He'd bought them aspuppies from the trunk of a 1984 LeBaron parked outside a LizClaiborne factory outlet. Its driver was a hippie girl who saidthe puppies would be drowned that afternoon unless theyfound homes, because G.o.d had summoned her to Long Islandwhere she was to cornrow the hair of teenagers as well as moni-tor the sunrise.

As he aged and lost his hair and wrinkled, Randy figured hedeserved no love or affection because he hadn't been brave or suffered or fought a good fight across the years. The newer,younger, more beautiful children arrived, and with annoyingease inherited the rubble of the s.e.xual revolution, plus the free-dom and the easy knowledge of love, death, s.e.x and risk. Randyextracted his revenge on the world for poisoning both hiscoming-of-age and his youth, through the creation of lies andrumors. Locked inside his Erie town house at night, numbedby hisday job doing payroll for a roofing company, he fed thou-sands of deceptions into a Dell PC which multiplied them likeviruses, out into the world of electrons. Most of his rumorsdied, but some became self-fulfilling prophecies. Who couldhave known that young ingenue truly was so ripe to become a compulsive handwasher?

And then one September night Susan Colgate fell into his life.He was watching Matlock, had a refreshing cuc.u.mber facial scrubon his face, and was drinking weak Ovaltine, when there wasa thump on his front door. He braced himself-midnight joltson the door, even in Randy's relatively safe neighborhood, were not a good sign. He looked through a small pane of a bay win-dow and saw a pregnant woman, whom he didn't recognize,slumped on his doorstep.

He raced to the door and opened it. The woman was evi-dently in great pain, and Randy carried her into the living roomand lay her down on his two-week-old Ethan Allen colonialcouch. He started to dial 911, but the woman screamed, "No!"and yanked the cord from the wall before he could even dial the third digit. She lowered her voice. "Please. Randy Montarelli.Help me. You were the only person I could think of to come to.I saved your letter."

Randy wondered what she could mean by a letter. Shebriefly calmed down, and Randy realized that this was SusanColgate.

"You're not dead!"

Susan burst into tears.

"Oh good Lord, you're alive!" Randy ran over to hold hertightly and he whispered, "Oh, Susan-Susan-please-you'resafe here. Everything's going to be fine. Just fine."

"I'm scared, Randy. I'm so scared." she grimaced, then yelpedlike a coyote. "s.h.i.t, the contractions are close. I'm landing anymoment now."

A Boy Scout pragmatism seized him. "I'll get things ready.What do you need right away?"

"Water. I'm thirsty."

"Right." Randy raced into the kitchen, his thoughts scram-bled like popcorn. Nothing in his life had prepared him foran event like this. He filled a plastic jug with tap water andrelayed it to the living room with a plastic cup. He raninto the guestroom and grabbed a pile of down comfortersand told Camper and w.i.l.l.y to stop whining. Randomthoughts went through his brain. Susan was supposed tohave been long dead. He clearly remembered his pilgrimageto Seneca, one of his few forays outside the Erie region. He thenremembered reading in a magazine that Prince Charles wishedhe hadn't witnessed Prince Harry's birth. He'd wondered what.i.t was Charles had seen, and now he'd soon find out and theidea made him woozy. Was that bourbon he smelled on herbreath?

He raced again into the living room; the TV was on. Heturned it off. He laid the blankets on the floor but Susan's bag ofwaters had already burst. He ignored the stains on his couchand rug. Susan reached over sideways into her purse and pulledout Randy's letter. "Here . . ." she said. "You wrote this to me. Itwas the nicest thing I ever had anybody say about me. Comehere, Randy. Hold me a second."

Randy hugged Susan tightly. She held him away from her and looked deeply into his eyes: "We're going to get throughthis okay, Randy. We've been having babies for a trillion years.This isn't something new.

Let's just breathe and play it cool.Here . . ." Susan straightened out some blankets. "We're goingto do just fine."

23 O.

"Does it hurt?" Randy asked. "I've got some Vicodins leftover from my root ca.n.a.l."

"I'll take them."

Randy ran into the bathroom and fetched them and sometowels. Back in the living room Susan was screaming, "This is it,Randy!"

The next twenty minutes were wordless. They became a grunt--ing, shouting push-me-pull-you animal team, and a baby boyfinally emerged in a squalling pink lump. Susan held him upto her chest and Randy severed the umbilical cord. All three ofthem cried, and by sunrise, they were asleep in the wreckageof the living room.

