He got there forty-five minutes late and was in an ugly mood.
I said, “What’s the matter, Mano?”
He said, “I think maybe it’d be better if we didn’t see each other for a while.”
I suddenly started to shake. I got up and said, “I left something in the room, I’ll be right back.”
Every breath I took seemed a struggle. Every step felt like I was wearing cement boots.
I got back to the room and Naomi said, “Oh my God! What’s the matter? You’re snow-white.” Then she saw how badly I was shaking and said, “Lie down.”
I lay down flat on the floor and lit up a cigarette and Naomi poured me a glass of wine. I glugged three or four glasses and felt okay enough to hurry back to Steve.
He was still sitting in the lobby, staring at nothing.
“Come on, Mano,” I said to him. “I flew all the way up here—at least have a drink with me.”
He came into the bar with me and after a couple drinks, Steve loosened up a little.
He took me down to his quad and showed me the room he lived in—it was a hovel.
He made a point of telling me that one of his neighbors had recently OD’d on smack.
We flew back to Maui.
But I was hurting so much that as the weeks went by on Maui, I couldn’t face thinking about Steve’s or Suzi’s or Gerri’s pain.
Because if I thought of their pain, it would make my pain unbearable. I’d start to shake or throw up or I’d reach for another joint or another glass of Tanqueray or white wine.
I missed my house, too, the Tara-like dream home atop a hill in Tiburon that overlooked the bay.
I had decorated every room, had selected every African mask and every painting and every vintage, turn-of-the-century Tiffany lamp. I had designed even the crystal in the kitchen door and the tulips in the kitchen tile.
I missed driving my big black Mercedes on a foggy day over the hill to my other house in Stinson Beach, which I had decorated with a Hungarian motif, even finding a cabinet carved in the 1870s with the figures of hussars all over it.
And I missed my dogs: Macko, the hard-headed husky who listened only to my directions … Bookshi, the ugliest dog in the world, a Chihuahua I’d bought at a flea market for ten dollars … Cigi, our lab, the Mexican army dog who ran away at the first sign of trouble.
I missed my home.
· · ·
I went back to Tiburon with Naomi for Steve’s high school graduation. I sat next to Gerri at the ceremony while Naomi stayed at the Huntington hotel.
I hugged Steve as he came down the aisle with the other graduates.
He looked away from me when I hugged him.
I had a drink with Gerri afterward and told her I couldn’t handle the pain of this anymore. I told her I was coming back home.
When we got to the house, Suzi was there. I told her that I was coming back home and Suzi held me and cried.
I looked at Suzi in her pretty purple dress and realized that my little girl had grown up.
I also realized that Naomi had bought her … what seemed like such a long time ago … the pretty dress Suzi was wearing.
I went inside, called Naomi at the hotel, and told her. I was crying when I said the words, “I’m going back to Gerri and the kids.”
Naomi said, “Is someone desperately ill?”
I said, “No. You should go back to L.A.”
Naomi said, “Can I see you before I go?”
I said, “No.”
Gerri and I sat and drank and I asked where Suzi was. Gerri said Suzi had gone to an all-night graduation party and would be back the next day.
What about Steve? Where was Steve? Steve didn’t even know I was home.
Steve was at an all-night graduation party, too.
I was exhausted and I went to bed and after a while I heard Gerri come in and go to her bed.
I pretended to be asleep.
When I got up the next morning, Gerri was already downstairs. I sat on the side of the bed, looked out on the bay, and started to cry.
I went downstairs and Gerri was on the phone telling everyone that I was back.
I tried to call Naomi at the hotel. She had checked out.
A messenger arrived with a letter from her.
I was reading her letter and crying when Gerri came running down the stairs to my office yelling, “I won! I won!”
She took one look at me reading Naomi’s letter and froze. She knew from the look on my face who the letter was from.
“I need some time to think this out,” I said.
Gerri glared at me, her jaw set.
