The Reporter (7 page)

Janet appeared from around the corner, and Maxi pulled herself back to the present. The two women exchanged what seemed to
both of them a self-conscious hug.

“Come in, Maxi,” Janet said. “Take a look around; see if anything else is yours. Or if there’s anything else of his that you
want, for that matter.”

“How did you know those two pieces were mine?”

“Jack told me. I’d wondered about them, because they’re so different from everything else he owned.”

Maxi scanned her ex-husband’s cumbersome furniture crowded end to end, the antique mirrors leaning against the walls, the
boxes stacked everywhere filled with books, tapes, clothing, and odds and ends, all of it the personal effects of superstar
Jack Nathanson collected over thirty years.

And his artwork! Bulky, bizarre sculptures on pedestals, cryptic drawings and gigantic paintings on the walls, dark, frightening
pieces of Expressionism, bloody, gory scenes portraying people cut in half, phantoms, ghouls, the devil in many forms, human
and animal freaks of nature. Most of the work was by noted artists, Beckmann, Kandinsky, all superbly done, and all of it
expensive. He even had a Corot, but the darkest, most dour example of that brilliant French Impressionist, a bleak forest
of gnarled and decaying trees. Glancing at it on her
own
living room wall back then, Maxi would chuckle—she’d always figured
that Corot must’ve been having a really bad day when he knocked that one out.

And it was voluminous, his art collection—Jack had been accumulating it with fervor since he’d scored with his first big movie
and Sam Bloom had turned him on to the joy and prudence of investing in art. Jack never did anything halfway. Maxi could guess
how Janet must have felt as she’d attempted to incorporate these grotesqueries into a tasteful, inviting home—a daunting task,
Maxi knew, because she’d tried to do the same.

Two men in dark suits were wending their way through the clutter. “Anything with a red sticker is going,” Janet said to them.
And by way of explanation to Maxi, “They’re the appraisers from Sotheby’s. It’s all going to auction.”

Janet didn’t seem at all bereaved, but Maxi knew that the shock of violent loss often left loved ones in denial for a time.
Still, it was just a week to the day after Jack’s funeral. Soon, it seemed, for his wife to be efficiently and matter-of-factly
clearing out his things.

“You’ll find those stickers on most of what’s in the house,” Janet went on to the appraisers. “There’s more in my late husband’s
office, and the dining room, the den, bedrooms—”

“We’ll go around and make notes, Ms. Orson,” said one of the men, with the deference due a recent widow.

Maxi felt an odd sensation, being in the midst of Jack’s belongings again. Big, heavy, dark, dreary furniture, Chippendale
and Louis-the-Something, oversized, overstuffed, overwrought, cracked here, broken there, shabby in her view, and loads of
it, most of the pieces undeniably ugly. Undeniable by everyone except Jack. He’d loved these things. Maxi remembered the day
Wendy Harris had looked around their house in horror when they were moving Jack’s belongings in. “What the hell are you going
to
do
with all this shit?” Wendy had asked her. “What
can
I do?” Maxi had countered. “He loves it, and I love him. And in the scheme of things that really count, a few sticks and
bones are
unimportant, don’t you think?” Wendy, a confirmed minimalist when it came to furnishings, had just rolled her eyes.

“Are you okay?” Janet asked now, sensing Maxi’s discomfort.

“I… Yes, it’s just… It’s been a while since I’ve seen all this….”

The two women were quiet for several moments. Memories. They both had them. Janet broke the silence. “Come with me,” she said.

She led Maxi across the broad expanse of the crammed living room to four sets of French doors that looked out on a beautifully
landscaped pool area. “Let’s sit for a minute,” she said to Maxi, indicating a pair of small, tasteful loveseats that seemed
overpowered by the rest of the furnishings in the room.

“I don’t remember these—” Maxi started, as they sat down opposite each other.

“No, these were mine,” Janet said, running a hand gently over the ivory silk upholstery. The two women looked at each other
then, and in that moment both realized that they had a lot in common.

“You know, Maxi,” Janet said softly, “I was tempted to call you several times, when Jack seemed his most perplexing. To see
what light you could shed on his behavior. But I never did.”

