The hurricane blonde, p.17
The Hurricane Blonde, page 17
“Excuse me,” I said. The boy’s mother looked up, staring. “Would you like these? My eyes were bigger than my stomach.”
I dropped the donuts on their table and turned to leave. I was halfway through the doors when I heard her call after me, “Hey, aren’t you . . .”
But I let the door slam behind me before I heard the rest.
June 11, 1997
Tawney called me. When I picked up, she asked me if I was buzzed.
“No.” Not a lie. It was only my second beer of the afternoon.
I could practically hear Tawney thinking on the phone. “All right,” she said. “Can you take the car and meet me at the Jacaranda House? Don’t tell Mom and Dad where you’re going.” She hesitated. “Tell them . . . tell them you’re going to meet a friend or something.”
I took the turns from the Hollywood Hills as a game, trying hard not to tap on the brakes as I leaned into the curves with my learner’s permit. By the time I sputtered to a stop in front of the Jacaranda House, my veins were buzzing with adrenaline, almost a good substitute for coke, although I’d bargained with myself that Tawney wouldn’t be able to tell if I did just a little bump in the car.
Things had been so strange since Tawney had broken off her engagement with Cal—she’d gotten more reclusive, shutting herself up in the house so paparazzi couldn’t trail her, prone to crying jags that left me wondering why, if she missed Cal so much, she’d left him in the first place.
Some nights felt normal: Tawney would grab a bottle of wine—our secret—and make popcorn and we’d sit in her three-million-dollar mansion, on her white leather sofa that cost more than most people made in a year, and, like other sisters, watch Death Becomes Her, talk about boys while we hid out from the paparazzi.
This time, Tawney met me at the door. Her face was scrubbed of makeup, arms crossed over her famous chest in a slubby gray T-shirt and jeans. Light freckles dusted her nose.
“Did you tell Mom you were coming?” she asked as I hugged her. She pulled away abruptly and headed back through the house, out to the pool.
No VHS and wine tonight.
“Of course not,” I said, kicking my shoes off so I could dangle my toes in the water. Tawney had already rolled her jeans up, kicking her feet back and forth in the pool.
“Good.” Tawney sat half in shadow, so I could only partially see her face, but even so I could tell something was weighing heavy on her mind. With the clarity of a coke high starting to come on, I realized she’d been crying: Her eyes were just the littlest bit puffy.
“Why do you care if Mom knows I’m here anyway?”
Tawney ducked her head. “Because I needed to talk to you. Not her.”
“Is it Cal? Do you think you might . . . get back together?” I still couldn’t believe she’d ended it with him for good. I knew they’d had their ups and downs, but so had our parents and everyone called theirs the love story of the century.
Her lips pinched together. Her eyes darted to the privacy hedges that enclosed the yard. “No. I don’t think so. I don’t know.”
My big sister fumbling for words wasn’t something I was used to. I didn’t like the way it made me feel.
Tawney scrubbed her hands over her face in frustration, and then said, in a voice more like her usual: “What we had wasn’t healthy, you know that, right? I loved Cal. A lot. But the thing between us . . .” She shook her head, staring gloomily into the pool. “There were only bad endings for it. Even if I hadn’t . . .” She bit herself off midsentence, actually clamped her lips together so she didn’t say anything more.
I knew I should pay attention, but my brain couldn’t track it, couldn’t keep up. “Tune in for the exclusive take on Tawney and Cal’s breakup tonight at five,” I said, then giggled crazily, nearly slipping off the lip of the pool into the water.
Tawney’s entire body went electric-shock straight as she examined my dilated pupils. She slapped the pool, splashing me. “You’re high, aren’t you? I fucking knew it. Goddamn it, Salma, what’s wrong with you?”
“Look, just because you want to live your life chained up even though you’re young, doesn’t mean I can’t—”
In the dark, the palm trees above us swayed and Tawney held a finger to her lips: Quiet. I shut up and we both sat in the dark, listening. Tawney’s eyes narrowed, and she stared at the rippling bushes with laser focus. I rolled my eyes.
