“I’m beginning to. Wow. You had Charlie Chaplin up here, I see.”
“Yes, he came up here often. He used to bring his little girls.”
“Little girls?”
“He liked them young.”
Todd raised a quizzical eyebrow. “And you didn’t mind?”
“I don’t believe in Thou Shall Not. That’s for people who are afraid to follow their own instincts. Of course when you’re out there in the world you’ve got to play by the rules, or you’ll spend your life behind bars. They’d lock you up and throw away the key. But this isn’t the world. This is my Canyon. They called it Coldheart Canyon, because they said I have a soul like ice. But why should I care what people say? Let them say whatever they want to say, as long as their money pays for the little luxuries in life. I want my Kingdom to be a place where people could take their pleasures freely, without judgment or punishment.
“This is Eden, you see? Only there’s no snake. No angel to drive you out either, because you did a bad thing. Why? Because there were no bad things.”
“Literally none?”
She looked at him, her stare luminous. “Oh you mean murder, perhaps? We had one or two murderers here. And we had sisters who’d fucked their brothers, and sons who fucked their mothers, and a man who liked having children suck him off.”
“What?”
“Ha! Now you’re shocked. His name was Laurence Skimpell, and he was as handsome a man as I’ve ever met. He had a contract at Warner Brothers, and they were going to make him a star. A big star. Then this woman turns up at the studios with a child, who she said was Skimpell’s. Warner Brothers have always been very loyal. They offered the woman money; said they’d put the child up for adoption. But as she got up and left she said: you don’t understand, this isn’t his offspring. This is his lover.”
“Oh Jesus Christ.”
“That was the last we ever heard of Laurence Skimpell.”
“That’s a ridiculous story. I don’t believe a word of it.”
She laughed, as though perhaps this time she was inventing a little. “You’re in here,” he said, coming to some mentions of Katya Lupi. “And there’s a long list of Men … ”
“Oh that was a competition we had.”
“You had all these men?”
“It was my canyon. It still is. I can do what I like here.”
“So you let people do what they wanted?”
“More or less.” She returned to the book. “You see the symbols beside the names?”
Todd nodded, somewhat tentatively. The conversation had taken a turn he was by no means certain he liked. It was one thing to talk about freedom in Coldheart Canyon; it was another to have her boasting about babies sucking dicks. “All the symbols mean something different,” she said. “Look here. That squiggle there, that means snakes. That knotted rope? That means being bound up. The more knots in the rope the more bound the person likes to be. So … here … Barrymore … his rope has six knots in it. So he liked to be very well tied up. And then there’s a little flame beside him. That means — ”
“He liked to be burned?”
“When he was sober. In the end, I stopped inviting him because he got so drunk and so abusive he wasn’t any fun.”
“Ah! So you did make a judgment.”
She considered this for a moment. “Yes. I suppose I did.”
“Did he spoil the secret? Once you didn’t invite him anymore. Did he start telling everyone about what it was like up here?”
“Of course not. What was he going to say? Even he had a reputation to keep. Besides, half of Hollywood swam in that pool at one time or another. And the other half wished they could. Nobody said anything but everybody knew.”
“What … exactly. That there were orgies here. That women got fucked with snakes?”
“All of that yes. But mostly that people came back from Coldheart Canyon spiritually changed.”
“You mean that? Spiritually.”
“Yes. Spiritually. Don’t look so surprised. The flesh and the soul are tied together.”