She went running up the stairs.
· · ·
Naomi’s letter:
June 17, 1993
And yet another irony, Bill announced he was leaving me on the 17th.
You just called and I suppose it’s safe to say that I’m in shock. Or at least I must be, because I’m unable to feel anything.
I do know several things which I will try to articulate:
1. I will miss you deeply. I love you deeply.
2. I will pine for you and the beautiful home we created (or at least began to create) on Maui. Our Jeep. Our spiders. Our life.
3. I will never understand why you wouldn’t (or couldn’t) do me the courtesy of telling me in person. You’re certainly not one to shirk those sorts of responsibilities. Such an abrupt dismissal seems unnecessarily cruel, but perhaps you think I don’t deserve more.
4. I will always grieve for the loss of our future children, “our barbarians.” They would have been extraordinary people.
5. I’m sorry if you felt I didn’t love you enough. I loved you with every ounce of my being, but perhaps there wasn’t enough of me left.
6. I will miss what you called me: “the Little Guinea.” You discovered her, and her crooked smile, and her clodhoppers, and her declaiming manners, and her mongoose temper, and I guess it means that I now have to say goodbye to yet another piece of me. No wonder I feel like a shell. “I should have been a pair of ragged claws …”
7. I can’t hate you. You gave me too much. I hope you don’t go back to your lonely ways; you deserve so much more.
8. (I must keep writing. I’ve been left so totally alone and I’m afraid to stop.) I’m sorry I wasn’t able to say more over the phone. I was (and am) in shock. I was waiting in my white dress to throw myself in your arms, tell you how much I missed you, and glow … while you told me how pretty I looked. The scenario that ensued is so dreadful that I can’t even express the pain. If I open that door, I think I may not even come back.
What do you suppose I have done in my life to warrant such sadness? Have I looked at the world through rose-colored glasses for so long that I must now see a harsh, cruel reality? Am I never to see the bright side again? I wish I could talk to you. Was it something you felt I did? I can assure you, I never lied to you. I was only honest. What a sadness. We are a human tragedy, aren’t we? At least I certainly am. I never betrayed your love.
I am grateful that we had such a lovely last night and last day together. I loved you immensely today. I felt that perhaps the sadness and pain was truly behind me and that, as you said only yesterday, great joy would make me forget all the past heartache. But instead I find I’m in for more. How will I endure without you? And so you’ve left me, sitting alone in this room, surrounded by your things. I suppose I understand what has happened, but what I don’t understand, and probably never will, is, once again, the way it was executed. Maybe someday you will, as my great friend, be able to explain it to me.
I love you,
Naomi
P.S.
Thank you for everything you’ve given me. I just wish I weren’t left here alone with no one even to hold my hand or offer some hope. I love you, Joe. I guess I just didn’t show it to you enough. I would have been a great friend, and even greater partner. But thank you for giving me the past three months. A final kiss—X.
P.P.S.
When we went to St. Emeric’s, you told me you’d love me forever. You told my dad you would never hurt me. I still love you anyway.
I sat there for hours, thinking, crying, rereading Naomi’s letter. I got on the phone and tried to reach her in L.A.
Gerri came downstairs and I asked her to forgive me. I couldn’t do it. I loved Naomi too much. I was leaving again.
Gerri started to cry and said, “Joseph, how can you do this to us?”
Gerri’s psychiatrist arrived. She had called him. He sat in my office and told me that I was “addicted to Naomi.” He said this was going to be as difficult to break as any other addiction, but he was sure he could help.
He wanted to put me into a hospital under sedation for three or four days, then do some psychological testing, then put me into another hospital for about a month.
I said no thanks, watched him walk out and get into his car.
His license plate read “Go-For-It.”
I took his license plate’s advice. I reached Naomi in L.A., told her how much I loved her, and told her to get back to the Huntington as soon as she could.
Steve and Suzi got back from their parties around dinnertime. We sat down in the dining room and I told them I was leaving again.
