Somebody's Darling

by Somebody's Darling (retail) (epub)

  A WEEK LATER I saw Owen again. Foolishly, I had agreed to go up to Tujunga Canyon, to a party at Elmo Buckle’s. Actually, I had even agreed to be Elmo’s date for the evening—or in other words, the hostess of the party. Of course Gohagen was a co-host. I usually called him Gohagen because I knew he was shy, underneath his hardened manner, and he had a greatly exaggerated respect for me. So did Elmo, I guess. If I called Winfield Winfield, he got morbid and drunk and told me he loved me, despite the fact that he had three live-in women at the time, one of whom was pregnant.

  As for Elmo, he claimed to be in love with a Canadian actress, who had evidently just left. Apparently she had managed to share the house with him for three weeks without ever consummating the act of love—as he delicately put it.

  “We never consummated the act of love,” he told me mournfully as he was driving me to his house in the Canyon. “That’s why I’m forced to call on you to help me out. If she hears I have a respectable woman for a date, don’t you reckon she’ll want to take another look at it?”

  I had followed Elmo and Winfield for years, through labyrinthine loves, seductions, and mate-swappings, without ever having been able to decide which group was the more masochistic: them, or their women. No woman who wasn’t somewhat masochistic would have put up with their rather stereotypic chauvinism. On the other hand, no healthy man would have put up with their women, who were either totally passive zombies or else the meanest-spirited, most grasping, bitter-mouthed poor-white women I had ever seen. It was as if they had a pipeline running from Tujunga Canyon to Austin, out of which crawled only those two kinds of women. That Elmo had branched out as far as a Canadian actress was a sign of some progress.

  “I hope she comes and takes another look at it,” Elmo said as we drove.

  I had no comment. Underneath all their acts, Elmo and Winfield were likable, intelligent, perceptive and kindly men, and I could never understand or imagine what colossal uncertainties drove them to live as they did.

  Their party was filled with the usual assortment of record producers, dope dealers, hip bankers, rock singers, a jet-set child or two, and many hillbilly musicians, plus a few very nervous younger executives from Beverly Hills who were seeing how far out they could get and still make it back. I made tacos and Elmo and Winfield cooked up a ferocious chili. They argued enough about its ingredients to cause a bystander to think that a five-star meal was in progress. Winfield brought all three of his girls, and Elmo, I think, managed to consummate the act of love with one of them before the evening was over—though I had told him specifically that if I was going to be his date, he would have to refrain from such a thing, at least until after he took me home. Theirs was a strange friendship—neither of them quite trusted a woman until she’d slept with them both.

  A lot of marijuana was smoked, some coke sniffed, a lot of chili eaten, and some loud hillbilly played. I felt quite at home with Elmo and Winfield, although I didn’t like a soul at their party except them and one seraphic young guitarist, who stood over me half the evening, trying to think of something to say. Whenever I asked him a question he called me ma’am.

  “I lived out in Floydada until I went off with the band,” he said. “It sure is crazy out here in L.A., ain’t it, ma’am?” He was such a baby he reminded me of my son, who hadn’t called home in weeks.

  Somehow Elmo’s house seemed like it ought to be in Appalachia, although the kitchen was all redwood, very expensive, and all the cars parked below it were Mercedes or Ferraris or something. I spent most of my evening in the kitchen, which smelled wonderful, partly of chili and partly of redwood. Once in a while Elmo came in, drunker and more stoned each time. Each time, he hugged me.

  “Shit, the wenches of Texas have become a race of fuckin’ harridans,” he said on one such visit. “One of them’s giving old Winfield a blow job, right out in the yard. I seen it. How much lower can a civilization sink?”

  Then he insisted that the angelic young man play his guitar for the guests. I went out of the kitchen to listen and saw Owen. Once again he was with Raven Dexter, who was wearing a woolly coat of some kind, not because it was cold but because Lulu Dickey wore woolly coats. She had cornered one of the young executives and was promoting her screenplay, and Owen was standing by himself, looking out a plate-glass window. He hadn’t seen me and didn’t know I was there, so I got to study him a little. It was a rare opportunity for me to try and figure out what I’d seen in him to begin with, but I didn’t do much with it. I got scared he’d see me and went back to the kitchen, only to sit there hating myself for my cowardice. Was I going to hide in the kitchen at every party he turned up at, for the rest of my life?

