by John Rechy
Lenora said to Rusty Blake in a lecherous whisper: “Hear that, honeybunch? Nine. Betcha he was referring to his inches.”
Blake’s crooked smile widened so that it seemed to be about to slip off his face. “Yeah, man, yeah, I like that, man.”
Tarah searched her mind for a subtle way to approach this crucial question: “Oh, by the way, Rusty, what is your sign, your astrological sign?”
His grin cut across his square jaw. “The sexy one, man,” he winked. “Actually I’m, like, a Scientologist.”
Of course. “But your sign—” Tarah started.
“Tarah! Blake!” Lenora ended the banter. “Enough bullshitting. “I’ve arranged for you two to be seen at Spago’s for dinner, together.”
Rusty Blake slouched over to Tarah, massaging her back. “Yeah, hey!”
“I’m not aching, thank you!” Tarah pulled away.
“There’s a scene in the script that takes place there between Helen Lawson and Ted Casablanca. I can assure an item about how right you look for the roles, how uncannily right.” She puffed on her cigar, blew out a noxious cloud, eyed what was left of the cigar as if she was considering devouring it. She barked at Tarah: “Guess who’ll be there that night to see about how right you are for the role?”
Tarah could hardly breathe the name. “Liz Smith.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
1
The flight to the City of Angels, or more accurately to the Lord’s Headquarters.
And so Lyle flew with Sister Sis and Brother Bud in the first-class section of the plane. Brother Bud explained the expensive means of transportation as Lyle looked around at well-dressed men and women. “The needy souls we minister to don’t want us to set a bad example, we gotta exemplify what is possible under the Lord’s guidance, and what is possible is travelin’ first class. Until we get our own jet. Soon.”
“A daiquiri mix,” Sister Sis ordered from the steward, who couldn’t keep his eyes off Lyle.
“A whiskey sour—with two olives,” Brother Bud ordered.
That startled the steward into attention. “An olive? In a whiskey sour?”
“I said two,” Brother Bud asserted.
“And him?” the attendant gasped, pointing at Lyle. “What will the stud—uh—what will the—uh—cowboy have?” He touched his blond hair, to exhibit its newly acquired highlights.
“Tea, iced tea,” Lyle said, “with a wedge of lemon.”
The attendant did not move.
“Now you run along and do your duties!” Sister Sis said irritably. “Keep in mind what the Lord did to Sodom.”
“What did he do?” Lyle asked.
“Destroyed it,” Brother Bud said, glaring at the attendant.
2
Someone secret knows Lyle’s whereabouts.
Lyle landed in Los Angeles and was whisked away by limousine, Sister Sis and Brother Bud sitting close to him as if they suspected he might run away from them before they reached the Lord’s Headquarters in Anaheim.
The limousine let them out at a motel that looked as if a giant artificial flower had burst and scattered its waxy pedals over everything. There was a swimming pool with pockets of azure lights. Lyle noticed a beautiful woman emerging from the water. She spread her towel on a pool chair and lay on it. Lyle continued to stare back until they entered the lobby, all chrome and plastic. The three were led by a smart bellboy to—
“Your room, cowboy!” Brother Bud announced proudly.
It had been selected, and probably decorated, by them, Lyle knew, because dominating the room—pleated drapes, shiny tables, flashy lamps, a velvet sofa, a polished sliding window that faced the pool—the gorgeous woman was still there—was a large crucifix over a huge bed; the crucifix glowed in a slab of light within which it had been strategically located.
Lyle’s first instinct was to run out of the room—and perhaps run into the gorgeous woman outside—but Brother Bud and Sister Sis were holding on to each of his arms.
“Kinda overwhelms you, doesn’t it, cowboy?” Sister Sis asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Lyle said. Her hand—long red fingernails—tightening on his arm had squeezed out his answer.
“Now you stop calling me ma’am,” Sister Sis instructed, touching her eyelashes as if to make sure they were still there.
“Yes, Ms. Sis.”
Brother Bud was fussing around puffing up pillows.
A knock at the door. Lyle opened it.
“A present for Mr. Lyle Clemens,” the motel bellboy said.
