Текст книги "The Exorcist"

Автор книги: William Peter Blatty

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    "Well, I heard..."

    "You heard what? Heard from who?"

    Whirling slivers of doubt in the eyes; hesitation; then a shrug of dismissal "I don't know. I just thought."

    "Well, it's silly, so forget it."

    "Okay."

    "Now go to sleep."

    "Can I read? I'm not sleepy."

    "Sure. Read your new book, hon, until you get tired."

    "Thanks, Mommy."

    "Good night, hon."

    "Good night."

    Chris blew her a kiss from the door and them closed it. She walked down the stairs. Kids! Where do they get their ideas! She wondered if Regan connected Dennings to her filing for divorce. Oh, come on, that's dumb. Regan knew only that Chris had filed. Yet Howard had wanted it. Long separations. Erosion of ego as the husband of a star. He'd found someone else. Regan didn't know that. Oh, quit all this amateur psychoanalyzing and try to spend a little more time with her!

    Back to the study. The script. Chris read. Halfway through, she saw Regan coming toward her.

    "Hi, honey. What's wrong?"

    "There's these real funny noises, Mom."

    "In your room?"

    "It's like knocking. I can't go to sleep."

    Where the hell are those traps!

    "Honey, sleep in my bedroom and I'll see what it is."

    Chris led her to the bedroom and tucked her in.

    "Can I watch TV for a while till I sleep?"

    "Where's your book?"

    "l can't find it. Can I watch?"

    "Sure; okay." Chris tuned in a channel on the bedroom portable. "Loud enough?"

    "Yes, Mom."

    "Try to sleep."

    Chris turned out the light and went down the hall. She climbed the narrow, carpeted stairs that led to the attic. She opened the door and felt for the light switch; found it; flicked it, stooping as she entered.

    She glanced around. Cartons of clippings and correspondence on the pinewood floor. Nothing else, except the traps. Six of them. Baited. The room was spotless. Even the air smelled clean and cool. The attic was unheated. No pipe. No radiator. No little holes in the roof.

    "There is nothing."

    Chris jumped from her skin. "0h, good Jesus!" she gasped, turning quickly with her hand to a fluttering heart. "Jesus Christ, Karl, don't do that!"

    He was standing on the steps.

    "Very sorry. But you see? It is clean."

    "Yeah, it's clean. Thanks a lot."

    "Maybe cat better."

    "What?"

    "To catch rats."

    Without Waiting for an answer, he nodded and left.

    For a moment, Chris stared at the doorway. Either Karl hadn't any sense of humor whatever, or he had one so sly it escaped her detection. She couldn't decide which one it was.

    She considered the rappings again, then glanced at the angled roof. The street was shaded by various trees, most of them gnarled and interwined with vines; and the branches of a mushrooming, massive basswood umbrellaed the entire front third of the house. Was it squirrels after all? It must be. Or branches. Right. Could be branches. The nights had been windy."

    "Maybe cat better."

    Chris glanced at the doorway again. Pretty smartass? Abruptly she smiled, looking pertly mischievous.

    She went downstairs to Regan's bedroom, picked something up, brought it back to the attic, and then after a minute went back to her bedroom. Regan was sleeping. She returned her to her room, tucked her Into her bed, then went back to her own bedroom, turned off the television set and went to sleep.

    The house was quiet until morning.

    Eating her breakfast, Chris told Karl in an offhand way that she thought she'd heard a trap springing shut during the night.

    "Like to go and take a look?" Chris suggested, sipping coffee and pretending to be engrossed in the morning paper. Without any comment, he went up to investigate.

    Chris passed him in the hall on the second floor as he was returning, staring expressionlessly at the large stuffed mouse he was holding. He'd found it with its snout clamped tight in a trap.

    As she walked toward her bedroom, Chris lifted an eyebrow at the mouse.

    "Someone is funny," Karl muttered as he passed her. He returned the stuffed animal to Regan's bedroom.

