Hello Hollywood

by Suzanne Corso

  “Who supplied the fresh stuff for the salad?” I was imagining a wife hidden in the closet. “And who waters the plants?”

  “An Asian woman who is, I don’t know, probably in her late seventies. She lives downstairs and takes care of the place for me. Every so often I call her and give her a list of stuff I need, and she goes shopping for me. She cleans twice a month and comes in every few days to water my plants.”

  “So you have a place that functions on automatic.”

  “Several places.”

  “Yeah?” I poured water into the glasses I’d placed on the table. “Where else?”

  I expected him to name places like the south of France. Monaco. Tasmania. Auckland. Instead, he named San Francisco and Santa Fe, places I’d never been. “Why those cities?” I asked as he chopped up veggies to put on top of the pizza.

  “San Francisco may be the best city on the planet, and from there, I can explore northern California, and I love wines. Santa Fe has a thriving art scene and is close enough to Anasazi ruins. But my favorite is Santiago, Chile. I get there only once or twice a year.”

  “All cities that start with S. What’s that about?”

  “S is the initial that captured my heart early on in life, so I follow things that I love. I try to do whatever feels right at the time. Living in a concrete room can teach you that.”

  Twenty minutes later, our pizza was done, and we had opened another bottle of wine. “What’s Chile like?” I asked.

  “Gorgeous, varied, and parts of it are mystical. Like the island of Chiloé. There’s a—”

  “A ghost ship there,” I said, interrupting him. “I read about it somewhere. The Caleuche . . . yeah, I think that’s what it’s called.”

  “On Chiloé, they believe that ghost ship exists. They believe in mermaids. The place is enchanted, I’m sure of it. I took Brian with me once. We agreed it would be a great location for a movie.” He laughed. “All we need is a script.”

  “When have you had the time to buy all these properties?” The question was crass and none of my business, but an answer seemed important, at least in some deeper sense. Maybe everything he was telling me was bullshit, right? It wouldn’t be the first time.

  “A couple times a year I take a few weeks off. That’s when I’ve bought properties in the past.” He popped the last bite of pizza into his mouth and sipped at his wine.

  I touched his arm. “Show me the rest of your place,” I said.

  “You have to see the coolest thing yet.” He motioned for me to follow him. “No one else has ever seen it. The renovations were just completed last week.”

  The exquisite thing wasn’t his bedroom, per se, but started in his bedroom, in a corner: a tight, spiral iron staircase that led to the roof. Half of the roof was a garden where he grew herbs and bamboo.

  “Wow, this is impressive. But who tends the garden?” I asked.

  “The Asian woman.”

  “Does she have a name?”

  “Yes, Asian woman.” We both chuckled.

  “Lalyie. She is lovely, I’m blessed.”

  “So your hideouts hum along without you.” In all those places he’d mentioned where he owned homes.

  “Yeah, something like that.”

  “What do you pay them? No, wait. I’m sorry. That’s none of my business.”

  John just laughed. “You always have so many questions?”

  “Inquisitive.”

  “It’s refreshing. Most people are more interested in talking about themselves.” He was standing in a slice of sunlight during this exchange and looked breathtakingly handsome as his hands patted the air. “Okay, let’s see. I employ a dozen people to take care of my homes when I’m gone and to stock the places before I arrive. I pay my employees well and am grateful for them. The only place where I hold a mortgage is on my place in Malibu, for tax purposes.”

  “Uh, okay. I wasn’t really asking you for an accounting, John, I was just wondering about . . .” The way you live. Who you are. “I was just curious about how it all works.”

  “After those years in prison, when I didn’t have control over any facet of my life, when it was the same routine day after day, I enjoy making choices that make me feel good. Does that sound selfish?”

  “Selfish? No way. It sounds like all of us should be living our lives like that.”

  “C’mon, I’ll show you the other part of the roof.”

