Occultation Read Online Free PDF Page B

touch of that taint had rubbed off on Partridge. Nadine was the youthful excess that Hollywood could not supply, despite its excess of youth, the one he still longed for during the long, blank Malibu nights. He carried a load of guilt about the whole affair as well.
     Occasionally, in the strange, hollow years after the hoopla, the groundswell of acclaim and infamy, she would corner Partridge in a remote getaway bungalow, or a honeymoon seaside cottage, for a weekend of gin and bitters and savage lovemaking. In the languorous aftermath, she often confided how his magic Panaflex had destroyed her career.  She would forever be “the woman in that movie.” She was branded a real-life scream queen and the sex pot with the so-so face and magnificent ass.
    Nadine was right, as usual. “The Forest that Eats Men” never let go once it sank its teeth.
     
    He dreamed of poling a raft on a warm, muddy river. Mangroves hemmed them in corridors of convoluted blacks and greens. Creepers and vines strung the winding waterway. Pale sunlight sifted down through the screen of vegetation; a dim, smoky light full of shadows and shifting clouds of gnats and mosquitoes. Birds warbled and screeched. He crouched in the stern of the raft and stared at the person directly before him. That person’s wooden mask with its dead eyes and wooden smile gaped at him, fitted as it was to the back of the man’s head. The wooden mouth whispered, “You forgot your mask.” Partridge reached back and found, with burgeoning horror, that his skull was indeed naked and defenseless. 
    “They’re coming. They’re coming.”  The mask grinned soullessly.
    He inhaled to scream and jerked awake, twisted in the sheets and sweating. Red light poured through the thin curtains. Nadine sat in the shadows at the foot of his bed. Her hair was loose and her skin reflected the ruddy light. He thought of the goddess Kali shrunk to mortal dimensions.
    “You don’t sleep well either, huh,” she said.
    “Nope. Not since Bangladesh.” 
    “That long. Huh.”
    He propped himself on his elbow and studied her. “I’ve been considering my options lately. I’m thinking it might be time to hang up my spurs. Go live in the Bahamas.”
    She said, “You’re too young to go.” That was her mocking tone.
    “You too.”
    She didn’t say anything for a while. Then, “Rich, you ever get the feeling you’re being watched?”
    “Like when you snuck in here while I was sleeping? Funny you should mention it…”
    “Rich.”
    He saw that she was serious. “Sometimes, yeah.”
    “Well you are. Always. I want you to keep that in mind.”
    “Okay. Will it help?”
    “Good question.”
    The room darkened, bit by bit. He said, “You think you would’ve made it back to the barge?” He couldn’t distance himself from her cry as she flailed overboard and hit the water like a stone. There were crocodiles everywhere.  No one moved. The whole crew was frozen in that moment between disbelief and action. He had shoved the camera at, who? Beasley. He had done that and then gone in and gotten her. Blood-warm water, brown with mud. He did not remember much of the rest. The camera caught it all.
    “No,” she said. “Not even close.”
    He climbed over the bed and hugged her. She was warm. He pressed his face into her hair. Her hair trapped the faint, cloying odor of sickness. “I’m so fucking sorry,” he said.
    She didn’t say anything. She rubbed his shoulder.
    That night was quiet at the Moorehead Estate. There was a subdued dinner and afterward some drinks. Everybody chatted about the good old days. The real ones and the imaginary ones too. Phillips and Montague disappeared early on and took their men-at-arms with them. Nadine sat aloof. She held onto a hardback—one of Toshi’s long out of print treatises on insect behavior and ecological patterns. Partridge could tell she was only pretending to look at it.
    Later, after lights out, Partridge roused from a dream of