“Unless, of course,” Joel Edison temporized to Victor, “you’re there. She trusts you implicitly,” he added on the phone, the third call so far that day. “No clue why.” He then asked, “What are you eating?”
Victor wanted to answer back, “Choice Georgian pecker,” but it was only 11:25 a.m. and he wouldn’t get to that morsel until after 3:30. It was becoming increasing clear that he was going to have to forego his afternoon treat today.
“She trusts me because I’m a fine and intelligent man. And I’ll go if you insist, Joel.”
“I insist.”
“And so it shall read on your tombstone, Joel. Remember I’m only doing this for you.”
Not to mention the extra weekly income.
So he got into the Z after shrugging elaborately in the general direction of the roofer, as though to say he had no idea when he’d return, and headed over the hill, enjoying the long death-spiral down Beverly Glen Boulevard’s other side. He succeeded in achieving that daring drive using his brakes only four times—a record!
The MGA was in her dressing room, fully costumed and made up and supposedly prepped for her scene, Sam said.
Victor arrived wearing a navy turtle-neck over which he’d thrown a gray Irish tweed jacket with suede patch elbows. He’d stopped to buy a pipe, which he left empty, but held in his mouth as he entered the supposedly busy but actually dead-stopped set.
“Who are you supposed to be?” Sam asked, “David Niven?”
“Do I look like him?”
“Kind of.”
“Or do I look like someone’s shrink?”
“Ahh! Clever!” Sam pointed Victor to the MGA’s dressing room.
“Thank God you’re here!” she said, looking around to see if anyone were watching—they were all busily, pointedly, not watching—then pulling him into the big shallow mobile room. “No one understands the problem!” she all but wailed.
The “problem,” as Victor saw it, was that Daddy—i.e., Frank—was off with another girl—i.e., Miss North Shore—and so couldn’t give all of his time and attention to the MGA.
So he did. For thirty minutes straight.
He told her exactly what was wrong with her. She cared too much for other people; she cared too much what other people thought; she put herself out too much for other people. All lies of course. Yet she all but wept as she acknowledged these glaring personal faults.
He told her what she had to do now: show them all up; let them see she was strong and independent; make sure they knew who they were dealing with; give the performance of a lifetime. Everything he knew she was utterly incapable of doing.
Later on, with Mark, he’d describe the conversation and Mark would describe it back to Victor as “sounding highly testicular.”
But— He did succeed in getting the MGA out of the dressing room and onto the set and into the scene, with the Assistant Director, Sam, and himself all there watching her do it, with cameras, sound people, lights, and etc. all taking it down on celluloid. In fact, the MGA was on such a roll she did a record-low twelve takes before the A.D. and Sam declared they were happy with the result and then she kissed them all before flouncing back to her dressing room to learn the next scene and think up another round of general agita.
To Victor’s astonishment and instant mortification, once the scene was done, Frank and Miss North Shore were also revealed to have been on the set for at the last few takes, and they came over to the three younger men.
“Slumming?” Frank asked Victor.
“I invited him,” Sam said as the A.D. skedaddled away lest he be caught in a lie.
“He might as well get used to a shooting set,” Frank admitted. “We may need him next time around.” Another unveiled reference to their own project, now already at Act Three, Scene Two, script wise.
“I never cared for it,” Miss North Shore admitted. “Too cold and draughty on set,” she explained, looking at Frank as though he were responsible for the forty foot ceilings. She was dressed in some kind of vaguely equestrian outfit today. Tam-like cap, pullover, boots, all in earth shades right down to her tan, under-the-boot fitted pants. She exuded a kind of Amazon glamour. Several of the grips and the middle-aged Best Boy Electrician were staring. Victor hoped she and Frank were finally doing it. He decided that if she once called Frank “snookums,” he’d murder her on the spot.
Victor excused himself, and after a short talk with Frank, Sam walked him off the set. “They’re not staying. He’ll be back tomorrow. That was a real life-saver, Vic. God, she almost acted today.”
“Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.” Victor replied airily. “Blow me in the back of a limo when it premieres and I call it even!”
But driving back home through winding canyon roads that rose precipitously, twisting and turning as in some daft analogy to his stupid life, Victor kept thinking how he had earlier that week rewritten at least sixty percent of the dialogue in that scene shot today. How could they not notice? Not Frank? Not Miss North Shore? They were bound to someday. Soon. It was a dangerous game, and he had to wonder how long it could possibly last before they discovered it and crucified him.
He arrived home and fixed himself a mind-deadening triple-Stoli on the rocks and was done with it, staring at a strange and muted sunset, when the phone rang. It was Gilbert’s boyfriend, Jeff.
“I spent all day getting him admitted to St. Luke’s today. Pneumocystis carinii. He’s on Keflex and a steroid and some other drips. But he’s been in and out of what looks like a coma for several hours now and . . .”
From the background noises, it was clear Jeff was speaking from a hospital corridor pay phone.
A week ago, Victor would have predicted exactly this phone call; receiving it satisfied nothing in him.
“He said your name three times,” Jeff addded. “He can’t urinate. They’ve got him on some kind of . . . His kidneys are shutting down.”
“Hang up the phone, Jeff, so I can get a plane.”
“Wait. I’ve got to—”
“Hang up the phone, Jeff. I’ll catch the first plane out of here and come right to the hospital.”
“Can you do that? Won’t it be—?”
“Hang up the phone, Jeff. Wait.” He looked for and found Mark Chastain’s schedule. “First, call my lover, Mark, at this number. Tell him you need him there and that it’s a legal situation.”
“A what? Let me get a piece of paper.”
“Use the admission sheet.”
“Oh! Right!”
“Do what I said, Jeff. Call him. Do what I say, Jeff, now, or I’ll hit you very hard when I see you. Which will be in about seven hours. Do you hear, Jeff?”
“Okay. Okay. It’s just that I’m just kind of . . . you know. . . It’s all so sudden and all so . . .”
“I know, Jeff. I know. Now hang up the phone. Call Mark, and wait for me at the hospital. It’s Intensive Care, right?”
“Yes. Thanks. I thought I’d know how to handle it all when it came to us. But it’s too much, Vic. It’s just too much, waiting down there all day in that pit, while he got sicker and sicker and no one cared and . . . !” Jeff began crying and Victor told him to be strong and hung up the phone.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!”
At the airport, the V.I.P. lounge had free phones. Victor used them to leave messages for Frank, Sam, Joel Edison, the MGA, and Andy Grant, who’d known Gilbert when they were all boys together.
He arrived at the hospital at six a.m. the next morning.
Mark was splayed out with his law books on the ICU corridor floor, studying. Jeff was slumped napping against one shoulder.
“I’m sorry I made you come, Mark, but he was a complete mess when I spoke to him on the phone.”
“He was when I arrived, too. You did exactly the right thing getting me here,” Mark said. He extricated himself from Jeff and they went in to look at Gilbert.
“The intern said he passed som
e urine through a catheter and he’s been hydrated again. He’s doing a little better. So that crisis is passed.”
“Hey, sleepy head.” Victor kissed his friend’s desiccated face. “You look like shit! If you’re not careful I’m taking photos and blackmailing you for everything you’re worth.”
Gilbert didn’t really wake up, but he said Victor’s name so he somehow knew he was there. Victor held onto his hand until he began snoring again.
They found an empty cot for Jeff to sleep on, then went to sit in the waiting room, together watching the sunrise reflected in the downstairs windows. A few others were there sleeping, covered with coats. While breakfasting on coffee and crullers, Mark stared at him.
“What?” Victor asked.
“You’re so tan!”
“Head to foot,” Victor declared. He stood and modeled, pulling down his pants a few inches at the waist. “With no tan line.”
“You’re kidding!”
