The Talking Dead, continued...

The fickle cameraman moved away from Kincaid’s wife and focused on the young actress. She began to applaud wildly. I know all the tricks of the acting trade, but again I marveled at how quickly tears appeared in her creaseless eyes. If there is one more award show, I thought, Hollywood will drown in its own tears of adulation. Maybe I was too old.
Sitting on my right was Theodora Woods; she had just accepted her own Golden Globe for being the creator of the newest, hottest sitcom: “The Life of Brendan Kincaid.” She also happened to be Brendan’s lover. I was her guest at the table. Theo liked my work and always made sure there was a part for me in her shows. I nodded and smiled at Theo. The cameraman now pointed his lens at her. But she wasn’t applauding and she wasn’t smiling. As the star-filled audience, clad in tuxedos and evening gowns, got to their feet giving Brendan a standing ovation, Theodora remained seated; her intelligent dark eyes shined with betrayal. Her short dark hair was cut at sharp angles. Her mouth, lipstick long forgotten, was pressed into a thin resentful line. The cameraman, not one for nuance, lurched away toward another more easily identifiable face.
“What’s wrong?” I whispered in her ear.
“TV saps your soul.” She downed the last of her wine and placed her napkin firmly on the table. The thin strap of her purple velvet gown slipped from her bony shoulder as she stood and stalked with great purpose out of the Grand Ballroom. A frown deepened the lines around Alison Kincaid’s eyes as she watched Theo leave. In shock, the young actress’ tears dried immediately as if they were made out of polyester.
Theodora Woods forgot to take her award.
People don’t walk out in Hollywood. They are pushed out, kicking and screaming and clutching their multimillion-dollar golden parachutes. So when Theo got up and left during a standing ovation for the star of her show, it was an unsettling event. Even Brendan was rendered speechless upon his return to the table. It was quickly decided that Theo must not have been feeling well and I, her friend, should take her award home for safekeeping. They considered me her friend because Theo got me work.
Since my husband Colin died of a heart attack I live alone in our unremodeled beach house -– euphemistically called a teardown -– in Malibu. That night I placed Theo’s award on the mantle next to Colin’s two Oscars, which he had won for best screenplay. The two awards and the house were all I had left. Having to earn a living, I had gone back to what I knew best: acting.
I called Theo and got her machine. After leaving a message I crawled into bed, took my sleeping pill, and turned on the TV. There was nothing I wanted to watch; I just wanted to fill the silence even while I slept. Closing my eyes, I wondered what Theo was doing. She wasn’t the kind of woman you worried about; but her behavior, even for a writer, was odd.
The next morning I was standing in my kitchen drinking coffee and channel surfing my way to the news when on some obscure station I saw the shocking image of myself at eighteen. I was acting in a segment of Bewitched. Samantha, the witch, was wiggling her nose, trying to turn me into an ugly old hag so Darrin, her husband, would not be attracted to me. I no longer knew that young blond-haired woman who was once me. Her face was filled with such hope and beauty that she broke my heart. She also looked young enough to be Brendan Kincaid’s TV wife. The doorbell rang. Pulling my husband’s paisley silk robe more tightly around me, I ran my hand through my now determinedly blond hair and went to answer it.
Brendan Kincaid burst in. “Where is Theo?”
“I don’t know.”
Brendan was tall and woodenly handsome. He reached out his arms in a hopelessly dramatic gesture that reeked of bad acting; it was his larger-than-life mannerisms, which had no connection to the reality of the moment, that made Brendan such a comic success on the small screen.
“I’ve been calling her all night. I keep getting the machine. I went to her house this morning and she’s not there.” He peered forlornly down at the little alligator insignia on his pink polo shirt as if it might help him.
“Maybe she’s already at the studio,” I offered.
“I tried her office. Nothing. Nobody has seen her. I thought she might’ve come here to pick up her award.”
“No.” He followed my gaze to the fireplace mantel.
“You put her award with Colin’s Oscars?”
“I thought her sense of irony might like that.”
“Are you saying my show is beneath the writing of the great Colin?”
“Yes.” You could be honest with Brendan because he never listened to what you said.
“I’ve been up all night,” he groaned. “I need a cup of coffee.”
