Gregory sat and watched the embers fade. It was like watching someone die, seeing life drain from the body in stark, relentless stages.
He berated himself for his fancy. Imagination, always his greatest ally, was seeking domination over him.
But…what? The cat? No. There was no way Felix could have moved the book from the coffee table to the fire. The coffee table was on his left, the fire to his right. Sharon? He rose quickly and walked down the carpeted passage to the bedroom.
She was asleep, face bloodless in the moonlight, blankets strewn in a disorderly heap around her. She groaned and turned over. Restless.
He walked over to the bedroom window and drew back the light lace curtain. Outside, the green of the garden had taken on a somber gray cast. It was still and quiet.
He went back to the study. The last flames flickered and sputtered out as the burnt logs crumbled in the ashes. He sat down and shivered.
Gregory didn’t know what to think. What could he think in a situation like this? The only rational answer (and for God’s sake, he told himself, stay rational) was that he had done it himself. In his sleep. He must have reached over while he was asleep, picked up the book, and tossed it into the fireplace. If he wrote that scene into a script it would be instantly rejected. But truth is stranger than fiction. There was no other plausible explanation. His emotions had been strange and new during the past two days. Perhaps sleepwalking was just a phase. And maybe he’d start talking in his sleep, and walking naked on roofs, too.
The hell with it! This line of reasoning was getting him nowhere. It had to be what happened.
He pulled the wire-mesh screen in front of the fireplace, feeling shaky.
He bent to pick up Felix, but the cat backed up quickly, fur rising slightly.
“Hey,” he said aloud. “I’m not the only one getting weird. Come on, Felix.”
He moved his hand toward the cat more slowly, and this time it didn’t retreat. He stroked the top of its head gently and the cat rubbed him back.
“Come on, old friend.” The animal had been with him for almost five years. They respected each other. It was a serviceable relationship; he’d decided one couldn’t expect more from a cat. He picked it up and put it out through the kitchen door. Then he went to the bedroom.
More than anything else, he needed sleep, he decided. A tired mind plays tricks. He would rest it, nourish it with the balm of sleep.
But sleep holds its own perils. The dream came soon after he fell asleep.
Brooke was wearing something white and silky that clung to her. Her back was bare, the color of alabaster in the dim light of the moon.
They stood on a hill, looking down at the lights of Los Angeles—slashes and pinpricks on a black canvas. He couldn’t see his own face, just his clothes: a dinner jacket, his shoes.
“I love this city at night,” she said. “All those people down there. I wonder who they are and what they dream about.”
He put his hands on her shoulders. There was dark hair on his knuckles. He was wearing a gold signet ring on his left hand, set with a fleur-de-lis carved in a black stone.
“And I love you,” he said. “Night or day.”
She turned with a radiant smile. “I…”
And then she faded. The lights winked out, the hill disappeared from beneath his feet. Blackness. A whistle of wind.
He knew he was back in his bed. Asleep.
But he wasn’t alone. A dark presence stood beside the bed.
It was a woman. Somehow he knew, even though she was wearing a long hooded cloak that hid her face. He began to sweat. The figure just stood there, looking down at him.
He wished he could see her face. He struggled to open his eyes. Oh, God! What’s happening? Why can’t I open my eyes? He told himself he could wake up. This is a dream.
He could feel the woman’s hatred.
And then she spoke. “Stay away,” she said. Her voice grated at him. It was coarse, malicious, filled with contempt.
“Stay away from Brooke. Stay away from her.”
He struggled. He twisted and turned. He wanted to scream at her, to strike her. Go away, damn you! He wanted to wake up. More than anything, he wanted to open his eyes and wake up. He tried, but his eyelids wouldn’t move. Oh, please! Please open, please! He had the terrifying thought that if he didn’t wake up now he never would.
He awakened.
His body was drenched in perspiration. His throat was dry. He wanted to retch.
He stumbled into the kitchen and got a bottle of mineral water out of the fridge. He drank thirstily.
He went back to the bed and sat on its edge, rubbing his forehead. Behind him, Sharon stirred.
“Greg? What…?”
He leaned backward and half-turned to kiss her cheek. “Nothing, sweetie. Go back to sleep.”
She mumbled and then was quiet. He envied her escape, and stretched back on the bed, looking up at the ceiling. Sleep had never been more elusive.
He woke at ten, feeling partially refreshed. So he had gone back to sleep after all. And in spite of his apprehension, had had no more nightmares. Sharon had left a note on the kitchen table:
You looked so cute, I didn’t wake you. I’ll call later. Eat some breakfast!
xo,
S.
He disobeyed. He made some coffee and drank three cups with as many cigarettes while he read the paper.
When at last he glanced up and gazed out the window, he realized it was a spectacular day. The kitchen looked out at the garden on the side of the house. Although there was a fence and he couldn’t see her, he could hear his neighbor clucking as she went through her daily ritual, feeding the birds. It was an ideal situation: they fed and shat on her side of the fence, then flew over and added life to his yard.
