She screamed.
It wasn’t a scream of pleasure. Her legs gave way, and I heard the awful sound of her rings scrapping glass as she fell forward. With one hand holding her hips and the fingers of my other hand tangled in her hair, I kept her from pitching through the window.
Outside, nothing remained of Layla but a swirl of fog.
The columnist’s reflection was suddenly gaunt and terrified. “Someone saw us,” she said. “Someone’s out there — ”
“No,” I said. “It was just the fog. The wind picked up. It was swirling.”
She dropped to her knees and turned toward me. “No. It was a person… a woman… and she was watching us. God, if she had a camera — ”
She left the rest unsaid.
She left me the perfect opportunity.
“If she had a camera, I’d like a couple of prints,” I said. “That would show people around this town that I’m determined about my work.”
The columnist looked at me for a long time.
I didn’t say any more, just held my little grin, and she got the message.
She decided that it was her turn to make me happy.
We stayed in front of the window. She made me feel so good that I wanted to close my eyes, but I resisted the temptation. Instead, I watched the fog.
And, just for spite, I made damn sure the fog was watching me.
My name appeared in four straight columns, much to the studio’s delight. I guess I don’t need to tell you that I got the part.
It’s the picture that most people remember. I even wore the red windbreaker — the same one that I wore to the scribbler’s house — and most people remember that, too.
There’s a scene in that picture where a guy calls me a chicken. I get all broken up about it, and we go for a little chickie run. Stolen cars and a big cliff by the ocean. The same doe-eyed starlet that I’d taken to the premiere of my first picture sends us on our way, looking like daddy’s most frightening wet-dream in a tight cashmere sweater.
I live. The guy who called me a chicken doesn’t. I get the girl, too.
Kind of like my night with the woman in the glass house.
See, we had our own little game of chicken, Layla and me. That’s what the whole scene with the columnist was really about. Layla was taunting me, just waiting for the woman to crack so she could get inside her. She wanted nothing more than to be inside the scribbler’s head when I went into action. That’s how badly she wanted another piece of me. But I’d learned my lesson at the winery, and I didn’t give her a chance to do anything this time — you might say that I jumped at just the right moment. Layla might as well have sailed over a cliff in an old Ford, just like my rival in the movie.
That was my magic at work. I had to show Layla that I could succeed on my own, without her help. But something kept me from stopping there. I rubbed it in, like she’d done with her spooky laughter at the winery after I’d let her touch me.
So I gave the columnist what I refused Layla, and laughter didn’t go along with it. We kept at it way past the point where pleasure turned to something raw and unstoppable. And the woman — who looked nothing like Layla — became Layla for me. I wanted a piece of her. A real big piece. I pinned her to that wall of cold glass and kept her there until the smell of her perfume was long gone.
That’s when the fog went wild and tore itself apart.
And then the morning brought the sun.
It was hard work, that picture. I got to know the little starlet, and she had about a million questions for me. The only problem was that she didn’t pay too much attention to my answers.
We wrapped on schedule. Before I could blink, the studio tossed me into a picture about the oil business. I didn’t get the lead, but I was going to be working shoulder to shoulder with some of the biggest names in the business. Believe me, I was nervous about it.
Location shooting was starting right away. I only had a couple days to get myself ready and head down to Texas. Things were moving fast and I was flying pretty high, but I wanted to see Layla before I left. This was the second big gig I’d gotten on my own, and I wanted to let her know it. But there was something else. Something in me wanted to keep her interested, too. I didn’t want to lose her. Maybe I felt like we were even now, like we’d come to a new point in our relationship. A place where I might be able to let her touch me without worrying that she’d take something away. A place where I could touch her, and make her smile, and hear her breath catch in her throat, and not stop there… and go on with the rest of it without wanting anything else from her.
A place where we could meet as equals.
I phoned her.
She said, “I’d love to see you.”
For a gag, I bought one of those rubber shrunken heads with wild red eyes that glowed like embers. It was intended as a peace offering, really, something that would make Layla laugh in a way I wouldn’t mind.
I never did give her that head, though.
Layla didn’t want a peace offering.
She wanted some kind of cheap revenge.
I parked the Spyder in front of her little bungalow and trotted up the steps. Just when I was about to bang on the screen door, a little whimper came from inside.
I hung back from the door, my back against a tangle of bougainvillea that climbed a web of trelliswork screening the front porch. Though the layout of the living room was second nature to me, it was pretty dark in there — all the drapes were closed, and I had trouble making things out. Fortunately, a few candles glowed in the far corners of the room, guttering when caught by the feeble breeze of an oscillating fan.
Layla sat on the couch, naked, not moving at all. A yellow summer dress surrounded her feet as if she’d just slipped out of it, a pool of silk on the hardwood floor. A man sat beside her. He was fully dressed, and every now and then his big shoulders heaved.
I recognized his voice. It was the guy who had directed my first picture. He was busy spinning stories of his long friendship with Layla, hinting that he needed some payback from her. “You know how it is,” he told her. “I’m not the fair-haired boy anymore. Back when I started it was genius-this and prodigy-that. You remember. What a future I had. But now it’s nothing but complaints. Can’t he do anything new? What happened to his spark? His daring? All that high-hopes-gone-for-naught crap.”
Layla laughed.
It was almost as if her laughter was a reward for his wit in the face of doom, but I knew better. She was laughing at me. Me, crouching against a nest of sweet bougainvillea like a cheap voyeur. Me, stiff and straight and breathless as a corpse, honeybees buzzing around my head.
The director moved closer to her — nuzzled her neck, ran eager fingers over her breasts — but she only laughed some more, as though a particularly precocious child were tickling her. It was plain that he didn’t have a damn thing that she wanted. Not anymore. The sly old puppeteer had given everything to Layla long ago. Layla was the director of this little scene, and she was determined to give me a glimpse of my future.
She thought she was that smart.
She thought I was that stupid.
Somehow, I couldn’t believe that she thought so little of me.
I was pissed.
I tied the rubber shrunken head to the rear-view mirror of the director’s Mercedes.
I got in the Spyder and drove all the way to Marfa, Texas.
I ate up the sunshine down there in Texas. Couldn’t get enough of it. I tried to do good work on the picture, and I think I succeeded. For the first time in a long time, I was way past worrying.