The Hollywood Trilogy

by Don Carpenter

  Then a few more people came, people who had called me for one reason or another: Marty, our producer, who had obviously come over to talk to me about business and finding himself in the middle of a loose friendly party, sat stiffly in a corner with a glass of Perrier talking to Sonny for at least ten minutes and then vanished. And others.

  I was immoderately happy. These were all people I liked, even the ones I didn’t know, and there was no pressure on me to be host. No civilians, no assholes, no cops. We had all eaten the salt of Hollywood and were alive to tell about it. For a while I hung out around the charcoal grill and listened to Mike and Phil talk about a hunting trip they were planning for the autumn in Eastern Washington where Phil came from, while on the grill were steaks, hamburgers and hotdogs, people coming out and grabbing what they wanted, Sonny’s baguette of bread split, garlicked, toasted and gone, her salad wiped up in minutes and everybody still waiting for the seasmelling mystery wonderdish to emerge from the kitchen, where aside from Oona and Johnny’s girl peeling shrimps and cracking crab, Debbie and Sonny sliced and quartered bananas, pineapple, strawberries, nuts and dates for the dessert, to accompany the two big ice cream nut rolls somebody had brought and put into the refrigerator. And more.

  Naturally, there was a certain amount of marijuana being smoked, to keep everyone’s appetite at a fever pitch, and plenty of beer and wine to keep throats from getting dry.

  When it was finally time to sit down to the rice and seafood, everyone gathered in the living room and the big bowl was placed on the cleared-away coffee table, and Debbie dished. Mike put the television on to the Z Channel and we watched a firstrun movie, people making cracks like “Ooh, isn’t she cute!” and “Boy, look at Larry’s toup!” We were all insiders, naturally, and knew everybody. “Oh ho! He’s the biggest dope dealer in Hollywood!” Or, “Look at those tits! Who are they kidding?” Not a set, not a line of dialog, not a makeup job, got past without somebody yelling something derisive. “Mike shadow! Mike shadow!” “I can see her scars, who lit this shit?” “Cut toooo . . .” “I was up for that job, but it was scale plus ten so fuck it.” “Please pass the sliced tomatoes . . .”

  And then we were done. The chatter died down and the movie, not bad, not good, ground on. Sonny and Debbie got coffee for everybody, putting the Chemex on the coffee table and getting out all my cups and some glasses. Somebody burped deeply and a couple of others chuckled with appreciation.

  Well, here goes, I said to myself, and went into the bedroom, coming out with my remaining Merck, mirror, razorblade, silver fluted straw from Tiffany’s, and walked over to where Ford Hamilton lay stupefied between Johnny’s girl and Debbie’s cousin. I gave him the mirror and the little bottle. The room sighed with hunger for the coke. Just one little hit after a big meal is the ultimate civilized touch, no?

  “So you’re the hip David Ogilvie, huh?” I said, looking him in the eye for the first time. “Why don’t you cut us some lines?”

  Ford looked up and ogled me like a master. I fell down laughing, not as a joke but because he was so funny to look at. The son of a bitch was really good. He grinned shyly, and Johnny Brokaw came in with his impeccable John Wayne impression: “You cowboys git tuh makin’ love, there’s gonna be blood on the saddle, fer sure!”

  It was corny but everybody was in just the right mood for a little corn and we all laughed and slapped tables and knees, and nobody tried to top him.

  By midnight everybody but Sonny was gone. While she was in the bathroom taking the pins out of her hair, I called Jim’s apartment on the lot, just for the hell of it. Twenty rings and no answer. I hung up. The chill in my gut, the Vegas chill, began right about then, and I went into the bedroom, to Sonny, dreading it.

  VEGAS. WELL, Vegas. Hmm, Vegas. “Lost Wages, Nevada.” I’ve never been to Las Vegas, not really, and have no desire to go. I have never walked down Fremont Street, stopped just anywhere for a cheeseburger and dropped my change into the slot machine. I have never read a Las Vegas newspaper, nor have I gotten married or divorced in one of the neon houses of worship.

  For me Las Vegas is a series of limousines and deep concrete garages, private elevators, endless carpeted canyons of shopping malls lit down so that people in evening clothes at ten a.m. don’t look out of place, and air conditioned to a dry sweat chill. In all the years I have been coming here I have never left the Golconda grounds except in the back of a car, and never to go anywhere but the airport or somebody’s posh suite through another pipeladen underground garage and up yet another private elevator.

  Sunbathing? I had my own terrace, and I spent plenty of time there, giving myself a nice dry bake. If it happened to be nighttime I would use my private sauna, forty minutes of baking and I was ready for the night terrace and the crystal stars. Tennis? Galba’s private court was mine to use, and the cyclone fence surrounding it was draped in green canvas, to keep the turkeys from gathering.

  Turkeys. This is where the word originated, among the waitresses, busboys, bartenders, dealers and security cops who had to herd the turkeys hither and yon, seeing to it that they were housed, fed and stripped clean with a minimum of violence. The levels of contempt and tiredness from which the word developed are better left unthought about. Naturally, Galba and the other hotel and casino bosses wanted their highly-paid entertainers to mix with the turkeys, especially in the casinos, where a surprising number of performers left their paychecks, or, in a couple of cases, tried in vain every year to win back the money they had lost, wildly, entertainingly, and with great flair, in front of the turkeys last year, or even the last several years.

