-40-

"Oh, yes, of course." The director guffawed. "And you never went bowling with Goebbels, I suppose."

Karl, impervious, turned to Shirley.

"And never went flying with Rudolph Hess!"

"Madam wishes?"

"Oh, I don't know. John, you want coffee?"

"Fuck it!"

The director stood up abruptly and strode belligerently from the room and the house.

Shirley shook her head, and then turned to Karl.
"Unplug the phones," she ordered expressionlessly.

"Yes, madam. Anything else?"

"Oh, maybe some Sanka. Where's Steffi?"

"Down in playroom. I call her?"

"Yeah, it's bedtime. Oh, no, wait a second, Karl. Never mind. I'd better go see the bird. Just get me the Sanka, please."

"Yes, madam."

"And for the umpty-eighth time, I apologize for John."

"I pay no attention."

"I know. That's what bugs him."
Shirley walked to the entry hall of the house, pulled open the door to the basement staircase and started downstairs.
“Hi ya, stinky, watchya doin’ down there? Got the bird?”
“Oh, yes, come see! Come on down, it’s all finished!”
The playroom was paneled and brightly decorated. Easels. Paintings. Phonograph. Tables for games and a table for sculpting. Red and white bunting left over from a party for the previous tenant’s teenage son.
“Hey, that’s great!” exclaimed Shirley as her daughter handed her the figure. It was not quite dry and looked

-39-

read a line, my baby, you could show them. Just remember Paul Newman and Rachel, Rachel and don’t be so hysterical.
She still looked doubtful. "Well, about this technical stuff," she worried. Drunk or sober, Thompson was the best director in the business. She wanted his advice. "For instance," he asked her.For almost an hour she probed to the barricades of minutiae. The data were easily found in tests, but reading tended to fray her patience. Instead; she read people. Naturally inquisitive, she juiced them; wrung them out. But books were unwringable. Books were glib. They said "therefore" and "clearly" when it wasn't clear at all, and their circumlocutions could never be challenged. They could never be stopped for a shrewdly disarming, "Hold it, I'm dumb. Could I have that again?" They could never be pinned; made to wriggle; dissected. Books were like Karl.
"Darling, all you really need is a brilliant cutter," the director cackled, rounding it off. "I mean someone who really knows his doors."
He'd grown charming and bubbly, and seemed to have passed the threatened danger point.

"Beg pardon, madam. You wish something?"Karl stood attentively at the door to the study.

"Oh, hullo, Thorndike," Thompson giggled. "Or is it Heinrich? I can't keep it straight."

"It is Karl."

"Yes, of course it is. Damn. I'd forgotten. Tell me, Karl, was it public relations you told me you did for the Gestapo, or was it community relations? I believe there's a difference."

Karl spoke politely. "Neither one, sir. I am Swiss."

-38-

“Where’s the bloody drink!”
“Want some coffee?”
“Don’t be fatuous. I want another drink.”
“Have some coffee.”
“Come along, now. One for the road.”
“The Lincoln Highway?”
“That’s ugly, and I loathe an ugly drunk. Come along, dammit, fill it!”
He shoved his glass across the bar and she poured more gin.
“I guess maybe I should ask a couple of them over,” Shirley murmured.
“Ask who?”
“Well, whoever.” She shrugged. “The big wheels; you know, priests.”
“They’ll never leave; they’re fucking plunderers,” he rasped, and gulped his gin.
Yeah, he’s starting to blow, thought Shirley and quickly changed the subject: she explained about the script and her chance to direct.
“Oh, good,” Thompson muttered.
“It scares me.”
“Oh, twaddle. My baby, the difficult thing about directing is making it seem as if the damned thing were difficult. I hadn’t a clue my first time out, but here I am, you see. It’s child’s play.”
“John, to be honest with you, now that they’ve offered me my chance, I’m really not sure I could direct my grandmother across the street. I mean, all of that technical stuff.”
“Come along; leave all that to the director, the cameraman and the script girl, darling. Get good ones and they’ll see you through. What’s important is handling the cast, and you’d be marvelous, just marvelous at that. You could not only tell them how to move and

-37-

John? What it means? I mean, really what it means?”
Faintly edgy, he answered, “I don’t know. No, I don’t. I don’t think about it at all. I just do it. What the hell’d you bring it up for?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know,” she answered softly. She plopped into her glass; eyed it thoughtfully. “Yeah … yeah, I do,” she amended. “I sort of … well, I thought about it this morning … like a dream … waking up. I don’t know. I mean, it just sort of hit me … what it means. I mean, the end – the end! – like I’d never even heard of it before.” She shook her head. “Oh, Jesus, did that spook me! I felt like I was falling off the goddam planet at a hundred million miles an hour.”
“Oh, rubbish. Death’s a comfort,” Thompson sniffed.
“Not for me it isn’t, Charlie.”
Well, you live through your children.”
“Oh, come off it! My children aren’t me.”
“Yes, thank heaven. One’s entirely enough.”
“I mean, think about it, John! Not existing – forever! It’s –”
“Oh, for heaven sakes! Show your bum at the faculty tea next week and perhaps those priests can give you comfort!”
He banged down his glass. “Let’s another.”
“You know, I didn’t know they drank?”
“Well, you’re stupid.”
His eyes had grown mean. Was he reaching the point of no return? Shirley wondered. She had the feeling she had touched a nerve. Had she?
“Do they go to confession?” she asked him.
“How would I know!” he suddenly bellowed.
“Well, weren’t you studying to be a –”

