I hoist my knees onto the bar stool, lean in, and plant a wet one on his kisser. “There’s a place in heaven for you, buddy. But not anytime soon.” I climb back down, not at all sure what I meant, but Jimmy’s eyes mist over, so I couldn’t have gone too wrong. I make my way through the kitchen, pick up my chili, and leave another smacker on Eddie’s cheek.
“Take it easy,” he says, his lips settling into a pucker around missing front teeth. “You get yourself back here more often, you hear?”
“You bet, Eddie.” I suspect there’s probably a slice or two of corn bread in the brown sack with the container of chili. I stow the bag next to me on the front seat and pull out of the parking lot, heading toward the canyon.
Things could be worse. I have a job and a full belly. My tires are holding up. Moths haven’t got at my good suit. Unlike legions of casualties of my hippy-dippy–turned–yuppie generation, I don’t crave drugs or booze. I don’t have to attend twelve-step meetings or visit a probation officer. I don’t even have to face a vengeful former husband: The first one is a vague memory, and the second is dead… I hope.
I crest Mulholland just as the sun blazing low on the horizon shows Hollywood what Technicolor means, a riotous Looney Tunes rainbow that’s missing nothing more than “Th-th-that’s all, folks!”
I pull into my favorite lay-by at the top of the canyon, my sense of well-being expanding. I don’t owe anybody anything, and I have all the time in the world. I bound out of the car, my eyes traveling across the mauve-shadowed hillside to the far reaches of misty coastline where twenty-six miles across the sea, Santa Catalina is a-waitin’ for me…
I hum a few bars, rocking on my heels, picturing the island coming into view as I tack hard to the right, sails billowing in the strong breeze. Abalone for dinner, a dry white chilling in an ice bucket, and the sea glittering with fresh-tossed diamonds—who wouldn’t feel like a rich lady?
A chill breeze sweeps down the hillside. I close my eyes against the dust swirling across the road, and turn away. The euphoria I felt moments ago vanishes, along with my view of the faraway coastline. Harder to block out is my mental image of the thirty-two-foot WindStar, now docked in some stranger’s boat slip.
I poke the toe of my sandal in the gravel, kick hard, and send a dusty spray into the weeds. A rustling erupts in a scrubby patch of sage. I’ve disturbed some small creature’s peaceful sanctuary, and I feel even worse. Live and let live, or at least do no harm.
I look to the right, taking in the scarred hillside and flattened ridgelines ringed by massive walls of concrete. Bulldozed mounds of earth, scraped up from a cavernous pit in the hilltop that’s now half-filled with briny sludge, stand lumped along a rutted pathway. Tattered yellow flags, staked into raw earth, delineate six foundation pads at staggered elevations in a vast, graded expanse. Now an abandoned construction site, it was once meant to be my dream house, with views stretching from the mountains to the sea.
But first it was to be a model home, custom designed to lure the fabulously rich to the other villas Paul would build atop the canyon. He dreamed of turning that steep and unstable slope, best suited to mountain goats, into a gated, terraced community of luxurious mansions. He told me so on our second date, when he parked his four-wheel drive where the asphalt ended and the rock-strewn path began.
Before I had a chance to unbuckle my seat belt, Paul was already standing on the hillside, pocketing his car key. For a big man, he was surprisingly agile. Every motion easy, stoked with power. He rolled up his sleeves and looked back at me, the sun glancing off the bronzed slope of his forehead. “C’mon, sugar. What’re you waiting for?”
My heart lurched. I reached for the door, breathless to keep up. He slung a blanket under his arm and binoculars around his neck, and we were off. The two of us hiked, his hand reaching back for mine, as we climbed up the slippery hillside to the topmost point of the ridge.
“Where you’re standing right now, sugar, God help ya, that’s what you’ll see every mornin’ when you wake up,” he’d said, swamping me with his bluegrass charm. “And the stars at night, you’ll want to hold out your hand and let ’em tickle your fingertips, that’s how close they’ll feel.” He put his arm around me, a burly mass of muscle that tugged me close and made my knees go weak.
