What Movies Made Me Do

by Susan Braudy

  I turned away, surprised that my life had brought me here to this kitchen, where I was cooking chicken soup for a movie star whom I had once slept with, run away from, dreamed about, and who was now working for me.

  The chicken was golding in butter. I lowered the flame under the boiling soup. In the bathroom, I unfurled a sheet, dropping it into the empty tub. My grandmother used to kneel by her curving old tub with claw feet and fold me in wet sheets to contain the heat of the water. I loved inhaling the steam and the yeast she added. She fussed over me like a sleeping princess, calling it bathing Russian style. Grandpop tsked with his teeth and told her to stop telling me bubbe-mysehs. I loved her gnarled witchlike hands wrapping the sheets around me under the water. She made my whole body feel relaxed and floating and loved.

  I rummaged into my vitamin shelf and found a jar of yeast tablets. I shook the flat yellow pills into the sheets steaming in the hot water and watched the pills flake away.

  Ten minutes later he leaned a hand on my shoulder and dipped one brown foot into the heated water. Rosemary and I sat on our knees shaking lotions and more tablets into the marble tub. We were soaked and sweaty and silent. He was still wearing his dungarees. They smelled musty in the damp bathroom, like our cigarette-choked airplane.

  He wrinkled his nose. “It smells like my granddad’s barn when I was a kid.”

  “My grandmom gave me baths like this.” We smiled at each other.

  When Rosemary and I peeked in five minutes later he was lying under ballooning wet sheets. He looked like a drowning pigeon. Rosemary stifled her chortles and snorted. I ducked my head down, hugging her, and got a fit of giggles. “I wish I had a camera,” she hissed into my ear.

  “Hey, I’m cold! Close the door, you two!”

  “Sssh,” I told Rosemary. We crept forward into the bathroom without looking at each other and knelt, patting wet sheets over his body to keep air out of them. The sheets billowed and sank.

  He grinned at me, his face shining with perspiration and steam. His eyebrows and lashes were moistly dark and seductive. “Women’ll do anything to get my clothes off.”

  Rosemary blushed. “I think you initiated this,” I said, kneeling over his feet.

  “Could be worse,” he sighed in the relaxing heat.

  I wiped my wet hand across my forehead and sat back on my heels. It was amazing. I had made this man into a gigantic rejecting figure whom I had carried around in my head for years. And here he was, life-size, in my bathtub. It was silly, but it felt like my grandmother’s ritual had shrunk him.

  “You feeling better?”

  “Hot and wet.” He yawned.

  “You look boiled.”

  “Ladies, please leave so I can get out.” He shivered and splashed a small wave at my soaked dungarees. I brandished my big white terry bathrobe at him.

  A minute later he was leaning against the sink so I could rub his hair with a towel. When I stopped he smiled at me, flushed, clean, and nearly asleep. I got goose bumps remembering my father drying my hair like this when I was little. Rosemary was staring at us, looking sad.

  “Let me sleep for a week. What a drag,” he said with a warm sigh as we helped him under the covers.

  I leaned over to touch his forehead. Cooler. The phone rang in the living room and Rocky pranced to it like a rocking horse. I ran after him to hear my service answering. I flinched as one of Ronald’s copy assistants at the Times said, “Tell her emergency.”

  I dialed Israel.

  “Where the hell are you?” asked Anita.

  “New York. Home.” I looked down at shining cars winding through the park.

  “You working?” I asked.

  “Let me direct my own movie, snooks, it’s the one thing I’m great at.” She sounded tired. “Now what about Jack?”

  “Yeah?” I stalled.

  “You talk to him before you left?” She wasn’t admitting he was gone.

  “Anita, I got him.”

  “What did you say?”

  “He’s sleeping in my bed,” I stammered. I felt like we were back in the dorm.

  She whistled harshly. “You took him away?”

  “Wrong. He was running away. I just made him run my way.”

  “I can’t believe it.” She sounded furious. “Paul guessed it, though. When’s he coming back?”

