Hollywood Boulevard (10 page)

    No, he answered me: He only got down to the office maybe twice a week. He missed it, but so much was done online now, and the actors were willing to come up to the house, so he managed. " Harry still has it," he said, coming as close to smiling as he ever did.

    We sat down to lunch, and I was desperate what we'd talk about. The phone rang and the housekeeper told him who it was and Harry said he'd take the call. The food was as flavorless as promised. I ate while he talked. It was the actor from earlier, apologizing for being a hothead. The conversation went on a bit, with Harry saying okay, he'd get back to the producer today and see if he could audition for a bigger part and so on, all of it sounding painfully familiar.

    "I guess nothing's changed in movieland," I said.

    Harry looked at me. "Everything's changed. The whole damn studio system is on the way out. That whole approach. Streaming videos, animation, 'straight to DVD' . . . The star system is dying, Ardennes."

    I took a sip of wine.

    "I liked it better in the old days, but I guess every old fart says the same damn thing." He waved his hand dismissively, with more energy than he had ever shown before, no protruding belly now to tuck his arm back onto. I felt sudden compassion for Harry. Not because he'd been so sick or because the times were changing and some of the light had gone out of his once- upon- a- time sharp eyes but because of that once- upon- a- time itself. A time when Harry Machin called the shots, was mother hen, pissed- off daddy, and fighting superagent who could make me feel anxious or secure, who'd shaped so much of my and others' lives. Maybe it was a wave of compassion for my own past too. I pictured Harry walking heavily down the Croisette, at Cannes, after a press conference, telling me I'd done well. Telling me the plan if I won Cannes, how we'd take the whole world. Harry was going to see to it that I arrived and that I got there in style. That was the day he tried to buy me a new dress for the award ceremony.

    The table was cleared and tea brought out, green for Harry, black for me. I asked for milk. Harry was scanning me, that old Buddha scan, quiet and penetrating. "What?" I said, knowing what was coming.

    "I could work you. Goddammit, you still have it. You have it more than you ever did. You're just approaching peak. Don't you know that? This is a crime."

    Was I a horse? Place your bets? "Harry . . ."

    "What are you doing these days? Writing haiku, flower- arranging classes? Ah, a memoir, perhaps?" The sarcasm came with a kind of bluing of his lips. His eyes were dark underneath.

    I started to stand. "I should probably go."

    Harry held up his hand. "I'm going to stay calm, though I'd like to slap you around, to make you come to your senses. Do you think life gives you a choice?"

    "I don't know what you mean." I felt heavy and tired and sank back into my chair.

    "If you have something to give the world, it is your duty, your God- given duty, to take that something— talent— and make it live, push it to the limit, and bring it home." As he spoke his left hand tapped each word out on the table.

    "Don't, Harry. This isn't necessary."

    "Not necessary?" That fierceness I'd sensed when I'd arrived was piercing now, like a knife blade in the sun, a hawk about to dive at its prey. "Then give me a reason; tell me what you would not tell me before."

    I shook my head slowly.

    
"WHY DID YOU QUIT?"
he thundered, banging his hand on the table.

    I flinched. The housekeeper came running into the dining room. "Mr. Machin! Mr. Machin? You mustn't upset yourself." She gave me a dirty look.

    Harry waved her away. He stood up, hands grabbing the edge of the table. To me he said— his eyes boring into my smallest, most curled- up corner— almost in a whisper:
"Why?"

T
he blush is off the rose. I have no wish to see the setting sun or snow- capped San Gabriels, the pomegranate ripening in the tree that I'm only guessing is a pomegranate, the squawking green parrots; all the charming fragments that held my fragments together. I did venture up the other day, forced myself. The old man was there with his jar of wine and unassuming dog with the appealingly ugly face, faithfully witnessing another day sink into the graveyard of spent time as another Hollywood night approached: beauty, brilliance, power, the desire to outshine the sun. Does it all boil down to power? Not for the old man and his dog.