Déjà vu,
Maxi thought, remembering the day when she herself had first called Debra Angelo, sorely needing the same kind of enlightenment.
There’d been nobody else to look to. Certainly not Sam Bloom, who thought all of Jack’s wives were predators. Not wonderful
Julian Polo, who knew the dark side of his client’s movie plots, but not of his home life. Nor had she known anyone in Jack’s
family who could help. He’d told her he
had
no family.

Maxi’s gaze drifted once again to the glut of furnishings in the room. “There’s… just so much of it, isn’t there?” she breathed,
to break the mood.

“So much, and so
awful,”
Janet returned, surprising Maxi with her candor. She relaxed into her comfortable love seat,
dwarfed now by Jack’s possessions engorging the enormous room. “I’m selling Jack’s things at auction, according to the terms
of his will,” she said. “The proceeds will go to his estate for Gia.” Maxi looked around her at this mini Hearst Castle, chock-full
of Citizen Nathanson’s stuff.

“I’m selling this house, too,” Janet said. “I never really liked it.”

“The upkeep alone must be exorbitant,” Maxi said, for lack of anything more cogent to say. Again, this scene, with Janet confiding
to her about her life with Jack, seemed hauntingly like when Maxi had first talked to Debra,
really
talked to her.
Jack Nathanson’s wives,
Maxi thought.
The Club.

“Let’s not even
talk
about money.” Janet sighed.

“I’m guessing you paid for everything,” Maxi ventured, emboldened by Janet’s willingness, her seeming need, to open up. Maxi
was one of the few people who knew that Jack Nathanson was broke when he married Janet Orson.

“Everything,” Janet affirmed.

“You were in love,” Maxi put in kindly. “I certainly knew that feeling—”

“Yes, he was the romantic one, the artistic one, the outrageous one, and heaven knows, I needed that in my very conservative,
cautious life,” she said. “Jack was exciting—”

“Were
you in love with him?” Maxi heard herself asking.

“Of course,” Janet said. “Weren’t you?”

“Yes. For a while.”

“Me too.”

“How do you feel now?” Maxi asked quietly.

Janet looked out the French doors into the middle distance. “Like I’ve been let out of prison,” she murmured.

T
his is Zahna, your late night rock ‘n’ roll dreamin’ queen on Radio-KBIS, playin’ ’em just for you on a Wednesday night. Call
me and tell me what you wanna do… I mean what you wanna
hear
… I
know
what you wanna
do,
you maniacs….”

Zahna was flying. She’d coked up before her eight-to-midnight shift, had to, just to get herself out of the house. Now, to
bring herself down to that hazy, lazy, low-down soft-rock mode the station format called for, she was drinking straight tequila
out of a paper cup, leveling out.

“This one’s for Frank in Fontana. He’s nuts about Lacy, but Lacy sez she needs her space. Hey, Frankie, lots of chicks would
like to share
your
space, babe—bet we’ll hear from a few tonight,” she murmured, breathing heavily into the microphone.

What crap,
she was thinking. Two hours into her show and she was getting very drunk. What else was new?

“Okay, boys and girls, this one’s for Jack Nathanson. You know, Jack Nathanson, the big-deal movie star shot dead at his ex-wife’s
house… weekend before last…you saw the news. Hadda be an old wife or an old girlfriend dunnit, don’tcha think? Shouldn’t mess
with your women, guys, or look what happens.”

The sound came up on Sting’s “Every Breath You Take.”
Zahna put her lips an inch away from the microphone and purred, “Oh, yeah, here’s the
stalker
song—ever watch your lover’s every move, every step, every breath?”

She punched her MUTE button. “I was watching
you,
you motherfucking, two-timing, three-timing…” she was muttering, knocking back the liquor, no ice, no lime, no frills, just
anesthesia.

Her engineer shook his head. Blastoff time already, only 10:06. At her current rate of escalation, he was thinking, one of
these nights she was either going to pass out cold, or confess on the air that she
killed
the guy. Good thing the bosses didn’t listen at this time of night.

Everyone at the station knew that Zahna Cole had been having an affair with Jack Nathanson, an on-again, off-again, one-way
kind of thing—it was on when he wanted it on, it was off when he didn’t call her, and it was all one way,
his
way. Zahna was transparent, and her coworkers couldn’t miss the signs—when he was around, Zahna was euphoric, and when he
wasn’t, Zahna was obsessed. Now he was dead, and she seemed dangerously close to the edge.

