But she had an addendum: ‘Not since your picture at the Nuart.’ And then her smile went sideways with the extra-added attraction. She whispered, ‘Gulp.’ Not like a title, or anything. Just the word. Gulp. Without the exclamation point. Just to let me know that she knew. And still, she never lost her smile.
I could only stare at her in admiration. ‘Same to you, but more of it.’ It was a lame retort, I know, but I had to say something. And she laughed, a tinkling shower of delight that prickled the hair on the back of my neck. Gulp, indeed.
‘If you weren’t an actress, I’d ask you to marry me.’ Chicks dig that.
‘If you weren’t a director, I’d slap you for that.’ But I was, so she didn’t. ‘I like directors...especially the young, talented ones.’
‘If I meet one I’ll be sure to introduce you.’ The self-deprecating stuff always hooks them. And I wanted her hooked. Gaffed. Boned.
‘Oh, we’ve already met.’
Her wet, crimson lips glistened, and I watched them stick together and peel apart as the ‘m’ made its way through her mouth in slow motion.
‘Will you be at the after-party?’ she asked. After-party? What after-party? Was that on my invitation?
‘Will you?’
‘I have to be.’
‘Then so do I. When and where?’
‘It’s a secret.’ And then she leaned close, offering a bud-tipped alabaster view, and shared her secret with me.
* * * *
The rain was Biblical, but the directions very specific. The little roadster and I headed up Laurel Canyon, past Joel Silver’s Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece on Hollywood Boulevard, turned left on Wonderland and slid through an aquarium of eely estuaries and sobbing oaks. We groped through the rare midnight storm, ever upwards, evading the cracks of lightning that drew closer as we drove higher. At the applause of a particularly splendiferous hand of electrical fingers in the sky, I turned to look down at the Basin below and behind, just in time to see its voracious maw go dark.
It made little difference to my slithering drive. Here in the jungle of the Hollywood Hills, there were no streetlights. The moonlight was my guide. I was so close to my destination. I could not give up my quest, even if the party was called off when the lights went out.
So I continued, the heart of Indiana Jones beating within my chest.
At last I emerged at the crest of the mountain, and I saw Xanadu. Not the Olivia Newton-John bowl-filler, but the Orson Welles original, done Southern California-style. It was vast and pink and Spanish-tiled, probably built in the twenties when this acreage could be had for pocket change. And though the dozens of windows were dark, red-vested car chimps were jockeying the Benzes and Beemers into place. I parked the TT myself, and let the rain submerge me as I walked to the door.
Cool.
Security was tight, but I didn’t need a ticket. The enormous Polynesian totem at the door let me right in without even a word passing between us. Either a fan or he’d been primed.
I walked inside this Old Hollywood mansion, and found myself submerged in darkness. I squinted through the twisting hallway, choking on the musk of history, and stepped into the spider’s parlour. It opened up into a giant room filled with overstuffed furnishings and the glow of pale candlelight. It was a step into another era, one you only see on the screen, and even then only in black-and-white. This place was an education in early cinema, the kind I flunked out in at film school: an education I did not want, but could not avoid. The whole house was dressed in the elegance of a Hollywood long gone, like an Ernst Lubitsch drawing room comedy, dressed by William Cameron Menzies. The ceilings were high and scalloped, the maroon velvet draperies belted into place by gold ropes. It all looked so wrong in colour.
This was a Hollywood for which I had no nostalgia. It had grown long in the tooth on quaintness and manners and dust and censorship. It was far removed from real life: cornball artifice with heavy make-up and jerky special effects. It looked like Cary Grant should step in and offer me a drink.
Which is exactly what happened.
His black hair oiled into a perfect, shining part, a pearly grin that rounded the dimpled chin into an undersized apple, he poured me champagne and wished me well before disappearing into the candlelit gloom.
