Somebody's Darling

by Somebody's Darling (retail) (epub)

  “Look at him,” Bo said. “I’d rather slosh through shit in my underwear than sleep with that. What are women, that they cohabit with such creatures?”

  Then the light went off and the picture came on. The first shot was of Tony Maury standing on the very top row of the Colosseum, with a fat fag in an Australian bush hat standing beside him—the art director, actually. It was a fast little film. I couldn’t tell what people were thinking, but once I heard Sherry say, “Lookit, it’s Harvey. . . .” That was it until the end of the picture.

  Usually there’s an awkward silence at the end of a screening, while people try to think of something nice to say, but there was no problem about that this time. The minute the lights came on Swan jumped to his feet, walked up the aisle to where I was sitting, and motioned at Sherry.

  “I hated it, let’s go,” he said.

  Sherry had the black glasses back on. “Yes, Daddy,” she said, standing up. I stepped out in the aisle as she passed by.

  “Who told you you could hit him?” she said, as she went past me. That was it. No thank-you-for-asking-me, no comment on the film, nothing.

  “See ya,” she said to Bo as she went out.

  Lulu was trying to get Digby to put away his earphones. The executive said, “Fine film, very fine film,” and rushed off with a pained expression on his face, probably to try and placate Swan Bunting. Bo was still in his seat, nibbling on an eraser. He seemed in a thoughtful mood.

  “Let’s see it again,” he said, waving at the projectionist. Lulu and the Chink had been trying to get Digby on his feet, but they sat back down. We saw it again.

  “Goddamn, I’ve got good judgment,” he said when the lights went on a second time. “I think it needs more tits, and maybe a little more cussin’. We might as well take our R and go for the college crowd.”

  Lulu and her gang came wandering up the aisle at that point.

  “That was fun,” she said. “Digby slept some, the second time around. We better haul it on home. He’s just exhausted.”

  Her departure obviously didn’t matter to Bo. He waved an eraserless pencil at her and went on talking. He monologued for a while about the various marketing options, but I didn’t really listen. I was wishing I had hit Sherry Solaré instead of her boyfriend. I found it pretty galling that she hadn’t bothered to say thank you. All I had wanted was a look at her, but she had been a better Indian than me. She had seen me and I had seen her sunglasses. I guess she had let me know my place, or what she thought was my place.

  “How did you like Miss Sherry?” Bo asked, when he finally finished airing his thoughts on the film.

  “She was damn rude,” I said. “Doesn’t she ever say thank you?”

  “It’s a power thang,” he said. “The bigger you get, the less manners you need. When you’re on top, one way to show it is by what one might call negative manners. The top cunt need never say please and thank you.”

  “How far down does she have to fall before she gets polite again?”

  He looked at me as if I was dumber than shit. “I wouldn’t wait around for please and thank you from Sherry,” he said. “She’s been up there so long she’s forgotten about manners, if she ever knew. She’s a desperate woman.”

  “Desperate? She didn’t strike me that way.”

  “You haven’t worked with her,” he said. “You haven’t watched her fight to get her way on every single point, every single day, for three or fo’ months. Shit, I can remember having’ to reswing the door on her trailer, when we were making our little musical. The door swung from left to right, like so many doors do, and she decided she’d be more comfortable if it swung from right to left. We reswung the motherfucker.”

  “Why’d you do that?”

  “Because we had six million in the picture,” he said. “It don’t cost six million to reswing a trailer door.

  “Sherry’s a worse addict than that shivering’ hulk with Lulu,” he added, “only her dope is powah. Which is what ah call a desperate situation, with her getting older. Just don’t you look for fine manners on her way down. You’ll see bitterness, you’ll see vitriol, you’ll see folks gettin’ scalded and fried all over the place.”

  “I thought you wanted to do a picture with her,” I said.

  “Oh, yeah, I do,” he said. “Right now, before she begins the decline. Next week wouldn’t be too soon to start.”

  “She doesn’t look so bad,” I said. “Maybe she’s just lonely. Maybe she just needs lovin’.”

