Belinda Read online

  I pressed down on the button and watched in silence as the thing rolled to its finish. She didn’t appear again. There was no name in the credits. I had a strange taste in my mouth.

  I got up mechanically, poured myself a glass of Scotch, came back and sat down again.

  I felt like I had to do something, but what? Call Alex? Call Dan? It was true, I knew that now for certain. But I couldn’t think what it meant to me or to her. I just couldn’t think.

  For a long time I didn’t move, not even to drink the Scotch, and then I slipped the next cassette into the machine and started to scan.

  OK, the same international gang. And this time in Renaissance drag and the Swedish woman is really putting on weight. But it’s all right if you’re playing a Medici. All right, come on. Where is Belinda?

  And finally there she was again for a precious few moments, one of two little children brought in to be kissed good night. Ah, the roundness of her little arms, the sight of her dimpled hand clutching the doll.

  I cannot stand this. The rest of the film rolled out in silent fast forward without her. Go to the next.

  More junk. A Western this time, with a different director, Franco Manzoni, but Claudia was there again and Bonnie, too, and the same old American boys. I was tempted to skip it. But I wanted to find out everything I could. And it looked newer, the color sharper. I didn’t have to wait long. Ranch house living room scene, girl of ten or eleven with braids, embroidery in hand, yes, Belinda. Simply lovely Belinda. Neck longer, waist very small. But hands still have dimples. Claudia Scartino sits beside her on couch, embraces her. Belinda speaks. I slowed it down. Not her voice, dubbed in Italian. Awful.

  I indulged myself for a couple of minutes just drinking in one freeze-frame close-up after another. Breasts already, yes, and with those baby hands. Irresistible. Fingers positively pudgy still, and her eyes enormous because the face is thinner, slightly longer. Scan again.

  Belinda is in the dirt street during the shoot-out. She grabs Claudia, stops her from running to stop the duel. Bonnie appears in black hat, black boots, very de Sade, shoots Claudia. Men stopped in their tracks. Belinda goes into hysterics.

  Is this acting? I couldn’t calm down long enough to come to any opinion. She looked too much like a little bonbon in her gingham dress with the big sash, arms up, thick veil of hair flying. As she went down on her knees, I saw the pooch of her breasts again. Again no credit.

  But the fact is, this little girl, my little girl, my Belinda, has been in movies all her life. The teenybopper with the posters on the walls has been a starlet herself.

  Next two Franco-Italian Westerns, lousy, she about the same age, same kind of part, Claudia and Bonnie again, but in the second of these she has a precious five minutes of being chased by a cowboy bent on rape whom she hits over the head with a water pitcher. If this isn’t acting, it’s something. Star quality, is that the vulgar phrase? Alex Clementine would know if he saw all this. Couldn’t be objective. She was utterly adorable. Yet no credit, unless her real name is not Belinda at all.

  Was seeing oil paintings of all this, of course. Belinda in Franco-Italian Movie.

  But what am I thinking of? That we just go on from here?

  Two more cassettes.

  And suddenly everything changes. Grainy texture as before, but the color is brand-new, subtle. Extreme European look, but the title in English:

  FINAL SCORE

  All right!

  American names I don’t know are sliding gently down a backdrop of seaside cliffs, the unmistakable white buildings of a Greek island village.

  AND INTRODUCING BELINDA

  I could hear my heart pounding in my head. The shock spread all through me like a chill. It is her name, all right, just that, Belinda, no last name, the same way they always used Bonnie. OK.

  DIRECTED BY SUSAN JEREMIAH

  Through a state of shock bordering on catatonia I kept watching. Let it roll at normal speed.

  A Greek island. A gang of Texans, accents authentic, amateur cocaine smugglers, it seems, hiding out on the island until the right time to bring home the stash. Two men bitter and Sophisticated, women same, but all bid for our sympathy with dreams of what they will do with the money. Arty, fast-paced, acting excellent, lots of talk. Extremely professional look. Texture awful, probably because it was shot originally in sixteen millimeter, or the videotape is just bad.