That morning Randy phoned in and quit his job. He had be-come privy to some, but not all, of the details of Susan Colgate'sprecrash and postcrash life. By the afternoon he had the livingroom pieces hauled away. He ordered a vanload of groceries andbaby furniture. He emptied his bank accounts. He stripped Su-san's car of Indiana plates and replaced them with fakes hebought from a junkyard. He had momentum. The action made him thrive. He didn't feel like Randy Montarelli anymore. Hefelt like . . .

Well, he wasn't sure yet who or what he felt like.That would come. But within the week he'd thrown away manyof his clothes and knickknacks and photos and things that tohim reeked of the old Randy-sweaters he wore out of duty tothe relatives who joylessly gifted him with them every year; drugstore colognes purchased not because he liked their scentbut so as not to inflame redneck strangers with overly exoticaromas; his high school ring, which he kept because it seemedthe only piece of jewelry he'd ever have earned the right towear. He also began legal proceedings to change his surname toHexum, something he'd always wanted to do but had neverfound the will to act on.

Randy had been offered this one doozy of a chance to rewritehimself, and he wasn't going to blow it.

He'd kill for Susan andlittle Eugene if need be, and he hoped that in the near future Su-san might go into further details on what she hinted was a planfor leaving Erie. In the meantime, Susan spent much of the first month either crying or locked in silence. Randy didn't push her.And the thought of Randy phoning somebody to announce thisBethlehemical miracle was out of the question. This was some-thing for him alone: no mocking relatives or evil coworkers andchatterboxes from his model railway club allowed.

"Randy," Susan said, "why bother reading those infant care books? Any kid of mine is going to be tough as nails. His genesare made of solid t.i.tanium."

"We want the baby to be a G.o.d, Susan. We want him to glow.He has to be raised with care."

Whether to alert the authorities to the birth was not an issue.In Susan's mind, Eugene Junior wasn't to enter the public realm.He was to be unknown to the world and protected from itsstares and probes and jabs. "Especially" said Susan, wheneverRandy broached the subject, "from my mother."

The more Randy had Susan and Eugene Junior to himself, thehappier he was. He was a born provider, and now he had been blessed with souls for whom to care.

Late one night in her fourth week in Erie, the trio was watch-ing TV-an old episode of Meet the Blooms. Eugene was clampedonto Susan's left breast. The TV's volume was low. On the screenwas an episode in which Mitch, the eldest child, develops a co-caine habit for exactly one episode. Susan watched the TV as if itwere an aquarium, garnering neither highs nor lows-just a constant dull hum.

A log in the fireplace burst aglow with new vigor. "Do youever miss Chris?" Randy asked."Chris? I barely ever think of him, the old poofter."

Randy's eyes goggled. "PoofterFYou mean-no s.h.a.gging?"

"Good Lord, no. I mean, I like Chris now, but at the beginningwe were about as close to each other as you'd be, say, to someFedEx guy dropping an envelope off at Reception. Well, that's behind us now, isn't it? Far, far away." She drained her gla.s.s.

"But those pictures," said Randy, "and all those stories thatwere in the tabloids week in, week out-'Chris and s.e.xy Sue'sHawaiian Love Romp'-big burly Chris with the scratch markson his back. I saw them."

"Those scratch marks? His ma.s.seur, Dominic. I was over inHonolulu getting blepharoplasty on my eyes."

"Your tattoo-it said,chris always." Randy's disillusionmentwas growing more vocal. "But then I guess I didn't see it when Eugene was being born."

"No, you didn't. I had it done for a Paris Match photo shoot. Itwas laser-removed in 1996." Susan stood up, shook her head asthough her hair were wet, then positioned her body to meetRandy's full on.

"Randy, look at me, okay? It's all lies, Randy.All of it. Not just me. Chris. Them. Whoever. Everybody: Everything you read. It's all just c.r.a.p and lies and distortions. All of it. Lies.That's what makes the lies you spread so funny, Randy. They'rehonest lies."

The baby snored. A tape that had been spinning in the VCR without playing hit the end of the reel and made a thunk. Susantried to change her tone. "Having said that, Randy, tell me,what's the big lie of the day?"

Randy chuckled. "Whitney Houston."

"Oh dear."

"It's true."

"About her left foot."

"What about her left foot?" Susan played along.

"You haven't heard?" "Break it to me.""It's pretty weird.""Just tell me!""Cloven hoof.""Oh Randy."

Chapter Twenty-eight.

After shooting her j.a.panese TV commercial in Guam ("Heyteam-let's Pocari!"), Susan arrived back in Los Angeles freshwith the knowledge that the network had decided not to renewMeet the Blooms. Larry was in Europe, and he spent hours on thephone with Susan, rea.s.suring her that her promising career had barely yet begun.