“Everyone tells me it’s impossible, but they’re wrong. I know I can build up here. We’ve got the means, the technology. We can actually move mountains, if we have the will to do so.” His voice in my ear spoke to my soul.
“What’ll it take to make it happen?” I breathed.
“I just need someone to believe in me,” he whispered.
That was the sucker punch, the Ayn Rand call to arms. By then my soul had conveyed a message to a moistening, always receptive organ in my nether regions that took it from there. At the other end of the circuit, my brain received an urgent S.O.S.—he needs me!—then promptly shut down. I’d like to be able to say that Paul didn’t take me then and there, but that would not be true. The blanket came in handy; the binoculars did not.
Like a hound dog marking his territory, Paul laid claim to me in the rugged terrain he promised we’d inhabit one day. Meanwhile, looking up at wide, blue sky, my back pressed into the warm earth, I laid claim to ecstasy in CinemaScope. Afterward, Paul and I made our way back to his four-wheel drive and sped away to my own house in another canyon. For more of the same.
I shiver, not just from the night air. Below me, smoky shadows obliterate the modest bungalows and tract houses dwarfed by the concrete retaining walls Paul built to hold his dreams. The folks below awaken each morning in the shade cast by the Great Wall. At night, they can no longer see the stars. Wildlife that once flourished here has moved on to more-open territory.
I climb back into the Volvo and join the last of the rush hour traffic heading toward the Westside from the Valley. By now, a messenger will have delivered my script, and there will be free parking available on a side street near my agent’s office. I punch up a Diana Krall CD, good downhill listening, and practically coast straight to my destination, traffic lights favoring me all the way.
A note attached to the script I pick up gives me pause: Location shooting is in Pasadena. That means gas money and early makeup calls. Adjustments in my living arrangements will be necessary if I’m to be on the road, bathed and well rested, before six every morning.
I’m still considering my options when I pull into a parking spot at my health club, the best bargain outside of happy hour. At the particular time I was contemplating my bleak, bankrupt future, Carol mentioned that she was joining a new health club and wondered if I wanted to be her “buddy.”
“It’s that dangerous?” I asked.
“Spare me. It’s just this special bring-a-buddy offer for the opening. It’s a twofer, so if I join, you get in free, but you’ll have to pay a portion of the co-monthly. You want to go for a ‘complimentary’ and check it out?”
We did, and I jumped at it, especially since I was allowed to take an extended leave of absence. Even now, I can’t believe my luck. It makes my life possible. Validated parking. Opens at five a.m., closes at eleven p.m. Everything’s laid on: showers, shampoo, towels, deodorant, hair dryers, hand lotion, and lockers. There are even bowls of cotton balls and safety razors. The place is big enough to be anonymous, and no one cares how often I come, how long I stay. Behind the sauna and steam room there are lounge chairs that no one else seems to have discovered. I can work out, hang out, a cell phone connecting me to the outside world. There’s also a wall outlet I can use to recharge the battery.
Of course, I never see my “buddy” Carol at the club. She uses her gym at home and books a trainer three times a week.
I take an eight o’clock Zen Stretch class, then curl up on a lounge chair with my script. Eating at me is how I can make it into the club for a shower and still beat early-morning traffic for a makeup call when I film in Pasadena next week. Every move requires careful planning these days.
S
hortly before eleven o’clock closing, I retrieve my car and head for my old neighborhood. The 1930s-era Spanish bungalow I once called home has been transformed into something resembling a massive pink Taco Bell without the neon sign—or perhaps one is on order. The first time I passed it, soon after moving in with Sid and Carol, demolition was already in progress. I somehow stopped myself from scaling the chain-link fence to beat off the workmen tearing away at her. Instead, I slumped down in my car and watched as they stripped flesh from her bones, leaving her exposed to the midday sun. I’d bought the house at a bargain price—with earnings from my first network series—from the estate of an early-talkies screenwriter. Being stripped of the first and only home I’d ever owned was more than I could bear. I left town a few days later, feeling as though my heart and soul had been torn from my body.