As my pupils adjusted to the light, I realised that I stood in a room filled with perfect specimens of an age gone by. Elegant in their evening clothes, many of them had been at the Cinemateque gala. But none of the icons from the fifties or beyond were here. These replicants were strictly of pre-war vintage. Most of these had not served at the Egyptian; they were special: the very most beautiful recreations of Hollywood’s so-called Golden Era. Not really being a student of celluloid history, there were a lot of lookalikes I didn’t recognise at the time. You know, if a movie was made before the birth of Michael Bay, I wasn’t interested. But some of them you just couldn’t avoid, so great was their status as pop culture icons.
Even the new generation of filmmakers that comes after me would have recognised the young John Wayne, that woman with the big monkey in King Kong, Kate Hepburn, Jimmy Cagney, Jimmy Stewart, Lana Turner in a bright red sweater, that woman who always had her blonde hair hanging over one eye, that Thin Man guy with the moustache, the old lady from Big Valley, who was a lot better-looking young, but still no babe. Except for Lana’s show-off sweater, all of them were in the most elegant evening clothes of the era: white tie and tails, satin gowns, real classy stuff.
But what really looked out of place, even more than seeing these facsimiles in full, living colour, was watching what they were doing. The place was foetid with body heat. Those elegant clothes slid off of bare shoulders and dropped into elegant little pools of silk at the feet of the guests being serviced. I mean, it wasn’t like everybody was whanging and banging in the middle of the room or anything; it was a little subtler than that.
But the Hollywood Hills were alive with coupling. Each massive easy chair, divan or settee was occupied with at least one gorgeous specimen treating the guests to a taste of Old Hollywood. A hand cupped a puddle of breast here; a flesh probe reached between tight buttocks there. Lips met teats and groins lubricated to the gentle strains of the string section in the other room. This glamorous repast of bodies on bodies was still elegant, passionate yet ethereal. It was my first appreciation of Hollywood Past.
I felt out of place, like a child, apart from the party, a guest but not a participant...until tapered porcelain fingers rested on my shoulders from behind. I turned, and joined the celebration. Harlow II touched her scarlet lips to my cheek and gently slid her fingers between mine. ‘I was waiting for you.’
Jesus!
The words eased over me on her gentle breath, and every body hair prickled to attention. In the candlelight, she was even more luminous, practically digitally enhanced. Her fingers wrapped around mine, and it was as if we had melted together at the hand.
‘Nice party,’ I managed, but my voice cracked the ‘nice’ into two syllables. I couldn’t imagine a modern woman as beautiful as my Jean...and I told her so.
‘You should see me on a weekday.’
I shuddered. The veil of imagination lifted for a moment, and for just a slice of that moment I could see past the platinum hair and the period lipstick, and saw her as just another beautiful actress in LA. Everything suddenly darkened in a crash of artifice, and my pulse dropped. The arousal waned, and I struggled it back in time, but without success. Jean was a working girl, another gorgeous face in the Academy Players Directory, with a wannabe resume and an attraction to randy directors. I went limp.
She noticed.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing. I just imagined you without the wig, having lunch with your agent at the Ivy and checking your pages every hour on your cell phone. In the real world.’
She looked at me, figuring me out. ‘This is my real world. Here. Now. With you. This is no wig; go ahead, feel it.’
I did. I ran my fingers thr
ough the curling-iron waves, and she closed her eyes, enjoying the journey. ‘Pull on it.’ I gave it a little tug, and her lips parted, releasing that intoxicating breath. It was not a wig.
‘I don’t have an agent, I eat lunch at Musso and Frank’s every day, and I hate cell phones. In fact, that’s how I tell good people from evil people. If you talk on a cell phone in a restaurant, you’re evil. Period. No way around it, no second chance. One strike and you’re out. Cell phones in restaurants or talking in a movie theatre: the true signs of human slime.’ I hoped nobody would choose this moment to reach out and touch me via the PacBell digital in my coat pocket. ‘This is me, the real me, the ever me. Just a little less dressy on weekdays. So mind your manners, or you’ll have to be spanked.’
Oh, please, not that. I apologised, and she forgave me.
‘What would you like?’
‘Are you kidding?’ Uncharacteristically, her face flushed and she looked shyly down under my hungry gaze.
