The bloodstone, p.9
The Bloodstone, page 9
“Hey,” he whispered, winking, “you want to get stoned?”
Smiling broadly, she strode past him up Broadway. She felt better than she had in days. Weeks! The smell of success had aroused her in a way that she had not experienced since her college days, since even before that, when she was a little girl doing her dance for Aunt Mildred.
Success would take some time, she knew that. But she was willing to wait, and that made her feel good.
It wasn’t until she stood in the Drama Book Shop, while glancing through monologues for women that, for the first time, it hit her. She drew in her breath sharply and the slim manuscript slid from between her fingers to the floor.
Incredible, she shuddered to herself. Or rather, impossible. How had she come to forget? The old fear that had kept her off the stage for at least eight years. The nauseating panic, so acute, that she had actually refused to make an entrance. Then, the word had gone out. Nobody would hire her. For that matter, she had been too frightened to take a chance on herself.
Someone tapped her on the shoulder. “Here. You dropped this.”
Thanks,” she managed to reply without any clear focus and felt the play book shoved back into her hand.
It was the stage fright, she remembered, that had first made her want to leave New York. To go to California. She and Justin had intended to go to Hollywood.
“Yes!” she whispered and remembered that much clearly. What she couldn’t remember was why they hadn’t gone. Why had they stayed?
But as she automatically went through her day—lunch at Chock Full O’Nuts, ballet and modem dance at Carnegie Hall, a quick stop at the Equity lounge—the thought that stayed with her was that she had somehow forgotten what should have been impossible to forget. The stage fright. The damned stage fright. And not far behind this recurring phrase in her mind, teased another worry. What if she were to get a part? Could she take it? Would she dare take the chance again?
She wandered now into several agents’ offices where she was received with hostility or not at all. Their rudeness made no impression on her. She was wrapped in her own thoughts. Christ. Stage fright.
At a small dance shop she bought black tights—Lord, $9.98—and ended up in front of the Booth Theatre where a poster-size picture of Billy Deats jumped out at her.
She glanced at her watch—6:45 P.M.
Why not, she shrugged, and purchased a ticket. Rear balcony, the cheapest seat available. It gave her a charge to be seeing a Broadway show again, the black-skirted, white-collared ushers who handed out playbills, the murmur of the growing crowd, the knowledge that, Jesus, this was Broadway. Broadway!
Chandal settled back in her seat as the lights dimmed and thought—“Give ’em hell, Billy—” and knew sixty seconds into the play that it was going to be one of those deadly, embarrassing theater situations with the acting so bad as to make people slide down in their seats. Billy himself was the worst of the lot—so bad as to make empathic sweat pop out on the back of her neck—and she could only reflect that opening night must have been one of those magical transforming performances that occasionally occur in the theater.
Here and there giggles rippled through the audience at inappropriate times, more often sighs of boredom or disgusted grunts from patrons who had spent good money for tickets. From time to time, people walked out.
After the show had dragged to a conclusion of sorts, she dreaded the curtain call, but relaxed when Billy walked out to accept his lukewarm, but polite applause. He stood center stage with a beaming smile and no awareness whatsoever of how dreadful he had been.
Chandal pounded her hands together loudly and didn’t care that people glanced at her with raised eyebrows. Here’s to you, Billy. Here’s to a guy who made it even without that much talent. And chuckled at her immediate relief in the thought that now Billy was moving on to films and would never need embarrass himself again. His acting would look a hell of a lot better on film.
She blended into the crowd that poured out in an orderly fashion from the four center theater doors. A few celebrities were in the audience; one she recognized as Joan something. Last name beginning with a T. Tanner, or Tessman or something. The crowd murmured as Joan T. swept through the door clad in a tight black, glittering-with-diamonds gown, on the arm of an anonymous bronzed god. A photographer appeared suddenly, cried, “Joan! Here, Joan!” as she signed her name into the book of a known autograph seeker, a man who knew everyone and had spent uncounted years adding to his vast collection of signatures.
