Dreams Are Not Enough

by Jacqueline Briskin

  Beth had never showed her warmth before: Alyssia felt her throat tighten. Then William Holden came over, his weathered face creased into a smile.

  The next time Alyssia glimpsed Barry, he was at the buffet with one arm around a blonde wearing a brief, metallic gold top.

  Alyssia decided that when major executives hung on Barry’s words and blondes pressed their spectacularly tanned bodies up to his, that was the time to bring up a divorce.

  Leaving Hap, she went over to make a date with her husband.

  • • •

  When the phone rang at eleven thirty the following morning, she glared balefully at the instrument, positive that it was Barry canceling.

  “Hello?” she snapped.

  “May I speak to Miss del Mar?”

  Puzzled, she tried to place the soft masculine voice. Their phones were unlisted, therefore she knew everyone who rang the Laurel Canyon house.

  “This is she.”

  “Miss del Mar, Robert Lang here. I’m in Los Angeles today and I’d like to lunch with you.”

  Taken completely by surprise, she blurted, “Hap’s at the office for a press conference.”

  “I’m aware of that. And considering how Mr. Cordiner feels about me, don’t you agree it would be easier if we meet without him? Shall we say at the Bel Air? At one.”

  “I can’t—” she started. But the phone had gone dead.

  She slammed down the instrument. I’ll call and cancel, she thought. But the incident had roused her uncertainties, and she examined herself in the mirror.

  For her meeting with Barry she had put on a black turtleneck and jeans. Mightn’t he think she was too casual and get his back up? She changed to a crimson midi with matching boots. But this outfit might also be a demerit—Barry had always felt that she overdressed.

  She was wearing one of the silk Valentinos she’d bought in Milan when she finally went into the living room. Barry was well into a fifth of Chivas Regal.

  “I’m sorry, Barry,” she said. “But you know me, late for my own funeral.”

  “Juanita gave me a drink,” he responded cheerfully. “But I do have an appointment at the Brown Derby.” He took a sip. “Last night went well, think?”

  “How not? Another fabulous script.” As he beamed, she continued, “I wanted to get things rolling with the divorce. It’s been dragging on too long.”

  He was still smiling. “You’re the Catholic, remember.”

  In all the years they had lived together as man and wife she had never once entered a church or uttered a prayer, yet he continued to perceive her as Alicia Lopez, devout housemaid.

  “It’s better to get it settled,” she said.

  “Any time you want, hon. As I’ve told you ad nauseam.”

  Had he been too drunk to remember those times when he had sobbed and begged her not to cut him out of her life, not to turn him adrift?

  “I’m not up on the community property, but we’ll make a date with the business manager.”

  “Why?” Barry blinked rapidly. “Your finances are of no concern to me.”

  Too late she remembered his touchiness about her success, financial and otherwise. “You’re right,” she soothed. “It’s better to let the lawyers handle everything. But we can get rolling?”

  “Alyssia, it so happens I’m more eager than you to dissolve this long-defunct marriage.”

  After he left, she stared at the door, trying to remember how Barry had appeared to her years ago—a godlike college man, erudite, sophisticated, impossibly successful.

  Sighing, she dialed Information for the number of the Bel Air Hotel.

  “I’d like to speak to Robert Lang.”

  “Robert Lang?” A long silence. “I’m sorry, but we have no Mr. Lang registered.”

  “Oh. I thought he was staying with you. Then please give me the dining room.”

  The captain informed her there was no luncheon reservation for anyone by the name of Lang.

  Juanita had come to clear away the drink. “What’s wrong? Barry cry in his beer again?”

  “No, no. He said it’s fine with him.”

  “Now there’s a new tune.” Juanita set the glass on the tray. “So why d’you look like the end of the world?”

  “Robert Lang called awhile ago—”

  “Lang?”

  “Yes. He said he’d meet me at the Bel Air. And hung up before I could refuse. I just tried to give him a message that I won’t be there, but he’s not registered—he doesn’t even have a table for lunch.”