  I followed him to the other side of the roof, where four cobblestone steps led to a small tinted-glass dome. It was a beautiful room that held a perfectly round bed with an African motif—quilt, rug, pillowcases. There were plants everywhere, so it possessed an unmistakable lushness that scented the air. Next to the bed was a gorgeous cedar nightstand that held a bark wood lamp and several neatly stacked books. Against one wall was a pint-sized fridge, a teak dresser, and a closet. Another door led to a bathroom.

  “Your man cave,” I said with a laugh. “It’s fantastic.”

  He pressed a button on the wall; the dome darkened, and the bark lamp as well as several others came on, emitting a light so soft I could feel it against my skin. I set my drink on the nightstand and shed my jacket. I could not believe how he had this under the radar, how hidden away this space was. In the depths of a Brooklyn street, and he did so much to it. I could also tell how John never forgot where he came from, still keeping some sort of roots here. Just his name. That was forgotten.

  He set his drink on a nightstand on the other side of the bed, and the dome now blacked out completely. I wasn’t sure that I liked the tinted darkness. But I definitely liked what I saw as he unbuttoned and removed his shirt—a tattoo of Christ next to an image of the Brooklyn Bridge. “Wow,” I whispered, running my hand over it. I couldn’t believe the artwork or the man who had done this to his chiseled body. To be able to ink all your beliefs onto your body was, to me, a beautiful form of expression. Not all men can display it as such.

  Then he turned, showing me his back. The tattoo of the Archangel Michael stood next to a tattoo of a Blessed Mother. The artwork was exquisite, detailed, breathtaking. I was blown away that all the things I believed in were on this man’s body. “Every morning, I light three candles,” I said quietly. “To the Blessed Mother, Michael, and Buddha—that’s all you’re missing from this wonderful exhibit.”

  His eyes widened. “Really, Samantha?” I loved it when he said my full name aloud.

  “Paul used to make fun of me for doing that. He told me religion doesn’t have any place in Hollywood.”

  “Religion probably doesn’t, but spiritual practices definitely fit into Hollywood.” Then he cupped my face in his hand and drew me down against him, against the bed, and our clothes slipped away from us like water. The sheets were pure white and the fabric ever so soft. I melted into them. He drew the top sheet over us, and it fluttered down against my skin with exquisite softness. His hands moved over my body with unbearable gentleness, and yet it felt as if they emitted an electrical current that pulsed from my head to my toes.

  “My God, you are beautiful,” he whispered, and kissed my eyelids, the tip of my nose, the corners of my mouth, my breasts; and his hands slipped under me, over me, between my thighs.

  We rolled, laughing, across the inviting sheets, our bodies pressed so tightly together that it was impossible to tell where my skin ended and his began. I pulled back at one point and ran my hands over his chest, over the intricate tattoos, and I wanted to know in detail about each one and its origin. “Tell me about these,” I murmured, sliding my fingertips over the ink on his skin.

  He rolled onto his side, head propped up with one hand, and started talking, telling me how each tattoo had come about as his free hand slipped over my body. “My Blessed Mother was before I went to prison. It represents faith and hope. Michael is my protector, my warrior; and Jesus, well, he’s pure love. And, of course
, the bridge was who I was and where I’ve been, and I can never forget that . . . it led me back here to you, my Brooklyn girl, my real-life Rapunzel, who was always filled with bags of love, even when we were kids. Remember you were the one who grabbed me under the mistletoe, always on the attack.”

  He explored me like Magellan exploring a foreign country, a new land, learning the valleys and peaks, the planes and angles of this new place.

  Now he paused, and his mouth moved to where his hand had been, toying with my nipples. His tongue slid down the center of my body, circling my navel, inscribing a secret language against my belly and igniting a fire against my skin that burned hot and furiously.

  He rocked back onto his heels, slipped his hands under me, and then his mouth moved between my legs. When his tongue touched me, I groaned and gripped his shoulders, the sensation so overwhelming that my body arched, hungry for more. His fingers slid inside me, and his tongue kept darting, flicking, tasting. My groans seemed to fill the dome, echoing, bouncing off the glass walls. I moaned loudly as I came, my body twitching, my nails sinking into his skin.