The events of the night seemed to lose their significance in the brightness of the morning. Of course he must have thrown the book in the fire. A strange thing to do, but then, there it was. He shouldn’t have eaten that sandwich before going to bed. When he was a child, his mother had warned him about that. “Indigestion will give you bad dreams, Greg,” she used to say. Maybe she was right, for once. There was an explanation for everything, surely. “Ain’t it just like the night, to play tricks when you’re trying to be so quiet,” Bob Dylan had sung.
He would start work on the project. He already had an idea for the first scene. He needed to buckle down to his workaday tasks more earnestly and indulge his fancy less. The thought cheered him. He washed his coffee cup and clapped his hands together. “Action!” he said aloud.
Felix looked up lazily from his position on the kitchen chair.
Gregory showered briskly, shaved, and dressed, feeling better than he had in days. Work cures all ills, he told himself. It’s the universal panacea. Without it, whole populations would go insane.
His enthusiasm faded briefly when he reached his study and faced a blank sheet of paper in his typewriter. It always did. But it was just a stage, and he’d learned to beat it. Just get some words down, any words.
He began to write.
She stood at the top of the stairs, in a white dress.
The motion in the room slowed for him, then stopped. He saw nothing but that vision. Everything else was surrounded by a haze.
She looked directly at him, a smile hovering around her mouth. He walked toward her. The depths in her eyes threatened to make his step falter. The crowd seemed to part for him.
“Hello, there,” he said.
“Hello,” she replied. (Keep it simple, keep it simple.)
“You’re Brooke Ashley. I saw one of your films.”
She inclined her head, accepting his homage. She smiled. It was dazzling. The haze in the room lifted and he became aware again of the hum of conversation around them.
He realized she was holding out her hand. He took it in his, meaning to shake it. Instead he just stood there, a fool, frozen, with a hand burning in his palm.
“Who are you here with?” he asked finally.
She mentioned a name he vaguely recognized.
“Can you leave with me now?” he asked. He realized he was still holding her hand and released it.
“I’ll get my coat,” she said. Again she smiled with that peculiar radiance, tantalizing him with excitement.
Gregory pushed the typewriter away and read what he had written. It had been fairly effortless and had an easy feeling to it. That was a good sign. But it read like a film script. It was too threadbare for a novel. He needed some background and atmosphere. The party. He should describe it, capture the ambience of Hollywood in the forties.
Research. He needed to do research. Bone up on the period. Inject some detail into the story.
The telephone rang.
It was Steve Williams, a friend who went back to his first days in Hollywood. They hadn’t seen much of each other since he had been with Sharon. He suspected that Steve and his wife, Liz, didn’t care for her much, although they had never said anything.
They chatted. When Steve heard that Sharon was out of town, he could hardly contain his pleasure.
“Come over for dinner tonight,” he said. “You’ve probably forgotten how to cook since you’ve been living in blissful sin.”
Gregory accepted. It would be a pleasant evening. He enjoyed their company. He agreed to be at their house between six and seven.
He hung up and again skimmed through the pages he had written. He penciled in a couple of changes, but it wasn’t what the scene really needed. He decided to concentrate on the research.
The Franklin Potter Film Institute in Beverly Hills squats beside Wilshire Boulevard, an architectural monstrosity, a gauche monument to the pretentious side of Los Angeles’s character that the city has never been able to suppress. A hard-headed businessman, Potter had made his fortune in kidney beans, trampling over the bodies of his unfortunate competitors and his even more unfortunate employees, who were for the most part illegal aliens willing to work for a pittance. His only known soft spot was the film industry. He had loved the color and glamour of it. He had been a fan, in the extreme sense of the word, and had been wealthy enough to indulge himself. He had hobnobbed with studio bosses and stars, financed a few films, and visited the sets at every opportunity, heady with the excitement of it all.
Potter’s aspirations to immortality were accomplished by the construction of the Institute. It was both a research center and a museum, filled with memorabilia, books, scripts, and copies of films long forgotten by a fickle public. It was a gold mine for students and nostalgia freaks, and they came from all over the world to tap its treasures.
Gregory took the elevator up to the library on the third floor. It was a large room, obviously designed with the researcher in mind. There were comfortable, almost luxurious chairs and tables. He walked past several studious figures to the desk at the far side of the room.
A pretty woman with rounded shoulders asked if she could help.
“I’d like the clippings and still files on Brooke Ashley, please,” he said.
The woman went back to a row of filing cabinets on the rear wall. After a few minutes she came back carrying two folders. She put them on the desk and copied their file numbers onto a form.
“Please fill in your name and address,” she said, pushing the paper over to him.
He completed the paperwork, although he didn’t quite understand its purpose. If he wanted to steal anything, he’d need only to put down a false name. He took the folders to a nearby table.
