The Company She Keeps

by Georgia Durante

  The next weekend, Fred Reed, my friend from Rochester, came to Los Angeles on his annual trip to the coast with his children. I had plans to take him to lunch. Richard came into the breakfast room while I was feeding Dustin. He sat down with his coffee and played with Dustin for a while. His son was his pride and joy, and my leaving was going to be tough on Richard.

  “What’re your plans for today?” he asked.

  “Fred’s in town and I’m taking him to lunch. Do you want to join us?”

  “No, I’m going riding today. The horses need some exercise. Where you taking him?”

  “I’m not quite sure yet. Somewhere in Beverly Hills. Maybe the Polo Lounge,” I said.

  “Where’s Toni?”

  “She left for the mountains with her friend Liz and her family for the weekend.”

  “Tell Fred hello for me,” he said, as he poured the remainder of his coffee into the sink and walked out of the kitchen.

  “Bye-bye, Daddy,” Dustin said after him, but Richard was already gone.

  By eleven o’clock the sun broke through the fog, putting a fresh new complexion on the day. Rather than sit in a stuffy restaurant, I decided to take Fred to the marina. We sat at a window seat of a waterfront restaurant and watched the boats cruise lazily through the channel. Fred brought me up-to-date with the news from home. When the wine came, he lifted his glass and toasted me.

  “Georgia, I’ve seen you through some pretty rough times. I’m so glad to see you’re finally happy,” he said with sincerity.

  Maybe I should be an actress, I thought, as we clicked our glasses together. I took a sip of wine and looked away before Fred could read what was in my eyes. I’d spent years pretending to be happy. The last thing I wanted was to give satisfaction to anyone in Rochester who wished me ill. Getting wind of the fact that this marriage had become a nightmare too would surely create joy for my enemies. Fred was a friend, but he was still from Rochester, and I was always reminded of my vow to prove to the vicious gossips of my youth that I could be successful and respectable despite their expectations.

  I gazed out the window at the serene view and then choked on my wine. Richard, piloting our boat, was cruising carefree down the channel with two trashy women by his side. From where I sat, it looked like they were snorting cocaine. One of the girls appeared to be drinking hard liquor straight from the bottle. They seemed to be having a wonderful time. His obsession with sleaze infuriated me.

  “Are you okay?” Fred asked with concern.

  “Yeah, it must have gone down the wrong pipe. Will you excuse me a minute?” I said. I walked in the direction of the ladies’ room.

  Richard was heading back to the slip. I jumped in my car and dashed over to the Marina City Club, where we docked our boat. When I got to the gate, I discovered I didn’t have my key with me. A Mexican guy was standing there sweeping the sidewalk.

  “Have you got a key to this gate?” I asked with authority. He nodded affirmatively. “Open it!” I demanded.

  As soon as the gate was open, I flew to the end of the dock and arrived just as the boat was pulling into the slip. The look on Richard’s face was priceless. There was nowhere for him to go except forward. He was caught. The boat was halfway into the slip when I jumped on. I got Richard in a headlock and yanked on his neck so hard the captain’s chair broke and he landed on the deck. Meanwhile, the boat was banging against the sides of the slip, unmanned for the moment.

  “What are you doing to him?” screamed one of his shipmates.

  I’d forgotten all about the girls in my rage, but now that they had called attention to themselves, my focus turned their way. In one sweeping move I pushed them both overboard. I kicked Richard one last time, jumped off the boat, ran to my car, and dashed back to the restaurant. A total of five or six minutes had passed. I calmly sat down at my table, picked up my wine, and continued my conversation with Fred as if nothing had happened. Yep, I would have made an excellent actress.

  Fred and I continued to drink the afternoon away. Lunch had turned into dinner, and we still carried on. Sometime after midnight we called it a night. I was pretty blasted. When I returned home, I was appalled to open my bedroom door and see Richard snoring away in my bed!

  Gotta give this guy some credit, White—he’s got balls!

