Belinda Read online

  And there had been the brief affair, a week at most in his splendid, clean Beverly Hills house before he’d said: “You don’t have to do this for me, kid. I like you just fine the way you are.” I hadn’t believed it at first, but he had meant it.

  Sex he could get anywhere, and he didn’t care if it was the cute little Japanese gardener or the new waiter at Chasen’s. What he really wanted around the house was a nice-looking straight kid who could fit in like a SOIl. When his wife, Faye, had come home from Europe, I’d understood it a little better, staying on with them for weeks after, loving both of them, and pretty much having the time of my life.

  Parties, movies, late-night cam playing, drinking, talking, afternoon walks, shopping trips, we did all those things easily and comfortably, and the sex was utterly forgotten as if I’d imagined the whole thing. I didn’t leave till I had finished a portrait of Faye, which hangs over the living room fireplace down there to this day.

  She had been one of those pretty comic starlets that nobody remembers now, her career and her life were swallowed by Alex, but no matter how many “sons” or lovers he had had over the years, she was his one and only true leading lady. He’d gone through absolute hell after her death.

  I’d never been to bed with a man after that, though now and then I’d felt a powerful temptation to do it, at least when I was very young. And though many of Alex’s “sons” had outgrown his interest, we had become enduring friends.

  We’d shared some pretty dramatic moments since those times and would probably share others as the years passed.

  “Don’t worry, kid,” he said now. “I’ll never tell that New Orleans tale or any other. The truth is just not my business. It never was.”

  “Yeah, well,” I said bitterly, “maybe you’ve got a point.”

  He laughed a little uneasily. “You’re cranky tonight. You’re crazy. Why don’t you get out of the fog for a while, come down south with me?”

  “Not right now,” I said.

  “Go home and paint little girls then.”

  “You got it.”

  I SMOKED one of those horrible little Gauloises because they were all I had left, and I drove down Nob Hill and out to the Haight to look for Belinda.

  But I couldn’t shake Alex’s story. He was right about me not being able to tell that old tale. Neither of my former wives had ever heard it. Nor had my closest friends. And I would have hated Alex had he put it in his book. I wondered what he would think if he knew I’d never set foot in Mother’s house since the day I’d left on the plane for California. It was still exactly as he had just described it, as far as I knew.

  For a few years I’d rented out the lower floor for wedding receptions and other gatherings through a local agency. You could do that with a Saint Charles Avenue mansion. But when they’d insisted on redecorating, I’d stopped.

  The place was kept alive now by an old Irish housekeeper, Miss Annie, whom I knew only by voice on the phone. It wasn’t in the guide books anymore, and the tour buses no longer stopped in front. But now and then, I was told, some elderly lady would ring the doorbell asking to see where Cynthia Walker had written her books. Miss Annie always let them in.

  FINALLY these dark recollections started to lift as I cruised through the late-night Haight. But other thoughts, just as dark, began to intrude.

  Why the hell had I left Alex and Faye so soon to go to San Francisco? Over and over they had asked me to settle down south near them.

  But I had to be independent, to grow up, of course. I’d been terrified of the love I felt for Faye and Alex, of the sheer comfort I knew in their home. And how had I become independent? By painting little girls in drafty moldering San Francisco Victorians that reminded me of Mother’s old New Orleans house?

  It was right here in the Haight, in a Victorian on Clayton Street, that my mother’s, editor, trying in vain to persuade me to write more Cynthia Walker, had discovered my paintings and signed me up for my first children’s book.

  The portrait of Faye I’d left on Alex’s wall was the last picture of a grown woman that I’d ever done.

  Forget it. Drive it all out of mind as you’ve always been able to do. And think on the exhilaration you feel when you paint Belinda. Just that.

  Belinda.

  I CRUISED down Haight slowly from Masonic to Stanyon looking for her on both sides of the street, sometimes blocking the little stream of traffic till someone honked at inc.

