by John Rechy
“Did you get your name from Forever Amber?” the girl asked her in a voice that was not unkind, not at all.
“Partly—but also from the color of my eyes,” Amber said. She looks like me, in a new way, she thought, feeling instantly close to the girl. “But my real name is Barbara, Barbara Leighton.” It was the first time she had told anyone her real name in— … How long! Years. Years. This girl was so young, so unaffected; she made Amber feel old, at twenty-nine.
“Bodies,” came the voice of the man Amber had expected to hear speak first. Though the single word was uttered softly, it left a disturbing echo.
She turned away from it. She strode away in the loose, leggy style she had made her own—her proud gait, both bold and shy, sexual and elegant. It began, her walk, in preparation, with a quick toss of her head, her hair brushing her cheek as she turned her face just barely to the right, her chin raised for a second, then back as if in qualification of its overt assurance. Her left shoulder and hand swung slightly back, and her right leg extended in a long assertive step against the always-adoring fabric of her dress, which shifted to greet the advance of her left leg—now the right shoulder swung back in opposite complement. It was an assertive, joyful, sexual walk—which might pause uncertainly for only a moment before it resumed with the quick toss of her head again.
She had parked in a lot near Max Factor's on Highland Avenue. She had to journey through the shattered spectacle of Hollywood Boulevard. Rows of ignored bronzed stars, bearing the names of famous and not-so-famous movie people—hers would never be among them—are embedded into the concrete of the sidewalks; shabby, tacky reminders of one of myriad attempts to restore “glamor” to this vanquished street of squeezed game arcades—machines pinging, tiny electric colors measuring out tiny victories; oniony food stands; frothing fruity-drink counters; army surplus stores with limbless manikins; and, at intervals, grand atavistic theaters, temples, now triplexes, fragments of their Art Deco heritage assaulted by flat plastic additions, partitions. Along the blocks, people waited for buses; others just waited. And there were hustlers of all kinds, all sexes, all types—pushing sex and cheap dope.
On hot days there is much nudity on this street—young girls in cutoffs that show the crescents of their buttocks; squads of shirtless, sinewy youngmen. Lounging, moving away, coming back, moving away. A mobile indolence.
Amber passed the pale lavender building on that strip: Frederick's of Hollywood. In the windows, pretty pouting manikins are dressed in the type of clothes she often wore in her movies—lacy black corsets designed not to close in the middle, frilled brassieres through which nipples peek out, nightgowns that open strategically in cut-out heart shapes to reveal flesh, bikinis that part at the lower tip of the wider V. In attitudes that are meant to be sexually provocative, the giant sex-dolls behind the polished glass looked crazily desperate to Amber today, all bunched together, coy hands meant to flutter but paralyzed in alarm. It was as if these frozen creatures were wandering through a pretty disaster. The head of one sultry manikin was tilted too far to one side. The neck looked twisted under the see-through pinkish peach material of the open-striped creation she wore.
Disturbed all at once by the odd conglomeration of fantasy bodies, Amber retreated from the window. On it, her own reflection was ghostly. Pulling back farther, she bumped into a meek man emerging nervously out of the store. He clutched a large box to himself as if to hide it. “Excuse me,” he apologized. “That's all right,” Amber said quickly, “that's really all right.” “Thank you,” he said. The man looked so mild, so lost, like the man who had waited too long to masturbate in the theater earlier.
Walking slightly faster, avoiding the tarnished copper stars on the sidewalks, Amber passed an army surplus store. In combat uniforms, the manikins there were truncated torsos with featureless faces.
She stopped for a red light. Across the street, near the shiny kaleidoscope of pulpy colors—magazines lined in outdoor racks next to a yellowish coffee shop—young male hustlers gathered. Cheap odors wafted from the cafe, like rancid perfume. Many shirtless, some skinny, masculine youngmen loitered among pretty, androgynous boys. Both groups stared invitingly at cars that drove circling the block. Some of the youngmen motioned hopefully at the drivers, then flung resigned middle fingers at them when they didn't stop.