  There are ladies and gentlemen of the entertainment persuasion who go out on the road every year to try to earn back what they have thrown away, and one of the things that bothered me, that Galba tried to make me believe, is that Jim is one of these, Jim a profligate and a wild gambler.

  I never went into the casinos and never mixed. Jim and I argued about it once, and he called me “a real chickenshit,” without any malice.

  I never asked Jim about his financial affairs since years before we had been suckered into having a business manager who would call us into his office and enthusiastically pull the wool over our eyes. In those days Jim and I were both full of wisdom about various money schemes and talked about our “picture” all the time, but after the big crush, when we couldn’t get work and had to withdraw from some of these profit-making ventures, and discovered that pulling out was just not possible without wrecking everything, we started keeping our own council, like the boys in Treasure of the Sierra Madre burying their gold in hidden places because they couldn’t trust each other.

  So I didn’t know. Jim mixed when he felt like it, was always surrounded by people, and loved it. Jim truly enjoyed being in show business, even though it drove him crazy. I wished I did.

  So we finished the picture without Jim, four days left on the shooting schedule, but a small rewrite and some close-ups of me, some voice-overs and we were covered. All this is an atmosphere of pretended calm, because, among other things, they didn’t want me invading the cutting room to see what I could do about fixing the picture up. Fat chance. I wanted nothing more to do with the picture.

  As for our act, we had rehearsed nearly every day of shooting and the only sore point with the hotel or Gerry, who managed the room, was that Jim wasn’t there to work with the band, getting down the fine points. But hell, as I pointed out, Jim knew everybody in the band already, what more could you want?

  They wanted him there, that’s what they wanted.

  Gerry, in his green-on-green polo shirt and lemon slacks, asked me one afternoon over tea, our opening three days away and Jim still not checked in, “Do you think perhaps, and I use the word perhaps because I can’t think of a better word, that your friend might not be coming at all?”

  Gerry was the only one who ever suggested this, and he did so only that once. I, of course, laughed lightly and said. “Well, if he doesn’t, maybe I can break in as a sing
le.” Gerry’s laugh was like rubbing two hunks of wood together.

  As far as anybody was concerned, Jim simply hadn’t checked in yet, had missed a week’s rehearsals, which he hardly needed, and there was no connection between that and the fact that he hadn’t shown up for the last shooting days of the picture.

  Galba was wonderful. As we were walking through the underground passageway to the private entrance to his private tennis courts, he said, “My big party for you boys is tomorrow night, be sure to give Jim a call and remind him.”

  “I don’t know where Jim is,” I said.

  “Of course you don’t, but you can get the word to him, can’t you?”

  “I can’t,” I said.

  He jerked open the big firedoor with a squeak and we both blinked in the brilliant heat.

  “Maybe he’s pissed off at you,” Galba said, as we stepped into the light. “Maybe he’s punishing you for being such a shit about things.”

  “Me, a shit?” I said. “For that you make no points.”

  Galba took off his shirt and stretched his arms upward. “Ye Gods this is beautiful!” he said loudly, and laughed. He grinned at me. “Do you know I’m eighteen inches taller than my father?”

  Even so, I beat him in straight sets 6-2, 6-4, 6-2. His face was red and fierce and angry as we left the court, and all the way down the corridor to the elevator he walked ten feet in front of me, his head down, his racquet slapping his leg. Galba hates to lose.

  I GOT a lot of phone calls the night of Galba’s party. Galba never called, of course, because the conversation might have gone something like this:

  “When are you coming up to the party? There’s people here I want you to meet.”

  “I’m terribly sorry, Gregory, but I seem to be developing this sore throat . . .”

  “Do you want me to send Dr. Glickman down?”

  “No, I think bedrest . . .”

  “This party is in your honor. . . .”

  “Oh, please . . .” The party was really for his girlfriend Jody McKeegan, who closed that night.

  “I want you to understand that I take this very seriously. . . .” And blah-blah-blah. He could hardly tell me I’d never work again, and even if he did, I would have to say, “That’s great! Never work again? I love it!”

  The truth is, I did go to bed early, after a quiet dinner in my suite and half a bottle of wine to help me get to sleep. Unfortunately, while the wine did work and I was snoozing comfortably with the television on, the telephone started to ring.

  Jody called and begged me in her deep voice to come to the party. She even said that Jim was going to be there.

  “You talk to him?” I asked her.

  “Somebody did, he said he’d be right over,” she said.

  “In that case, I’ll be right up,” I said. “But otherwise no.”

  “You bastard,” she said, “we have things to talk about . . .”

  “Sometimes,” I said to her, “the best parties are the ones we don’t attend . . .”

  “Shall I come down?”

  “There’s somebody here,” I said in a low voice. The somebody was me, of course, but I didn’t tell her that.

