Hollywood Boulevard (6 page)

    "Like the actors?" I ventured.

    If he heard me he didn't react. The café sold Moroccan items: pointed leather slippers, clay tagines, spices, even clothing and mother- of- pearl combs. As we were sipping our mint tea and coffee after dinner, Andre abruptly walked over to an armoire that had a sumptuous gold- threaded white caftan hanging on the open door. He brought it to the table and told me to stand and hold it up. "This would fit you perfectly," he said. I couldn't help noticing the three- hundred- fifty- dollar price tag. Calling for the check, he told the waiter to add the caftan and wrap it up. He gave me the package out on the sidewalk.

    "For me?" I was embarrassed by his extravagance and what it might imply for the rest of the night, but all he did was kiss my hand.

    " Thank you for your silence; it's a rare gift these days. I enjoyed our dinner."

    (I have a gift for silence?)

    That was it. Assured I knew my way back to Hollywood, he said good- night. I didn't see him again for nearly two years. He was right about the caftan; it fit as if it had been custom- made. That café became a favorite of mine, but not sentimentally; I had no idea what to make of the evening or why Andre wanted to have dinner with me. As far as I knew, he went home to wife number two, an actress, that night.

I
n the morning I got up whisper- quiet, not to waken Andre.  I made a pot of tea to drink on the balcony as I idly watched for signs of White Shirt. There were none. The day was bright, clear, and almost cold. I could see snow on the mountains. Without the sun, now well over the San Gabriels, I would have frozen stiff. The caftan is here with me, in L.A., and I look for excuses to wear it. I wonder sometimes if in his mind that Moroccan dinner was the start of Andre's courting me. The next time we met he referred to the evening as if it had taken place the week before. The caftan is meant for a Park Avenue apartment with a cascading marble staircase, for descending à la Loretta Young, swishing to greet guests for cocktails or late- morning confidential chats in the boudoir. I have neither cascading stairs nor a bedroom fit for an heiress, and no Fred Astaire type arrives of an evening, the butler showing him in. The garment is of another era. Joan Crawford comes to mind.

    Too bad it wasn't with me when I won best actress at Cannes. Andre was up too, for best director, for
Separation and Rain
. He didn't win, but his leading lady did. The French adored Andre, and Cannes had already awarded him best director, so he was relaxed either way. I nearly threw up when they announced my name. I didn't even have a new dress but an old filmy thing I'd had around forever that I wore to every event. I jazzed it up with a silk shawl I'd seen in a shop window along the Croisette, which Harry surprised me by buying. Mindy Scott showed up in Cannes, scraped the money together, she said, to fly over for the festival and was hanging on to me like skin on bone. She'd had all of three lines in the movie. She must have told Harry about the shawl, and I figured he must have paid her way over, probably to keep tabs on me, though Mindy was not his client. He'd wanted to buy me a new dress, but I'd refused. I told him to forget it; I was not going to win and not to waste his money. I shocked him by getting my hair cut très short. I walked cold into a salon and said, "Take it off." It looked great, if I do say so myself. Harry of course pooh- poohed the style. "Eurotrash!" he called it.

    Cannes was a disappointment; the town, the film festival, even the fabled beach was a letdown. Beneath a glamorous veneer the festival was a flesh factory for selling cans of movies and careers. We had press nearly every day; Andre and the producers, the principal actors, interviews and photo ops to keep the excitement revved up. Andre was very nice, helped me handle the glare and field some of the numbingly inane questions the press threw at me. Mindy was practically my Siamese twin, so she made some press appearances too. I didn't fault her pushiness. I held on to her in the street, where we were trailed by a band of bored- looking paparazzi. Until I won; then it was a wolf pack of international camera snappers in my face, all part of the star machinery.

    Joe flew over after I called to say I'd been nominated, making it to Cannes one hour before the ceremonies began. At least he wore a black sports coat over his jeans. He loved the hair. "Very gamine," he said in my ear. Cannes disgusted him as much as it did me. The water off Nice looked polluted from the plane, he said, like a milky stream of sewage pouring in next to the bathers. The road from Nice to Cannes was littered with an obnoxious string of minimalls— not Big Mac and Burger King but
pan
,
pizza
,
poulet
joints— fast food French style. The Ritz, where Harry had put me up, was over the top. Even the coffee shop was a four- star deal; luckily the room came with breakfast of croissant and bowls of café au lait. Joe asked if they didn't have a Motel 8 or something like it near the airport. I was worrying about how he was going to take all the after- ceremony parties I'd have to attend— de rigueur— just because I'd been nominated, so I didn't hear when they announced my name. Joe nudged me. "It'll be all right," I said. "We'll pop in, say hello, and scram to the next party, ten minutes each, max."

    "What are you talking about? You won, silly goose." He held and kissed the palm of my hand. I stared at him. They said my name again, and I felt myself stand up among the audience as if I were being lifted on an ocean wave, my stomach bucking. Suddenly Andre was there, kissing both my cheeks, his hands on my shoulders, nearly knocking off the mauve shawl. Harry was squashed into a seat two rows behind me; he pushed himself up to come embrace me, his breath wet in my ear. An usher appeared to guide me to the stage. My legs were rubber doll's legs. I faced Joe with a get- me- outta- here look. But he was applauding along with everyone else. I didn't figure I'd have a snowball's chance in hell of winning so I had nothing prepared to say. One of my idols, Giulietta Masina, won best actress at Cannes— for
Nights of Cabiria—
was I worthy of her? Some genie moved my hands for me, tossing the shawl gamely over one shoul der, leaving the other bare, the strap of my dress slipping ever so slightly. Joe said later the hair and subdued sexiness of the shawl worked magic. The French papers next day exclaimed over my chicly original sense of style. Ha.

