Hollywood Boulevard (3 page)

    What Harry didn't see was that, different as we were, Joe and I overlapped in crucial ways. He could pick up a false note in my work and excise it like a surgeon. And I loved those two cats, Molly and Corot, and our too- small West Side flat. The dark streets of New York were like the veins along my hands, avenues and boulevards in my blood. I held New York close in my heart. "Success at what price, Harry?"

    He looked at me from below those heavy lids, scanning my interior, a stone Buddha, arms across his large front. "You think I talk of crass success? Dollar bills falling out of your brassiere, manse in the hills with the saline pool, ego billing on the marquee? You think I don't know you? Craft, Ardennes— A- R- T— is not going to settle for trysts and one- night stands, rendezvous in a bus station. A- R- T wants all of you! And all of you is all I want you to be."

    It sounded so enlightened.

    "Poetic, Harry," I said. I looked at my watch. "I gotta run, a night shoot today. I'm due on set at four." I stood up, reaching for my purse. I still didn't know why Harry had called me in that day. I was hoping for a month off, time with Joe.

    He barely stirred, ever so slightly lifted that left hand again. "You got the part."

    "What? You mean
Separation and Rain
? The
lead
?"

    Harry nodded sagely. "You start one hour before this part ends. No time to go home and feed the cats."

    I whooped, I spun, I clapped my hands. I was young enough to whoop and spin. I was big- eyed, all goals, virgin territory; I was all the places I would never get to that I would strive for until the last breath was out of me. This was big, colossal, this would move the earth: a plum part I knew I was right for, that I wanted badly, that would give me the chance to really show what I knew I had untapped inside me. This was my shot to breathe life into a character half alive on paper; this was my Michelangelo: Adam reaching out to touch the hand of God. Okay, I was not about to be God to some Adam, but I would make that character live. I would! Wouldn't I? I flashed on a memory of Joe and me stretched out on a blanket on the rolling grass of the Sheep Meadow in Central Park. Joe poured wine into a thermos so we wouldn't be caught drinking out in the open. We had a baguette and cheese, and grapes, I think. We were having a what- if- one- of- us- makes- it conversation we had a lot in those days, and Joe said I wouldn't be able to take it anyway if I did make it big. He was tender about it. He knew how uncomfortable strange surroundings can make me, and that too many demands send me into a confused tailspin so I lose my bearings and need to run away. "I should have been a librarian," I told him that day. Joe said, "Nah, not with that face; none of the boys would get any homework done." I smiled at him from my toes up to my heart. "Your home is with me," he said. That was a good moment, the kind that can make up for so much, that ought to be the real essence of being alive but somehow never is.

    "Harry, don't fool with me."

    Harry's eyelids widened a fraction. "I never fool," he said with mild indignation.

    "Then this is real!" I felt my breath catch. "The lead . . ." I sat down. This was a twenty- million- dollar budget with a solid script and a superior director. (I didn't know that day— and it was a few years off— that I would one day be married to Andre Lucerne, perhaps the most demanding director in Hollywood.) "You're sure? Andre Lucerne cast
me
?" I remember the doubts starting to creep in, that a mistake had been made, a mix- up in head shots or the audition tapes. I even suspected Harry might have bribed the producer, used blackmail, called in a life- and- death favor owed and I would be found out and dismissed as a fraud. I was working up to full- fledged panic when I heard Harry moving.

    He lifted his cumbersome frame out of the plush leather desk chair and waddled to a small fridge you wouldn't know was there, tucked beneath some shelves in the well- appointed, screaming- success office. He leaned down heavily and pulled out a split of champagne, and from a nearby cabinet two flutes. "If you didn't have work tonight, we'd celebrate properly at Spago, on the Strip. Will this do for now?" He held up a bottle of Cristal. Spago was the place to be seen; the Cristal cost about what a New York City immigrant garment worker made in a week. He popped the cork and poured out wine and fizz.

    I reached blindly for the glass Harry pushed toward me. I'd had my small victories; some— plenty of— actors would say I was in a good place even without this bit of luck, but I suddenly didn't know what to do, didn't know how to handle getting what I wanted. Harry was always saying luck had nothing to do with it, but that's not so; luck is either at work in a person's life or it's not. I sagged backward into the thick cushions of Harry's buffalo- hide sofa and put the flute down on the coffee table. Harry chuckled. I looked up; tears filled my eyes, ready to spill over. " Thank you, Harry," I whispered.