  He looked at me quickly. “Lovin’ is a term that’s somewhat ambiguous,” he said. “Has Miss Jill seen the picture yet?”

  “Nope,” I said. “Tomorrow’s her birthday. I’ve been saving it for a birthday present.”

  “Glad to know about the birthday,” he said. “We owe her about a million roses for what she’s done with Tony’s picture. We think a lot of Miss Jill.”

  All I cared about was that he liked the picture. I was beginning to get a lucky feeling. I think from the way Bo kept looking at me that he had it in mind to tell me to stay away from Sherry, or to be nice to Jill, or some such brilliant advice, but if so, he didn’t say it, which was just as well. I might have hit him too. It wouldn’t have helped the picture, but I was getting pretty tired of his smart little eyes.

  9

  AN AVID WOMAN I CAN TRUST: SOMEONE WHO WANTS TO lick every inch of skin, poke her tongue into every hole. That’s fine. That’s natural. That type of woman doesn’t expect too much. Jill expected too much, and respected too much. She respected things that weren’t even there, and she didn’t seem to want to know every single thing about my past, like most women would. They always want to get control of your past—it’s smart enough, I guess.

  But Jill didn’t go about things that way. She was too private, too discreet, and ten times too polite. She waited to be asked, which is no way to go about anything.

  We got dressed up before the screening so we could go to dinner afterward. All during the picture she kept playing with a gold chain I had given her for her birthday, wrapping it around her fingers and then unwrapping it. I saw her smile a few times, but she didn’t laugh out loud. It made me nervous. If she had giggled a few times, I would have felt better, but there were no giggles, and when it was over, there was the kind of awkward pause that you usually get when a screening ends.

  The pause lasted about five seconds, which was long enough for me to begin to wish I hadn’t met Jill. She wasn’t going to lie. She thought it was crappy and she was going to say so. I knew it. I watched her. I don’t know, I think I would have fallen in love with her if she’d lied at that point. It would have been as good as avidity. Anybody who won’t lie for a lover is warped, somewhere. I was surprised at how much I wanted to hear her say it was a nice film. Then we could go eat, and go home and fuck, and who knows? Maybe I would have married her, who knows? She was pleasant to live with—a little strong on the health food, but pleasant. But if she wasn’t going to tell me what I needed to hear, then fuck it. That’s too basic.

  “All right,” I said. “You hate it. Fuck you. Do you want to go eat?”

  “Yeah,” she said, and tried to take my hand.

  I shoved her hand away and got up and walked out. She caught up with me at the car.

  “Owen, don’t get that way,” she said. “I don’t respond quickly to films. You know that.”

  “Oh, fuck off,” I said. “I don’t want your explanations. I don’t know what I’m doing with a woman your age anyway. People come to California for youth, not wrinkles.”

  She got in the car without a word. I shut up. She can ignore twenty minutes’ worth of insults, so it was a waste of breath.

  “Partly, I felt strange because it was Jimmy Boyd who cut it,” she said. “Jimmy Boyd grew up with Johnny. I’ve known him since he was five.”

  Johnny was her son. She had such guilt hang-ups about him that I never brought him up, or encouraged any talk about him. He was nearly grown and off living in a commune some
where in New Mexico. I guess the two of them had rejected one another, but I didn’t really care. The last thing I needed was a teenage kid hanging around, hating me because I was fucking his mother.

  “I mean, he’s good,” she said. “It’s a good piece of editing, and I know you didn’t do it because you don’t have the patience. A little kid I used to make popcorn for did it. It made me feel strange, that’s all.”

  “That’s just a cop-out,” I said. “I couldn’t make a picture you’d like, and you know it.”

  I was so mad at her that I almost ran over the kid who parked cars at the restaurant. It was the yellow restaurant. At night it wasn’t so full of uptight executives.

  “You have no knack for saying the right thing at the right time,” I said when we were seated. “I know you think your fucking integrity prevents it, but it’s really just selfishness. You’d rather be right than make people feel good.”

