma let out a small laugh. Ronnie was extraordinarily pushy. But it never helped her, and her pushiness hadn’t helped Mark, Emma’s college friend and the writer/director/producer of
Serpent’s Teeth
, either.

Ronnie hadn’t liked the modest project, and refused to make a single call to help it. She had nothing to do with the film and now she was claiming she was instrumental in putting the whole thing together.

“It grows in the night without your consent,” Ronnie said about the fat. “Look at me. I don’t eat a thing. Not a
thing
. I have one tiny lamb chop at night with all the fat cut off, and a lettuce leaf. I don’t know why I’m so fat.” She heaved a great sigh.

“I’d be a pretty girl if I wasn’t so big, wouldn’t I?” She gave Emma a searching look. Emma knew that although
Ronnie was deeply involved with her fat, that was not what was on her mind right then. She was really very worried that Emma would leave her.

“You
are
a pretty girl,” Emma said.

She turned her head and caught sight of a couple at a table across the room. They were caressing fingers while talking and looking deep in each other’s eyes. Unexpectedly, grief gnawed at her, filling her again with the overwhelming feeling of desolation that had slowly been taking her over for a long time.

“We can’t eat fat. We can’t eat sugar,” Ronnie was babbling. “You’re not going to leave me, are you?” she demanded suddenly.

Emma stared at the lovers. She couldn’t remember the last time Jason had looked at her like that.

“What did you imagine happening after you did this film?” he had asked again last night.

Her reply didn’t satisfy him. “It was a low-budget thing.” She had shrugged. Big deal. “Kind of a lark. We had no idea anyone would pick it up.”

“Some lark.” He was like a stone wall. There was no getting through it.

“Oh, come on, Jason, is it so bad that people will see my work instead of just hearing me?”

For the last few years, Emma had been a voice on both TV and radio. She had acted in several of Mark’s plays, but got no important work on the stage and no parts at all on TV or in the films.

“It’s not just work,” Jason said carefully. “It’s a sexual thing. You exposed your body, you humiliated me—”

“Don’t.”

“Don’t what? You can do it, but I can’t say it?”

“I was acting in a film, that’s all.”

“It’s more than acting. It was a
sexual
thing, Emma. You have sex. What would you call it?”

“It’s work. I call it work.”

“Working on your back with your clothes off and a stranger on top of you? What kind of work is it?”

“Stop it. You’re making too much of it. I’m an actress. It’s what I do.”

“No, it’s not what you do. It’s not what you’ve ever done.” He turned away, wouldn’t look at her.

“I thought you were so well analyzed,” she had said after a long pause. “Other husbands of actresses seem to handle it.”

“Maybe, if it’s part of the deal,” he replied bitterly. “But I’m a doctor, a very private person. This wasn’t part of our deal.”

“Emma. Answer the question,” Ronnie demanded.

“I have to go,” Emma said suddenly.

“What? We haven’t talked about the scripts yet. One of them has a sex scene in it that will knock you over.” She reached in her bag for the other scripts she brought.

Emma shook her head. “Look,” she said slowly. “I’m not sure I want to be known for that.”

“What are you talking about?” Ronnie cried.

Emma turned away from the lovers and focused on her. “I said it isn’t what I want to be known for.”

“Since when are we so squeamish, huh?” Ronnie started fanning her face with one of the scripts, as if she were going to faint. It had a red cover that clashed with her hair. “Look, you have to do what they send you. If they send you prostitute scripts, you have to be a prostitute.”

“Is that what they are?” Emma asked. “All three?”

“What’s the big deal? What’s the matter with you all of a sudden?”

“I hate films that glorify hookers. I really do. Hookers
are not wonderful people. They don’t end up happily ever after. I don’t want to be known for my body. It’s—”

“You have to read for this one next week. So look at this first and call me after two.” Ronnie handed over the scripts abruptly. “Don’t make me sick.”

“I have a taping this afternoon,” Emma said.

She was doing a Maalox moment, speaking the voice of the old woman because the old woman cast for the part sounded like a chicken.

“Then read it now.” Ronnie pushed it at her.

Emma took it. It was very thin, only four or five pages. “These are just sides,” she protested.

“So?”

“So where’s the rest of it?” she demanded.

“Emma, don’t fight me. Sometimes they just
give
sides. They don’t want you to work on the whole goddamn part. They just want to see you do the scene cold, how you see the character from the few words that are written there.”

“Where’s the rest of it? I can’t do it if I don’t know what the story is.”

“You’re making me very upset. You’ve been in this business long enough to know you’re not the one who has leverage at this point. They are the ones who decide on
you
. You do it, and if they like you, you get the part. You get famous, have fun, and make lots of money. What’s the problem here?”

Emma gathered up her things. Right, get famous and make lots of money. Ronnie was right. She had been working very hard for this for years.

“Okay,” she told Ronnie. “I’ll go for it.” If Jason didn’t like her success, it was his problem.

She watched the lovers get up and leave.

“Well, what can you tell me?” Newt Regis leaned back in his chair feeling a little nervous, because Dr. Milt Ferris had bothered to come to his office instead of calling him on the phone with the information Newt had asked for. When Newt wanted a prelim, Milt usually gave him a call with the TOD and COD.

Milton Ferris had been Medical Examiner for a while in the City of San Diego, and had taught pathology for years at the medical school. When he decided he wanted to get away from it all and came out here to write his memoirs, the job of Coroner happened to be open. Milt was persuaded to take it as a stopgap until they could find someone else. So far they were lucky. Four years had passed, nobody ever bothered to look for a replacement, and he hadn’t complained about the work yet.

Milt had changed a few things in Potoway Village.

Before Milt came, Newt was called Newton, which was his real name. Establishing Time of Death was just that, and nothing else. But Milton was a crossword puzzle maniac, and now everything was letters and codes. His idea
of a good time was making up a crossword puzzle with just law enforcement and forensic terms in it.

Sometimes Newt complained that Milt had turned him into a salamander and Cause of Death into a fish, but Milt pointed out the KGB, CIA, FBI, and all the other police agencies around the world were the ones that started it, not him. Hey, the FBI now had branches with names like VICAP and IMNAT, absolute necessities for any crossword on the subject.

Milt was smooth all over, bald as an egg, pale, round, not over five foot five. At sixty, his face was still unlined except around the eyes, where there was always something of a smile going on. If he had had some hair, he might have looked a lot like a small Santa Claus. But even without hair, he didn’t look like someone who had spent his life cutting up dead bodies, and then studying the gruesome bits.