First he looked quickly through the stills. There were about two dozen, mostly publicity poses and shots of her movies, alone and with leading men. There was one picture of her at the age of nineteen. She looked like a schoolgirl, but the signs of character that grew more evident in the later photographs had already begun to emerge.
He pushed the folder aside and opened the clipping file. It was considerably thicker. It began with the usual gossip-column headings: A Face to Watch; Rising Young Star. And so on. Then there was a rash of dating publicity, arranged by the studio. “Seen at the Brown Derby with actor James Stewart was up-and-coming starlet Brooke Ashley.” There were interviews, reviews of her films.
During the last year of her life, the press coverage had increased. More interviews, more fan-magazine features.
And then, an item printed about six months before she died caught his eye:
IN THE LURCH—People are wondering why beautiful Brooke Ashley arrived at Dolly Crocket’s spectacular Beverly Hills party with studio executive Bill Tanner and left with dashing young screenwriter Michael Richardson…
Stupefied, Gregory closed the file.
It was the scene he had just written.
He told himself it was just coincidence. But, Jesus! The world was getting to be a strange place, a place where things that didn’t happen were happening to him.
He opened the folder and read the item again. It was one of a number in a column filled with titillating questions and implications. It was exactly how he had created the opening scene of his novel. She arrives at the party with her usual escort, meets someone else. There is instant chemistry between them, and they leave together.
An incredible coincidence.
Gregory rubbed his face. Coincidences did happen. It was practical proof of the adage that life mirrors art. He continued reading.
Brooke Ashley’s death had kept the newspapers busy for almost a week. She had received far more press attention in death than at any time during her career. One paper suggested that arson had been suspected. The other accounts said merely that the cause of the fire was unknown. A columnist mentioned the rumor that just before her death Brooke Ashley had been considering retirement from acting. Luminaries, whom Gregory suspected had probably never even known her, heaped profuse praise on her acting ability, her honesty, her beauty, her attitude toward life. Altogether, it was an exhibition of that peculiar plethora of togetherness and admiration that the Hollywood community exhibits when one of its members dies. Never are they loved so much as in death.
Gregory took the folders back to the woman at the desk.
“Do you have anything else on Brooke Ashley?” he asked.
“Her films are probably on file. Other than that, you might check the card catalogue to see if there are any books.”
As he turned away, she spoke again. “By the way, there’s a miniature wax museum on the first floor. If you’re interested, I think there’s a tableau featuring her there.”
Gregory thanked her and went to the catalogue file. There was a card for the biography he had read before. The one he had thrown in the fire. Nothing else on Brooke Ashley.
Impulsively, he went back to the desk. The woman smiled patiently.
“Do you have a file on a screenwriter named Michael Richardson?” he asked.
She went back to her cabinets and returned a moment later with a folder. He filled out the paperwork again, but the file was so slim he read it at the desk.
There were only four or five clippings. No pictures. There was also a small biographical entry. “Michael Richardson, born June 9, 1918, San Francisco, California…” followed by a list of the films he had written. His last work had been The Flight of an Eagle, which also happened to be Brooke Ashley’s last film. Nothing else of note. He handed the file back.
He ignored the elevator and took the stairs down to the first floor, where the guard showed him the passage to the wax museum. It was a large, low-ceilinged room in the rear of the building. He was the only one in the museum.
The figures were all in glass cases. Perfect costumed replicas, three feet high. It struck him as bizarre. Gable and Lombard, Gable and Leigh from Gone with the Wind; Cagney, Bogart, Harlow, Tierney—they were all there, presented in scenes from their films with perfectly scaled sets and costumes. There was nothing later than 1950, he noticed. The idea had probably died with its benefactor from lack of interest.
Brooke Ashley’s tableau was in a corner. He almost missed it. The scene was from The Flight of an Eagle. The model was exquisite. She was looking up, her lips parted. It was almost a plea.
Gregory stared at it searchingly, looking for the human spirit beneath the wax, examining the contours of her face and figure. A turmoil of nameless emotions gripped him. He began to grow warm. Still he stood, unable to tear his glance from the lovely face looking up at him.
The small figure of Brooke had her hands outstretched in his direction, as if to welcome him into her arms, a gesture forever unfulfilled. It saddened him somehow.
Gregory started to feel uncomfortably hot. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead. He felt them run down his neck. His throat tightened, his breathing grew difficult.
He pulled at his collar, as if to loosen it. Suddenly, he felt as if all the air had been sucked out of the room. He began to gasp. Spooked, he ran out into the hall.
He leaned against the wall, slowly regaining his breath. As soon as he left the building, he felt better. Still, his reaction had left him unnerved, drained. What was that? A panic attack? A bout of claustrophobia? What he needed, he thought, was to relax in friendly company. That would do him a world of good.