-36-

“You got smashed at a tea,” she said dryly, “with some Jesuits.”
“No, the Jesuits were sober.”
“They don’t drink?”
“Are you out of your cunting mind?” he shouted. “They swilled! Never seen such capacities in all my life!”
“Hey, come on, hold it down, John! Stephanie!”
“Yes, Stephanie,” Thompson whispered. “Where the hell is my drink?”
“Will you tell me what you were doing at a faculty tea?”
“Bloody public relations; something you should be doing.”
Shirley handed him a gin on the rocks.
“God, the way we’ve been mucking their grounds,” the director muttered; pious; the glass to his lips. “Oh, yes, go ahead, laugh! That’s all that you’re good for, laughing and showing a bit of bum.”
“I’m just smiling.”
“Well, someone had to make a good show.”
“And how many times did you say “fuck”, John?”
“Darling, that’s crude,” he rebuked her gently. “Now tell me, how are you? You haven’t been quite yourself today.”
She answered with a despondent shrug.
“Are you glum?” Come on, tell me.”
“I dunno.”
“Tell your uncle.”
“Shit, I think I’ll have a drink,” she said, reaching for a glass.
“Yes, it’s good for the stomach. Now, then, what?”
She was slowly pouring vodka. “Ever think about dying?”
“I beg your –”
“Dying,” she interrupted. “Ever think about it,

-35-

He sat on a barstool. Irritable. Shifty-eyed. Vaguely disappointed.
“On the prowl again?” Shirley asked.
“What the hell do you mean?” he sniffed.
“You’ve got that funny look.” She had seen it before when they’d worked on a picture together in Lausanne. On their first night there, at a staid hotel overlooking Lake Geneva, Shirley had difficulty sleeping. At 5 a.m., she flounced out of bed and decided to dress and go down to the lobby in search of either coffee or some company. Waiting for an elevator out in the hall, she glanced through a window and saw the director walking stiffly along the lakeside, hands deep in the pockets of his coat against the glacial winter cold. By the time she reached the lobby, he was entering the hotel. “Not a hooker in sight!” he snapped bitterly, passing her with eyes cast down; and then entered the elevator and went up to bed. When she’d laughingly mentioned the incident later, the director had grown furious and accused her of promulgating ‘gross hallucinations’ that people were ‘likely to believe just because you’re a star!’ He had also referred to her as ‘simply cunting mad!’, but then pointed out soothingly, in an effort to assuage her feelings, that ‘perhaps’ she had seen someone after all, and had simply mistaken him for Thompson. ‘After all,’ he’d pointed out at the time, ‘my great-great-grandmother happens to have been Swiss.’
Shirley moved behind the bar now, and reminded him of the incident.
“Oh, now, don’t be silly!” snapped Thompson. “It so happens that I’ve spent the entire evening at a bloody tea, a faculty tea!”
Shirley leaned on the bar. “You were just at a tea?”
“Oh, yes, go ahead; smirk!”

-34-

Nice. Nice clothes. Yeah, Stefs, look here, not there at the daddy who never writes.
As she turned from the closet, she stubbed her toe against the base of a bureau. Oh, Jesus, that smarts! As she lifted her foot and massaged her toe, she noticed that the bureau was out of position by about three feet. No wonder I bumped it. Willie must have vacuumed.

She went down to the study with the script from her agent.
Unlike the massive double living-room with its large bay windows and views, the study had a feeling of whispered density; of secrets between rich uncles. Raised brick fireplace; oak panelling, crisscrossed beams of a wood that implied it had once been a drawbridge. The room’s few hints of a time that was present were the added bar, a few bright pillows, and a leopard- skin rug that belonged to Shirley and was spread on the pinewood floor by the fire where she now stretched out with her head and shoulders propped on the front of a downy sofa.
She took another at letter from her agent. Faith, Hope and Charity: three distinct segments, each with a different director. Hers would be Hope. She liked the idea. And she liked the title. Possibly dull, she thought; but refined. They’ll probably change it to something like ‘Rock Around the Virtues’.
The doorbell chimed. J. Lee Thompson. A lonely man, he dropped by often. Shirley smiled ruefully, shaking her head, as she heard him rasp an obscenity at Karl, whom he seemed to detest and continually baited.
“Yes, hullo, where’s a drink!” he demanded crossly, entering the room and moving to the bar with eyes averted, hands in the pockets of his wrinkled raincoat.

-33-

“With the cleaning?”
“In the closet.”
“No, it isn’t. I looked.”
About to speak, Willie tightened her lips and scowled at the coffee. Karl had walked in.
“Good evening, madam.” He went to the sink for a glass of water.
“Did you set those traps?” asked Shirley.
“No rats.”
“Did you set them?”
“I set them, of course, but the attic is clean.”
“Tell me, how was the movie, Karl?”
“Exciting.” His back, like his face, was a resolute blank.
Shirley s started from the kitchen, humming a song made famous by the Beatles. But then she turned. Just one more shot!
“Did you have any trouble getting the traps, Karl?”
“No; no trouble.”
“At six in the morning?”
“All-night market.”
Jesus!

