In fact her sense of security, like so much else in her increasingly fragile life, was an illusion.
One evening, walking in the garden, the dogs suddenly got crazy, and out of the darkness stepped Rudy Valentino. He looked entirely unchanged by death: his skin as smooth as ever, his hair as brilliantly coifed, his clothes as flawless.
He bowed deeply to her.
“My apologies,” he said, “for coming here. I know I’m not welcome. But frankly, I didn’t know where else to go.”
There was no hint of manipulation in this; it seemed to be the unvarnished truth.
“I went home to Falcon Lair,” Rudy went on, “but it’s been trampled over by so many people, it doesn’t feel as though it’s mine any more. Please … I beg you … don’t be afraid of me.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” Katya replied, quite truthfully. “There were always ghosts in my village. We used to see them all the time. My grandmother used to sing me to sleep, and she’d been dead ten years. But Rudy, let’s be honest. I know why you’re up here. You want to get in to see the Hunt — ”
” — just for a little while.”
“No.”
“Please.”
“No!” she said, waving him away, “I really don’t want to hear any more of this. Why don’t you just go back to Sicily?”
“Costellaneta.”
“Wherever. I’m sure they’ll be pleased to see the ghost of their favorite son.”
She turned her back on him and walked back towards the house. She heard him following on after her, his heels light on the grass, but solid enough.
“It’s true what they said about you. Cold heart.”
“You say whatever you like, Rudy. Just leave me alone.”
He stopped following her.
“You think I’m the only one?” he said to her.
His words brought her to a halt.
“They’re all going to come up here, in time. It doesn’t matter how many dogs you have, how many guards. They’ll get in. Your beautiful Canyon’s going to be full of ghosts.”
“Stop being childish, Rudy,” she said, turning back to look at him.
“Is that how you want to live, Katya? Like a prisoner, surrounded by the dead? Is that the life you had in mind for yourself?”
“I’m not a prisoner. I can leave whenever I want to.”
“And still be a great star? No. To be a star you will have to be here, in Hollywood.”
“So?”
“So you will have company, night and day. The dead will be here with you, night and day. We will not be ignored.”
“You keep saying we, Rudy. But I only see you.”
“The others will come. They’ll all find their way here, sooner or later. Did you know Virginia Maple hanged herself last night? You remember Virginia? Or perhaps you don’t. She was — ”
“I know Virginia. And no, I didn’t know she hanged herself. Nor, frankly, do I much care.”
“She couldn’t take the pain.”
“The pain?”
“Of being kept out of this house! Being kept away from the Devil’s Country.”
“It’s my house. I have a perfect right to invite whoever I like into it.”
“You see nothing but yourself, do you?”
“Oh please, Rudy, no lectures on narcissism. Not from you, of all people.”
“I see things differently now.”
“Oh I’m sure you do. I’m sure you regret every self-obsessed moment of your petty little life. But that’s really not my problem, now is it?”
The color of the ghost before her suddenly changed. In a heartbeat he became a stain of yellow and gray, his fury rising in palpable waves off his face.
“I will make it your problem,” he shrieked. He strode towards her. “You selfish bitch.”
“And what did they call you?” she snapped back. “Powder-puff, was it?”
It was an insult she knew would strike him hard. Just the year before an anonymous journalist in the Chicago Tribune had called him ‘a pink powder puff’. ‘Why didn’t somebody quietly drown Rudolph Guglielmi, alias Valentino, years ago?’ he’d written. Rudy had challenged the man to a boxing match, to see which of them was truly the more virile. The journalist had of course never shown his face. But the insult had stuck. And hearing it repeated now threw Valentino into such a rage that he pitched himself at Katya, reaching for her throat. She had half-expected his phantom body to be so unsubstantial that his hands would fail to make any real contact. But not so. Though the flesh and blood of him had been reduced to an urn full of ashes, his spirit-form had a force of its own. She felt his fingers at her neck as though they were living tissue. They stopped her breath.