Hollywood Boulevard (18 page)

H
otel maids know everything. The shoes you wear, the undergarments. They witness the bed stains; the time of the month and the signs of sexual activity. A good maid has seen it all. Disheveled bath towels thrown on the floor, the makeup and the creams, the brush full of hidden gray hairs, and the paperwork left lying around— they see that too, if they bother to look. My sense of the staff at the Hotel Muse is that they are involved, they cooperate, and they report back. The Muse is friendly, the snooping not malignant. The Hollywood location suggests a certain sort of guest, film people, journalists, and plenty of foreigners; not your typical Hollywood tourist hole. All the more reason to keep a lookout.

    Zaneda was friendly and bright. Alma, her alternate, was also amiable, with better English and shrewder, more on the lookout for tips. Our extra coffees and teas and bath products, the bits of attention here and there, reflected that and also the awareness that Andre was an important figure. Plus we are long term, which called for greater investment on the maids' part. I had cachet too, whether they knew it or not, though the mystique was faded. Not that the tingle of elusive fame once achieved is ever entirely extinguished.

    With so much of Andre's crew occupying so many rooms we were bound to make waves. Sometimes there was partying late, loud with the pungent smell of weed carried on the nighttime air. Once or twice management made a call, which I fielded on the house phone. Those calls should have gone to the line producer, but Andre had negotiated the rooms and was staying here and was in charge, so complaints— though they were never quite that— went to the head of the movie family, and since I was here so much of the time that, by proxy, became me. Management was always apologetic.

    The maids asked me questions too. So I shouldn't have been surprised when Zaneda asked if everything was all right. Detective Collins had arrived in an unmarked car and left minutes before Andre and Carola replaced him in the suite. The Detective had stayed perhaps twenty minutes, long enough for Zaneda to observe him come and go; long enough for a possibly illegal immigrant to sniff out the law. Zaneda could have been anywhere: changing another room's sheets, carrying out a big bundle of wash to be picked up in the hotel van, or bagloads of trash, or fluffing pillows and scouring sinks and toilets— unseen eyes seeing everything.

    But what did she mean by all right? If she said she'd seen a man come and go, she'd be stepping on my privacy. The man that had come and gone could have been anyone, a lawyer, a producer . . . but there was that cop stink to him, and gentle Zaneda would have the wariness natural to a third world transplant. Anyone who says hotels are anonymous has their head up in the dark; hotel walls have eyes and ears and mouths that talk.

    She rang the bell. She hadn't cleaned the rooms, she said; was running late with more guests than usual for early spring. We were standing in the doorway, and I let her know I'd made the bed already. She looked at my ankle.

    Sharif 's unopened box of Epsom salts was on the kitchen counter, right behind me. Assuming she'd seen me, Zaneda had surely noted I was not limping when I went out in the car and again when I came back. I wasn't favoring the foot now. Good thing I'm not with the CIA; I couldn't even remember my own cover story. Word was out I'd hurt myself on hotel property. Was that what Zaneda meant by asking if I was all right?

    I stepped aside from the doorway. A drafty current was wheezing down the open- ended corridor. "See what you think, if the room needs cleaning."

    She didn't come in. "Is up to you. But fresh towels, soaps? What ever you need."

    "I'm okay, Zaneda, thanks;
está bien, todo bien
. Will you come back, clean tomorrow?
Mañana
?"

    "Tomorrow is Alma."

    "Ah, you're off ? Wait one minute." I went for my purse, not limping— the hell with it— and found a twenty. Usually we tip a ten to the maids every week or so. I gave her the twenty. Her eyes lit up at the amount. She made the usual polite protest. "For
los niños
," I said. She said okay and took the money with thanks and a quick glance at my ankle, then tried for my eyes. I'm guessing she was guessing the big tip was for the man who'd come to my rooms,
la
policía
, and for her ignorance of that fact. I reached down to rub my ankle, making it seem unconscious. I might make a lousy intelligence agent, but I could still perform. I smiled and closed the door.

