Three To Get Deadly (84 page)

Nice and easy. Maybe there would even be a Starbucks open for business. With so many of them in the valley, statistically it just wasn't possible that the Big One had leveled them all.

That pleasant thought occupied Marty for the next half hour as they climbed over rubble and moved through the injured, the lost, and the hopeless.

Marty tried to imagine how Beth would look, how happy she would be to see him. In his mind, there wasn't a scratch on her, she was as he left her that morning in the kitchen. Only the coldness would be gone, because he knew if he could walk across this decimated city to her, then traveling the distance in their marriage wouldn't seem so hard anymore.

To make that journey, he'd have to start almost two years ago. They weren't living in the Calabasas house then; they were still in the ranch-style place in Reseda. They were "north of the boulevard," the demarcation line across the valley separating those who'd "made it" and were living in the foothills above Ventura Boulevard from those still trying to and living in the flatlands below.

Marty was in his home office, stuck on page 138 of his second, unfinished novel. Shortly after he got his network job, he set aside his unfinished scripts, rationalizing his failure to complete a screenplay was the price he paid for being too damn good at his job. He spent his days developing other people's scripts, criticizing draft after draft until the writers got the story and the characters as good as their limited skills would allow. The problem was when Marty sat down to write himself at night, he couldn't stop being a network executive. He couldn't write a line without giving himself notes before he was even done typing it.

So Marty switched to novels, knowing that would free him up creatively to be the inventive, insightful, prolific writer he knew he was.

Or would be . . . if he could just get past page 138.

It wasn't so much that the stories petered out, which they did, but that none of the characters ever seemed to come to life. They were just game pieces, moving around the plot, performing their story function without ever breathing. He was always dragging them across the page, pushing them into situations, forcing them to speak, and then agonizing over each word they said.

Just once, Marty wanted a character to take over, to say things that surprised him, to take the story in new directions he hadn't thought of until he was actually writing them.

He was in one of those frustrating moments, staring hatefully at his laptop, at that 26,962nd word on the 138th page, when Beth came up behind him and put her hand on his shoulder. She meant to be affectionate and considerate, to disturb him as gently as possible, but the truth was he loathed the interruption no matter how nicely it was done, even when it wasn't interrupting anything.

In fact, especially when it wasn't.

"In two months, we'll have been married three years," Beth said softly.

"I haven't forgotten our anniversary yet, but I appreciate the reminder."

Marty regretted the tone of his voice right away and knew he'd hurt her by the way she let her hand drop off his shoulder. But Beth didn't leave, she just dropped onto his ratty couch, the $200 Levitz special he'd been dragging from one house to another since college, and waited for him to turn around.

He did, and saw her snuggled into one corner, her knees drawn up to her chest, which he knew meant that a serious conversation was coming, and whatever it was, he'd just made it worse. Damage control time.

"I'm sorry," he said. "You caught me at a really bad moment. I'm in a difficult place in my book. The truth is, I'm stuck."

"So am I," she said. "I spend my days either going to auditions or playing bit parts, and my nights studying for them."

"You're an actress, that's what you've got to do. The performance is what it's all about." He wondered what this was leading to, what this had to do with being married for three years, and why she had to bring it up now, on page 138.

"Tomorrow I'm playing a reporter who can't get laid because she's got bad breath but finds the man of her dreams once she starts using an amazing new mouthwash with an incredible, minty taste."

Marty smiled. "It's a beginning. You're working towards something."

"But I'm not getting there," Beth glanced at his laptop. "Neither of us is."

That was the most devastating, hurtful thing she'd ever said to him, even more so because she threw it off so casually, like it was an obvious truth. Which Marty supposed it was, he just had no idea she knew. And now it was out there, the unsaid said. He wasn't a writer.

"You never wanted me to," Marty said. "You were the one who pushed me to take a development job."

"I didn't have to push very hard."

"Is that why you came in here, to tell me I can't write or that you can't act?"

It was what Marty always did when she attacked, strike back even harder. He knew this about himself, and yet he couldn't stop doing it.

She studied her knees, which was a much safer place to be looking right now than at her husband. "No," she replied softly.

That was Beth, winning by not upping the ante. She could get away with being cruel because he always fired back even harder, and then she'd acquiesce. And then he'd feel guilty, and he'd be the one to apologize. Even if he didn't, she still occupied the higher ground. It was a constant, repeated pattern in their conflicts; they both knew it, and neither one seemed able to break it.

The dog came bounding in ready to play, drool-soaked ball in his mouth, but even his dog brain was sophisticated enough to read the vibes in the room. He dropped his ball and slinked right out again.

"Why are we trying so hard?" she asked. "You working all day at the network and then trying to write all night. Me, going after as many parts as I can, taking anything that I'm offered?"

"Because that's what you have to do to make it, to achieve your goals."

"So that's what we are, two people trying to achieve their goals."

"What's wrong with that?"

"It's not enough."

He knew what was missing. What he didn't say. But it wasn't too late to correct the mistake.

"We're also two people who love each other very much." Sometimes the right line came to him in life but rarely in fiction. For most writers, it was the other way around, but he didn't consider himself fortunate.

She smiled, acknowledging his effort. "Two people who love each other but spend every moment in their separate worlds, obsessed with achieving their dreams. And for what?"

"To be who we want to be."

"If that's all it is, then it's selfish and it's empty and it's lonely. We should be working for something, something shared."

"Your success will make me as happy as it makes you," he said. "Maybe more so, because I want it so badly for you. That makes it shared."

"That's sweet, and probably the perfect thing to say, but it doesn't change anything. The fact is we're doing it for ourselves. Not for us, not for our marriage, not for our family. If it was, then it would be worth it."

Our family? What family?

