L.A. Success (30 page)

“I want to ask you a question. After
I gave you my first act, you told me you weren't even going to read it, but
that Spieldburt ended up asking you to bring it to him. Why was that again?”

“Because of the name of your
character, Gertie Elliot. I thought it was a funny coincidence at first. He, on
the other hand, took it very seriously. But I've got to admit he's been acting
weird lately. This afternoon he stormed into his office, slammed the door, and
started yelling and breaking things. I was supposed to show him some new
scripts, but he canceled everything for the day.”

“He was acting a little weird when I
saw him earlier as well,” I said.

“He always acts weird when you're
concerned. He actually made me type up your first two acts. I was sure you
wouldn't mind, so I took the liberty of fixing your spelling and re-arranging
some scenes that you clearly wrote out of order. It's actually somewhat
readable now. I'm interested in seeing the final act.”

I had intended to go off on him for
what he had told Helen, but he was being oddly nice and caught me completely
off-guard.

“Thanks. And hey—tell your boss I
need that envelope back. He'll know what I mean. We'll be in contact, I'm
sure,” I said.

He got back into the slothmobile and
took off. I could tell by the jerky movements of his car that he was already
texting away, making up for all that lost time.

9

I now had a lot of questions I
wanted answered, and they all seemed to involve Gertie Elliot. Spieldburt had had
no reason to read that stuff I'd sent him, but he had done it anyway when he
had found out she was in it. Why was this? And then another question I'd never
thought of before came to me: Why had Ignacio given me her name in the first
place?

I dialed her number, but she didn't
pick up. When I got back to the house, I knocked on Tommy's door, but he wasn't
there. Gertie's office was closed for the day, so the only place I could try
was her house. I took the big poodle, mainly so he wouldn't scratch at my bedroom
door and bother my dad, and drove down to Venice.

Several of the lights in Gertie's
house were on. I rang the bell. She opened the door wearing a silk nightie that
was a real turn-on until you saw the wrinkly parts protruding out. From the way
her gaze drifted off to some spot behind me, I could tell she was sloshed.

“
Hi
Gertie. I don't mean to bother you, but I need to ask you something. Are you
busy?”

“
I
have time. Tommy's getting the bedroom ready. You wouldn't expect it, but he's
a serious neat freak. He likes to make the bed before we get into it, even if
it's midnight. He even shakes the sheets out the window. Come in,” she said and
then looked down at the dog. “Good god! How does that thing see? He's like a
ball of hair.”

“
I
try to make a part in his afro around the eyes every morning, but by lunch time
it closes up again.”

She led me into her living room,
which was decorated in shades of violet and pink. All of her furniture was
upholstered in plush, much of which looked worn away from friction. I sat down
on the couch and sank in until the angle formed at the back of my knees was
less than ninety degrees.

Gertie picked up a glass of wine and
began to stare at me. I had the impression she had already forgotten what I'd
said at the door. To prevent another invitation to join Tommy and her, I
explained again.

“
So
Gertie, I came over to ask you about—” I said but was interrupted by Tommy's
voice coming from the other room.

“
Gairtee!
I yam red-ee,” said Tommy.

“
I'm
talking to someone here!” yelled Gertie. “I want you to take a shower anyway,
mister. And make sure to soap up that coat-wearing worm of yours!” She looked
over at me and said, “You won't believe what I find in that European dong of
his. There was a piece of pizza crust in there once. It's like the hose of a
vacuum, that thing. For all the shit that gets stuck in there, he must flop it
around catching stuff with it like a frog catches flies.” She paused and once
again forgot why I was there. She struck a seductive pose, figuring since she was
half naked it had to be for a related reason.

“
As
I was saying, I need to know something. I wrote a screenplay about you and sent
it to that director—”

“
I
knew you were obsessed with me,” she interrupted. “This is something we're
going to have to learn to control because things are getting serious between me
and Tommy. At least until he goes back to wherever the hell he's from,” she
said and then whispered, “we'll do it in the houses. Everything happens in the
houses.”

“
That
sounds great,” I said, knowing she wouldn't remember anyway, or rather she'd
remember what she wanted to remember anyway, no matter what I said. In Gertie's
drunken memories I was probably always trying to get at her. “But I gave my
screenplay about you to Spieldburt—”

“
Who?”

“
Spieldburt—the
E.T. guy.”

“
You
mean Spielberg,” she said.

“
Spielberg?
He's the E.T. guy?” Gertie nodded, and I wondered how I could have gone so long
getting his name wrong. That prick Grant hadn't corrected me once. “Well, yeah.
That guy. And there was more or less a misunderstanding. He thought I wanted
some money, and then the next thing I knew, I was on the ground getting kicked
in the ribs.”

Gertie's face lost her normal sheen
of lustiness, and she went quiet for a moment. She downed the rest of her wine,
went over to her open kitchen and poured herself another glass. She then walked
over to one of the drawers of her entertainment center and took out a photo
album. She came back and sat down next to me. She put the album on my lap and
opened it. The pages were filled with pictures of disco-looking, curly-haired
people. All the photos were so old that the colors looked off, like they had
been taken on a planet that orbited a blue sun. I turned the pages
uninterestedly. I assumed Gertie had forgotten why I had come again. I prepared
myself for the eventual jolt of dirty pictures that I imagined lay after every
turn of the page. Then I recognized a young Gertie, wearing hip-hugging,
bell-bottom jeans and an obnoxiously bright, flower-pattern shirt. Her hair was
parted in the middle, feathered back ridiculously, and had obviously been
lightened with bleach. She was leaning on a scrawny, curly-headed guy, and her
hand was resting on his chest.

“Hey, that's you,” I said. “I almost
didn't recognize you. Your skin was so dark.”