  The neighborhood tonight seemed uncommonly forlorn and claustrophobic. Streets too narrow, houses with their round bay windows shabby and faded. Garbage in the gutters. No romance. Only the barefoot, the lost, the crazy.

  I made my way back to Masonic again. And then back down to Stanyon and along the park, studying every passing female figure.

  I was cold sober now. I must have made the circuit six times before an absolute fright of a kid dashed right up to me at the stoplight on Masonic and leaned into the car to kiss me.

  “Belinda!”

  There she was under a mess of paint.

  “What are you doing down here?” she asked. Blood red lips, black rings around her eyes, gold mascara. Her hair was a shower of magenta-gelled spikes. Perfectly horrible. I loved it.

  “Looking for you,” I said. “Get in the car.”

  I watched her run around the front. Horrid leopard skin coat, rhinestone heels. Only the purse was familiar. I could have passed her a thousand times like that and never seen her. ‘

  She slipped into the leather seat beside me and flung her arms around my neck again. I shifted gears, but I couldn’t really see anything. “This car’s the greatest,” she said. “Bet it’s as old as you are.”

  “Not quite,” I mumbled.

  It was a 1954 MG-TD, the old roadster with the spare on the trunk, a collector’s item like the damned toys, and I did get a kick out of her liking it.

  In fact, I couldn’t believe I had her again.

  I turned sharply onto Masonic and headed up the hill towards Seventeenth.

  “So where are we going?” she asked. “Your place?”

  The perfume must have been Tabu, Ambush, something like that. Real grownup scent. Like the big rhinestone earrings and the beaded black dress. But she was working hard on a wad of gum that smelled deliciously like Doublemint.

  “Yeah, my place,” I said. “I have to show you some pictures I did. Why don’t we swing by your room and get your stuff so you can stay for a while? That is, if you don’t get mad about the pictures.”

  “Bad news back there,” she said. She popped her gum suddenly, then two more times. (I winced.) “The guy and his lady in the back room are having a fight. Somebody’s liable to call the cops if they don’t stop it. Let’s just wing it, OK? I’ve got my toothbrush. I was by your place a couple of hours ago, you know. Five dollars cab fare. Did you get the note I left you?”

  “No. When are you going to give me an address and phone number?”

  “Never,” she said. “But I’m here now, aren’t I?” She popped her gum again three times in succession. “I just learned how to do that. I still can’t blow a bubble.”

  “It’s charming,” I said. “Who did you learn it from, a car hop? No, don’t tell me, the same person who taught you the matchbook trick.”

  She laughed in the sweetest way. Then she kissed me on the cheek, then on the mouth. In fact, she had me in a clinch, all prickly and soft at the same time with the spikes of hair and the juicy little mouth and her eyelashes like wire and her cheeks like peaches.

  “Stop,” I said. “We’re going to go off the road.” We were headed down the Seventeenth Street hill towards Market, and my house about a block past it. “And besides, you just may get mad when you see the pictures I painted of you.”

  [5]

  I KNEW I should take her right upstairs to the attic and get this confession over about painting her nude, along with all the promises that nobody would ever see the pictures.(Right you are, Alex.)

  But when she walk
ed past me into the dusty living room, it was like enchantment. A little light came in from the hall and from the back kitchen. But other than that, it was dark, and the toys looked ghostly. And she was witchy in the black lace stockings and glittering rhinestone heels with her spiked hair and her face painted. She touched the roof of the dollhouse, and then knelt down to move the train on the track. It was better than it had been when she wore the nightgown.

  She slipped off the awful fake leopard coat, and she climbed up on the carousel horse. The old black flapper dress she wore was low cut, with only straps over her shoulders. The layers of fringe and beads shivered slightly.

  She gathered the fabric up in her lap as she crossed her ankles. And she rested her head against the brass pole with her fingers curled around it above her. She let her eyes move over the objects of the room just the way I often did.

  Same pose as the nightgown picture. The naked picture.

  “Don’t move,” I said.

