“Diva Number Two?” Victor asked. “She’s not a bad person. She’s just in over her head. Unfortunately, she’s just smart enough to realize it.”
“I mean this flick isn’t going to totally tank, is it?” the agent asked.
“No clue at all, Joel. I saw some rushes before I left. She’s funny. And she’s surrounded by some real pros. But—“
“But . . . the script still sucks.”
“If Shakespeare was doctoring it, it would still suck.”
“Don’t say a word to anyone. Meanwhile I’ll manipulate and finagle her into another project before this can open and be seen.”
“Great idea!”
“And while we’re speaking of real pro’s, Victor Regina, you did step up and save the day. I will not forget this good deed.”
“Just get me some options on my other books. That’s my financial means for spending full summers at Fire Island Pines. I don’t give a fuck if they intend to make movies of them or not.”
“Good as done.”
All well and good. But then Victor had gone to Black Hawk Pictures with his penultimate four pages of the Justify script, as per their schedule, and that’s when it all began to unravel.
As always, Frank was in his inner office reading the pages Victor had written. But this time Sam had barely let Victor in the door when he had to leave to go to the set. He said sure the secret pages had arrived and they looked good and another under-the-table check had been deposited. But there was this undeniable distance between them, as though he had an actual right to be upset and offended that Victor had left a goddamn lousy movie to tend a dying friend. Sam was so brusque as he left the office that Victor almost told him off.
Just then Frank came out and Victor, still fuming, said, “You know, Frank. I’ve beaten up straight boys before. If that one,” pointing at the door where Sam had exited, “isn’t careful, he’s next.”
Frank was astonished by Victor’s aggressiveness. (Andy Grant had once told him, “For a faggot, you’re a little too macho sometimes. I think you take your name a bit too seriously.”) He apologized profusely for Sam, probably out of guilt knowing that he himself was responsible for his Production Assistant’s case of Cosmic agita.
“These are good pages, Vic.”
“No notes?” Victor asked.
“Tiny ones. But I think it’s now time to talk about the ending.”
So they sat down and discussed the ending of the script of Justify My Sins.
That was when weft and weave parted company.
As Victor might easily have predicted many moons ago, indeed, as he had predicted to Mark only last week, Frank suddenly performed a Hollywood-About-Face, compared to which a man falling from Mt. Everest and transforming into an eagle and flying away is but the slightest of variations.
He prefaced it by saying, “We’re bringing the new shoot in at budget. More or less on time. Everyone’s happy with it.”
For a brief moment, Victor wondered if they were talking about the same film. This was like Frank saying “black is white, and always was white.” But hey, Victor was a big boy, and he could accept bald faced lies as well as the next guy. “Everyone” being the key word, after all, and meaning, he guessed, the studio money men and administrators, who were, of course, co-financing the new production, and would doubtless also co-finance Justify.
“But . . . ?” Victor cautiously lifted a bare quarter-inch the lid of Pandora’s box.
“But . . . while they loved the scenario, they found it ended a bit too starkly.”
“Too darkly?”
“Well, that too.”
I.e., it was not a “happy ending.” Duh and double duh.
The appropriate response—and as a rule, only the Yiddish have an appropriate response for this kind of tumultuous and total disaster—would be: “Oy, veys mir!” But Frank’s a goy, right? So, he wouldn’t get it and sat there waiting for Victor’s response.
Now let us review the previous four months as though it were bunched up into a flash-forward reel, speeded up four or five times, and I think you’ll agree that Victor had very little to complain about. He’d lived like a king, in great weather, for free. He’d gotten Primo construction worker dick. He’d had various kinds of fun. He’d beached, sunned, and mostly he’d been overpaid for work he’d done, and better yet, for work he’d never signed on to do. He’d become friends with a big macher film director, a hot show biz agent, and a very famous TV actress. This was not—putting it all into context—chopped chicken liver
“So, what do we do now?” Victor said, as though he was nineteen years old and never been fucked up the rear and so was unaware that particular activity was at that moment about to occur (we’re speaking metaphorically, natch).
