Down and Out in Beverly Heels

by Kathryn Leigh Scott

  By the time that article appeared, I’d discovered my house had been mortgaged at almost twice its value and was no longer in my name. Since Paul was the property expert, I had been happy to take his advice and willingly signed whatever he put in front of me.

  After Dirck, who left me to pay bills and balance our joint bank accounts, it was a relief to have a husband so skilled in financial management. But Paul was already in “whereabouts unknown” (in the company of Mexican bandits? Goons from a drug cartel?) when credit card bills, for accounts in my name that I knew nothing about, poured in, each maxed to the limit with airline tickets, limos, clothing, jewelry, and dining charges, to say nothing of substantial cash withdrawals.

  The sailboat mentioned in the clipping was Paul’s, confiscated along with his leased automobiles, a Land Rover and a Porsche. I’d closed my eyes to excesses that should have sent up red flags. Whenever I gently pointed out to Paul that he didn’t have to pick up every dinner check, he’d say, “It’s the cost of doing business, baby.” That was also his excuse to lavish acquaintances with spectacular flower arrangements, cases of vintage wine, and expensive trinkets from Tiffany’s. Despite having two luxury cars, he’d hire a limo to attend a midtown business meeting, or charter a helicopter to show property.

  “You got to make people think big! The sky’s the limit when you’re sellin’ dreams,” he’d say, slipping into the backwoods drawl that disarmed everyone. “It’s just dirt out there, baby. That’s all they’re gonna see if I just putt-putt them up to the site in some ol’ jalopy.”

  I’d laugh in agreement, happy enough to have him wrap his arm around my shoulders and squeeze me close. Sitting in the jalopy I now call home, I cringe at the thought of that embrace. I roll down the window for more air.

  After Paul’s mortgage scheme became front-page news and his property seized, I hid out in the Baskins’ pool house, “unavailable for comment.” I brought with me only the clothing and personal belongings Carol and I could hastily box up. I managed to dump cartons of files and papers in Dougie’s garage, but neglected to pack up possessions of greater value—my grandmother’s rocking chair, a small writing desk, a water-color, among many other significant items—that are now lost to me forever. It would not have occurred to me to tuck a painting under my arm on my way out the door. But at the time, I didn’t fully realize how serious my situation was.

  I stow the clippings in the trunk and pull back onto Mulholland. Either Paul’s dead, killed by cartoon banditos, or he faked his disappearance, making off with all the cash and loot I could stuff into a grocery bag for his accomplice to pick up. Who knows how much more he salted away somewhere in embezzled funds? Is he really still alive? Enough people are trying to find him to make me think so.

  All I need to play a murderess tomorrow is to think about Paul robbing me blind even as I thought I was saving his life. But then, I’d give anything to have back the man I thought I married. I’m struck once again by parallels between my own life and that of the character I’m playing, both of us deceived by husbands we loved. The difference, of course, is that my character is haunted by remorse for killing her husband and his mistress because they duped her, while I suffer regret for having played the willing fool. How differently would I have reacted if I’d discovered the deception before Paul disappeared?

  I’m halfway back to Donna’s house when my cell phone rings. I pull to the side of the road and rummage in my handbag. The melody becomes louder, more insistent. I seize the little monster, flip its lid, and shout, “Yes? Hello?”

  “Sorry, did I catch you at a bad time? It’s Jack Mitchell.”

  “Hi. Sorry, I just couldn’t find my phone.”

  “I hope you don’t mind my calling.”

  “No, unless I’m being indicted or something.” Easy, Meg, why so hostile? “Sorry, joking.”

  “I don’t think you need to worry. I’m out at the beach, and I was just wondering if you might join me for dinner at Chez Jay? That place on Ocean Avenue.”

  “Not tonight, I’m afraid. I start shooting tomorrow.”

  “Right, I remember. Well, maybe we could make it an early dinner.”

  “Thanks, Jack. Maybe another time.”

  “Promise?”

  “Absolutely. Another time, okay? After I get this behind me.”

