Magic Hour (26 page)
"Why didn't he kick her out of his house? Fire her?"
"Well, he wasn't going to fire her until he had a replacement, which was going to be terribly expensive. Lindsay had a pay-or-play contract: she got paid in full whether she made the movie or not. But he was looking for someone else. That's why he was going to L.A. As far as kicking her out of his house, he was first and foremost a smart operator. If for any reason he couldn't make a deal with another actress, he'd be stuck with Lindsay, and while she was living with him and having sex with him and getting little ten-thousand-dollar trinkets from him, she'd at least be semi-manageable. If he gave her the heave-ho, she'd be blatantly hostile."
"Do you think Lindsay knew Sy was seeing you?"
"Me specifically? No. Seeing someone? Definitely. Not that Sy told me, but he'd call her trailer from my house; they have those portable phones. She'd come to the phone and obviously ask where he was, and he'd take a long beat and then say, 'Oh, I'm, uh, having lunch with an old friend from college, uh, Bob, just ran into him. We're at this little hole-in-the-wall.' And she asked him where, and he took another beat and said, 'Uh, uh, Water Mill.' He was lying but letting her know he was lying."
"Did you get any sense from Sy that Lindsay might have someone on the side?" Bonnie smiled and shook her head, as if the possibility was too ridiculous to even consider. "Why not? Was he that terrific in the sack that she wouldn't want anyone else?" I confess: this was not strictly a police question. I wanted to know.
Maybe she knew I wanted to know. But she didn't want to tell me. "That's really not relevant."
"Yes, it is. I've got to know everything about him. I've got to know how he behaved toward people, toward women. It's important that I know what kind of number he was doing with Lindsay Keefe. Why are you so sure she wasn't stepping out?"
"Because Sy could satisfy anyone." She sat up, eyes right on me, trying to act detached, trying for a clinical look, like a woman in a white coat on TV selling April Showers douche. If she'd worn glasses she would have taken them off and looked sincere. "Sy was extremely adaptable with women. He could be whatever they wanted. Well, he couldn't be six three, with a thing that went from here to Philadelphia. But he could talk dirty or romantically. He could be an animal, or he could be Fred Astaire to your Ginger Rogers. Forget real passion, or real warmth—he wasn't capable of either. But he could be a sensational animal, a fantastic Fred Astaire. Or whatever it was you wanted."
Moose came to the door and started barking. She wanted to join the conversation. I couldn't risk letting her run out and setting off my neighbors' dogs in the dark. So we went back inside, back to the pineapple room. I switched on the lamp, and we took up our previously staked-out positions. But since we were getting along better, I decided it was safe to put my feet up on the bed. "What if I told you Lindsay was having a go at Victor Santana?" I inquired.
"No!"
"Well?"
"I'd say..." Bonnie gave it about five seconds' thought. The fresh air had brightened her eyes, cleared her head. "She probably could have gotten away with it. You know why? Sy would never believe it." She pulled up her legs, hugged her knees. "But if he did, that would have been it for her. He was so vindictive. If anyone—an agent, a studio executive—crossed him, he'd go on Sy's list. Seriously, he had this mental list, including a top ten, that kept changing. Whenever he could zing it to someone on his list, no matter what number, he would. And once you were on, you never dropped off."
I kept thinking Sy's vengefulness had to mean something. Maybe he'd confronted Lindsay, worked her over about her crummy acting. Or he'd found out about Santana. Maybe she sensed he was about to do damage to her: not just fire her but try and destroy her career, let everyone know she'd lost it as an actress. Would she have gone after him then? It
added
up, I thought. No. But almost.
Bonnie said: "I honestly don't think Sy knew. He wasn't in one of his I'll-rip-out-her-heart-with-my-teeth moods. He was very optimistic about his trip to L.A. Very relaxed too. He'd planned on taking the ten-fifteen morning flight, but instead he decided to go over to the set, to make nice to everybody because he knew morale wasn't all that high. Then he called me to meet him at his place. I'd never seen it before. He gave me the grand tour. Wanted to hear me say 'Gosh! Gee! My God!' "
"Did you?"