“I had a top floor deck. Lotsa privacy. And if a certain law student plays his cards right, he’ll get to see every scrumptious inch of perfectly tanned epidermis.”
Mark pulled him onto the waiting room sofa and they kissed. A Latina coming through the waiting room noticed them and laughed “Ay! Hijos. So early in the day!?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-six
”Is that you, Andy?”
Victor hadn’t seen Andy Grant in what? Two months? Three? And Andy had changed. He’d dropped twenty pounds. He’d gone to a gym. He’d shorn the beard and clipped the hair to near normal. He was wearing recognizably gay male oriented clothing. His long front locks even looked frosted. No? Could they be sun-streaked? He looked great. As he should, even on a dull, rainy, Sunday afternoon at Basic Plumbing. He was also half staggering out of the place with another guy twisted around his body like ivy around a redwood.
“Hey!” Andy recognized him too. “You’re back? I’m flying out Wednesday to the East to see Gilbee!”
“Good! He’s better. But . . . I’m glad you’re going.”
“Yeah. Good. See you.” Andy was being manipulated by his vine toward the front door. “Sorry! I got the last guy here!”
Then they were gone and the rain hammered down on the tin roof and the place seemed even colder and emptier than it actually was. The kid behind the front screen was sawing Z’s like someone three times his age, and even trusty old “Michel de” wasn’t helping today.
Victor had returned to Los Angeles some ten days ago, once Gilbert had been declared out of “immediate danger” and released from ICU to a double room at St. Luke’s.
In the week and a half he was in Manhattan, Victor had managed to set up a strong support network for his friend that he could join when he returned. He’d also managed to have three “serious conversations” with his over-studied, sex-starved lover, who, after a lengthy and loving perusal of Victor’s entire and entirely tanned body, would have agreed to almost anything. In turn, as a sign of his support, Victor promised Mark he’d be back in New York in less than a month, before the dreaded Law Boards.
He met half of the other studiers, seeing for himself that none of them was a threat. The three women, including the tardy Angelica, were all clearly head-over-heels infatuated with Mark, as any sensible woman would be. If any of the Law Board guys were gay, they hid it well.
Victor had many talks with Gilbert in the hospital. He spent so much time in the ICU with Gilbert, alternately harassing and making friends with the staff there, that his friend really had no choice but to be completely open with him. Victor was completely open with him right back.
At Victor’s instigation, on the next to last hospital visit Mark dropped off Last Will and Testament papers as well as Medical and Financial Power of Attorney papers. Both Mark and Victor sternly instructed Gilbert to read them through and make needed changes.
The next day, the day before he enplaned for El Lay, Victor returned and demanded to see them all, adding, “And they’d better be filled out.” Ever-practical, Gilbert had gone over and marked and signed them all exactly as he should have. An hour later, as Victor waited outside the room, the hospital social worker and notary inside witnessed the signing and made it all legal. Jeff, who was in the room, had done everything but black out.
Once Mr. Oversensitivity was shooed out of the room, Vic and Gilbert finally had a conversation like the ones they used to have: non-medical, non-nurse-like, and real! Victor began by saying, “So! Do you want a big or little funeral?”
“Let my parents do the funeral. You guys do a memorial service slash party.”
“With a big cake and hats and balloons?”
“Sure. And silver paper crowns for the queens.”
“Two hundred crowns coming up,” Victor noted.
“And you know what would be fun?” Gilbert added, “Why not have a loop of a film going in the background?”
“One film. Titled?”
“Funny Face. Isn’t that one where Dolores Gray does the big Vogue Magazine ‘Think Pink’ dance number as they travel to Paris?”
“That’s the one,” Victor said. “One movie loop. Real age on the cake? Or big lie?”
“What will I care?” Gilbert laughed and coughed. “Sure. Go ahead.”
“What about what’s his face? Miss Jeff? He was an Em-Ee-Ess-Ess until we arrived. Will he hold up?”
“I don’t know. Dope him up for the party. Oh, and why not buy him that cute porn star he likes for the evening. The Italian American bottom?”
