Burning Time

32

Ronnie’s broad face puckered with rage. “What’s the matter with you? What’s going on? A whole week goes by and I can’t get a straight answer from you. What kind of shit is this?”

She covered a block of Sixth Avenue with quick little steps, her heels pounding the uneven sidewalk. It was the last day of April. The sun was finally out. Tomorrow was May Day. Ronnie went on without an answer.

“I’ve been telling Elinor Zing every day for more than a week that we want to do this film, and now you say you’re not sure you do. How much longer do you think I can hold them off? I can’t hold them off.” She stopped and turned to Emma. “Are you listening to me?”

Emma had her eye on the street behind her.

“What’s the matter with you?” Ronnie demanded fiercely.

“Nothing.” Emma shook her head, looking puzzled. “It’s weird.”

“You know what Elinor told me? She said they like you very much, but just between us, she doesn’t think Jack and Albert have a long attention span.”

Emma took a few steps forward and then turned around again, frowning.

“What is the matter with you?”

“I don’t know. I have the strangest feeling.…”

“Emma, look at me. Elinor told me not to jerk them around. She told me to tell you that no one who turns Jack down gets a second chance.”

Emma studied the array of people behind Ronnie on Sixth Avenue. Nothing out of the ordinary. The usual mix of business people and street people. There was a crowd around two huge black men playing three-card monte.

“I told her you adore Jack,” Ronnie went on. “I said you’re dying to work with him. What are you looking at?”

“I told you, I have a funny feeling someone is—Oh, forget it.” She shook her head.

“So Elinor said, ‘What more could anyone want?’ She could tell you liked Michael. God! Anybody would kill to work with him. I told her you would kill to work with him. You’re crazy about him, aren’t you? Can you imagine being with him for six weeks in a small hick southern town, huh?”

“I liked him,” Emma admitted. “I liked him a lot.”

“So she wanted to know what the trouble was and I couldn’t think of a thing. So she, I don’t know how, she got the idea you wanted more money.”

“Jesus,” Emma muttered.

“So she said she’d call me today and see if they can do any better.” Ronnie pointed to her watch angrily. “Look at this. You waited too long, you asked for too much, and now they may not want you anymore. Do you think she called me back? Huh? Do you? No. She did not call me back.”

“It’s only twelve-thirty,” Emma muttered. “It’s still early in California.”

“Yeah, but they may be talking to other people. I could just kill you. Hey, where are you going?” Ronnie protested. “I have a reservation at the Tea Room. Don’t you want to be seen?”

Emma had continued up Sixth Avenue and was heading toward the park.

Ronnie huffed after her. “Speak to me,” she demanded. “You finally got what we wanted, and now you’re teetering on the edge of losing it. What the fuck’s the matter with you?”

Ronnie stopped in the middle of the sidewalk by Café De La Paix and planted herself in Emma’s path. Her face was red and angry. “Don’t do this to me.”

“You’re my agent. You’re supposed to represent my best interests,” Emma said, “not just yours.”

“But mine is yours,” Ronnie insisted.

“Then you’ll understand it isn’t so simple.” Emma started walking again.

“Oh, for God’s sake, stop. I can’t walk anymore. Where do you think you’re going?” Ronnie protested helplessly.

“I’m going into the park. I don’t want to eat. I want to sit on that bench over there in the sun.” Where she could see the people around her. She started to cross with the light.

Ronnie plunged after her, puffing with the effort of keeping up. “You’re making me crazy,” she muttered.

“I can’t make you crazy.” Emma replied sharply, because it was a sore point. She wasn’t exactly sure whether she could make someone crazy or not. Jason said she could do something that could trigger a crazy reaction. And now he was out of town. But she had a very strong feeling that he was still around. It was extremely unnerving.

“Look, I may be thwarting and frustrating you, but you’re already crazy.”

“Don’t give me that shrink shit!” Ronnie cried. “I’m sick of that shrink shit. Just talk normal.”

Emma made for the newly painted green bench just inside the park wall. It had no homeless person on it, no bird droppings. And just at that moment it was in the sun. Emma sat, and Ronnie collapsed next to her. Ronnie’s red-and-blue silk skirt rose like a tent as she sat down, then gently deflated around her.

“You’re already crazy,” Emma repeated.

“Maybe,” Ronnie said, more gently. “Maybe I am, but I know a few things, and you’re making a big mistake here. What’s going on with you?”

Emma paused for a long time. “Maybe I don’t want to change my life,” she said, starting cautiously. “Being so—public isn’t all terrific.”

“What are you talking about? Of course it’s terrific.”

“Something’s happening, Ronnie.”

Ronnie scowled. “What are you talking about?”

“I’ve been getting … letters.” Emma’s lips trembled.

“So? Everybody gets letters. It’s part of the game. You get famous, you get letters. Forget it. Let’s go have lunch. You’ll feel better.” Ronnie stood up.

Emma’s face was white. “Not like these. It’s somebody who knows me.”

“How do you know?” Ronnie was irritated again.

“How do I know? He talks about things that happened in high school. I was the ghost in Blithe Spirit. He knows what my costume looked like. He talks about how pure I was. There was an incident in my senior year with the captain of the football team.…”

You were the Ice Queen no one could touch you.

“What kind of incident?” Ronnie was curious now.

Emma looked at a squirrel running up a tree. “It happened so long ago.”

“What?” Ronnie asked again.

“Oh, nothing. Just … I don’t know.”

Ronnie sighed. If Emma were a big star, then she, Ronnie, would be a big star’s agent. Other actors would come to her. She’d make a lot of money and be thin. She screwed her face up with the effort of looking for the right thing to say.

“Um, so, you’re kind of freaked by these letters.”

“It isn’t just the letters,” Emma said, looking at some serious scuff marks on the toe of her new shoes. It was Jason.

“Actors are recognized and talked to on the street all the time. They get thousands of letters. It’s the price you pay for fame.”

“What do they do?” Emma asked after a long moment.

“They don’t open the letters. Give me the go-ahead, Emma. They’re not going to wait for you forever.”

Why did you become a piece of shit?

“It’s not so easy,” Emma said. “I’m scared.”

“I don’t believe this,” Ronnie said. “What’s there to be scared of? Do the damn film. Don’t open the fucking letters. What’s so hard?”

“You don’t understand,” Emma said. Somebody knew how to scare her from the inside.

She rubbed at the scuff mark. She didn’t want to believe that she could do something that could make a person go crazy. But what if it was true? What if seeing her naked in a film made her own husband crazy?

Jason said he left town. Her parents said they saw him when he arrived last night. But she had the distinct feeling he was back. He had come back without telling her and was following her around. She shook her head. How could that be?

Planes flew all night. That’s how it could be.

“Aw, shit. I’m going to call Elinor. So what if we leave a few thousand on the table.” Ronnie put her arm around Emma and gave her a squeeze. “Come on. Come, let’s go eat something. You’ll feel better,” she said soothingly. “Come on, Em. You know I love you.”

The words struck a chord. Emma put her hands to her face.

Ronnie leaned over, concerned. “Jesus, what’s the matter?”

They were surrounded by sunlight and springtime and the glow of a golden future. They should be eating caviar and drinking champagne in The Russian Tea Room, and Emma was crying her eyes out.