    "Sure a lot of things goin' on," Chris murmured, shaking her head as she entered her bedroom. She slipped off her robe and prepared to go to work. Yeah, maybe cat better, old buddy. Much better. Whenever she grinned, her entire face appeared to crinkle.

The filming went smoothly that day. Later in the morning, Sharon came by the set and during breaks between scenes, in her portable dressing room, she and Chris handled items of business: a letter to her agent (she would think about the script); "okay" to the White House; a wire to Howard reminding him to telephone on Regan's birthday; a call to her business manager asking if she could afford to take off for a year; plans for a dinner party April twenty-third.

    Early in the evening, Chris took Regan out to a movie, and the following day they drove around to points of interest in Chris's Jaguar XKE. The Lincoln Memorial. The Capitol. The cherry blossom lagoon. A bite to eat. Then across the river to Arlington Cemetery and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Regan turned solemn, and later, at the grave of John F. Kennedy, seemed to grow distant and a little sad. She stared at the "eternal flame" for a time; them mutely reached for Chris's hand. "Mom, why do people have to die?"

    The question pierced her mother's soul. Oh, Rags, you too? You too? Oh, no! And yet what could she tell her? Lies? Slue couldn't. She looked at her daughter's upturned face, eyes misting with tears. Had she sensed her own thoughts? She had done it so often... so often before. "Honey, people get tired," she answered Regan tenderly.

    "Why does God let them?"

    For a moment, Chris stared. She was puzzled.

    Disturbed. An atheist, she had never taught Regan religion. She thought it dishonest "Who's been telling you about God?" she asked.

    "Sharon."

    "Oh." She would have to speak to her.

    "Mom, why does God let us get tired?"

    Looking down at those sensitive eyes and that pain, Chris surrendered; couldn't tell her what she believed. "Well, after a while God gets lonesome for us, Rags. He wants us back."

    Regan folded herself into silence. She stayed quiet during the drive home, and her mood persisted all the rest of the day and through Monday.

    On Tuesday, Regan's birthday, it seemed to break. Chris took her along to the filming and when the shooting day was over, the cast and crew sang "Happy Birthday" and brought out a cake. Always a kind and gentle man when sober, Dennings had the lights rewarmed and filmed her as she cut it. He called it a "screen test," and afterwards promised to make her a star. She seemed quite gay.

    But after dinner and the opening of presents, the mood seemed to fade. No word from Howard. Chris placed a call to him in Rome, and was told by a clerk at his hotel that he hadn't been there for several days and couldn't be reached. He was somewhere on a yacht.

    Chris made excuses.

    Regan nodded, subdued, and shook her head to her mother's suggestion that they go to the Hot Shoppe for a shake. Without a word, she went downstairs to the basement playroom, where she remained until time for bed.

    The following morning when Chris opened her eyes, she found Regan in bed with her, half awake.

    "Well, what in the.... What are you doing here?" Chris chuckled.

    "My bed was shaking."

    "You nut." Chris kissed her and pulled up her covers. "Go to sleep. It's still early."

    What looked like morning was the beginning of endless night.

CHAPTER TWO

He stood at the edge of the lonely subway platform, listening for the rumble of a train that would still the ache that was always with him. Like his pulse. Heard only in silence. He shifted his bag to the other hand and stared down the tunnel. Points of light. They stretched into dark like guides to hopelessness.

    A cough. He glanced to the left. The gray-stubbled derelict numb on the ground in a pool of his urine was sitting up. With yellowed eyes he stared at the priest with the chipped, sad face.

    The priest looked away. He would come. He would whine. Couldjya help an old altar boy, Father? Wouldjya? The vomit-flaked hand pressing down on the shoulder. The fumbling for the medal. The reeking of the breath of a thousand confessions with the wine and the garlic and the stale mortal sins belching out all together, and smothering... smothering...