  I immediately looked around for a gun, but anticipating my anger, he had carefully hidden all firearms—not wanting to have to replace all the windows in the house again. Georgia Black had surfaced frequently during recent times. On one occasion I had shot out all the windows in the house to vent my anger, but now I wanted blood. I searched for another weapon. Ah, the fireplace poker. I walked back into the bedroom and smashed it with all my might against his back.

  I’ll teach him to screw with you.

  “What the fuck!” he screamed.

  “If you want to live to see morning, I suggest you leave now,” I spewed in a controlled voice that even scared me.

  Richard ran out the door in his pajamas and jumped into his Rolls-Royce. He backed out of the driveway at high speed, scraping his prized possession on the half-opened gate as he fled. When he returned three days later, he was still wearing his pajamas.

  The next day I began house hunting and became extremely depressed. Compared to what I was used to, $300,000 homes in Beverly Hills and the adjacent areas were like shacks. They had small bedrooms, tiny closets, and no backyards. The San Fernando Valley posed the only solution if I was going to get any kind of a house for my money. The “Valley” was a foreign world to me. Although only ten minutes from Beverly Hills, it was the wrong direction from the world I had come to know.

  Dust trailed the limousine as it sped the five miles to what seemed to be nowhere on the dry lake bed in El Mirage. Nothing was in sight except the black, sinister-looking vehicle. The heat waves rose from the vast, desolate surface of the desert’s parched floor. Six drivers, five men and me, departed from the sleek machine. We were an impressive sight, dressed in identical black driving suits and helmets. Wally, our team leader, got a kick out of putting on a show. The temperature in the Mojave Desert was a blistering 120 degrees. With windows rolled up, no air-conditioning in the prototypes, and wearing all black, I was going to earn every cent I made.

  I had almost turned down this job, anxious to continue the search for a new home. Oddly enough, if I had not taken the job, I would never have found the house in which I now live.

  After a long, hellish, hot day, we returned to Los Angeles tired and haggard. Bob Schultz, one of the team’s drivers, and I were both house hunting, and neither of us was having any luck. After describing what I wanted, he remembered seeing a place that fit my description. We happened to be close by, so he directed the chauffeur to the residence.

  “This is it, Bob! It has everything I’ve been looking for. It’s on a cul-de-sac. It has a guesthouse, a pool, and a big yard. What are they asking?” I inquired excitedly.

  “Three hundred and eighty-nine thousand.”

  “If the inside is as nice as the outside, I’m going to make an offer on it,” I exclaimed, trying to contain my excitement.

  The next day I called my broker and had her make an appointment to see it. I walked through the house and instantly got a good vibe. Every room had a vaulted ceiling. The vertical space gave the house an expansive feel. Counting the guesthouse, it was 2,800 square feet, less than half of what I then lived in. It needed work to bring it up to my standards, but I was no stranger to remodeling. My offer was accepted, with a sixty-day escrow. Sixty more days of living under the same roof with Richard.

  When the reality of my leaving set in, he became a real jerk.

  “You’ll take my son over my dead body!” he barked as he stormed out of the house, slamming the door behind him.

  Then so be it . . .

  Georgia Black came up with a plan. Richard had a bad heart. He’d already had a heart attack when he was only thirty-four years old. He’d actually died while being driven to the hospital. H
e was pronounced dead, but arrived in time to be revived.

  You can kill him, White, and you don’t even have to pull the trigger.

  Richard was dining with one of his street girls at Pips when I made the call.

  “I’d like to speak to Richard Adray, please.”

  “Uh, I don’t think I’ve seen Mr. Adray this evening,” said the bartender, recognizing my voice.

  “John, this is an emergency. Try to find him.”

  Richard was on the phone immediately. I found my hysterical voice and screamed into the phone. “I just killed the kids! Now neither one of us can have them!” I hung up and immediately poured ketchup all over the foyer floor and walls, smearing it to look like blood.

  This should do it.