  She played with her napkin, a faraway look in her eye.

  “You still haven’t told me what you thought about it, other than that you popped popcorn for the cutter,” I said.

  “I guess I just don’t like satire that much,” she said. “It only tells one side of the story, and that seems too easy. It’s really easy to make Elmo and Winfield and the rest of us look like slobs. I could make you look like the cheapest hustler in town, if I handled the camera right.”

  “But it’s true,” I said. “I am a cheap hustler, and they are slobs. If you’re so big on the truth, why don’t you admit it?”

  She shook her head. “There just has to be sympathy,” she said. “Some satire’s all right—we all deserve it. But you could show us with a little sympathy. A lot of people worked hard on that picture, and we’re not all as ridiculous as you make us seem.

  “It’s why I respected Tony,” she said. “He got a little sympathy into his pictures, at least.”

  “Well, I could never hope to equal a great like Tony Maury,” I said. “I don’t think I’m the right man for you. Every time I turn around I bump into some pedestal.”

  It wasn’t a festive evening. I got depressed. Jill tried to make light of it, to cheer me up. She even lied a little about the picture, but it was too late. Her timing was terrible. Everything she said sounded phony, and phony coming from her was worse than if it had been coming from a natural phony.

  As soon as we got home I got drunk. She got drunk too, probably in an effort to keep me company. It didn’t help matters, because she’s as phony a drunk as she is a phony, and she was just going to be sick for about ten hours when it was all over. I felt disgusted with her and even more disgusted with myself for having gotten involved with her. It’s hard to believe that knowing what I know I had hooked up with a woman whose opinion would make a difference to me. With millions of women in the world who wouldn’t know a documentary from a pile of crap, I had tied on with one who knew something. What made it more stupid was that I didn’t really need to have anything going with a woman. I could get what sex I needed off the streets—particularly the L.A. streets.

  None of it made sense—I felt cornered. There’s no easy backing away from a woman like Jill. You can’t just say, “Whoa, ma’am, my mistake,” and back out the door. A woman like her destroys all the simple appetites. I could still fuck around, but it just made me restless. I felt like things had been going up and down for months, like I was on some crazy ride at an amusement park.

  The only thing to do was to start trying to get off. It would probably take months, but I was ready to start. Later on in the evening, when Jill crawled on top of me, expecting to get fucked, I kicked her out of bed. I got a foot in her stomach and shoved. She landed up against a chair halfway across the room. It seemed to surprise her.

  “Why’d you do that?” she said.

  “Because I have no sympathy,” I said. “I’m just a hustler from West Texas. I don’t give a shit about sympathy and I’m sick of you.”

  She thought she could change my mind. She eased back in bed. I grabbed her, rolled her over me, and dumped her on the floor on the other side of the bed. This time she hit a bookcase and about a dozen little pottery ducks fell off it. She couldn’t stay away from pottery ducks.

  “You’re drunk,” she said.

  “So are you—happy birthday,” I said. “I do it better than you, like almost everything else. I don’t know what you can do, except sympathize.”

  She picked herself up and got some clothes on and left. I didn’t pay any attention, and she didn’t say another word. She looked like she might make it out of the building before getting sick, but I didn’t care. It was just the beginning of something that would take a long time. I had done it before, twice. She might be back in the morning, or it might be a couple of days, but she’d be back. In the meantime she would talk to about twenty of her creaky old buddies, all of whom would tell her that I was a total shit. They would point out to her that I was completely wrong for her, that she was just being masochistic and self-destructive in seeing me, that it had no future, that I didn’t love her, that I was just leeching off her reputation, and a lot of other things that were probably half true. Maybe they were all true: it wouldn’t make a nickel’s worth of difference, except maybe to them. They could congratulate themselves on having given good advice, and commiserate about the trouble Jill was in, and agree with one another about what a prick I was, and none of it would matter. Jill would be right back. She wasn’t an organized woman, like Lulu. Lulu could turn it on and off like a faucet, but not Jill.

