Shallow Graves

18

At four-thirty Pellam remembered Janine. "Oh, hell."

Sam looked up. Probably thinking that he'd pointed the muzzle of the single-shot, break-action shotgun the wrong way or hadn't remembered one of the firearm safety rules Pellam had told him.

For the past couple hours they'd been plinking away with shotguns. Occasionally Pellam would throw a can or two into the air and Sam, sweating with the effort, would calculate the lead. Pellam noticed the determination on the boy's face. Once he overheard Sam mutter something as he fired.

"Ned" was what it sounded like. Pellam had asked him what he'd said but he just shook his head and said, "Can you throw another one please?"

"Got to call it quits, son," Pellam now said. "I've got an errand back in town."

Inside the kitchen Sam said, "Mom, you should've seen me."

"I did. I was watching out the window."

"How'd I do, Mr Pellam?"

"Did good, really good," Pellam said. "You've got to clean your weapon, Sam. But I've got to run to town. We'll do it when I get back." He looked at Meg and there must have been something in his words or-goddamn it, was he blushing? He looked at her coy smile and said, "You mind dropping me in town and I'll bring the camper back?"

"Hey," Sam said, his high voice cracking into an even higher register. "Can I come?"

Meg smiled sweetly, "Oh, and can I come too?"

"Probably better if you didn't."

She let him swing for a minute then said, "Maybe you've got some other friends in town. Some people I don't know."

"Shouldn't take more than fifteen minutes."

Meg smiled innocently. "Fifteen? That's pretty fast."

He gave her an exasperated glance.

The phone rang.

Meg kept her eyes on Pellam as she made a slow turn and walked to it.

"Hi, hon… Aw, no. Come on. What? Problems?"

"Hi, Daddy!" Sam shrieked, jumping for the phone. "I shot a hundred cans…"

Meg winced and waved him down. "I'm making a roast. You can't make it?" She sighed. "Okay. All right. We'll save some for you. Love you."

"Bye, Daddy!"

To Pellam she said, "He's in a bind at the plant. He's got to work most of the night. Sunday, can you believe it? He said he'll be back at eleven… So we eat a trois." Sam said, "What's that, Mom? Sounds yucky."

"It means there'll be three of us for dinner."

"Oh, I thought it was this weird food you were going to make." To Pellam he said, "Mom makes this totally strange stuff sometimes. All slippery-"

"Sam."

"… and these gross colors."

"Young man, that's enough."

"And her apple butter…" He headed for the porch. "It starts out brownish. Then it gets kind of green."

"Sam-" Meg began good-naturedly.

Pellam asked Meg, "So, how 'bout that ride?"

"Let's go."

Pellam called to Sam, "Don't clean that gun till I get back, young man."

"Yessir. And then it goes all grayish. Yuck…"

Meg dropped him a block away from the camper.

She turned to him but before she could say anything he preempted her. "You don't talk about flower children, I won't talk about apple butter."

She laughed hard. "See you soon." This was a moment when he might've kissed her. But instead he just climbed stiffly out of the tiny car-his wounds still hurt-and walked quickly to the camper.

Inside a light was on. He opened the door. Inside, Janine sat motionless, looking down.

She turned to him. "Bastard."

"I'm sorry I ran into some trouble last night and-"

"Bastard." What she was talking about, though, wasn't his being late but the screenplay of To Sleep in a Shallow Grave. The binder was open and she'd read most of it.

He closed the door.

"This character you've added. That's me, isn't it?"

He sat down slowly.

"Some of it's based on you. Some. It isn't what I feel about you, it's not the way I see you. It's fiction. A story, nothing more than that. Mostly my imagination."

She lowered her head and read, " 'You're living a dream that the past can't justify…' 'It's the remoteness of the past that makes it such a safe place for you to live…' The Age of Aquarius was a long, long time ago…' Janice. Christ, Pellam, you could at least have done a better job changing my name."

"I didn't-"

"You!" She threw the notebook against the wall. The binding snapped. The pages cascaded to the floor. "You're the one living in a dream, not me. You come into people's lives-nobody invited you to Cleary-you come into town with the big fantasy, promising to put people into a movie, promising to take people away from here-"

"I never said that."