  I flip the lid on the phone and pull back on the road, wondering exactly what I meant by needing to get “this” behind me. The pilot? Or the whole business with Paul that’s beginning to haunt every waking moment? It’s being stuck in limbo, waiting for the next growly voice on my cell phone, the next scary note on my windshield. Why couldn’t they have found his damn body so everyone could get on with their lives?

  I reach the fork in the road at Mulholland and Coldwater Canyon and on impulse pull into the TreePeople nature preserve. Minutes later I’m hiking along a shady path, my footfalls silenced by a thick cushion of chipped bark and pine needles. I try to empty my mind and think of nothing, which has the effect of opening a floodgate of unwelcome thoughts.

  For starters, I face the fact that my decision not to join Jack at the beach had a lot to do with the cost of the gas to get there. My half-tank will have to see me to Pasadena and back tomorrow. What fresh hell is this—weighing fuel consumption against a meal at a favorite restaurant with a man I find more than a little attractive?

  Would I have met Jack at a restaurant that was only two minutes away? I consider calling him back, but I can’t make myself do it. Even with the outside chance that over a bottle of decent Cab Jack might reveal more about The Coop II—or, more enticingly, himself—conserving fuel wins out.

  Wearing jeans and an old flannel jacket, my hair still damp from the shower, I tiptoe down the stairs, careful not to wake up Donna and her six dozen baby dolls. I sip a few mouthfuls of coffee, sling my bag over my shoulder, and head out into the cold night air.

  I’m stoked and ready for the day, my anticipation revving up as I turn on the ignition. Before releasing the brake, I run my wipers over the silvery dew on the windshield.

  “Hey, fella,” I murmur as my headlights pick up the brush of a tail, then the slinky gray body of a coyote loping across the road toward the eucalyptus. He turns his head, as though curious to know what mortal would venture out at this time of the morning. Just me, a lucky actor with an early call.

  Less than a mile up the road I crest Mulholland. Across the valley floor, the San Joaquin mountains rise majestically, crowned with dawn’s golden glimmer. In a rush, the night sky fades from starlit indigo to velvety purple, then bursts into shimmering lavender. I travel along the ridge, then turn down the Valley side of the canyon, no other car in sight. By the time I reach Ventura Boulevard, morning has bloomed, revealing a world of strip malls, fast-food joints, and gas stations.

  Within minutes, the road is teeming, the freeway ramps jammed. Who are all these people, and where are they going at this hour? Surely they don’t all have makeup calls. I glance at the page of location directions in the passenger seat, then at my watch. If I don’t get lost or stuck in a major pileup en route, I should make it on time—but if I do run into trouble, at least I can make a call.

  I shudder, thinking back on a career full of pre–cell phone, early-morning searches for remote location shoots, usually in rugged desert locales where Westerns, sci-fi, and action adventures are filmed. More than once, hopelessly lost in a dusty moonscape of parched earth and jagged rocks, I’d tear my eyes from the narrowing road and try to decipher scribbled directions in the half-light of dawn.

  Invariably some vital piece of information had been withheld from the hurried instructions given by a third assistant director mumbling through the static of a field phone. On one occasion, “Bear left at the gas station on the other side of the hill” had left me in no-man’s-land miles from the destination and only minutes away from my call-time. There is no greater relief than coming across the temporary encampment of behemoth production trailers and knots of crew members s
tanding around a breakfast truck.

  Somehow I’ve managed never to be late for a call, but I’ve come close, and it’s always a sickening fear. If you’re late, eighty-five people wearing shorts and Nikes are left standing idle in the early-morning frost. While you’re zooming up one canyon road and down another, battling the forces of panic and doom in Location Hell, you can hear the growling spreading through the makeup trailer:

  “Drugs,” they’re saying. “She just doesn’t give a damn.”

  This morning, with plenty of time to spare, I pull up alongside a wall of location trucks parked on a leafy residential street in Pasadena. A wiry young production assistant, walkie-talkie in hand, sprints up to me.

  “Miss Barnes, morning. I’m Sean. Your dressing room’s over here,” he says in a rush, pointing toward a trailer. “We’d like to get you into hair and makeup first thing. Can I get you some breakfast?”

  “Just orange juice, thank you. I’ll get something later.”