  “Never.”

  “What about my movie?”

  “Now you want him,” I taunted.

  “Michael’ll shut me down.”

  “We cover Jack’s tracks,” I said carefully. “You got to and I got to. He’s a wreck now, you get me?”

  “Okay, okay, we lie.” She sounded a little better. “When are you going to get him back here?”

  “He says never. I say maybe three days. He’s got a major temperature.”

  She chuckled weakly. “You don’t need three whole days, lamb chop. I smell a conflict of interest.”

  “Listen, between us, I don’t know what my own interests are anymore,” I lamented. “This job seems—”

  “Don’t have a breakdown,” she said hastily. “I’ll help you. I’ll spend three days locked in his cottage, pretending we’re in seclusion learning his Hebrew accent. I’ll order our meals on a tray. I’ll send out his laundry.”

  “Sounds great. I miss you.”

  “And what will you be working on?” she needled.

  “His fever and his temper.”

  “Call me if he runs out on you. Don’t make him too comfortable,” she said before we hung up.

  Rosemary handed me a scribbled list of incoming calls. I dialed Ronald’s copy assistant, Bill Murray.

  “I flew over to Israel with Ronald.”

  “Yeah? Trouble on the set?”

  “Nope.”

  “I got somebody here says your star ran away.”

  God, news traveled at the speed of light. “What are you talking about?” My pulse pounded in my head. I was sick of all the bullshit. I was dripping bathwater on the love seat.

  He sounded tough. “Jack Hanscomb’s pulled a disappearing act before, right? My reporter says some movie in the Canary Islands never got made because he split.” I pictured his reporter passing notes to him while they waited for my denial.

  “Bill, it’s great copy, but—”

  “Maybe that’s why you were on Ronald’s plane.”

  Rosemary threw me a dish towel. I draped it over the needlepoint cushion and sat.

  “I hear your Anita’s fighting for her life.”

  “Don’t forget, it’s always poor Anita against the system.”

  “Yeah, I remember that eye patch,” he relented.

  I had brought Anita to a deli lunch with him and Ronald. They were dazzled when Anita swept out of her white Rolls wearing a black eye patch and four-inch stiletto boots, and whenever his questions got tough she said, “No comment, I am an artist working in a corrupt and brutal system.”

  I was twisting the telephone cord. I was tired of this kind of lying, but I had no choice. “Bill, I just talked to Anita and she was shooting fabulous close-ups of his face at magic hour.”

  “They say you’re out of a job.” He sounded sorry.

  “False.”

  “Your boss been over there?”

  “Nope. You should see this week’s rushes. Jack Hanscomb looked incredible.” I covered the mouthpiece when Rosemary giggled.

  Bill sighed. “I’m on the level. I hate bothering you but our reporter’s got a pal who’s an a.c. on your picture and he tells me everybody’s in an uproar because Anita pulled off Jack Hanscomb’s pants to get his naked rage exploding on camera.” His voice faded apologetically.

  “You’re calling me about a dumb rumor like that?”

  “And then he ran away.” He sounded like he believed me a little.

  “I’m not paying him to run away,” I said coldly.

  “My reporter says he’s been threatening all along.”

  “You’ll look terrible with that crazy story in print
.”

  “Okay, okay, I get it. East coast veep denies rumors.”

  I hung up, staring at Rosemary across the coffee table. I was, as the kids say, dead meat. Rosemary looked droopy too. It was strange to see her in my house. Usually a viola student from Juilliard takes my dog, but this had been an emergency.

  “What’s he want?” Rosemary asked.

  “The inside story when I’m fired.”

  “Doesn’t he want to write it now?”

  “I stalled him.” But I knew it was only a matter of time before he got the full story of Jack’s disappearance.

  “I better go to the office now,” Rosemary said forlornly.

  I rubbed my forehead. Major jet lag. I dialed Michael Finley’s Burbank office.

  “He’s in New York,” Rosemary said impatiently.

  “Right, but this way it won’t look like I’m hiding from him.”

