The Hollywood Trilogy

by Don Carpenter

  “What happened to the movie?” I asked. “Did it get made?”

  “Sure it got made. There sits Irving, knowing that Max can’t lose—he’s out from under the cost of the script and into profits, and if the movie by some miracle happens to succeed, he gets more from his percentage. Irving is stuck with making the picture to see if Max has screwed him royally, or if Max by some as yet unknown sense of what clicks with the public knew that this lousy script, plus this half-talent actor, will hit the public right in the eye. Sure it got made.”

  “Well,” said Jody McKeegan, “drop the other shoe.”

  “This is the real point of the story,” Karl said. “We don’t know, or at least you don’t. I happen to remember, because I was home from school that summer and I was aboard the yacht to Santa Barbara.”

  “You mean I just told a true story?” Gregory said, with a look of surprise.

  “Sure it’s a true story,” Karl said. “Handsome Harry used to come over to the house every Saturday morning that summer to play billiards with my father, Hell, Max gave him his career. The picture was a big hit, a smash.”

  But Karl wouldn’t tell us the guy’s name. “What difference does it make?” Karl asked. “The man’s dead now.”

  “I DON’T get it,” Jody said. “Was Harry faking, under Max’s direction? Acting? Or did he really refuse to work for Max?”

  Gregory patted her hand. “Doesn’t matter, does it? Suppose the kid really was the kind of idealist who would refuse to work for Max because of principles? If so, then Max said exactly the right things to him aboard the yacht: reminded him he wasn’t going to starve, no matter what, and then all but accused him of excessive vanity, that he was just another egomaniac playing the game.”

  Chet laughed. “He wasn’t buying an actor, he was selling a screenplay.”

  JIM LOOKED at me. “And so, by following a path of virtue, Harry became a star.”

  “And died,” I said.

  CHET EUBANK was talking to the table at large, but it seemed to me he was dwelling on Sonny.

  “Suppose it went this way,” he said. “Suppose you were a public figure, no, not just a public figure, but the subject of a myth, partly of your family’s making and partly swelling up out of the people’s need for mythic figures. And partly from the extraordinary nature of your martyred brothers. Suppose also that you were the clown of the family, the one who always got caught, a fixed position for you, glittering in the public eye, but always with your hand in the cookie jar. Now, with the martyred and worshipped brothers dead but far from gone, the family’s power demonstrated to be stronger than that of many governments, sometimes including our own, you see yourself, will-I, nil-I, propelled into the center stage. People who never gave you a thought now cry when you touch their hand, and states you’ve never visited call you Favorite Son.

  “But there’s even more boiling under the surface: one brother has a sexual reputation that gives deep unconscious power to the myth, a young god trampling the boundaries, a genetic masterstag, Adonis to the women, Achilles to the men. In the public eye you are all devils with the women, no matter what the reality, and so one night you find yourself in a car with a young woman, she could be a secret concubine—the public would expect no less—or she could be a stranger—the myth would allow for that, too—on your way to a necking party, a tryst, whatever develops, and find other hands on the wheel, driving you into the cold dark fastrunning waters of death.

  “The two of you escape from the car, and you can only wonder at the lubricity of your position, once again the comic, once again, with wet and baggy pants you pratfall on the world stage and everyone has a good laugh: ‘Well, they’re not all gods!’ It takes a couple of hours for the two of you to make your way back to the party, and then more time is spent in confused and in some cases drunken congratulations and speculations, time, precious time, rolling past as you grow dryer and warmer and try to think of a way to keep this one botched attempt to be dashing out of the papers.

  “And then they discover the missing girl. The girl who had been known to crawl into the back seats of cars at parties to sleep off the effect of a couple of glasses of beer. The girl who is missing.

  “The others, as you rush to the water’s edge, hope for the best, all except you. Your knowledge is based on a lifetime—you know she is in the car, you know she has passed from sleep into death, you know the trouble to come, that there will be no way to explain this, that all explanations are the same, that you did this and you will be blamed, and the blame is yours.”