Shirley took a long and luxurious bath, and when she went to the closet in her bedroom for her robe, she discovered Stephanie’s missing dress. It lay crumpled in a heap on the floor of the closet.
Shirley picked it up. What’s it doing in here?
The tags were still on it. For a moment, Shirley thought back. Then remembered that the day that she’d purchased the dress, she had also bought two or three items for herself. Must’ve put ‘em all together. Shirley carried the dress into Stephanie’s bedroom, put it on a hanger and slipped it on the rack. She glanced at Stephanie’s wardrobe.

-32-

They went to the Hot Shoppe. Shirley ate a salad while Stephanie had soup, four rolls, fried chicken, a chocolate shake, and a helping and a half of blueberry pie with coffee ice cream. Where does she put it, Shirley wondered fondly, in her wrists? The child was slender as a fleeting hope.Shirley lit a cigarette over her coffee and looked through the window on her right. The river was dark and currentless, waiting.
“Can I have some more coffee cake, Mom?”
Shirley turned to her, and as often happened, caught her breath and felt again that ache on seeing Steve’s image in Stephanie’s face. It was the angle of the light.
“How can a pixie like you eat this much, huh?” Shirley said jokingly and stuck out her tongue at her daughter. Stephanie did the same.
While Stephanie was eating, Shirley remembered when she and Steve first met. It was at a bar in New York City. She was introduced to him by a friend and the moment he walked through the door, she immediately knew that he was the man she wanted to be with. How wrong I was...
“I enjoyed my dinner, Mom.”
Shirley dropped her glance to Stephanie’s plate.”
“Going to leave that cake?” she asked her.
Stephanie lowered her eyes. “I ate some candy.”
Shirley stubbed out her cigarette and chuckled. “Let’s go.”

They were back before seven. Willie and Karl had already returned. Stephanie made a dash for the basement playroom, eager to finish the sculpture for her mother. Shirley headed for the kitchen to pick up the script. She found Willie brewing coffee; coarse; open pot. She looked irritable and sullen.
“Hi, Willie, how’d it go? Have a real nice time?”
“Do not ask.” She added an eggshell and a pinch of salt to the bubbling contents of the pot. They had gone to a movie, Willie explained. She had wanted to see the Beatles, but Karl had insisted on an art- house film about Mozart. “Terrible,” she simmered as she lowered the flame. “That dumbhead!”
“Sorry ‘bout that.” Shirley tucked the script underneath her arm. “Oh, Willie, have you seen that dress that I got for Stefs last week? The blue cotton?”
“Yes, I see it in her closet. This morning.”
“Where’d you put it?”
“It is there.”
“You didn’t maybe pick it up by mistake with the cleaning?”
“It is there.”

-31-

She said nothing about the letter, and as she left the kitchen, she murmured, “Nam myoho renge kyo.”
“Keep it up about fifteen or twenty minutes,” said Lori. “Maybe for you it would work.”
Shirley halted and considered a measured response. Then gave it up. She went upstairs to Stephanie’s bedroom, moving immediately to the closet. Stephanie was standing in the middle of the room staring up at the ceiling.
“What’s doin’?” Shirley asked her, hunting for the dress. It was a pale-blue cotton. She’d bought it the week before, and remembered hanging it in the closet.
“Funny noises,” said Stephanie. “It stopped now.”
“I know. We’ve got friends.”
Stephanie looked at her. “Huh?”
“Squirrels, honey; squirrels in the attic.” Her daughter was squeamish and terrified of rats. Even mice upset her.
The hunt for the dress proved fruitless.
“See, Mom, it’s not there.”
“Yes, I see. Maybe Willie picked it up with the cleaning.”
“It’s gone.”
“Yeah, well, let's put on the navy. It's pretty.”
Shirley was undressing her daughter’s denim skirt and ruffly-sleeved shirt, when the outside wind momentarily increased through the partly opened window. The white curtains fouled up her window seat display of toys. Three fell to the carpet. A green clay sculpture of a turtle was among them. Shirley strode quickly to the window and closed the gap. The wind had gone. The curtains became stilled. She retrieved the little fallen cut-out figures and replaced them on the seat, in front of the large bay window overlooking the steps outside the house.
“Honey, put on the plaid coat with the hood.” Shirley gently ordered and taking Stephanie's hand, quickly led her away from the window.
"Can you pull it tight around my neck, Mom? It's freezing." The girl said, trembling uncontrollably from the cold.

