Everyone who knew Jack knew that Emma had been part of his family. As it turned out, Miramax arranged everything for him--including the car to the airport. Erica got him his ticket; she even offered to fly with him. It wasn't necessary for her to come with him, Jack told her, but he appreciated the offer.
There was another call to Jack's room at The Mark that morning. Mimi Lederer had been right--room service was confused by his breakfast order. Although he'd stopped shivering, Mimi had gone on holding him as if he were her cello, until the phone rang that second
time.
"I don't give a rat's ass about the yogurt," Mimi heard Jack say into the phone. "Any kind of yogurt will do."
"Are you okay, Jack?" Mimi asked.
"Emma's dead," he snapped at her. "I guess I can worry about the fucking yogurt another day."
"Are you acting?" she asked him. "I mean even now. Are you still acting?"
Jack didn't know what she meant, but she was covering herself with the bedsheet as if he were a total stranger to her. "What's wrong?" he asked.
"What's wrong with you, Jack?"
They were both sitting up in bed, and Jack could see himself in the mirror above the dresser. There was nothing wrong with him, but that was the problem. Jack didn't look as if his best friend had died; on the contrary, he looked as if nothing had happened to him. His face was a clean slate--"more noir than noir," The New York Times might have said.
Jack couldn't stop staring at himself--that was a problem, too. Mimi Lederer said later that she couldn't stand the sight of him, not at that moment. "You're not in a movie, Jack," Mimi started to say, but Jack looked at her as if he really were Billy Rainbow. "Why aren't you crying?" Mimi Lederer asked him.
Jack couldn't answer her, and he was good at tears. When his part called for crying, he would usually start when he heard the A.D. say, "Quiet, please."
"Rolling," the cameraman would say; Jack's eyes were already watering away.
"Speed," said the sound guy--Jack's face would be bathed in tears.
When the director (even Wild Bill Vanvleck) said, "Action!"--well, Jack could cry on-camera like nobody's business. His eyes would well with tears just reading a script!
But that morning at The Mark, Jack was as tough-guy noir as he'd ever been--on film or off. He was as deadpan as Emma when she wrote, "Life is a call sheet. You're supposed to show up when they tell you, but that's the only rule."
That was what Jack Burns was doing--he was going to L.A., just to show up. He would probably hold Mrs. Oastler's hand, because he was supposed to--those were just the rules.
"Jesus, Jack--" Mimi Lederer started to say; then she stopped. Jack realized, as if he'd missed something she'd said, that she was getting dressed. "If you didn't love Emma, you never loved anyone," Mimi was saying. "She was the person closest to you, Jack. Can you love anyone? If you didn't love her, I think not."
That was the last Jack saw of Mimi Lederer, and he liked Mimi--he really did. But she didn't like him anymore after that morning at The Mark. Mimi said when she left that she didn't know who he was. But the scary thing was that Jack didn't know who he was.
As an actor, he could be anybody. On-screen, the world had seen Jack Burns cry--as a man and as a woman. He'd made his mascara run many times--anything for a movie! Yet Jack couldn't cry for Emma; he didn't shed a single tear that morning at The Mark.
It was still pretty early when he left the hotel for the airport. The front-desk clerk was a young man Jack hadn't seen before--probably the same young man who'd put through Alice's call. Of course the clerk knew it was the Jack Burns--everyone did. But as Jack was leaving, the clerk called out--his voice full of the utmost sincerity, of the kind that young people express when they genuinely want to please you. "Have a nice day, Mr. Rainbow!"
As it turned out, Jack had been wrong to envision Emma's death as a heart attack, which typically has some familiar symptoms antecedent to death--like sweating, shortness of breath, light-headedness, and chest pains. But Emma Oastler died of a heart condition called Long QT Syndrome; an inherited disease, it affects the sodium and potassium channels in the heart. (This, in turn, leads to abnormalities in the heart's electrical system.) Emma died of a sudden arrhythmia--ventricular fi-brillation, her doctor told Jack. Her heart suddenly stopped pumping; Emma died before she was even aware of not feeling well.
With Long QT Syndrome, often sudden death is the first indication of a problem. In sixty percent of patients, a resting EKG would indicate an abnormality, which would alert a doctor to the possibility of the condition. But the other forty percent would have completely normal examinations--unless exercise EKG's were used. (Emma's doctor told Jack that Emma had never had one.)
Her doctor went on to tell him that a fatal episode could be triggered by a loud noise, extreme emotion, exertion, or an electrolyte imbalance--which, in turn, could be caused by drinking alcohol or having sex.
The boy from Coconut Teaszer--whose name would never be made public--said that Emma had collapsed on him so spontaneously that he'd thought it was simply the way she liked to have sex, which he was having for the first time. He'd done exactly what Emma had told him to do; he hadn't moved. (He was probably too afraid to move.) After he'd managed to extricate himself from Emma's last embrace, the kid called the police.
Given the genetic nature of the syndrome, Emma's surviving family would eventually be screened for it. Leslie Oastler was the sole survivor, and she showed no signs of the abnormality. Her ex-husband, Emma's father, had died several years earlier--apparently, in his sleep.
"What a pisser," as Leslie would put it.
Jack arrived home before he had time to prepare himself for Mrs. Oastler. On the plane, he'd been thinking about Emma--not Leslie. (He'd been considering his lack of emotion, if that was the right word for what he lacked.)
Leslie Oastler was all over Jack, like a storm. "I know Leslie," Alice had said. "She'll break down, eventually." But Mrs. Oastler's grief was not yet evident--only her anger.
Leslie greeted him at the door. "Where the fuck is Emma's novel, Jack? I mean the new one."