“Who else did you tell you’re here?” Sister Sis demanded.
Lyle took the small, wrapped box.
“Let me see!” Brother Bud snatched it from him.
Lyle snatched it back and opened it. The box contained a jar of jelly beans, all colors.
“What the hell?” Sister Sis greeted. She grabbed a card attached to the jar. “‘Stay put’—that’s all it says.” She frowned at Lyle.
Sister Matilda? Lyle’s heart gave a joyful leap. He looked around the room, as if she would be there, somewhere, with her golden crown, waiting to explain her absence.
“Now what do you think that means?” Sister Sis’s frown cracked her forehead.
“Hmmmm,” Brother Bud pondered. “You fond of jelly beans, cowboy?”
Lyle knew he had to invent an answer to dissuade any suspicion about Sister Matilda—if the present did involve her. “Yes, Mr. Bud, real fond of jelly beans.” He dipped in the jar, stopped, extended it to Sister Sis, who took one, a pink one, then to Brother Bud, who refused. Lyle chewed several.
“Who sent them to you”—Sister Sis’s voice was not her girlish one—“and who wants you to stay put, and why?”
“Uh—I guess, you know—that man on the airplane—that steward, remember?” That’s all Lyle could come up with.
“The sodomite!” Brother Bud was harsh. “How’d he know?”
“When I went to the restroom,” Lyle said, “he offered me some and I told him that was my favorite candy.”
“Makes sense,” Brother Bud pronounced, “and he wants to see you again. We’ll make sure that don’t happen.”
Lyle strained to look out at the woman by the pool.
Sister Sis chose another pink jelly bean. “Does taste good, doesn’t it? Oh, the Lord’s little pleasures!”
“Now, then, you relax, cowboy, cause we’re gonna rehearse ya tomorrow,” Brother Bud adopted his friendliest tone.
Sister Sis said, “We’ll send a driver to pick you up. We’re already announcing your participation on our stations to inaugurate the Write-a-Love-Letter-to-Jesus Campaign, got some days for practicin’, but not too many. Gotta keep that spontaneity in your talent.”
When they left, Lyle ate more jelly beans. Stay put! If the jelly beans came from Sister Matilda, they were a reminder, of course; she had asked him to remember what he’d seen in a candy jar back in the Pentecostal Hall, and what he’d seen was jelly beans. The exhortation would mean for him to stick it out with Brother Bud and Sister Sis until—
What? Damned if he knew. In the meantime—
He hurried to the window. The beautiful woman by the pool was still there. He wished he had brought trunks, and then he would join her without seeming obvious. Talking to that woman would keep him from feeling so goddamned low about leaving everyone he loved—and if more happened, well, that would keep his mind even more occupied, away from Maria for now.
3
“Return to the Valley of the Dolls”
The new title is Return to the Valley of the Dolls—not a remake any more; it’s a sequel. Remakes are flops.
A sequel! Tarah Worth had wanted to tear Lenora’s memo apart when she first read that at her home in—near—Hollywood. If it was to be a sequel, then Helen Lawson would have aged into a mummy!
Now, as she lounged by the gaudy pool of this tacky motel in Anaheim—and tried, just tried, to relax before, in a few days, she and Rusty Blake would make their crucial appearance at Spago�
��s with the great Liz Smith in watchful attendance—she read the memo more intently, more assured.
Unfortunately, we’re stuck with the word “dolls” in the title. Susann invented it.
Isn’t that what great writers do, invent? Tarah defended. She skipped on to read cast possibilities:
Madonna or Courtney Love as Anne Wells, the classy blue-blood from Vermont; Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger as the English literary giant who betrays her; Jennifer Lopez as Neely O’Hara—
Were they crazy? Tarah forced herself to continue:
Michael Douglas as the plastic surgeon (a new character).
Perfect casting, with his perfect chin!
—for the role of Ted Casablanca, Tom Cruise—or Rusty Blake, if we can’t get Cruise.
