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.
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