Hollywood Boulevard (4 page)

    White Shirt was the first sign of life on that side of the hill. There is another house, a large two- family Spanish style. I look down on its backyard, where a lollipop- shaped tree is lit up each night with white lights. There was a cocktail party one evening on the patio, which I enjoyed watching, but the people in that house don't interest me. There is a chewable normalcy to the "Spanish Heights" house, something too obvious. White Shirt does interest me. His house is on the other side of the street from the Spanish Heights, and his yard is a square, grassy plot on top of his garage. One of the garage doors— white flap- downs— is broken; a dim light stays on all night over a white sports car.

    White Shirt is home a lot. So am I. I watch him as David watched Bathsheba, though so far I am not lusting. Without binoculars I can see only that he is tall and slim with a full head of light brown hair. He must know he faces a hotel with large balconies; he must know he can be seen. In the Bible story David was supposed to be at war with his men; it was spring,
the time kings went to war
. Full stop. Why would kings, as a matter of course, go to war in the spring? Anyway, David was up on his roof prowling in the wee hours, and Bathsheba was up on hers having a late- night bath. Did a full moon illuminate her wet alabaster skin? Why was she bathing at that hour? Were they both insomniacs? Her husband, Uriah the Hittite, was at war, where David ought to have been instead of spying on bathing women. He sent one of his servants to invite her over. He was king, so his was probably an invitation one literally could not refuse. What did he want? Come lie with me, Mrs., we will have a grand old time.

The Bible doesn't bother with her take on the situation, other

than mentioning that Bathsheba cleaned herself after the act. We are not told if she tried to beg off with a headache or if she was flattered; after all, this was David who slew the giant, handsome, powerful King David. Did she love her husband? Uriah was a dedicated warrior; perhaps she felt neglected. Soon after David lay with her, Bathsheba let him know she was with child. David hadn't thought of that, apparently, but he figured he'd bring Uriah back from battle and pin the child on him. Go to your house, he told Uriah after faking a query about how the war was going. But loyal Uriah slept outside the palace doors that night. His men were in harm's way; his king and liege had spoken to him, quite the honor; this was no time to be dallying with the wife in the comforts of home. The same thing happened for two more nights, even after David got him drunk. Uriah was loyal to a fault. His wife might have thought so even before David seduced her. The story soon took a bad turn: David saw to it that Uriah died in battle, and then God killed David and Bathsheba's newborn as punishment. Bathsheba paid, but we don't know exactly for what: the unsanctioned dalliance with David or her infidelity to Uriah. The God of the Old Testament didn't seem to finesse the details when demanding his pound of flesh. Things eventually worked out for David and Bathsheba—

    Andre! He came in just now, all a flurry of breathless, manly purpose, surprising me on the balcony. White Shirt had just gone inside his house.

    "Let's have a drink," Andre announced.

    "I'm ahead of you," I said, walking inside, drink in hand. I turned on the news, trying to mask the flutter in my stomach— a signal of any number of reactions to this unscheduled arrival of the director for a drink with his wife. Did he have time off the set during a complicated lighting shift . . . or was something wrong that he could leave, or had he said he'd have an early night and I'd forgotten?

    It was a hurried drink. A drink should never be hurried. "How you grace me with your presence!" I spoke to his back as the door closed. He left with the bottle. He'd come for the bottle, the drink a nickel's worth of his time bestowed. Was his leading lady thirsty?

    They are shooting close by, close enough for me to drop in, which he said I should do. But I won't. I would be treated on set like the general's wife. There would be curious stares and fawning over his onetime lead, the actress who took best prize at Cannes under his direction. The unanswered question always hovering: Why did she retire early, still in her prime, when the full blossoming of her breasts tantalizes most and she begins to understand her craft and to take bigger risks— why? Were the producers already casting about for less ripe, more malleable girls with dreams of stardom; was that it? Andre insists the lead is in me yet. Ha! I walked away of my own free will. Why would I walk back into that insecure cesspool of chattering facades called acting?

    Andre doesn't like that word,
insecure
. He says it's overused, a catchall excuse for lack of discipline.

    "Wobbly, then," I said back. "People are wobbly in who they are. You might try to be more sympathetic."

