The Hollywood Trilogy (26 page)

I WENT into the kitchen and pulled open the refrigerator. Half an avocado, wrapped in plastic, three small hunks of different kinds of cheese, wrapped also in plastic—I have never been able to throw good food away, except, of course, drunkenly and deliberately throwing food—but any sliver or scrap of food in the house must be preserved until it is either dead and grey or eaten, perhaps at three in the morning, me standing in front of the refrigerator, the door open and its light spilling over my nakedness in the otherwise dark apartment, munching on a hunk of cheese and hoping I could get back to sleep
from whatever woke me, drunken shouts from the drive below, sirens down Sunset, the sky opening up with a tremendous explosion and God reaching down, crushing L.A. under His paw. . . . It didn't take much to waken me in Hollywood, although on Sonoma Mountain I usually went to bed with the sunset and got up with the dawn, ten or twelve hours of sweet unbroken sleep.

There was also an unopened package of two T-bone steaks, a pound of ground round, a package of dinner franks, what my relatives called tube steaks, “Somebody's got to eat the ears and snouts!” my cousin Harold would say cheerfully, “no use throwing out good pig meat!”

These were all-beef.

There was half a jar of cucumber pickles, a couple of quarts of milk, three cans of Miller's High Life, and, in the freezer compartment, two trays of ice and half a pint of Dreyer's deadliest vanilla ice cream.

I could have called the desk and ordered dinner from Greenblatt's or Schwab's or for that matter Chasen's, all you have to do is pay for it, but instead I called down to Sonny's apartment. She answered right away. She'd had a tough day, too.

“Do you have any potatoes or salad stuff? I got some steaks,” I said.

“I was just going to go to bed,” she said. “I just got out of the tub.”

“Did you have dinner?”

“I had a couple of cookies when I got home,” she said. “I just thought I would read.”

“What are you reading?”

“
Shogun
,” she said.

“Can't you hear those steaks, sizzling in the pan?” I asked.

“You're talking me into it,” she said.

I had time to take a nice hot shower before Sonny showed up with a big bowl full of salad and a baguette of bread. The television was on, Connie Chung with the news, and I was drinking a beer and watching.

“What's new?” Sonny said as she passed through to the kitchen. She was dressed in jeans and a faded pink sweatshirt, no shoes, her hair up under a scarf.

“Beats me,” I said. My private phone rang, and for a second I thought it would be Jim and my low-down feeling of doom would go away. But it was Johnny Brokaw, a comedian friend. Johnny lived at the beach when he wasn't in residence in Vegas or touring, but right now he was in town with
nothing to do. I asked him to dinner and told him to stop by the market and pick out his meat course. “We're having steaks,” I said.

Johnny protested, saying he thought I'd probably want to be alone, but I laughed at him and said, “Come the fuck over.” Johnny was a very funny man, naturally funny, handsome as hell although nobody really ever thinks of him that way when he's working; a damn good dresser, a doper and a good pal. Sonny had never heard of him.

“Jesus Christ,” I said.

“Did you ask him to bring some wine?” she asked. I hadn't, of course, so I had to put on my
huaraches
and slip-slop down the hill to the Liquor Locker, where I picked up two bottles of grey Riesling, Wente Bros., a can of deluxe mixed nuts, and trudged back up the hill. Sonny had changed channels and was sitting watching the Dinah Shore Show. I sat next to her after getting a beer for myself. It was comfortable. Sonny and I had taken to spending quite a few of the dead dull weeknights together, watching television or even going to bed together. Karl was too busy to see her, although he claimed he loved her and she was the only girl for him. She knew what Karl was like, by now, and oddly, as friends, she and I had some remarkable times in bed.

There was a tapping at my door. I said, “That's Johnny,” and went over to open the door, but it wasn't Johnny, it was an actor friend named Mike Leary, grinning, leaning against the wall.

“Hello,” he said, “or is it goodbye?”

“It's hello and come on in,” I said. We hadn't seen each other since last year, when he had gone to Hawaii. Mike was too good for our pictures, although he had appeared in a couple of them some years ago.

“Have you had supper?” I asked him.

“No, as a matter of fact, I haven't,” he said. I introduced him to Sonny and they laughed and said they had met, at “the club,” long ago, and had even been on a couple of casting calls together.

“What's ‘the club'?” I asked.

“God, you mean to tell me you've never been to ‘the
club
'?” Sonny said. She and Mike exchanged grins.

Mike said, “He's probably the only performer in America who's never been to ‘the club,'” and I knew what he was talking about. Unemployment.

“I've done more time in the unemployment line than you've been in pictures,” I said without originality.

“Tell us about it, Pops,” Mike said, and grinned at Sonny, who patted the seat next to her. Mike sat down.

When I had gotten home I had wanted nothing but to be alone. Now I was in the mood for a party.

“Hey,” I said to Mike as the three of us passed a joint, “let's call Phil and Oona and have 'em stop by the Hughes Allnight Supermarket. Oona can pick out whatever she likes, I'll pay for it when they get here. You could call Debbie and ask her to bring her cousin. We'll have a dinner!”

Sonny looked at me strangely.

“Fun!” I yelled. “Fun! Fun!”

