The Hollywood Trilogy

by Don Carpenter

  “I’ve decided not to see her anymore. It isn’t fair to her. I really like her, and we had—well. Anyway, I want to see you, and I promise that I won’t see Eleanor again.”

  “That’s sweet for Momma,” Lindy said to him. “She thinks you’re her boyfriend.”

  Quentin looked genuinely pained, and bit his lip. “I know. But how would it be if I went back to her and really all the time loved you? Wouldn’t that be even more unfair?”

  “Mister Corby,” Lindy said slowly and deliberately, “I already have a boyfriend. I live with him. You know that. If I told him what you said to me he’d find you and break your fingers.” She stood up. She wanted to add something absolutely killing, but couldn’t think of anything good enough, so she just walked away from the table. He followed her, and when she turned at the door, she could see that their waitress was following him with a check. It was getting comical.

  “Please!” he said again. “Please don’t—tell your mother!”

  “Don’t worry,” Lindy said. Then: “I knew you’d say that!” And she left.

  EIGHT

  THE NEXT night as usual Quentin bought groceries and went through Eleanor’s checkstand. They had a date for that night, but Quentin’s routine now was to buy his things and take them home, then pick Eleanor up later after she had showered and changed her clothes.

  Eleanor asked him, “Did you get home late?”

  “Not too,” he said. “The rain was awful, though. I’m glad I drove Lindy home. She’s a very nice girl. You told me she was beautiful but I thought, you know, just a proud mother talking.”

  “No, she’s a real beauty,” Eleanor said. “Oh, this onion’s got a soft spot on it. Just a sec.” And she trotted over to the produce section and picked him out a good big round yellow onion. When she got back to the checkstand she said, “Jody’s not going to be home tonight. She’s staying with her friend Patsy.” Eleanor was too shy to look at him as she said this, because she knew he would understand her to mean that for the first time she was inviting him to make love to her at home.

  “I didn’t want to see the damned movie anyway,” he said, and when she did look up at him he was grinning shyly. They had been going to go see She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, starring John Wayne.

  As usual she was not hungry after work, but tonight there was a special sense of daring and excitement inside her. They were going to make love on her own bed, with her familiar sheets and her old patchwork quilt. She did not this night think about all the times she and Burt had made such hurried, embarrassed and furtive love in the same bed. She only thought about Quentin and the pleasures to come. Before she took her shower she changed the sheets and pillowcases, and then when she came out of the shower, her skin rosy with cold, she had an impulse to lie down on the fresh bed and wait for him that way, naked and sensual. But common sense told her not to be a fool, and she dressed as if they were going to the movie. After all, he might change his mind.

  But he didn’t. She heard the familiar car door slam and then his footsteps and she had the door open before he could knock. He kissed her right there, standing in the doorway and letting the cold air into the house, his tongue swelling into her mouth and one hand intimately grasping her as he pressed her against the doorjamb. My God, she thought with a thrill, we might not make it into the bedroom! But after that first passionate kiss Quentin laughed and said, “Let’s shut the door before we freeze to death,” and they went inside, and after only a few minutes of not looking at one another, moved on, holding hands, into the bedroom, where Quentin slowly undressed her and then himself as she lay on the bed with her arms delicately folded across her breasts.

  He stood naked looking at her. “My God I love you,” he said. He lay down next to her and took her into his arms and began kissing her breasts. She felt such an overwhelming love for him that she began to cry without making a sound and he only found out about it when he moved up and began kissing her mouth.

  “What’s the matter?” he whispered.

  “Nothing. I love you,” she said, and to prove it she moved down to kiss his belly, loving the way his hair felt against her lips and tongue, and then took his cock into her mouth. She knew he loved this best of all because he had saved it up to teach her last, saving it because he did not want to scare her off, and he had been right. If he had tried to get her to do this on their first evening she would have turned cold with disgust and fear. But now she loved the taste of his cock and the taste and smell of his sperm. Now she could feel him pressing his tongue up inside her, and she gave a deep satisfied internal grunt.