  I can’t stand it. Where is she? Scan:

  Quarrels, sex. Relationships not quite what they seem. Red-haired woman fights with man, walks off alone at dawn. Beach. Sunrise. Exquisite. Stops, sees tiny figure riding towards her along the edge of the surf..

  Yes, please come closer. Stop scan. Sound of surf. “And introducing Belinda.” Yes. No mistake about it. There she is in one of those tiny white bikinis, which is infinitely more seductive than pure nakedness. Worse than the one she wears around here.

  And she is riding the horse bareback.

  She is so luscious as she comes smiling towards the redhead. The redhead is still pretty, very pretty. In fact, she is quite beautiful. But now she is utterly eclipsed by my darling.

  The redhead talks to her in English. Belinda only shakes her head. The redhead asks her if she lives here. Again, Belinda shakes her head. Then she says something to the redhead in Greek. Lovely accent, the language soft as Italian yet somehow even more sensual. Touch of the East in it. It is the redhead’s turn to shake her head now. But some sort of friendship is being struck.

  Belinda points to a little house up on the cliff, extends an unmistakable invitation. Then she helps the redhead to climb up on the horse behind her. Gracefully the horse picks its way up the steep path.

  Hair blowing in the wind, smiles, attempts at speech that fail. Unbearable, the easy sway of Belinda’s hips as she moves with the horse, the light on her belly. Her hair is longer than it is now, almost covers her bottom.

  In a small white house Belinda puts food on the table. Bread, oranges. Everything has the starkness and beauty of a Morandi painting. The sea is a rectangle of blue through the perfectly square window in the white wall. Camera on Belinda’s face as it creates a skilled impression of naiveté and simplicity which in real life Belinda simply never suggests. The red-haired woman is content for the first time in the film.

  I don’t think you have to be in love with Belinda to find her utterly captivating, to watch paralyzed as she points out things in the room, teaches the woman the words for them, as she laughs softly at the woman’s miserable pronunciation, as she does the simple thing of pouring milk from a pitcher, buttering the bread.

  Everything has become sensuous. The redhead wipes her hair back from her face and it is dance. Then the trouble comes back to her expression, the tension. She breaks down, and Belinda caresses her, strokes her red hair.

  The fullness of Belinda’s breasts beneath the childish face is too much. I can’t stand it. Want to peel off the little triangles of white fabric, see the nipples in this new frame.

  The redhead looks up, and then that shift happens that you see a thousand times between men and women in a film: intimacy chemizes into passion. They are embracing, and now suddenly they are kissing. No intrusive music. Just the sound of the surf.

  Why didn’t I see this coming? Between a man and a woman it would have been a cliché. They rise from the table, go into the bedroom, off comes the bikini, the redhead’s blouse, pants. They do not seem entirely sure what to do, only that they mean to do it.

  And there is none of the urgency of the standard erotic film, and none of the fuzzy mysticism of the popular cinema either. The redhead is kissing Belinda’s belly, kissing her thighs. Demure. Not very explicit at all. Close-up of Belinda’s face gorgeously flushed. That’s the X-rated part, that flush.

  Cut. Back to the drug amateurs, and the redhead coming in. Man glad to see her, wants to make up, feels awful. She comforts him, no rancor. He’s relieved. Distant expressions on her rice.

  I hit the freeze-frame and sat
there for a moment trying to get my temperature to drop. I have been living with this girl, and this is her secret? She is an actress, and the audiences at Cannes applauded her, and the director wants her and the agents want her, and I take her out of a sleazy dump on Page Street, where the cops are questioning her, and I get on her case for going to a rock concert and I-Scan again. Don’t think.

  Fights among the Texans, craziness, man beating woman, redhead intervening, getting smacked, smacking man back. Stop, scan again, stop. On and on it seems to roll, the true body of the film, with much smoking, drinking, and bickering. They don’t really know what they want to do with the money from the cocaine. That’s it. They are beyond being saved by the “final drug score.”

  The redhead appears dominant, taking charge as things deteriorate. Finally everybody is busy concealing the staggering abundance of cocaine in little white statuettes. The bottoms must be sealed with plaster, then covered with green felt. Peace at last with simple labor.