    "Don't thank me. All I did was make a few calls, let the world know an angel had descended. You did the rest."

    That snapped me back to my senses. I never knew if Harry bought his own lines or not. I jumped up, pointing to the phone on his desk. "I have to tell Joe!"

    Harry snorted. "Go ahead, call that chump. You're halfway up the mountain; see if he can't find a way to drag you back down."

    I smiled. "Don't ruin it, Harry," I said, reaching for the flute

with my right hand as I punched in the numbers with my left. I raised the glass to Harry and took the bubbly down in one swallow. I listened impatiently to Joe's ring tone but hung up when the leave- a- message voice came on. I didn't leave one. I canceled the call and saw what I'd just done register on Harry's face. I looked at him as I chewed on my lower lip.

    "This is a game changer, Ardennes," Harry said. "Nothing will be the same after today." And nothing ever was.

S
o here I am in L.A., climbing a mountain of remembering, killing a day piled high with the past. I should give Proust another try. I walked idly up to the pavilion to check on the condom before heading back to my freshly cleaned rooms.
Remembrance of Things
Past
— I never got through it. Joe did; all seven volumes in one year, ten pages a night. Joe, what's he up to now? I miss his ironclad discipline. I've read all his books, four so far. Remembrance of Joe . . . There it is! Dropped a foot farther down toward the parking lot, lying in the dirt; sunshine has baked the rubber hard, the semen into crisp mica crusts. Do the lovers remember their fallen condom; is it part of
their
meaningful past?

    Where did I see that rosemary the other day, along one of the paths? I wanted to pick a few stems on the off chance I'd grow ambitious in the little kitchen and maybe cook a chicken.

    I gave up on the rosemary and turned toward the stairs that led down to my suite. That was when I spotted a cat walking behind a man. They were on one of the footbridges connecting the top tier of rooms, in back. Some suites are permanent apartments with tatty screen doors and potted plants and other domestic touches along the balconies. The man was pale— hair, skin, voice, stooped posture, he looked to be a full- time renter with a noticeable Californianess about him, a certain stratum of weed smoker with few ambitions.

    When you've haunted as many hotels as I have you spot the underlying characters, the tensions, the esprit de corps— or lack of it— among the workers, the essence of an establishment by the quirks encountered. The cat was striped rust and black, with splashes of white. Pale Guy said yes when I asked if the cat was with him. I said, "Hey, Kitty," in a high- pitched, girlish voice. "Hi, Kitty," I repeated quietly, remembering Joe and my long- gone sister cats. I thought of telling Pale Guy I loved cats but moved around too much to keep them— though that was more my former working self. Thankfully, I held my tongue. I did say, "He doesn't run away?"

    "Not when he's hungry."

    " 'Bye, Kitty," I said, half wishing the cat would follow me instead. I'd put out a saucer of milk, buy a can of tuna, make a little bed in the corner. Pale Guy continued on his way, Kitty in tow, tail hoisted high. I guess they've seen enough guests come and go not to bother. Pale Guy and Kitty were nuggets, though, not gold, but solid pieces of the texture of the hotel. I looked down and saw the rosemary right there at my feet. I bent to pinch a stem, thinking, as I always do when I pilfer flowers, if everyone did this there would be none left.

    The Hotel Muse is old by Hollywood measure, a nightclub originally, from the late '40s, featuring acts better suited to a cir cus sideshow. The hotel was added later. Halfway up the hill is the upper part where we are situated— modest cousin to the main hotel on the avenue. It's the director's whim that his wife and principal crew (mostly imports from the East Coast) be installed up top, forming a kind of colony. Andre likes the availability of his people grouped together, but there are fewer amenities up top. Be low, the pool is heated; Turkish bathrobes, wireless, DVDs, and cable are provided— perks for those who prefer sanitized luxury. With us scruffier sorts above, services are hit- and- miss; no DVDs or wireless. Internet and breakfast are had by trekking downhill to the main lobby area, laptop in tow. The lobby is small so most mornings Internet users from uphill gather around the pool, rain or shine, chill or warm, huddling under patio umbrellas. I've noticed a number of German film types at breakfast. They talked loudly on Skype as they pace, necks swathed in scarves, woolen caps pulled low.