We were all crying.
I begged them to try somehow to forgive me.
Suzi said, “Fuck you! I hate you, Dad!” and left the house.
Steve said, “My dad is a real asshole,” and left, too.
I went to the phone to call a cab.
“I’ll drive you into the city,” Gerri said.
I said, “No, please, it’s better if I take a cab.”
“Let me drive you in, Joseph,” Gerri said.
I couldn’t stop crying as she drove the big Mercedes.
Gerri said, “What have you done to yourself, Joseph?”
When Naomi got to the Huntington a few hours later, I was still crying. We were both crying as we fell asleep in each other’s arms, after the moments when we conceived our first child. The next day we flew back to Maui.
I felt that Steve and Suzi were too far away from me on Maui.
I wanted to go back to Marin with Naomi, but my kids argued against it, saying that Gerri would freak if I went back there with Naomi.
We decided to rent a place in L.A., although as far away from L.A. as we could be—in Malibu, on the sea, where we could pretend we were still on Maui.
We rented a furnished house in the fabled Malibu Colony, where our neighbors would be John McEnroe and Kate Jackson and Brian Keith and Paul Reiser.
Flying from Maui to the mainland, as Naomi and I were dozing off in the darkly lighted cabin …
A man wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses startled us awake.
He stuck a mini tape recorder in my face.
Speaking very quickly, he said, “I’m Bob Blanchard from the Enquirer—can you tell us about this tawdry romance you’re involved in.”
I put my arm up and pushed him and said, “Back the fuck up a minute, okay?”
And at that moment I recognized him. It was my producer friend Don Simpson, whom I hadn’t seen in years.
I introduced him to Naomi and asked him what he was doing and he said he was trying to lose some weight—he’d been at a fat farm on Maui, was stopping at home in L.A. for a week, and was then headed for a fat farm in Arizona.
Naomi went back to sleep and Simpson and I sat down together in some empty seats and talked for hours, catching up on each other’s lives.
After a while I went back and sat with Naomi and when the plane landed in L.A., Naomi and I were the first to get off so I could race to the bathroom for a cigarette.
A valet who was a film student at USC met us at the gate to handle our carry-ons.
I suddenly realized I hadn’t said goodbye to Simpson and said to Naomi, “Wait a minute, I want to give Don a hug.”
I left Naomi with the valet and went back to the gate.
Simpson came out the door and saw me there waiting for him.
The film-student-valet said to Naomi, “This is a historic moment here. There’s Don Simpson and Joe Eszterhas.”
I gave him a hug and Don hugged me around the waist and picked me up high in the air … and as he held me, he started to topple backward.
The film-school-valet said to Naomi, “There’s Don Simpson and Joe Eszterhas falling down.”
I fell right on top of Simpson, who was on his back, his legs apart, while I lay between his legs.
“Get off me!” Simpson barked.
I knew what the position we were in must be doing to Don’s hyper-extended sense of macho.
The film-student-valet said to Naomi, “There’s Joe Eszterhas between Don Simpson’s legs.”
“Get off me!” Simpson yelled.
I started to move my hips atop him and mock-kissed him on the lips.
The film-student-valet said, “There’s Joe Eszterhas humping and kissing Don Simpson.”
Simpson pushed me off of him in a huff and got up.
Simpson, red-faced, said, “That’s not funny, goddamnit!”
My knees were bruised from the fall and since I wore shorts in the summer to all my meetings, I explained to everyone that Don Simpson had given me rug burns.
We rented our house in the Colony from a producer who had had one hit nearly thirty years ago and was now living in a tiny apartment in Studio City … and living off the rental of the house he still owned in the Colony.
The house had been added on to so many times that all the floors were uneven—each room higher or lower than the other.
I kept falling, stumbling, or twisting my ankle as I went from one room to the other.
