The Hollywood Trilogy

by Don Carpenter

  “Well, back to the rathole,” said a voice from behind her. It belonged to a tall man with longish white hair, wearing a striped polo shirt and grey slacks. He seemed about fifty and sad, although he was smiling. He looked down at Jody and said, “I’ve been living here four years and this is the most exciting thing that’s happened.”

  Jody liked him at once, and smiled at him. Without speaking further, the two of them began to drift back toward the lobby with a lot of other people. Jody looked back and saw Alonzo looking at her, and just at that moment the man with the white hair touched her elbow, as if to gently guide her. Giving Alonzo her profile she smiled again at the man and entered the lobby ahead of him.

  “Eight?” the white-haired man said. It was not really a question. He got out with her.

  “I’m not being forward,” he said. “I happen to live on this floor myself.” He walked her to her door, smiled faintly and said, “Harry would kill me,” and put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her. It was a good kiss.

  They looked at each other. He still had his hands on her shoulders. Jody knew that all she would have to do would be to say, “Come in,” and he would follow her, she could have him. But they kept looking at each other, and neither said anything, and finally he dropped his hands and with that same almost sad smile said, “Good night, Jody,” and went off down the hall. Jody went to sleep thinking about the way his hands had felt on her shoulders and his lips on her mouth.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  JAN KOSKY was terribly excited. Over dinner her casting friend Stan Bird had told her that on Monday morning at eleven o’clock she had an appointment with F. Wayne Cole the famous director, who was casting a picture that would be shot in Durango, Mexico.

  “The part I’m up for,” she told Jody as they sped down the Los Angeles freeway toward the south coast, “is this chick who’s captured by these Mexican bandits.” She giggled. “I get tortured to death. Five days shooting for me. But the director and everybody else will be in Durango for at least two months, maybe three. Stan told me if Cole likes me, I mean if I get the part and he likes the stuff I do, I could maybe stick around for another week or two.”

  “It sounds great,” Jody said. “How much money?”

  “Oh, we didn’t even get into that. Stan says that what I should do is after the audition if the director likes me he’ll get me an agent. Stan will. He knows all the agents in town naturally, and they all want to do him favors. I never realized how much power these casting people have. God!”

  It was a hot weekend and so they had decided not to go to any of the local beaches. Instead they were driving south, just to see the countryside. They got as far as San Juan Capistrano, where they had lunch and looked at the old mission with a group of other tourists. It was too late to go on and try to make Tijuana, so they turned around and headed back for Los Angeles.

  “I didn’t see any goddamn swallows,” Jan said with a laugh. She drove with verve and style, weaving from lane to lane, keeping to a steady seventy miles per hour until they got back into the Los Angeles freeway complex. Then things slowed down. The air was thick and heavy and the traffic down to almost a standstill. Finally, by dusk, they were inching their way along the Harbor Freeway. Both Jan and Jody were hungry, tired and had to go to the toilet, but there was no way out of the mess. Neither of them knew the streets of the city well enough to venture off the freeway, and so they had to sit in the miasma, the car radio blasting out, until with darkness the traffic seemed to break up and once again they could make speed. They got to the hotel at nine-thirty.

  Jody felt better after a long shower, and just as she came out of the bathroom, naked and loving the coolness of the air against her skin, the telephone rang. She thought immediately of the white-haired man from last night. But it was Harry, from Atlanta.

  “I called to tell you I love you,” he said. “I feel terrible.”

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Sure,” he said. “Except that I feel terrible I’m fine. We’ve been beating around the backwoods. Gargolian almost got in a fight with some cracker in a bar. There was this sign behind the bar saying, ‘track of the American chicken,’ with a peace sign. It doesn’t matter. We still have about twenty places to look.”

  “But you’re back in Atlanta,” she said.

  Apparently the location survey was not going too well, except that the men were getting acquainted with each other’s styles and that was good. Harry sounded hysterical and petulant, and Jody guessed that he was very tired.

  “It’s late there, isn’t it?” she asked.

  “Just past two, I think,” Harry said. “What about you? Are you getting along okay? Do you have enough money?”

  “I’m fine,” she said. “Getting a lot of sun.” She wanted to ask him about the white-haired man, but she did not, and after exchanging I-love-you’s they hung up, leaving Jody feeling empty and somehow lost. Her skin was dry and hot now, except for trickles of sweat running from her armpits, and her palm, which had been cupping the telephone too tightly.

  She could imagine Harry in his little hotel room, unable to sleep although he was terribly tired, calling her at two in the morning, in fact probably calling her all evening and not getting an answer (she was sure now the box in the lobby would be full of little message slips—she hadn’t bothered to look), no one else to talk to except the men he had spent the day with. And Jody knew from her own brief visit to Atlanta a couple of years before with a man whose name she could not remember, that on Sunday Atlanta was dry as a bone, so Harry had nothing to look forward to but a day of lonely rest. Jody found herself wishing Harry would call a hooker and at least relieve himself. But then maybe he had, and that was why he was calling her to tell her he loved her. Jody had known men like that, probably most men were like that.