    The priest heard the derelict rising.

    Don't come!

    Heard a step.

    Ah, my God, let me be!

    "Hi ya, Faddah."

    He winced. Sagged. Couldn't turn. He could not bear to search for Christ again in stench and hollow eyes; for the Christ of pus and bleeding excrement, the Christ who could not be. In absent gesture, he felt at his sleeve as if for an unseen band of mourning. He dimly remembered another Christ.

    "Hey, Faddah!"

    The hum of an incoming train. Then sounds of stumbling. He looked to the tramp. He was staggering. Fainting. With a blind, sudden rush. the priest was to him; caught him; dragged him to the bench against the wall.

    "I'm a Cat'lic," the derelict mumbled. "I'm Cat'lic."

    The priest eased him down; stretched him out; saw his train. He quickly pulled a dollar from out of his wallet and placed it in the pocket of the derelict's jacket. Then decided he would lose it. He plucked out the dollar and stuffed it into a urine-damp trouser pocket, then he picked up his bag and boarded the train.

    He sat in a corner and pretended to sleep. At the end of the line he walked to Fordham University. The dollar had been meant for his cab.

    When he reached the residence hall for visitors, he signed his name on the register. Damien Karras, he wrote. Then examined it. Something was wrong. Wearily he remembered and added, S. J.

    He took a room in Weigel Hall and, after an hour, was able to sleep.

    The following day he attended a meeting of the American Psychiatric Association. As principal speaker, he delivered a paper entitled "Psychological Aspects of Spiritual Development." At the end of the day, he enjoyed a few drinks and a bite to eat with some other psychiatrists. They paid. He left them early. He would have to see his mother.

    He walked to the crumbling brownstone apartment building on Manhattan's East Twenty-first Street. Pausing by the steps that led up to the door, he eyed the children on the stoop. Unkempt. Ill-clothed. No place to go. He remembered evictions: humiliations: -walking home with a seventh-grade sweetheart and encountering his mother as she hopefully rummaged through a garbage can on the corner. He climbed the steps and opened the door as if it were a tender wound.

    An odor like cooking. Like rotted sweetness. He remembered the visits to Mrs. Ghoirelli and her tiny apartment with the eighteen cats. He gripped the banister and climbed, overcome by a sudden, draining weariness that he knew was caused by guilt. He should never have left her. Not alone.

    Her greeting was joyful A shout. A kiss. She rushed to make coffee. Dark. Stubby, gnarled legs. He sat in the kitchen and listened to her talk, the dingy walls and soiled floor seeping into his bones. The apartment was a hovel. Social Security. Each month, a few dollars from a brother.

    She sat at the table. Mrs. This. Uncle That. Still in immigrant accents. He avoided those eyes that were wells of sorrow, eyes that spent days staring out of a window.

    He should never have left her.

    He wrote a few letters for her later. She could neither read nor write any English Then he spent time repairing the tuner on a crackling, plastic radio. Her world. The news. Mayor Lindsay.

    He went to the bathroom. Yellowing newspaper spread on the tile. Stains of rust in the tub and the sink. On the floor, an old corset. Seeds of vocation. From these he had fled into love. Now the love had grown cold. In the night, he heard it whistling through the chambers of his heart like a lost, crying wind.

    At a quarter to eleven, he kissed her good-bye; promised to return jest as soon as he could. He left with the radio tuned to the news.

Once back in his room in Weigel Hall, he gave some thought to writing a letter to the Jesuit head of the Maryland province. He'd covered the ground with him once before: request for a transfer to the New York province in order to be loser to his mother; request for a teaching post and relief from his duties. In requesting the latter, he'd cited as a reason "unfitness" for the work.