Joan T. posed with the autograph book, smiled and then waved as laughingly, her escort pulled her into a waiting limo, the chauffeur dutifully closing the door behind them.
The parade of theatergoers continued uninterrupted, hats and coats donned in mid-stride, a burst of laughter, a pipe lighted, a cab hailed, until Chandal laughed and gestured to the doorman that she would wait at the corner for Billy Deats.
“He’s always the last to leave,” the man said good-naturedly.
“I don’t mind. I have all night.” She had a sudden thought. “Is anyone else waiting for him?”
“Not that I know of, Miss. He’s a loner.”
“A loner? Billy?”
“Excuse me.” The doorman turned away apologetically to try to expedite a taxicab jam. Three different parties were fighting over two cabs.
“Who are you?” asked a voice suddenly. “Are you anybody?”
Chandal considered that as she smilingly studied the face of the professional autograph seeker.
“No,” she decided finally. “I guess to you I’m not. I’m nobody.”
She knew by the flash of surprise in his eyes that he was seldom wrong and took satisfaction in the fact that he had mistaken her for a celebrity. That had to mean that somewhere along the way she had picked up “Star Quality.”
Giggling to herself, she stepped further back and imagined coming face-to-face with Billy. Thank God, she never felt obligated to tell actor friends the truth about bad performances. Her wide-sweeping rule was: If you go back stage, tell everyone you meet that they were marvelous. If you can’t swallow that, don’t go back stage.
Billy would, without a doubt, be delighted to see her and she... She bit her lip and remembered how it used to be when she and Justin were dating. Sometimes—God, so many times—Billy was there. Either as a threesome, with Billy as a single, or as a foursome, with Billy seldom taking out the same woman more than twice. Uneasily she focused on that mental picture of Billy, Justin and herself, and she wondered why she didn’t think of Justin that often. And had never really experienced the kind of grief she should have since his death.
Almost wonderingly she watched Billy drop from the picture in her mind and now she concentrated on the tiny image of Justin and Chandal, looking at each other with so much love. And yet she couldn’t feel that love anymore, not even now, when she tried to summon it. She could only look rather blankly as the two remembered lovers leaned toward each other, touched, kissed in a special private manner.
“Why can’t I grieve?” she had asked Dr. Luther. “I should grieve, shouldn’t I? I loved Justin. I know I loved him.” Dr. Luther had shrugged and talked about “incomplete mourning” as though it were a usual thing, a defense mechanism used by many people, not just her.
But it would be good, yes, wonderful, to see Billy Deats again. Involved in her own thoughts, she had completely missed Billy as he came from the backstage door. She blinked, saw him climb into the back seat of a black limo, and began to call, wave her arms and run toward him.
There was an instant now that seemed to her later to have happened in slow motion. Herself in a long graceful stride that for a moment held her in midair, her long flowing hair gliding like smoke behind her. In front of her Billy turned, also held in a freeze position. Plainly he was caught off guard. In that moment his eyes locked into hers. Shock, even panic. Something passed between them, an undercurrent. Something, not exactly hostile, but almost a backlash of fear.
“Billy!” she screamed and the moment was broken.
Hurriedly he slid into the car, his face now composed, expressionless, and slammed the door behind him. Slowly the limo merged into traffic.
“Billy!” she screamed and leaped into the street. With her fists she pounded on the car window. Deliberately he turned his head in the opposite direction as the car inched forward, wedged in by other cars.
“Billy!” she yelled and found her arms being firmly held. She turned in shock to face a policeman who remonstrated gently with her.
“Miss, you can’t do things like that....”
“He’s a goddamn friend of mine!” she gulped and couldn’t believe the tears that began to run down her cheeks.
“Oh, I see,” the cop said, turning her arms loose. “That’s the way it is, I guess. When they get that big, well... Don’t do that sort of thing again though, huh?”