It was a dump of a little house with its own Hollywood history. Previous renters included Bette Midler and Tim Hutton and Woody Harrelson, who’d left behind the teepee he built on the lawn next to the house.
After about a month there, I started thinking I really was losing my mind.
I kept losing things. First some underwear, then some tank tops, then some sun-bleached navy Polo shorts I’d worn for years.
Naomi was laughing at me and I had to admit that I couldn’t conceive why anyone would want to steal my somewhat frayed size 38 Fruit of the Loom jockey shorts.
We were over in the Valley, sitting in a coffee shop one day when my producer-landlord walked in with some of his friends.
We chitchatted about how much we liked living in his house and about the movies I was working on and then I told him how much I liked the sun-bleached navy Polo shorts he was wearing and he told me that he’d worn them for years.
There were no paparazzi at the Colony. The security guards at the only entrance made sure of that.
And our new neighbors, who’d read every headline of the Sharon/Bill/ Naomi/Joe tabloid extravaganza, were nice to us and protective of us.
Naomi was becoming more obviously pregnant each day and Jon Peters, who lived across the street from us, sent his maid over with specially prepared pastas. Once he and his girlfriend, Vendela, even sent her roses.
Early one morning, I saw someone nosing around our new Land Rover and I went out there and found that it was John McEnroe.
“Sorry.” He grinned. “Great wheels.”
We had to fly back to Ohio for a family member’s funeral and when we put the TV on in our hotel room in Cleveland, we saw that Malibu was burning.
The news said the massive fire was approaching the Colony. We couldn’t get through by phone to see if we’d lost the few belongings that we had.
The next morning, as we hurried through the Cleveland airport to catch a flight home, the TV news told us, just as we were getting on the plane, that the Malibu Colony had burned to the ground.
The gods, I thought to myself, were angry at us (probably justifiably).
The house Naomi had shared in Venice Beach with Bill Macdonald had burned to the ground and now this …
Naomi’s journal:
On the way to the funer
al home, his father told Joe he wanted to come to California to live with us.
Joe told him, “No, Pop, you’re better off here.”
When we got to the funeral home, we sat in the first row—Joe’s dad, then Joe, then me.
Joe leans over and says, “I’m going out to have a cigarette. Can you please move over next to my dad when I leave?”
So I do. His father turns and stares at me. Right in the eyes, a long hard stare. It said everything.
It said, “You. You could have made it possible for me to come to California. If you wanted me to come, he would let me. And you sold me out. A lot of good you did.”
And then he snorted, and turned back to look straight ahead, as if to say, “I don’t need you to sit next to me.”
So I leaned over and said, “Well, at least I’m better looking than Joe is …” knowing full well that, in any circumstance, Joe’s dad always loves to sit next to a young woman.
He never looked at me, he just laughed one big “Haw!” out loud.
Then he said, “Zis is true.”
The Pacific Coast Highway to Malibu was closed, but the cops finally let us through when we convinced them we were residents.
The air was filled with ash. Hillsides were still blazing. We drove inch by inch through a brown-hazed war zone. Burning embers and tree branches were all over the road.
It took us almost three hours to get to the Colony. Hundreds of fire trucks were lined up in a wall guarding it, spraying the fields in front of the Colony walls.
Much of the rest of Malibu had burned, but this panzer division of fire trucks had kept the Colony safe.
Of course, I thought to myself.
The gods may have been angry at us … but our neighbors had juice.
We got Naomi’s golden retriever, Jake, back from the ranch where he’d been temporarily staying and now Jake was with us in our house at the Colony.
There was one problem, I quickly noted. Jake wasn’t just Naomi’s dog … he was also Bill Macdonald’s.
Jake hated me. He snarled and barked at me.
Every afternoon, as I did my laps in the pool, Jake waited for me and … at just the right moment … Jake hurled himself onto the middle of my back, trying to drown me.
Naomi went for a walk on the Colony beach with Jake.
Hollywood Animal Page 65