    Joe used to say greed was the only deadly sin and that all the others fit neatly under that banner. If you gave in to greed, you gave in to lust and envy, wrath, gluttony, sloth, and most of all pride, wanting it all for yourself. "Rapaciousness rules," he'd say. Joe believed the growing corporate plutocracy was ruining us and pretty soon the neo– robber barons would be broke too because they'd broken the buying public, who in turn could no longer purchase their junk. Joe's solution? Simple: Find a better motivation than making money. He didn't mean the wage- earners, of course.

    Harry's been dead nearly a week. No more deals and percentages for him, no more raking it in, no more power. No more tomorrows, no sunsets: no Harry. A monument thrown into the dust, he just toppled over. Lundy stood there and screamed her British head off. "What have you done? You've killed Mr. Machin!" she shouted at me.

    Why was she shouting? was my first thought. Well, my second. The first was that Harry wasn't breathing. He seemed to rear up; the chair toppled over behind him as he clawed his chest, and then he dropped to the dining room floor like a sack of potatoes. That fast.

    "Harry?" I said, and for some reason I thought of my father.

    She wouldn't stop yelling. What happened to the English stiff upper lip and all that proper proper? She was verging on hysteria. "We need 911," I said, pulling out my phone.

    "
She
did it!" she told the police when they arrived, about a minute after the ambulance. I wondered how they'd made it up the winding hills so fast. She pointed a stubby finger at me, housekeeping hands blotchy red. "That woman killed Mr. Machin."

    The emergency technician kneeled over Harry and shook his head toward the police officers: " Looks like standard heart attack to me."

    "She did it!"

    "Ma'am, I'm going to have to ask you to calm down," one officer told Lundy. The other cop took me into the living room, where we could still hear her carrying on as they covered Harry with a sheet. I briefly wondered where the sheet had come from. Did emergency workers carry them around like those ubiquitous latex gloves?

"Can you tell me what happened in there?"

"We had lunch; he got upset. His heart was bad. . . ."

"What is your relation?"

"I was his client."

"You're an actress?"

"Not anymore."

    "You had a dispute?" I shook my head. "All right," he said, pulling out a pad, "name and address." We did the formalities, and the officer said they'd be in touch; I was free to go. "You'll stay in Los Angeles, not go back to New York, correct." He wasn't asking. I nodded my head.

    Lundy yelled as I walked to the door: Why wasn't I being arrested; why was I allowed to go free? "She's a murderer!"

    They wheeled Harry out as I got into my car. I'd stood a few minutes catching my breath. The ambulance was blocking me in anyway. I thought of calling Andre but didn't. I drove back to the hotel, a zombie behind the wheel. It was bad enough about Harry, but why'd that woman accuse me? I drove over that little crest on Sunset Boulevard, where on rare days the snow can be seen on the distant mountains, but not today. Today I saw the dry hills to my left and thought what I always used to think when I lived here: This place looks like dinosaur country; they're hiding up there. There's oil under L.A. How can a huge metropolis have oil rigs pumping, and how can there be tar pits in the middle of a city? Any day now the dinosaurs will come clomping down, scattering all the people. It'll be like King Kong in New York, when he grabs the elevated subway car in his fist and all the little people inside fall over, screaming in terror.

    I pulled over and called Carola, Andre's first assistant director, to find out if they were shooting anywhere near the hotel. They weren't far, she said, an interior at a bar in Los Feliz. I plugged the address into the GPS and found myself on the 101 heading southeast, which didn't seem right, but it got me there and I found a meter and fed it and then saw the trucks and vans and the usual milling- around crew and wondered what I was doing and turned and started back down toward the car when someone called to me: "Ms. Thrush? Ms. Thrush!" Louder the second time. It was Jarrad, the same jeans hanging perilously low atop skinny hips, a soft smile warming his face. All of a sudden I wanted to sob. It was seeing Harry fall like that; he was supposed to go on being Harry forever, a monument.