    Alone, I was left to try and untangle a day that was beginning to feel like a trashy airport novel. Should I dive into a bottle of scotch or scrounge around for an aspirin? I didn't do either; the aspirin would sit badly in my stomach and the scotch would change nothing. I was rattled, but not by Eddie or the sudden involvement of Detective Collins in my life; those things were trouble enough. What Andre had just made me do was worse.

    The hardest thing about ending a part on stage is coming down from the high, shutting that down. This happens in film too if the part has any meat on its bones. Even if the acting is a struggle from word one to word last, the body systems quicken. You might feel like you're about to have a stroke standing up before an audience or in front of the camera's cold eye as you utter your first line. Maybe there isn't a molecule of saliva in your mouth and an ocean is pounding inside your skull and you are sure you are trembling so if you have to pick up a prop — a glass, say— that could slip and crash and shatter into a thousand pieces, there is still the rush. Get past the first sentence and hear your voice take control, your body snap inside the character, and
feel
being heard, listened to, watched,
seen
, clung to . . . not ego but power, the power you own over the words. With a good part the writer's voice comes alive through you, the emotions rising naturally out of the words, no gimmicks to rouse a tear, a laugh, a shout. Maybe I got that from Joe, about the writer's voice, or maybe from reading so much, I don't know. But even the crap parts, done truthfully, carry a rush. Never mind that it's not you; never mind that it's all an act. . . .

    Okay, let's lay it bare: It's a sham, entertainment, a passing waste of time, a
numbing
of time; a make- believe magic show of inconsequential emotions and tired stories told over and over again; a three- ring circus of prancing ponies, seminude girls and pretend tough guys, manufactured machismo, guns shooting blanks, and simulated sex. For all that, some of us believed it was real. Some of us remembered what Aristotle talked about. Some of us understood somewhere deep down that our job was to say things that couldn't be said, emote to catharsis, pass through taboos and yearning and fear and hope and all the other murky misunderstandings we call communication and mostly fail at miserably in real life. Good theater embraces that, attempts that level of communication.

    Andre's script—
The Dance
— is about Anne Dernier, a ballerina, and her agent, Mr. Lawson. She's an Isadora Duncan type, an original. Mr. Lawson— always Mr. Lawson even after they become lovers— wants control, to take her to the top. He gives up all his other clients for her. She's spry and joyous— the actress would want to tap a bit of Gelsomina from Fellini's
La Strada
(well, I would). Mr. Lawson ridicules her childlike sense of play. There is a scene at an amusement park, Anne and a boy spinning, the Ferris wheel lighting up the night sky. "It's like dancing!" Anne says, throwing her head back. But there is an accident; she's thrown from a ride, the Mouse— not even a dangerous ride, but her belt was not secure. The carnival turns to sideshow horror; her legs are broken. Mr. Lawson has followed her— he thinks she's fallen for the boy, but the boy is only a friend, a fellow dancer. Lawson sees the accident and abandons Anne. Years later he finds her tending bar at the same amusement park; her friends are carnie types— clowns, snake charmers, magicians, dwarfs; outsiders.

    "Serving drinks to nobodies. Always drawn to nobodies," Lawson tells her.

    "I like freaks," she responds. "They're more real."

    There is a clown, Mr. Chuckles, whose unrequited love for Anne has evolved into devoted protection. She could choreograph, Mr. Lawson tells Anne; she was a genius, being lame shouldn't stop her, why did she give up? Chuckles tries to warn her against Lawson, but she falls under his spell a second time and makes a comeback. Lawson finds her an apprentice, a young dancer who looks a little like her younger self. Anne's dances become darkly comic, modern Grimm's tales: strange, filmy figures swirling across the stage— a Powell/Pressburger tone, the critics' note. She attains an audience once again and begins to slip out of Mr. Lawson's grip. She attempts to make him laugh, the one thing he cannot control; if he laughs, she wins. She tells him there are rhythms beyond the ego and that he misses everything essential, is only half human. He seduces the young apprentice, letting Anne know
he
is in control, that he will humiliate and torment her if need be. Mr. Lawson is killed and suspicion falls first on Mr. Chuckles, then on Anne. The audience won't know if she's killed him or not; there is a trial, but nothing can be proved, and of course the audience wants him gone. Anne forms a dance troupe with the young apprentice as her lead. Her tragicomic ballets are beautiful: sensuous and grotesque, haunting and mesmerizing.