“You’re so paranoid—”
“Shh, quiet!” Tawney flapped her hand at me, head jerking back to the hedge. A frond twitched, then went still. The breeze. I was sure it was the breeze. But Tawney stared at it like it would crack under interrogation, if she willed it.
“Tawney Lowe, the world’s most famous actor. Give me a break,” I snapped. “Nobody’s trying to get you. It’s night, the photos would be shit anyway. Okay?”
Tawney listened and watched for another minute before her shoulders slumped, and she sighed. “I swear to God, I feel like someone is watching me. I keep expecting that I’m going to wake up one morning and there’ll be all these photos of me like—swimming, or in the shower or something. It’s like they’re in the house with me, even when I’m alone.” She shuddered. “They’re under my skin.”
Tawney, so dramatic. Her feelings colored the world; I thought she was overreacting. The paparazzi were bad, but I thought it would pass. Once the story about her and Cal died down, so would the attention.
“Give it a few years,” I said, sisterly rivalry bubbling to the surface. “Someone younger and prettier and more stacked will come along, and you’ll be old news. Just ask Mom.”
“You are such a fucking—”
This time, there was no mistaking it. The soft click, click, click, of a camera shutter, the rustle of the hedge. Even in the dark, I could see Tawney’s face turn white, and she pulled her feet out of the pool so quickly, she slipped, scraping her hand. “Get inside,” she hissed. “Now!”
She didn’t have to tell me twice. I scrambled for the door, and she tugged it shut behind me, throwing the lock and the curtains. She dripped a puddle on the terra-cotta tiles, trembling as she hugged herself.
“I wasn’t imagining that, was I?”
I had to admit no, she wasn’t.
Tawney turned her head, peering anxiously through the curtains. As she did, her hair fell back and I could see a reddish blotch on the side of her neck, about the size of a golf ball.
Or a mouth.
A shock ran through me. She’d been broken up with Cal for weeks. She hadn’t done anything wrong, not technically. But the sight of it made me queasy.
Tawney was pale, and she had a funny look on her face, one I hadn’t seen before. I wondered if she knew I’d seen. “Salma, I have to tell you something. But if I tell you,” she whispered, her eyes dark and glittering, “you’ll hate me for it.”
I stared at the hickey. I knew what she was going to say. There was someone new; the tabloids had been right, there’d been someone all along.
“Wow,” I said coldly. “Like father, like daughter, huh?”
Tawney’s face fell, and then she was crying, big, gulping, ugly sobs. I didn’t go to her. I turned and left the Jacaranda House, slamming the door behind me, ducking my head in case the paparazzo was still outside, waiting, never knowing how badly I’d failed her.
The next morning, I would call her and apologize. I’d tell her I loved her, and I was drunk and high, she was right about that, and I was sorry for being a shit. Tawney would accept my apology, making it sound easy and light and forgotten already, because that’s who she was: the kind of sister who made it easy for me.
A few days later, she’d fight with my mother, so loud I thought they’d scream the rafters down. And then, what felt like minutes later, she’d be dead.
That was the last night I saw her alive.
Chapter
21
When Melany picked up my call, I lied. I told her I had something of Tawney’s to give her, to help her with her performance. I didn’t feel bad for a second.
I told Melany to meet me at the museum behind Stars Six Feet Under at eight p.m., three days after the hotel pool shoot. By eight, she’d be out of makeup. And at Stars Six Feet Under, the last tour would have ended. The gift shop, closed.
We’d be alone.
I got there early, waiting in the parking lot until I was sure everyone had left for the evening, before I went in the back door, tapping in the key code to keep the alarm off.
I’d had time to think after I’d talked to MacLeish. He wasn’t wrong. It wasn’t impossible Cal had learned about the scene of the crime through other means—the coroner’s file, for instance. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw that flutter of X’s down the center of Tawney’s chest. The clutch of jacaranda blossoms kicking against her thigh.