  While I was hiding, Gohagen came in the back door. Although he was extremely drunk, he at once figured out what I was doing.

  “Sittin’ there hidin’ from fuckin’ old Owen,” he said. “I wisht I had some room to talk, but hell, look at me. I just got sucked off by a woman I didn’t even know, and me with three women here. Let’s go for a ride before something else happens.”

  “You’re too drunk,” I said. “I’m scared to ride with you.”

  Gohagen was perhaps forty-two, and he looked like he had lived three lives. In fact he looked like he was even then living two or three, simultaneously, and probably he was.

  “You want us to beat the piss out of him?” he asked, blinking at the suggestion that he was too drunk to drive. “Me and Elmo will take him on, if you say the word. I know we’re drunk, but we’re persistent.”

  I didn’t want them to beat him up, and I didn’t want him to see me, either. I really didn’t want it. The only impression I had formed in my inspection was that he had a selfish mouth, which I already knew. While I was hiding I found a novel Elmo had written, and read about half of it. To my surprise, it was good. In Hollywood, when a screenwriter tells you he writes novels it makes as little impression as if a woman like my mother tells you she plays bridge. It never occurs to anyone that such novels could count, but it seemed to me that Elmo’s almost counted.

  My hiding worked. Owen and Raven went off, as did the young executives, the hip bankers, and the dope dealers. Only the musicians stayed, and I finally did go out and listen to the young guitarist. Gohagen was in intense conversation with his pregnant lady friend—the other two sat silent as statues nearby.

  When Elmo came in and sat down by me, I asked if I could borrow his book. It was called Fast Company.

  “You can have it,” he said. “Shit, you can even have the remainder of it if you can think of something to do with it. I got twenty-three hundred copies stacked in the garage.

  “I had a great theme that time,” he added. Elmo had weary eyes. “My theme was that life is a mess. Undeniably great fuckin’ theme. You want to run off with me and go live in Italy? We could just be friends.”

  “Not this year,” I said. “Maybe next year.”

  “Your ex-feller was asking about you,” he said. “Half the time I feel like whipping his ass, but I never get around to it.”

  “You boys are a little hard on him,” I said.

  “Yeah, maybe,” Elmo said. “I guess anybody that’s had to stick it in Sherry deserves some sympathy. You know what she told me one time? She said I looked like a Berkeley professor. An ordinary Berkeley professor, she said. Worst insult I’ve had since my first wife told me I didn’t know how to fuck. Me and Winfield call her the Sphincter. That’s our pet name for her.”

  “Who? Sherry, or your first wife?”

  “Sherry. Winfield hates her worst than I do. She seen him naked at an orgy or something and told him his cock was so little she thought he had three balls. That kind of remark carries a sting, let me tell you. Winfield keeps having fantasies of hitting her between the eyes with a ball-peen hammer.

  “Do you know that I got a daughter that’s married?” he said a little later. “Hell, I ain’t even married. Makes me feel funny. Old Winfield’s got kids older than mine. He’s already a fuckin’ grandpa, an’ look
at him. Three women, and he can’t fuck often enough to do justice even to one. I don’t know why I go on livin’ in fuckin’ L.A. If I could just quit spending money, I’d be rich in a week, at the rate I make it.”

  Gohagen came slouching over and plopped down in a chair, beer can in hand.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask you a bold question,” I said. “Do you set your beer can down when you make love?”

  He grinned shyly. “Most times,” he said. “Unless some wench slips up on me and humps me up against a tree or something. If I get to lie down in a bed, I usually set it down.”

  “Just wondered,” I said.

  Later, the two of them drove me home, leaving Winfield’s three women sitting in front of a huge TV set. Winfield insisted on driving, to show me he could drive in any state, I guess. His driving didn’t bother me, but it scared Elmo badly.

  “This is two-lane traffic up here, I mean two-way traffic and a two-lane road, and this sure as hell ain’t England,” he said. “How come you’re driving on the left?”