    Andre's quirks usually pay off. I like his crew, and the arty types up here, for once inheriting the earth— or the spectacular view, anyhow. Our outsized, east- facing balcony overlooks a coral tree where wild green parrots squawk and screech each morning among the bright red flower petals. The landscape reminds me of the south of France, houses and villas tumbling steeply down the hills in a hodgepodge of styles, an architectural balancing act. The view to the right veers neurotically into L.A.'s urban sprawl and the sudden verticality of downtown. Straight ahead I can see the gray dome of the Griffith Observatory. On mornings when fog or the yellow- brown curtain of smog lifts, the San Gabriel Mountains are visible, snow- capped and reassuring in the distance. Brown- dotted hills segue into mountains in snow, urban and wild in the same snapshot. I hear there are lions in those mountains. I look out each day and imagine the city living on borrowed time, that the earth under Hollywood will someday shift and shrug houses and people, the observatory, trees, birds, coyotes, squirrels, cats, snakes, and everyone's dreams off the hills into the yawning abyss.

    Another day has passed— faded meaninglessly into evening. I went outside for the sunset. The wind and chill were sharp up at the benched pavilion. Someone had taken a rake to the grounds; the condom was gone, and the narrative seemed lost without it. Over my shoulder a stream of distant planes flowed silently from the east, into LAX. To the west a slip of the Pacific Ocean shone like a piece of broken plate under a limpid sky. When the earth finally does shake the hills loose, the ocean will flood the coast and slimy sea monsters will roam the earth, lapping at the fallen city's face.

    That's what I was imagining when I saw that the old gray man and his dog were back. He's been there every evening I've come up. He stood below the condom pavilion, at the top of the restaurant parking lot. His dog, an ugly black- and- brown pit bull, stared up at me. The grizzled man never turned my way, if he knew I was there. I made a friendly little click toward the dog, who continued to stare. I thought the old man had libation with him, a jar with purple remnants, communion with the setting sun. He was not a guest but arrived by a narrow path through the undergrowth outside the chain- link fence, past the pool. I'd thought of disguising scotch in a coffee mug to carry with me as I bade the day adieu but had decided I'd reward myself when I returned to the rooms, chilled from my own sunset homage.

    Walking back toward the pool I heard voices, customers from the restaurant, the cocktail hour officially on. Asian tourists held cameras, peered toward the west, murmuring their pleasure; a night out on the town, living it up, spending plenty of yen. I wanted to slip out of sight (tricky since they were above me with a clear advantage), feeling like the old man, pretending I was alone to keep the moment to myself. I had a friend once— no, he was a writer pal of Joe's, a lanky poetic type who said I was a hoarder of moments. Maybe that's true. As I turned at the waterfall at the top of the stairs, heading down to my rooms, the kitty ran out in front of me.

    " Where did you come from?" I said, bending to pet him. His purr was a minor roar. He sidled along my legs, rubbing around and back again. "Want to come home with me?" I asked, kneading my fingers through his thick fur. He followed as I veered back to the pool, then ran up a squat tree with perpetually shedding purple flowers, showing off. I watched for a few minutes, but he didn't follow when I turned to go.

    Back at the rooms I poured myself a proper scotch— two ice cubes— into one of the glasses I'd purchased for the purpose. I went out to the balcony, the cashmere shawl Andre had given me the previous Christmas over my shoulders, Mexican- serape style. The last orange traces of sun were leaving the tops of the hills, the houses below already deep in shadow. The observatory held the golden glow longest, and then it too dimmed to a colorless form. I saw, across the hill, that the man was there in his garden.

    I have been watching the man. I call him White Shirt because white seems to be his preference. His house is perched on the hill pretty much dead opposite my balcony, on the other side of a steep arroyo. It's French country style with a blue front door. I'd trade a toe for my binoculars back in New York. I could buy a pair here but that seems as if it would be cheating. My method of hotel discovery is slow, hints here and there, bits of life: an outdoor umbrella shifted, soft illumination from a nighttime window, the glow of a television or computer screen flickering in the middle of the night. I tried to drive up White Shirt's hill yesterday but got lost winding my way, ending up on Mulholland, at the top of Runyon Canyon. I parked the car in the small unpaved lot. A sign at the entrance warned of rattlesnakes. I walked alone along a dirt trail in the baking- hot sun until I came to one of the pinnacles. I could have been anywhere; the view shifted from angle to angle and felt foreign. Nothing was clarified, but I'm in no hurry. Things reveal themselves in their own time, time being a commodity I currently have to spare.