  They made love for a couple of hours, holding one another and talking quietly between episodes. The subject of Lindy did not come up. Finally Eleanor was hungry, and she got up and made them both toasted cheese sandwiches, which they ate in the living room, listening to music on the radio. After he left she went back to bed and composed herself for sleep by daydreaming about what marriage to Quentin would be like. She knew she would not have any trouble getting a divorce from Burt. He would see reason. She could stay home and keep house, taking care of Quentin’s son and Jody until they were out of school and away. Then she and Quentin could travel together. She had always wanted to travel, but as a matter of fact aside from a trip to Crater Lake before she had married Burt, Eleanor had never been outside the Willamette Valley. She had never even been to the ocean, although as a girl she had had many chances to go.

  But of course none of this would actually happen. She would not ask him to marry her, and she did not think he would ask her. He had his life. He was a college professor and he moved in different circles. She would feel awful going to the kind of parties he told her about, with people sitting on the floor drinking wine and talking about communism. She even had a suspicion that Quentin was a communist, although to her he made fun of the campus radicals. No. Not marriage. But that was all right. Her life was full now.

  NINE

  EDDIE DORKIN came back from his road trip tired and irritable. He had been knocking back a little too much benzedrine, and for the past three days he had not been able to sleep without heavy doses of seconal, and after a brief staccato argument with Lindy he burst into tears and sat on the edge of the bed. “Oh God,” he said to her, “I wish I was dead.”

  She had been about to tell him about Quentin to see if it would make him jealous, but when she saw his disconsolate face and pitiful little hands kneading each other in his lap she relented and sat beside him, putting her fingers on his neck and rubbing gently. “It’s okay,” she said, without even knowing what the problem was. He told her about all the pills, and about the terrors he had been experiencing in the middle of the night. “My life is a sham,” he said, and started crying again. Lindy felt sorry for him. She helped him undress and climbed into bed with him but it was no use. “I’ll probably have a limp cock for a week,” he admitted. “Those goddamn drugs.”

  By the way Eddie looked and sounded, Lindy knew that she had it in her power to destroy him right then and there if she wanted to. All she would have to do would be to respond to this contemptuously, or even with false solicitude—anything that would let Eddie know she was repelled by his lack of manhood. She could gain complete control over Eddie if she played it right. But even while she was thinking about it she knew she could not. Instead she laughed and said, “I feel the same way sometimes. Lay back and cool it, and I’ll fix you something to eat.”

  Later on he still was not able to sleep and did not want to take any more pills so he suggested that they smoke some marijuana. Lindy got out the Prince Albert can and the papers and rolled a couple of bombers. They smoked the first one and were halfway through the second, listening to some Stan Kenton records, when Eddie began to get the horrors.

  “Oh Jesus God,” he said in a wailing voice, “I can’t stop thinking about it!” He put his hands over his eyes and rocked back and forth on the couch.

  “You can’t stop thinking about what?” she asked him.

  “I c
an’t talk about it,” he said. “Oh God, the pot makes it worse!”

  Lindy finished the joint by herself. She was feeling good and high and Eddie was quiet now, looking like a fat little gargoyle to Lindy. She did a few dance steps to the music and he stayed on the couch.

  “Lindy!”

  “Yes, baby?” She kept dancing.

  “I’m dying.”

  She stopped. “What do you mean?”

  “I started thinking about it in Medford. It just came to me. I’m gonna die and there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  “Wait a minute. You mean you have a disease or something?”

  He looked up at her and she could see the terror in his eyes. “No,” he said. “Not a disease. It’s just I never thought about it before, but we’re all going to die.”

  Lindy could not help laughing. It was really outrageously funny. “Sure we’re all gonna die! So what?”

  “I know, I know, it’s funny. I laughed myself when I couldn’t get my mind off it, but it’s true. I’m gonna die, you’re gonna die, everybody’s gonna die, and so what? But I can’t stop thinking about it! Do you understand that? I lay in bed at night and think about what’s gonna happen to me.”