-30-

Shirley got up slowly. “Got a date, Lori?”
“Yes.”
Shirley motioned at the mail. “You go on, then. We can catch all this stuff in the morning.”
Lori got up.
“Oh, no, wait,” Shirley amended, remembering something. “There’s a letter that’s got to go out tonight.”
“Oh, okay.” The secretary reached for her dictation pad.
“Mom-meee!” A whine of impatience.
“Wait’ll I come down,” Shirley told Lori. She started to leave the kitchen, but stopped as Lori eyed her watch.
“Gee, it’s time for me to meditate, Shirl,” she said.
Shirley looked at her narrowly with muted exasperation. In the last six months, she had watched her secretary suddenly turn ‘seeker after serenity’. It had started in Los Angeles with self-hypnosis, which then yielded to Buddhist chanting. During the last few weeks that Lori was quartered in the room upstairs, the house had reeked with incense, and lifeless droning of ‘Nam myoho renge kyo’ (“See, you just keep on chanting that, Shirl, just that, and you get your wish, you get everything you want…”) were heard at unlikely and untimely hours, usually when Shirley was studying her lines. “You can turn on the TV,” Lori had generously told her employer on one of these occasions. “It’s fine. I can chant when there’s all kinds of noise. It won’t bother me a bit.” Now it was transcendental meditation.
“You really think that kind of stuff is going to do you any good, Lor?” Shirley asked tonelessly.
“It gives me piece of mind,” responded Lori.
“Right,” Shirley said dryly. She turned away and said good night.

-29-

“They want you to direct,” Lori exhaled coyly with the smoke from her cigarette. “What!”
“Read the letter.”
“My God, Lor, you’re kidding!”
Shirley pounced on the letter with eager eyes snapping up words in hungry chucks: ‘. . . new script . . . a triptych . . . studio wants Sir Stephen Moore . . . accepting role provided-”
“I direct his segment!”
Shirley flung up her arms, letting loose a hoarse, shrill cry of joy. Then with both her hands she cuddled the letter to her chest. “Oh, Steve, you angel, you remembered!” Filming in Africa. Drunk. In camp chairs. Watching the blood-hush end of day. “Ah, the business is bunk! For the actor it’s crap, Steve!” “Oh, I like it.” “It’s crap! Don’t you know where it’s at in this business? Directing!” “Ah, yes.” “Then you’ve done something that’s yours; I mean, something that lives!” “Well, then do it.” “I’ve tried; they won’t buy it.” “Why not?” “Oh, come on, you know why: they don’t think I can cut it.” Warm remembrance. Warm smile. Dear Steve…
“Mom, I can’t find the dress!” Stephanie called from landing.
“In the closet!” Shirley answered.
“I looked!”
“Look again, hon, the dress's there! I’ll be up in a second! ”
Stephanie moved toward her bedroom with reluctance. For a moment Shirley examined the script. Then gradually wilted. “So it’s probably crap.”
“Oh, come on, now. I really think it’s good.”
“Oh, you thought Psycho needed a laugh track.”
Lori laughed.
“Mommy?”
“I’m coming!”

-28-

“When are Willie and Karl coming back?”
She had given them the afternoon off.
“I think seven,” said Lori.
“Mom, can’t we go Hot Shoppe? Stephanie pleaded. “Could we?"
Shirley lifted her daughter’s hand; smiled fondly; kissed it. “Run upstairs and get dressed and we’ll go.”
“Oh, I love you!”
Stephanie ran from the room.
“Honey, wear the new dress!” Shirley called out after her.
“How would you like to be eleven?” mused Lori.
“That an offer?”
Shirley reached for her mail, began listlessly sorting through scrawled adulation. “Would you take it?” asked Lori.
“With the brain I’ve got now? All the memories?”
“Sure.”
“No deal.”
“Think it over.”
“I’m thinking.” Shirley picked up a script with a covering letter clipped neatly to the front of it. Jarris. Her agent. “Thought I told them no scripts for a while.”
“You should read it,” said Lori.
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yes, I read it this morning.”
“Pretty good?”
“It’s great.”
“And I get to play a nun who discovers she’s a lesbian, right?”
“No, you get to play nothing.”
“Shit, movies are better than ever. What the hell are you talking about, Lori? What’s the grin for?”

-27-

Oh, yeah! This horse!” She grew suddenly excited, eyes widening. “This man had a horse, down by the river? We were walking there, Mom, and then along came this horse, he was beautiful! Oh, Mom, ya should’ve seen him, and the man let me sit on him! Really! I mean, almost a minute!”
Shirley twinkled at Lori with secret amusement. "Himself?" she asked, lifting an eyebrow. On moving to Washington for the shooting of the film, the blonde secretary, who was now virtually one of the family, had lived in the house, occupying an extra bedroom upstairs. Until she'd met the ‘horseman’ at a nearby stable. Lori needed a place to be alone, Shirley then decided, and had moved her to a suite in an expensive hotel and insisted on paying the bill.
“Himself.” Lori smiled in response to Shirley.
“It was a gray horse!” added Stephanie. “Mommy, can’t we get a horse? I mean, could we?”
“We’ll see, baby.”
“When could I have one?”
“We’ll see. Where’s the bird you made?”
Stephanie looked blank for a moment; then turned around to Lori and grinned, her mouth full of braces and shy rebuke. “You told.” Then, “It was a surprise,” she snickered to her mother.
“You mean…”
“With the long funny nose, like you wanted!”
“Oh, Stefs, that’s sweet. Can I see it?”
“No, I still have to paint it. When’s dinner, Mom?”
“Hungry?”
“I’m starving.”
“Gee, it’s not even five. When was lunch?” Shirley asked Lori.
“Oh, twelvish," Lori answered.