She threw a duty-free bag filled with folded j.a.panese papercranes into a cupboard. She waited three weeks to unpack her luggage from the trip. She took long baths and spoke only toLarry until she visited her First Interstate branch and learnedthat her long-term savings account, into which she'd been regu-larly depositing good sums for years, was empty.

Her lawyer was in an AIDS rehab hospice and unable to helpher, and her accountant had recently left town in the wake ofsavings and loan scandals, so Larry hired new and expensivelawyers and accountants. They did a forensic audit of Susan's life, and after months of doc.u.ment wrangling, playing peeka-boo with receptionists and marathon phone tag, Susan learnedthat Marilyn had, quite legally, soaked up and then dissipatedSusan's earnings-Marilyn who had been little more than aduty visit once a month up in Encino.

"One of my numerology clients was a child star," said Dreama, then living on her own in North Hollywood. "He gotfleeced, too. The government has the what-the Coogon Lawnow, don't they? I thought the system was rigged so that parentscouldn't swindle the kids' loot anymore."

Susan, heavily sedated, called Dreama frequently during thisperiod. She murmured, "Dreama, Dreama, Dreama-all you haveto do is come home late from a shoot wired with about threehundred Dexatrims, sign one or two doc.u.ments buried within apile of doc.u.ments, and you've signed it all away."

"You two must have talked . . ."

"Battled."

"What does she say? I mean . . ."

"She says I owed it to her. She says I'd have been nothingwithout her. And you know what she told me when it becameclear that she'd swiped everything I had? She said to me, 'That'sthe price you pay for being a piece of Tinseltown trash.' "

Dreama, not a shrieker, shrieked. "Tinseltown?"

Larry continued paying the rent on Kelton Street, but he toldSusan his accountant would only let him do it for one moreyear or until Susan had her own income again, if that camesooner. Jobs were hard to come by. Casting agents knew shewasn't a skilled actress and didn't think her marquee value can-celed out her bad acting. Lessons did nothing to improve herskills, and the fact she was even taking lessons made her a sub-ject of snide whispers in cla.s.s. Larry seemed to be giving her farless attention, too, not because of her unbankability but because he knew that Jenna was the root of the problem.

By the end of the Blooms run, Susan overheard Kenny the di-rector say that if Susan ever got a role even as a tree in the back-ground of a high school production of Bye Bye Birdie, it would beas an act of pity. The taping of the final two-hour episode was abad dream to which Susan returned over and over.

"Susan, dear, you've just learned your father has prostate can-cer.Your face looks like you're trying to choose between regularor extracrispy chicken. Let's do a little wakey-wakey becausewe're close to union overtime, okay?"

The cameras rolled: "Dad, why didn't you tell me before?Why all the others but not me?"

"Cut! Susan, you're not asking him 'Where is theTV Guide?'You're asking him why he didn't share with you the most im-portant secret of his life."

The cameras rolled: "Dad, why didn't you tell me before?Why all the others but not me?"

"Cut!"

Susan stopped again.

"Susan, lessTV Guide and more cancer."

"Kenny, can I use some fake tears or something? This is ahard line."

"No, you may not use fake tears, and no, this is not a hardline. Roger? Give me my cell phone." A bored P.A. handed him aphone. "Susan, here's a phone-would you like me to give youa number and you can simply phone this line in? Or would youlike to do it for the camera, for which you're being paid?"

"Don't be such a p.r.i.c.k, Kenny."

The cameras rolled: "Dad, why didn't you tell me before?Why all the others but not me?"

"Cut! Roger? Please bring Miss American Robot here somefake tears."

Soon Susan began going to parties each night, not becauseshe was a party hound but because her celebrity status ent.i.tledher to as many free drugs as she wanted, as long as she toleratedbeing fawned over or mocked by the substance suppliers.

* I can't believe Susan Colgate's here at this party.

Basically, for a gram she'll go anywhere inLA. County. For an ounce she'llbe the pony that takes you there.

As time went on, she learned not to stand outside the kitch-ens, where the acoustics were better and where she was morelikely to hear the worst about herself. She had far too much freetime on her hands, and with it she began to obsess about Larry.One early evening when Susan was feeling particularly alone and the phone hadn't rung all day, she decided she was sick ofbeing iced out of his life, and went to his house. Larry had men-tioned that Jenna would be away that night at her mother'sbirthday in Carson City.

Susan knew that if she tried to use theintercom at the gate, or open the front door, she'd be frostily ig- nored. She cut through the next-door neighbor's yard, oncehome to a prized Empress Keiko persimmon tree, and ap-proached the house from the back patio.

