The Sorrows, page 12
He cried out as his cell phone shattered the silence. Furious with himself for forgetting to turn down the ring tone, he opened it and put it to his ear. “Look, Granderson, I know you’d rather stay in the guest house, but I think it’s better if you…”
He trailed off, the small black phone a poisonous spider in his hand.
“Come downstairs,” a raspy voice said. “Mr. Irvin is ready to see you.”
Chapter Two
Ben gaped at Claire’s blue dress. “Was I supposed to wear something formal?” he asked.
When her face flushed, he added, “It’s not you I’m worried about…you look fantastic.”
That seemed to relax her. “I wear it for recitals,” she said. “It shows a little more than I’d like.”
Eva’s door opened.
“Good gravy,” Eddie said.
The dark-green strapless hugged Eva’s sleek body all the way to her knees.
Eva took Claire by the hand and said, “That’s more like it.”
Claire fiddled with a shoulder strap. “It doesn’t feel like me.”
When they reached the sixth-floor studio, Eva went to the windows and began tying back the thick green curtains. Claire joined her, and soon they were all bathed in a warm roseate glow, the cool evening breeze ventilating the large room.
Ben let his gaze linger over Claire’s full breasts, her powdery skin. She did have a classical beauty, but not in the way Eddie had said. She was lovely, the stuff of poetry. A Waterhouse painting come to life. Her perfume dowsed over him, the fragrance reminding him of white jasmine.
Eddie turned to Claire and asked, “Will you play for us?”
She looked at him in surprise. “I guess so. Any requests?”
Eddie nodded and opened the binder in the Steinway’s tray.
“‘Annabel’s Theme’,” Claire read.
“Ready to debut it?”
Claire gaped up at him. “Really? Don’t you want to—”
“You’ll do it more justice than I will.” Eddie regarded the sheet music. “It’ll be better once we have the violin playing the main theme. There’ll be some winds, but not a lot…I don’t want to mess with the purity of the theme, clutter things up.”
Claire centered the binder in the tray, examined it a moment. She took a deep breath and began.
Notes from the upper register exploded in the silence of the studio. Claire’s fingers raced, finding the notes with an accuracy and a rhythm that Ben could never have managed.
The song was magnificent.
Claire was possessed, her fingers working the keys in a controlled frenzy of virtuosity. He couldn’t remember seeing a player so skilled. The song changed keys, soared, plunged into hellish uncertainty, then returned to the brawling main theme, which charged, bludgeoned, and ultimately lifted the listener to a dizzying height before abandoning him and letting him plummet to his doom.
When she finished, they all stood watching her. Ben half expected to see smoke rising from the piano.
Claire looked up at him and asked, “Was it all right?”
But it was Eddie who answered. “It’s the best piece of suspense music I’ve ever heard.”
Chapter Three
The night grew darker. Claire helped Ben pull a couch to one of the bay windows so the seating area felt intimate despite the spaciousness of the studio. Outside, the red twilight had given way to intermittent clouds, and in the distance, the faint rumble of thunder.
Rather than cooling the air in the studio, the encroaching storm heated it and sheened Claire’s skin with moisture. She sipped her wine, enjoying the lack of inhibition it brought on.
She sat on the edge of the window seat, the aroma of ozone wafting over her. Ben sat on the couch opposite, Eva beside him. At Claire’s elbow were Eddie’s bare feet. Reclined in the open window a hundred feet from the ground, he made her nervous, but maybe that’s why he’d chosen to sit there, for the thrill of it.
Eddie said, “I think it’s time for Eva to drop the Mona Lisa smile and let us know what’s on her mind.”
Eva looked amused. “Maybe you won’t like what I tell you.”
Eddie grinned, a drunken glimmer in his eyes. “I wanna know what you’ve been scrawling in that notebook of yours.”
Claire glanced at Ben, who looked on with a contented smile. Since his creative burst earlier he’d seemed a different person, transformed from the tortured soul who put on a brave face to a confident artist secure in his work.