She’d met Jack Nathanson when she was cast for a small part in one of his movies, a voice-over disc jockey bit. The location
was a brokerage company in a high-rise building on the Wilshire corridor. She’d never expected to see the star, but while
she was recording her sequences, Nathanson actually came over to the microphone, bent down, and whispered in her ear that
he’d heard her on the radio and had wondered if she was as sexy as she sounded. “When you’re done here, come watch us shoot,”
he’d tossed back at her as he left the booth.

His hot breath in her ear melted her, and she was not an easy melt. This was Jack Nathanson—famous, glamorous, rich, dynamic,
handsome movie star Jack Nathanson—wondering how sexy she was. She’d love to show him, she thought, and in fact he didn’t
make her wait.

Watching the shoot, it felt as if Jack was playing right to her. He made eye contact, he smiled, he winked, once he gave her
a little finger wave. On the dinner break he came off the set, took her arm, and walked her to the chow wagon outside, where
cast and crew were lining up. “We definitely don’t want to eat this shit,” he’d whispered with that impish grin, as they perused
the assortment of hot casseroles, cold salads, baskets of rolls, and slices of fruit pie on paper plates. “When we’re finished
shooting, I’ll take you to dinner.”

“I have to do my radio show,” she said.

“How about after your show?”

“At midnight?”

“Something wrong with midnight?” He laughed, and he asked for her address.

After work that night, when she pulled up at her small rented house in Sherman Oaks, his Ferrari was parked by the gate and
he was sitting on her front steps, holding a bottle of champagne.

“Hi…How did you get in the gate?” she asked.

“An old army trick,” he said with a wink.

Inside, he opened the champagne. He took her to bed. “Oh God,” he’d groaned, “I’ve wanted to eat you since the second I saw
you. Give it to me, give it to me, put it in my face, yes,
yesssss
…” Zahna couldn’t believe she was rolling around on her king-size bed with this ravenous, insatiable man, this glutton for
her body whom she’d just met that afternoon.

“Wait—what about condoms?” she’d breathed.

“What about them?” he’d slurred, burying his head deeper between her legs. She was too stoned to make an issue of it. She’d
brought out cocaine. “Great combination,” he’d moaned. “Champagne and toot—and sex.”

She’d found herself drifting into one of her fantasies. He was a Roman soldier who had stumbled upon this beauty huddled in
fear in the back room of a greathouse that his soldiers were pillaging. He pulled back his toga, revealing his bronzed, muscled
body. His troops would have the jewels, he would have the woman. She was just settling into the scenario in her mind and the
rhythm in her loins when he climaxed, big, fast, and he was up, and dressing. She rolled over on her stomach and reached for
her robe.

“You’re fabulous, Jack…. I’ll make some coffee.”

“No coffee, babe—gotta go.” He was scrambling for his Nikes. “Early shoot tomorrow. I’ll call you.” And he was gone. She heard
his car turn over and peel off before she got her robe around her. Home to the wife, she supposed—he was married to that newscaster
Maxi Poole. Oh well, it had been a fun day.

But he did call, and he kept calling, and she lived for his calls. Every time they got together she fell harder. His wife
was busy all the time, he told her. Maxi worked late, Jack got up early—their sex life was not exactly an Olympic event, he’d
confided. “Frankly, Scarlett, she just doesn’t turn me on the way my Zahna does, know what I mean? Spit in my face,” he’d
beg. “C’mon, Zahna, I’m your Roman soldier, I’m going to rape you, spit in my face….”

She knew what she had with him; she was nobody’s fool. Still, he kept showing up, and she couldn’t resist him. The day would
come, she’d tell herself, when he would realize that he was getting a lot better in the little house on Sumac Drive than he
was getting at home, and he would leave Ms. Newsbitch and come to Zahna—and unlike his other two wives, she would know how
to keep him happy.

Zahna Cole’s time was due, she was sure of that. She’d had too many lousy relationships, and now she was alone, not getting
any younger, and doing this dopey job. She had come to Los Angeles with moondust in her eyes. She was going to be a singer,
make it big. Everybody said she was good, she was beautiful, she was gonna be a rock ‘n’ roll diva. Now, sixteen years later,
she had dead-ended on all fronts, doing yeoman’s service on a local FM station for thirty-six-five a year and spending half
of it on
drugs. Her ship was due to come in, and she was sure that sexy Jack Nathanson was at the helm.