  “Oh, crap, everybody does that once in a while. You’ll get over it.”

  “Three days,” Eddie said. “Three fucking days, and all I can think about is dying. Listen, I never told you this. I have a kid. A little boy. He lives in Bend with his mother, she works at the Greyhound depot there. He’s five and a half. What I started thinking about was him. I saw him dead in my dream, his body all white as marble. He was laid out on this table, his eyes shut. There was no blood in him, he was just laying there dead. I couldn’t get it out of my mind and there was nothing I could do about it. You don’t know how helpless I felt. I spend my whole fucking life lying to those goddamn fucking doctors, smile smile, pretend to be educated, look sharp, dress cool, smile, smile, sell that shit! You don’t know! Most of the time I see people as little parts in a puzzle, you know? I just take those little parts and fit ’em in where I want ’em, and if they don’t quite fit I stick ’em in anyway. Just little pieces of wood, most of the time. I laugh and cry but I don’t feel anything, and I think most people are faking it when they show their feelings. All the way through high school and college I work people around to do what I want; I get girls to do my term papers and I blackmail teachers into good grades if I can’t get ’em any other way. Once, Oh God I never told this to anybody, once I made a teacher suck my cock and then I called up his wife on the telephone and told her about it, and he left school. I’m a motherfucker, that’s all there is to that, and the sooner I die the better. My kid don’t need me, nobody needs me. That’s what I got to thinking about. Even if I did die, who would care?”

  Tears were running down his face, and he looked absolutely terrified. “But I don’t want to die!”

  If Lindy hadn’t been so stoned she might have slapped his face and said, “Stop feeling sorry for yourself, you little shit!” but instead she sat next to him and cradled him in her arms and said, “There, there, it’s going to be okay, baby,” while he cried.

  Finally he shrugged her off and got up and went into the bathroom. She heard the water running for a long time, and eventually she could not push the thought out of her mind that Eddie was in there cutting his throat or his wrists and was bleeding to death into the sink. She giggled. What a silly idea! On the other hand, it had been a long long time, and that water was just running and running. She did not want to embarrass herself by knocking on the door and asking him what was the matter, but neither did she want to find his corpse on the floor and a sink full of blood. But it was impossible. He wouldn’t kill himself. Why should he? He was just going through a little self-pity, that was all. Lindy often felt sorry for herself, and Eddie was no different. She could see why he got sick of his job, but he made heaps of money at it and what better job was waiting for him? He was just a salesman. She got to her feet and went to the bathroom door just as Eddie opened it and came out. His face was clean and blotched and his eyes bloodshot. He grinned sheepishly at her.

  “God I’m an ugly bastard,” he said in a hoarse voice. “What do you see in me?”

  “Oh Eddie,” she said, and hugged him.

  It went on five more days. Eddie could not sleep that night, and she heard him get out of bed mumbling and cursing under his breath, go into the living room and rummage through his detail bag, and then heard the running water in the bathroom. She wondered how many reds he was taking. When he got back to bed she pretended to be asleep. Marijuana usually made her sleepy, but tonight she could not seem to drop off either. Eddie, after about twenty minutes of lying stiffly on his back, began to breathe deeply, and then heavily, a fluttering snore emerging from his slightly open mouth. Lindy debated whether to have more marijuana or to try the sleeping pills, but fell asleep before she could make up her mind.

  The next morning and every morning while he was home, Eddie was down and logy until he had had four or five cups of black coffee and a few cigarettes, but he was making a conscious effort to stay away from the bennies. During the days he tried to spend more time with Lindy than he usually did, and they went to Mount Hood skiing once, to a couple of afternoon movies, and shopping. The skiing didn’t work out too well because Eddie could not get warm enough to enjoy himself. They both rented good equipment and had plenty of warm ski clothes, but Eddie’s feet simply would not warm up, and his face looked grey under the pink of his cheeks, and his eyes were sunken. He did not speak about death, but Lindy could tell it was on his mind more or less continuously.