  “Oh, my God,” I moaned. “Not so fast . . . stop . . . don’t stop . . . never stop . . .”

  He brought me to the edge again and again, pausing just before I came, then held me there at the precipice, his mouth against mine, kisses between words, my hands groping at him, at his hardness, desperately wanting him inside me.

  “Not yet,” he said, his voice husky with desire.

  He gently turned me onto my stomach; I lifted to my knees, and his hands ran over my ass, fastened to my hips. I felt his hardness against me and reached back, stroking him, trying to coax his penis inside of me. But his fingers slipped into me from a different angle and stroked long and hard, and I moaned into the pillow. His tongue slipped down my back, as if counting the steps in my spine, and I somehow rolled onto my back once more. He hovered just above me, his eyes locked on mine.

  “I . . . I . . .”

  “Ssshhh,” he said, and kissed me again, his hands everywhere at once.

  “Wait,” I said, and took him in my mouth, and he groaned as his fingers knotted in my hair.

  Then we rolled again, and he moved between my legs and his tongue teased me, flicking, darting away, driving me insane with desire. My body was slick with sweat; he licked it off my belly and lifted my hips and fastened his mouth against me. He stroked me with his finger, then his tongue, then both at once, and I began to shake and groan and didn’t just fall over the precipice, I plunged. I screamed; I was sure I screamed, but his mouth covered mine and took my scream into himself.

  Then he was inside of me, and we moved against each other, our bodies slapping together, our rhythm was perfection. I felt our inexorable power, a force of nature that could move mountains, change the course of rivers, and flip the planet on its axis. I lost track of time and space, lost track of everything.

  • • •

  We lay together beneath the tinted dome, in the soft light that might have been the glow of stars or of the moon, our fingers clasped. And we talked and made love again and talked and talked.

  “I’d like to stay right here for the rest of my life,” he said.

  “We’d starve.”

  “Nah, we’d call the deli up the block and have them deliver whatever we need.”

  “We’d get fat.”

  He laughed. “Okay, so we could get up now and then and walk through Brooklyn.”

  “We’d have to shower now and then, too, you know.”

  He laughed and slipped his arm around me and glanced at the clock on the nightstand. “Holy shit, Sam, it’s four in the morning.”

  “No way.”

  John got up and pressed a button that turned the dome transparent. The room filled with starlight. “Gorgeous, isn’t it?” he asked.

  “Incredible. But how can it be four a.m.?”

  “We were abducted by aliens.” He slipped back under the covers. “That’s the only explanation.”

  I pulled the sheet over us and stifled a yawn. “Well, if it was aliens, I’m glad they abducted the two of us at the same time.”

  He slipped his arm under my shoulders, drawing me closer to him, and I instantly fell asleep.

  • • •

  The sun woke us a few hours later. I realized I didn’t have even a toothbrush with me. I would have to go by the hotel to change clothes and freshen up before heading over to the park.

  “We’d better get moving.” I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, and he wrapped an arm around my waist and drew me back.

  “One more minute,” he whispered, and buried his face in my hair. I turned and kissed him. The heat rose between us again, and I finally pulled back, traced the shape of his mouth with my finger. Then I vaulted off the bed, swept my clothes off the floor, and floated toward the bathroom.

  Thirty minutes later, we were outside, moving along with the pedestrian traffic, the early-morning light spilling across a neighborhood as familiar to me as my own skin. But everything looked different. I felt as though I had been transported to some other world, a dimension of such magic and beauty that the air tasted new and fresh. Even the hum of traffic and noise sounded changed, almost musical.

  “Ever since that day I saw you at Blu Jam,” he said, “I imagined us walking along this very street after having spent the night together, knowing that the world would be transformed for me.”