  “Just giving myself a little advantage on these hairpin curves,” Winfield insisted. He careened out of the Canyon at a speed so great that Elmo was silent with apprehension. I was unafraid. I didn’t think I was going to be hurt in a car wreck. Subtler fates were in store for me.

  They asked about Joe—Uncle Joe, they called him—and before I could finish telling them, we were at my house. Owen’s butter-colored Mercedes was sitting in front of it. Winfield reacted quickly and drove right on past. We all caught a glimpse of Owen, sitting behind the wheel. Winfield rolled on, five or six blocks down the hill, and killed the motor. They both looked at me.

  “Don’t look at me,” I said. “I didn’t do anything.”

  “He smelled her,” Elmo said. “I told you he would. This is your fault, Winfield. You just want to fuck that silly-ass New York wench, so you asked her to the party knowing full well who she was shacked up with.”

  “Well, I like to fuck silly women,” Winfield said, defensively. “I’m silly myself, and the whole world knows it. I never asked her to bring a date.”

  They stopped talking and we were all silent.

  “I consider it a sinister development,” Elmo said.

  “Oh, I don’t,” I said. “Let me out.”

  “But you don’t live here,” Winfield said. “You live up there.”

  “I know that,” I said. “I think I’d like a little walk before I go home.”

  “Wonder what he did with Raven,” Winfield said.

  “Don’t give it a thought,” Elmo said. “Three women are waiting at my house, remember? I don’t plan to go home and tell them I just happened to drop you off at Raven Dexter’s.”

  I thanked them and got out and began to walk up the sidewalk. They began to follow me in the car. Winfield didn’t even turn around. He just backed.

  “Why are you following me?” I asked.

  “Dangerous city,” Elmo said. “We just want to make sure you get home safe. We owe you that. After all, you did make the tacos.”

  “Go away,” I said. “This is my neighborhood. I walk here every night. I just want to be alone for a few minutes, if you don’t mind.”

  Of course all men mind, even friendly men. They never want you to be alone—not unless they have plans of their own.

  However, Elmo managed to be mature. “The reason chivalry is dead is because women won’t put up with it no more,” he said. “Ain’t that right, Winfield?”

  I walked on, and the car stayed where it was. When I was two blocks up the hill I looked back and it was still there. I heard the sound of one of Winfield’s beer cans hitting the street—even heard it roll down until it struck the curb.

  After that I walked more slowly. At times, in fact, I stopped walking altogether and just stood there on the sidewalk, trying to decide what mood to be in when I finally arrived. It required decision, because I really was in no mood at all. The sight of the familiar car, sitting in front of my house, plus the glimpse of Owen sulking at the wheel, had caused a sort of surcease in my feeling processes. I certainly didn’t feel excited, expectant, or angry. I didn’t even feel apprehensive. I just felt blank—which I didn’t like. I wasn’t going to be a blackboard on which he could write whatever he had decided he felt.

  It’s odd that I should have tried to deal with actors, when I myself am such a bad actress—not even bad, just a non-actress. Hauteur would be appropriate for such a situation, but I couldn’t act hauteur. Maybe I just felt a little vindicated: the power to make someone come back, for however illegitimate a reason or purpose, is still a satisfying power. After all, he had come back. The fact was more eloquent than he was likely to be.

  Eventually I reached my block, and then the car. He was fatter in the face, unhealthily so. I was hoping he would be generous enough to come up with some first words, but it was a vain hope. He just looked.

  “All right,” I said. “Hello, if you won’t say it.”

  “Didn’t see you at the party,” he said.

  “I stayed in the kitchen. Didn’t much like the crowd.”

  “That’s their good crowd,” he said. “You ought to see their bad crowd.”

  It made me impatient, really impatient. Did he think he had come to talk about Elmo’s taste in people?

  “Owen, what do you want?” I asked.

  “Maybe just a cup of coffee,” he said.

  “If that’s what you want, go get it at a diner,” I said tersely.

  “Go ahead and get mad,” he said. “I wouldn’t blame you.”

  “No reason you should.”