    "Rubbish." It could almost have been Joe talking. But Joe would have qualified the retort by saying that the system of civi lization discourages personal strengths, the better to control a populace.

    I stopped myself from throwing my drink at the door behind Andre. Wasted! I am wasted on peasants. If I came at you, dear audience, full force, you couldn't withstand me, yet Andre can crush me with a glance, like a rose petal under heavy boots.

B
etween Joe and Andre there were others. Once Joe and I bled dry, were wrung out, twisting in the winds of our failure, others entered the void. I was all alone in L.A. We didn't want to split up a pair of sisters, so Joe kept the cats, old by then but missed terribly, and I would not replace them. Harry kept me busy. He bent over backward to make the physical part of my move painless. It wasn't. He secured invitations to the important parties. That was hell. It was all I could do to keep from finding the broom closet until enough time passed to head for the door, get into my car, and drive home. I'd bought a brand- new compact to spirit me across the vastness of Los Angeles. I sublet a furnished bungalow on Gardiner Street, up in the hills— not too far from where I am now— and hunkered down among the chintz upholstery, shades drawn. I napped a lot, like a three- year- old, or I paced the small, secluded garden draped with intoxicating jasmine, surrounded by tall eucalyptus trees. I went for walks and absorbed the stares of the locals for doing the unthinkable, using my feet on the pavement. I detested L.A. at that point with all the strength my newly single sorry soul had available.

    Dottie was my one solid friend. We were an odd mix. She was much older and very overt. Singers are a different sort of showman than actors. She started out doing radio jingles in Wichita, then went east, played the Rainbow Room, other high- end New York nightspots. Dottie was auditory color; she'd made a brief splash in a tough town. She told me she was born with perfect pitch. "That was God's gift," she declared. "I had not a thing to do with it." It was her Plains modesty talking; Dottie's no- nonsense values didn't always fit with her bright outfits and flamboyant theatrics. We had in common a shyness hidden by what we did for a living. With Dottie it was Kansas proper— no one out in all that open likes a show- off, she'd say— though she could ham it up pretty good at the piano. I was shy at the bone. If you scratched Dottie, you scratched dirt, where corn or soy or wheat comes from: solid earth, simple and clean and probably conservative in ways I might not tolerate if Dottie wasn't a chanteuse. Scratch my surface and you get blood, guts, darkness, and dumb hope.

    She sang Noël Coward ballads and old show tunes with flare but not a whole lot of depth— the material didn't encourage it. She worked sporadically. A well- off husband died, leaving her comfortably placed. About Joe she said, sensibly, "Ard, honey, the boy who'll follow a girl around the world hasn't been invented yet. They'll calve before that happens. You had no choice. Or yes, you did: It was you for yourself or him." Why'd I have to choose at all? Joe hadn't given me an ultimatum, and I hadn't given him one. I was wracked with doubt. Should I have moved out west, put my career ahead of Joe? Was Dottie right: Woman follows man? Was I doomed to die alone?

    I hit bottom, started turning down jobs, refusing phone calls. Harry was ready to work me over with a whip. He called to tell me Andre Lucerne was looking to direct another feature; he wouldn't cast me in the lead this time but was offering a strong supporting role that was mine for the taking. I said no, thanks.

    "You're turning down Andre Lucerne?" Harry said. "Help me here, Ardennes."

    "I'm not turning down Lucerne. I'm turning down the location. Stockholm in winter, Harry? It's too far away. I'm just not ready." Harry snorted his disbelief. "Okay, I don't like the part either."

    "You're wrong; that part is a perfect vehicle for you. And Stockholm is glorious in winter. Lucerne
himself
called." This time I snorted a so- what. " Never mind." Harry said all calm business. "I'm giving you one month to finish suffering and then I'm dropping you."

    "Harry . . ."

    Dottie said what did I expect; Harry wasn't my uncle. She didn't let on how worried she was about me hanging around the house all day with a bad case of the guilty blues. She'd take me shopping or come over and make us cocktails, sing ditties until I'd smile, which was about all I could manage, and that was mostly polite. "Dear girl, that sea is loaded with fish, you just have to dive in and pull. And for heaven's sake climb out of those tired old pj's and get outside. Go back to work!"