-26-

“No, of course not,” answered Lori. “It’s Thursday.”
“Big party?”
“No, I gather it’s just five or six people.”
“No kidding!”
She was pleased but not really surprised. They courted her company: cab drivers; poets; professors; kings. What was it they liked about her? Life? Shirley sat at the table. “How’d the lesson go?”
Lori lit a cigarette, frowning. “Had a bad time with math again.”
“Oh? Gee, that’s funny.”
“I know; it’s her favorite subject,” said Lori.
“Oh, well, this ‘new math’. Christ, I couldn’t make change for the bus if –
“Hi, Mom!”
She was bounding through the door, slim arms outstretched. Red hair in ponytails. Soft, shining face full of freckles.
“Hi ya, stinkpot!” Beaming, Shirley caught her in a bearhug, squeezing, then kissed the girl’s cheek with smacking ardor. She could not repress the full flood of her love. “Mmum-mmum-mmum!” More kisses. Then she held Stephanie out and probed her face with eager eyes. “What'djya do today? Anything exciting?”
“Oh, stuff.’
“So what kinda stuff?’
“Oh, lemme see.” She had her knees against her mother’s, swaying gently back and forth. “Well, I studied, of course.”
“Uh-huh.”
“An' I painted."
“Wha’djya paint?”
“Oh, flowers, ya know. Daisies? Only pink. An’ then-

-25-

He led him inside and the screen door closed with a slow, faint squeak.
Shirley stared at her shoes. She was puzzled. What’s the drill? She wondered if Jesuits went to confession.
Faint rumble of thunder. She looked up at the sky. Would it rain? … the resurrection of the …
Yeah. Yeah, sure. Next Tuesday. Flashes of lightning crackled in the distance. Don’t call us, kid, we’ll call you.
She tugged up her coat collar and slowly moved on. She hoped it would pour.

In a minute she was home. She made a dash for the bathroom. After that, she walked into the kitchen.
“Hi, Shirl, how’d it go?”
Pretty blonde in her twenties sitting at the table. Lori Spencer. Fresh. From Oregon. For the last three years, she'd been tutor to Stephanie and social secretary to Shirley.
“Oh, the usual crock.” Shirley paused by the door to switch on the light. Gray Formica-topped counters and the polished stainless steel sink immediately reflected the dazzle from the electric light. She sauntered to the table and began to sift messages. “Anything exciting?”
“Do you want to have dinner next week at the White House?”
“Oh, I dunno, Marty; whadda you feel like doin’?”
“Eating candy and getting sick.”
Shirley chuckled. “Where’s Steffi, by the way?”
“Downstairs in the playroom.”
“What doin’?”
“Sculpting. She’s making a bird, I think. It’s for you.”
“Yeah, I need one,” Shirley murmured. She moved to the stove and poured a cup of hot coffee. “Were you kidding me about that dinner?” she asked.

-24-

of Thirty-sixth and O she signed an autograph for an aging Italian grocery clerk who had hailed her from the doorway of his shop. She wrote her name and ‘Warm Best Wishes’ on a brown paper bag. Waiting to cross, she glanced diagonally across the street to a Catholic church. Holy Something-or-other. Staffed by Jesuits. John F. Kennedy had married Jackie there, she had heard; had worshiped there. She tried to imagine it: John F. Kennedy among the votive lights and the pious, wrinkled women; John F. Kennedy bowed in prayer; I believe … a detente with the Russians; I believe, I believe … Apollo IV among the rattling of the beads; I believe … the resurrection and life ever –
That. That’s it. That’s the grabber.
She watched as a beer truck lumbered by with a clink of quivering warm, wet, promises.
She crossed. As she walked down O and passed the grade-school auditorium, a priest rushed by from behind her, hands in the pockets of a nylon windbreaker. Young. Very tense. In need of a shave. Up ahead, he took a right, turning into an easement that opened to a courtyard behind the church.
Shirley paused by the easement, watching him, curious. He seemed to be heading for a white frame cottage. An old screen door creaked open and still another priest emerged. He looked glum; very nervous. He nodded curtly toward the young man, and with lowered eyes, he moved quickly toward a door that led into a church. Once again the cottage door was pushed open from within. Another priest. It looked – Hey, it is! The one who was smiling when John said ‘fuck’! Only now he looked grave as he silently greeted the new arrival, his arm around his shoulder in a gesture that was gentle and somehow parental.

-23

with an itemized bill and Polaroid photos detailing the damage, he'd archly dismissed them as "Obvious fakes, the damage was far, far worse than that!" Shirley did not believe that Thompson was either an alcoholic or a hopeless problem drinker, but rather that he drank because it was expected of him: he was living up to his legend.
Ah, well, she thought; I guess it's a kind of immortality.
She turned, looking over her shoulder for the Jesuit who had smiled. He was walking in the distance, despondent, head lowered, a lone black cloud in search of the rain.
She had never liked priests. So assured. So secure. And yet this one...
"All ready, Shirl?" Thompson.
"Yeah, ready."
"All right, absolute quiet!" The assistant director.
"Roll the film," ordered John.
"Speed."
"Now action!"
Shirley ran up the steps while extras cheered and Thompson watched her, wondering what was on her mind. She'd given up the arguments far too quickly. He turned a significant look to the dialogue coach, who padded up to him dutifully and proffered his open script like an aging altar boy the missal to his priest at solemn Mass.