  The shopping was mostly for her. In the past it had been fun for them both. Lindy knew how to stretch it out, spending hour after hour trying on clothes she would never in a million years wear, such as full-length party gowns, cocktail dresses, furs and hats, and Eddie would watch her with the pride of a man who owns beauty; but this time he simply sat with his hands in his lap and stared dully at a point in the distance, and Lindy had to make all the fun herself. The truth was, she was getting a little tired of Eddie’s death problems, and she coaxed him into buying her a lot of things she neither needed nor wanted. But Eddie would pay and kiss her absently on the cheek and they would move on.

  Nights were the worst. They spent a lot of time in the Desert Room, The Shadows or The Cherokee Club, drinking and talking to the Portland night club people. Lindy was no longer proud of the way Eddie could handle himself. He was drinking far too much, and when men interested in her would needle Eddie, he would just nod and go back to his drinking. One night, just to see what he would do, she danced two hours with a shoe salesman named Ben Weintraub, who kept one hand on her ass and whispered into her ear that the two of them should meet when Eddie next went out of town. She ignored the hand and the whispers, and when they finally went back to the table, Eddie apparently had been ignoring them too, because he said nothing.

  But the worst parts were when they got home to the apartment. Lindy was willing to let sex go for a few days, since Eddie was having all these problems, but he could not. Every night they had to go through the farce of attempting to make love. These days Eddie’s breath was awful, and although she had mentioned it once and he had rushed into the bathroom and gargled, it got no better, and she had to stop mentioning it, deep inside afraid that he might, just might, commit suicide over the simple matter of bad breath. So she was not exactly in a sexy mood herself, and Eddie instead of confident was timid and tentative, which made her skin turn cold against his touch. She tried massaging him one night until her arms ached, but nothing worked. She wished it were her period, which would have solved everything because nobody was expected to make love then, but that wasn’t for another couple of weeks.

  After the attempts at lovemaking failed, Eddie would go through his nightly battle over the sleeping pills, which he always lost, but only after hours of pacing, talking, lying in bed stiffly and incidentally driving Lindy herself into insomnia
. She kept expecting Eddie to wake up one morning his old cheery ironic self, but it just didn’t happen, and finally she had to pack him off on the road again, rocky, shaky, dark rims under his eyes and terrified.

  “I’ll call you every night, baby,” he said to her as he left the apartment with his bags, and after he had been gone ten minutes she understood why: he would call her to demonstrate that he had not yet killed himself. Jesus, she thought, he’s really got something. Another ten minutes later the doorbell rang and, thinking it was Eddie returning, she pressed the buzzer without talking on the speaker. When she opened the front door to the apartment, she saw Quentin Corby standing there, a stupid grin on his face.

  “I thought he’d never leave,” he said. “Can I come in?”

  Lindy thought about shutting the door in his face but for some reason she didn’t. She really wanted to talk to somebody who was sane, somebody from the real world. “Oh hell, come on in,” she said.

  TEN

  QUENTIN CORBY was the finest lover Lindy had ever been with, and she fell in love with him almost immediately. Not because of the lovemaking, she told herself, but because with him she felt for the first time truly alive and free. Her life had been closing down and now Quentin was opening it up again, showing her worlds she could enter and belong to. It was really so simple: all she had to do was register at Multnomah College’s night high school, get her diploma, and then go on to college. No one had ever told her how intelligent she was, everyone up to now had concentrated on her beauty, but Quentin said, “Beauty’s wonderful and you have enough of it to drive me crazy, but what’s supposed to happen to you when you get to be thirty, forty, fifty? Life isn’t over at twenty-five, you know. I’m forty years old myself, and the older I get the more I like my life and the more I want to live. You’re a smart person, you’re clever, and I’m just damned sure you’re intelligent as hell.”