She was crying again. Her hair was pasted to her cheeks, she pulled it angrily away. "You didn't have to say it. What the hell did you expect people to think? Here you come, with your van and your camera, studying the town, talking to people, getting to know everyone… Getting to know some of them very well. You don't understand the power you've got. You don't understand how desperate people are. Desperate to get out of places like Cleary. And what do they do? They spill their guts to you and you betray them. Why? In the name of what? What word is sacred to you, Pellam? Art? In the name of Art? Film? Money? How do you justify taking people's lives and making a movie out of them?"

He stood up and reached out for her. She shook his arms away. "You just can't drop into someone's life, take what you want, then leave."

"I'm sorry."

She stood up. Walked to the door then stopped. Waiting for something. Neither of them knew what should come next.

"I thought…" Janine's voice faded and she stepped outside, closing the metal door softly behind her.

Pellam sighed. He picked up the screenplay binder then bent to the floor and gathered the pages, one by one.

Driving down Main Street, Pellam passed a grocery store and parked, bought a bottle of chardonnay and walked back outside. He looked up and down the street for Janine. No sign of her. And what would he tell her if he saw her? There was no answer for that.

He looked up the street at an approaching car, an American GT of some kind, maybe ten years old, its rear end jacked high. It came bubbling down the street. The driver parked in front of the Cedar Tap and gunned the engine into a sexy growl before he shut it off. He got out and walked into the bar. Pellam walked over to the car, looked inside.

He returned to the Winnebago, fired it up and drove slowly out of town. He rolled both windows down and felt the cool air fill the cockpit.

He is driving fast in a fast car. A Porsche. A Hun car, because in L.A. you must have a German car. It's not as easy as that, though. You also have to ignore the fact that a German car is the kind to have and it must seem as if you're the first person on the West Coast to think about owning one. Pellam's is black. He drives it hard, with the passion of someone who loves speed though not necessarily the machinery that allows the car to drive fast. Whenever anybody says, "Shit, the Germans make good cars," he always looks surprised, as if they'd just caught on to his secret.

They are going into the desert, Tommy Bernstein and him.

"Thomaso," Pellam shouts over the huge slipstream. "You're going to lose your hat."

And the man does, reaching up too late to keep the stiff, three-hundred-dollar, curly brimmed cowboy hat from sailing into the hundred-mile-an-hour slip-stream.

"Shit, Pellam, turn around."

Pellam only whoops loudly and speeds up.

Tommy doesn't seem to mind. Somehow, it would be wrong to stop the little black car. There is an urgency, a sense of mission. Tommy shouts something about the hat and illegal aliens. Pellam nods.

The sun is a plate of hot pressure above them. The wind, which makes their ears ache, is hot.

Los Angeles is behind them. Ahead is nothing but desert.

"John, give me some!" Tommy shouts. He repeats this twice before Pellam hears and four times before he chooses to answer.

"Please!" A moaning wail, a sound that the wind takes and instantly makes vanish.

Pellam tosses the salt shaker underhand. The wind plays hell with the trajectory, but Tommy catches it in desperate, fumbling grabs.

"Not funny."

"Improves your reflexes."

Tommy was trying to snort. "Too fast, I can't-"

Pellam hits the clutch and brake. The car skids and fishtails. When they slow to sixty Tommy can snort the coke. He gives the high sign. Pellam accelerates and refuses the offered shaker.

Pellam feels philosophical. He shouts, "You think the desert's minimal, right? Bullshit. It isn't. It's goddamn complex. Complex like a, you know, a crystal. Like the way colors spread under a microscope. Remember those science films in high school?"

"Yeah," Tommy shouts. "About gonads and seeds and ovum." He is grinning like the dirty little boy he likes to portray though he is clearly considering Pellam's comment. In fact he is considering it desperately. Pellam wishes he hadn't spoken.

Tommy suffers from terminally ill confidence. The actor had received one L.A. Film Critics' award and one from Cannes when he'd been courted and seduced by a big studio lot producer. The money was incredible, the movies worse than awful. His most recent, a critic wrote, could be stuffed and served at a Thanksgiving dinner for the population of the country. Tommy was trying to think of ways to redeem himself. "Don't be desperate," Pellam had told him. "This city don't love desperate men."

But Tommy snatched up even that advice like a life preserver.