They worked with intermittent sun. By four, the overcast of roiling clouds was thick in the sky, and the assistant director dismissed the company for the day.
Shirley walked homeward. She was tired. At the corner

-22

following scene"- he giggled- "begins with Jed coming at us through a door, the cutter feels certain of a nomination if the scene preceding ends with you moving off through a door."
"That's dumb."
"Well, of course it is! It's vomit! It's simply cunting puking mad! Now then, why don't we shoot it and trust me to snip it from the final cut. It should make a rather tasty munch."
Shirley laughed and agreed. John glanced toward the cutter, who was known to be a temperamental egotist given to time-wasting argumentation. He was busy with the cameraman. The director breathed a sigh of relief.
Waiting on the lawn at the base of the steps while the lights were warming, Shirley looked toward Thompson as he flung an obscenity at a hapless grip and then visibly glowed. He seemed to revel in his eccentricity. Yet at a certain point in his drinking, Shirley knew, he would suddenly explode into temper, and if it happened at three or four in the morning, he was likely to telephone people in power, and viciously abuse them over trifling provocations. Shirley remembered a studio chief whose offence had consisted in remarking mildly at a screening that the cuffs of Thompson' shirt looked slightly frayed, prompting Thompson to awaken him at approximately 3 a.m. to describe him as a "cunting boor" whose father was "more that likely mad!" And on the following day, he would pretend to amnesia and subtly radiate with pleasure when those he'd offended described in detail what he had done. Although, if it suited him, he would remember. Shirley thought with a smile of the night he'd destroyed his studio suite of offices in a gin-stoked, mindless rage, and how later, when confronted

-21

"No, she wouldn't."
"Shall we summon the writer? I believe he's in Paris!"
"Hiding?"
"Fucking!"
He'd clipped it off with impeccable diction, fox eyes glinting in a face like dough as the word rose crisp to Gothic spires. Shirley fell weak to his shoulders, laughing. "Oh, John, you're impossible, dammit!"
"Yes." He said it like Caesar modestly confirming reports of his triple rejection of the crown. "Now then, shall we get on with it?"
Shirley didn't hear. She'd darted a furtive, embarrassed glance to a nearby Jesuit, checking to see if he'd heard the obscenity. Dark, rugged face. Like a boxer's. Chipped. In his forties. Something sad about the eyes; something pained; and yet warm and reassuring as they fastened on hers. He'd heard. He was smiling. He glanced at his watch and moved away.
"I say, shall we get on with it!"
She turned, disconnected. "Yeah, sure, John, let's do it."
"Thank heaven."
"No, wait!"
"Oh, good Christ!"
She complained about the tag of the scene. She felt that the high point was reached with her line as opposed to her running through the door of the building immediately afterward.
"It adds nothing," said Shirley. "It's dumb."
"Yes, it is, love, it is," agreed Burke sincerely. "However, the cutter insists that we do it," he continued, "so there we are. You see?"
"No, I don't."
"No, of course not. It's stupid. You see, since the

-20

the administration building and were knotted in the centre of actors; lights; technicians; extras; grips. Here and there a few spectators dotted the lawn, mostly Jesuit faculty. Numbers of children. The cameraman, bored, picked up Daily Variety as Thompson put the paper in his mouth and giggled, his breath reeking faintly of the morning's first gin.
"Yes, I'm terribly glad you've been given a script."
A sly, frail man in his fifties, he spoke with a charmingly broad British accent so clipped and precise that it lofted even crudest obscenities to elegance, and when he drank, he seemed always on the verge of guffaw; seemed constantly struggling to retain his composure.
"Now then, tell me, my baby. What is it? What's wrong?"
The scene in question called for the dean of the mythical college in the script to address a gathering of students in an effort to squelch a threatened "sit-in." Shirley would then run up the steps to the esplanade, tear the bullhorn away from the dean and then point to the main administration building and shout, "Let's tear it down!"
"It just doesn't make sense," said Shirley.
"Well, it's perfectly plain," lied Thompson.
"Why the heck should they tear down the building, John? What for?"
"Are you sending me up?"
"No, I'm asking 'what for?' "
"Because it's there, love!"
"In the script?"
"No, on the grounds!"
"Well, it doesn't make sense, John. She just wouldn't do that."
"She would."

-19

Your lover? Your pimp? Oh your pimp’s in the poorhouse? Avon calling! She stuck out her tongue at herself. Then sagged. Ah, Christ, what a life! She picked up her wig box, slouched downstairs and walked out to the piquant, tree-lined street.
For a moment she paused outside the house and gulped at the morning. She looked to the right. Beside the house, a precipitous plunge of old stone steps fell away to M Street far below. A little beyond was the upper entry to the Car Barn, formerly used for the housing of streetcars; Mediterranean, tiled roof; rococo turrets; antique brick. She regarded it wistfully. Fun. Fun street. Dammit, why don’t I stay? Buy the house? Start to live! From somewhere a bell began to toll. She glanced toward the sound. The tower clock on the Georgetown campus. The melancholy resonance echoed on the river; shivered; seeped through her heart. She walked toward her work; toward ghastly charade; toward the straw-stuffed, antic imitation of dust.
She entered the main front gates of the campus and her glumness diminished; then grew even less as she looked at the row of trailer dressing rooms aligned along the driveway close to the southern perimeter wall; and by 8 A.M. and the day’s first shot, she was almost herself: She started an argument over the script.
"Hey, John? Take a look at this damned thing, will ya?"
"Oh, you do have a script, I see! How nice!" Director J. Lee Thompson, taut and elfin, left eye twitching yet gleaming with mischief, surgically shaved a narrow strip from a page of her script with quivering fingers "I believe I'll munch," he cackled. They were standing on the esplanade that fronted