    I wasn't sure if Harry was bluffing or if he'd really drop me. I also genuinely did not know if I'd ever stand in front of a camera again. I wanted so badly to call Joe, tell him that I'd made a terrible mistake, that I wanted to come home; I'd go back to stage acting and our life together, forget all about Hollywood. But he didn't call either and I think that was what hurt the most, that he could just do without me. He'd had a lot of practice, Dottie pointed out, all those absences, me out here working among the fleshpots of Southern California. But Joe didn't doubt me in that way; he was the surest guy I ever met. In the end I think he just didn't want to be married to a movie actress.

    Dottie said it was not what she had in mind when I started going around with a friend of hers, a steadily employed character actor in big movies. We met at one of Dottie's rare singing dates. For a couple of weeks she was the closing act at a club that specialized in after- hours drinkers, well- off layabouts, a crowd that ate up her songs, was never loaded to the point of clamor, and by closing time would be singing along, adoring Dottie and their carefree lives.

    Like me, Fits (that's all anyone ever called him except in movie credits, where "Matthew Fitzgerald" scrolled across the screen) didn't fit the cabaret scene. He didn't know the lyrics to Dottie's numbers and flat- out hated show tunes. We were there for her, and maybe the generous drinks. Fits was not my type. He was heavyset with sandy, graying hair scattered like buckshot over his head, and a good number of years older. His small eyes had an ironic twinkle belying the rough kindness of his nature. He was unexpectedly light on his feet and sexy and, at that particular moment, the best shoulder in the world for me to cry on. Like Joe, he had radar for injustice and a healthy sense of outrage. And, like most actors I know, he was on the lookout for injury, his ego on his sleeve, finding slights where none was intended. His main complaint, besides rarely getting the lead, was not enough camera time. I've never met an actor who didn't have that particular complaint. But it wasn't something he got ugly about, or only fleetingly, and not a true disappointment. When I met him he was cleaning up. He said he'd wake up not knowing if it was the booze or the coke from the night before that made him feel like slow death each morning; he'd decided he did not want to live that way anymore. He was divorced— twice— who isn't in Hollywood— and the father of a kid living problematically with her mother, which added worry and increased the booze- or- cocaine or cocaine- or- booze routine— whichever it was. He wanted to be able to account for his nights and learn to let things be: his acquired wisdom; very L.A.

    He teased me that night for being so young and pathetic, and for being Dottie's friend. I pointed out that he was her friend too, but he said that was different and went on calling me a child and so on until I finally asked him to dance with me just to get him to shut up. His elegant dancing took me very much by surprise. I mean, Fits could waltz. I'm a closet dancer. I respond to music; even dumb, sentimental twaddle wafts its way into my skin and my hips begin to sway. Joe mocked dancing unless it was exotic, by which he meant Indian or Indonesian, not lap. Dancing was a bourgeois pastime meant to allow repressed people to touch, he said. He did learn to watch me improvise at home, to jazz mostly, saying it was probably necessary for an actor to be connected to the body in that way. Once in a while we played at striptease. Ah, Joe.

    Anyhow, Dottie was singing a Gershwin tune that night I'd forgotten requesting. She didn't know all the lyrics and said so, sticking the blame of her attempt on me. The song was "Someone to Watch over Me," and I hummed along in Fits's ear as we danced, fighting down tears. He chuckled, his loose frame wobbling in my arms. "Don't laugh at me," I murmured.

    He pulled back to look into my face. "I would never laugh at you," he said. "At the song maybe, but not you."

    I looked back to see if he was fooling with me. He wasn't. I moved to the music, not even needing a partner. "Who's leading?" I asked.

    "I always lead," Fits replied.

    It was a Hollywood moment.

    He took me home that night. Dottie had insisted I take a car service to the club, though it was not far, down on Fountain, I think. I didn't drink that much anyway and could have driven even if it was three a.m. and I was weary. So Fits took me home in his beat- up Beemer and came in and made himself a pot of coffee, and we sat up in the bungalow for what was left of the night and talked. He was contrary and proud and not easy, but he was the right guy that night. Underneath a fair amount of armor, my soul was safe with Fits.