Crossing the street, Amber almost ran into a muscular shirtless youngman in his late teens. With him—leaning lovingly on his bare brown shoulder—was a youngman of extraordinary blond beauty. He had golden long hair. He wore denim cutoffs, a short shirt cropped just below his nipples. The more masculine of the two pretended—obviously pretended—indifference, loving indifference. Their open closeness pleased Amber. “Hi,” she said. “Hi,” they echoed.
By the time she reached the parking lot, the walk had stilled Amber's rage. She had gathered strength from this wounded but defiant street. The courage she had come to search in the theater showing Meat asserted itself. Next to a liquor store was a series of exposed phone booths. The first one swallowed her coins without connecting her to anyone, anything. “Damn!” She wanted to avoid becoming anxious, nervous. The receiver in the next naked booth had been torn, the coiled wire like a silver cut vein. She moved away quickly. The third phone worked.
“Landers’,” the woman's voice answered.
“Theodore, please,” Amber said. She had been about to greet the familiar receptionist, but her breathing became instantly irregular.
“Mr. Landers is not— …”
“It's Amber; tell him I have to talk to him.”
“Oh, Amber,” said the receptionist, “you sound so different. Theodore's talking to Jimmy. He tried to call you earlier, to tell you that— … Well, I'll let him tell you.”
“Amber?” came the steady voice of Theodore Landers. “I just tried to telephone you earlier, darling. What a coincidence. Jimmy's here. He brought me the Reporter. It confirms that Meat has already surpassed The Devil in Miss Jones in gross profits. A few more weeks and we'll go after Deep Throat.”
Jimmy's voice called out: “Tell her what they called us!”
“Jimmy wants me to tell you,” Theodore Landers said, his voice cool as always, “that the Reporter called you and Jimmy the Jeannette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy of the erotic film circuit.” He never said “sex films,” never said “porn” or “porno” or even “pornography.”
“Who's supposed to be who?” Amber attempted to release at least one coil of tension. She heard Theodore tell Jimmy Steed what she'd said.
“You cummon over and I'll show you!” Jimmy yelled at the phone.
“Darling,” Theodore said, “I've got the ideal script for your next film—you and Jimmy again—and it's better than Meat.”
Script! “I have to see you—tomorrow, Theodore,” Amber emphasized. “It's important.”
“Of course, darling, let's have lunch,” he said. No questions; that cunning, easy “acceptance.”
He knew it was about Meat, Amber was sure; she had told him last week she was seeing it today. “And I'd like Jimmy to be there,” she said. She looked away and saw that the street where the ruined phones were was lined with rows of extremely tall, skinny palm trees; they all tilted slightly toward the same side. Toward the ocean? Away? A gusty wind was rising, shaking the dried leaves drooping under green branches that open like fans. She heard Theodore's voice, then Jimmy's.
“Jimmy says the pleasure is his,” Theodore Landers said. “And mine.”
Amber took a deep breath and then said, “At Chez Toi.” She had chosen the most flagrantly—showily—“exclusive” restaurant in the city. It was where Theodore took the wealthy backers and bankers who made his “quality erotic films” possible. But he had never taken her there.
Hardly a second of silence, then the cool voice said “Chez Toi it is, darling.” His tone was a riddle. “How's twelve-thirty?… You, me, and Jimmy—and whatever you want to tell me. … Ciao, darling.” Before he hung up, Jimmy Steed's voice
pushed into the receiver. “Chow, sweet!”
As she drove up into the wind-scrimmed distance off Sunset Boulevard to her home in Laurel Canyon, she felt the air, not cool at all, rush at her in her small, shiny new red MG. Often, with nothing to do, she would drive about the city—into the freeways—going nowhere, and then she would feel exhilarated by the wind brushing her flesh. Now she did not feel triumphant. Was it that Theodore had agreed so easily and that, expecting some resistance and therefore geared for battle, she had not had to fight? This unfought battle might render the war itself savage.
She entered the area that meanders into the Hollywood Hills. She lived off Lookout Mountain. Wild with trees and flowers, Laurel Canyon has gone through several vicissitudes in the last years. In the Sixties, rock stars pretending gypsy poverty and offering weekly smorgasbords of expensive drugs clogged the area with dazzling sports cars. In the Seventies, the new “hip” film-makers and the “new” serious actors and actresses asserted their need for “space” and wore expensive working-class clothes. Many of them remained, along with the newer tenants, stars and demistars of nervous television series.