He followed me into the kitchen and slumped in a chair. “What happened, Diana? Why did she get up and leave like that? The Golden Globes, for God’s sake, and just as I’m getting a standing ovation. I mean, it was her standing ovation, too. I was gracious in my acceptance speech, wasn’t I?” His big brown spaniel eyes pleaded with me.
“Mentioning your father was very touching. As usual, you were very charming, Brendan.”
“What do you mean, as usual? You’ve never liked me, have you?”
“I don’t know what Theo sees in you.”
“Since Colin died you’ve turned into a very bitter woman, Diana Poole. It’s not my fault he left you with no money.”
“Money never mattered to us. You’re married, Brendan.”
“So? If that’s your reason for disliking a man you must...” Again he waved his arm dramatically in the air, searching for the words to finish his sentence. Letting his arm fall to his side, he gave up the search. I handed him a cup of coffee and sat down across from him. He took a sip and stared at the TV.
“You watch Bewitched?”
“No. I was channel surfing and saw my...”
“Who is that?”
“Who?”
He leaned forward, squinting at the young me on the screen. “The blonde. The voice is familiar.”
“Are you being funny?”
“God, she’s gorgeous. Can you imagine what she looks like now?”
“No, I can’t.”
He dragged his hand through his thick brown hair, leaving it askew. This gesture always brought gales of laughter from the TV audience.
“Do you realize that every one of those stars on Bewitched are dead now?” he said bleakly. “I mean, if you think about it, they’re just dead people talking.”
“Sounds like something Theo would say.” I grabbed the remote and turned the TV off. The young me vanished.
“I said it. Not Theo,” he snapped.
“All right. You said it.”
“What do you mean, ‘I’m married’? Is that why Theo walked out? She wants me to divorce Alison? Did she tell you that?”
“No.”
“Then what did you mean by that crack?”
“It wasn’t a crack. It’s a fact. You are a married man. And it’s taking a toll on Theo. Not to mention your wife.”
“Oh God, this should be the happiest morning of my life but I have you moralizing at me, and I can’t find Theo. What possessed her, Diana? “
“When you were in her house, did you look in the closet and see if she packed some of her clothes?”
“How would I know? Theo isn’t the kind of woman that makes you pay attention to what she wears. In fact, she has awful taste in clothes. Did you see that purple thing she was wearing last night?”
“Did she take a suitcase?”
He shrugged helplessly.

“I’ll go look. I have a key.”
“You have a key?”
“She’s five houses down from me on the beach. I look after her place while she’s gone and she looks after mine.”
“Yes, but I didn’t know you had a key,” he said, in a proprietary voice.
“When she’s traveling I pick up the newspapers and water the plants. She does the same for me when I’m on location. What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing, I just didn’t know, that’s all. I think of it as our little hideaway. Hers and mine.”
“It’s her home, Brendan. She bought and paid for it.”
“Why do you resent me?” He rested his chin in his hand.
“In all honesty? I don’t know. You’re charming. You have a wonderful way of expressing yourself, and an inept way of acting that people respond to. Theo says she loves you. Your wife stays with you. Your fans adore you. By all rights, I should like you, too, but I don’t.”
He eyed me suspiciously. “Did you talk her into leaving me?”
“Nobody talks Theo into anything.”
“That’s true. She must’ve said something, Diana, when she got up and left last night.”
“She said: ‘TV saps your soul.’”
“TV saps your soul?”
“Yes.”
“TV?”
“TV.”
“What does it mean?”
“I think it means that Theo is tired, burnt-out. The last time we had lunch she mentioned she wanted to get away and write her novel.”
“A novel?”
“A book.”
“I know what a novel is. You don’t have to be so condescending.”
“I’m sorry. You bring it out in me. She probably went away to think.”
“Either way, I lose.”
“There are other writers, Brendan.”
“Not like her.”
“There are even other lovers.”
“Do you really believe I don’t care for her? That I could just transfer my needs and affection to somebody else? “I don’t think you know what Theo means to me. She gave me the strength to talk about my father last night. She brings things out in me I never thought were significant. She sees the significance in me.”