  OK, makes good sense, good film probably, but right now all I want is Belinda.

  Finally they are packing up. The tape has nearly run out.

  Are they going to leave this island and Belinda?

  No. Before dawn the redhead goes out, finds the little house, knocks. Belinda opens.

  Sound up—the surf. Belinda gestures for silence. An old man is asleep in the other room. The women go down to the water together. I freeze-frame it a dozen times as they disrobe, embrace each other. And this time it goes on much longer, is greedier, more heated, their hips grinding together, mouths locked. but it is still demure. Faces as important as the anatomy. Belinda lies back on her elbows. This is the look of ecstasy I have seen countless times in my own shadow in bed. Sunlight.

  The ferry carries away the doomed quartet of Americans. Belinda unseen watches from the cliff. The redhead on the deck keeps her secret in weary silence, face going gradually dead.

  THE phone rang.

  Freeze it on ~r~E ~~qr), copyright last year.

  “Yeah.” Why the hell didn’t I let the machine answer it? But now I have it in my hand.

  “Jeremy, listen to me!”

  “Dan—”

  “Bonnie’s daughter is named Belinda! Sixteen, blond, the whole bit. All I need is the picture to be certain, but none of this makes sense.”

  “I know.”

  “Nobody’s reported this kid missing! Agents all over this fucking town think she’s in some fancy European school.”

  Blood pounding in my head. Can’t talk. Talk.

  “Jeremy, this is worse than anything I imagined. These people will kill you, Jer. Can’t you see that? I mean Bonnie and Moreschi, they’re front page National Enquirer week in, week out!”

  I wanted to say something, I really did. But I was just staring at the tapes, just staring back into time, into that first moment when I saw her in the bookstore. I was looking back over all of it. What had always been my worse fear? Not scandal or ruin, no, I’d been courting that from the beginning. It was that the truth would take her away from me, that the truth would mandate some action that would divide us forever, and she’d be lost, like a little girl I had painted out of the imagination, no more a warm and living being in my arms.

  “Jeremy, this is a fucking bomb that can go off any minute in your face.”

  “Dan, find out where the fuck this Swiss school is and if they really think she’s over there, goddamn it, if she’s somehow pulled the wool over her mother’s eyes.”

  “Of course, she hasn’t. It’s a cover-up, it has to be. Sampson’s got to be working for Moreschi, and that’s why he’s sneaking around with these pix of the kid, and it’s all so hush-hush in LA?”

  “Is that legal? Not even to report her missing? What kind of people are we talking about here? She splits and they don’t even call the LAPD?”

  “Man, you are in no position to throw stones!”

  “Fuck it, we’re talking about her mother.”

  “Do you want them to call the LAPD? Are you crazy?”

  “You have to find out—”

  “And you have to get rid of her, Jeremy, before Sampson tracks her to your door.”

  “No, Dan.”

  “Look, Jer. Remember I told you I thought I’d seen her before? It was probably the news magazines, Jet, could have even been on the tube. This girl is famous. The tabloids chase her mother all over this town. They might blow the lid off it before Sampson finds her, don’t you see what this could mean?”

  “Zero in on the parents. Find out when she disappeared. I have to know what went down.”

  I hung up before he could say anything more.

  Seemed impossible to move then, to gather up the tapes, to carry them back upstairs.

  But I did it.

  And I stood there dazed, heart still overloading as I stared at the closet shelves.

  The old film magazines were in a pile at the very bottom. And on the top of that pile was Bonnie smiling up at me from the cover of Cahiers du Cinema. And underneath that was Bonnie again on an old Paris-Match. And, yes, Bonnie on the cover of Stern, and Bonnie on the cover of CineRevue. And all those that didn’t have Bonnie’s face on the cover had her name somewhere there.

  Yes, every single one of them had some connection to Bonnie.

  And as I opened the most recent, the Newsweek that was over a year old, I found immediately the big color picture of the dark-eyed sex goddess with one arm around a gaunt black-haired man and the other around the radiant blond woman-child I loved:

  “Bonnie with producer husband, Marty Moreschi, and daughter, Belinda, poolside in Beverly Hills as ‘Champagne Flight’ prepares for takeoff.”