She was more attracted to him than ever.
Eva said, “I’ll tell you a story if you’d like, but you have to promise not to ask questions afterward.”
Eddie crossed his legs in the window seat. “Sounds like a doozy.”
Eva said, “My mother wanted to be an actress. She was beautiful too. She spent her childhood in a Brazilian town called Sorriso. There wasn’t much there, but the town did have a theater. My mother—Gabriela was her name—grew up watching Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn. Actresses like Doris Day and Marilyn Monroe. She idolized these women and wanted nothing else but to be a movie star.”
Eva crossed her arms. “My mother didn’t like scary movies, but when she moved from South America to Hollywood, those were the only parts available to women of her…kind.”
“Voluptuous women,” Ben said.
Eva glanced at him. “Yes. Soon my mother met a man and they conceived.”
“But not…” Eddie began.
“They never married, no.”
She reached up, arranged a lock of hair behind her ear. “So I was a setback to my mom’s career. There weren’t many parts for pregnant women who spoke broken English.”
Claire sipped her wine, pictured Eva with a fuller figure.
Eva said, “My biological father cast us aside before my mother delivered me. She had trouble paying the bills. She worked all sorts of jobs…not all of them the kind she would have wanted me to know about.”
Eva finished her glass, held it out for Eddie to refill. “By this time I was six or so. Mom had a roommate named Kathy, also a struggling actress. She could be grumpy, but that was because of the drugs.
“All this time my mom was auditioning for commercials, television, even theater. But she still wanted to be in movies.”
Eva crossed her legs, looked up at the ceiling. “You’d think that kind of life would have taken its toll, but not on Gabriela Rosales. She was still young, and if anything she was prettier than she’d been when she came to America. She answered a casting call for a film about werewolves.”
Ben said, “It wasn’t Death Howl was it?”
Eva looked at him in surprise. “Yes, it was.”
Eddie sat forward. “Holy shit, the Lee Stanley picture?”
“His third,” Ben said. “The first two were about vampires.”
Eva smiled, but there was no humor in it. “Bathed in Blood I and II,” she said. “Cinematic masterpieces.”
Eddie said, “The second one had some good parts.”
Eva gave him a thin look.
“Well it did,” Eddie said. “The last scene where they make the girl eat the dead guy’s—”
“I assume your mother wasn’t treated very well,” Ben said.
Eva sighed. “My mother went to the call and was told she was a finalist for the lead role.”
“Just like that?”
“She wasn’t a finalist for anything.”
Eva went on, each word tightening the tense coil in Claire’s belly. “Even though he’d only been on the scene a few years, Lee Stanley was already getting a reputation for being a scary guy. In his personal life, I mean.”
She regarded her drink. “One thing I forgot to mention was my mother’s drug problem. I suppose she got caught up in that…lifestyle. She developed a heroin habit. Lee exploited it right away. He told her whatever actress played the lead role might have to do so without much compensation. What budget they had, he explained, had to go to special effects, costumes…”
“Fake blood,” Eddie said.
“He paid my mother with heroin. She was already carrying a serious problem when she met Lee, but within a couple weeks she was a zombie, a real-life zombie. She ceased taking care of me…I didn’t know what was going on, but I knew it was something very bad.”
Eva took a drink and Claire saw her hand shake. “Lee kept himself in business by selling drugs and working with pornographers. My mother appeared in her first adult movie without knowing she’d been filmed.”
Claire asked, “What about the werewolf movie?”
Eva cocked an eyebrow. “Death Howl? Gabriela never shot one scene in Death Howl. She was replaced by another actress, one who spoke better English.
“Eventually mom caught on to Lee’s game, but by then she was too wasted to care. She made five adult films in the space of a month, but by that time the heroin was spoiling her looks. So Lee cut her off.”
Eva took a drink and shrugged. “She begged him to give her another fix, but he told her she’d gotten ugly—those were his words. My mom told him she’d do anything, so he said come back at midnight.”