  The big joke was that I wasn’t an organized man. That’s where I had them all fooled. I’ve always aspired to pure opportunism, but I never make it. If I’d been a pure opportunist, I’d have stayed with Lulu. In time I could have persuaded her to pack old Digby off to the dope farm, and I would have had it made. But I didn’t like the taste of Lulu—not really—so I ended up being bossed around by my impulses, just like Jill. I hated Jill’s style, but I still liked the taste of her. Long after I thought I wouldn’t care if I never fucked her again, she kept turning me around. It kept happening, even after both of us had decided we might as well quit.

  I guess it was a good thing for both of us that Hollywood is nowhere near as ruthlessly efficient as it likes to think it is. There were a couple of superhuman types like Bo around, but mostly the town consisted of half-assed opportunists much like myself. They dress like professionals, but most of them are just fuck-ups. Naturally most of them end up fucking the wrong people and making the wrong pictures. Jill was actually sort of right to hang out with the crews—the crews have to be professional or they get fired, or don’t get hired.

  JILL STAYED AWAY FOR three days. I didn’t call her, she didn’t call me. I played a little poker and got turned down flat by Carly Heseltine, Bo’s secretary. It didn’t surprise me—I knew she had a boss hang-up. I just thought I’d give it a shot.

  Jill finally walked in just as I was thinking of driving to Vegas or somewhere. L.A. was beginning to get on my nerves. She was wearing a dress and carrying a script, so something must have been happening.

  “Are you still mad?” she asked, a little hesitant.

  “You could have called and asked if I was alone, before you came,” I said. “You don’t live here, you know.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “So call, like a normal person. This is not a public place.”

  “Owen, I think you’re overdoing the snottiness,” she said. “I’m sorry about the other night. I wasn’t very nice about your picture and I realize your feelings were hurt. Can’t we forget it? I have some news.”

  “Why would I need your news?” I said.

  She ignored it. “I had lunch with Bo today,” she said. “He really likes your picture. I think he’s going to spend some money on it.”

  “So let him tell me if he likes it,” I said. “You’re not my wife, you know.”

  Of course he had probably tried to call. I had been letting the service take the calls, and I hadn’t bothe
red to call in. That hadn’t been too brilliantly professional either, but that was the mood I was in.

  Jill just shrugged.

  “You’re not much on nonverbal communication, are you?” I said. “What do I have to do besides kick you in the stomach. Most people would take that to mean they’re not welcome.”

  “I took it to mean you were pissed off,” Jill said. “Not to mention drunk. I didn’t take it as a final statement.”

  “Why don’t you go back home and pretend we had a great romance,” I said. “Otherwise I’m apt to tell you about some of the ladies I’ve been fucking.”

  That shut her up for a minute. She thought it over.

  “I don’t think I could pretend it was a great one,” she said. “I guess I just like to think it’s something.”

  “It might have been, if you weren’t so hipped on work,” I said. “You’re not too exciting when you’re exhausted, you know.”

  She looked a little impatient.

  “Name some ladies,” she said.

  “How about Lulu?”

  She lifted her eyebrows, and waited. “Just one?” she said. “Aren’t there any more names?”

  “You wouldn’t know the rest of them,” I said. “They were what you might call casual fucks. One here, one there.”

  “I see,” she said. “I guess that explains why you seemed a little worked down at times yourself. I knew it couldn’t have anything to do with your arduous labors in the cutting room. You’re not always exactly breathtaking, you know.”

  She tried but she didn’t say it right. Some people can’t insult. When it came to meanness, Jill was undersupplied, but she did have anger. Her jaw was trembling and she got up and paced around the room, looking for something to smash. If I had had anything to smash she would have smashed it, but I have no possessions to speak of. All she could do, when her anger burst, was to throw the script in my face. A script is hardly a satisfying weapon. Her face was red with anger.

  “Why’d you quit her?” she said. “You’re perfect for one another. Neither one of you knows anything, or cares to learn about anything, except your deals. If you teamed up the two of you could own Hollywood in a few years.”