  “You bet. Let’s get you over to the makeup trailer pronto, okay?”

  His face is anxious. I smile. “Sure. Fine with me.”

  How many times, to how many far-flung locations all over the world, have I arrived just after dawn, bare-faced with damp hair, to climb steps to a cozily cluttered trailer where I hand myself over to a hairdresser and makeup artist? It’s never an easy surrender, particularly on the first day of a shoot, despite casual introductions and bright smiles all around. Early-morning coffee has soured my stomach. Every fiber of my being resists being touched by unfamiliar hands, relinquishing control to strangers. Many times I’ve sat in a makeup chair, kicking and screaming inside, longing to slap on my own paint in my own good time. But however wary and ill at ease I feel, I’m always amazed when my face in the makeup mirror appears relaxed, trusting—my first acting of the day, and perhaps my best.

  Smiling at Silvia, the makeup woman assigned to me, I settle into a vinyl-covered chair, my fingers gripping the armrests.

  “You have gorgeous skin,” she says, stroking a creamy liquid on my temples and cheeks. “Let me know if you’re allergic to something.”

  “Thanks, but I can’t think of anything.”

  I’d certainly know by now if there was, considering the variety of war paint applied to my face over the years. I’ve even survived unblemished from four-hour makeup sessions for Star Trek, complete with green skin, pointy ears, and a protruding forehead, painstakingly applied so as not to incur the wrath of the steely-eyed production staff, who keep the covenant with platoons of eagle-eyed Trekkies the world over. If my face can handle that, anything else is a piece of cake.

  Silvia’s cool fingertips flutter across my eyes. I melt into my chair, already succumbing to the drowsy warmth of the makeup lights. She strokes, blends, and dabs, earning my trust. It’s not easy. I’ve experienced my share of calamities.

  Early in my career, I was seated in the chair of a member of a legendary family of Hollywood makeup artists. That crusty old peacock, still vain despite liver-spotted hands, had a reputation for having bedded starlets who later became screen legends. I was in awe of him… until he finished applying his Pancake No. 3, cake mascara, and tangerine lipstick.

  “Um, my eyes,” I ventured, on the verge of sobbing. “Maybe we could, um…”

  “Something wrong?” he asked gruffly. “You know how long I’ve been in this business? Hedy Lamarr never complained. Ann Sheridan never complained.”

  “Oh, no, I’m not complaining,” I assured him, looking at the beaded, waxy clumps of mascara on my eyelashes. I was playing an innocent young schoolmarm in a television Western. I left his makeup chair looking like Mae West.

  “I hope you’re not going to sneak off and make a mess of things,” he warned. “Gloria DeHaven always pulled that, and I don’t like to be called on the set to fix things. I know lights. I know the director, and I know what he likes. Know what I mean?”

  “Absolutely,” I assured him, cowed and anxious that, as a contract player, I could be replaced before my first close-up was in the can. I resisted every urge to touch my face. That makeup man is long dead, but I still have to watch vintage reruns of myself with a face that looks like two prunes stuck in a bowl of orange Jell-O.

  “Are you always this happy?” I open my eyes and see Silvia’s twenty-something face peering at me in the mirror. “You’ve been smiling for twenty minutes,” she says.

  “Sorry, am I making things difficult?”

  “No, not at all. I’ve just never seen anyone in my makeup chair so relaxed and cheerful this time of the morning.”

  Shortly before eight I’m led into the first setup, the living room of a threadbare Pasadena mansion. I’m dressed in a classic Courrèges suit, complete with tissue protecting the white collar until we’re ready to shoot. A Jackie Kennedy–style pillbox hat is perched on my pouffed-up hair.

  The authentic period set is like an attic full of youthful memories. I thumb through old copies of Life magazine and revisit my childhood world of rotary phones, a console radio, and an old stereo set similar to one on which we played Beatles and Dinah Washington LPs.

  “Wow, no remote. Can you believe it?” I turn to see our director, Lenny Bishop, gazing at a Philco television set. “Only black-and-white,” he says, shaking his head.

  “Only three channels,” I say with a smile. “And no DVD.”