  “So what this fellow is afraid of,” said Gregory, “is not assassination but fucking up.”

  Chet looked as if Galba had hit him across the face with a whip—I saw the look because he turned toward me to keep Galba from seeing it. He composed himself quickly and smiled at us all and said, “Yes, I suppose so. At any rate, he’s a damned good politician, probably a better legislator than either of his brothers . . .”

  “But a fuckup,” Galba said.

  Chet sighed. “Yes,” he said.

  Sonny looked entranced. We had been exchanging under-the-table handclasps and toe-touches early in the meal, but not recently. I sent an exploratory toe out in her direction, but all I got was a wink from Jim.

  “I want to sing a song,” Jim said. His eyes were glittering. “I want to sing about tits and ass.”

  He stood up.

  “Tits and ass,” he sang, “tits and ass, raise a glass to tits and ass . . .”

  We all raised our glasses, but I could see that Chet was a little offended by the language, and maybe the way Jim was stepping on his moment.

  Galba noticed, too.

  CHET AND Karl tried to keep things on an elevated level by talking more politics, but dinner had been running a long time and we were full of wine and food. Good old Gregory Galba put an end to the politeness for once and for all by tilting slightly in his chair and letting a series of explosive farts. It was worth it to have been there, just to see the various expressions, from Karl’s sudden closing of his face to Chet’s genuine shock. Galba showed his teeth to Chet:

  And lo! he let flee a fart,

  Both great and terrible,

  And smote them full in the face. . . .

  Jody McKeegan laughed immoderately, and Chet looked down at his plate.

  Gregory said, “What’s the matter, Chester, don’t you recognize Geoffrey Chaucer? I thought you were Harvard, class of ’52. . . . Don’t they teach you the dirty parts?”

  “The ‘Miller’s Tale,’” Chet said softly, “I’d forgotten that . . .”

  “The trouble with you, Chester, is that you’re a contradiction in terms, a political gentleman. You’ve probably never even killed anybody.”

  “At least not by that particular means,” Chet said mildly, and the laughter was full of relief, but Galba would not be put off. He laughed too, drank some wine and refilled his glass. We were all tinkling over our wine and coffee, etc. Galba lifted his glass to the rest of us:

  “Here’s to tits and ass, without which none of us would even be here.” Before he raised the glass to his mouth he said to Chet, “How about it? Are you willing to admit that a pair of nice glossy tits next to you in a warm bed is worth all the literature in the world?”

  The comeback would have been easy enough, but now I saw what Galba had seen, that Chet wouldn’t get dirty, wouldn’t say certain words in front of women, that he was fighting with one hand tied behind his back, so to speak. And Galba was trying to hack off his head.

  “‘Sing, Muse, of the wrath of Achilles,’” Chet said in that mild voice, “I suppose you’re right, because there, in the very first line of Western literature, you have a man so angry over having a woman taken away from him that he refuses to fight beside his allies . . .”

  “Mighty interesting,” Gregory said. He had drunk his wine by now and a shiny streak of it crossed his chin and made it look in the candlelight as if he was drooling, that mean heavy unrelenting face. “I
t was tits and ass then, and it is tits and ass now.”

  “Particularly tits,” Jim said. “I love tits. I would do almost anything to kiss them, fondle them, even just look at them for a while. My God, here we are, sitting in the same room with three pair of tits, in some cases barely concealed but in all cases magnificent in their shape and, um, attack, shall we say, and yet we manage to talk of other things and look in other directions. Tits! Do you realize that when you were a baby, your mother’s tits were the size of your head? Your first experience with food, with sex and with the sublime, all at the same time. goddamn!”

  “Don’t get carried away,” I said. I was starting to feel a little embarrassed for the girls, although to tell the truth, they didn’t seem to mind as much as Chet did; in fact, they didn’t seem to mind at all.

  “Big cocks are important, too,” Jody McKeegan said.