  “It’s freezing here,” I told his secretary. People in Los Angeles love to gloat about the weather.

  “I drove down to Malibu before work, burned my shoulders. Say, Michael’s unavailable.”

  “Tell him I can’t wait to talk.”

  My fingertips were like icicles. I was light-headed with tension. But now I was worried about Rosemary. She sat, tears filming her eyes, hugging her legs.

  “Rosemary, what’s got you so unhappy?”

  She began tying her high black sneakers. “It’s stupid.” She pulled a Kleenex out of her corduroy pants and honked her nose into it until her face was bright red. “You’re going to be mad.”

  “Try me.”

  “I slept with that director Sam.” She blew her nose again. “I’d like to kill him.”

  I was shocked. Wiped out. My headache was worse. Sam’s like a shark—just a taste of blood and he goes into a feeding frenzy. I opened my mouth to tell her I lived with Sam five years ago, but then I stopped myself.

  “What’s the problem?” I sounded testy. I was good and jealous. I didn’t like picturing Rosemary and Sam in his loft bed in Tribeca. I suddenly remembered the way Sam would open his datebook and say, “Let’s coordinate our lives.”

  “He made me feel special and smart,” and she dissolved into more tears.

  I knew what she meant. I felt like something had been taken away from me.

  “And so?” I asked.

  She burst out, “He came by the office and he was wearing this old leather jacket. He’s really shy, and God, his beard is so blond. He really listened to me saying things.”

  “Then what happened?” I wanted to put my hands over my ears. I knew Sam too well. It was more than a little ironic the way he made each girl feel unique.

  “We went for a ride on his motorcycle and got pizza. We went to a penny arcade and then we wound up in his projection room.”

  “What’d you screen?” If I knew Rosemary, by the time she got to his office she’d had her future with him mapped out. It was a little funny and a little sad. Of course, it had been like that for me.

  “An antiwar movie he made at Haverford. I don’t know.” She smiled admiringly. “It was great. He wasn’t always a Hollywood wheeler-dealer. He’s a very serious person, and he’s surrounded by vipers.”

  I pictured Sam describing the snakes he hoodwinked daily. “He’s an old friend of mine—” I said helplessly.

  She blushed.

  “What happened after the movie?” I swallowed.

  She struggled to form the words. “We went next door to his apartment.” She was looking out the window and curling a strand of her hair around her fingers. “He made videotapes of us slow-dancing. I’d like to rip them up.”

  “Sounds like him.” I felt old and tired.

  “What’s the matter with you?” She glared at me.

  “Nothing much.”

  “Did he ever talk to you about me?” she asked eagerly.

  “Nope.”

  “Not since yesterday?”

  “In case you don’t remember, I was halfway around the world,” I said tartly.

  “You guys love telephoning. You’d die happy if you could get a couple phone lines down there.” She giggled in a mean way.

  I had a flash of annoyance. “What’s the big problem with Sam?”

  She balled her fingers into a fist. “He never called me. I call his office and they won’t put me through.” She started crying again in little hiccups.

  I wanted to hold her hand. I felt sorry for all of us. I said what Peter O’Toole said after he put a match out with his fingers in Lawrence of Arabia. “Rosemary, it hurts, but the trick is not to mind.”

  “I mind. I can’t help it.” She hugged her knees, comforting herself. “He was so much fun. We had breakfast at his French restaurant in the Village. He pretended I was a producer and he had to pitch me on his new movie. I kept turning him down and he kept buttering me a corn muffin. He was such a pleasure. I’d love to associate-produce his next movie.” She sprawled back into the couch. “He asked me a lot about the abortion I had back home junior year.”

  “What abortion?”

  She shrugged. I had to hand it to Sam. He really got down to the essential pain in this routine of his. “He gives you incredible sympathy and understanding that he can’t sustain,” I said shortly.

  “He got me to tell him all about how I met you and how you changed my life.”

  “What made you tell him so much?” I asked in despair. The girl was too trusting. She never held anything back. She didn’t protect herself.