  Was he really saying this? It was as if he’d just read my mind. As if he’d just stepped inside me and scooped out my thoughts and articulated them. This man knew everything I was thinking. “I feel like I woke up in a new life or something.”

  He laughed and squeezed my hand. “Same life, new story. When I first read your novel and then your script, I was blown away, Sam, by the honesty of what you’d written. So many of the women I’ve known have been deceptive and conniving, especially in Hollywood. Brian had emailed me the script and asked me what I thought. As soon as I’d finished reading it, I called him and told him that Gallery really needed to shoot this movie. An hour later, we had a deal with Paul.”

  Paul. During the night John and I had spent together, I’d completely forgotten about Paul, the monster in the shadows. And the nasty confrontation with Vito had been pushed out of my mind. Bliss, I realized, was possible even in the midst of chaos. Or maybe it grew out of chaos.

  “I wonder how our lives would have been different if something had developed between us after that first kiss all those years ago.”

  He shook his head. “I wasn’t the person I am now. It wouldn’t have worked. Besides, we’re here now, that’s what’s important. In spite of all the bullshit the two of us have lived through, we found each other, Sam, once again.”

  He touched my chin, turning my face toward him, and kissed me. The crowd of pedestrians flowed around us, and once more I was transported, swept away like some lovesick teenager being kissed for the first time.

  When we broke apart, he said, “You make me forget where I am.”

  “That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. I feel the same way, my John Steeling.”

  He looked delighted and surprised and let out a gleeful roar. We hurried on through Brooklyn, through the morning light, our strides easy and quick, as though we were walking on air. Then John called for the car that took us back to the Greenwich.

  SEVENTEEN

  When we arrived at the park, the entire area had already been closed off for the shooting. Two dozen stalls were lined up in neat rows from one end of the park to the other. They would be selling food, crafts, statues of Santa Rosalia and other Catholic saints and icons. Some booths would feature games and raffles, and the place would be rocking with music. A DJ was setting up at the far end of the park, and I knew that one of the songs that would be playing was Cher’s “Half-Breed.”

  The two hundred extra
s hired for this shoot spilled through the park. Some would play vendors in the stalls; others would be visitors at the festival. One scene would include Janice and me at a coin-toss booth, where you pitched a nickel into the center of a glass ashtray to win silly stuffed animals. A spotted giraffe, a black bear, a lion with a fuzzy mane, or a gangly-legged zebra with a yellow bow tied around its neck: I remembered all of this so vividly, it was like it had happened yesterday. It was as if, somewhere, my younger self still thrived and flourished.

  The coin toss had been especially popular with the guys, who enjoyed showing off for their girlfriends. That day thirty years ago, I remembered, Janice had worn a red halter top and khaki chinos, and I had worn tapered lime-green pants and an off-white tank top that covered my modest breasts and tiny waist. The day had been muggy—not the perfect weather we presently had.

  One of the scenes that would be shot this morning would involve Father Rinaldi—De Niro—who would be selling raffle tickets at the church’s booth. He would spot us and wave us over. In real life, as Janice and I had moved toward him, we had talked about what a hot-looking guy he was. And he really had been a handsome man, tall and lean, with dark hair that was perfectly cut and a broad smile.

  It’s a shame such a hot-looking guy isn’t available, Janice had said.

  Tell me about it.

  I could do him.

  Janice!

  Wouldya blame me?

  We both had burst into giggles, silly teenage giggles, the kind of giggles you would hear at slumber parties or during long, hot afternoons in the summer when we hung out together at someone’s house. When we reached the booth, Rinaldi had asked if we were enjoying ourselves.

  How’s your mom, Sam? he’d inquired.

  It seemed to be common knowledge in the neighborhood that my mother had some problems. Or maybe it was just that Rinaldi knew more about his parishioners and their families than anyone had a right to know.

  So-so.

  I’ll keep her in my prayers, Rinaldi had said.

  Thanks, Father.