Butterfly (33 page)

tall glass-and-brick building. Most of the building’s windows were dark, except for a few

lights coming from the twentieth floor. The Silver Cloud stopped in front of the subter-

ranean entrance and the chauffeur got out to open the passenger door. Beverly Highland

stepped out, turned up the collar of her fur coat, and hurried into the deserted building.

On the twentieth floor she went through the large oak doors of Highland Enterprises,

Inc., and went directly to the inner offices.

“Hi,” said the woman who was already there, waiting for her.

“Sorry I’m late,” said Beverly, shedding her coat and hanging it up. “I had to take a call

from the coastal commissioner. I’ll be needing to testify again. What have you got there?”

The woman held out a sheaf of papers.

Beverly took them. “New members?” she asked.

“New
companions,”
said the director of Butterfly.

“We might have to think about expanding,” Beverly murmured as she quickly looked

through the papers. Then she set them aside and gave her friend a serious look. “He took

the money,” she said. “Danny took the five hundred thousand and invited me out to his

Texas ranch. I was able to get out of it again, but sooner or later I’m going to have to meet

him face-to-face. He’s anxious to thank me in person for all my support of his campaign.

Anyway, it’s time to put the next phase of our plan into motion. Tell the others that I want

to meet with you all one week from tonight, just before the New Hampshire primary.”

“All right.”

“Worried?” Beverly said.

“I don’t know.”

“Don’t be. Danny may be powerful, but I’m more powerful. Nothing can go wrong. I

promise you that.”

The two women looked at each other. They each knew what the other was thinking.

That, after thirty-five years, Beverly was going to have her revenge at last. On June 11, the

day Danny Mackay was going to wish he had never been born.

19

Hollywood, California: 1960

“Sex is what sells today, you know that, Bev?” She didn’t hear him. She was too busy

struggling with the diner’s incomprehensible accounting books. It was times like this

when Beverly thought of Carmelita. A girl born with a phenomenal talent, forced to bury

it along with the rest of her dreams. Carmelita, who had stopped answering Beverly’s let-

ters two years ago.

“Hey, Bev. Who’s the sexiest actor you can think of?” “I don’t know,” she said without

looking up from her accounting.

Roy Madison scowled over the top of his
Variety
and said, “I’m serious, Bev. Come on

now, who’s the sexiest man on the screen today?”

Beverly put down her pencil and looked up from her stool at the end of the counter.

Roy was sitting at his usual corner table, the one nearest the pay phone, with the latest

copies of
Variety, Casting Call,
and
Hollywood Reporter
spread out before him. And as

usual he wore clean but carefully patched clothes, sat with his chair situated so that he

could frequently check his looks in the shine of the jukebox, and nursed a cold cup of cof-

fee bought two hours ago (he never bought anything to eat—Roy was so broke he could-

n’t even afford Eddie’s) while he checked out the opportunities. A typical out-of-work

actor.

“I really don’t know, Roy. I don’t go to movies.”

“What about Paul Newman?”

It was the morning lull—between the breakfast and lunch rushes—there were only a

few customers at other tables. Even Highland Avenue out front seemed quiet this morn-

ing. “Why do you want to know, Roy?”

“I’m thinking of changing my image maybe. Making myself sexier.”

She gave this some serious thought. Although Beverly rarely gave consideration to

men in general and had not found them appealing for six years, she was observant enough

to know that there was nothing wrong with Roy Madison’s image. He was really quite

good-looking, in a plastic screen-idol kind of way. Eddie often remarked what a shame it

was that with his looks Roy wasn’t getting more acting jobs. But the problem was, he was

a small unknown fish competing in an ocean full of barracudas. He’d landed a few non-

speaking bit parts here and there—once even on
Bonanza,
in color—but it wasn’t enough

to launch him. He held down part-time jobs, quitting them when he was briefly flush,

scrounging again when he was broke. Like today. It had been over a month since his agent

had returned any of his calls.

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Kathryn Harvey

“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with your image, Roy.”

“The last casting director I saw told me I look too much like Fabian. Is that true, Bev?”

She watched the way he observed himself in his reflection on the jukebox, turning his

head this way and that, patting his perfect pompadour, and she had to agree: he did look

too much like Fabian.

“If I could land just one good part, you know? A
speaking
part. Show them my real

stuff. But you can’t get a speaking part if you don’t have a SAG card. And you don’t qual-

ify for a SAG card if you haven’t ever done a speaking part. Shit, Bev. Just once,
just once,

I’d like people to see what I can really do.”

“You will, Roy,” she said softly. “The opportunity will come for you someday.”

“Yeah,” he snorted. “Like it came for Eddie.” Roy had been coming to the diner for

eight years now; he remembered Tony’s Royal Burgers when it was a second-rate joint

with nothing but hookers, cops, and unemployed actors like himself eating Eddie’s rancid

burgers. And now? Well, Eddie drove a brand-new Edsel, he was that successful.