Wait till Blake reads that Cruise is up for the role! Tarah read on:
Ted Casablanca is still pursued by gossip that he’s gay, although he’s constantly chasing women; reputedly into (soft) S & M (bondage, handcuffs, etc.). In the meantime, beautiful Jennifer North’s mother has sworn to terrorize everyone associated with her daughter’s death as a result of being in the “flesh flicks” which exploited her beauty and led to her suicide. Everyone in the present cast was involved in one way or another with Jennifer’s demise, and so everyone is on the Stalker Mom’s list, the first target being the French pimp (George Hamilton) who introduced Jennifer to flesh flicks.
George Hamilton! Perfect!
The Stalker Mom is a frumpy housewife type, not your ordinary stalker. (Bette Midler?) First on her stalk list is Ted Casablanca, vulnerable when he’s being bound in sex play with Neely O’Hara. The Stalker Mom’s next target is Helen Lawson. (Liz Taylor? Tara Worth?) …
On the margin the creature had underlined the misspelling of her name and had written: “This will be you if you try hard enough and Liz doesn’t want the part.”
Lawson once pushed Jennifer out of a legitimate role, which made her take another step into porn. Lawson, having consulted a spiritual guru, is no longer a gargoyle—she’s had a facelift.
Thank God, thank God, thank God, not a gargoyle—and the facelift would erase the years in between the original and the sequel, Tarah had exulted when she read that reprieve earlier. “Thank God,” she said aloud, reverentially. She touched her face. Should she? She had been at Neiman-Marcus recently, and all the women had the same noses. Thank God she had been blessed with a perfect nose, needing no surgery, none whatever, none, except for that insignificant bump she had had removed.
The Stalker Mom has announced she will pounce on Lawson on a certain day (the Fourth of July, for added fireworks?). Lawson flees Hollywood, incognito, to a tacky city called Anaheim. There, in a gaudy motel, by the pool, she engages in conversation with a good-looking young man she does not readily recognize. Who is he? The Stalker Mom’s accomplice? Or—?
That was why Tarah Worth was here, by the pool of a gaudy motel in Anaheim, to research that scene, already written in revised draft, and right now in her hands. She would capture every nuance of the great role—in the exact setting, all in further preparation for the role of a lifetime. When she appeared at Spago’s with Rusty Blake, she would be Helen Lawson, and the great Liz Smith would confirm it.
4
A poolside encounter.
The woman wasn’t as young as Lyle imagined, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that she was very sexy—and, damn, he sure needed to keep his mind away from Maria and that nonsense about her being his sister.
Under a sheltering umbrella, the woman lowered the straps of her bathing top, and peered at him from under sunglasses.
He spoke aloud what he was thinking: “Wow”—although the thought of Maria tugged at the edges of his mind, no, at the edges of his heart.
The woman took off her sunglasses and sat up. “You recognized me, didn’t you?” she asked. “From my movies?” she added when Lyle seemed puzzled. Wait a second! This couldn’t be a coincidence. Lenora! The creature was the only one who knew she was here and why, and she was not beyond having secretly hired an actor to challenge her into the scene.
“You’re a movie star?” Lyle said. He would write Clarita about it. Not Sylvia, always competing.
“Yes.” Tarah said. “Now do you mind moving a little? You’re blocking my sun.”
He wasn’t. The only move he could make put him closer to her—or else he would plunge into the pool; he moved closer.
“Do you work here?” she asked him. Maybe he wasn’t a hired actor, just a horny bellboy? With those boots? No.
“No. I’m going to sing for the Write-a-Love-Letter-to-Jesus Campaign.” Is that what he was really going to do?
“Hmm.” What to make of that? The last thing she needed was one of those shrill born-agains telling her to prepare because the Apocalypse was at hand, bad enough that Rusty Blake was a Scientologist. Removing her sunglasses, she studied the young man before her. Very handsome, very sexy. Definitely an actor hired by Lenora. Had he read the scene, or was he improvising, forcing her to rise to the test, seizing the direction? Very sexy. Perhaps she should consider extending the rehearsal beyond the written scene, into the motel room and—
Looking at the sultry body lying before him, a coat of sunblock turning into sequins, Lyle reminded himself that he missed his sister a lot. Dammit! Maria was not his sister!—and damn right—whoever the hell she was!—he missed her. Still—
“Listen, cowboy—” Tarah improvised. Had someone creative in Hollywood decided to make the mysterious stranger a cowboy? A good touch!