  [20]

  Six a.m. Gray sky. Chill wind.

  I was walking up Powell Street towards Union Square from the metro stop, not even sure where I was going, what I wanted to do. Looking for a place to rest, to think.

  Left her sleeping in the four-poster, the old-fashioned quilts piled on top of her, her head to the side, her hair flowing over the pillow. Washed and scrubbed, all traces of the rock concert and the punk street kid gone.

  And I had left a note by the bed.

  “Gone downtown. Business. Back late afternoon.”

  Business. What business? Words calculated to hurt and confuse. Nothing was open except the bars and the dingy all-night restaurants. What was I going to do? What did I want to do?

  One thing was for sure. After last night I couldn’t go on until I came to some resolution.

  SCREAMING fight when she walked in after the rock concert.

  And I was the one drunk on Scotch by that time, and she sober and wary, glaring at me through the mask of punk makeup. “What’s the matter?”

  “Sometimes I just can’t stand it, that’s all.”

  “Stand what?”

  “Not knowing. Where you came from, what happened, why you ran away.” Pacing the kitchen. Anger in my voice, boiling anger. Goddamn it, you are a fucking movie star/

  “You promised me you’d never ask me about all that again.” Chewing gum. Eyes flashing like gaudy jewelry. Stop playing Lolita.

  “I’m not asking you. I’m just telling you that I can’t stand it sometimes, that I feel sometimes like, like this is doomed, do you understand me?” Smash of glass into the sink.

  She had stared at the broken glass.

  “What’s doomed, why are you acting like this?”

  “You, me. Because it cannot be right. It just cannot be right.”

  “Why isn’t it right? Do I hound you about your wives, your old girlfriends, the times you’ve been to bed with men? I go off to one rock concert by myself and you flip out and we’re doomed suddenly.”

  “That has nothing to do with it. I’m going crazy, like you’ve taken over my life and yet I don’t even know you, where you came from, how long you’ll stay, where you’re going—”

  “I’m not going anywhere! Why should I go?” Hurt suddenly. Break in the voice. “You want me to leave, Jer
emy? You want me to leave? I’ll leave tonight.”

  “I don’t want you to leave. I live in terror that you might leave. God—God damn it, I’d do anything to stop you from leaving, but I’m just saying that sometimes—”

  “Nobody just says anything. I’m here, you can take it or leave it, but those are the terms. For God’s sakes we’ve been over and over this. This is us, Jeremy. This belongs to us!”

  “Just like your body belongs to you?”

  “For the love of God, yes!” California accent dried up, elegant clipped voice taking over, the real Belinda, Miss International-film-actress.

  But she was really crying. She had bowed her head, rushed down the hall and up the stairs.

  I had caught her at the bedroom door, taken her in my arms.

  “I love you. I don’t care then, I swear it—”

  “You say it, but you don’t mean it.” Pulling away. “Go up and look at your damn paintings, that’s what you feel guilty about, what you’re doing, that they’re a thousand times better than the goddamned illustrations you did before.”

  “To hell with the paintings, I know all that!”

  “Let go of me!” Shoving me. I reached out. Her hand came up, but she did not slap me. Let her hand drop.

  “Look, what do you want of me, that I make something up for you, to make it easy? I didn’t belong to them, don’t you understand? I’m not their fucking property, Jeremy!”

  “I know.” And I know who them is, and goddamn it, how can you keep it secret? How can you stand it, Belinda?

  “No, you don’t know! If you did, you’d believe when I tell you I am where I want to be! And you’d worry about the damned paintings and why they’re better than all that slop you did before.”

  “Don’t say that—”

  “You always wanted to paint what was under the little girls’ dresses—”

  “Not true. I want to paint you!”

  “Yes, well, that’s genius up there now, isn’t it? You tell me. You’re the artist. I’m just the kid. It’s genius, isn’t it? For the first time in your fucking life it’s not a book illustration. It’s art!”