    I started going over the lines I'd read to Andre and Carola. That opening line about Mr. Lawson had to be read with a kind of mad euphoria but at the same time innocence. I'd lifted my hand at one point, the free hand not holding the script. I remembered every modulation and tone change. I didn't remember every word, but close. If I kept churning the lines, all the words would come back to me of a piece. I picked up the new pages Andre had thrown down. He was right; they were terrible, the life sucked out of them.

    I'd been critical of the script when I first read it in New York. Andre deflected my angry words, saying the script could be changed as needed.

    "Don't lie!" I said, theatrically loud. "This isn't a draft."

    "I thought you would like it."

"My liking it or not has nothing to do with anything."

"And why not?"

    "I don't act anymore!" I gestured dramatically toward the script lying on the coffee table between us, a silly flourish. We were in New York, Andre's loft, where I'd moved after our island wedding. I still kept my apartment uptown. I'd sublet it to actor friends I'd known since the starving theater days, way back. They were my only link to Joe because they'd remained friends; he'd inherited them from me. I charged only maintenance and taxes, utilities. They would never get past struggling in the theater world, but at least their quest was uncorrupted, which translated into their being broke. Anyhow, I got to keep my apartment, my just- in- case escape hatch. I'd learned to keep escape hatches at the ready.

    "Tell me what is so terrible in this script?" Andre asked, watching me, scrutinizing me with those director eyes. I kept silent. "So," he shrugged, "you don't
act
anymore. You still
think
; you still understand how to read a script, no? It is paper, it won't bite you. Amuse me." He smiled.

    " Humor me; you mean
humor
," I said, instantly regretting my nastiness.

    "Go on."

    "Okay. For one thing, how is an actress supposed to play this?"

    "This what?"

    "This, this running joke idea—"

    "What running joke?"

    "That she is joyous and funny— goofy— this laughter she wants to elicit from that horror Lawson. How do you direct that? How would I— how would the actress play such a vague concept?"

    "This is not difficult to solve. . . ."

    "And why would she fall for Lawson in the first place?" I was growing heated. "Plus, this business of not using Lawson's first name; it's contrived. Even in bed, Andre?"

    "He was her guide; she is a performer,
aspiring
, young but an original, a force . . . yet with all the sensitivity and doubts of a great talent . . . she needs him."

    "
Great
talent
; that's not specific!" He'd said the word
aspiring
with that European emphasis that sometimes made me hate him because he sounded so
certain
. I've never trusted immaculate certainty. Not since Joe.

    "Okay. Why would she fall for him a second time? She's not
as
piring
anymore, not after the broken legs. And he abandoned her. She would hate him."

    "Ah, the actor here is critical. He is older— remember that— twisted, yes, but a magnet nonetheless, very attractive, worn, a bit worn, but . . . the lines can be changed to satisfy, to convince the actress."

    He meant "magnetic," but I'd run out of steam to mock him. I didn't want to mock Andre, play the bitch. I stood up, trying to gather my thoughts. Something about the script was bothering me and I wasn't getting at it. I walked over to the wall of windows. It was raining outside, hard, like a Kurosawa film.

    Andre had lived at the loft with his second wife— bought it with her. I was a case of marital musical chairs, I'd joked. I'd added a few touches, taken a back room for a small studio, my inner sanctum, my private corner of earth. I'd thought briefly of renovating the state- of- the- art kitchen, but that was ridiculous, only something to bury myself in. I'd let Andre believe I was taking notes in my studio for a possible book. I was in fact keeping a notebook. Not a diary. Writing and reading diaries is deathly boring; the last one I'd kept was as a tiresomely sincere eleven- year- old. Mostly I lay about and read books in my inner sanctum.