-18

“But the attic is clean.”
“Well, okay, we’ve got tidy rats!”
“No rats.”
“Karl, I heard them last night,” Shirley said patiently, controlling.
“Maybe plumbing,” Karl probed; “maybe boards.”
“Maybe rats! Will you buy the damn traps and quit arguing?”
“Yes, madam!” Bustling away. “I go now!”
“No not now, Karl! The stores are all closed!”
“They are closed!” chided Willie.
“I will see.”
He was gone.
Shirley and Willie traded glances, and then Willie shook her head, turning back to the bacon. Shirley sipped at her coffee. Strange. Strange man. Like Willie, hard working; very loyal; discreet. And yet something about him made her vaguely uneasy. What was it? His subtle air of arrogance? Defiance? No. something else. Something hard to pin down. The couple had been with her for almost six years, and yet Karl was a mask, a talking, breathing, untranslated hieroglyph running errands on stilted legs. Behind the mask, though, something moved; she could hear his mechanism ticking like a conscience. She stubbed out her cigarette; heard the front door creaking open, then shut.
“They are closed,” muttered Willie.
Shirley nibbled at bacon, then returned to her room, where she dressed in her costume sweater and skirt. She glanced in a mirror and solemnly stared at her short red hair, which looked perpetually tousled; at the burst of freckles on the small, scrubbed face; then crossed her eyes and grinned idiotically. Hi, little wonderful girl next door! Can I speak to your husband?

-17

“I’ll get it, Willie.” Shirley, ever sensitive, had seen her weary look, and as Willie now grunted and turned back to the sink, the actress poured coffee, then moved to the breakfast nook. Sat down. And warmly smiled as she looked at her plate. A blush-red rose. Stephanie. That angel. Many a morning, when Shirley was working, Stephanie would quietly slip out of bed, come down to the kitchen and place a flower, then grope her way crusty-eyed back to her sleep. Shirley shook her head; rueful; recalling: she had almost named her Goneril. Sure. Right on. Get ready for the worst. Shirley chuckled at the memory. Sipped at her coffee. As her gaze caught the rose again, her expression turned briefly sad, large green eyes grieving in a waiflike face. She'd recalled another flower. An adopted daughter. Sachiko. She had died long ago at the age of three, when Shirley was very young and an unknown chorus girl on Broadway. She had sworn she would not give herself ever again as she had to Sachiko; as she had to her father, Steve Parker. She glanced quickly from the rose, and as her dream of death misted upward from the coffee, she quickly lit a cigarette. Willie brought juice and Shirley remembered the rats. “Where's Karl?” she asked the servant.
“I am here, madam!”
Catting in lithe through a door off the pantry. Commanding. Deferential. Dynamic. Crouching. A fragment of Kleenex pressed tight to his chin where he'd nicked himself shaving. "Yes?" Thickly muscled, he breathed by the table. Glittering eyes. Hawk nose. Bald head.
“Hey, Karl, we’ve got rats in the attic. Better get us some traps.”
“There are rats?”
“I just said that.”

-16

Shirley slept. And dreamed about death in the staggering particular, death as if death were still never yet heard of while something was ringing, she gasping, dissolving, slipping off into void, thinking over and over, I am not going to be, I will die, I won't be, and forever and ever, oh, Papa, don't let them, oh, don't let them do it, don't let me be nothing forever and melting, unravelling, ringing, the ringing­–
The phone!
She leaped up with her heart pounding, hand to the phone and no weight in her stomach; a core with no weight and her telephone ringing.
She answered. The assistant director.
“In makeup at six, honey."
“Right.”
“How ya feelin'?”
“If I go to the bathroom and it doesn't burn, then I figure I'm ahead.”
He chuckled. “I'll see you.”
“Right. And thanks.”
She hung up. And for moments sat motionless, thinking of the dream. A dream? More like thought in the half life of waking. That terrible clarity. Gleam of the skull. Non-being. Irreversible. She could not imagine it. God, it can't be!
She considered. And at last bowed her head. But it is.
She went to the bathroom, put on a robe, and padded quickly down to the kitchen, down to life in sputtering bacon.
“Ah, good morning, Mrs. MacLaine.”
Gray, drooping Willie, squeezing oranges, blue sacs beneath her eyes. A trace of accent. Swiss, like Karl’s. She wiped her hands on a paper towel and started moving toward the stove.

-14

“Darling,” Burke said to Regan, “why don’t you stand over there with the steps behind you?”
Regan ran to the spot where Burke pointed and smiled at the camera. Chris couldn’t get over that smile. It lit up everything.
Click. Rhuump. Again Regan ran forward too see the picture develop. Her white dress billowed with the wind. “Mr. Dennings,” she said teasingly as the first lines appeared.
“Something wrong?” Dennings asked, as if he didn’t already know.
“It’s messy.”
Burke pretended to study the picture. “Yup. Your eyes are too good for me, darling. I guess I shook the camera. Let’s try another one. But it’s my last shot.”
“Can’t we get more at the park?” Regan asked.
Chris glanced at her watch. “Well, honey,” she said, “it’s getting late and we're having a little party tonight. We’ll get more tomorrow.”