  “See you in a year,” she said. I asked her if she wasn’t coming to our opening, feeling just a pang of fear that there wouldn’t even be an opening, but she said she was working in England and would be packed and gone tomorrow. We made our goodbyes and hints of things to come, and I threw the covers back over my head.

  But sleep was gone and I was left with that dry feeling of alertness and awareness, the rub of the sheets, the flutter of the air conditioning, the switched-off television set cracking as it cooled. The trouble with sleeping in total air conditioning is that you can’t get away from it, sheets up or sheets down you feel about the same, and the hot side of the pillow never quite cools off.

  Mike called from L.A., and I was glad to talk to somebody sane. He apologized for not coming up to Vegas for the opening, although he had never come before, and we talked about a job he was up for that would put him in Bora Bora for nine months. I told him to save up all the fungus that would grow on him during the long tropical nights, because it had medical value here in the States. “Or, you could dry it, roll it up and smoke it,” I said. We made our peaceful goodbyes and I lay back again, grinning up into the darkness because I liked Mike, and was thinking wouldn’t it be fun in the middle of winter just to show up in Bora Bora, take him and his pals on the picture out to dinner and drunkenness, and then fly out. I knew I’d never do it, but it was fun to think about for what seemed like a couple of hours but was really only twenty minutes.

  Terrace. The air was buffeting hot outside. Back into bed, naked, on top of the covers. I could drink some more, but I knew from experience that late-night drinking to get to sleep could easily produce the opposite effect and leave me blistering drunk at eight a.m. Pills, there were plenty of pills, Galba had seen to that, through perhaps the ubiquitous Dr. Glickman, perhaps through a mob connection, or quite possibly Galba owned a couple of international pharmaceutical houses. Although Galba never really owned anything, he just took an interest . . .

  I pulled the sheet without the blanket slowly up over me, and it felt good, just right, sleepy nice and comfortable. Down I began to sink, down and down, but just at the threshold of unconsciousness I felt a probing finger into my intestines, just that one little probing, but I knew what it could mean, and I arose into wakefulness quickly, dreading the next touch but knowing it would come, and then my mind drifting to other things as I almost slipped down and out again, but no, here came the twisting probing watery curl of my gut, the squeezeout, the leveler, the great common bond for all humanity:

  I had to get up and shit.

  Here it came again, the death-dance of peristalsis, and I groaned in self-pity and belly anguish, got out of bed and started toward my toilet, my throne. The telephone rang again. It was Galba’s gopher, a man named Phil Dickman, who wanted to know if I was “in touch with Baby Cakes.”

  “Christ no,” I growled and hung up, just making it to the toilet in time.

  I sat there in the darkness to keep from having to look at all the stupid crap Galba had decorated the bathroom with, and decided for the tenth time at least to have it all thrown out the next day. Then I thought about grizzly bears who expel their shit at the first sign of a fight and how a friend of mine up in Alaska had come around a corner on a trail someplace and run fullface into a grizzly, who wheeled, shit blueberries all over my friend, and fled. My friend was very lucky at that. Then Sonny called from the party and asked if I was coming over, and I told her no, hung up, felt guilty for a while, and then called down to have my phone shut off for the night. I sat quietly waiting for the next episode. The next squeeze, the next twisting agony. I thought about the former Shah of Iran sitting on his solid gold toilet feeling the same way I did, and all the soldiers in all the war novels I had eagerly consumed as a kid, feeling these agonies as well as their jungle sores, ulcers, terror from the dropping bombs. Quaking bowels.

  Then, with a light cold sweat on my forehead and the back of my neck wet, I returned to bed to await developments. After only a few minutes I called downstairs and had them switch my telephone on again. I didn’t want to say, “Only Jim Larson,” out of some stupid kind of idiot pride because everybody in the hotel knew already what was going on, so who was I kidding anyway, and immediately the telephone rings, and I find myself talking to an old friend from years ago who happened to be in town . . . I was polite and glad to hear from him, glad about his marriage and his two kids and his uncle and sister-in-law, so glad that I told him there would be tickets to our show waiting for him, and then had to call downstairs to take care of that, and just while I was spelling everything out for Gracie the reservations girl, the second wave hit the beach and I doubled over with a sharp groan, got off the phone as quick as I could and stumbled helpless and humbled into the place where my only goddamn friend in the world was sitting squatly w
aiting for me.

  I LOOK at the clock on the dressing-room table in front of me, big red glowing numerals. Silently, a minute dies and another is born. I depress the button on top of the clock and it shows the running of the seconds into minutes. I watch for a while, my fingertip white on the button. Once more I decide that if there is ever going to be an end to this madness I will quit the business, I will fake an accident, flaming wreck not enough left to identify and go live in the mountains with my grandpa. Then I remember he is dead. I take my finger off the button and the clock stares at me unblinking.

  Jut for the fun of it, I slam the clock down into my big open jar of cold-cream, wush! The clock is facedown and I can’t see it, but it grinds on, I can hear the tiny grinding noise inside. I pull the cord, kind of hard, I guess, because the clock flies across the room and hits the wall with a crack and a splat, and the cold cream jar goes rolling off the dressing table, hits my foot and rolls under the table. I screech, and then again, and the door opens.