This area, not inexpensive, is seasonally threatened by torrential rains. When soaked soil moves, houses fold into rivers of mud. During thirsty spells, the threat of fire is a constant reminder with the ashy odor of smog. Still, the area—constantly rebuilt and reinforced after every disaster—survives, desirable.
Amber parked her MG in the small garage under her sunning porch. Her house clutched more deeply into the soil, and so it resisted the crawling mud. A handsome structure of glass and wood, it was shoved against a mottled-green hill. That protected it from the sheets of water in the rainy season; rocks blocked the flowing rain and sent it in an arc over the house. Flowers grew wild. Amber liked the crash of bright colors, the jagged forms and varied heights.
Inside, the house was sparingly furnished. She preferred uncluttered, open rooms. She sat on the dark brown leather falcon chair she preferred. She felt sad, tired. But her body seemed charged with inner energy. The erotic film circuit! How she hated Theodore's phrase. Circuit, like electricity. An electric circle.
Standing up, she removed her clothes, almost as she did before the camera, slowly, sexually—but this time for herself, enjoying her own private sensuality. She walked naked onto the porch, which perched over the hill. Sometimes deer came to the edge of the house. She had tried to feed one once, but it had fled. They always stood so proud and free, lithe, almost delicate. Then impulsively they'd rush into the crackling brush.
Amber never attempted to get a tan. Her fair skin warred with the sun; and, too, it was the creamy whiteness of her body that emphasized the copper of her hair, especially between her legs. In her films, it was tinged with a dot of brilliantine. She touched her body with both hands, and felt aroused in the naked warmth. It was spring, but like summer. She would have welcomed skipping over the cruelty of spring, the end of winter's hope.
The next morning, the heat had abated—but it was edging in—as Amber drove into Sunset. She wanted to be just slightly late, let Theodore—and Jimmy—be waiting for her as she walked into Chez Toi.
The main appeal of Chez Toi is not its food—it is sometimes good—but its vaunted, expensive snobbishness and exclusivity. Its telephone number is listed in the name of the maitre d'hotel. Only those chosen by wealth or extreme fame, or those who can purchase attention, are welcome into what looks at first like a plain, smallish house over which a huge plastic parachute has fallen and been reinflated. The translucent plastic distorts the reflections of the entering guests into melting figures. Fat, overfed shrubs squat along the narrow walk.
It is the ambience of restriction that makes Chez Toi exclusive, sought after, craved, courted—and a source of despair to many, and that despair renders it even more desirable for those who do not have to feel it. In this city of shaky wealth and status, the maitre d'hotel of Chez Toi has been allowed the papal power to bless or excommunicate the anxious courtiers who pay to see who else will be allowed, who turned away—a salubrious, regular ritual. Telephone-accepted reservations may be denied—if a name or reference is not recognized at the door. Dress at lunch may range from expensive—always expensive—tennis shorts and shoes, armies of sewn, tiny green alligators proclaiming the correct label displayed like combat badges—to the outrageous—one round producer holding often daily court in draped caftans of tangled spectrums—to the doggedly chic—original dresses and suits purchased just moments earlier on Rodeo Drive, for this one lunch, this one entrance—and exit—this one trip to the restroom, which can become a journey through a mined war-field of appraising eyes, meanly strained necks. But anything is acceptable if there is enough wealth, enough power behind it.
Like everything else about it, the inside of the restaurant is at best ordinary. Beyond the plastic-sheeted patio, there is a tiny bar and, upstairs, a room for sealed parties. Within a certain imperfect social circle, one's reception at Chez Toi is an essential component in determining status.
Outside, the squat house recedes a few feet from the street. In a small dirt lot before it, uniformed attendants park only Rolls Royces, Corniches—free advertisements for the restaurant. Lesser cars—the fleets of ordinary Mercedeses ubiquitous in this city—are rushed to hidden lots surrounding the restaurant.