I park up the street in a cul-de-sac off the main road. Then, my overnight bag slung on my shoulder, I slip through a break in a boxwood hedge. In the shadow of a sycamore tree, I pause, listening to the sounds of the night. The lights are off in Marjorie Singleton’s house. I don’t know Marjorie well, though her garage was our customary neighborhood polling station. Whenever I voted, it was in that clean, spacious garage, her Bentley parked on the street to make way for a bank of polling booths. I’m sure Marjorie, if she knew, would be only too happy to extend a neighborly welcome to me.
It’s Wednesday: Marjorie’s son, who lives in Encino, is home with his family and won’t stop by again until Friday afternoon, when he’ll bring her Chinese takeaway. I know the rituals; I’ve watched Jake Singleton come and go. This is a safe night, and all is quiet.
I follow the flagstone walkway around the swimming pool, past the rose bed, and turn the knob on the side door to the garage. Inside, I slip quietly along the west wall to the workbench Marjorie’s long-dead husband built, and set down my carryall. I plug my laptop and cell phone into an outlet to top up, then move through the darkness to Marjorie’s Bentley. She rarely drives it anymore.
I toss my sleeping bag into the backseat, then strip off my jeans and sandals. I always sleep in a T-shirt and underwear, my shoes and pants handy in case of an intruder. Tonight I can pack in a good six hours and be gone before the gardeners arrive. On those nights when I’ve had to spend the night in my own car, I remain fully clothed, doors locked, windows open no more than a fingertip wide.
Usually I find a spot on the street around Holmby Park, the gates to the late Aaron Spelling’s former mansion within spitting distance. Should his ghostly presence be hovering above his former abode, I can imagine his bemusement at seeing me camping out a stone’s throw from his old bedroom window. I still get residuals from his shows, blessed checks from repeats of mindless fluff that pay my car insurance and buy me another month at the health club. But those nights parked on the street, hiding under spread newspapers, even with the tinted windows, are the tough ones, the only time it really hits me that I’m homeless.
More accurately, I am without a home. I am not actually a homeless person. I always manage to have a roof over my head, even if it comes with four wheels and a dashboard. I’m not a bag lady, a bum. I’m not a thief, though I suppose I’ve stolen a few pennies’ worth of kilowatt juice from Marjorie. But the backseat of an old lady’s car is only temporary accommodation, not home, sweet home. I awaken too often in the night, dozing more than sleeping.
I slide my legs deeper into my sleeping bag and hug my arms for warmth, trying to stop the rat-wheel of worry in my head. I am far from complacent about the fix I’m in. When I bump my head against the carryall, a whiff of chili hits my nostrils. Would a slice of Eddie’s corn bread put me to sleep? I drift off, savoring the thought while my mind roils in a stew of anxiety.
Little wonder I’m propelled into one of my agonizing furniture dreams. Like any actor, I’m plagued with the usual panic dreams, such as: I arrive on the set and don’t know my lines because a) I wasn’t sent a script, b) I was sent the wrong script, c) I forgot I had the job. I’ve had flying dreams, falling dreams, climbing dreams, naked dreams, and losing my purse/ticket/keys dreams like everyone else, but I hate owning up to having furniture dreams. I’ve never known anyone to say, “Boy, I sure had some furniture dream last night!”
Essentially, in this takeoff on a chase dream, I’m forced to jump from end table to dining table to sofa to the tops of various appliances, packing boxes, assorted chairs, and coffee tables. I used to think clutter was the problem, so I worked at being ever more organized and tidy. I still had the dreams. Then came a revelation: It turned out furniture was the basic problem.
I discovered it by accident. My first husband, Dirck, a self-described pack rat, and I were separated for several months early in my career when I was hired for a role in a miniseries shooting in Los Angeles. He remained in our New York rent-controlled apartment to do an Off-Broadway play. I moved into an unfurnished two-bedroom maisonette in West Hollywood and bought only bare necessities: a mattress, pillow, two sheets, a blanket, and some strictly utilitarian household goods. I lived that Spartan style for six months, blissfully happy.