“Well . . . let’s try to find a”—Frank didn’t say the dreaded phrase—but instead uttered “a finale more palatable to the studio. Not to mention one for the two actresses who’ve seen half the script and expressed interest.”
From there on, our hero, Victor, was totally Missing In Action. Had Frank been queer, or known Victor better, or cared more, the key would have been that Victor didn’t even bother to ask who the actresses were.
They spent the next three hours trying to work out a “palatable” ending.
Let’s hear it for Frank. With the thirty pieces of silver all but weighing down his tweed trousers, he got up and gave a really good show. He had an idea for a final scene. They discussed it, wrote dialogue together, and acted it out. No go. They tried another tack and wrote more dialogue together. Not good. He came up with another possibility. It stank. And another, even more ingenious. Even worse.
Still, it seemed like work, and it seemed as though, if they kept at it, they actually might accomplish something. So when Sam returned and knocked on the door and stepped into the office, Victor attempted not to glare daggers at him, but instead smiled, even though he suddenly sensed strongly that Sam Alan Haddad was behind what they’d been wasting time on for the past few hours. Sam needed to talk to Frank, and Victor said he had to leave, and Frank followed him out saying, “Spend some time on it. Feel free to call me with whatever comes up. Anything at all. I’ve always got time for this.”
Of course, Victor did foolishly spend some time on it—about an hour—then he phoned Mark who instantly said, “That lying fuck,” and threatened to come out himself and deal with the turncoat. Then Victor phoned Marcie, who said, “What did you expect, Vic? They lie like rugs! You always knew that.” Victor called Gilbert who said, “You mean you aren’t going to play the building supervisor in the movie?” Vic had to let him down gently, saying that in case there actually was a movie (which was looking more dubious by the second), of course he’d be in it. He’d insist on being named Gilberto and wear a big Puerto Rican moustache. That mollified his sick friend who quickly wandered out of this misfortune and into some others which seemed of equally crucial importance to him although they involved blue rather than yellow plastic pudding cups at lunch, since minor dementia had definitely settled in for the duration.
By the following week, Victor handed in the last rewrites on the Disaster of the Decade, and subsequently saw the zeros rise in his savings account. He sunbathed a lot, and had more sex with Jared, and he even went to Basic Plumbing. He lunched twice and laughed a lot with the MGA, and once with Joel Edison. When Thursday came up, he was getting ready to drive downhill into the “Golden Triangle” when Sam called to say Frank had to cancel their script meeting as they were so close to wrapping up shooting on the other film.
That went on a second week. And a third. Clearly, Frank hadn’t come up with anything viable as an ending either.
One morning Victor received a piece of mail from a company he’d never heard of saying that the house lease would be up in nine days and he sighed in relief and instantly phoned and made plans to fly back to Manhattan without saying anything to anyone in La La, because why bother, it was all over, wasn’t i
t? Why make a scene?
So here he was, a day before he was headed back East, with—to be ruthlessly, depressingly candid—yet another bigger, even more expensive, even more fabulous, potentially even great film project based on his second novel. And it was dead, dead, dead!
Which might explain why he’d come to Basic Plumbing having dropped a Quaalude and smoked a long joint of quite good Sinsemilla weed, hoping for a final total sex and drugs blow-out.
Alone in a nearly empty building, shaken by gusts of wind and rain, on an early May Sunday afternoon at 3:16 p.m.
At last, the front door was flung open, and the doorman almost fell off his chair with surprise. From where he was, Victor couldn’t see who had entered. Then, a minute later, the inner door was flung open and he could see very well: a tall, auburn haired, rock-star handsome man of about thirty with an amazing body, followed by an African-American version of same with an even more astounding body.
In an instant Victor’s gay brain did the math and the read-out was: Pro footballers, off season, looking for action on the down-low.
He leapt up, almost tripped, caught himself and headed out into the maze surrounding the little rooms.
The next ten minutes was like a bad joke. He did finally get face to face with the first guy, who looked back at him, as he turned a corner. Then the black guy who had a to-die-for two day beard caught Victor in his arms and said, “Hey, bay-bee. Where ya goin’?”