  The doorbell rang and she opened it without thinking. Fortunately it was not the man with the white hair or Alonzo or anybody else but Jan.

  “You look cool,” was Jan’s only comment. “Let’s get on the phone to Stan and see about that dope!”

  “Didn’t you ask him the other day?”

  “Yeah, but he told me to call him at home tonight.”

  Stan Bird arrived around midnight, with a friend and a pocketful of drugs. Bird was a small handsome man with grey eyes behind contact lenses and teeth so even Jody was certain that they were false, although they did not have the look of bad false teeth. They were probably caps, she thought. Looking down, she saw that he was also wearing shoes that built up his height about two inches. Around his middle was probably a combination girdle and moneybelt, she thought, and laughed aloud. Stan Bird was dressed Mod, and his friend, a large pale sweating man of about thirty in Hawaiian shirt and white drill pants. Jody guessed that the big man, introduced only as Tommy, was supposed to be for her. By this time Jody was wearing a faded blue man’s shirt and her tightest palest Levi’s, and she could see Tommy’s eyes covertly looking at her body. Tommy did not look like a rich or powerful person. She wondered who he was and why Bird brought him.

  “It’s party time,” Stan Bird announced, and pulled from one pocket a plastic bag filled with dark-red cleaned marijuana. “You got any papers here?”

  Jody sat at the coffee table with the weed and papers and rolled a few joints while the others talked quietly. Jan wanted to talk about F. Wayne Cole and the picture, but Bird was evasive. Tommy did not join into any of the movie talk, and when Jody lit one of the joints and passed it to him, he waved a pudgy hand and said, “No, thanks. Emphysema.” She did not believe it for a minute. While the others smoked, Tommy sat quietly sweating, looking from person to person, trying to appear interested but not joining into the conversation except to inject clichés like, “Well, what do you think of that!” or, “Sounds about par for the course.”

  After only a few tokes Jody knew this was very good weed. “Where can I buy some of this?” she asked Stan, and Stan grinned and pointed to Tommy. “This here’s the man,” he said.


  “What do you want for it?” she asked Tommy. Now she recognized the type. He was a dealer but a square. He would run down to Mexico in his camper or motor home, square as a bear, probably with an uptight-looking woman with him, make his deal in Mazatlán or some other wide-open place, then cruise back, while the police were busting longhairs. If he was really smart he would buy his drugs directly from the police, paying well enough to guarantee, hopefully, that he would not be betrayed. And obviously he had not been. He looked no more like a dope dealer than the man in the moon.

  “This is Panama Red,” he said, as if describing an item in his sales catalog; “it’s not tops, as you can tell, but the tops to this stuff went for fifty a lid.”

  “How much do you want for a good lid?” Jody persisted.

  “Mostly it goes by the pound,” he said, but she finally cornered him into admitting that he would part with an ounce of it for thirty dollars. Christ in Heaven, she thought, I’m glad it’s not my money.

  “Listen,” Stan Bird said. He had his arm around Jan’s shoulder and they had been whispering. “While you people conduct business, me and this one are going to use your bedroom, okay?”

  Tommy had to go down to his car to pick up the lid, and as Jody was holding the door open for him she said, “Do you happen to have any coke?” She thought about Harry’s desire never ever to see coke again. Well, if this man had any, she would conceal it from Harry, that was all.

  “I have a little bit,” Tommy said, and negotiations began as soon as Jody shut the door again. After he left to get the drugs, Jody sat down in the living room and tried not to listen to the faint sounds coming from the bedroom. It helped that all the windows in the apartment were open, and traffic noises from the nearby entrance to the Hollywood Freeway drifted up on the warm air; but it did not help enough. Jody was horny, that was all. She had been horny before, and she had gone without before.

  But she was getting older. Thirty-five. Time was wasting and death was coming. She thought with a smile about seducing Tommy, the uptight businessman who happened to find himself in the dope business. Since he was overweight he was probably very uptight about women and sex, too. Maybe he carried all that extra weight on purpose, to thrust away the problems of sex. But then maybe not. Maybe he would be the one. Maybe it would be an act of kindness to seduce him, to be gentle to him and make love to him.

  Jody caught herself gritting her teeth noisily. The doorbell buzzed and she opened it to Tommy, who smiled without looking at her and stood in the middle of the room, holding out the bag of marijuana and the gram of cocaine in its small plastic envelope. “Do you want to taste the coke?” he asked.

  “Sure, but not from my gram,” she said. They sat beside each other on the couch while he got out his own coke, contained in a small wooden carved box. He had a tiny silver coke spoon for her to use. She snorted a good pile into each nostril and felt the incredible, indescribable rush that first-class cocaine gave her. After a few moments she said, “Aren’t you going to have any?”

  “I just keep it for my friends,” he said. He still would not look her in the eye, but it did not matter. From the bedroom came a cry and then another one. Tommy grinned at the floor and stood up. “Guess I better get out of here,” he said.

  “Don’t be in a hurry,” Jody said. “Don’t you take anything?”

  “I guess I’m just a sugar junkie,” Tommy said. Now he looked at her. “There’s a delicatessen down on Fairfax,” he said, “with the best pastries you ever saw. Care to go have something to eat?”

