The Hollywood Trilogy

by Don Carpenter

  “I hope you can afford her,” he said. “One of the goddamnedest women I ever met.”

  Chet was gone by now. Just me and good old Gregory.

  “I’m worried about Jim,” he said.

  “WHY IS that?” I asked.

  “Because of you, my young friend,” Galba said. “How well acquainted are you with Jim’s situation these days?”

  “He seems okay to me,” I said.

  “Jim is what our Jewish friends would call a macher,” Galba said, almost spitting on me with his Yiddish. “He likes things to happen, he likes to be there. He’s always on, if you get my meaning.”

  I got that he was telling me about a man I had known nearly all my life, but I nodded and looked into my goblet and tried to keep from tapping my foot against the barstool. A servant came in and told us the picture was about to start again, and Galba waved him off.

  “You’re different,” he said to me. Now he was going to tell me about somebody I had known all my life. No wonder he was a big success in business. “You’re a relaxed kind of character, you’ve found your little niche, you do a picture, a couple of Tonite-type shows, a month at the club and you’re happy. You seem to have a good sense of your own limits. In fact, I admire you. Under guidance you took a little bit of talent and made it pay off, like a man who don’t lift nothing too heavy. I’m not insulting you, wipe that look off your face, I’m telling you a compliment, do you think I see myself as a genius? I’m a man who likes to gamble and hates to lose, that’s the long and short of me, and you’re in many ways a similar character. But Jim is different, you know that, Christ, you probably know Jim better than anybody else alive, except you maybe know him a little too well, and you forget he’s different from you, touchier, more drive, a more mysterious personality, you know.

  “Now, take this business of him not wanting to go out as a single,” he said.

  “Hum?” I said, or something like it.

  “What is that all about, can you tell me? I need your advice in this matter and I’m not afraid to ask you. Why is Jim afraid to work without you?”

  “I don’t know that he is,” I said. “Look, I really don’t like to talk about my partner. . . .”

  Galba smiled with charm. “I know, I understand, but you have to understand that Jim’s in a lot more things than you, and some of the things are also personal involvements of mine, or say, for example, a situation where I might have recommended Jim to people, as an associate and employee of mine, with the understanding that certain things would happen that didn’t happen. Like repayment. Don’t look so shocked, Ogle, you know Jim can’t handle money. What do you do with yours, by the way, I never see you at the tables and I never hear about you being in anything; what do you do, cash your check at the grocery store and bury the money in Mason jars?”

  “I buy a lot of goat futures,” I said, but Galba only looked impatient.

  “Jim wants very much to expand activities,” he said.

  “That’s fine,” I said. “He seldom asks my advice about anything, so . . .”

  “Any expansion, we’ve been led to believe, would have to involve you as his partner. I don’t have to tell you what’s out there, yen and pounds and marks . . .”

  “Rubles and pice and francs . . .”

  “Please shut up when I’m talking to you,” he said warmly with a nice pat on the hand to remove the sting of the words. “Dollars are wonderful to have, but a world tour by you fellows . . .”

  Thud. Thud.

  “. . . would bring in some really useful amounts of money. I don’t have to tell you how well your pictures do in places like Japan and Afghanistan and around the world.”

  “Gregory,” I said, and stood up. My hands were shaking. “My position on this is clear, and I think I made it clear: I don’t want to talk about a world tour, or even a benefit or a weekend in Mexico.”

  The man could be a monster, but he could also charm you to death, and I feared the charm more. I backed away to the curtain.

  He smiled and came toward me. “Don’t be upset, David. But we must keep talking. I don’t know if you have any idea how much trouble Jim is in . . .”

  “Not enough to say anything to me about it,” I said.

  “But that’s just it. You’d be the last person he could talk to. We know you boys, we know what you’re like. If Jim came to you and said, ‘Dave, old buddy, I need us to do some work overseas, just once, one world tour, for me to get healthy,’ you would be forced not only to say yes, but to slap him on the back and pet him and kiss him and tell him the world is a wonderful place to tour. Isn’t that right?”