All actors feel inferior. So when an actor finds someone, especially a writer, who sees the worth in him, that is much more important than mere love. I know. I was an actor married to a writer.
“Did you two have an argument?” I asked.
“No. Yes, but not about us, about words.”
“The show?”
“It was about the way I say my lines, or her lines. She’s very possessive about her lines.”
“Writers are protective of their words.”
“It’s just dialogue, Diana. Nothing more. You don’t think she’s had a breakdown, do you?” He buried his face in hands. “Oh God, I can’t go on without her.”
“Actors always go on.”

He peered over his fingertips at me. “Did you just make that up? I mean, just now, off the top of your head?”
“Yes.”
“That was very funny,” he said, not laughing. “But do you think it’s true?”
“That actors always go on? Yes.”
“I hope you’re right. ‘TV saps your soul.’ How could Theo say that? It’s given
me mine.”
“TV has given you steady work, money, and fame, Brendan. But not your soul. I’m not so sure you have one.”
He smiled his charming lopsided grin. “Sometimes I think you know me best, Diana.”
I smiled back. You couldn’t help it with Brendan. He took another sip of his coffee, then spoke with a dark finality, “That was an omen.”
“What was?”
“You watching the rerun of Bewitched. Dead people talking.” He got slowly to his feet and wandered out of my house.
Later I walked down the beach to Theo’s and let myself in with her key. In the living room her sparse, expensive, stiff-backed furniture looked stoic and prim, like lonely women who have waited too long to say yes. The house was heavy with silence. But her house was always quiet. I, who must have the TV or music on all the time, once asked her how she could stand the silence. Theo pointed to her head and said, “It’s not quiet in here. I’m a writer. I love it.” I had laughed, remembering my husband sitting in the stillness of his office; a room I hardly go into anymore. And now there was no Theo, with her eyes turned inward, moving gracefully through her silence toward her office.
I quickly went into her bedroom and searched through her closet. Her suitcase was gone and so were some of her clothes. I heard the front door open and close, then hurried footsteps in the hall. I waited, listening. Drawers were being opened and slammed shut in her office. I crept down the hallway and peered in.
Brendan Kincaid was taking papers from her filing cabinet and placing them into a large plastic trash bag.
“Hello, Brendan.” I leaned against the doorjamb.
“God, Diana, you scared the hell out of me. I didn’t see your car.”
“I walked down the beach. I told you I was going to check to see if she took a suitcase with her.”
“Did she?” He dumped some folders into the bag.
“Yes. What are you doing?”
“I don’t think she’s coming back.”
“You didn’t answer my question. What are you doing taking her papers?”
“I’ve written her love letters. I don’t think that’s anybody’s business but mine. I want to find Theo. Not cause my wife embarrassment.”
“You wrote a trash bag full of love letters?”
“And the scripts are mine, just as much as they are hers.” He stuffed more papers into the bag. A card fluttered to the ground.
“You’re acting like she’s not coming back, Brendan.”
“I don’t think she can forgive me.”
“For what?”
“Stealing… her love.” Throwing the trash bag over his shoulder he lurched down the hallway and out the front door.
“You have no right to take any of this, Brendan,” I foolishly yelled after him, but he wasn’t listening.
In Hollywood, everybody has a right. It’s all about rights: the rights of the stars, the rights of the director, the rights of the producer. Even the rights of the lover. It’s all about how many rights you can accumulate in your contract or how many you can steal.
I picked up the card he had dropped. It was a warm and fuzzy drugstore card declaring eternal love and was signed by Brendan. Where love letters were concerned, he was certainly no Browning. I checked the back of the card to see if he had sent her a Hallmark and discovered the words: “Dead people talking.” They were written in Theo’s hand. And they were the exact words Brendan had used this morning when watching Bewitched. I placed the card on her desk.
It was a Hallmark.
That night something jarred me out of my sleep. My heart pounding, I sat up, feeling another’s presence in my room. I quickly turned on the light. It was only W.C. Fields in the movie David Copperfield falling downstairs and announcing that he had arrived. As usual, I had fallen asleep with the TV on. I felt comforted by Fields until I remembered he was one of the dead people talking. I got out of bed, threw on a robe, went into the living room, and opened the sliding glass door. On the deck I breathed in the heavy salty air and watched the dark waves turn white as they splattered on the shore in the moonlight. I gazed down the beach toward Theo’s house. A light shone in the window. Had she come back?