No furniture, no furniture dreams. No husband, either. But I wasn’t willing at the time to think Dirck might be the problem, even though the man never entered the apartment without bringing in something newly bought and never, ever discarded a single thing, including expired grocery coupons, empty coffee tins, egg cartons, broken appliances, and, indeed, furniture that was no longer of any use whatsoever. He’d saved every birthday card given him since childhood, each year’s bounty in separate, neatly labeled packets. The space under the bed in our cramped New York apartment took on aspects of a landfill. My first husband’s hoarding knew no bounds.
After my second marriage, when Paul moved into my Coldwater Canyon house, he brought with him only a laptop, a garment bag, and a small suitcase. He bought vast amounts of goods and services, but mostly as business-related gifts. His closet was spare. He was not the sort to accumulate stuff in drawers and cupboards. Who says you marry the same man twice?
A variation on the dream started up again after Paul vanished. Furniture, as it turned out, was not the problem this time. Indeed, belongings, and the lack of them, became a problem. For weeks after he disappeared I searched the house hoping to find among Paul’s few possessions some clue to the man I apparently had not gotten to know at all well through courtship and almost two years of marriage. He left nothing of consequence behind, and I came to realize there’d been nothing in the first place.
Tonight—whether it’s Doug’s mention of Paul or fumes from Eddie’s chili—my furniture dream attacks with a vengeance. I jump from place to place, urgently searching for something just beyond my reach. I hurtle through the maze of furniture, topple off a file cabinet, and feel myself falling, arms outstretched, my stomach churning in panic.
Moments later—or is it hours?—I’m fully awake and alert, every fiber of my being a listening device. What is it? What did I hear? My heart bangs in my ears as I strain to sort out the sounds. The irrigation system kicking in? A squirrel on the roof?
I slide free of my sleeping bag and reach for my jeans, sure now that what I’m hearing are footsteps falling softly on the flagstone walk. Who’s coming for me? Who in hell knows I’m here?
I zip my jeans and pull sandals on my feet. I daren’t open the door: The Bentley’s interior lights will turn on. My heart flutters as the doorknob turns. I fumble inside my carryall, my fingers closing around a small can of pepper spray. I don’t even know that the aerosol works. The container is old, and I’ve never had occasion to test it.
The garage door scrapes open. A beam of light arcs across the windshield. A male voice booms, “C’mon out. Now!”
I peer above the leather seat, directly into the beam of a flashlight, and raise my hands, my thumb curled around the small can of pepper spray. “It’s okay. It’s just me. I’m coming out.”
“Whatever’s in your hand, drop it. Just step out slowly.”
I dro
p the can. It clatters on the cement floor. “I’m sorry. Is that you, Mr. Singleton? Please, I don’t mean any harm.”
“Just who the hell are you?”
“Uh, Margaret. From the neighborhood. Just down the street. Look, I had a fight with my husband, and—”
“Don’t bullshit me. My mother’s seen you sneaking in here before. I told her to call me if she saw you again. What the hell’s going on?”
“I’ll leave right now. I won’t be back, I promise.” My voice is barely a whisper. In the flare of the flashlight beam I see my laptop and cell phone plugged into the wall socket a good three feet away. I can’t leave them behind. My mind races, plotting escape scenarios as I slowly hoist my carryall on my shoulder.
“Where do I know you from? You look like—”
“The neighborhood, that’s all. I just needed a place for the night.” A gate squawks noisily, followed by the fall of heavy feet. “The police? You didn’t call them, did you?”
“It’s the patrol guys, what do you think? Of course we’ll call the police.”
The information flashes through my brain. It’s only the security bozos, not the police—yet. The flashlight beam plays across the floor of the garage. My eyes adjust. I see him now, a sandy-haired man in a windbreaker. I slide my foot closer to the workbench.
“Where do you get off thinking you can just break in here? What’re you, crazy?” His voice sounds plaintive. Not angry. He glances over his shoulder and edges toward the door. Outside, plodding closer, shoes scrape and slap the flagstone walk.
“Mr. Singleton, I’m very sorry.” I drop my voice, aiming for a register that sounds calm, in control. “Please give me a chance. I can explain everything. Please don’t call the police. Please don’t file a complaint. Trust me. Please.”
“You know what you’re asking? This is breaking and entering. You know that, right?”
Down and Out in Beverly Heels Page 4