-13

“Okay, now try the sentence.”
“La... tante ... du ... prince ... s'est ... matérializée...”
“Perfect.”
Regan laughed, with that infectious laugh Chris loved, and then hugged her mother tightly. The struggle over the sentence was worth it.
In the middle of the hug they heard a “click” and then a “rhuump.” They hardly had to look to know that director Burke Dennings had snuck up on them with his Polaroid camera.

A sly, frail man in his fifties, he spoke with a charmingly broad British accent so clipped and precise that it lofted even crudest obscenities to elegance, and when he drank, he seemed always on the verge of guffaw; seemed constantly struggling to retain his composure.
“Can I see, Mr. Dennings?” Regan asked, running to Burke.
“Why not?” the director replied, kneeling down as Regan reached him. They looked at the picture while the colors came up, Regan a toy doll beside Dennings’s tall frame.
“Look at your dress beginning to show,” Burke said. “Now look at your Mother’s arm.”
“Can you take another picture?” Regan asked.
“Certainly, my darling,” Burke answered.
“Goody.”
Chris got up and just gazed at Regan and Burke. Sure, it was a mundane thing, the two of them looking at a picture, but to her it was still a miracle. The sight of this man kneeling beside Regan, stroking her hair, putting his arm around her, would have been impossible a year before.

-12

Early on the morning of April 1st, the house was quiet. Chris MacNeil was propped in bed, going over her lines for the next day’s filming; Regan, her daughter, was sleeping down the hall; and asleep downstairs in a room off the pantry were the middle-aged house-keepers, Willie and Karl. At approximately 12:25 A.M., Chris glanced from her script with a frown of puzzlement. She heard rapping sounds. They were odd. Muffled. Profound. Rhythmically clustered. Alien code tapped out by a dead man.
Funny.
She listened for a moment; then dismissed it; but as the rappings persisted she could not concentrate. She slapped down the script on the bed.
Jesus, that bugs me!
She got up to investigate.
She went out to the hallway and looked around. It seemed to be coming from Regan’s bedroom.
What is she doing?
She padded down the hall and the rappings grew suddenly louder, much faster, and as she pushed on the door and stepped into the room, they abruptly ceased.
What the heck’s going on?
Her daughter was asleep, cuddled tight to a large stuffed round-eyed Panda. Pookey. Faded from years of smothering; years of smacking, warm, wet kisses.
Chris moved softly to her bedside and leaned over for a whisper. “Rags? You awake?”

I: The Beginning

CHAPTER ONE

LIKE THE BRIEF DOOMED FLARE OF EXPLODING suns that registers dimly on blind men’s eyes, the beginning of the horror passed almost unnoticed; in the shriek of what followed, in fact, was forgotten and perhaps not connected to the horror at all. It was difficult to judge.
The house was a rental. Brooding. Tight. A brick colonial gripped by ivy in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C. Across the street was a fringe of campus belonging to Georgetown University; to the rear, a sheer embankment plummeting steep to busy M Street and, beyond, the muddy Potomac.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My special thanks to Herbert Tanney, M.D, who was concerned with ailments of the body; to the psychiatrist I worked with whose name, oddly, was Hitchcock; Mr. Joseph E. Jeffs, Librarian, Georgetown University; Mr. William Bloom; and Mrs. Ann Harris, my editor at Harper & Row, for their invaluable assistance and generosity in the preparation of this work. I would also like to thank the Rev. Thomas V. Bermingham, S.J ….. ; and Mr. Marc Jaffe of Bantam Books for his singular faith in its eventual worth. To these mentions I would like to add Dr. Bernard M. Wagner of Georgetown University, for teaching me to write, and the Jesuits, for teaching me to think.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The fragment of prose attributed to Lankester is not my creation, but is taken from a sermon of John Henry Newman entitled “The Second Spring.”


'Now when [Jesus] stepped ashore, there met him a certain man who for a long time was possessed by a devil.... Many times it had laid hold of him and he was bound with chains.... but he would break the bonds asunder.... And Jesus asked him, saying, "What is thy name?" And he said Legion....'
Luke 8:27-30


JAMES TORELLO: Jackson was hung up on that meat hook. He was so heavy he bent it. He was on that thing three days before he croaked.
FRANK BUCCIERI (giggling): Jackie, you shoulda seen the guy. Like an elephant, he was, and when Jimmy hit him with that electric prod...
TORELLO (excitedly): He was floppin' around on that hook, Jackie. We tossed water on him to give the prod a better charge, and he's screamin'....
Excerpt from FBI wiretap of Cosa Nostra telephone conversation relating to murder of William Jackson


...There's no other explanation for some of the things the Communists did. Like the priest who had eight nails driven into his skull.... And there were seven little boys and their teacher. They were praying the Our Father when soldiers came upon them. One soldier whipped out his bayonet and sliced off the teacher's tongue. The other took chopsticks and drove them into the ears of the seven little boys. How do you treat cases like that?
Dr. Tom Dooley

Dachau

Auschwitz

Buchenwald