  He shrugged—his second shrug in a very short space of time. It was as close as he could come to penitence.

  “Stop shrugging,” I said. “No one’s going to forgive you on the basis of a gesture that weak.”

  “Do you want to take a trip?” he asked brusquely.

  “Is that why you came? A trip where?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “We could figure it out on the way. Tucson, maybe. Or maybe just San Diego. I liked that motel we had.”

  “Um, lots of towels,” I said.

  We stared at one another for a while.

  “No,” I said. “It’s insolent of you to suggest it. Take your trip with Raven.”

  “I will if you don’t get in,” he said. “Come on. I’m tired of this town. Let’s go somewhere else for three or four days.”

  “No,” I said.

  “You say no too much,” he said. “You don’t have the guts to do the things you really want to do.”

  I turned and went up my sidewalk and he started the car and was gone by the time I got to my steps. I sat on the steps for a while. Maybe I thought he might come back, try to argue, I don’t know. He had never been a man to hammer at rejection—he just went away from it. I felt stirred up and horrible. I hated the arrogance of it all, and his absolute refusal to deal with the past. He didn’t understand that I had to deal with the past before I could feel myself a present. We were a mismatch: he just wasn’t that way. The past never got a hand on him, as he liked to put it.

  I spent the rest of the night on my couch, drinking tea with lots of lemon. Probably I drank a quart, or maybe a gallon—trying to drown my antagonistic feelings in tea with lots of lemon. Half my antagonistic feelings were for Owen, and the other half were for myself. I didn’t turn on the television, although I could have consoled myself with plenty of all-night movies. Having just rejected real life, I wasn’t ready to lull myself with fantasies.

  Probably he had nailed me. Probably I didn’t have the guts to do what I really wanted to do. The more I attended to principles, the lonelier I got. I should have gone off into the desert with him and fucked for a few days. It seemed incredible to me, once my first anger cooled, that I was still evidently holding out for some totally stereotyped version of the American dream. Did I really suppose that if I just stuck to my principles, someday Owen and I, or someone and I, would develop into a model American c
ouple?

  Probably the big secret I kept wanting to deny was that the essence of what Owen and I had was just cheap, not fine. It wasn’t ideal, or progressive, or filled with social potential, or creative, or domestic. It boiled down to crude attraction: fucking in motels was about the best we had ever done, or would ever do—three or four days in some place we’d never see but once, with the sheets a tangle, the flicker of television, and the smell of sex. I would get ashamed to let the maids come in, at least until the towels ran out. Why I had to try and convert that into some recognizably normal domesticity was a question to which there was certainly no answer in the tea leaves.

  I spent three days in a turmoil of regret, fantasizing about what might have happened if I hadn’t been so cautious and so ordinary.

  Then I heard that Raven Dexter had suddenly married Toole Peters. Their pictures were in all the magazines, Toole looking unusually sickly.

  About two weeks later Owen called, sounding drunk and almost jolly. He was pretending things were easy between us. We talked about my picture for a bit. It was a Friday night, and I had just settled down to drink tea and read some scripts.

  “Let’s go to Nevada,” he said. It was dusk. He had always felt better with evening to protect him. He knew it wouldn’t do to approach me in the brightness of morning. Better to have a little weariness working for him. I was too prickly in the morning, too clearheaded. Better to drive along hypnotically for several hours, lulled by the night and the road. It helped us to stop being so individual.

  I waited a moment to see if he was going to say anything else.

  “I don’t like Las Vegas,” I said. “Never have.”

  “How about Tahoe?” he said. “Somewhere around there. I’m fresh. We could drive all night.”

  With Owen, waiting never got one much.

  “Sure,” I said. “Good idea. Let’s drive all night.”

  8

  OWEN HAD EYES LIKE A LION, AMBER, AND EMPTY WHEN he was satisfied. At least in the shadows of bedrooms, with just a little light and my eyes only a few inches away, they seemed amber. In strong light they were light brown. The secret, I decided, was not to let strong light into our lives. Lower the shades. Make love in the light from the television. Get food from room service, or from some place that delivered. Stop trying to make it into a sunny relationship, with walks and beaches and balanced meals.