A tear streamed down Eva’s pretty face. “Lee had invited about fifteen of his buddies for a sex show. He gave my mom her fix and then had a servant bring in a Rottweiler.”
“Oh hell,” Eddie said.
“You can imagine what the intent was…they tried to get the animal to perform, but it wasn’t happening the way Lee wanted. So he demanded my mom manipulate the dog, use her hand…”
She blew out a trembling breath. “After she came to, she locked herself in Lee’s guest room and gave herself a huge dose of heroin. Lee hadn’t seen her take the pistol out of his dresser beforehand. The stereo must have been loud enough they didn’t hear the gunshot. Or maybe they just didn’t care.
“When they found her the next morning she was dead. The suicide note said she deserved to die for her sins. There was a bucket placed on the floor under her hand to catch the blood. She’d shot herself in the palm, punishing herself for touching the dog. Part of her hand had been vaporized by the bullet, but the coroner said it must have taken hours for her to bleed to death.”
Chapter Four
When Eva had finished, they lapsed into silence. After a time Eddie said, “The storm’s almost here.”
Ben watched as Claire crawled forward in the window seat and peered into the night. Eva’s macabre tale had been like a temporary anesthesia, but as he studied Claire’s body, her rear end pressing the silky blue material, a pleasant sensation returned.
Claire made a surprised sound and stared down at the window seat.
“What?” Eddie asked.
“Stand up a second,” she said.
Claire got hold of the edge of the seat and lifted. A musty cedar scent puffed out of the darkness. The large storage area hidden beneath the window seat looked like an oversized coffin.
“You don’t behave yourself,” Eva said to Eddie, “we’ll make you sleep in there.”
“Do I get to choose who sleeps with me?”
She smiled.
The breeze grew stronger. It felt good on Ben’s face, a mixture of salt and raw electricity. He swallowed the rest of his drink, stood, and touched Claire’s shoulder. She glanced back at him, eyebrows raised.
“Would you dance with me?”
She nodded and followed him past the couch.
He heard Eddie say to Eva, “Guess that means you’re stuck with the psychological train wreck.”
Eva didn’t answer, but she did follow him over to the stereo.
“You want another glass?” Ben asked, leading Claire to the crate of wine. He got the bottle open, poured.
“I think I’m getting a little drunk,” she said.
“Excellent,” he answered. “My plan was to get you good and liquored up.”
At the stereo Eddie asked, “Any requests?”
Ben glanced at Claire, who was sipping her drink and watching him. Ben said, “Name some options.”
Eddie whistled, flipped open the CD case. “Looks like Sinatra, The Best of Fred Astaire, Ella Fitzgerald—”
Eva said, “I’d like to hear ‘Night and Day’ if you have it.”
Ben stared at Eva a moment as she stood at the window. Framed by churning storm clouds, wreathed by a penumbra of moonglow, she reminded him of an angry goddess. He imagined her spreading her arms and commanding the seas.
“Astaire it is,” Eddie said and put in the disc.
When the music came on, Ben smiled and stepped closer to Claire. Eyes wide, she put her hand in his and followed his lead.
“I have no idea how to dance,” she said.
“Me either,” he answered. “I leaned against the wall at dances.”
“I never went to dances,” she said.
“You always snuck out with a boy?”
“Uh-uh. I was a homebody.”
Laughter to their left. They turned and saw Eddie and Eva moving together, his arms about her waist.
“I thought she wanted to castrate him,” Claire said.
He could almost taste her skin, sweet and fresh, her ear close enough to kiss. He said into it, “I don’t care about them.”
“You don’t?”
“Not one bit.”
Her hand slid from his shoulder to the back of his neck. He pulled away slightly, looked into her eyes a moment, and kissed her. The taste of her was incredible, as summery as the air teeming through the studio. Her tongue met his. She was running a hand through the hair on the back of his head—he loved that—and kissing him deeply. If he didn’t get her alone soon—
“Jesus Christ,” a terror-stricken voice cried out.
