The Hollywood Trilogy (25 page)

It was the voice of Baby Cakes, shrill with anger. Thank God we were about done with principal photography.

IT TOOK me a couple of minutes to get used to the darkness, and then I could see two groups of people. Over by the set were a handful of reporters and feature writers, looking mean as hell, God, don't ever offend one of these small-time Hollywood hacks because all they are sniffing for is some little hunk of nastiness they can magnify into a career-wrecking anecdote; just seeing them there and remembering that Marty had arranged the press conference pissed me off—a couple of hours of wrestling that toothless old shark across the lot had put me in a shitty mood anyway. And now the other group, which was two guys and Baby Cakes and Marty.

Nobody had seen me yet, so I stayed in the shadows for as long as I could. The two guys with Baby Cakes were obviously the cause of the trouble. They were black guys, not your average people but guys with
LOSER
stamped across their faces at birth, sunglasses, shapeless hats pulled down, dirty suits and shoes from out of the garbage can someplace, easy to tell from their swaying and murmuring, hands in bulging pockets, that they were drunk, I could almost smell the cheap boozy stink from where I was standing. One of them laughed at Marty's stiff face and showed a bunch of horrible teeth, and Marty stepped back, probably without even knowing it, and Baby Cakes said, “We'll wait in Jim's trailer, goddamn it.”

Marty said stiffly, “The set's closed until after the press leaves, and I don't want you on the sound stage.”

“Jim is expecting me, and he's gonna be royally pissed off you fired me,” Baby Cakes said.

Naturally, the press is eating it up, though still uptight at being kept an hour. Marty, although it was obviously killing him, told Baby Cakes that he was not fired, he quit, and nobody believed him anyway, and to please clear the set with the rest of the crew. . . .

       
BABY CAKES:
I'm not crew, you asshole . . .

       
ONE OF THE GUYS:
Hey, man . . .

With wonderful timing, in came Karl Meador and Sonny, walking right into the middle of the mess. This stirred up the reporters and they broke formation and started toward Karl. Karl is good with reporters, although he hates them, and he went among them shaking hands, being introduced by the studio publicity guy, and I came out of the shadows and up to Marty and his group.

“What's happening?” I asked Marty. Baby Cakes backed away from the look on my face.

“We'll wait in Jim's trailer,” Baby Cakes said.

Marty's eyes went to glass. “You'll
shit!
” he said, cold. “Get off the goddamn set before I have you thrown off!”

“Say that in front of Jim!” Baby Cakes said, and the two black guys weaved uncertainly and looked at each other. Now Marty could see all the reporters plus his boss Karl, and Sonny, a beautiful woman, watching. He turned to me:

“You throw them off the set!”

“Nobody's throwing me off any set,” Baby Cakes said. “These are some people I want Jim to meet.” He looked at me with terrible dislike and fear in his eyes. “And Jim wants to meet them, too!”

“Oh, fuck off,” I said to him, and turned away. Marty and I walked over to where the reporters were milling around Karl and Sonny, and the PR guy said in a really fake cheery voice, “And here he is, ladies and gentlemen, David OGILVIE!”

I raised my hands like a champ and said, “Deelighted to be here, but just give me a little moment, perhaps you could pass the time most profitably by interviewing Miss Sonny Baer, and I hope you'll accept our apology for being late, but as you know, we're right at the tag end of making our picture and things are in a bit of a squeeze . . .”

I heard a girl reporter say in an amazed little voice, “Oh, he speaks so
fast!
” In character, I drawl.

Karl, bless him, took it up and began to introduce Sonny to them by quoting from the promotion handout, and I moved away and started toward Jim's trailer. Baby Cakes and the two guys were standing out in front. Baby Cakes looked upset and almost flinched when I grinned at him.

“Where's Jim?” I asked.

“Not in there,” Baby Cakes said. “He wants to see us.”

I walked around the trailer and beat on the toilet window, but no response. I went back and opened the unlocked door. No Jim inside.

I beckoned to Baby Cakes and the two guys to come in and sit down.

“Make yourselves comfortable,” I said. I introduced myself and we all shook hands. “Would anybody like a drink?” I said. “Baby Cakes, how about being a good guy?”

In fifteen minutes we were all pals. The guys, it turned out, had something to sell to Jim, straight off the boat, uncut, topgrade stuff, only 125 dollars a gram, and after a nice warming drink of whiskey, I paid for two grams, folded into bindles in magazine paper, patted everybody on the back, winked at Baby Cakes and escorted the three of them to the door of the sound stage opposite to the one where the crew was hanging out. Then I went back to Jim's trailer and flushed the garbage down the drain.

I walked back to the press conference and answered stupid questions, trick questions and just plain ignorant questions for thirty minutes, and then Ron came out, smiling, from his little office, with Luigi the first assistant director and Leon the production manager. Luigi, as was his job, cleared out the reporters.