Consistency was the secret of Eddie’s success. He now owned six Royal Burger outlets

and guaranteed his customers that when they bought a burger at the Pasadena store, it

would be of the same quality and taste as the one they had enjoyed last week at the Santa

Monica store. Chain hamburger stands were a very new concept; Eddie was familiar with

White Tower and White Castle back East, but the West Coast, with the exception of a few

relatively unknown chains, such as the one started by the McDonald brothers out in god-

forsaken San Bernardino, knew no such phenomenon. Eddie, in the six years since

Beverly had spiced up his burgers, had discovered to his surprise what it was the public

wanted these days: fast service and standardized food at low prices. He was getting rich on

his Royal diners, even though the burgers still came wrapped in paper and you could buy

them by the bag at ten cents apiece. The diner’s motto was “Millions of people have eaten

Royal Burgers,” and it was written on every Royal Burger sign, just beneath the distinc-

tive, familiar golden crown.

The mailman came in just then, his big postal sack slung over his shoulder. “Hi,

Beverly,” he said, handing her a small stack of envelopes.

“Hello, Mr. Johnson,” she said as she took the mail from him.

He watched her carefully inspect each piece. He knew she was looking for something,

but he didn’t know what. Fred Johnson liked looking at the pretty young Beverly

Highland. He’d been on this beat for nearly twenty years, and in all that time had never

once set eyes on a sight as refreshing as the girl who ran Eddie’s diner. He’d once even

thought of getting up the courage to ask her out, bowling maybe, but then had gotten the

lowdown one day from Eddie: Beverly didn’t date. She didn’t have a boyfriend; in fact, she

didn’t seem to have any friends to speak of. What was she like? Fred had asked Eddie. But

Eddie had had to admit that although she’d been working for him for six years now, he

still knew about as much about her as he did the first night she had come into the store

asking for a job.

Fred watched her hands shuffle the envelopes—long and slender and pretty they were.

Like the girl herself. She amazed him. No matter how busy the diner got—and lately that

was pretty busy—Beverly never had a hair out of place. She was always calm, quiet, and

BUTTERFLY

143

under control. Her uniform was always pressed with never a spot on it; she never raised

her voice or got harried with the rush. She made him think of lemonade on hot days, or

picnics under shade trees.

She sighed and laid the bills and notices aside. Fred decided that whatever it was she so

diligently searched for every day, it still hadn’t come. It suddenly occurred to him that if

he knew what it was Beverly was looking for, he’d move heaven and earth to get it for her.

But not even Fred Johnson with his mid-life ardor could arrange that. What Beverly

looked for in the mail every day was an answer to an advertisement she had placed in

newspapers all over the country. “Naomi Burgess Dwyer,” the announcement under

Personals read: “Contact your daughter Rachel at 1718 Highland Ave, Hollywood, Ca.”

In four years there had been no reply.

“Can I get you something, Mr. Johnson? A Coke or something?”

She was like that. Always thoughtful and considerate. Since Fred stopped in at several

doughnut shops and delicatessens on his mail route, he had plenty of opportunities to eat.

But he never refused Beverly. He liked to watch her stand at the soda dispenser and fill the

big paper cup. He liked to take it from her hand and say, “Thanks, you’re an angel,” and

watch the way she blushed sometimes. That was what attracted old Fred to the unblem-

ished young Beverly. Her innocence. You could tell just by watching her that she hadn’t so

much as ever been kissed.

After the mailman had left with his usual free drink, Beverly closed the accounting

books and slid them under the cash register. Ever since Eddie got semirich, his wife,

Laverne, had quit working at the diner and Beverly had taken over her job as manager of

the store, and was still trying to make sense of Laverne’s cryptic bookkeeping. It was for

that reason that Carmelita sprang up frequently these days into Beverly’s mind.

On that terrible night six years ago, when, as Rachel Dwyer, she had boarded the train

heading for California, Beverly had vowed she would never set foot in Texas again.

But time, she found, does help you heal. Having lived since then in the company of kind

and decent people, Beverly’s bitterness toward Hazel had been tempered. From the perspec-

tive of the years and the miles, and Beverly’s safe and respectable life, not to mention the

security of savings in the bank, she was able to look back without feeling the old rage boil up

inside her. She was able to recall her two years at Hazel’s, and her friendship with Carmelita,

with fondness, nostalgically almost, and lately found herself wondering more and more

what had become of Carmelita, why she had stopped answering Beverly’s letters.

But a trip to Texas was out of the question right now. Eddie was so busy planning new

sites for future stores, and redesigning the diner to make it more efficient, more accom-

modating of cars, for example, that he left the running of the small company to Beverly.

Not that she minded. It kept her busy from morning till night. It kept the loneliness at

bay; it gave her an excuse not to spend time with the friends she had made in the diner.

Being busy allowed her to concentrate on the only important thing in her life: revenge

against Danny Mackay.

A young woman came into the diner and ordered two barbecued burgers to go. She

carried a small child on her hip, and when Beverly took her money at the cash register, she

said, “How old’s your little girl?”

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Kathryn Harvey

“She’s nearly two,” the proud young mother said. “Ain’t you, Cindy?”

Beverly gazed wistfully at the child. Her own baby, if it had lived, would be five years

old now. “Here,” she said, handing the baby a peppermint candy cane.

“Say thank you, Cindy,” the young mother said, and Beverly watched them leave.

Roy got up from his table, dropped a dime in the jukebox and paused to look at him-

self as Marty Robbins started to sing “El Paso.”

“I don’t know, Bev,” Roy Madison said, sauntering up to the counter and throwing

one lanky leg over a stool. “I work hard to look good. They just don’t seem to want me.”

She studied him with a serious expression. She wished he wouldn’t keep playing that