Boys in the Trees: A Memoir (30 page)
Read Boys in the Trees: A Memoir Online
Authors: Carly Simon
Soft summer gardens.
Me hailing a cab in New York City to get home and cook crème brûlée for a big date.
W
hen my charisma was at an all-time high, I had a visitor backstage at the Troubadour. In between shows during my first week opening for Cat Stevens, Warren came into my dressing room and feigned shyness. He was affecting a touch of the old “aw shucks” attitude. As he saw there was no one else around, he closed the door. He got very close to me, looked into my face, and looked down at my breasts, braless and curved bravely in an insinuating shape under my chamois shirt. He said: “Can I see you?”
I knew who he was, of course, before he introduced himself. In actual fact, there was no one who could match him. What a glorious specimen of man. He put them all to shame, if looks and charm were what you were after. He homed in like a tracking dog. It was mysterious because it worked and it shouldn’t have. Now, when I say it worked, I mean it was irresistible. He had to have me as a notch in his belt, a belt where the greats could mix warmly with the rich, the famous, and the fair.
Warren was naturally skilled at keeping several women on the hook at the same time, but there was always one at the top. He had a list that he referred to as “the main loves of his life.” We all likely have had lists like that. Warren’s list was there on a piece of white paper in his pocket so he could take it out and show you. When he showed me, he added my name, to make me current (the main one at the top) so I could see that I was right up there above women like Catherine the Great, Marie Curie, Maria Tallchief, and Lillian Hellman. As I said, this shouldn’t have worked, but this is a man who imitated nothing. He was completely himself, and though it is unlikely that he had had his heart too terribly broken, he could manifest both that sheepish look and the “bird with the broken wing” thing. He was such an actor that he could convince himself that he was vulnerable. Therefore by the time he communicated it to you, it wasn’t false at all. The three or four women he held at any given time in his upper tier actually made his infidelity less onerous per capita than if there had been only one other.
Warren
always
phoned the next day. Sex was followed by a call. He referenced things only the two of you could ever know; the two of you together would be the only two in history to ever remember at exactly what time on the morning of June 17 the radio had come on with the Beatles song “Norwegian Wood” playing. He remembered the names of my mother, sisters, brother, grandmother, old boyfriends, streets where I lived five years ago. With this groundbreaking memory, he seldom if ever got confused.
I thought: What have I done to merit all this attention? Never have I had such a rush before. Not that I haven’t been aware of my appeal to some men, but this was over the top. The only thing it could mean was that he was one of those men who believed that my interest in them would make them more attractive to other women. What did Warren want from the next woman before whom I was being dangled as a lure? Who could satisfy the craving enough to make him settle down? He was like Frank Sinatra in
The Tender Trap
.
But you must give Warren credit for loving women. He did and does love them. He’s not alone, but he is privileged by being universally attractive. He became compulsive because he could. But in love he believed that you use everything you possess to make her play like a Stradivarius. You use your hands—every inch, pad, and tip—and your voice must be seductive and trained to envelop the object of your affection in the finest Indian silk. He was just poetic enough, just passionate enough. How he was sincere is hard to understand, but he was sincere. I knew I could never have Warren even if I wanted him, so I didn’t ever think to take him seriously. I was playing the game he was setting out.
Maybe Warren had questions about his lack of ability to maintain a relationship. If he questioned his ability to love, I can understand why he might, but I for one believe he can and does really love, and like the best of his kind, he can also “simulate” love. Maybe it was pure need, disguised as love, and likely he made sure he moved on before what was disguised as love would ever come to that.
I always imagined Warren as a train conductor. Potemkin was Catherine the Great’s lover and the man who basically ran the Russian Empire during her reign. The story goes that Catherine had never seen the Ukraine before and was coming there to see how he had taken over as Governor of these devastated lands. Potemkin ordered his builders to construct miles of houses and splendid villages along the banks of the Dnieper River, so that when Catherine’s barge arrived she and her visitors would see prosperity and order. But Potemkin realized that due to time constraints it would not be completed in time. He wisely instructed his builders to make exotic fronts of the houses and stores that could be seen from the river, much like a Hollywood set. “The New Russia” was a success. What a coup. So, I think of Warren as Potemkin, lining his psyche with such “sets.” I can see him riding, the whistles starting to blow as he rounds the bend on the train. He, the conductor, would have a half smile on his face as he came within a mile of the station. He would get out his small case and polish his shoes. He would get off the train when it huffed to a halt and look up, now with a full smile, at his mark. I was where his gaze rested. I would wait in the second-story window, which of course was a shell, with two gauzy antique lace curtains blowing in the finest wind a stage director could imagine. I was in his hands.