She was shortcutting through the yard when suddenly theplace flared up like Stalag 17. Five Dobermans with salivameringues drooling down their fangs formed a pentagramaround her, and what seemed like a dozen Iranian guys withMarlboro Man mustaches circled the dogs, handguns drawn.She saw Larry amble out onto his veranda next door wearing hispostcoital silk robe, the one he'd stolen from the New Otaniback when he'd been negotiating the j.a.panese TV commercialdeal. A naked little fawn named Amber Van Witten from theTV series Home Life scampered out after him, eating a peach.

Larry yelled to the Iranians, "Hakim, it's okay-she's one ofmine," and the Iranians, gaping at Amber, called off the dogswho, happy as lambs, bounded toward Susan to smell the urinepuddle at her feet.

Larry beckoned Susan into the house. She followed him intohis den, where he made Susan sit on a towel he placed on the fireplace's flagstones, making her burn with humiliation.

"Susan, it's over."

She started to say, "But Larry," but her pants chafed, the urinehad gone cold, and Amber poked her head in through the wal-nut wood doors. ("Oh, hi Susan.") Susan stopped speaking.

Larry said that he still wanted to be friends-and then Susanreally did realize it was over. Larry said he had an idea, and thathe could use Susan's help if she was willing to go along with it. He'd begun managing a new band out of England called Steel Mountain-"head-banger stuff for mall rats." There had been a screw-up at the Department of Immigration and Naturalization,and the band's lead singer, Chris Thraice, needed a green card oran H-1 visa. If Susan agreed to marry him in order to get himinto the country, she could earn 10K a month, live at Chris'shouse-no more Kelton Street-and have access to the social scene as something other than unbankable former child star Su-san Colgate. So she asked him what the catch was, and he saidthat there wasn't a catch, that Chris was a closeted gay, so shewouldn't even have to deal with s.e.x.

A week later she married Chris in Las Vegas-cover of People ina black, almost athletic, Betsy Johnson dress. She'd never had somuch coverage of anything like this in her career. Music was in-deed a whole new level.

She toured 140 concerts per year: all-access laminates; catered vegetarian meals; football arenas and stadiums. Everywhere theywent little trolls out on the fringes pandered to their mostvaried substance needs. It was fast and furious but full of deadspots and time holes in Hyatt suites and Americruiser buses and airport business lounges. Susan felt like she was in a com-fortable, well-stocked limo being driven very slowly by a drunkchauffeur.

Larry was around full-time, but he was business only now;fun was over, or rather, fun had moved on.

s.e.x was easier for Chris to find than for Susan. If Susan had liked stringy-haired ba.s.sists with severe drug problems and colon breath, she would have been in luck-but she didn't. The only thing that kept heraround was access to free drugs, but a few well-placed ques-tions to the people out on the scene's fringes allowed her to setup her own supply in Los Angeles, and she camped out atChris's s.p.a.ce Needle house in Los Angeles.

"I'd introduce you to my lesbian friends," said Dreama, "butI don't think you'd find what you're looking for. And how canyou continue to let yourself be in such a phallocentric and ex-ploitative situation?"

Susan ignored Dreama's PC dronings. "Chris tells me I shouldjust phone up hustlers and bill them to the company. What ahypocrite he is. He found out I was seeing other guys-or atleast trying to-and he turned into the Killer Bunny fromMonty Python because I was putting his green card in jeopardy.If he were to walk into the room right now, we'd probably rip each other up."

"There ought to be some way for you to meet somebody."

"The only way anybody meets anybody in L.A., Dreama, isthrough work, which I don't have."

Just under three years into their marriage, Chris had an al-b.u.m tank. In the magical way of the music industry, SteelMountain was, out of the blue, over. The record company with-drew support, money shrank and Chris had to start playingsmaller arenas and cities, and he accrued the bitterness that ac- companies thwarted ambition. Susan saw his snide side. Chrishad his lawyer pay Susan her monthly 1 OK in the form of twohundred checks for $50, and then the checks started comingless frequently and there wasn't much she could do about it.One morning Susan went out to her car-a pretty little Saab convertible-and Chris had replaced it with an anonymous budget white sedan which Susan called the Pontiac Light-Days,"it's like driving a tampon, Dreama."

A year later Susan had a new agent, Adam, who took Susan onas a mercy client. He owed Larry fourteen months' rent on of-fice s.p.a.ce his B-list agency rented from Larry's holding com-pany. He phoned and told Susan she had a big break, that ayoung director with a development deal at Universal wantedher to play the deranged ex-girlfriend in a high-budget actionmovie he was making. "Susan, this kid is young and he is hot."

"What's he done?"

"A Pepsi commercial."

There was silence from Susan's end of the line. Finally sheasked him, "What's it called?"

"Dynamite Bay."

"Why do they want me?"

"Because you're an icon and you're-"

"Stop right there, Adam. Why me?"