I slipped into some shoes, threw on a coat, got her key, ran down the beach, and let myself in. In the dark I made my way through to her office. Alison Kincaid was going through Theo’s computer discs.
“Hello, Diana,” she greeted. Her face was strained and pale. “Thought you’d be asleep. Brendan is not computer literate. Didn’t think to get her discs.” She looked through them with a clerical precision.
“What’s all this about, Alison?”
“Theo’s not coming back. At least not to Brendan.”
“How do you know?”
“He received a post card from her. It was placed in the mailbox, not sent. It has a picture of the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre on it. Do they still call it Graumans?”
“I think it’s a Loews now. Who knows what they call things anymore.”
“Here, read it.” She whipped it out of her pocket and thrust it at me. It read: “Brendan, you tried standing in mine, now you’re going to have to find another pair. Here’s a graveyard full of them.” I turned it over. It was a post card of all the old movie stars’ footprints.
“He’s frantic, Diana.” Alison opened her tote bag and dumped the computer discs into it.
“What possible use can her personal writings be to you?” I grabbed a yellow legal tablet out of her hand. “You can’t just take anything you want.”
“I have to fill a void!” She snapped, pointing a bony, manicured finger at me. Her gray eyes were desperate. “Fifteen years ago I married the most beautiful actor in the world. A handsome void. I thought I could fill him with love. I couldn’t. When Theo came to him with this idea for a show he slowly began to change. Then he started to have an affair with her. That’s when he became a different man. The man that I had always wanted. Witty and sharp. Why do you think I put up with the affair? I don’t want to lose that witty and wise man, Diana. I have to help him.”
“Help him do what?”
“Fill the void.” She snapped her bag shut and walked briskly out of Theo’s house.

I sighed and leafed through the yellow legal-size tablet; it was a writer’s sketchbook. There was a brief description of a woman having coffee. Ideas for different books. Observations. Overheard conversations that Theo had jotted down. From her desk I took the greeting card Brendan had given her and turned it over. “Dead people talking.” Why had she written that phrase on Brendan’s card? Did she think he was one of the dead people? Or did she just use the card to make her writer’s note? I replaced it and took the yellow legal pad home with me. I fell asleep looking through it while David Copperfield found that his first true love was not all that she was cracked up to be.
The next morning I was standing in my kitchen watching the local news when the image of Brendan Kincaid appeared in a room filled with microphones and reporters. He announced that the he was asking the police for their help in finding Theodora Woods. He looked exhausted and scared. Why was he so frightened? At the end of the news conference he peered into the camera and said, “I know this may sound odd coming from me, but I think it’s important to say. TV CAN SAP YOUR SOUL. It’s such hard work, you don’t get to see your loved ones, and there is always the pressure of the next show. I think, I hope, that Theo is somewhere getting in touch with her soul again and that she will soon return to us and those who love her. Come back to us, Theo. With your soul intact.”
A few hours later Brendan called me. “Have you heard anything?”
“No.”
“She’s not coming back. I have to adjust. Prepare.”
“For what?”
“My wife said she ran into you last night.”
“You mean while she was ransacking Theo’s office?”
“We don’t want you to mention that to the police when they talk to you. Remember, Diana, you need to work in this town.”
“Is that a threat?”
“I don’t know. It seemed the appropriate thing to say.”
“Appropriate? Brendan, can you hear yourself?”

“Oh God, I’m so lost without her.”

“Are you aware that you used Theo’s words as your own in the press conference?”
“What do you mean?”
“‘TV saps your soul.’”
“How can you be so petty at a time like this?” He hung up on me.
I poured myself another cup of coffee, put on a CD of Willie Nelson croaking about love, sat down in the living room, and went page by page through Theo’s note pad. I was looking for a clue, a hint of why she had walked out. Under the title A LIFE I read: My father was a drunk. He loved the sauce more than he loved me. But when he was half-sober and feeling melancholy he would take me out in the backyard and we would sit on the damp grass while he taught me how to talk to the moon.