Pellam drives in silence. A half hour later he notices a small road leading off the highway toward a huge rock eased out of the brush and dirty sand. He makes a fast turn and the car skids to a stop out of sight of the road.

They climb out, stretch, pee against rocks.

Tommy asks, "You bring the Geiger counter?"

"What do we need that for?"

"The fucking Army. They test atom bombs here."

"That's New Mexico."

"Fucking no," Tommy says. "Cruise missiles blasting sheep to hell and gone. I'm scared." He looks around cautiously.

Pellam says, "There're no sheep here."

"What I'm saying! They're dead. Got blasted into lambchops. We're in danger. Our kids'll glow in the dark."

"Let's go to work, hombre."

From the car they take two heavy garbage cans that ring with glass falling against itself. Pellam drags them toward the rock. There isn't much shade though there will be in an hour or two. Tommy, now pissed about his hat, rubs suntan lotion on his face and thinning scalp, then pulls a large cooler from the car. This he plants in the sand near the big rise of rock. He returns and struggles to get two lawnchairs out of what pretends to be a backseat.

"German cars, shit," Tommy says. He drives a Chevy Impala.

Pellam takes empty beer bottles out of the green bags and sets them carefully on a ridge of dirt and sand about thirty feet away from where Tommy plants the lawnchairs. He surveys his handiwork then opens a pineapple-printed beach umbrella and sticks it into the ground between the chairs.

Pellam finishes setting out the bottles. He calls, "How many pages?"

Tommy flips through a plastic-bound manuscript. "One seventeen,"

"Need one more."

Tommy pulls another bottle from the cooler, pops the lid with a church key and drinks it down. He tosses it to Pellam, who plants it at the end of the row.

One hundred seventeen bottles.

They sit in the chairs, facing the bottles. Tommy takes another snort from the shaker.

He says, "Can I have the Python. Please?"

From a large, battered attache case, Pellam takes two pistols. He keeps the Ruger.44 for himself and hands Tommy the Colt. He places yellow-and-green boxes of shells between them.

Two copies of the script appear. On the title page: "Central Standard Time. By John Pellam and Tommy Bernstein."

They begin reading aloud and rewriting the script. They correct each other, changing dialogue, argue. Pellam is quieter and grimmer. Tommy is boisterous. He'll shout, then stand and stalk around, sit again.

When they finish eleven pages-the end of the first scene-they stuff cotton into their ears, load the pistols and with fifteen shots between them take turns disintegrating the first eleven bottles. One for each page. The rules of their game.

Tommy says, spinning the cylinder of his gun, "You remember that scene, what was it from? Some old jungle movie? Stewart Granger's aiming at Deborah Kerr's head? She's scared, doesn't know what's going on. Then, blam! He wastes a boa constrictor right behind her. I always wanted to play that scene. Why don't you go sit over next to the rocks, Pellam? They got snakes in the rocks."

"Yeah, hell with snakes," Pellam says, pulling a beer from the cooler. "I always wanted to shoot me an actor."

They work until eleven that night, and blow the last three bottles apart in the headlight of the tiny German car surrounded by the sound of its bubbling exhaust. They are shivering and it takes ten rounds each to hit the last glistening bottle.

"This fucking movie's going to make us, Pellam!" Tommy shouts. "We're going right to the top!" And he empties the gun at the night sky.

The house was completely quiet.

Meg had a little time until Pellam would be back. She took her coffee and walked up the stairs. She paused, then sat on the landing for a long time, looking into the hall and those portions of the den and living room she could see. The parquet floor, the furniture. The house seemed different, a stranger's home. She didn't recognize it. There was nothing unpleasant about the sensation; it was one of those moments when you focus on a familiar object-a doorknob, a chair, your own little finger-and it seems absurd and alien to you. This was her house, the house she'd always loved. Hers and Keith's and Sam's. Only something was different.

Meg went into the bedroom, got dressed. She tied her hair in a pony tail. Her hands paused, holding the ribbon above her neck.

The doorbell rang. She bounded down the stairs like Sam on Christmas morning.

She swung the heavy door open. She'd already prepared a wry comment for Pellam about Janine and was ready to deliver it.

But she blinked in surprise.