The great slip-up, and there was one, yes, involved my analyst, Dr. L. The therapist who told me to jump into the deep end of the pool. The same one to whom I would have listened all session long on what he had to say about Utah. Whenever there was a slow moment, he would resort to travel suggestions, usually involving Utah. This is the way it went down:
Warren called me on a Sunday afternoon to tell me he was at the airport in L.A. and flying to New York. He would be in by twelve thirty or one, and would be over to my apartment as soon as he could get here. One caveat was that he was needed on the set for some early morning shots and would have to leave by 5:30 a.m. But he
had
to see me. He missed me. He couldn’t wait to see me. I got undressed and put something on the stove, some buttery pudding-like thing with a brûlée crust on top in case he was hungry, but also, to live up to the whole fantasy that this amazing man, the most handsome and charming and sweet and funny and politically correct and extremely talented man, was coming to see me in the middle of the night. I think we had known each other for only about a month at that point, and maybe I had been his partner on the court five or six times. Evidently enough so that he had noticed by then that my thighs were, indeed, “poems.” When he arrived at the apartment, he picked me up at the front door and carried me into bed (on which I had sprayed some very nice eau de cologne, which was supposed to pass as my inner self). We made love like in a movie. However, there were real sensations, for Warren was such a professional, the pressure points he knew about stirred a tremor in me, which meant that I left my head for a while, and all of a sudden we weren’t in the movie anymore. Warren seemed to have just created a brand-new manual on how to make love—not too brazen, not just missionary, but not too many tricks either—and followed it so expertly while being at the same time attuned and sensitive to the response he was getting. He didn’t speak. Didn’t whisper, either. Didn’t call you “darling” or “sweetheart” but used your name. How can one formula work for so many? That was his genius. Maybe I
was
in love. I certainly was starting to talk myself into it.
There was no heath or roaring surf, but Warren was a warrior prince and in his mind, there
were
those things; he conveyed them as he put his hand on the small of my back, balancing me just at the right angle.
He was up and in the shower by five and out the door with a piece of toast by five twenty. I then got a few hours of sleep and raced to dress and get in a cab and up to Ninety-sixth Street by eleven in time for my appointment with my beloved Dr. L.
“Whew!! What a night I had. Warren flew in at the last minute and didn’t get to my apartment until one thirty, at which point I was already tired, but he had so much energy and my God, he’s such a superman, I know what I’ve said about him in the past, how I believe he’s better at playing him than anyone could ever be, and how it was even better having two of him: one ‘him’ and one him playing ‘him.’ But last night I felt as if there was only him, you know what I mean…”
It was then that I noticed Dr. L looked unwell. He had a pallor that scared me, and I thought he was going to be sick or do something violent or that he might die on the spot. I asked what was wrong and sat forward in my chair. He said:
“Under the circumstances, I can’t withhold this. It’s too much to believe … it’s unbelievable, in fact … I suppose … I suppose I will tell you … that … You are not the first patient of the day who spent the night with Warren Beatty last night.”
Well. Since I was his third patient, and it was only eleven, there technically could have been
two
others. If so, I wonder if Dr. L told patient number 2? Poor Dr. L must have in fact wondered whether we women hadn’t put together some practical joke. He must have thought he was going crazy.
I wasted little time telling Warren. I knew he might have something to add, or refute. He did howl over the phone. I’m sure he was adding numbers and going over facts in his mind and maybe took out his calculator or his calendar. Could he have slipped up? Could this have really happened? All to his credit that he was up for the hilariousness of the situation. I suspect that the other woman (or women) wasn’t any more hurt than I was, with her own protective gear, though I don’t know that as a fact.
All the time, I could feel the speeding approach of some dénouement. And finally, all the players—myself and the two other girls (let’s just say there were two, it’s more fun that way)—were back at the Potemkin hotel, disappearing behind sets of diaphanous white curtains that flowed, getting more phosphorescent, dimmer and dimmer, into the nonexistent rooms. The train’s engine became softer and more distant as the handsome, enigmatic train conductor stretched and took out a black notebook from his breast pocket. I could see that look come into his eyes as he slipped his hand into his back pocket and filled his palm with loose diamonds. He thought of the woman at the edge of the Caspian Sea and how he might anticipate her every whim—would twenty diamonds and a newly composed poem by Lord Byron suffice?
Me in the fantastic Potemkin Hotel.
Your smiling face.
J
oey saw a psychic in the early seventies and, when she asked about her sister Carly, she was told “cement is her enemy.” This was already true, although I wouldn’t have put it exactly that way. I don’t like New York City very much, though I do respect it. Lots of cars have a detrimental effect on me, the surge of traffic intimidates me, and blaring horns horrify me. I hear everything louder than it is. I’ve been tested. I have always liked MacDougal Alley, Washington Mews, Patchin Place, Beekman Place, Sutton Place, the out-of-the-way places, less-busy trails that I like to imagine lead into the woods.