“Two Quaaludes!” Victor notated and looked at a dubious Gilbert. “Three? Okay. And one porn star named Joey Stephano.”
“The real problem,” Gilbert looked suddenly deeply concerned, “is what we do with my devastatingly important collection of twenty-four years of Silver Screen magazines, in pristine condition?”
“When I’m back in Aitch-Wood, I’ll check around. Maybe the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences wants them.” When Gilbert didn’t register what he was saying, he added, “The people who give out the Oscars? The Academy of ‘Academy Awards’?”
Gilbert’s eyes lit up, and suddenly he was star-struck seventeen years old and dewily newly gay again. “Wouldn’t that be fabulous? I can see it now: ‘The Gilbert Onager Collection.’ Everyone will wonder who the fuck I was. Some great make-up artist. Or a deeply devoted yet unknown hair-dresser to the stars. You are the best friend in the world. How could I have gotten this far without you?”
“You couldn’t have, Gillo. Am-po-see-bluh.”
“Now tell me all about the MGA again? What does she call Frank?” He had months of questions saved up dealing with the extraordinary excitement of his best friend actually being involved in making a movie, no matter how terrible Victor said it would end up being. This, in effect, closed the other conversation.
Victor got medical power of attorney with Jeff as a second when he wasn’t available. The general prognosis—as far as one could be made with everything so topsy turvy in an immunologically defective body—was that Gilbert would have a few months before something equally horrible happened to toss him back into ICU again. Victor intended to be done with both scripts and back in Manhattan again well before that and he said so.
Easy to say in New York.
His “real life” consolidated, he flew back to California.
Once he arrived back on Mulholland Drive and checked the hundred and seventy-eight messages left on the machine (most of them repeats), he realized this would be a bit less easy to get out of, right here, on the spot.
He decided to brass it out.
Talking to Frank on the phone the first full day he was back, Victor said, “My closest friend is dying of AIDS. If he calls me again, I’m flying back. Period. I’ll work from there, if need be.”
Frank seemed subdued and vague and at last he admitted they only had two more work sessions anyway.
The MGA proved to be astonishingly compassionate. “You poor thing! And yo
ur poor friend! Yes, I’ll definitely understand if you must rush to his bedside. But of course, you’ll let me phone you there and bitch a little, won’t you? Please! Please,” she begged.
“Only if you do so while wearing a steel-ribbed brassiere and speak dirty with a Viennese accent.”
“I’ll miss you. You’re such a card,” she delightedly trilled the last word.
Sam Alan Haddad was a little less sweet. “We are this close to utter disaster, you know. These past ten days while you were gone, the Beast With Five Heads”—Miss North Shore, formerly Miss Hot Pants Script Writer—“also left. I had a drained, depressed, and energyless Frank on my hands to deal with.”
All this while script pages had shot back and forth betwixt the two coasts via telex and overnight mail, Victor sometimes working next to Gilbert’s bed, moaning in frustration at the thinness of the material he was supposed to tinker with.
“Sam, you’re going to heaven with your shoes on.”
“What are you talking about?”
“That’s what my little old Italian grandmother used to tell us kids whenever we’d done some good and selfless deed. I guess having shoes was a big thing back then.”
“I am so close to snapping, Vic. And you’re talking about grandmothers and shoes?”
“Why don’t I come right over there to—where is it you live? Westwood?—and give you a naked hot oil massage? Believe me, Sam, you’ll be far less stressed afterward.”
It took Sam a half a minute to understand what Victor had said.
“Ummm. Ummm. I’ve got someone coming over in about ten minutes.”
“Great! Then let her do it,” Victor said and hung up
Victor retold that little piece of dialogue to Joel Edison, who was next in line to be called back.
“That one will need more than one hot oil massage, believe me. He’s a walking advertisement for ‘Uptight.’” Then, “Listen, she’s almost human. And it’s all thanks to you.”
Justify My Sins Page 21