"Sure. If you're going to make a fuss over a house, this was the one to do it with."
"He was relatively relaxed?"
"He wasn't tense. He said he'd done everything but wave pom-poms and cheer on the set, and when he'd left, he could feel the change in atmosphere. Much more positive. And as far as the L.A. trip, he'd gotten copies of the screenplay to three different actresses, and he was going to take the seven o'clock evening flight, get a decent night's sleep, and the next day he was going to have breakfast, lunch and dinner with them. He was going to make one of them an offer that same night. He told me, 'I'm a little in the hole right now with
Starry
, but watch. I'm going to pull it out. It's going to be my biggest. My best.' "
I put my feet down and pulled the chair closer to the bed: straight talk time. I didn't like being so charmed by her. "Tell me why you threatened Sy."
"What are you talking about?"
"Bonnie, come on. You went to see him at the
Starry Night
set. We have witnesses. You said: 'Sy, you've just been a rotten bastard for the last time.' "
"You call this an interrogation?" Too cute. Like a snotty Upper East Side bitch.
"Fuck off, Bonnie."
"No, you eff off. Don't you know
anything
about people? Here's Sy Spencer, my former husband who's been coming to my house every day, having sex with me, telling me how he's missed me, how wonderfully
human
I am, how there's been an emptiness in his life since I've been gone despite all the other women and he's beginning to think he made a ghastly mistake. 'Ghastly' was his word. Sure, I knew it was almost all bull, but he said, I want you to come down to the set one day soon; I want you to see what I'm doing firsthand. So I went. Okay, it might have been better to wait for an engraved invitation: big deal. But when I got there, he told me to leave—so everyone could hear. I wasn't hurt. I was furious. And that
was
going to be the last time he was a rotten bastard. He came over to my house later and I wouldn't let him in. Over. Goodbye."
"Except it wasn't over."
"He called about two seconds later from his car phone. He said he felt
terrible
. He explained that if he had invited me on the set, it would look like we had something going, because he never took anyone to the set except big banker types. And he couldn't afford to have Lindsay focus on me; it would give the game away, and he wasn't ready for that yet. So he had to disavow me publicly. Naturally, he apologized all over himself and swore he was getting rid of her. As soon as she was gone, I'd have carte blanche to visit anytime I wanted. He said he was proud of me. I'd created
Cowgirl
. He wanted to parade me around, show me off to the crew." I didn't say anything. I didn't have to. She acknowledged: "Even if you were dying to believe him, you couldn't. For a sophisticated man, he could be such an ass."
The day's heat was finally rising off the land. The first night breeze blew through the window. The shade flapped, and Bonnie shivered. "Let me get you a sweatshirt or something."
"No, thanks. I'm fine."
Okay, I would have liked to see her in my old SUNY Albany sweatshirt. I would have liked to take her hands between my hands and rub them. The fact was, I liked having Bonnie in my house. Despite the insane circumstances, despite the occasional angry sparks that flared up between us, it was so comfortable. So much about her pleased me, from her not making cholesterol remarks when I handed her the TV dinner to her courage to her wonderful, glossy hair. But the great thing was, I realized, that in spite of the pleasure of her company, I had recovered from my obsession with her.
Maybe by allowing myself to remember what had gone on between us, I had broken her hold over me. Here I was, able to sit in a box of a room, inches away from her, question her, behave like a real cop. Her power was gone. I could relax, not fantasize about kissing her. Or about licking her lips, putting my tongue in her mouth. I was past that hump of desire. Hey, I thought, about time.
In that instant of self-congratulation, I glanced away from her mouth. If the shade hadn't been pulled down, I might have looked out the window, leaned back and watched the moon on the rise. But since there was no night sky to admire, no stars, I looked elsewhere and noticed the tautness of the nylon shorts stretched between her legs.
If we'd been characters in some porno cartoon, the God of Passion would, at that moment, have hurled down a bolt of lightning; it would have slashed across the sky, forked into two jagged spears and, at the exact same moment, zapped each of us, right in the pubes.