‘You want something to drink?’
‘Cary Grant gave me champagne, which I don’t drink. I’ll take a Coke, if you’ve got it. But I just want to be with you.’
She smiled at me, all girlish and genuine. ‘That’s so sweet.’ And she led me by the hand. We walked through dim caverns of candlelight, each containing bodies in rhythmic heat. I was not startled to see Cary lying beneath an energetically hyperventilating Madame Publicist, her eyes rolled back in her head in ecstasy, her nails gouging red rivers down Cary’s chest. I tried to sneak past, but her eyes found me, and she gave me a yellow wink. Her words reached me on a wave of dragon breath: ‘Have a nice time...’ And then she came. Loudly. Ugh.
Other couplings were more visually appealing. There were fantasies fulfilled throughout the house, animus cloaked in an historic glamour. Dead movie stars brought back to life by the vigour of our desire. I can’t tell you how exciting these violations of the Hays Code were to watch.
Laid out in the elegance of the location, the perfect grooming and formal wear intensified the heat to an amazing degree. The power may have been off, but the house was filled with electricity. I had always seen that Old Hollywood shit as dull and historic and musty and grampy. But now it was making me sprout wood.
I’m a director, so I observe. I felt no guilt staring at the couplings as Jean led me through them. It was a symphony of flesh, and each of the players was first chair. And I was being led to the podium to conduct a little ditty of my own.
* * * *
I couldn’t believe that the dark room she eased me into was anchored by a heart-shaped bed. That image would have worn a beard even in one of those old thirties movies. But it did, and the bed was made up in pink satin, as if art-directed to set off Harlow II’s peach gown. The high-ceilinged room was lit only by a shaft of blue moonlight through a curtain of rain. The chill of the moonlight was tempered by the heat of our bodies. When she slid lightly onto the corner of the bed, tiny arcs of static electricity crackled between her and the sheet. As she sat in the shaft, highlighted by the moon, I could only gasp. She lifted her arms to me, and I dropped down next to her. I knew this had to go slow. It had to be drawn out. This might only happen once.
She stroked my face with her delicate fingertips, a Mona Lisa grin tugging at her scarlet lips. Those lips moved slowly in, and I wanted them to just devour me: wrap around my head and work their way down to my toes until I was dinner. Instead, they eased against my cheek, pausing there before peeling wetly away and leaving their crimson imprint. She grinned at the lipstick she’d left on my face, and lunged in to lick it off in a swift wipe of her tongue. Then she laughed.
I put my hands up and gently held her face in them, as if it might shatter. Her skin was as smooth and white as an egg. She let me draw her face close to mine, and finally we kissed. No suction, no open mouths, just our lips touching each other, gently at first, breathing each other’s breath. I kissed her upper lip, her lower lip, then tilted my head to kiss them both at a vertical angle. Then I got hungry. I started to pull her lower lip into my mouth, nursing on it. Soon, the tiny pink tip of her tongue ventured into my mouth, tracing my teeth and gums. There was the faintest taste of chocolate on her tongue, and I savoured it. I wrapped my mouth around her tongue, and she slid it deeper inside, soon moving it to a samba rhythm. Then she took my tongue and nursed on it. I’m sure my eyes rolled back in my head in idiot abandon.
When finally we broke for air, we just looked unbelievingly into each other’s eyes and breathed. And then we both just broke into laughter with the delight of it all. She nestled into the base of my neck, kissing it wet and warm, and I carefully lowered the satin strap that held in Nirvana. But I wasn’t about to go right for the good stuff. I wouldn’t be the pig with the hands that only wanted to grasp the tits and the clutch. For the first time in my life, I pleasured in the getting there. I felt the rich gloss of her neck and shoulders, stroked the clean, perfect whiteness of her deliriously long back. I kissed down her neck, tasted her wrists, even lifted her arm to cradle my head under it and kiss her pit. I tasted the slightest hint of salt and loved it. There wasn’t even a trace of stubble.