  “Not necessarily,” I said weakly. I had left my goddamn goblet on the bar, and my mouth was dry.

  “So he can’t talk to you, because you can’t refuse him.”

  “Gregory,” I said. “You seem to have this all worked out, but to remind you of our contract . . .”

  He didn’t interrupt me with words, but he did look sad, like a Mafia Don who has to shoot his dog, and I shut up about the contract. It was no defense anyway; it just said that I would work here and there and nowhere else. This had all been tried before and would be tried again, I was not surprised by anything but the escalation—not just a couple of gigs in Reno or Atlantic City, not a command performance in Buckingham Palace, not a visit to a tennis tournament in Monaco, but a whole world tour, capped by a triumphant appearance at the White House, because I didn’t doubt for a minute that the two things were connected, despite certain well-advertised animosities.

  “Let’s go see the movie,” I said.

  “I saw it,” he said shortly. “Come back and sit down.”

  I came back and sat down.

  “Is there some champagne under there?” I asked. There wasn’t, and we had to send for some.

  This was going to take a while. I rolled the bottle of champagne around in its bucket of ice and then poured myself a fresh goblet.

  “Er, your toupee is up in back,” I said.

  THERE WERE a lot of gasoline explosions up on the screen when I got back to the screening room, and in their light I could see Karl and Sonny with their heads together, probably holding hands and twining toes, too. Next to them were Chet and the other actress, and right up by the door, Jody. Galba had gone to the toilet. I hissed at Jody and she came out with me.

  “Where’s Jim?” I said.

  “He’s left,” she said. “While they were fixing the print he got up and sang us a song and then he said he was bored and left.”

  Galba bulged up into the corridor. “You two again,” he said, and took Jody by the arm. To me he said as they went back inside, “You think about that,” and I said, “I will.”

  Naturally, we had come to no conclusions over the brandy, Galba’s harangues were just the first part of a continuing battle for me and Jim to expand our activities to the maximum dollar, as Galba might say. I wondered where Jim was, although I wasn’t worried, I just wanted somebody to talk to. I wandered out in front and saw that my car was missing, and deduced that Jim and the Alfa were together. I didn’t want to go back into the screening room, so I checked Karl’s little two-seater Mercedes; there were the keys, so I got in and drove out through the big gates. Pretty soon I was on the Sunset Boulevard Speedway, with all the other Mercedes hotshots, heading for L.A.

  I felt pretty bad, I guess. Instead of going on to the hotel, I turned off in Holmby Hills and stopped in front of another big set of gates, only these were closed, locked, and guarded by a big mirror that reflected your image to a television camera and showed you to the security people up at the House. I waited a minute and a scratchy voice asked me who I was, and I stuck my head out into the light better and grinned for the camera, and the gates swung open.

  This was the entrance to the Playboy Mansion. When Hefner was in town there was nearly always a party going on, and Hefner was obviously in town or the gates never would have opened. When I got to the top of the drive, there were a couple of dozen cars parked
in the circle, and I could see more in back, through the archway that leads to the rear exit. Also back there were the cyclone-fenced cages for the Dobermans, a small security measure taken by the staff since Manson. I was in perfect sympathy, and told Hefner so.

  “Anybody who sneaks up to your house ought to be torn apart by dogs,” I said.

  Since my Alfa was among the cars outside, I knew Jim was somewhere around. Inside the House, a bunch of people were sitting on cushions on the floor of the living room, watching a movie, and I could see some of the faces of the pretty girls who strutted their tits and asses through Playboy magazine. I don’t know why, but every time I saw one of those girls I got a twinge of anger; maybe, “There goes all that beautiful young pussy and I ain’t getting any.” Coming to the House you always saw them in bunches and bunches. There were guys who came over just to hang out by the pool, where the girls were encouraged, although they didn’t need much encouraging, to swim, cavort and sunbathe naked, driving these guys out of their minds, because of course the girls were perfectly free to turn them down.