“I’m not a cowboy, I’ve never been on a horse.”
An actor, then, of course. She pushed the scene along. “I’m a lone woman getting away from something awful,”—this was a memorized line from the written scene—“and I’m lonely.” Susann would be proud of those lines—so blunt, so exact! “So”—she made her voice husky like Helen Lawson’s and finished the scripted line that would send chills through the audience—“you wanna fuck?”
“Sure!” That lifted the sadness, a lot.
“But—” Damn, what was the next line? The scene had all those great twists and turns; and this was the crucial point at which Helen Lawson realizes—What?
“I sure would want to!” Lyle reminded enthusiastically.
What was it, the elusive, crucial line! There had been several X’d out, insertions substituted, also X’d out. She had read each aloud, thrilling. Which had remained? “Yes, I want to, but” … “I don’t have time because—” What?—oh, yes—because I’m dying? Dying? No, that was crossed out. “Yes, I want to, but I mustn’t—” she repeated, hoping the rest of the line would hop on. Then she remembered it, the shattering line, and spoke it with all the power that would make the audience gasp: “Yes, I want to, but I never could, I could never have sex with a man I only now recognize as … my brother.”
Lyle ran back to his motel room.
5
The Lord’s Cowboy is born.
“Let’s rehearse you for the Lord!” Brother Bud greeted Lyle on the stage of the Lord’s Headquarters in Anaheim, California. A chauffeur had picked him up at the motel.
“Praise the Lord and the young cowboy,” Sister Sis batted her eyelashes at heaven and spoke loudly for the workers on the set to hear. Technicians, many in sloppy shorts, went about arranging props, electrical equipment, recording instruments.
“I’m not a cowboy,” Lyle announced loudly to everyone. “I’ve never been on a horse.”
“Shush,” Brother Bud cautioned. “You are a cowboy now.” He consulted several sheets of paper, notes, neatly typed. “This is how you came to Jesus on your way to becoming the Lord’s Cowboy.”
“The Lord’s Cowboy?” Lyle restrained laughter because Brother Bud was so serious.
“It was a thundering day,” Sister Sis said, closing her eyes to evoke it, “gray clouds warred in the heavens, like they did when the first rebellion occurred in heaven—”
“—and mean ole Sat
an set angel against angel, and they wrestled over doomed souls”—Brother Bud took over—“including yours!” he shot at Lyle.
A prop man carrying a huge painting of a happy Jesus stumbled over a coil of wires and bounced against Lyle. “Sorry, Lord’s Cowboy,” he said.
“Look,” Lyle said to Brother Bud and Sister Sis, “none of that happened to me. Those are lies. I can’t—”
“Lies!” Brother Bud shook his head sadly, Sister Sis lowered hers as far as the giant wig would allow without toppling over. “The Lord doesn’t lie, cowboy,” Brother Bud said. “He directed your mission, from the moment you sang peace into all those souls back in Ree-oh Es-condee-toe. Now he has sent us visions of your life that not even you may remember.”
“—and there you were in the middle of the storm on your horse named—named—” Sister Sis continued fashioning Lyle’s new life.
“—named Rigger,” Brother Bud furnished.
“You mean Trigger,” Sister Sis corrected
“No, that belongs to Roy Roger and his wife Dale, decent Christians committed to the Lord, and may they rest in peace—”
“Brother Bud, Dale’s not dead. We had her as a guest.”
“May the Lord allow her to thrive. You sure she isn’t dead? I do think she has gone to her reward. Is Gene—?”
“Dead,” Sister Sis said, “Gene Autry is dead for sure.”
“A fine upstanding Christian, too, Gene raffled his hat, once, for the Lord. Now, cowboy, you named your horse Rigger after the famous Trigger, because you’d been inspired by Dale and Roy, may they rest—Sure she isn’t dead?” Brother Bud insisted.
Lyle listened. If he did become someone else, at least for a while, wouldn’t the pain of leaving lessen, wouldn’t sad memories pester him less?