They pushed away convulsively. Ben had forgotten Eddie and Eva were still in the room, but he witnessed them now in a bizarre tableau—Eddie gazing at the bay window with huge, staring eyes; Eva staring at Eddie as though he’d gone mad.
“What’s wrong?” Ben called, over Fred Astaire, who was now singing “Let’s Face the Music and Dance.”
“I have no idea,” Eva said, half-disbelieving, half-furious. She brought a palsied hand to her mouth, pulled it away and looked at her fingers. “We were kissing when he freaked out. He…bit me.” She ran her tongue over her bottom lip and Ben saw blood there.
“Eddie?” he asked, approaching his friend’s unmoving form. “What’s going on?”
But Eddie paid him no heed, only stared gape-mouthed at the window.
He drew even with Eddie, put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Don’t tell me you saw a sea monster?”
Eddie seemed not to hear, was shaking his head in disbelief.
Ben turned to Eva. “You see anything?”
“Just him going crazy and shoving me.”
Claire moved in front of Eddie. “What did you see?”
Eddie shook his head.
Ben said, “I hope it wasn’t a ghost.”
Eddie turned on him, his face a hostile mask. “Shut the fuck up,” he said and strode toward the stairs.
Too shocked to call after him, Ben could only watch as Eddie disappeared, his descending footfalls soon lost in the growing thunder.
Chapter Five
Her name was Lily.
Eddie lay in his room, the window closed despite the heat. He rolled onto his side and remembered how Lily looked that first day.
Climbing out of the red MG in the tight-fitting white shirt, the sleeves short and her arms dark. Muscled too, but not as much as her legs. God, they’d been terrific—long and toned and muscular and shiny with sweat. Her face was attractive, her long blonde hair too, but it had been those legs—Christ, like a thoroughbred’s—that had convinced him.
He was Cal-Berkeley’s number-one singles player, had been for two years, and a preseason All-American. It was a point of pride for him to bed every good-looking female athlete at Berkeley, and when he saw the tall blonde stride onto the court beside his, Eddie knew she would be his next lover.
She served—a good, hard serve—to an empty court. She plucked another ball from her basket, wound up and cracked another serve that was barely foul. It was hot that day and sunny, the girl already sweating. Eddie sat in a folding chair, waiting for his coach to show up, and watched the girl take another ball from the basket, bounce it a few times—hard bounces, full of frustration—and serve again. This time the ball landed four feet out of bounds, so she wrested another ball from the basket, bounced it once, hard, and grunted with the force of the serve. Eddie smiled as the ball sailed way long, almost to the opposite serving line. His smile grew as the girl slammed several more out of bounds, in her anger pushing harder, always harder, and never making an adjustment, never thinking about where she was going wrong. In the weeks to follow he would come to understand that those first few moments with Lily defined her completely.
It didn’t take him long to get to her. He introduced himself as she was leaving practice. Being a local girl she knew who he was, and he knew then it would go much faster than he’d anticipated. His friends told him what she didn’t divulge, filled in the blanks for him. A highly recruited incoming freshman, she had an obsessive father who scared most prospective college coaches away. Early on Eddie could tell her daddy had polluted her mind with all sorts of crap about her incredible talent, what a short journey it would be to the professional circuit. The usual garbage.
Eddie sensed the pampered daughter in her, as well as the athlete who’d been driven like a draft animal to achieve, achieve, achieve. To procure a college scholarship. To make a name for herself in the tennis world. Eddie liked hearing her talk about it, recapitulating her father’s nonsense. He would listen to her and think, I’m going to fuck it out of you. The bullshit, the devotion to your slave-driving daddy. All of it.
After she lost her first match, he drove her to his apartment and listened to her cry. He soothed her, and when she’d calmed a little, he convinced her a massage would help.
She cried afterward.
Telling him she had been a virgin (not anymore!) and how she was risking pregnancy and was he sure he’d pulled out?