“Okay, thanks,” she murmured and forced herself forward, a strange certainty forming in her mind. In some way, at some time in the past, Billy had let her down. An image. Herself dialing. “Billy, I need help.” The help had never come.
And with the image, a vague piece of her past dropped into place.
CHAPTER EIGHT
CITY BLOCKS DISAPPEARED, GROUND OUT UNDER HER BOOT heels. The tears were gone. Left behind somewhere in the neighborhood of the Booth Theatre, or the Majestic, or the Belasco.
It wasn’t until Chandal stood at the outer gate to the courtyard that she had a sudden puzzling thought. Then she wondered why it had taken her so long to come to it. Billy had let her down in some way, she remembered that much. But the fear on his face—surely that didn’t compute. No, the fear made no sense.
The gate latch felt cold against her fingers as she released it. Billy’s face—not the face of an actor on a success trip, nor arrogance, nothing like that. But fear.
“A loner,” the doorman had said. Billy had never been a loner in his life. He had been a hanger-outer. One of the crowd at the Sacred Cow or Joe Allen’s. She closed the heavy steel gate carefully behind her.
Lost in thought, she walked slowly, her heels hollow against the flagstone. Breathing the wet air of the night, air that blew lightly over the dark city roofs and then dropped swiftly, turning the courtyard into a mild vortex, she felt the key slip easily into its lock and reached for the door.
“Chandal?”
“What?” She turned sharply and came face to face with Mike Hammer. “My God,” she breathed. “You scared me to death.”
“I’m sorry.” His face, shadow-soft and relaxed, smiled over her.
“How did you... I didn’t see you.”
“The basement door. I noticed your light was out. I came over to put in a new bulb,” he said and grinned with the air of a magician as he produced a lightbulb from his jacket pocket. “It’ll only take a second.”
Mike moved closer to her now as he reached up and unscrewed the defective bulb. In the almost complete darkness she felt like a small figure lost in the huge shadow of his body. His breathing grew louder as he reached up and screwed in the new bulb.
“It could have waited until the morning,” she said in annoyance. “I’m sure...” She broke off, her breath caught in a short gasp. The sudden glare of the unshaded bulb shone directly onto Mike’s face, and Chandal noticed at once the deep gash, raw and purple, on his right cheek.
He turned and their eyes welded.
“There, that should do it.” He smiled.
“Thanks,” she said coldly and turned to let herself into the carriage house.
She felt Mike’s hand grope at her arm.
“I hope I didn’t wake you up last night,” he said.
“I... I don’t understand,” she stammered, and awkwardly removed her arm from his grasp.
There was a long silence. Chandal watched Mike’s deformed hand run nervously up and down his trouser leg. The courtyard about them was silent, as if everyone in New York slept or were standing about quietly watching.
“The outside gate,” he mumbled. “The damn thing kept blowing open. It’s supposed to lock automatically.”, He shrugged. “I thought maybe you heard me hammering away out there.”
“Is that what that was?” She let out a pent-up sigh. “I thought it was the tree branches.”
“That too, I guess. It blew up pretty strong last night.”
A glistening darkness swallowed them. Blackness lit by shimmers of water droplets illumined by moonglow. Even the trees shone like wet distorted skeletons and an old cobweb on the grillwork of the window looked like black gossamer.
“I guess I owe you an apology for yesterday,” he said softly.
Chandal stared at him without answering.
“I was just tired,” he explained. “That’s all. Just tired.”
“It happens, I guess.”
Mike watched her for a moment. Then he said wryly, “I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that I...”
“How did you get that scratch?” Chandal interrupted.
“What, this?” His hand reached to his face. “A damned cat. A stray in the building.”
“Oh. I—I just wondered. It looks like a nasty cut.”