Had she written down a vignette from Brendan’s life or from her own? I stared at the Golden Globe sitting on the mantle. It looked as if it had been moved. Did Brendan pick it up when he was here? I couldn’t remember. At one o’clock I had an interview for an antacid commercial. So I went and changed into what I call my good-wife clothes: slacks, pastel-colored print blouse, and Keds. In the script, my dopey husband didn’t know when to stop eating.
It was six o’clock when I returned to the house. After the interview I had run errands and gone to the market. I didn’t get the commercial. I guess I wasn’t that good of a wife.
Late that night, sipping a glass of wine, I walked out onto the deck and again looked toward Theo’s house; it was dark. I wondered just what Theo was doing by putting that postcard in Brendan’s mailbox? Was she playing some kind of cruel psychological game with him? If so, she didn’t have to leave town for that. Now that Brendan and his wife had ransacked her files, the last place anyone would look for her very late at night would be her own home. I got her key and my flashlight.
“Theo?” I called, entering her house. My light bounced around her living room. “Theo?” I moved down the hallway to her bedroom. “Theo?” I turned the overhead light on. Brendan Kincaid lay on her bed surrounded by more of Theo’s papers, his arms splayed out in one of his helpless gestures. Blood ran from a dark hole in his temple down his neck and into his shirt collar. On the floor by the bed was a gun. I leaned against the wall for support. The poor guy looked as if he had been sitting on the bed studying her writings as if they were Cliff Notes, as if he had a test he knew he wasn’t going to pass. I stumbled back down the hall and to the phone in the kitchen.
Three hours later, wearing my husband’s bathrobe, I sat alone in my living room. I had told the police everything I knew. Alison was called. She had recognized the gun as belonging to Brendan. The two detectives were talking suicide. I offered to go home with Alison but she refused.
“You were Theo’s friend, not Brendan’s,” she had told me. “Theo caused his suicide. She wanted it to happen.”
But why? And where was Theo? Staring at her award on the mantelpiece, I realized I had been sitting in complete silence. I had forgotten to turn on the TV or my CD player. Folding my arms across my chest I stood in front of the fireplace. The two Oscars were sleek in their art deco, streamlined, gold-plated nudity. The Golden Globe looked bold in its artlessness. A chill ran through me. The award had been moved. Even Theo couldn’t resist touching it.
I walked slowly, like a pallbearer, through my kitchen to the room that was once my husband’s office. Trembling, I opened the door and quickly flipped on the light. His desk chair was at a quarter-turn, as if he had just stood up. My photograph was still on his desk. The computer screen was blank. The daybed appeared to be untouched. The small bathroom still had the faint smell of Colin’s cologne. I breathed it in, feeling the pain of loss once more. I opened the door that led out to the side of the house. The walkway was as it should be. Everything was as it should be. And yet something was wrong. Colin’s room did not have the feel of a forgotten place. There was the sense of someone having recently been in it. Of the stillness having been broken.
I took Theo’s award from the mantel and went back to my room. I placed it on my nightstand and got into bed. I turned off the light. I didn’t turn on the television. I didn’t take my sleeping pill. I stared at the shadows on the ceiling and waited in the dark terrifying quiet. I’m not sure how much time had passed when I saw Theo’s slim figure in my doorway.
“It took me awhile to figure out what was wrong,” she said in her low soft voice. “No TV, no Willie Nelson. No white noise.”
“You were counting on my fear of silence.” I sat up and turned on the light. We blinked as if seeing each other for the first time. She wore black slacks and a black sweater. Her small sharp face was drawn. Her intelligent eyes looked dull. I’d never seen her eyes look dull before.
“I was only taking advantage of your fear. Why are you so afraid, Diana?” She stayed in the doorway.
“Just like Brendan, I’m trying to a fill a void. The void death makes.”
“I liked staying in Colin’s room. It was like sleeping in a shrine.”
“You’ve been here all the time.”
“Yes. I hope you don’t mind. I just needed to be where nobody could get at me. Haven’t you ever felt like that, Diana?” She titled her head and attempted a smile.
“I think you needed to be in a place where you could commit a murder and nobody would know.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Brendan’s dead.”