    "Hello, Jarrad. How's it going on set?"

    "Good. Well, I'm out here, but I haven't heard of any trouble so far."

    "Is it a big scene right now, between the leads?"

    "Nah, establishing shot in the bar; the shithead— oh, sorry— the bad guy and the girl come on later, probably after dinner break. It'll be another late night, probably."

    If the leads were not up I wouldn't be too much of a disruption, showing up like this. "You think it would be all right for me to go in?"

    Jarrad puffed importantly for the briefest second, got on his walkie- talkie to say there was a visitor and would it be okay to bring her in now. I smiled at his cool assessment, and at his not using my name. " Thank you, Jarrad," I said as he led me inside. He nodded and took off.

    The scene had just broken up. The gaffers got going on the lights for the next shot. I walked along the back of the humming activity, a ways behind the monitor, where Andre was talking with Carola and Renny, his cameraman. Carola spotted me first. This was her second film with Andre; she was a New York import too, via Lisbon, and so was staying at the hotel. I liked Carola. She was quick and smart and serious. "Ardennes," she called out in that not- shouting shout a good assistant director learns how to do.

    Andre turned around. He cocked his head to the side. It was probably not a good idea for me to just show up on his set. For the director, it's nearly never a good time. He finished his consult with Renny, nodded to Carola, and turned. I walked toward him as he walked toward me. A musical score should have played as we advanced, signaling the emotions, informing the audience what to feel about the key characters approaching each other as if time would stop as their energies meshed like violent destiny— as if the actors might not succeed in doing that without a musical cue.

    We'd done this before, walked toward each other on a movie set; uncertain on my part, masterful on his. It was the set of
Separation
and Rain
, and my big scene was up, my crescendo moment. As usual with movies, the denouement was scheduled at the start of the shoot. It was six a.m.; I had just arrived and was very anxious. We were toward the end of the first week. Everyone was well tuned in at that point, but no big scenes had been shot yet. I hadn't felt satisfied— far from it— at rehearsal, but Andre had been fine. With typically little to say, he'd said okay, called it a night and walked away. Even if he hadn't walked away I'm not sure I would have been able to say to him, I need more time, I need to get this right, I'm not sure of a thing. So a troop of tap dancers was practicing on my gut; I was jumpy and jittery as a bird. I pretty much wanted out. I'd called Joe in New York after rehearsal. He said I'd be great, to forget everything, especially the meaning of the words, and just go with it. Sure. Just go with it. Of course he was right.

    Andre looked at me that day as we closed in and I understood I was exactly where he wanted me to be: full of doubt. For a split second I looked away, unwilling to be manipulated without so much as a nod. But his confidence won out; he was certain of me even if I wasn't. I clicked to the correct interpretation, shut down the rebellion raging inside and got the scene in three takes. When it was over I stormed off to the dressing room. He may have been right, but I loathed Andre Lucerne at that moment with all my heart.

    So here were Andre and I walking toward each other on a movie set once again, and the tap dancers were suddenly practicing inside me again and I had a bad feeling all over, a déjà vu of massive proportions, a dream coming at me that I'd dreamed before, only this time it was daylight and I was wide awake.

    "Something is wrong?" he asked.

    I'm generally unaware of Andre's accent, but today I realized, as if for the first time: He has an accent. His mother was American, so his Swiss French is tempered, though at his father's insistence he grew up speaking no English. His mother read to him in her language, their little secret to keep her identity alive in her son. Andre and his mother had a world of their own, out of his father's domineering gaze. I pictured him hearing "Hansel and Gretel" in English, sequestered with his mother in his corner bedroom, snow outside the window, a low lamp on the table, a triangle of light illuminating the conspirators. I mentally corrected him:
Is some
thing wrong?
or the old movie standard,
Are you all right?
But that formal, stiff
Something is wrong?
the word
wrong
coming out all wrong, almost made me laugh.