“You’re together, right?” Victor asked. “Him and you?”
“Not necessarily.” Seeing it was the wrong answer, he amended it to, “We could be.”
“Since we three are the only ones in here,“ Victor said, “I suggest you find your friend we work something out for all of us to do.”
This was sealed with a death-grip hug from “LaMarr” and a tongue thrust which stopped roughly inside Victor’s upper esophagus, which Victor took as an assent.
They ended up in the single long room, and in the (slightly altered) words of Edward Gorey’s immortal tome, The Curious Sofa, after some poppers being opened and some pants being pulled down, “many were the moans, barks and giggles” that ensued over the next twenty minutes.
Evidently the two Offensive Rams had merely been the spearhead of a rush on the place and everyone else who had followed them in could see—via the Mylar ceiling, not to mention the many glory holes accessing the center space—exactly how hot the triple action was. Victor remembered at one moment being something like the bologna in a white bread and pumpernickel NFL-Pro sandwich, as others’ hands suddenly came out every hole as though in a second rate Ingmar Bergman movie, reaching and grabbing and wanting some of the action. After he’d orgasmed twice, and had done pretty much every combination possible with the two Sport-Adonises, Victor staggered out of the room—two other guys squeezed their way in as he left—and, trying to get his clothing more or less back onto his body in the correct places, he stumbled his way over to the lounge.
He’d just managed to get more or less together, had even stepped into the excuse of a lavatory to wet down his hair, when he heard:
“Why Miz Vic-tor! I never ’spected to see you here!”
Joel Edison. Of course.
“What are you doing here?” Victor asked back.
“I heard there was a scene and a half going on with some major meat from the Sports World. Someone I know phoned from the Shell station across the street.”
“Go right, then left, it’s the third door.”
“Directions from the very person who has just exited such a scene. As I might have guessed. And left what slim pickings?”
“The guys had about a tenth of load left each when I vamoosed.”
They could hear a loud moan, which Victor recognized as coming from “Bart” quickly followed by another from “LaMarr.”
“I’d guess the pickings have been picked clean by now.”
“Just my luck.” Joel said. Then, philosophically, “Well, one of them was probably a friend of my brother’s, anyway.”
They sat down and Joel opened a Thirties silver cigarette case that Flynn might have borrowed off Harlow and removed a joint that he tamped tight and lit up.
“I heard you’re headed East soon.”
“9:45 a.m.,” Victor specified.
“Shame. We coulda done great things.”
“Sure. Right.”
“No, really. You were just with the wrong people.”
“Then put me with the right people!”
“Gay-boy poontang,” Joel said.
“Wha-at?
“That’s what my older brother and his teammates call coming in places like here and getting off with fellows, or going to some bathhouse in Kansas City or Denver after a game.” He was slurring a little. “‘Hey lil’ bro,’ he’d say, ‘We got us some first rate gay-boy poontang t’other day. And it was as good as gash poon!’ And they’d all laugh, thinking to shock me, thinking I didn’t know shit about what they were saying.”
“You’re kidding . . . You’re not kidding?”
“Not. But I am now leaving here. You should too.”
Out on the street it had stopped storming. The sidewalks were littered with blown down palm tree husks the size of a Vespa and about as sturdy.
“The very bad boy at Frank’s office is going to call you and apologize. I have it on the best of words.”
“Who cares anymore?” Victor said.
“You should. He’s going places, that one. He’ll count some day. You watch.”
“Maybe. But he’s the one who pretty much ended my film project.”
“Come on. If the other’s a hit, it’s completely on again. Full blast. That’s how it works. And anyway, you knew it had a shaky chance at the long run from the get-go. Admit it.”
“I guess I always did. And you know why. Because it’s just too good. Too smart. Too real.”
“All of the above,” Joel admitted.
Just then the two NFL Pros exited Basic Plumbing. LaMarr saw Victor first and they headed over.
When they reached him, Joel was gone.
“Hey man! We want your phone number.” Bart said. Big smile. Big ass and dick too.
“I’m in New York.”