Or maybe there had been police photographs taken of the scene—Cal could’ve bribed a police officer for them.
But it was so intimate. The pleasure Cal had taken in the details, the arrogance of filming a letter-perfect re-creation of a murder . . . It felt personal.
Much as I didn’t want to be anywhere near Cal, I knew I’d have to stay in his orbit. Maybe I could convince Emerald and Cherry to meet with me off the set, find ways to chisel away at their alibis—if they were lying—although I didn’t count on it.
But I needed to get Melany away from Cal, fast.
I flipped on the lights, pulling apart the heavy black velvet curtains that guarded the museum. Over the years, Dale had amassed a macabre collection of trinkets and mementos of the dead—letters from famous murderers or victims; Jean Harlow’s handkerchief, stained with something brownish and gory; a patch from James Dean’s motorcycle jacket, trimmings of leather visible underneath it.
Together as a collection, the museum was ghoulish. I knew that. A study in poor taste, linked by prurient interest, shock value, the gawking worst of human instincts. All true. But there was also a melancholy impulse there, one I understood to my core: the attempt to pin a piece of those loved and lost to the human realm, to create a story we could revisit. Memories weren’t tangible. Mementos were.
In one corner, I’d built a shrine to my Dead Girls. I grouped their headshots on an altar, along with pieces Dale could find. The radio from the car where Thelma Todd, the Ice Cream Blonde, had died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Dominique Dunne’s hair ribbon from Poltergeist. Dried flowers from Dorothy Stratten’s marriage to the man who murdered her. A handwritten letter by Rebecca Schaeffer, a pill bottle made out to Lupe Vélez, a replica of the Black Dahlia’s handbag.
At the top of the altar: Tawney, of course.
Melany poked her head around the black velvet curtain. I waved her inside, watched her take it all in—the Marilyn-centric wallpaper, the exhibit under glass. Me, standing quietly, hands folded on the altar of my making.
There was a look on her face between wonder and revulsion. “This is spooky,” Melany said, forcing a laugh. Her eyes darted toward the black velvet curtain. “Is it . . . is it just us here?”
I nodded. I knew how it looked, me asking her to come here at night, in the dark. I tried to break the ice. “How did the shoot go today?”
Melany was leaning wide-eyed on one of the glass exhibits, her lips moving as she read the card beneath it. She didn’t look up as she answered. “Fine.”
I waited, but she didn’t say anything else. As she straightened from the case, there was a gassy rumble, and Melany laughed a little, self-consciously. “Sorry. Haven’t had a chance to eat yet.”
“We could go—”
“No!” There was a bright panic in her eyes, then she smiled, like she was trying to wave it away. “No, that’s all right. I’ll grab something at home. I have approved dinners at home.”
I frowned. “Approved? What do you mean, ‘approved’?”
Melany looked embarrassed. “Cal has me on a strict diet. Stuff to maximize my performance. It’s really helped, I think.”
“Cal put you on a diet?”
She raised a shoulder, studied her nails, like it wasn’t important. “It’s been good for me. I’ve lost twelve pounds since I auditioned.”
Twelve pounds. I stared at her willowy frame. She did look thinner. Her collarbones jutted. I felt dizzy. Cal was shaving her down to nothing. Trying to re-create my sister at her most unhappily skeletal.
Studios were no longer allowed to enact a formal weight clause in their contracts for female actors, the way they had once, but there were ways around it: well-placed comments and suggestions, different meals served at breaks, even outright threats of firing under the guise of not being right for the part.
I knew all about that. Tawney did, too.
“Melany, that’s not healthy,” I said. “You should—”
She cut me off, yanking on her ponytail, a sharp, irritated movement. “What was so urgent I had to come down here? You said you had something for me?”
I took a step closer. I’d practiced what to say to her in the days since I’d talked to MacLeish. I had it all worked out in my head. But seeing Cal’s effect on her body rattled me. When the words came, they were rushed, shrill: “Melany, you need to quit the movie.”