“Where were you when I needed you?” I said to Luigi.

“Huh?”

We waited two hours for Jim but he never did show up. That was when Marty crossed the street for his one big Bucket of Gin, and I began to fear that I might never see my partner again.

“I THINK I'm going crazy,” he told me up at the ranch, in fact, he must have come to the ranch just to tell me that, but then other things happened and we never got back to it. Maybe we should have gotten back to it, I think as I sit in my dressing room waiting for the walls to explode. This year he disappears, what the fuck, one year he came down with some kind of insane virus and his face swelled up and turned red and he had a temperature of 104, an hour before we were due to make our opening night entrance at the Golconda. Galba had his pet doctor up there—I wasn't around for fear of catching it—but Jim told me later Galba really leaned on the doctor, like in a cheap movie, “Fix him up, Doc!” while the wounded bankrobber lays blubbering about Mary Ann and the rain hits the windowpanes. Doc gave him a shot of something and we went on and that was the end of it.

Another time, it was me. Right in the middle of shooting our picture I went all cold inside and couldn't do anything. I've been depressed before but this was more like despair. It just didn't seem to matter. I mean, really, who gives a shit whether we make another movie or not? Who goes to see these
things? What are we doing to their minds? I lay in bed in the motel and the despair was like a heavy airless weight on my chest; how long had I been alive, and what did it all mean? I had no wife, no children, my parents were long dead, I loved my relatives but I couldn't stand to be around them, what, really, had I contributed to existence? What had I done with my life except take my big paychecks and stow the money and ruthlessly screw everybody who came near me?

I didn't blame anybody but myself for the goddamn funk, so for a couple of days I would let them dress me up like a farmer (in this movie I was a farmer and Jim was my old army buddy from the big city) and lead me out onto the set, and everyone was very sweet to me, especially Jim, whose sweetness took the form of leaving me the hell alone, and they would fuss with the lighting and get everything right and Luigi would yell for everybody to be quiet, Ron would cue the camera, the sound man would quietly say, “Speed,” the camera guy would clap the clapper, Ron would quietly say, “Action,” and it was all up to me to speak my five words or look droll, or whatever, and I couldn't do it.

Fifty people standing around on salary waiting for me to chortle like an idiot, and I couldn't do it. I would be all cold in the middle and somehow not realize it was my turn to perform, and Ron would say quietly, “Keep rolling,” and then to me, “You okay, Ogle?” and I would nod and say, “Sorry,” and Jim and I would get back on our marks. “Action,” and Jim would look expectantly at me and I would go all cold inside.

Later in my motel room I lay there and wondered if this wasn't the beginning of the end for me, not as a performer but as a human. From now on I would be nothing more than a humanoid. Why eat? Humanoids don't eat. Humanoids don't drink or take drugs or fuck or yell at people. They just move around until somebody unplugs them.

It lasted three days and everybody went nuts all the way back to Hollywood. Doctors were sent out, psychiatrists, holistic miracle workers, telephone calls from Karl
personally
, but I just lay in that room and sweated out my emptiness.

Then on the fourth morning I was fine. I didn't even notice until I was sitting in the motel coffee shop having a cup of coffee. Everybody around me was so pointedly not looking at me that I broke out laughing and made the waitress think I was nuts.

So maybe I should have listened to Jim.

The night he disappeared I dragged myself over to the hotel, preferring to walk the four or five miles because I was sick of sitting in the back of studio limos while the Teamster behind the wheel babbles his life story, which I don't give a rusty fuck about. Besides, walking took about an hour and a half, and gave Jim time to undisappear, show up in my apartment snorting my precious stash and laughing.

It didn't happen that way, of course. My apartment was empty and still. It was just getting dark outside. I kicked off my shoes and pulled the socks off and let my feet luxuriate in the twilight air. I sat on the terrace overlooking the city and wondering for the ten thousandth time why I allowed myself to get tense about this shit. Jim would show up or he wouldn't. I wiggled my toes in the cool air and they thanked me after the hot walk. Ten little toes. Hello, toes. A line of Lenny Bruce's: “It's so
good
to get out of the
box!
” I sat there a minute silently doing Lenny's act for an appreciative audience of ten.

I looked over the rooftops to the left: that was where Lenny got his start, cheap night club between strippers, making his jokes to the band because it was “a little Squaresville” out in front. I thought a minute about getting out his records and playing them, just to hear the guys in the band laughing at Lenny's nasty humor. Oh, balls, some other time. But he was a god to me, a sleazy dopy god. I looked to the right; just down the street is where Lenny died. I didn't want to die like that, half in and half out of the toilet, naked on the floor with a needle in my arm. God, I didn't want to die at all. I started crying.

“Lenny, you cocksucker,” I cried to the dull red horizon, but I was really crying for myself.