    The Maryland Provincial had taken it up with him during the course of his annual inspection tour of Georgetown University, a function that closely paralleled that of an army inspector general in the granting of confidential hearings to those who had grievances or complaints. On the point of Damien Karras' mother, the Provicial had nodded and expressed his sympathy; but the question of the priest's "unfitness" he thought contradictory on its face. But Karras had pursued it: "Well, it's more than psychiatry, Torn. You know that. Some of their problems come down to vocation, to the meaning of their lives. Hell, it isn't always sex that's involved, it's their faith, and I just can't cut it, Tom, it's too much. I need out. I'm having problems of my own. l mean, doubts"

    "What thinking man doesn't, Damien?"

    A harried man with many appointments, the Provincial had not pressed him for the reasons for his doubt. For which Karras was grateful. He knew that his answers would have sounded insane: The need to rend food with the teeth and then defecate. My mother's nine First Fridays. Stinking socks. Thalidomide babies. An item in the paper about a young altar boy waiting at a bus stop; set on by strangers; sprayed with kerosene; ignited. No. Too emotional. Vague. Existential. More rooted in logic was the silence of God. In the world there was evil. And much of the evil resulted from doubt; from an honest confusion among men of good will. Would a reasonable God refuse to end it? Not reveal Himself? Not speak?"

    "Lord, give us a sign...."

    The raising of Lazarus was dim in the distant past. No one now living had heard his laughter.

    Why not a sign?

    At various times the priest would long to have lived-with Christ: to have sin; to have touched; to have probed His eyes. Ah, my God, let me see You! Let me know! Come in dreams!

    The yearning consumed him.

    He sat at the desk now with pen above paper. Perhaps it wasn't time that had silenced the Provincial. Perhaps he understood that faith was finally a matter of love.

    The Provincial had promised to consider the requests, but thus far nothing had bees done. Karras wrote the letter and went to bed.

    He sluggishly awakened at 5 A. M. and went to the chapel in Weigel Hall, secured a Host, then returned to his room and said Mass.

    " 'Et clamor meus ad te veniat,' " he prayed with murmured anguish. " 'Let my cry come unto Thee...' "

    He lifted the Host in consecration with an aching remembrance of the joy it once gave him; felt once again, as he did each morning, the pang of an unexpected glimpse from afar and unnoticed of a longlost love.

    He broke the Host above the chalice.

    " 'Peace I leave you. My peace I give you....' "

    He tucked the Host inside his mouth and swallowed the papery taste of despair.

    When the Mass was over, he polished the chalice and carefully placed it in his bag. He rushed for the seven-ten train back to Washington, carrying pain in a black valise.

CHAPTER THREE

Early on the morning of April 11, Chris made a telephone call to her doctor in Los Angeles– and asked him for a referral to a local psychiatrist for Regan.

    "Oh? What's wrong?"

    Chris explained. Beginning on the day after Regan's birthday–and following Howard's failure to call–she had noticed a sudden and dramatic change in her daughter's behavior and disposition. Insomnia.

    Quarrelsome. Fits of temper. Kicked things. Threw things. Screamed. Wouldn't eat. In addition, her energy seemed abnormal. She was constantly moving, touching, turning; tapping; running and jumping about. Doing poorly with schoolwork. Fantasy playmate. Eccentric attention-getting tactics.

    "Such as what?" the physician inquired.

    She started with the rappings. Since the night she'd investigated the attic, she'd heard them again on two occasions. In both of these instances, she'd noticed, Regan was present in the room; and the rappings would tease at the moment Chris entered. Secondly, she told him, Regan would "lose" things in the room: a dress; her toothbrush; books; her shoes. She complained about "somebody moving" her furniture. Finally, on the morning following the dinner at the White House, Chris saw Karl in Regan's bedroom pulling a bureau back into place from a spot that was halfway across the room. When Chris had inquired what he was doing, he repeated his former "Someone is funny," and refused to elaborate any further, but shortly thereafter Chris had found Regan in the kitchen complaining that someone had moved all her furniture during the night when she was sleeping.