She gaped at me, her mouth dropped comically low. Then she started to laugh. “God, Salma, you had me worried there for a moment.”
“I’m serious.” I hesitated. I reached out a hand and she flinched. “I think Cal killed Tawney. I think he killed Ankine. I think he’s capable of hurting you, too.”
Melany was staring at me now like I’d grown a second head. Her brow puckered, and she made a soft whistly inhale between pursed lips. “Oh my God, you’re serious. You’re actually serious.”
“He’s a dangerous man, Melany. I know.”
Melany looked around the room, her eye lighting on a photograph at the top of my Dead Girls altar. It was the only piece in Dale’s museum that didn’t have a descriptive card. In the photo, a young woman looked into a mirror, a candle below her chin brightening only a sliver of her face, the lines of her clavicle. Her shoulder blades were sharp as fins in the semidarkness, and she was hallowed by a Technicolor glow: sunset yellows and oranges. In front of her, a scattering of jacaranda blossoms glowed with light, like they were on fire, a camera propped in front of them.
In the self-portrait, my sister didn’t look beautiful. She looked otherworldly. She looked like she’d never belonged to any of us in the first place.
“Look,” she said slowly, her eyes still on Tawney’s photo. “I saw you taking pictures. I can see that what’s happening on the film set—I get that that’s really triggering for you. Maybe you should talk to someone about it?”
I huffed out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. Cal was her big break. On set, she seemed half in love with him. She wasn’t going to turn on him unless she really understood—he wasn’t the man she thought he was.
I took a deep breath, steeling myself.
“When I was fifteen,” I said, “the day of my sister’s funeral—Cal and I had sex.” The words stuck in my throat, threatened to choke me. I’d only ever told my rehab counselors. “Just the one time. But I was . . . I was a kid. Fifteen years old. He took advantage of the situation,” I said, realizing as I said it that it was true. I’d wanted him. But he’d been an adult. He’d known more about the human heart than I did. He could’ve protected me, and he chose not to. “He’s not a good man, Melany. I promise you.”
Melany’s face drained of color. I thought of all the small moments I’d seen between the two of them, Melany’s set-crush obvious to anyone with eyes. I knew she wouldn’t like it—but I had to tell her.
Finally, she shook her head. “Sorry, but—it’s a little hard to believe.” Her smile was pained. “You and Cal? I just . . . really don’t see the two of you together.”
I frowned. “Well, it happened.”
Melany held up a hand. “I’m not saying you’re lying. I believe you believe it. But . . .” She paused, and I knew, I fucking knew, what was coming next. “You had a troubled childhood. Maybe you . . . thought something happened. Maybe you got confused. I mean . . .” She gave me a sympathetic look. “He’s Cal Turner.”
“Right,” I said. My hands were balled so tightly into knots my nails were slicing my skin open. “Why would Cal sleep with me when he could have anyone in the world? I don’t know, Melany. Maybe you should ask yourself why Cal would cast you when he could’ve had any other leading lady he wanted.”
Melany looked like she’d been slapped. But only for a moment. “Cal warned me. He said you were jealous. But no, I thought you were trying to help me. All this pathetic hanging around. Well, you know what, Salma? Just because you ruined your big break doesn’t mean you can ruin mine. Sorry, but you need help. Like, lots and lots of it.”
I’d let my temper get the better of me. I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to her now that I knew for sure what Cal was capable of. I took a step forward. “Please, Melany. I’m trying to help you. Call Emerald right now and tell her you quit. We can find another role for you, anything.”
Melany shook her head, like she couldn’t believe me, like I disgusted her, then she swept out of the dark velvet curtains. I followed her into the gift shop, calling her name until the door slid shut behind her, the ping of Chopin following.
I stood there, stunned. Maybe I should’ve known she’d react like that. I knew what her big break meant to her. But even more than her life?
“Salma?”
My head jerked up. Dale was behind me, a worried look on his face. Fuck. The last thing I needed tonight was another lecture.
“Dale, I’m sorry, I just came to pick up—”