    I stumbled through a thank- you. I felt I wasn't breathing. I kept my eyes down and spoke just above a whisper, thanking Andre and the cast and Harry and the producers and, oh, the French,
"Viva La France!"
popped out of my mouth, eliciting a puff of laughter from the crowd. I felt the surge of their energy: an almost out- of- body sensation. I paused and looked out at all those faces, just for a second. It was like firecrackers lit just for me, ten thousand fireworks and I was the Fourth of July; a thousand flaming torches— all for me. It was madness. Finally, I thanked the writer Joe Finn.

    He was furious. We were up all night arguing after the parties Harry dragged us to in rapid succession. Joe had steadily downed the drinks, whatever the waiters were passing around. I watched him nervously; Joe wasn't much of a drinker. Back at the room I burst into tears. At one a.m. Andre called: Where was I? The big
Separation and Rain
celebration was just warming up and the star was missing. He sent up a bottle of champagne. I had the waiter open it, though Joe stood there glaring like poison. I went down to the party alone, a study in misery. Once again Andre stepped in, was gentlemanly and solicitous, guiding me through the night.

    The next day Cannes was dead, a ghost town. Everybody was either in bed hungover or on a plane home now that no one would pick up their tab if they stayed on. Outside, sweepers were at work as the locals reclaimed their town. Harry woke me up with a phone call at noon: Why wasn't I at the airport?

    My head was splitting, my mouth like old chewing gum and sawdust. "Can you change my ticket to a few days from now, please, Harry, and please don't ask me any questions."

    "It's that moper, isn't it?"

    "That's a question, Harry. Just please work some deal with my first- class ticket, cash it in for two coach fares back to New York in, say, four days. I'm begging you, Harry." I hung up.

    We rented a car and drove up to Aix en Provence, stopping at a roadside stand selling cherries—
cerise
— that were the plumpest, sweetest we'd ever tasted. " These aren't cherries," Joe said, holding one up. " These are tree- grown orgasms." He turned the car around and we bought another half kilo. We drank Pernod at the café Des Deux Garçons, where Cézanne used to hang out. We visited his studio, up past a housing- project slum outside Aix. Inside were the painter's props and his straw field hat and black all- weather coat hung on a hook by the door, as if he'd only just gone out. The very same leggy germaniums, still- life jars and vases; only fresh pears and apples were missing. We had the place to ourselves until a small troop of tourists filed in, cameras like appendages hanging off their necks. Even Joe thought we'd stood on something like hallowed ground that day.

    We went to the market for fresh goat cheese, bread, fruit, wine, tomatoes, and olives for a picnic at the base of Mont St. Victoire. I recall stopping the car to pee in the woods, and the glassy light in the forest, the reddish tree trunks and a wash of silver in the air. I remember thinking Cézanne had seen that light and captured it on canvas. We laughed out loud arriving at the view he'd painted so many times, the tumbledown boulders of St. Victoire. I said to Joe, "That's it, that's cubism right there; he painted what he saw!"

    "Good old crotchety Cézanne. And Hortense, his wife: the ball and chain," Joe said with a wink.

    "Hey!" I shot back. "What about 'Theory shits,' what he said to his painter pals in Paris, Monet and Pissarro and the others, before he took off for the south, never to look back."

    "A man who knew what he wanted and wasn't afraid to go after it," Joe said.

    We worked to patch things up under that pale Provençal sky that seemed as if it could cleanse any human sin. I thought Joe was angry at me for thanking Andre and everyone else first at the ceremony, but he sneered at that. "Andre?" he said, exaggerating the name (
Ahhhhhndray
). "All right, the man has talent, but all Andre does is Andre."

    I decided I'd skip that part. "Is this about you taking that electrical work? You don't have to."

    " Really? You took an apartment in Los Angeles; now we have two rents to pay."

    "It's just temporary, and I can handle both, Joe; it's way cheaper than a hotel." I made my voice small because money talk could cause an avalanche.

    "Do you think about what you're doing, Ardennes?"

    "Taking the apartment? I'll get more work if I'm out there. . . . I wish so much you'd come, just for a little while. The cats could fly out too."

    "I'm saying: Is this what you
want
?" His tone was like a clamp on my throat.

    "It's what I
do
, Joe; I'm an actor. It's just, I— what do you want me to do, act in documentaries?" I'd done everything in my life to be doing what I was doing; what was I supposed to make of Joe's question? Was I any different than Cézanne going after his art? "I don't see your writing saving the world from hunger—"

    "—Just forget it!" he cut in. (That was
his
fallback position.)

    After a tense silence I said, "I couldn't have done the award without you. I can't do anything without you."

    He dismissed that idea. "Ah, cut it out.
You
won all by yourself. Just keep me out of the cheesy stuff is all I ask. I'll boost my own career."

    Oh, I said to myself, I shouldn't have called him a writer. He
is
a writer! I felt so helplessly sad. It was impossible to keep guessing at what was going to work with Joe. It seemed like I was wrong seventy- five percent of the time. I must have looked like unhappiness incarnate, my face falling like a car wreck. Joe put his arms around me. "It's all right, don't fret, Ardennes."

    I brightened like a dumb flower that can't help itself when the sun peeks out from behind a cloud. I muttered the word
cerise
into his warm shoulder. We finished our picnic in peace and that night had magnificent
c'est ci bon
French sex. The next morning I was briefly recognized for my prize— it was all over the newspapers that week. I was afraid Joe would get mad again, but he was quiet as I thanked the concierge of the inn for congratulating me. He presented us with a bottle of Châteauneuf du Pape, asking first if I preferred red or white. Then he asked us to wait one moment while he ran back inside to present us with a bottle of white as well, kissing first me and then Joe on each of our cheeks.