  “Maybe they always give him one when he shows up. D’you think he’s about to make a pass?”

  “I won’t be there to find out.”

  “You can handle his passes, Alice,” Juanita said firmly. “And from everything I’ve heard, Robert Lang isn’t the type anybody stands up.”

  • • •

  The Hotel Bel Air shelters presidents, royalty and other celebrities desiring luxurious privacy. At casual glance, the rambling, vaguely Hispanic compound appears to be another of the surrounding Bel Air estates, and the hostelry’s noncommercial aspects were further corroborated inside. At that time the lobby was without a reception desk or bellboys, appearing to be a large, gracious drawing room.

  A man sat reading near the fireplace. His head was bent, so Alyssia couldn’t see his features, but the way his thinning brown hair was a bit rumpled and the easy, somewhat out-of-date cut of his well-tailored suit made her think, One of those Boston brahmins.

  He looked up and recognized her. Slipping his small book in his pocket, he came over, a tall, weedy man supremely confident of his surroundings. She formed a set little smile, anticipating a request for an autograph—it no longer surprised her that the rich and powerful were wowed by her film persona. At least he wasn’t pricing her. Most tycoons eyed her with lascivious appraisal, as if figuring to the dollar what it might cost to spend a night with the object of universal desire.

  “Miss del Mar,” he said. “I’m Robert Lang.”

  She couldn’t control the stiffening of her muscles. PD had described their Las Vegas connection as having class, but that Robert Lang looked like old money came as a shock.

  “You seem surprised to see me,” he said.

  “I didn’t think you’d be here.” She extemporized with the truth, adding, “The moment I hung up I realized I already had a lunch date. I called back. They told me you weren’t registered. The dining room had no reservation for you.” She cut off her sentences as if with a scissors.

  “My secretary never uses my name. My apologies about your other appointment, but I’m grateful you’re here.” There was an ambassadorial formality in Lang’s tone, and he ushered her across the patio as if this were his official residence.

  In the dining room, after their orders were taken, he said, “Transformations is everything I hoped.”

  “It’s too upscale for a broad market,” she retorted.

  “The excellence means more to me. You were magnificent,” he said, and launched into further praise, never looking away from her face.

  Makeup artists, cinematographers, studio executives, directors, focused trained eyes on her. Out in the world, she was public property. Nobody was more accustomed to being stared at than she. Yet under Robert Lang’s gaze, she found herself fidgeting with her silverware.

  “I was just rereading this.” Fishing a book from his pocket, he extended it across the table.

  “Medea,” she read.

  “I’d like to see it made into a film.”

  “Have you signed Euripides? And Dame Judith?”

  “Judith Anderson isn’t Medea.”

  “She owns the part.”

  “Medea’s not an old, mannered actress. She’s young, vital—and rough around the edges. She comes from a savage land, where survival is difficult.” He tapped the well-worn leather binding. “If this were a modern play, she’d be from some urban ghetto or rural poverty pocket.”

  Alyssia wondered how much Robert Lang
knew of her past. “There’s a thousand interpretations.”

  “I see it as a big-budget epic.”

  “Oh, the bigger the better,” she said. “And modern, too—isn’t that what you said?”

  He ignored her jibing tone. “Turn of this century. And shot overseas.”

  “Greece, I suppose.”

  “No, somewhere wilder. Africa maybe.” He paused. “Miss del Mar, you could bring Medea to life.”

  “One picture is all I contracted for, and that’s it. Period.”

  “The terms would be negotiated by your agent.”

  “Forget it!” She spoke so vehemently that the nearby trio of withered, natty old men who had been darting discreet glances in her direction now stared with diagnostic intensity at her face and breasts.

  “You’d find me more than generous.”

  “I’ll never do another film for you.”

  She excused herself before coffee. As she crossed the arched bridge over the hotel’s pond, she was accepting that Robert Lang had done something worse than proposition her or threaten her, eventualities for which she had been primed. He had tempted her with the role of a lifetime.