  He was home in five minutes. I sat on the couch in the living room, facing the entry so as not to miss the event.

  No one is going to take your son away from you. I won’t let that happen. No way.

  His eyes bulged as he saw what he thought was blood. He ran into the kids’ rooms and saw that they were fine. His entire body shook as he confronted me in the living room—but he didn’t die.

  Shit! It didn’t work. What am I going to do now?

  I’ll think of something, White; don’t worry.

  My ever-increasing hatred for Richard knew no bounds. Once I was out of this marriage, I would never again allow another man to get close to me. The indignity of living with his infidelities had been bad enough, but his threat to take my son from me was an absolute declaration of war. Richard would not buy Dustin as though he were some material possession.

  The house was big enough for us to avoid each other, except when we passed in the hallway. Most of the time I retreated into the sanctuary of my Walkman and pretended he was invisible. Richard and I communicated only through our lawyers now. Ron Litz, my attorney, was less than pleased with my latest outburst.

  “Okay, Georgia,” he said, “you’ve really done it this time. Now you’re going to have to see a psychiatrist. We’ll have to prove somehow, you were under an exceptional amount of stress.”

  “Stress? Living under these conditions isn’t stress—it’s insanity!” I shrieked.

  “After this episode, I tend to agree with you.”

  Life was stressful, but Georgia Black knew exactly what she was doing. All I wanted was to be happy. All Black wanted was revenge. But for now, I’d have to go along with the program.

  Ron looked perplexed and shook his head. “What ever possessed you to do that?”

  Black had possessed me, but he wouldn’t understand.

  “I wanted to kill him,” Black answered out loud.

  His eyes widened and he slowly let out a deep breath. “You’re not making my job very easy. Do you think you can refrain from that kind of behavior?” he asked.

  “I’ll try, Ron, but I’m telling you right now, he’s not getting my son. He thinks his money can buy anything. I’ll kill him first.”

  My first session with the shrink consisted of taking a four-hour written personality evaluation test. A week after taking the test, I left to do a national Jeep commercial in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. After a long day of white-knuckled filming, I returned to my hotel room for some well-deserved rest. My message light was flashing when I arrived. The psychiatrist wanted me to call him at home immediately upon my return.

  “What’s up, Doc?”

  “I just want to be sure you are going to keep your appointment next Thursday,” he said in his heavy French accent.

  “Yes, I have every intention of keeping my appointment. You called me just for that?”

  “Well, yes, I have your test results back and we must speak.”

  “What’s the problem, Doc?”

  “We will discuss it on Thursday when you come in. I just wanted to be sure you plan to be there.”

  “Well . . . okay. I’ll see you on Thursday.”

  I was too tired to dwell on it. I washed my face and climbed into bed. Four o’clock in the morning came too soon to stay up and wonder. I’d find out on Thursday. I couldn’t let my personal problems interfere with my job. I had four passengers riding with me in the picture car. One wrong move could mean disaster. The intensity of my work had gotten me through many painful times. I couldn’t afford to think.

  The next morning I arrived on location at the usual time for car commercials—before sunrise. We needed to reshoot some of the previous day’s footage. Evidently, my passengers didn’t look as though they were having too much fun. The look of terror was frozen in their expressions in full camera view.

  “What can you do to try to make them more comfortable, Georgia?” asked the director, Dennis Gripentrog, while we stood by the catering truck sipping our first cup of coffee in the morning darkness.

  “Why don’t you hide the ambulance? That’s an intimidating sight for them. These kids aren’t stuntpeople. I think I remember suggesting to you before we left that we should hire professionals to be in the car. What do you expect when you stop ordinary people on the street and ask them if they want to be in a car commercial? Did anyone ever explain to them what they’d be doing?”

  “They didn’t have it in the budget to fly in four additional stuntpeople and pay them all residuals. The agency demanded we find local people.”

  “You mean to tell me these kids are working for just a day rate?” I questioned.