Wexell Ambler stood there, looking shy, leaning against the jamb. "I was driving past. Saw your car was in the drive. The Cougar was gone. I couldn't wait till tomorrow."

Meg instinctively looked back, into the house to make certain they were alone. Then she looked behind Ambler.

"Is it Mr Pellam, Mommy?" Sam called. She wondered if Ambler could hear what the boy had asked. Didn't seem he had.

"No, honey. I'll be outside for a minute," she shouted. Her hand still on the doorknob Meg said to Ambler, "Keith's at work."

"I want to talk to you. I have to talk to you."

"I'm expecting some company."

Ambler had no reaction to this. She was trying to decide whether to tell him who the company was if he asked. He didn't. He said, "It won't take long." Though he said it slowly, the words full of meaning, as if he wanted their conversation to last for the entire evening.

She looked behind her again, up the stairs toward Sam's room, then stepped outside and closed the door behind her. It didn't latch.

He kissed her on the cheek and she kissed him back, though he'd have to be drunk or crazy not to sense the hesitancy.

"I had to see you."

"Is everything okay?"

He looked at her in surprise. "Okay, sure. I should be asking how Sam is. You never called to tell me if he's all right."

"He's fine. He'll be fine."

"He's a wonderful boy," Ambler said.

They walked to the end of the porch and stood at the railing, looking out across the moist lawn, glistening in slight radiance from the houselights.

"What is it, Wex?"

"About what I asked. About marrying me."

She turned to him. He was such a tough man. A dangerous man too, she supposed. That bodyguard thug of his, Mark, for instance. Also, the way he liked her to be helpless, almost cowering when they made love. (Meg Torrens believed sex was a window to your soul.) She'd never actually said, No, to him before and she wondered if there was a risk to her if she did. She felt a chill, colder than the air.

What should she say?

She suddenly remembered a line from one of Pellam's movies. A character has to make a decision about turning a friend over to the police. He says to his wife, "The most important decisions are always made by our hearts."

She let her heart answer now.

"Wex…" She looked away, fixing her eyes on a fingernail clipping of a moon over a dark wad of trees. "I can't see you anymore."

She wondered if it would be a total surprise. If he'd nod slowly and walk away. If he'd fly into a rage. She honestly didn't know.

He didn't answer for a moment and she heard his breathing, remembered the deep sound from the times they'd lain together.

Tension filled her body, turned her to stone.

"Were you going to come to the place yesterday and tell me that?" he asked. "Or were you just going to let me figure it out on my own."

She hesitated and for the first time in their relationship lied to him. "No, I was going to come."

Meg glanced toward the house and the driveway and then took his arm. He was shaking. Anger? Sorrow? The cold?

Will he hurt me?

She continued. "I'm sorry, Wex. I loved every minute we spent together, but…" She was parsing carefully, but she found she had no idea of what words she could attach to her thoughts to express them right. "But it's just time for it to be over with."

"How can you say that?" he spat out.

"It's what I feel."

"What happened?"

She couldn't look into his eyes. "No. It's run its course. I was searching for something. I-"

"You're going back to Keith."

"I don't know."

"You're in love with that man, Pellam. Right?"

The hesitation must have seemed huge to him, though for Meg it lasted only a second. "No, I'm not."

Ambler stepped away from her. "It's him, isn't it?"

"No."

"I knew it," he said bitterly. "I knew from the minute you heard there was going to be a movie in town, you were going after him. What did you want? For him to sweep you away to be a star?"

"Wex, come on…"

"Don't you remember? We were lying in bed-"

"Shhh!" She raised her palm to silence him.

"-and it was the first day they came into town, in that damn camper of theirs and all you talked about was making a movie. How much you wanted to act."

"Maybe I did. I want to be successful at something. Why is that so hard for you to understand?"

"Meg, you can't just go start a Hollywood career. You-"

"I don't want to talk about this."

"Did he fuck you?" His voice was loud.

"Be quiet!" She whirled to face him. "You can't come to my house and talk to me that way!"

He grabbed her arm. She winced. Then he calmed, reached forward and touched her face. Her eyes focused behind him, where a fast burst of light from the opening door would warn that Sam was on his way outside. "I love you, Meg. You don't know how much. I want to be with you. I'm going to be with you."