  Lenny frowns. “Man, forget TiVo. How cruel is that?”

  We spend most of the morning filming the flashback scenes when my husband’s body is discovered and the police are called. The vignettes are dramatic but brief, with little dialogue. By early afternoon, we’re rehearsing my biggest scene of the day, the one in which I confront my husband about his mistress. The two have resumed their affair, which he’d led me to believe was over. I discover the deception when a bank manager questions an overdraft, and I realize my husband has been supporting the other woman by siphoning money from the business we’ve built up together. When my husband arrives home late, I’m waiting for him, knowing he’s spent the evening with her.

  The young actor playing my husband appears on the set dressed in a business suit. He’s good-looking and cocky, with an easy manner. My stand-in, a young woman of my height and coloring, has taken note of him. She rarely strays out of his line of sight, a tactic that seems to be working. They lunched together, and she’s given him a neck massage. As the day wears on, she sheds one layer of clothing after another. By the time we’re set up for the confrontation scene, she’s down to a low-cut tank top.

  While Silvia and Lori do final touchups for the first take of the master shot, my eyes are on my stand-in, who is whispering to my husband. The distraction is grating, particularly as the actor and I are already in place on the set. The edge I need for the scene has been handily provided.

  By five o’clock, I’m wrapped for the day. I head for my car, feeling as carefree as a kid waking up to Saturday. The sun lowers behind a cloud bank, and the air chills. A cool breeze flutters the collar of my shirt, but my hair, lacquered into a bouffant helmet, remains rigidly in place. I hurry toward the Volvo, key in hand. But even at a distance of twenty feet, I see that the doors are unlocked. I double-click UNLOCK, just to be certain. The buttons don’t move. Was I that distracted this morning? I’m certain that I pressed LOCK and saw the buttons on the doors drop.

  Fear laps at my throat. I consider racing back to ask one of the off-duty cops on the set to walk me to my car. At least my Volvo no longer looks like a homeless person’s flophouse, crammed tight with odd belongings, thanks to the roomy closet in Donna’s house. Still, what would the police think if I requested an escort? This is Pasadena, hardly the mean streets of downtown’s skid row.

  I glance into the backseat before pulling the front door open, then slide behind the wheel, noticing at once that the seat is too far back. The glove compartment hangs open. Someone’s been in my car. I lock the doors, my heart racing. The redhead and her companion in the green sedan must have been here�
��and one of them knows how to disengage an alarm system.

  I turn the key in the ignition, exhaling with relief when I’m not blown to smithereens. I pull away from the curb. Why would anyone want to blow me up anyway? Am I coming unhinged?

  A few blocks from the freeway ramp, just as my stomach begins to calm down, I see in the rearview mirror that the lid of my trunk is bouncing up and down. I pull into a gas station and park near the convenience store. I should have realized that anyone checking out my car would also take a look in the trunk. I lift the lid and peer into the cluttered interior packed with boxes I’d decided not to unload at Donna’s house. Someone has rifled through the folder of clippings about Paul. Papers lay scattered, not even the slightest attempt made to return the folder intact to the file box. Whoever was rummaging around in my trunk doesn’t care that I know it.

  I ease the file box out of the trunk and immediately regret it. An avalanche of boxes and bags slide into the empty space. Rather than struggle to repack in the hot, crowded parking lot, I transfer the box to the backseat, slam the lid on the trunk, and get back behind the wheel. My hands are filthy, my head throbbing. Damn!

  I pull into rush hour traffic, molars grinding. What the hell do people think I’m hiding? What information could I possibly have that anyone would want? If Paul is Coop, and he’s still out in the world, alive and well—Wait! If anger focuses the mind, the thought blasting through my brain is riveting. Could Paul himself be stalking me? If so, why? I grip the steering wheel, forcing myself to breathe deeply.

  I head down the freeway, functioning on autopilot. What could Paul want? Or need? Nothing that I can think of; still, the idea sticks. Miles later, I realize with a jolt that I have four lanes of traffic between me and my exit ramp. I clamp my foot on the accelerator, trusting my turn signal to give fair warning to everyone in close proximity.