  She raised her arms helplessly. “The way he touched my skin, the way he touched the hair on my legs, he said he never saw so much hair on a red-headed girl.” She looked at me, abashed. “He even raised my arm and bit my hair there. He said how I had duckling down.”

  She stood up and stretched, picking up some former excitement. “You know he discovered a lot of movie stars?”

  “Yup.”

  “What was Sam’s wife like?”

  “Blond and ambitious.”

  She slumped on the couch again, and dropped her face into her bent arm. “I miss him every second that goes by.” Rocky trotted in and licked her elbow.

  I wanted to scream at Sam. He was too old to seduce and abandon girls. “Count yourself lucky,” I said.

  “Why?” She pushed Rocky’s nose away.

  “You had a swell night and he didn’t take your last dime to make his art.”

  “It’s not funny.”

  “Listen, I lived with him a couple years ago.” I watched her blue eyes snap with alarm.

  “What happened? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It never came up,” I said defensively. I bent to stroke Rocky’s back and to avoid the look in her teary eyes.

  “Tell me.” She looked like she’d been hit over the head.

  “We knew each other as kids in Philadelphia, from film festivals and lectures and stuff. Then I went to interview him in New York and he played a love song on his stereo and got me to give up the interview and slow-dance all over his living room. God, I was crazy about him.”

  “You danced with him first too?” she wailed.

  I laughed bitterly. “It’s his specialty. He does it without thinking.”

  “How long before you heard from him again?” she asked guardedly.

  “I called him every day for a month until he took my call. Then he actually moved into my apartment.”

  Rosemary looked furious. “I just wish you’d said something to me.”

  “You never told me about your abortion.”

  “That’s different.”

  “We don’t own each other.”

  Her face was crumbling again. “Why did he promise to call me?”

  “Because you’re young and he’s not and he wants to remember himself young.”

  “How old is he anyhow?” she asked, rolling her Kleenex in a ball between her palms.

  “Almost twice your age.”

  “We had such a good time,” she said breathlessly.

 
I had a flash of jealousy. “Come on. All he really loves are movies.”

  “How come you know everything?” she asked dolefully.

  “I don’t know anything, but you get impressions of people as time goes by.”

  “Nobody ever touched my hair like that.” Her cheeks got more red and she looked mutely out the window over Central Park.

  I began talking. “Forget him. Read scripts, hang out in editing rooms, ask questions. You’re young, you have potential. You don’t need a casanova sugar daddy.”

  “You sound upset yourself.”

  I slumped over. “I’m sorry to hear about you and Sam.” I took a shuddering breath. I needed a good cry. “I don’t even know why I want the damn job so much.”

  “You got it knocked,” she said shortly.

  “I’m telling you, my life is flying apart.”

  She blinked back tears. “Sam just better not call you at the office.” She couldn’t concentrate on anything but him.

  She shook her head. “Two days ago I felt fabulous.”

  I sighed. “I have felt that bad.”

  “You must think I’m a nincompoop.”

  “No, I still get mixed up, and I’m ready to marry a man if I sleep with him.” I leaned my chin on my hand. My neck tendons knotted.

  She was leaning her hand under her chin, unconsciously imitating the way I was sitting. “Sam live with you a long time?” she asked in a more sober voice.

  “A year.”

  “Do you resent me because of him?”

  “Yeah, sort of. I mean, I’d like to be young forever, but when I was your age, everything was always destroying me. It took me years to get over Sam and his aspiring actresses.”

  “How did you?” she asked sadly.

  I stood up, feeling my neck vertebrae crunch. “I didn’t exactly.” No point in false heroism. “I kind of saw it was his problem, it didn’t prove I was ugly and undesirable, even though I sure felt that way. What really happened is that time just passed. The pain went away.”

  She picked a newspaper off the neat pile on my black onyx coffee table, and opened it. The print blurred before my eyes. I needed two nights’ sleep. “I’m going to find the most sentimental tearjerker,” she said, scanning the movie page.