  • • •

  In the late afternoon she taped a guest appearance on The Merv Griffin Show, then her PR people whisked her to CBS for a live interview on the news, afterward depositing her in the El Padrino Room of the Beverly Wilshire for a tête-à-tête dinner interview with a reporter from the View section of the Los Angeles Times—all were part of her promo obligations to launch a film.

  She was reading in bed by the time Hap got home from the second screening, which, he reported, was equally as gratifying as the previous night.

  Because he remained implacably hostile to their Las Vegas backer, she did not mention her lunch.

  As Hap turned out the light, he asked, “What happened with Barry?”

  “He came by in the morning—the divorce is fine with him. He even called to give me his lawyer’s number.”

  “God, I can’t believe it!” Hap’s exultant chortle resounded in the darkness. “Barry actually said yes, with no delays?”

  “You’re about to be stuck with me.”

  She expected Hap, in high spirits, to retort in teasing kind. Instead, he reached for her hand, holding the palm against his chest. “I thought it’d never happen,” he said huskily.

  “But we’ve been together, darling.”

  “It’s always seemed flimsy.”

  “Flimsy?”

  “Remember that first time I drove you home from Magnum?”

  “You were wearing a pale gray sweater.”

  “I can still remember thinking, This is how it would be, married to somebody. I’ve always wanted the solid things with you. A family, a lifetime commitment.”

  He pushed up on his elbow, kissing her tenderly, insistently. Outside, in the cool California night, crickets chittered and a coyote faraway in the canyon howled at the orange half-moon. She put both arms around him, spreading her hands above and below his waist to bring him closer. After a few moments she raised up and the bedclothes slithered onto the carpet. She straddled him, and they both gasped as she sank down on his penis. Her interior muscles caressed him, his hands traced patterns on her breasts, the scents of their moistures mingled, and all at once she was still, her eyes wide open, her pulses violent. As she began to gasp, he gripped her hips roughly, pulling her into his rhythm, and she rode swiftly.

  Just before they fell asleep, he said drowsily, “We’ll be together always.”

  39

  The filing of the Cordiner/del Mar divorce on the grounds of her desertion caused a rush of publicity, but with the absence of titillating malice there was nothing to fan the gossip. The story quickly dropped into media limbo.

  • • •

  A few weeks before the divorce would become final, on a vigorously bright Tuesday in December, Alyssia, wearing outsize dark glasses, introduced herself at the West Los Angeles Police Station.

  “I’m here for Barry Cordiner,” she said.

  “Please come with me, Miss del Mar.”

  The sergeant’s voice was apologetic, his hazel eyes faded with awe, yet she heard a warning buzz in her ears. Dark-blue uniforms meant the enemy, the repressive, legally empowered hasslers of her girlhood.

  Her delicate nostrils grew pinched. “Oh?” she said coldly.

  “He has no ID on him.” The sergeant hacked a few dry little coughs. “You’ll need to identify him.”

  The cell, with its stained toilet and tiny corner washbowl, had two pairs of mattressless bunks, but Barry was alone, snoring gustily on steel springs. The bruise that swelled his left eye made his lashes appear embedded in the maroon-black flesh. The rest of his face was so pale that his freckles stood out like eczema. Lumpy, rust-colored stains ran down his shirt. His tweed sport jacket was ripped at the shoulder and one black loafer was missing.

  Drunk and disorderly.

  Assaulting an officer.

  Until this moment she had been certain that the police had somehow concocted the second charge. Barry, even blotto, was the last man to put up his dukes with a cop.

  “Miss del Mar, is this your husband?”

  “Yes.” What point dragging in their interlocutory decree? According to California statutes, for another three weeks he was indeed her husband.

  Barry stirred, opening his eyes—the left was a slit. Groaning, he mumbled, “’Lyssia? Whatcha doin’ here?”

  “Bailing you out,” she said tersely.

  She signed papers, counted out twenties, and Barry was released.

