14 In life, Lesli (or Leslie) Lyman and Doris McCutcheon were one and the same, but in death they were two separate persons. After the body had been positively identified and the autopsy performed, the police contacted the girl’s mother – who now went by the name Mrs. Crawford – and arrangements were made for the body to be shipped to Phoenix for burial. And Mrs. Crawford made it clear that her daughter’s California acquaintances – those fiends who ruined her and killed her – were most definitely not welcome at the funeral. As a consequence, Barry Bergman and Jenni Jarman, in the course of their sleepless night during which, between fitful bouts of inconclusive lovemaking, they talked about Lesli and other matters, arranged for a memorial ceremony to be held beside Barry’s pool. It would not be until the following Monday – giving them time to spread the word – since Thanksgiving weekend was coming up, and Jenni would be going to Fresno to spend it with her family. She had not been back since the Ambartsum holiday, shortly before meeting Barry, and she had of course not told them about her new life and work. There were, to be sure, adult theaters in Fresno, but Jenni doubted whether her folks had any contact with people who might frequent them. Still, one never knew, and they might wonder when they saw her drive up in her red Alfa Romeo Spider. It was only after they were up, still early in the morning, that Jenni told Barry that she was now actively looking for a place of her own. “That’s great!” he said, but he felt an unaccustomed pang in the pit of his stomach, one that was quite different from the little jealous twinges he had once felt. He was not looking forward, he thought as he was showering, to going to the Krugers’ Thanksgiving party. He had been greatly put off by Doc’s reaction to the news about Lesli: “What a waste! It was my best boob job ever, except maybe Gina George!” Nor did the prospect of fucking Helena – in her room, furtively and hurriedly as always, as though reenacting the defloration – thrill him as it had in the past. He even felt some very belated regrets over having taken up with her and thereby stopped his affair with Nancy, which had been lots of fun. Nancy still looked good and probably felt good too. But he realized that neither Helena nor Nancy, nor any of the other women he had known in a long while, felt as good as Jenni, who at that moment was making coffee – the aroma wafted into the bathroom from the kitchen and mingled with the residue of Jenni’s smell that he was reluctantly washing off his skin. And he felt that pang again. Was he in love with Jenni? Barry Bergman, in love? At least, he thought as he was drying himself, going to the Krugers’ would be good for something: he could talk to Nancy about his feelings, as he had always been able to, before, during and after their affair. He could tell her anything, and she would help him understand himself just by listening to him in her nonjudgmental way. She had, after all, approved of his being her daughter’s first lover, and honored his scriptural scruples about his relationship with her. He put on his bathrobe without tying it, walked determinedly to the kitchen, grabbed Jenni from behind and kissed her neck. She wriggled in his arms to face him and kissed him on the lips. “I love you, Jenni,” he said. “You’re sweet, Barry,” she answered. After breakfast Barry Bergman drove to the studio to take care of some business. For the first time ever, Jenni rode along with him. Atypically she wore a miniskirt, allowing him to stroke her knees and thighs over most of the ride. By the time they arrived at the now deserted studio they were so excited that Jenni almost ran as she pulled Barry by the hand to the bed on which she had been interminably fucked by Steve Kelly two days before. This time it was quick. Because the November sunlight on the Mediterranean was very different from what it had been in the summer, the sex scene on the beach had to be reshot in its entirety. Fortunately the beach they chose, in a secluded cove about an hour’s drive from Barcelona, was deserted on that afternoon, and they did not need to worry about peepers other than the driver of the van that had brought them there (it was the driver’s assignment to keep out other onlookers). The air was chilly, and Mario’s naked skin had to be sprinkled with warm water to simulate the perspiration that the scene called for. Gina was wearing a robe, but as she slowly and, in a seemingly unconscious way, seductively began to remove it in preparation for the shoot, Mario grew such an impressive erection that Albert