And then he knew what this was all about, a long-winded, philosophical way of saying what could be expressed directly in four words. So he said them.

"You want a baby."

She shook her head. "I want a family."

Marty turned back to his laptop, giving himself some space to think. If he couldn't write now, how much easier would it be with a wailing baby in the house? Forget the sleep deprivation, the noise, the demands on his time. What about the responsibility of having a child? The terror alone was enough to smother what little creative impulses he had left.

There he was being selfish again, Marty scolded himself. He wasn't thinking of her or of their marriage, only his personal goals. Isn't that exactly what Beth was talking about? Marty knew it was, but he also knew he didn't feel the least bit guilty about it, or any less in love with her. He didn't want to lose her, but he wasn't ready to give up on himself just yet.

"Do we have to decide right now?" he asked.

"Soon." She got up, kissed him on the top of his head, and walked out.

And a few months later, 138 pages into another novel, in the middle of a screening of his wife's bit part in a movie, a bit of Christopher Walkan in a part of his wife, Marty decided he was ready for kids.

And a few months after that, Marty discovered he was no better at creating a character in the womb than he was on the page.

Buck elbowed him in the ribs, intruding on his thoughts. "You think that's an after-quake special or their regular price?"

Marty followed his gaze and saw a sign dangling from a half-crumbled, stone wall. It read: Complete Funeral Service with steel or wood casket only $988 at Hollywood Park Cemetery . . . Hollywood Forever."

"What do they give you for a headstone at that price? An index card?" Buck snorted and shook his head.

Marty was stunned, not by the sign, but by the fact he was standing at the gates of the Hollywood Park Cemetery. He figured he must have walked the last couple miles in some kind of trance, letting himself be led by Buck, because he had no memory of leaving Western Avenue and trudging down Santa Monica Boulevard. But here they were, outside the eternal backlot, where Jayne Mansfield, Tyrone Power, Harry Cohn, Rudolph Valentino, and Cecil B. DeMille were buried under the shadow of the Paramount Studios soundstages, which abutted the southern edge of the cemetery.

The cemetery had become a tent city, hundreds of people seeking refuge among the toppled tombstones and crumbled crypts, finding some measure of safety in the open space of the dead.

But Marty wasn't looking at them. His gaze was fixed on the Paramount water tower, looming over the studio soundstages and the cemetery. To him, the water tower was like a palm tree in a desert oasis. Seeing it gave Marty a real sense of relief and security, as if he'd already arrived home.

Marty was one of the industry elite with a permanent Paramount gate pass. He could go on the lot whenever he pleased, dine in the private commissary, stroll down the fake city streets, and make unannounced visits to the offices of the most powerful writers, producers, and executives in the business.

He wanted to run through the studio gates right now, take a shower in a mobile dressing room, get a fresh suit of clothes from the wardrobe department, and then sit the disaster out in safety, sipping a mineral water and snacking on fresh fruit. He wouldn't have to walk any more, to turn his face away from the injured and the dead. They would be on the other side of the walls.

With Beth.

Maybe injured. Maybe dead.

He turned away from the water tower and faced north, where the Hollywood sign, or more accurately, the three crooked letters that remained of it, was visible through the smoke and dust that hung above the canted palm trees and listing office towers.

That was where he had to go.

Marty pushed on, heading up the gradual slope of Gower Street towards Sunset Boulevard, the Hollywood Hills, and the valley beyond. A few blocks ahead of him, he could see smoke rising from vehicles piled up on the Hollywood Freeway over-crossing. He wouldn't risk going under the concrete span, he'd cross west on Franklin instead, then follow Highland north alongside the freeway through the Cahuenga Pass until the avenue dropped into the valley and transformed into Ventura Boulevard.

"When we get to my place, if it's still standing, I got to show you my bathroom," Buck came up beside Marty. "I wallpapered it with cocktail napkins I collected from bars all over the country. Babes love it."

Marty looked at him incredulously. "Really?"

"All it takes is a stapler and some varnish and you're in fuck city."

"When this is all over, instead of rebuilding the Hollywood sign, maybe that's what they should write on those hills," Marty swept his hand in front of him, laying the words out boldly across the sky. "Fuck City."

"I got a note on that," Buck said. "It's gotta say Fucked City."

That was a note Marty couldn't argue with.

6:47 p.m. Tuesday

In the movie
Earthquake
, the Capitol Records building was one of the first to collapse, toppling like the stack of LPs it was designed to represent. But there it was, still standing, two blocks up from where Marty and Buck were, in the intersection of Sunset and Vine. One more thing the movies got wrong.

Uprooted palm trees were tipped at crazy angles or lay broken across the Sunset Boulevard, cars piled up against them or crushed underneath. The Cinerama Dome theatre, to Marty's left, was riddled with cracks and resembled half of a discarded eggshell. To his right, the Quantum Insurance office tower rose from a courtyard of broken glass, which the setting sun transformed into a field of glittering diamonds. It was almost beautiful. But Marty kept a wary eye on the tower, afraid it might topple at any moment.

Buck tipped his head towards the Cinerama Dome. "I live over there, on Yucca. Just a few blocks over."

"It's out of my way," Marty motioned towards the Capitol Records building. "I'm heading north."

"What about my bathroom?"

"I really want to get home. My wife is waiting for me."

Buck nodded. "Yeah, well, Thor is probably anxious to see me, too."

"Thor?"

"Yeah, Thor. My fucking dog," Buck looked genuinely hurt. "Haven't you listened to anything I've told you?"

Was this guy for real? Marty thought. Did Buck really think he was hanging on his every word?

"Forgive me, I've been a bit distracted. You know, with the earthquake, hanging from overpasses, that kind of thing."

"Right, whatever." Buck pulled out his gun and, for an instant, Marty was afraid he was going to get shot again.