  “That’s where you are wrong,” Galba said. He appeared to be enjoying himself now, and not so much on the prod for Chet Eubank. “You are completely wrong, as you are on almost every possible issue, my dear, my sweet poppin, because if you were right, men would go around wearing clothes that showed off the size of their cocks the way women go around wearing clothes that show off their tits. No man ever got into a really high place because of his cock size.”

  “You have it all figured out,” Jody said with a grin, “but you surprise me. I didn’t know you noticed men’s cocks all that much . . .”

  “This conversation is descending a bit, don’t you think?” said Karl. He was wearing an amused but willing to move on expression, and I could see the tip of his little finger lightly tapping the base of his champagne glass.

  “Yeah,” Jim said, wickedly charming. “Let’s get back up to the tit line.”

  “You know,” Chet said, “that’s one of the astonishing things about China. Sex really doesn’t seem to be as powerful, or maybe it’s because the government has taken such complete control of the individual’s sex life that the whole thing has gotten buried into the unconscious . . .”

  “Yes,” Galba said. “And then in a few years, everybody in China goes crazy and runs amok, raping and bayoneting everyone else . . .”

  “Things are changing,” Chet said.

  “No, I admit you’re right. By then the P.L.O. will be in charge of the world government, and they will do the raping and bayoneting.”

  “I wouldn’t mind getting in on some of that,” I said, but nobody laughed.

  A SERVANT came in and whispered to Karl.

  “Good news,” said Karl. “The picture’s here. They’re racking it up now.” He meant the movie we were supposed to have seen before dinner with the crowd of people who were now gone. “Why don’t we take brandy and coffee in the screening room?”

  “Beats popcorn,” Jody said. Gregory Galba stood up, looming over all of us, and went around to hold Jody’s chair out for her. She gave him one of those hot looks over her shoulder and they brushed against each other, and for some reason this made me like Galba in spite of everything, in spite of knowing him for years without hearing him say anything I agreed with, of working for him, of being patronized by him, snubbed, bored; that one little tickle of eroticism between him and Jody wiped it all out. He was just another guy with half a hardon.

  But it turned out that something was wrong with the workprint we were about to see, the director himself was in the projection booth fiddling around with the first reel, blah blah, I didn’t bother to listen but took a good big shot of brandy in a champagne glass and topped it with icecold champagne and wandered outside into a patio off the dining room. The moon was riding high in the west, no clouds, a warm Southern California night, the strong smell of some kind of nightblooming flowers almost but not quite too heavy. I found a bench in the darkness of an overhanging cluster of vines and sat down.

  It was pleasant to be alone for a few minutes. It wouldn’t do Sonny any harm to know that I was not always totally nuts about her, but had moments of sanity. Thinking about her, about the way she conducted herself, not trying to impress everybody, not trying to hold her own with the heavyweights and so holding her own quite well, like the other actress whose name I had either never learned or had forgotten, and you do not ask an actress her name. They had done pretty damned well and I felt warm for them both. But it was Jody who came out and sat next to me on the bench.

  “God, fresh air,” she said. “What are you drinking?”

  I told her. “I learned to drink this in Japan. We used to call it The Tokio Cannonball. Booze was cheap, no U.S. taxes to pay, so what the hell, Armagnac for breakfast, champagne, Canadian Club . . .”

  “Let me taste it.” I gave her the glass.

  “I think it’s called a French ’75 in polite society.”

  “Pretty good.”

  I offered to get her one but she said no, and we just sat there side by side looking out at the moonlit patio.

  “This is a beautiful house,” she said. “God, it’s nice to have money.”

  “Amen.”

  The trouble is, I wanted very much to fuck her. It was wrong of me, it was bad, it was evil, it was even goddamn dangerous, but nevertheless I wanted to throw her to the bricks.

  She looked at me and laughed. “Gimme another sip,” she said. She laughed again and I felt her fingers on the back of my neck, gentle. She leaned in and kissed me.

  “Maybe someday.” She got up and walked away.

  When I went back inside and down to the screening room, Sonny was sitting between Karl and Chet, with the other actress behind them, all laughing and chatting merrily. But Sonny looked like a kid after Jody McKeegan, her face unformed, her laughter almost too innocent. Jody and Galba weren’t in the room, and Jim was sitting off by himself, down close to the screen. I flopped down beside him.