    This was the incident, Chris explained, that had finally crystallized her suspicions. It was clearly her daughter who was doing it all.

    "You mean somnambulism? She's doing it in her sleep?"

    "No, Marc, she's doing it when she's awake. To get attention."

    Chris mentioned the matter of the shaking bed, Which had happened twice more and was always followed by Regan's insistence that she sleep with her mother.

    "Well, that could be physical," the internist ventured.

    "No, Marc, I didn't say the bed is shaking. I said that she says that it's shaking."

    "Do you know that it isn't shaking?"

    "No"

    "Well, it might be clonic spasms; he murmured.

    "Who?"

    "Any temperature?"

    "No. Listen, what do you think?" she asked. "Should I take her to a shrink or what?"

    "Chris, you mentioned her schoolwork. How is she doing with her math?"

    'Why'd you ask?"

    "How's she doing?" he persisted.

    "Just rotten. I mean, suddenly rotten."

    He grunted.

    "Why'd you ask?" she repeated "Well, it's part of the syndrome."

    "Of what?"

    'Nothing serious. I'd rather not guess about it oven the phone. Got a pencil?"

    He wanted to give her the name of a Washington internist.

    "Marc, can't you come out here and check her yourself?" Jamie. A lingering infection. Chris's doctor at that time had prescribed a new, broad-spectrum antibiotic. Refilling a prescription at a local drugstore, the pharmacist was wary. "I don't want to alarm you, ma'am, but this... Well, it's quite new on the market, and they've found that in Georgia it's been causing aplastic anemia in..." Jamie. Jamie. Dead. And ever since, Chris had never trusted doctors. Only Marc. And that had taken years. "Marc, can't you?" Chris pleaded.

    "No, I can't, but don't worry. This man is brilliant. The best. Now get a pencil."

    Hesitation. Then, "Okay."

    She wrote down the name.

    "Have him look her over and then tell him to call me," the internist advised. "And forget the psychiatrist for now."

    "Are you sure?"

    He delivered a blistering statement regarding the readiness of the general public to recognize psychosomatic illness, while failing to recognize the reverse: that illness of the body was often the cause of seeming illness of the mind.

    "Now what would you say," he proposed as an instance, "if you were my internist, God forbid, and I told you I had headaches, recurring nightmares, nausea, insomnia and blurring of the vision; and also that I generally felt unglued and was worried to death about my job? Would you say I was neurotic?"

    "I'm a bad one to ask, Marc; I know that you're crazy."

    "Those symptoms I gave you are the same as for brain tumor, Chris. Check the body. That's first. Then well see."

    Chris telephoned the internist and made an appointment for that afternoon. Her time was her own now. The filming was over, at least for her. Burke Dennings continued, loosely supervising the work of the "second unit;" a generally less expensive crew that was filming scenes of lesser importance, mostly helicopter shots of various exteriors around the city; also stunt work; scenes without any of the principal actors.

    But he wanted each foot of film to be perfect.

    The doctor was in Arlington. Samuel Klein. While Regan sat crossly in an examining room, Klein seated her mother in his office and took a brief case history. She told him the trouble. He listened; nodded; made copious notes. When she mentioned the shaking of– the bed, he appears to frown. But Chris continued: "Marc seemed to think it was kind of significant that Regan's doing poorly with her math. Now why was that?"

    "You mean schoolwork?"

    "Yes, schoolwork, but math in particular, though. What's it mean?"

    "Well, let's wait until I've looked at her, Mrs. MacNeil."

    He then excused himself and gave Regan a complete examination that included taking samples of urine and her blood. The urine was for testing of her liver and kidney functions; the blood for a number of checks: diabetes; thyroid function; red-cell blood count looking for possible anemia, White-cell blood count looking for exotic diseases of the blood.

    After he finished, he sat for a while and talked to Regan, observing her demeanor, and then returned to Chris and started writing a prescription.