ordered the cameraman to roll immediately (“Tournez, vite!” he shouted, to Gina’s amusement). He then stood behind the cameraman and guided his arms so that the hand-held camera would pan to Gina’s now naked body. Mario lay supine on a blanket and Gina walked toward him until her feet were on either side of his calves. She then knelt astride him, and Albert made the cameraman kneel as well so as to catch the slow disappearance of Mario’s penis behind Gina’s bush. The cameraman was himself so excited that he had difficulty in holding the camera steady, and Albert decided on the spur of the moment that, rather than try to steady him, he would let the film have a swaying quality in keeping with the action. Said action now went on at an ever-accelerating pace, toward an almost simultaneous climax. “ Coupez!” Albert shouted just before they disengaged and Mario began to show goose pimples. Albert handed Mario his robe while Gina casually put on hers. They quickly scrambled across the sand to the waiting van. Once he was warm again, Mario said that he could be ready for the hotel-room scene that evening. “Aren’t you going to save some for your girlfriend?” Gina asked him. “She is on vacation,” he said with a laugh. “And you don’t need to worry about her,” he added. In fact, the room at the seaside hotel – the same one in which the original scene had been shot – had been reserved not for that evening but, on Gina’s request, for the following one. Gina George was not in the habit of two on-camera performances in the same day. And she was looking forward to spending that evening alone with Albert Bosch. They would go out for dinner to one of the many rustic seafood restaurants by the waterfront, one that had been recommended to Albert by Sofia’s husband. They would need only to tell the taxi driver its name, and they would be taken there. She felt pleased with how her idea was working out, and Albert told her over appetizers that he was too. He had been somewhat wary of her proposal that the prints currently being shown in London and Paris be surreptitiously replaced with new ones, but his distributors seemed to like the idea – they saw it as a way of getting back at the critics – and he agreed. All subsequent openings would, of course, be with the revised version. For the hotel-room scene, he thought that all that needed to be reshot was the action that, in the original version, was simulated under the sheets. It could begin covered, for the sake of continuity, then the sheets would come off, and the camera would zoom in on the pelvic activity. “How would they come off?” asked Gina. “You could kick them off,” Albert replied, “the way you did in Fleshpots of the West.” “You saw that?!” “Yes, right after it opened, just before we left Los Angeles. I simply had to see it.” “But that was awful!” “Perhaps, but you were good,” Albert said between a bite of shrimp and a sip of wine. “I only did it – I mean kicking off the sheets – because I felt too hot. That guy Frank Bond really makes a girl sweat.” “This time you will do it because it is in the script,” Albert said with a laugh. “Then I need to rehearse it, don’t I?” Gina also laughed. “Let me rehearse it with you.” “The director as stand-in? Well, it’s been done.” “Maybe... lay-in?” She laughed again as their main dishes arrived. “That too. I understand that Hitchcock did it.” “I’m sure he wasn’t the only one. In fact, I know he wasn’t – I’ve been told first-hand stories.” “You must tell me some time,” said Albert as he picked up his fish knife. “Oh, I will, as long as I don’t name names. But for now let’s eat.” Before beginning his workout, Barry Bergman posted on the gym’s bulletin board a notice that he had lettered in his own hand, with a picture of a smiling Lesli, retrieved from files at the studio, clipped to it. The notice read: “Leslie Lyman” – he had been careful to put the final E on her name – “died yesterday.” On Jenni’s advice he omitted any adverbial modification of ‘died,’ such as ‘tragically’ or ‘under mysterious circumstances.’ The notice concluded: “Those who wish to remember her are invited to a memorial gathering to be held next Monday. For information, please call...” the number being that of the studio’s main line. While at the studio, Barry had changed the outgoing message on its voice mail so that it would sound, in Jenni’s office-trained voice, “For information about the Leslie Lyman memorial, please press two. For all other business, please press one.” It would be only after pressing 1 that a caller interested in other business would hear BB Productions announce itself, along with the usual after-hours options. There would in all likelihood have been no other way, Barry thought as he mounted the stationary bike, for anyone at the gym to find out about Leslie’s death. The police had been most discreet in what they had released to the media. The television news ignored the affair – not juicy enough – and the story that ran in that morning’s Los Angeles Times, under the heading “AZ Teen Runaway Found Dead in LA,” read, in its entirety, “Smart investigative work by the LAPD’s Hollywood Homicide Detectives led them quickly to identify the body of a young woman found floating yesterday in a private Hollywood pool as that of a teenage runaway from Arizona, just turned eighteen, who had been missing for two years. No foul play is suspected. The teenager, who had been working in Hollywood under an assumed name and had used a false ID that gave her age as five years older, had apparently died of an overdose of alcohol and other substances, and her body was found on the property of Hollywood producer Henry Bergman by a house guest while Mr. Bergman was away from home. Police have already contacted the victim’s next of kin.” Barry had placed the local-news section of the paper on the reading rack of the bicycle, and, rereading it again and again as he pedaled, he wondered if anyone who read it and knew him – but not too closely – would even make the connection between him and the “Hollywood producer Henry Bergman.” Hollywood producers were a dime a dozen, and many of them had the same or similar family names. The young gym attendant who on the preceding day had heard Barry identify himself as Henry did not seem like the newspaper-reading type. After dinner, Albert and Gina decided to walk from the restaurant, along the waterfront and through the old city, back to their hotel. Albert had estimated the distance as a little more than two kilometers and the time as a little over half an hour, at the pace that Gina’s high heels would permit. The night was chilly but clear, with no moon visible – it was the last quarter, Albert explained – but with myriads of stars. Gina knew that by the time they got back her feet would be sore and she would be tired, but until then it felt good to walk off the copious, wine-soaked dinner that had been finished off with brandy on the house. She had mentally reserved the right to hail a taxi if the walk proved too strenuous, and for that reason she made sure that their seemingly meandering route stayed close to the straight, broad avenue that cut through the old city. But, sooner than she had expected, the hotel’s ornate façade came into view. No, she was not tired, she decided, and she squeezed Albert’s hand as they walked into the hotel under the doorman’s unabashed stare. In the lobby she noticed a sign, in English, announcing a Thanksgiving dinner that would be held the next evening in one of the banquet rooms, organized by an American business group. Why hadn’t she noticed it before? she wondered. “Wait a second,” she said to Albert. She walked over to the desk and asked to speak to the manager on duty. Within a minute the man came out of his office. “Good evening, Miss George,” he said. “What can we do for you?” “I’d like to ask you for a favor,” she said. “Could you contact the American group that’s doing the Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow and see if I can get invited? With Mr. Bosch as my guest, of course,” she added with her Gina George smile. “Yes, of course, Miss George. We shall do it the first thing in the morning. There should not be any difficulty.” “Thank you,” she said simply. She walked back to Albert, who was waiting beside the elevators, took his hand with one of hers and pressed the elevator button with the other. “Turkey tomorrow,” she said. “What? We are going to Turkey? Tomorrow?” He was genuinely nonplussed. “No, silly,” she said laughing as she pulled him into the elevator. “Turkey dinner. You must have seen Thanksgiving dinners in American movies.” “Oh yes,” he said, now laughing as well. “The new one by Woody Allen, with Max von Sydow... Hannah and Her Sisters. Of course. So it’s tomorrow?” “Yes. And we’re going.” “Okay. But some day we should go to Turkey together,” he said as they stepped out of the elevator, this time with him pulling her. “Perhaps for Christmas, to get away from Europe. I hate European Christmas. And there’s skiing in Turkey.” “Then you’ll probably hate American Christmas even more. But, remember, we have to be in Utah in January.” “We have time,” he said as they walked through the door of their room together. “Plenty of time.” And the door closed behind them.