Clive Barker - Coldheart Canyon

"Oh, this is Tammy. Tammy, Ron. Ron, Tammy. Tammy's my date for the night."

"Good goin'," Ron said, to no one and about nothing in particular. Just a general California yea-saying to the world. "Let me just call Ms. Frizelle, and tell her you're on your way down."

"Nah," Todd said, sliding a twenty dollar bill into Ron's hand. "We're going to surprise her."

"No problem," Ron said, waving them by. "Good to see you, by the way -- "

It took Tammy a moment to realize that Ron was talking to her.

"It's always good to meet a new friend of Mr. Pickett's." There didn't seem to be any irony in this: it was a genuine expression of feeling.

"Well, thank you," Tammy said, thrown a little off-kilter by this.

"Fuck. She's having a party," Todd said to her as they left the guardhouse behind them.

"So."

"So there'll be lots of people. Looking at me."

"They've got to do it sooner or later."

Todd stopped the car in the middle of the street.

"I can't. I'm not ready for this."

"Yes you are. The more you put it off the more difficult it's going to be."

Todd sat there shaking his head saying: "No. No. I can't do it."

Tammy put her hand over his. "I'm just as nervous as you are," she said. "Feel how clammy my hand is?"

"Yeah."

"But we said we'd get answers. And the longer we take to ask her the more lies she'll have ready."

"You do know her, don't you?" he said.

"She's my nightmare."

"Really. Why?"

"Because she stood between me and you."

"Huh."

Silence.

"So what are we going to do?" Tammy said finally.

"Shit. I don't want to do this."

"So that makes two of us. But -- "

"I know, I know, if we don't do it now ... All right. You win. But I will beat the living shit out of the first person who says one word about my face."

They drove on, the houses they were driving past far more modest in scale and design than she'd expected. There was very little here of the kitsch of Beverly Hills: no faux-French chateaux sitting side by side with faux-Tudor mansions. The houses were mostly extremely plain, boxlike in most cases, with very occasional architectural flourishes. They were also very close to one another. "You wouldn't get much privacy there," Tammy commented.

"I guess everybody just pretends not to look at everybody else. Or they just don't care. That's more like it. They just don't care."

"That's the connection between you and Katya, isn't it? You've both been looked at so much ... and the rest of us don't know what that feels like."

"It feels like somebody's siphoning out your blood, pint by pint."

"Not good."

"No. Not good."

They rounded a corner, bringing their destination into view. The party-house was decorated with thousands of tiny white twinkle lights, as were the two palm trees that stood like sentinels to left and right of the door.

"Christmas came early this year," Tammy remarked.

"Apparently."

There were uniformed valets working the street; taking cars from the guests and spiriting them away to be parked somewhere out of sight.

"Are you sure you're ready for this?" Todd asked Tammy.

"No more than you are."

"Want to go one more circle around the block?"

"Yes."

"Uh-oh. Too late."

Two valets were coming at the car bearing what must have been burdensome smiles. As the doors were opened, Todd caught tight hold of Tammy's hand. "Don't leave my side," he said. "Promise me you won't."

"I promise," she said, and raising her head she put on her best impersonation of someone who was rich, famous and belonged at Todd Pickett's side. Todd relinquished the keys to the valet.

"May I assume this is your first A-list Hollywood party in the flesh?" Todd said to Tammy.

"You may."

"Well then this could be a lot of fun. In a grotesque, 'there's a shark in the swimming pool' sort of way."

SEVEN

There came a point, as Jerry's car was carrying Katya out of for the first time in the better part of three quarters of a century, when her fears seemed to get the better of her. Jerry heard a voice, as dry as a husk, out of the darkness behind him: "I'm sorry ... I don't know that I can do this."

"Do you want me to turn around?" he asked her. "I will if you want me to."

There was no reply. Just the soft sound of frightened weeping. "I wish Zeffer was still here. Why was I so cruel to him?" None of this seemed to be for open discussion. It was more like a private confessional. "Why am I such a bitch? Jesus. Jesus. Everything I've ever loved ... " She stopped herself, and looked up at Jerry, catching his reflection in the mirror. "Don't mind me. It's just a crazy old woman talking to herself."

"Maybe we should go back and find Mr. Zeffer? He could come with you. I realize there was some bad blood between you -- "

"Zeffer's dead, Jerry. I lost my temper with him, and -- "

"You killed him?"

"No. I left him in the Devil's Country. Wounded by one of the hunters."

"Lord."

Jerry brought the car to a halt. He stared out of the window, horrified. "What would you like me to do?" he said after a while. "If you can't go on without him, I mean."

"Take no notice of me," Katya said, after a short period of reflection: "I'm just feeling sorry for myself. Of course I can go on. What other choice do I have?" She took another moment to study the passing world. "It's just that it's been a long time since I was out in the real world."

"This isn't the real world, it's LA."

She saw the joke in that. They laughed together over the remark, and when their laughter had settled into smiles, he got the car going again, down the hill. At some unidentified point between the place where her faith had almost failed her, and Sunset Boulevard, they crossed the boundary of Coldheart Canyon.

Their destination was already decided, of course, so there wasn't much reason to talk as they went. Jerry left Katya to her musings. He knew his Hollywood history well enough to be sure that she would be astonished by what she was seeing. In her time Sunset Boulevard had been little more than a dirt track once it got east of what was now Doheny. There'd been no Century City back then, of course, no four lane highways clogged with sleek vehicles. Just shacks and orange groves and dirt.

"I've been thinking," Katya said, somewhere around Sepulveda.

"About what?"

"Me and my wickedness."

"Your what? Your wickedness?"

"Yes, my wickedness. I don't know why it came into my mind, but it did. If I think about the women I've played in all my really important pictures, they were all wicked women. Poisonous. Adulterers. One who kills her own child. Really unforgivable women."

"But don't most actors prefer to play bad characters? Isn't it more fun?"

"Oh it is. And I had a lot to inspire me."

"Inspire you?"

"As a child, I saw wickedness with my own eyes. I had it's hands on me. Worse, it possessed me." Her voice grew cold and dark. "My mother ran a whorehouse, did I ever tell you that? And when I was ten or so, she just decided one night it was time to make me available to the customers."

"Jesus."

"That's what I said to myself. Every night, I said: Jesus, please help me. Jesus, please come and take me away from this wicked woman. Take me to heaven. But he never came. I had to run away. Three times I ran away and my brothers found me and dragged me back. Once she let them have me, as a reward for finding me."

"Your own brothers?"

"Five of them."

"Christ."

"Anyway, I succeeded in escaping her eventually, and when you're a thirteen-year-old, and you're out in the world on your own, you see a lot thirteen-year-olds shouldn't have to see."

"I'm sure you did."

"So I put all that I saw into those women. That's why people believed in them. I was playing them for real." She fumbled at the inside of the door. "Is there some way to open this window?"