“Non-stop tanning. And it took work
back then. We had to do it the old-fashioned way. None of this tanning-booth
crap. Back in the day, all the girls went to the beach to tan year round. The
men would come after us like sharks. Nowadays men don't know how to hit on
girls at the beach because they only go there after they've already met their
ladies. It's ridiculous. Back then, you could see all the goods up front. This
modern, meeting-people-at-the-bookstore thing was invented by flat-assed
college girls. I can't believe men bought it.”

“Who's this guy?” I asked, pointing
to the curly-haired man.

“That's Spielberg—my Steven. We had
been seeing each other for several months when this photo was taken.”

“You were a couple?”

“Everybody was seeing everybody back
then. I was with all these people,” she said, making a sweeping gesture with
her hand. “But Steven, now he needed special attention. I only started up with
him because he was so unconfident that it was endearing. All these muscle-bound
guys at the beach hitting on girls right and left, and then there was Steven,
standing way off with his feet in the surf and staring at me. I walked over and
had to pounce on him to keep him from running away out of nervousness. He started
feeding me what I thought was a line of bullshit. He said he was working in TV
and was hoping to do a TV movie soon, and he threw out a whole bunch of names I
didn't know. I pretended to be interested in all this, and it made him
confident. Then he told me all about his dream project, his big movie idea that
he wanted to direct one day,” she said and went quiet remembering.

“Did he tell you about alien shit?”

“Oh no. Back then he was into some weird
stuff. He said he wanted to make a film about Sigmund Freud and his sidekick, a
guy named Missouri Fred, a rugged adventurer who always got the girl. In the
movie, Freud and Missouri Fred would travel to exotic places making criminally
insane villains good people by psycho-analyzing them and helping them
understand that it was okay to want to do their mothers. But the larger
objective of the two was to track down the Vagina Dentata and destroy it, thus
saving the world from impotence. Occasionally, they'd get death threats from
the Vagina Dentata. It would leave cryptic clues about its next victims. Freud
and Missouri Fred would travel to ravaged European hamlets, where teary,
limp-dicked peasants would give them a hero's welcome and help them prepare for
the journey ahead. He called the whole thing 'Dentata'.”

“What the hell is a vagina dentata?”

“It's a pussy with sharp teeth.
It'll bite your dick right off.”

“That's not true...is it?” I asked.

“We have always tried to keep it a
secret.”

“You don't—”

“You'll never know, unless you come
in for a little spelunking,” she said.

“So anyway,” I continued, “why does
Spielberg want to beat me up now?”

“Well, he and I started to get
serious back in the day. After a few years, we even began seeing each other exclusively—at
least it was exclusive from his side. The Gert was born to run. Everything was
going along great, but then I got sick of him spouting off new adventures of
Freud and Missouri Fred. I told him if he was going to write something about
scary teeth, it needed to be something men would go see, because 'Dentata' was
only going to be a perverted chick flick. I said 'why not an octopus or a squid
with big teeth? People will understand that you're talking metaphorically about
a toothy vagina.' He went away for a few weeks and came back beaming. He had
fed the idea to a screenwriter and had an entire movie ready to go, but with a
shark.”

“So he was happy with you, then.”

“No. He acted like I had nothing to
do with it. I told him he was acting like a child, and we started fighting. He
went away, and I didn't hear from him until about five years later. He called
and told me he'd made a film inspired by me, but me in the future.”

“Which one was that?”

“E.T. I went to see it as soon as it
came out. I was flattered at first because he had taken my name and given it to
those kids, and I was thinking about all my good qualities that he had given to
those brats: my innocence, my optimism, my honesty. I was so moved by it that I
was ready to reconcile with Steven. I drove to his house and rushed up to his
door. When he opened it, I threw myself into his arms and was ready to do
anything for him. I told him that now that I knew how he really felt about me,
I was ready to join my future to his.”

“You guys got married?”

“No, I had misinterpreted the whole
thing. There I was in his arms, but he was just holding me stiffly like you
would hold someone who had fainted. I looked up at him, and he had a stone-cold
look on his face. Then he gave a wry smile and led me into the living room. He
took out this album and showed me the photos on the very next page.”

“Wow, that's amazing. So I need a
favor from you, if you don't mind,” I said.

“What—you're not going to turn the
page?”

“Oh yeah,” I said and turned it. In
front of my eyes were pictures of classic Gertie poses, some I had seen before,
some I had only been forced to imagine.

“Do you recognize this from the
movie?” she asked, pointing to the first picture. It was her in the twilight of
the evening, obviously upset with someone because she was giving the finger.
But in the same hand she was using to flip the bird, she also held a cigarette,
which stood straight up alongside her middle finger. The glowing cinder of the
cigarette protruded just enough to make it look like the red light was coming
out of her nail.

“No!” I said.

“Oh yes. And look at this one,” she
said, pointing to a picture of a bedroom scene. A young Gertie, wearing nothing
but a smile, was spread out seductively on the bed. There was a line of little
chocolate candies leading up to her. The man taking the picture was not
visible, but his hand was caught in the frame reaching up for a candy.

“But this is the worst one,” she
said, pointing to a picture of her and Spielberg, basically in the same
position she was in when I walked in on her and Tommy, except that she was
facing away from him in this one. If I hadn't known her, I'd have been turned
on by this, but I couldn't keep the modern, wrinkly Gertie from creeping back
into my mind.

“He used to call this position 'the
bicycle',” she said. “When I thought about that scene in the movie where they
fly off in front of that big moon, it all made sense to me. I couldn't believe
it. Then I asked him why he would choose such an ugly-looking thing to turn me
into, and he said he got the idea by imagining what I was going to look like
after fifty years of year-round tanning and smoking. Did you know he actually
hired a two-pack-a-day smoker to do E.T.'s voice?”