  I hit the wall button for the little key light above the horse. Her eyes followed me dreamily. “Don’t move,” I said again, watching the light on her neck, the curve of her chin, the plump little cleavage of her breasts above the scoop neck. The gold gleamed on her eyelids and eyelashes. Her eyes looked blue as ever, fringed with gold mascara. I went to get the camera.

  I shot her from two different angles. She was very still. Yet she never got stiff. She just drifted into it as I took the pictures, her eyes following me now and then just as I wanted them to do as I circled her. Then I stood still looking at her. “Would you take the dress off?.” I asked.

  “I thought you’d never ask,” she said. Little touch of sarcasm. “Nobody will ever see these pictures, I swear it.” She laughed. “Sure, I’ve heard that one before.”

  “No, I mean it.” I said.

  She looked blankly at me for a moment. Then she said: “That would be an awful waste, wouldn’t it?” I didn’t say anything.

  She kicked off the shoes, slipped down to stand on the carpet, and pulled the dress over her head. No slip, no bra, no panties. If I’d reached under the dress, I would have felt moist secret pubic hair. Too much. Don’t think about it.

  Just a black satin garter belt holding the black lace stockings. She unsnapped it all around, slipped the stockings off. She climbed back up on the horse, assumed the same sidesaddle position, legs closed demurely, wrapping her right hand around the brass pole. She looked softly content—a punk womanchild. She was almost smiling. And then she did smile.

  Utterly unselfconscious.

  For a moment I couldn’t snap it. I was paralyzed looking at her.

  A foreboding had come over me, a premonition of disaster that seemed stronger than any dread I had known in years and years. I felt guilty looking at her. I felt guilty being with her and taking these pictures of her. I thought of what I’d said so defensively to Alex, that the talent for children’s art was the card I drew, that for me there wasn’t anything better. Not true. The pictures of her nude upstairs, they were better. A whole lot better ....

  And she was so innocently self-assured. So lovely.

  Her smile was sweet. No more to it than that. And it was right to the point of everything, her smile, the point of asking her to pose this way. Each element was crucial: her sweetness, the decadent makeup she wore, the carousel horse, her woman’s body, even her little cheeks all plumped by the smile.

  “Come on, Jeremy,” she said. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing,” I said. I started snapping the pictures. “Can I paint from these?” I asked.

  “Jeremy, really,” she said. Then she worked her little mouth for a second and popped the gum. “Sure you can.”

  I got into the shower with her. I soaped her all over, then washed her gently with the sponge as she stood with her head back under the flowing water, letting it come down over her closed eyes and her half-open mouth, her face glossy with it.

  Her hair got softer and softer. Then I worked the shampoo into it. I lathered it and I heard her moan, as if it gave her deep pleasure. She pressed her breasts against me. I wanted her so badly. I hadn’t taken her upstairs yet, but she had said it was OK to paint her nude. She had said OK. So that could wait until later.

  After I’d dried her with the towel, we sat on the side of the four-poster together, and I brushed her hair very carefully. She had on one of my starched cotton shirts. It was open down the front. She looked so small in it.

  “Would you braid your hair for me?” I asked. “I don’t know how to do it.”

  She smiled. She said she would. I watched her work at it, amazed that fingers could do something like that so quickly and easily. She made the braids start up high, pulling the hair back from her temples. Very pretty. Lovely smooth forehead. We bound the plaits with rubber bands. I didn’t own any ribbon.

  And when she finished, she looked like she was six years old all right. The cotton shirt hid her breasts. I could just see the gentle swell of flesh there, and the smoothness of her belly.

  I should have photographed her this way. But that could wait till morning. Right now it was driving me mad, the pigtails and her level gaze.

  I kissed her forehead first, then her lips. And then it was all over for the night because we were in bed together. No lights but those of the passing cars, and the room very warm around us.

  When she turned over later and sank her face into the pillow, I saw the part in her hair down the back, the way the hair was divided so evenly for the two braids, and that too looked utterly irresistible. Little Becky Thatcher. But just on the edge of sleep I clapped my hand on her wrist.