  “Is he in there?” I asked.

  “Who? Oh, Max? We should look.” But neither of us got up.

  “What’s delaying things?” I asked.

  “Maybe they’re waiting for Max to zoom in,” Jim said. “I don’t know, but I’m getting mighty bored. Mighty bored.”

  I had nothing to say to that, so we just sat there and waited. Finally the lights went down, and the picture started. In the first five minutes I could tell that it was not the kind of movie I would bother to go see. Fortunately for me, a splice came undone and up came the lights again.

  Chet walked down the aisle. “Let’s go get a drink,” he said. I didn’t bother saying all we had to do for drinks was get on the phone, I just got up and followed him out.

  “THE PRESIDENT really likes Larson and Ogilvie,” Chet said. We were sitting in the little bar off the living room.

  “You mentioned that before,” I said. “Much thanks to the President.” Chet was sipping his brandy, so into the silence I said, “You know, it’s really nice to know somebody out there is watching.”

  “Well, I should tell you that when he learned I was going to be in Southern California for a few days, he telephoned me and asked specifically if I would be running into you fellows, and if so, to be sure to convey his best wishes.”

  “Well now that is flattering,” I said.

  “For me I think it’s wonderful that he gets to sit down and relax with a film, even some television, if only for a couple of hours. Just a little relaxation, some laughs, can make all the difference.”

  Come on, I thought, drop the other shoe. What I said was, “That’s what we’re here for.”

  “Have you ever visited the White House? I know you haven’t met the President because he mentioned the fact, almost wistfully, as if he hoped he could meet you.”

  “No,” I said. “Never been there. We never even made Nixon’s shitlist.”

  Chet laughed and looked at his watch openly. “I wonder when the picture’s going to be ready.”

  “I’m not all that sure I care,” I said. “Big day tomorrow.”

  “So have I. I’ll be calling the White House early in the morning. Do you have any message in
particular?”

  “Um, hello, and keep up the good work?” I said, and he laughed again.

  “As a matter of fact I’ll make it even warmer than that, because I know that he’s just like anybody else when it comes to being a fan, and in fact I think you might expect an invitation to the White House, the two of you, of course, sometime later this year, when things aren’t quite so busy.”

  Thud.

  I remarked about how flattering it all was and how I was sure Jim would be delighted, just as delighted as myself, and how I wanted Chet to be sure to convey to the President Jim’s and my delight at the prospect of an invitation. Neither of us brought up the question of exactly when. He changed the subject to our old troopship, the U.S.S. Mann, and had me laughing at his description of the two-week poker game they conducted in the newspaper office, and then told me a couple of stories about life in Washington, looked at his watch again and said, “Well, back to the film, I suppose,” pouring a little brandy into his pony.

  “Don’t cork that,” said Gregory Galba. He came in through the curtain and sat down next to me, elbows on the bar, glass extended. The back of his rug was up, so he must have been scrooched down in his theater seat in the screening room. Chet and I exchanged looks. Heh heh.

  “Pour a good honest shot, Chester, none of your conservative ways here,” Galba said.

  “Yes, sir,” Chet said, and poured.

  “That’s a good boy. You must have been a waiter back at Harvard.”

  “Too busy studying the Orient,” Chet said. He looked pleasant, except maybe a little grim around the mouth.

  “You work with Ed?” Galba said.

  “Worked with Ed,” Chet said, his expression closed now. “Time to get back to the movie, I suppose,” he said.

  “You go ahead, I want to talk to Ogle,” Galba said, taking charge of the room and everybody in it. He patted me heavily on the back. He assumed a droll obscene expression. “Saw you out kissing my lady friend, Ogle,” he said. “What’s going on here?”

  “We plan to elope,” I said. “You weren’t supposed to know.” But the hair on the back of my neck was standing up, and I could feel sweat popping out on my forehead. Not, I hoped, enough to show.