  I didn’t see Jim or Hefner among the movie watchers, although there were several wellknown faces and several people I knew personally. The parties at the House always had a lot of wellknown guys around, never the heart of the movie industry, but the cream of the egomaniacs. Jim and I fit right in.

  I went out by the pool but nothing was happening, just a couple of couples, nobody I knew, so I went back in and ordered a Tokio Cannonball and sat and watched the movie. It was a picture that had been in release a few days, none of your workprints here, and it made me heavy-hearted to see where the laughs came, in this group. All the actors had to do was say, “Son-of-a-bitch!” or “Fuck!” and it brought the house down. These were real sophisticados, exclaiming with fright when the heroine was in danger, clapping and yelling like children when the hero comes over the wall, or up out of the hole, or through the window, guns blazing, fists akimbo. Sitting here on the floor hugging their knees or the nearest bunny were men who for a small profit would set fire to a village and light their cigars at the blaze; but now they were all honking like a bunch of goddamn geese at a scene so cynically sentimental I had to turn away to keep from sobbing myself.

  In other words, just an average bunch of folks. Clearly, I was in a bad humor.

  Jim made his entrance from somewhere in the upstairs part of the House just as the movie was coming to a close, the hero bloody but ready for a fuck and the heroine conveniently semiclad in his arms. Tears ran like glycerine down everybody’s faces.

  “All right, you motherfuckers!” Jim yelled. “This is a stickup!”

  An hour later I was on the floor myself, clapping and singing along as Jim led the group in a community sing, waving my glass and alternately hugging the girl on my left and nuzzling the girl on my right.

  Hefner still wasn’t there. Somebody said he was upstairs asleep and somebody else said he was out. It made no difference to me, I was strangling my sorrows in champagne, brandy, perfume and the sweat of lovely young women.

  THEN LATER we were sitting out on the lawn far enough away from the pool and the grotto to be out of the light. We were passing a bottle back and forth and talking. Jim was crosslegged and hunched over, and I was on one elbow. I don’t know why, but I was trying to explain to Jim how hurt and upset I was about Sonny, how for once I had really fallen for a girl, a real instant crush, and couldn’t shake it no matter what I tried, but Jim wasn’t paying much attention. Oh, he tried, sitting there rocking back and forth; knowing he was obliged to listen to me but bored by it, not wanting to hear it, wanting to tell me, “For Christ’s sake, just grab one of the girls over there dancing naked in the moonlight, every last one of them is younger and prettier than Sonny, throw her into the weeds and slip her the meat and you will forget all about what’s-her-name from Texas,” but not saying it because it would be insulting to treat my emotions so lightly; bored, thinking about something else, shaking his foot, looking downward, jiggling his body not in rhythm to the music from poolside but against the rhythm, just itching to get away from me. But I would not let him go. I was drunk and wanted my pard to hear my sad message. He all but said, “Yeahyeahyeah.”

  “Shit, you don’t care,” I said finally, and took the bottle back from him and gurgled down an ounce or so.

  “I do so care,” he said. “What do you want me to do, pat you on the shoulder and tell you everything’s gonna be all right?” I could see his teeth in the light from the pool. “It’s not gonna be all right,” he said. “Matters of the heart, my friend.”

  “Hell no,” I said. “I want you to come with me. We’ll go find the bitch. She’s probably in Karl’s fucking bed, right fucking now.”

  “I wonder what they’re doing?”

  “Waiting for us to come leaping in through the window,” I said.

  “Man,” he said, “how long have you been on this planet? You don’t know that’s no way to treat a lady?”

  “I don’t want her back, the bitch, I just want to tell her goodbye . . .”

  “Tell her she’s out of the picture . . .” he said.

  “No, that’s bullshit, just goodbye . . .”

  “See you on the set, bitch . . .”

  “That’s right. See you on the set, cunt!”