  “Don’t you dare leave here without telling me,” I said.

  “Tie me to the posts and then I can’t go,” she whispered in my ear.

  “Very funny.”

  Giggles.

  “Promise!”

  “I won’t go. I want to see the pictures.”

  IN THE morning I cut off a pair of my old jeans for her. They were too big in the waist, but she cinched it tight with one of my belts, and she tied the tails of the shirt in front. In this getup, with the braids, she looked like a Norman Rockwell tomboy. I was still in my robe and slippers when I decided to take her upstairs.

  I snapped her several times as we went up, and then I let her just wander into the attic and discover the two nudes.

  She didn’t say anything for a long time. The sun was coming through the windows, and she had to shade her eyes with her hand. The scant fleece on her tanned arms and legs was golden.

  “They’re gorgeous, Jeremy,” she said. “They’re wonderful.”

  “But what you have to understand is, you’re safe,” I said. “I meant it when I said no one would ever see them.”

  She frowned at me for a moment, tip jutting a little. “You mean, not right away, while I’m on the run.”

  “No. Never,” I said.

  “But I’m not going to be sixteen forever!”

  There it was. I guess even up till now I’d hoped for eighteen, even though I knew it just wasn’t possible.

  She was glaring at me. “I mean, I won’t be a minor forever, Jeremy. Then you can show them to anyone you want!”

  “No,” I said calmly, a little alarmed by her tone of voice. “Then you’ll be a woman and damn sorry you ever posed for anyone in the nude—”

  “Oh, stop it, you don’t know what you’re talking about!” She almost screamed it. Her face went red, and her braids made her look like a fierce little girl who might clench her fists and stomp her feet suddenly. “This isn’t Playboy for God’s sakes,” she said. “And I wouldn’t care if it was. Don’t you realize that?”

  “Belinda, all I’m trying to tell you is, even if you change your mind later on, you’re protected. I can’t show these pictures, even if I want to.”

  “Why not?”

  “Are you kidding? It would ruin my career to show them. It would hurt people. I’m a kid’s author, remember? I do books for little girls.”

>   She was trembling she was so upset. I took a step towards her and she backed away.

  “Hey, look, I don’t understand this,” I said.

  “Why the hell did you paint these pictures,” she screamed, “if nobody can see them? Why did you take the photographs of me downstairs?” I couldn’t figure this out. “Because I wanted to,” I said.

  “And never show all this to anybody? Never show them these canvases?

  I can’t stand it. I positively can’t stand it!”

  “You might not always feel that way!”

  “Don’t tell me that again, that’s a cop-out and you know it!”

  She pushed past me suddenly and pounded down the steps, slamming the door to the attic behind her.

  She had already stripped off the jeans and shirt when I came into the bedroom. And she was putting on the black sequined dress again. The braids made her look like a kid playing dress up.

  “Why are you angry, explain this to me,” I said.

  “You mean you really don’t know!” she said. She wasn’t just angry, she was miserable.

  She pulled up the zipper easily enough, then snapped the black lace stockings to her garter belt. She snatched up the leopard coat. “Where are my shoes!”

  “In the living room. Will you stop? Will you talk to me? Belinda, I don’t understand, honestly.”

  “What do you think I am?” she flashed. “Something filthy? Something for you to be ashamed of?. You come looking for me last night. You tell me you have pictures to show me. They’re these two big beautiful canvases of me, and you tell me you’ll never show them to anyone. They’d ruin your fucking career if you did. Well, you can get the hell out of my way if that’s the way you feel. This trash is getting out of your life, move!”

  She shot past me into the hall. I went to take her arm and she drew back furious.

  I followed her down to the living room where she found her rhinestone shoes and put them on, her face still flushed, her eyes just blazing with anger.

  “Look, don’t leave like this!” I said. “You’ve got to stay here. We’ve got to talk this over.”