Just as my breathing deepened, Bonnie reached behind her, took the pillow and placed it in her lap. It was one of those unconscious gestures of self-defense. But without realizing it, she began fondling the edge of the pillow, rubbing the protruding corner with her thumb. Oh, God, I thought, she could be doing that to me. I got more and more excited. I could almost feel the soft pressure of her thumb.
I tried to picture Lynne, use her as a magic charm against what was happening: auburn hair, I said to myself, and big brown eyes, peaches-and-cream complexion. The waist, the gorgeous long legs. But I couldn't get the parts to add up to anything. I couldn't break Bonnie's spell.
But she could. Either she suddenly realized what she was doing or she simply sensed the change of climate in the room, because she tucked the pillow behind her again. "What else would you like to know?" she asked, all perky, cheerleadery, like she was going for the Miss Teenage Ogden title.
"Why did you lie to me?"
"You mean, when you first came to my house?"
"I came in, asked a simple question: When was the last time you saw Sy? You said you weren't sure, but you thought a few days before, at the set. I asked when you'd seen him before that, and you were kind of vague, but you thought it was about a week before, when he gave you the fifty-cent tour of his house. You said you hadn't spent much time with him."
"For someone who can't remember, you have a great memory."
If I looked at her, I'd see her crotch, or her breasts, or the hollow of her collarbone where the neck of her stretched-out T-shirt drooped. So I looked right past her and concentrated on the weave of the crappy wood headboard. "I asked if Sy had visited you at your house. Again, vague, but then you said maybe he had dropped by. Real casual. Just two old pals working on a movie script together. So what I want to know is, did you construct an alibi before I showed up? Or were you winging it?"
"Aren't you going to give me one of your warnings? You know: 'If you don't tell me the truth, I'll bust your head open.' "
"No. It's I'll bust your fucking head open.' Now, can we get on with it?"
"What's wrong?"
Just because I was making major eye contact with a headboard, she thought something was wrong? "Nothing's wrong. I asked you a question. I'm waiting for an answer."
"I had an alibi, but I was winging it too." She took a deep breath. "After Sy called, I drove over. He showed me the house, and—big surprise—we ended up in bed."
"Yeah, big surprise." I could picture him, his arm around her, leading her from room to beautiful room, the 'This could be yours again' unspoken. I could see his hand on her ass, guiding her into the guest room, closing the door. "When did you start screwing and when did you finish?"
She snapped: "Why don't you just come right out and ask me exactly what we did and how it was?"
"Why don't you shut your mouth? Understand something: you're here to work. I didn't bring you over for the pleasure of your company or to get off on hearing about your sex life." Thwarted desire is great for the disposition. "Now, from when to when?"
"From about one until two-thirty. Do you want to know if it was good for me?"
"I'm sure it's always good for you, sweetheart. Otherwise you wouldn't do it so often."
Well, I'd said it to hurt her. And it worked. Nothing like a deep, wounding insult to snap a woman out of enticing you, put her on the verge of tears. Works like magic. "It wasn't necessary to say that." Her voice quavered; it was costing her to fight back.
"Did anyone see you while you were at Sy's?"
"Mrs. Robertson. She's the cook." She spoke to the green blanket.
"Did you have any conversation with her?"
"Yes. Sy went to call
"What about?"
"About our families, Sy's family. She'd begun working for us the second summer we were married. I hadn't seen her since the divorce."
"Was that before or after you got laid?"
"Don't talk to me like that."
"Before or after? Hurry up, Bonnie. There's a time bomb ticking. Robby Kurz is out there looking for you."
"Before."
"So you talked with Mrs. Robertson, went upstairs, had sexual intercourse ... Is that better?" She didn't answer. Just then I got another picture of Sy, with his tight cap of short gray hair, climbing all over her, petting, fondling, squeezing, feeling her skin. "And then what? Come
on
. Any conversation?"
"Only about the three actresses he was seeing. Who I thought would be best for the part, and why. He said he'd call me from L.A. and give me a report."
"That's it?"
"Pretty near."
"What else?"
"He said he loved me."
"Did you believe him?"
"I believed he believed it for that second."
"Did you believe him?"
"No."
"Any signs he was under pressure?"
"Not really."
"So you kissed goodbye, and what?"