And she, too, was happy to take her time with me. Her lips brushed lightly over my neck as she unbuttoned my shirt. I could feel the heat of her breath as she nuzzled my chest, her teeth lightly tugging on the hair around my nipples. She sucked easily on mine as I wanted hers. But I’d get there soon enough.
My hands went all exploratory, gently excavating the secrets of her body. I eased the satin down off of her breasts, and there were little sparkles of static electricity introducing them in a fanfare of tiny fireworks. Her happy little breasts were as white as the rest of her body, not surgically enhanced, and capped with tiny pink roses that almost disappeared in the moonlight. I first felt their heft with a light stroke of the underside with the back of my hand. I slowly closed in, palming them, holding them, clutching them. I nuzzled them, but that was it. Soon I had drawn them hungrily into my mouth, and I wanted to feed off of her: milk, blood, anything. I just wanted to swallow her fluids.
At that point, it wasn’t long before I was atop her, the globes of her ass clutched tightly in my hands. Her legs scissored me tightly as she chewed voraciously on my earlobe. And as her body was wracked in orgasm, I was pumping two years of dormant seed endlessly into her. I thought it would never stop...but finally it did.
* * * *
When the new sun peered into the bedroom window, the old movie was over. Jean was gliding into jeans and a T-shirt, and brushing her hair out of her eyes. She wasn’t Jean any more. I bet she lived in the Valley. I heard the leaden thump-thump of techno-disco booming through the old house, and a ripple of nausea curdled me. It took me a while to come to. The 2000s had fully replaced the 1930s. And I didn’t like it.
I watched the muscles of her chest heave as she brushed her platinum hair and tried to figure out what came next. ‘Um...what do I owe you?’
‘Don’t worry about it. Last night was all taken care of.’
Nice party.
I couldn’t take my eyes off of her, and she winked at me in the mirror.
‘When can I see you again?’
She turned to me. ‘Anytime you’ve got fifteen hundred bucks. Or a part you might think I’m right for. I’m a very versatile actress.’
I tried to smile back, but I’m sure she saw my face crash. Jean was gone. This stranger gave me a mock pout. ‘Aw, baby misses Jean Harlow, doesn’t he? I can be Jean anytime you can afford it.’ And she handed me a business card with her pager number on it. She kissed me hard on the lips and toodled.
What a crash. I don’t know why I felt so devastated, so abandoned, so cheated. But here I was, hollow and deflated, still sticky from last night, inside and out. All I had left was the drive home.
Home.
I stared out at the sewage bobbing along the beach from my tenth floor condo. I hated the present. A second-stage smog alert hung heavy over the effluent, and the traffic on t
he boulevard below was blocked like a bowel. I had the Criterion Armageddon on the DVD player, enveloping me in full Dolby Digital surround, but even that couldn’t bring me out of it. Normally its twenty-cuts-a-minute exhilarated me; today it merely enervated me. It just felt like a bunch of frantic, noisy crap, a cinematic nagging mother-in-law, screeching in my ear. I missed the past...and I’d never even been there.
So I decided to visit.
I made a sojourn to the dreaded San Fernando Valley to Dave’s Video, a beacon in the midnight of Ventura Boulevard. I loaded up on every black-and-white DVD made before the Great War and charged it to my Gramercy account. Research, you know. Let them pay for my education in the classics.
I lugged the tonnage of my cinema booty back to the Marina, and vegetated in front of the new HD screen from the Good Guys. Tendrils of beard sprouted as I reached back into the ghosts of the past. First, I made my way through every Jean Harlow film I could find, fromHell’s Angels through Saratoga. She’d made a couple dozen pictures in the course of a half-dozen years, then up and died. But Jesus, what a legacy she left! Through Harlow, I discovered Howard Hawks, William Wellman and Victor Fleming. The movies spoke to me in an eloquence I’d never known before. They just plain spoke! The words sparkled, the scenes played out without cuts, the camera observed, rather than led the characters! What a revelation!
Dark Terrors 5 - The Gollancz Book of Horror - [Anthology] Page 50