    "She appears to have a hyperkinetic behavior disorder."

    "A what?"

    "A disorder of the nerves. At least We think it is. We don't know yet exactly how it works, but its often seen in early adolescence. She shows all the symptoms: the hyperactivity; the temper; her performance in math."

    "Yeah, the math. Why the math?"

    "It affects concentration." He ripped the prescription from the small blue pad and handed it over, "Now this is for Ritalin."

    "What?"

    "Methylphenidate."

    "Oh."

    "Ten milligrams, twice a day, I'd recommend one at eight A. M., and the other at two in the afternoon."

    She was eyeing the prescription.

    "What is it? A tranquilizer?"

    "A stimulant."

    "Stimulant? She's higher'n a kite right now."

    "Her condition isn't quite what it seems," explained Klein. "It's a form of overcompensation. An overreaction to depression."

    "Depression?"

    Klein nodded.

    "Depression..." Chris murmured. She was thoughtful.

    "Well, you mentioned her father," said Klein.

    Chris looked up. "Do you think I should take her to see a psychiatrist?"

    "Oh, no. I'd wait and see what happens with the Ritalin. I think that's the answer. Wait two or three weeks."

    "So you think it's all nerves."

    "I suspect so."

    "And those lies she's been telling? This'll stop it?"

    His answer puzzled her. He asked her if she'd ever known Regan to swear or use obscenities.

    "Never," Chris answered.

    "Well, you see, that's quite similar to things like her lying–uncharacteristic, from what you tell me, but in certain disorders of the nerves it can–"

    "Wait a minute," Chris interrupted, perplexed. "Where'd you ever get the notion she uses obscenities? I mean, is that what you were saying or did I misunderstood?"

    For a moment, he eyed her rather curiously; considered; then cautiously ventured, "Yes, I'd say that she uses obscenities. Weren't you aware of it?"

    "I'm still not aware of it. What are you talking about?"

    "Well, she let loose quite a string while I was examining her, Mrs. MacNeil."

    "You're kidding! Like what?"

    He looked evasive. "Well, I'd say her vocabulary's rather extensive."

    "Well, what, for instance? I mean, give me an example!"

    He shrugged.

    "You mean 'shit?' Or 'fuck'?"

    He relaxed. "Yes, she used those words," he said.

    "And what else did she say? Specifically."

    "Well, specifically, Mrs. MacNeil, she advised and to keep my goddamn finger away from her cunt."

    Chris gasped with shock. "She used those words?"

    "Well, it isn't unusual, Mrs. MacNeil, and I really wouldn't worry about it at all. It's a part of the syndrome."

    She was shaking her head, looking down at her shoes. "It's just hard to believe."

    "Look, I doubt that she even understood what she was saying," he soothed.

    "Yeah, I guess," murmured Chris. "Maybe not"

    'Try the Ritalin," he advised her, "and we'll see what develops. And I'd like to take a look at her again in two weeks."

    He consulted a calendar pad on his desk. "Let's see; let's make it Wednesday the twenty-seventh. Would that be convenient?" he asked, glancing up.

    "Yeah, sure," she murmured, getting up from the chair. She crumpled the prescription in a pocket of her coat. "The twenty-seventh would be fine."

    "I'm quite a big fan of yours," Klein said, smiling as he opened the door leading into the hall.

    She paused in the doorway, preoccupied, a fingertip pressed to her lip. She glanced to the doctor.

    "You don't think a psychiatrist, huh?"

    "I don't know. But the best explanation is always the simplest one. Let's wait. Let's wait and see." He smiled encouragingly. "In the meantime, try not to worry."

    "How?"

    She left him.

As they drove back home, Regan asked her what the doctor had said.

    "That you're nervous."

    Chris had decided not to talk about her language. Burke. She picked it up from Burke.

    But she did speak to Sharon about it later, asking if she'd ever heard Regan use that kind of obscenity.