Inside, the tables are arranged to allow exposure to the important and obscurity to the candidates, who may graduate into prime visibility, or its orbit, through larger tips and contacts, if they are willing to wait.
Amber parked in the lot. A young Mexican attendant ran to open the door. She stepped out and dazzled him into momentary disfunction. She wore a sleeveless dress of diaphanous white silk. No jewelry. A swirl of wind wrapped the silk about her legs, outlining them lovingly. Barely kissing her nipples, the soft touch of silk hardened them so that her breasts asserted themselves with subtle daring. Her copper hair emphasized the exposed portions of skin. Sexual, glamorous—refined.
The attendant drove off to hide her car.
She was not sure whether or not she wanted to be recognized. Certainly being a “sex star” carried an amount of fame, awesome to some, tarnished for others. She knew she wanted to be admired, yes, and would be. Her stark beauty commanded that, always—even in a city of beautiful women. Again the wind wrapped the silk about her legs, carving the long limbs.
“Wow!”
She turned.
Leaning against a silver gray limousine parked in the place of honor with other powerful, impervious cars basking in their wealth was a chauffeur in a gray uniform, the color of the car. He was good-looking, yes, a man beginning to show—and to attempt to disguise—his age; early forties, tanned, broad-shouldered, brown-haired; he had a blondish moustache, perhaps brushed with bleach to conceal white obtruding hairs.
Amber remembered Rhett Butler eyeing Scarlett O'Hara on the steps of Twelve Oaks—that look that still made audiences sigh, just as Amber had when she first saw that film she loved. This man, this chauffeur— …
“Wow! Sweet! Suh-weet!”
Those words—the kind she was used to, expected, and welcomed at other times—sent stabs of panic through her now, because she knew he would not have dared utter them to any of the other women here, no matter how beautiful, alone or unescorted.
Without having been to Chez Toi, Amber had always detested it, all the rancidity it stood for. Its brutal hauteur had a radiating power. It could extend to contaminate even those who did not go—care to go—there. She had chosen it as the site for confronting Theodore because of what she knew it represented to him. It was here that he came with the people he took seriously, his “equals.” She chose it as her battleground.
She looked away from the chauffeur. The bone-colored heels of her shoes clicked assertively as—in her inimitable, impossibly elegant, sensual style, her long legs thrusting against the clinging silk—Amber Haze strode into Chez Toi.
At the entrance to the square plastic patio we
re two men in tuxedos, one of them a step behind the other. Amber recognized the man in front—often photographed, a powerful man simply because as maitre d'hotel he reigned over Chez Toi. He looked like a failed gigolo. “Madame?” His voice pounced on the last syllable. For a second she felt her beauty being drained by the chilled voice.
“With Mr. Landers,” Amber said. Eyes in the patio were already on her. For now, her extravagant beauty would be her passport, even if her identity, known, might restrict its terms. The tuxedoed man in front nodded to the man slightly behind him—small, pudgy, all scrapes and bows. Amber knew she was being relegated to the assistant. She wondered whether Theodore, with Jimmy, had been. No, not Theodore.
“This way, madame.” The squat man led her in.
A drone of voices that remains at one level is constant at Chez Toi. Faces turn quickly, eyes shift slyly—then away. All here have learned how to look just slightly, to appraise in one glance—and even to stare in accusation, even opportunistic admiration.
Passing a long table, Amber saw a woman she recongized from photographs—Margaret Manfred. One of the richest women in the world, she appeared constantly in society photographs—and on the front pages of trashy scandal sheets. Sitting like an empress and surrounded by two suited men and three women, the rich woman was looking so overtly at her that Amber paused near the table. Margaret Manfred had a pallid white face that seemed to have been ironed, the wrinkles pulled away, the skin cut, sewn behind the scattered strands of brown hair. Dressed in a high-necked gray dress even in this day of whitening heat, she sat stiffly as if the clasped skin had been traded for any expression indicating emotion. In its severe lineless agelessness, the face became ancient. Amber turned away from the stare of the woman, just as one of the men leaning toward the rigid face whispered: “… woman in that thing called Meat.”