"Wex, it's never been right. Not here. Cleary isn't the kind of place for this sort of thing. I see how wrong it was."

"You make it sound cheap. It wasn't that." His whisper was harsh.

"I didn't mean it that way. I don't regret anything. I just…"

He stared down at her for a moment then released her suddenly. Ambler turned and walked down the steps.

Meg felt the vacuum of his leaving. There was too much unresolved. Wex Ambler had been her only lover. Was this how affairs always ended? Punctuated more with question marks and ellipses than exclamation points? She leaned against the banister and watched him-without a glance toward her-get into his Cadillac.

He drove slowly away. She saw the flash of his brake lights as he paused at the road-paused just long enough to let the Winnebago turn up her driveway. Then Ambler hit the accelerator hard and vanished into the night.

They're waiting for me to say grace, he decided.

Meg and Sam were looking at him, expectation in their faces. Pellam cleared his throat. In front of him, on the Sunday-set table, was a veal roast that would have fed enough men to rake up all six acres of leaves on the Torrens estate in half an hour. A huge bowl of beans and one of salad. Another plate was loaded with potato pancakes. He and Meg were drinking the white wine; Sam had a glass of milk.

That's what they're waiting for. Grace. What do I do now?

They'd settled in their chairs, candles were lit, and their eyes turned toward him. Then, as the seconds rolled past slowly, they looked at each other.

Pellam unrolled his sleeves and buttoned his cuffs to buy time. Meg said, "Well?"

"Last time I did this must be twenty years ago. I don't remember it too well."

She was frowning. "Twenty years?"

"Well, I don't say grace in the camper."

And Meg was laughing, her wine glass in her hand rocking, spilling the blond liquid over her fingers.

"Pellam… No. We're just waiting for you to carve the roast."

"Oh." He covered his face with his hands and laughed. Sam said, "I can say grace, Mr Pellam. Here goes: Over the lips and past the gums, look out stomach, here it comes! Amen."

Pellam picked up the knife and serving fork and went to work. The first couple pieces crumbled. "Can I at least pray for help in carving?"

It was an hour into the meal when the eeriness settled on him. A feeling he couldn't pin down. It happened when he was laughing at one of Sam's jokes, one that Pellam himself had told to death thirty years before, and he glanced up at Meg. Their eyes met, and for one moment, a pivotal moment, there was no movie, no studio, no camper, no Keith, just a universe centered around the three of them.

And the instant he thought how comfortable and natural it seemed, the moment ended and he became anxious.

Pellam surveyed his massive wedge of blueberry pie. Meg said to his protesting palm, "Pellam, you're too skinny."

He ate two pieces.

When they'd finished dessert Pellam helped Meg clear the table. Sam asked, "Mr Pellam, tomorrow can you teach me to shoot your gun?"

"What gun's that?" Meg asked.

Pellam told her about the Colt.

Meg said, "I'm not real crazy about pistols. But…" She looked at her son. "You listen to everything Mr Pellam tells you."

As if that needed to be said.

"Totally excellent!" the little boy squealed.

Meg said, "Next you'll be teaching him poker."

Pellam laughed.

The two of them sat in the living room for a while, sipping coffee, the unidentified feeling ebbing and flowing within Pellam. He couldn't tell whether he wanted to stay, wanted to leave. One thing he knew for sure-he definitely wanted to leave before Keith came home.

The phone rang. Meg went to answer it and returned a moment later. She didn't say who the caller was. But now she too seemed uneasy.

What the hell're you doing here? he thought to himself. She's married, she's got a lover… You don't need those kinds of troubles. He rose. "I better go."

"You sure?"

No. But he said, "Better. Still have a few things to do."

"Sunday night?"

He nodded. Then asked, "Got a favor."

"Sure."

"You have a bottle of whiskey I can borrow?"

"Borrow?"

"No, now you mention it, make that have."

"After-dinner drink?"

"Little more complicated than that."

"Sure." She smiled in curiosity. And dug down under a cabinet and emerged with a half-full bottle of Wild Turkey.

"That's the cheapest you've got?" Pellam picked up the bottle.

"'Fraid so. Say, what're you going to do, teach my little boy to shoot, gamble and drink?"

Pellam hefted the bottle, hugged her. "Thanks again, ma'am. You make a mean meal. See you tomorrow."