“It’s not bad.” He stepped aside under the dim bulb, the downthrust shadows of his hair and nose casting deep, penetrating patterns over his face, as if attempting to hide in the dark recesses of the wall. “Well, like I said, sorry about yesterday. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
Mike hesitated, something curiously watchful in his intense eyes. She felt drawn to meet his gaze and then, as she did so, she had a falling-away sensation, a blurring of consciousness, as though she was on the verge of fainting. With a great effort she fought off the feeling, straightened her posture and returned Mike’s stare. He nodded slightly, almost as though he had received a signal, and faded away into a vaguely blinding mist.
She watched his shadowy figure descend the basement stairs, pulling the outer door closed behind him. Only when he had gone could she see clearly again. Still, a feeling of nakedness and vulnerability remained in his wake.
Entering the carriage house, she flicked on the living room light. The room warmed a little under the glow of the Tiffany lamp, and she had the sudden sensation of being welcomed, as though the house reached out to pull her forward. It calmed her, separated her from the outside world.
Still wearing her coat, she wandered through the room, and propped herself against the door frame of the den. What was it she had happened to call this small damp room... just yesterday morning? The words had come idly into her mind—the room that wept. She smiled at this romanticism for mildew. And yet...
She turned her back on the room. After hanging her coat in the closet, she made tea and toast, swept up a pail and rag which had been left in the middle of the kitchen floor, and deliberated whether or not to call Ron. She reached for the phone, dialed 1 and the area code, then angrily slammed the receiver down.
Lately, the moment she concentrated on Ron, she was filled with anger, but had no idea where it came from or what to do with it. Love, and longing in one breath, and in the next the feeling being transformed into near hatred. She couldn’t understand it, she decided, as she sipped at her tea and nibbled at her toast, burnt just the way she liked it.
For an instant she could remember very clearly the tenderness and the passion Ron had been able to arouse in her so easily. There had been times when the last remaining barrier between them had seemed paper-thin and she had been on the verge of giving herself to him completely. Saying words that could not be easily taken back. Something had always stopped her. And now, perhaps, she would never be able to find her way back to him. What the hell is happening? she wondered, but she could not hang onto the urgency of the thought. She found her attention divided; other matters compelled her interest. She had no control of it. It was as though she were standing at a crossroads with arrows pointing in two different directions. She could not choose which way to go and obstinately decided to take both courses, running back and forth between the separate paths.
But then, she considered, her day-to-day life seemed to be like that lately. She found her emotions running along two main streams. She took great delight in acting again, in fixing up the carriage house. In little details of clothing that she had never considered before. She also took great joy in compliments, embracing praise and flattery.
The other stream was a feeling of bitterness that drove her into rages, until she could only feel a deadness in herself, a void from which it was almost impossible to emerge.
Absently, she ran her hand across her forehead, then massaged her temples. Finally, in a state of numbness, she took a hot bath and got into her nightgown. Her skin was slightly damp, now, with warm sweat. She felt herself slipping deeper into a dreamlike state and roused herself to get a book. Something to focus her attention on. Her eyelids felt heavy as she curled up on the living room couch and opened the cover. Such an old book. Something from the book shelf in the corner of the den. She read for a while without remembering what she read. The words wouldn’t stick. She kept losing her place and having to backtrack. Then there were isolated unrelated thoughts: A fire in the fireplace would be so nice. One of those huge logs that burned for a long time. The way it used to be... no, she had never been here before.... Let’s see, where was she? She couldn’t remember a word she’d read.
After about half an hour, Chandal knew that somewhere within the carriage house was an odd sound. At first, when she heard it, her consciousness did not register it as sound. It was so faint, it might have been only a feeling, or an automatic functioning of her body, blinking, or her heart beating in her chest cavity. It was the absolute stillness that left her sensitive to every murmur. But as the sound persisted, she began to isolate it. She sat perfectly still as the sound grew louder. By degrees. Yes, it had grown louder.
What is that? she wondered. She could not identify the sound. And she realized now that it was not coming from any particular source. Not from the kitchen, nor the den, nor upstairs from the bedroom. Instead, it seemed to be coming from all directions at once.