    "Why, no," replied Sharon. "I mean, not even lately. But you know, I think her art teacher made a remark." A special tutor who came to the house.

    "You mean recently?" Chris asked.

    "Yes, it was just last week. But you know her. I just figured maybe Regan said 'damn' or 'crap.' You know, something like that."

    "By the way, have you been talking to her much about religion, Shar?"

    Sharon flushed.

    "Well, a little; that's all. I mean, it's hard to avoid. You see, she asks so many questions, and–well... " She gave a helpless little shrug. "It's just hard. I mean, how do I answer without telling what I think is a great big lie?"

    "Give her multiple choice."

In the days that preceded her scheduled party, Chris was extremely diligent in seeing that Regan took her dosage of Ritalin. By the night of the party, however, she had failed to observe any noticeable improvement.

    There were subtle signs, in fact, of a gradual deterioration: increased forgetfulness; untidiness; and one complaint of nausea. As for attention-getting tactics, although the familiar ones failed to recur, there appeared to be a new one: reports of a foul, unpleasant "smell" in Regan's bedroom. At Regan's insistence, Chris took a whiff one day and smelled nothing.

    "You don't?"

    "you mean, you smell it right now?" Chris had asked her.

    "Well, sure!"

    "What's it smell like?"

    She'd wrinkled her nose. "Well, like something burny."

    "Yeah?" Chris had sniffed.

    "Don't you smell it?"

    "Well, yes, hon," she'd lied. "Just a little. Let's open up the window for a while, get some air in."

    In fact, she'd smelled nothing, but had made up her mind that she would temporize, at least until the appointment with the doctor. She was also preoccupied with a number of other concerns. One was arrangements for the dinner party. Another had to do with the script. Although she was very enthusiastic about the prospect of directing, a natural caution had prevented her from making a prompt decision. In the meantime, her agent was calling her daily. She told him she'd given the script to Dennings for an opinion, and hoped he was reading and not consuming it.

    The third, and the most important, of Chris's concerns was the failure of two financial ventures: a purchase of convertible debentures through the use of prepaid interest; and an investment in an oil-drilling project in southern Libya. Both had been entered upon for the sheltering of income that would have been subject to enormous taxation. But something even worse had developed: the wells had come up dry and rocketing interest rates had prompted a sell-off in bonds.

    These were the problems that her gloomy business manager flew into town to discuss. He arrived on Thursday. Chris had him charting and explaining through Friday. At last, she decided on a course of action that the manager thought wise. He nodded approval. But he frowned when she brought up the subject of buying a Ferrari.

    "You mean, a new one?"

    "Why not? You know. I drove one in a picture once. If we write to the factory, maybe, and remind them, it could be they'd give us a deal. Don't you think?"

    He didn't. And cautioned that he thought a new car was improvident.

    "Ben, I made eight hundred thou last year and you're saying I can't get a freaking car! Don't you think that's ridiculous? Where did it go?"

    He reminder her that most of her money was in shelters. Then he listed the various drains on her gross; federal income tax; projected federal income tax; her state tax, tax on her real estate holdings; ten percent commission to her agent; five to him; five to her publicist; one and a quarter taken out as donation to the Motion Picture Welfare Fund; an outlay for wardrobe in tune with the fashion; salaries to Willie and Karl and Sharon and the caretaker of the Los Angeles home; various travel costs; and, finally, her monthly expenses.

    "Will you do another picture this year?' he asked her.

    She shrugged. "I don't know. Do I have to?"

    "Yes, l think you'd better."

    She cupped her face in both her hands and eyed him moodily. "What about a Honda?"

    He made no reply.

    Later that evening, Chris tried to put all of her worries aside; tried to keep herself busy with making preparations for the next night's party.

    "Let's serve the curry buffet instead of sit-down," she told Willie and Karl. "We can set up a table at the end of the living room. Right?"

    "Very good, madam," Karl answered quickly.