  Dennis shrugged. “I guess so. I’m not involved with talent payment. That’s not my department.”

  “Well, look what it’s costing them now,” I pointed out. “We lost a whole day yesterday. What it costs to reshoot everything would more than cover the cost of bringing in pros. And, at this rate, we still may not get the shot,” I said crisply.

  “Tell that to the bean counters in Detroit. Just do what you can to get them relaxed. We’ve got fifteen minutes before the sun comes up.”

  “Great.”

  The set designer had built these giant letters spelling out the words “Wagoneer” and “Cherokee,” the names of the vehicles we were featuring in the commercials. The letters were made mostly from chicken wire, covered with a material that looked amazingly like rock, matching our background setting of the real Grand Teton Mountains. They stood twenty feet high and seventy feet in length. The shot was to drive over the top of the letters in the vehicle with the same name. The surface on top wasn’t flat, but indented with the natural curve of the letters and topped with various sizes of gravel, which created the hazard of slipping and sliding. The letters appeared as though cut out of the mountain. It all looked great. But my job would be a bitch.

  I had gone over the specs with the designer before the sets were built and explained my requirements for a safe execution. He made a mistake in his calculations and left me with only four inches of solid ground on each side of the tires. It was workable, but didn’t provide much leeway for error. With professional stuntpeople in the vehicle, we could’ve had the shot in two takes. With every take, the risk factor became greater. We had the long shot in the can, but we needed the close-up to complete the commercial.

  The fact that I was a woman made my passengers nervous. Their lives were literally in my hands. Just driving up the ramp onto the letters was scary enough for them. This was also a first for me. I hadn’t driven up a ramp this size before. Of course, they weren’t aware of that, and neither was the production company.

  But I had no fears about doing it. The feeling is like being on a roller coaster—my only view the sky—with no visual reference points. I was driving totally blind, being guided only by feel and a lot of guts. To make it worse, the ramp was curved, rather than a straight shot to the top. There was absolutely no way to know where the curve started except by instinct. I not only needed to execute this with speed, but with the correct amount of it. Driving blind, I could only pray that when I came charging off the ramp and onto the letters, I was on my mark.

  To top it off, my vision was restricted by the camera mounted on the hood of the Jeep. I
n addition, the windshield was covered with a translucent material. Its purpose was to shield the sun in order to properly light our faces from the cumbersome rigging inside. The amount of space to see out from at the base of the windshield was less than two inches.

  The Wagoneer letters were the toughest. The spaces on top of the “W” were too wide. I had to have enough speed to get over it without the wheels getting stuck. That speed caused the Jeep to be airborne for an instant. When the tires made contact again, the vehicle naturally jutted from side to side, which made that four-inch margin critical.

  Concentrating on all this was tough enough; now I was also expected to get these people to smile and refrain from clutching the seats. I gave them a little pep talk and got prepared for our first run of the morning.

  “Action, Georgia,” said the assistant director.

  “You guys ready?”

  “As ready as we’re gonna be,” answered my passenger in the front seat. His eyes instantly sprang open as I began to accelerate.

  “Okay, here we go. Smile and act like you’re having the time of your life.”

  I also had to think about my own on-camera face. Concentrating and smiling wasn’t exactly easy. My personal problems never entered my mind. When I worked, my real life was a blank. I was in the moment. What a great escape.

  “Back to one, Georgia; we’ll go again.”

  We did it again.

  “Stop here for a reload, Georgia, and go back to one. We’ll shoot it again.”

  “Again?” asked one of the passengers.

  “Hey,” I answered, “it’s up to you guys how many times we do this. You must not be smiling or something. I’ve been keeping the rubber side down, so I know it’s not me.”

  We did it again.

  “Ah, Georgia, could you get out of the vehicle and come up to us? The director would like to speak with you. Over.”

  “Ten-four. Be right there, Gary.”

  At the video monitor, the director and the ad agency guys stood in a huddle. They moved aside, making room for me to look at the playback.