  As he pushed open the heavy glass exterior door for her, she caught a strong whiff of his sour odor. She stepped a bit apart, her memory flashing the image of Barry at the screening of Transformations. Clad in the latest hip leisure suit from Eric Ross, wooed by the powerful, embraced by the beautiful, a man at the top of his world. Since then she had seen him only twice, at the business manager’s office and amid a cadre of lawyers when they filed for the divorce, but from PD she knew that he had turned down a television job to clear the decks for his re-entry into feature writing and that no film work had materialized.

  As Barry opened the car door for her, he mumbled, “I don’t know why they called you, but I’m grateful you came.”

  “No problem.” She pulled out of the parking lot. “What happened, Barry?”

  “Last night? I’m not sure. My memory’s edited out certain crucial passages.” He paused. “I was in a bar on Wilshire with Christmas decorations everywhere and some black guy was telling an antisemitic joke. Who knows? Maybe I retaliated with an antiblack remark—Alyssia, you know I’m no racist. The next thing I can recollect is us being hauled apart. Then, it seemed a moment later, the local gendarmerie arrived. I had a dream of socking one, so maybe I did. The next thing I knew I was waking up incarcerated, with you there.”

  “Were you alone at the bar?”

  “I arrived with a Clairol blonde by the name of Wilma, her patronym will forever remain shrouded in mystery, and she was what the less generous might describe as an old pig. We’d connected a bit earlier at Fat Fred’s, that’s on Westwood Boulevard a block from me.”

  “Is this the first time?”

  “For what? Picking up a decrepit sow when under the influence?”

  “Getting booked.”

  Barry’s hands clenched on his knees. “Two other ‘drunks and disorderlies’ mar my escutcheon.”

  “Barry. . . . Maybe you need help.”

  “The obligatory call to AA?”

  “Yes, AA.”

  “Around a year ago Beth arranged a sponsor for me. He gave me a booklet with places and times of meetings, and we agreed on one at a Unitarian church. It was a Wednesday night. Alyssia, I swear to God I was going. But I was working on Transformations, and there was a flurry of rewrites.”

  Barry Cordiner, creator of screenplays and excuses.

  The light changed and she concentrated on turning right. “There
’s other places for people with your problem.”

  “A private dry-out, you mean?”

  “I heard about a first-rate one in Santa Barbara.”

  “It’s a sound idea,” he admitted. “But one has to be rich as Croesus.”

  “I’ll give you whatever you need.”

  Barry jerked erect in his seat and she heard the rip as his jacket separated yet further from its sleeve.

  “I am not a charity case!”

  The strength of the sun burned through her dark glasses, striking against her pupils. How could she have forgotten that during their marriage Barry had always obliquely indicated the object of his material desire, letting her be the one to suggest he get it, then raising objections, forcing her to plead?

  The remembrance of their old tugs-of-war roused not animosity but a perverse flood of tenderness. “Barry, it’ll be a loan,” she said. “You’ll write me an IOU.”

  She persisted until they reached his beige stucco apartment building, where he surrendered.

  “It’s obvious,” he said, “that you won’t feel properly ennobled until I’m locked up in this pseudoclinic.”

  “Let me find out the details.”

  • • •

  Villa Pacifica, Southern California’s classiest spot for treating chemical dependencies, happened to have a vacant suite with an ocean view. Leaving it to Barry to set the time and date of his entrance, Alyssia transacted the hefty financial arrangements.

  • • •

  “Hap, they usually have a waiting list, they only take thirty patients—guests, they’re called. And there was this one space. How’s that for luck?”

  “Amazing.”

  “Why that tone?”

  “Have you ever considered that you’re always helping Barry?”

  “A few loans—” She broke off, jumping as something rustled swiftly in the dark manzanita. “A rabbit,” she said.

  They were taking their evening stroll along the unsidewalked curves of Laurel Canyon. This tall mountain formation that divided the city from the San Fernando Valley remained rustic, and was home to extended families of rabbits, mule deer, coyotes, foxes and quail.

  “And you’re lending him more,” Hap said.

  “If only you’d seen him this morning.”