“Brendan? I don’t believe it.” She sagged against the doorjamb; writers should never act.
“Writers should never act,” I said.
She pulled herself up to her full height.
“That’s better.”
“How did he die?” she asked.
“The police think he committed suicide in your house. But I don’t believe he killed himself. Of course, they’re waiting to talk to you.” I swung my legs around and sat on the edge of the bed.
“How can you think I would do such a thing? My God, did Brendan think I was never coming back?” she asked.
“Maybe it was the postcard you sent him.”
“I was angry at him, but not enough to kill him, Diana.”
“You knew I rarely went into Colin’s office. You knew I hated a silent house. What did you do with your car? Park it on a side street?”
“Unless you have proof, I wouldn’t go around saying things like that. You know how this town talks. Besides, what’s my motive? Brendan was making me a fortune, and he was my lover.”
“Brendan would have left you with nothing to write about.”
She laughed harshly. “That’s hardly a motive, Diana.”
“But it’s true. Dorothy Parker said, ‘I require three things in a man. He must be handsome, ruthless, and stupid.’ Well, that was your Brendan. And you liked that about him. But the more successful he became, the more he felt he needed to talk off-screen like he did on-screen. He began to repeat things you had shared with him about your life as if they were his own, didn’t he?”
Rubbing her forehead, she paused a moment, then said evenly, “I thought I had found what every writer, hell, every woman, hopes for. A lover who is a good listener. But I got suckered. I would hear him at parties talking about his father, but it was really my father. His father drank diet cola and ate macaroni and cheese and never said an interesting thing in his life. My father was a drunk but at least he talked to the moon. Brendan would make a witty observation, everyone would laugh, but it was my observation. How do you tell a person at a dinner party, that’s not really Brendan speaking, that’s me? You can’t without sounding like a petty idiot.”
“He needed to fill his own void. That’s what his wife said.”
“She knew him better than I did. I began to realize he was stealing my life, my creative life, so he could fill his empty one. You’re correct about one thing, Diana. I was afraid I’d have nothing left to write when I sat down to start my novel. I couldn’t shut him up. I couldn’t stop him. I tried, but he just didn’t see the problem. It was all dialogue to him.”
“But you did stop him.”
“Nobody will believe that I killed Brendan. The golden goose never gets killed in Hollywood.”
“You killed this one. You got him to come to your house. That would be easy. But how did you get his gun? That’s the only part I can’t figure out.”
“Are you telling me he shot himself with his own gun? He must’ve used the gun he gave me. Brendan didn’t like the thought of me alone at the beach without protection. Diana, I’ve been good to you. I given you parts in my shows that other actresses your age would kill for.”
“Well, this show is over, isn’t it? You’ve seen to that.”
“I’ll write other shows, other parts.”
“But Theo, even with Brendan dead you still won’t be able to write your novel.”
Her dull eyes glimmered briefly with the pain of recognition. “Why do you say that?”
“If TV saps your soul, what does murder do to it?”
“TV is worse. Trust me.” She grinned wryly. It was Theo at her ironical best.
“I want my key back.”
“Sure.” She reached in her pocket of her slacks, took the key, and dropped it on my dresser.
“Yours is there in the glass bowl.”
She took it.
“Don’t forget your Golden Globe.”
Theo picked it up and weighed it in her hand, starring at me all the time.
“Are you thinking of killing me, too?”
“No, you have no proof. Except that Brendan was sucking all my creativity out of me. And who is going to buy that as a motive in Hollywood? People get paid for doing that here. It’s called synergy.”
“Alison Kincaid may think as I do.”
“No. She loved the man Brendan had become. The Brendan I had created. She wouldn’t want his image tarnished.”
“Where are you going to go?” I asked.
“To the police. Tell them how shocked I am. And hope that my silly behavior wasn’t partly to blame for his suicide. But sometimes, Diana, a woman just needs to get away. She just needs to pull her thoughts together. Good night.”
I made sure Theo had left and then I went back to bed. I turned on the TV. Bette Davis was talking. On reruns of his show Brendan Kincaid would soon be talking again. Now Theo, too, was one of the talking dead; she just didn’t know it yet. Cold, I pulled the covers up around me and watched Bette Davis blow smoke.

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