  “Listen, Dave, I been around too long to jump into this one. If I agree with you, ‘Yeah, fuck the bitch!’ and say a lot of shit about her, and then you two make up, Christ, Man, she and Karl might be friends, did that ever occur to you, friends, who have little intimate secrets, and dinners together and phone each other up all the time, lean their heads together while watching a movie, shit, you don’t know, you raving paranoid, but if it turns out that way and you’re still hot for her tomorrow, you’ll come looking for me with blood in your eye because of all the rotten things I said about that goddess. Take a hike, Man, I ain’t gonna play.”

  “Some fucking friend.”

  “Yes, some fucking friend. Tomorrow you’ll love me for keeping my mouth shut.”

  “I don’t want you to talk, I want you to accompany. Me. Back to Karl’s fucking house, and get the bitch, you can stay out in the fucking car if you want. All I want is company, is that too much to ask from you? Man, don’t drift away now.”

  “I’m not drifting away, Davie, dear David, my pal. I’m just being super-fucking cautious.”

  I started crying about then, damn it.

  “But I want her,” I sobbed.

  “Oh, I can’t handle this,” he said, and sprang up and fell over. I was sobbing and laughing at him, although I could not get up off the ground.

  “I promise not to cry,” I said. “Shit, I don’t want to cry.”

  “Oh, Honeybear, you got a right to cry,” he said, and made it to his feet. I knew what was coming:

  “YEW GOTTA RIGHT TEW CRAAAHHH!!!” he sang, and fell back on the lawn.

  Then we were in the back of Hefner’s limousine, heading for Santa Monica. The moon was way over to the west, so it must have been pretty late. Jim and I sat with our feet up on the jumpseats. For some reason the people at the House would not let us get into our machines and drive.

  “I can’t wait to get there,” Jim said. “My throat is dry.”

  “I’ll just put it to her this way: Does she or does she not want a ride back to the hotel? That’s, I think, the diplomatic thing to say, isn’t it?”

  Jim grinned. “Sure, we’re standing over the bed, two fucking crazy men in the middle of the night, ‘You wanna lift?’ ‘Aaaaggghhh! It’s the Mansons!’”

  I had to grin at the sight myself. “Do you think they have dogs around? Maybe we’ll be torn to bits . . .”

  “Torn to bits,” he sang, “torn to bits, into elbows and asses and tits . . .”

  “DON’T WAIT for us,” I said to the driver. I gave him a few dollars, and he said that two other drivers would be bringing our cars down here and he would take them back to Holmby Hills. I gave him some more money for the
other guys and he got into the limo to wait. Jim and I went around the side of the house.

  We tried a couple of doors but they were locked.

  “Maybe we should go around front and ring the bell,” Jim said.

  “Naw, that would just scare people,” I said. “Let’s climb this tree, go over the roof to Karl’s room and in through the window.”

  The tree was a huge branching oak with rough bark and dry stickery leaves, easy to climb, the kind of tree every California kid learns climbing on. I was up to the second floor in no time, and Jim was right behind me, then on up into the lighter branches and finally out a limb to the roof, which was red tile, not the flat kind, the half-round kind, easy to walk on. I let myself down onto the roof and walked up away from the tree to give Jim room, and he dropped out of the tree and fell over and rolled down almost to the edge.

  “Nice fall,” I whispered. I looked around. The hills and valleys of this huge house made an eerie landscape under the moon, but to the west you could see the entire Pacific Ocean, with a bright stripe of moonlight right down the middle. I could hear the surf at the bottom of the cliff, too, and for some reason it made me feel like Douglas Fairbanks or Errol Flynn.

  “High adventure, ’ey, old sport?” I said to Jim.

  “I think I skinned my knee,” he said. He was rubbing the place tenderly.

  “Which way to Karl’s room, do you think?” I had been to Karl’s part of the house many times, but from the roof and under moonlight the perspectives changed, and I was lost. There were chimneys and balconies and terraces and casements everywhere you looked.

  “How the fuck should I know?” Jim asked. He was still rubbing his knee.

  “You want a drink, don’t you?” I said. “Let’s get inside any old fucking way, have ourselves a brandy and then proceed to business. Indeed, Holmes, I daresay that is the only feasible course of action open to us.”