“Well, we kinda’ travel a lot,” Bart said, and they both laughed.
“I got a lover.”
“He hot as you?” La Marr asked.
“I think he’s hotter.”
“Well, then o-kay! Put that number right down here.”
Victor wrote his phone number.
“We can’t give you ours—” Bart began.
“I understand.”
“We’ll be out New York way by August at the latest. Got an exhibition game, right LaMarr? So check your newspapers and if you don’t hear from us, call us anyway. Go through the Coach’s office. Call and say you’re my cugino Victor. You hear me, ouaglio?”
“I definitely will call!”
“Don’t make me come find you!” Bart mock threatened.
Big hugs then and another taste of LaMarr’s pythonesque tongue.
They split and as Victor started up the Z for the last time, Joel was at the driver’s window.
“Not bad for a consolation prize,” Edison said.
He held up his hand in the Vulcan greeting. Victor laughed and tried to do it back.
Suddenly a tiny tornado arose as another cell of the storm hit. Joel ran for his Merce.
Victor turned off Sunset Boulevard and headed uphill. Once safe and dry at the hilltop house, he looked back at the storm over the lower part of the city, lightning striking down around the basin area that he’d left not twenty minutes before. He was amazed to see the bolts were not only extremely theatrical-looking in their shapes, but also strangely, almost grotesquely, electrically pink.
“It’s Hollywood,” Victor said aloud. “Why can’t the lightning be hot pink!”
ACT THREE
1999: RED LIGHT
,
GREEN LIGHT
We represent the lollypop guild,
The lollypop guild.
The lollypop guild!
--The Wizard of Oz
CHAPTER TWENTY-seven
Spider webs covered every square foot of the shoulder-high Jade Tree hedges surrounding the half dozen Hollywood Boulevard houses down the hill on the other side of Laurel Canyon. It almost looked as though they’d been sprayed with those cans of fake gluey gunk sold around Hallowe’en to make everything look aged, long-abandoned, and “scary.” But it was a week after New Year’s, and Victor Regina knew the webbing was real, despite the industrious ministrations of weekly Mexican-born landscape minions and enthusiastic home gardeners: another bizarre response of southern California natural life to the meteorological madness that was El Nino.
That specific weather pattern had arrived early the previous Autumn, eliciting great fanfare from the SoCal media. And as Victor himself had arrived then himself, this time for good, he’d noted it without paying it proper attention. From his viewpoint as a Manhattanite, weather was something you endured momentarily from the subway to the movie theater, from the taxi to your front door. The occasional snow storm that stopped traffic and closed schools, the once-in-a-decade hurricane that came as a dramatic caesura, was something to talk about later, once it was over. It was seldom actually experienced, never mind important.
But here, weather was all around you, because in truth, and especially if you were like Victor, relocated fairly high in the hills above West Hollywood with enormous windows facing three directions, weather was an all-dominating factor. Not a problem as a rule, since the weather was ordinarily temperate, clear, and sunny by day, with mists in the mornings, some fogs at night, with rain from January through March, at the most.
But since this past November, and with increasingly serious weirdness, weather was becoming an unwelcome character in the narrative of his new life. Now he went out with an umbrella and raincoat in the car, no matter how sunny and clear it looked from his extensive view over the L.A. Basin. Who knew what he might possibly encounter an hour later? The ordinarily drab and predictable weather that could as a rule be seen by satellite coming across the Pacific Ocean for five days in a row, and that could be described almost hour by hour by experts, was now transformed into pretty much totally-up-for-grabs. Every minute variation in the jet stream once it passed the Juan de Fuca Straits (Juan, the Straight Fucker, Victor called it) somewhere north of Seattle these days gave him much pause. This season drew unsuspected lines on the otherwise bland brows of the Weather Blonds of nightly television news, all those previously unfrazzled Fritzes and sunny Sonnys and undrummed upon Toms. Hell. Victor could hear the thread of semi-thrilled fear in their voices as they fore-omened all sorts of bizarre weather monstrosities headed toward him out of the skies. No wonder Victor felt like he’d wandered onto the set of some unreleased Spielberg movie.
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