  “No, baby,” she said. “I’m in the mood for love. You know what I mean?” His face reddened thickly and she said, “Oh hell, I was just kidding. Let’s go eat.”

  Tommy brought her back to the hotel and up in the elevator, but he did not enter the apartment. Jody could not hear anything, so she walked quietly down to the bedroom and looked in. The bed was a mess but there was nobody in it. The air conditioner was on, clanging distantly, and the room was slightly cooler than the others. Jody sighed and went to bed.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  IT WAS six o’clock Monday evening before Jan came up to tell Jody what had happened on her interview with F. Wayne Cole. Jody had just awakened from a nap and had not yet showered the sweat off her body, and she was about to ask Jan to come back a little later when she saw her face. Jan looked very bad. Jody opened the door wider and said, “What happened? Do you want a drink or anything?”

  “I should have known,” Jan said. She walked into the living room with her arms at her sides and sat down on the edge of the couch, as if she had to get up and go in a few minutes. She was dressed in jeans and a man’s red tee shirt, so she had had time to change, and perhaps had been home for hours. Jody brought them drinks and sat beside her.

  “Okay, spill it,” Jody said. “You didn’t get the part. Okay? You can’t win them all.”

  “He wanted me to suck his cock,” Jan said. “I came in his office and sat down and he said, ‘Stan Bird tells me you give really good head.’ I didn’t know what to say. I just sat there. You hear about it, you know. But I never believed. He just kept looking at me. He’s smaller than I thought and he has this full beard now and his eyes stick out a little. Then he says, ‘Well, what do you have to say for yourself?’ I asked him what else did Stan say about me and he says, “‘That was about it, honey.’”

  “Those sons of bitches,” Jody said.

  “Jody, I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I did it. I went over to him and kneeled down next to his desk and undid his pants and blew him. I wasn’t even thinking, I just did it. It took a long time for him, but he squirted off in my mouth, and then when I’m spitting the stuff out into my hankie he says in this real distant voice, ‘I wanted you to swallow it, honey.’”

  She looked at Jody and smiled strangely. “That’s when I finally caught on to what was happening. He was really auditioning me, but the person who gets the part has to be his girlfriend on the location. I guess when I didn’t swallow his come I flunked.” She laughed. “I used to study him in school! I’m such a goddamn idiot! What made me think I could make it out here, anyway?”

  “Don’t talk like that,” Jody said. “He’s just one bastard, that’s all.”

  But Jan was crying now, and she grabbed Jody by the arms. “Oh, did you ever do anything like that, though? I feel so bad about myself! Why didn’t I just say no thank you or something and walk out? I guess I really wanted that part bad, so bad I even shut off my mind. But I can’t shut it off now, I think about those two calling each other up on the telephone and talking about me, like, ‘She didn’t work out, do you have any other girls?’”

  “Did you talk to Stan Bird?” Jody asked. “I’d like to know what . . .”

  “Oh, yes, that was the first thing I did. As soon as I got off the lot I went into this Chinese restaurant across the street and went in the can and cried, then I called Stan on the pay phone. He was very angry with me. He said it was all my own fault, for doing it to him the first time we went out. He said he thought I loved to do it and wouldn’t mind. He told me that was how to get small parts and later on things would get better. He said I was stupid. I think he’s right.”

  “I think he’s a bastard,” Jody said. “You’re not stupid. You just happened to run into a couple of bad numbers, that’s all. Don’t be down on yourself.”

  “But I can’t help it! There’s thousands of women in this city trying to get parts! It’s so hopeless! It’s so stupid!”

  She broke down again and for a while Jody held her by the shoulders while she cried. Automatically Jan reached for her shoulder-bag and got out a wadded-up handkerchief, and then started sobbing again, throwing the handkerchief across the room. It came to rest on the rug, and Jody looked at it while Jan went into the bathroom to finish crying and wash her face. She knew she should get rid of it, but she did not want to touch it. But she had to, before Jan returned. Jody held the handkerchief as if it was a dead rat, and dropped i
t into the wastebasket under the sink, and then came back into the living room and waited for Jan. She did not feel like drinking whiskey, and Jan had not touched hers.

  When Jan came back she said, “I’m getting out of here.”

  “No,” Jody said. “Stay. We’ll go have dinner and a good time.”

  “No,” Jan said. “I mean Hollywood. I’m getting out of here. Tonight. I mean, why wait? I mean, fuck it!”

  With Jody to help her, Jan packed her things into two suitcases and one cardboard carton from the Hughes Market and stowed them in her car. She would be on the Hollywood Freeway before nine o’clock.

  “Where are you going?” Jody asked her as they were standing beside the car in the parking lot.

  “Anywhere but Detroit,” she said. “I think maybe San Francisco or someplace like that.”

  “I’m going to miss you, baby,” Jody said, but she did not ask her to stay. Jan was doing the right thing for a change.

  “Oh Jody,” Jan said, and hugged her tight. “I love you, Jody. I hope you get what you want. You’re such a good person!”

  Jody was startled. She had been called everything but that in her life. “I love you too, baby. Take care.”