“Oona's a great cook,” Mike said. “Let me at that telephone.”

Sonny sighed and went into the kitchen.

BY NINE or so there was a gang of people in the apartment, hanging out in the living room drinking the booze that various groups or individuals brought with them and watching the television or talking, moving in and out of the kitchen where Oona Naglio supervised the cooking, or out on the terrace where Mike had taken charge of the charcoal grill and a fifth of Wild Turkey. It was a good bunch of people, all working in show business one way or another. Nobody knew everybody, but that was all right, too. Johnny Brokaw showed up with a bag of groceries including a big jug of red wine and a couple more steaks, and on his arm was one of those beautiful long-legged Vegas line dancers that he liked so much even though they were all a few inches taller than Johnny, and right behind him came the Naglios, Phil and Oona, a writing team who lived over in Nichols Canyon; they had double armfuls of bulging sacks, having stopped at the Hughes Allnight Market, and Oona was carrying a big shallow bowl in case I didn't have one, for the main dish, which would be a rice and seafood conglomeration, and they had called Debbie (casting director) who had been in the middle of getting dinner for her cousin, her lovely cousin whose name I never learned, a secretary at Fox, and her cousin's date, Ford Hamilton, a rich boy turned comedian out from New York to make a picture at Fox and incidentally, a guy
Rolling Stone
had called “the hip David Ogilvie.” During the first part of the evening Ford Hamilton and I sort of ducked around and didn't make
any eye contact. I had been in the toilet when Debbie and What's-her-name and Hamilton arrived.

Then a few more people came, people who had called me for one reason or another: Marty, our producer, who had obviously come over to talk to me about business and finding himself in the middle of a loose friendly party, sat stiffly in a corner with a glass of Perrier talking to Sonny for at least ten minutes and then vanished. And others.

I was immoderately happy. These were all people I liked, even the ones I didn't know, and there was no pressure on me to be host. No civilians, no assholes, no cops. We had all eaten the salt of Hollywood and were alive to tell about it. For a while I hung out around the charcoal grill and listened to Mike and Phil talk about a hunting trip they were planning for the autumn in Eastern Washington where Phil came from, while on the grill were steaks, hamburgers and hotdogs, people coming out and grabbing what they wanted, Sonny's baguette of bread split, garlicked, toasted and gone, her salad wiped up in minutes and everybody still waiting for the seasmelling mystery wonderdish to emerge from the kitchen, where aside from Oona and Johnny's girl peeling shrimps and cracking crab, Debbie and Sonny sliced and quartered bananas, pineapple, strawberries, nuts and dates for the dessert, to accompany the two big ice cream nut rolls somebody had brought and put into the refrigerator. And more.

Naturally, there was a certain amount of marijuana being smoked, to keep everyone's appetite at a fever pitch, and plenty of beer and wine to keep throats from getting dry.

When it was finally time to sit down to the rice and seafood, everyone gathered in the living room and the big bowl was placed on the cleared-away coffee table, and Debbie dished. Mike put the television on to the Z Channel and we watched a firstrun movie, people making cracks like “Ooh, isn't she cute!” and “Boy, look at Larry's toup!” We were all insiders, naturally, and knew everybody. “Oh ho! He's the biggest dope dealer in Hollywood!” Or, “Look at those tits! Who are they kidding?” Not a set, not a line of dialog, not a makeup job, got past without somebody yelling something derisive. “Mike shadow! Mike shadow!” “I can see her scars, who lit this shit?” “Cut toooo . . .” “I was up for that job, but it was scale plus ten so fuck it.” “Please pass the sliced tomatoes . . .”

And then we were done. The chatter died down and the movie, not
bad, not good, ground on. Sonny and Debbie got coffee for everybody, putting the Chemex on the coffee table and getting out all my cups and some glasses. Somebody burped deeply and a couple of others chuckled with appreciation.

Well, here goes, I said to myself, and went into the bedroom, coming out with my remaining Merck, mirror, razorblade, silver fluted straw from Tiffany's, and walked over to where Ford Hamilton lay stupefied between Johnny's girl and Debbie's cousin. I gave him the mirror and the little bottle. The room sighed with hunger for the coke. Just one little hit after a big meal is the ultimate civilized touch, no?

“So you're the hip David Ogilvie, huh?” I said, looking him in the eye for the first time. “Why don't you cut us some lines?”

Ford looked up and ogled me like a master. I fell down laughing, not as a joke but because he was so funny to look at. The son of a bitch was really good. He grinned shyly, and Johnny Brokaw came in with his impeccable John Wayne impression: “You cowboys git tuh makin' love, there's gonna be blood on the saddle, fer sure!”

It was corny but everybody was in just the right mood for a little corn and we all laughed and slapped tables and knees, and nobody tried to top him.

By midnight everybody but Sonny was gone. While she was in the bathroom taking the pins out of her hair, I called Jim's apartment on the lot, just for the hell of it. Twenty rings and no answer. I hung up. The chill in my gut, the Vegas chill, began right about then, and I went into the bedroom, to Sonny, dreading it.

VEGAS. WELL, Vegas. Hmm, Vegas. “Lost Wages, Nevada.” I've never been to Las Vegas, not really, and have no desire to go. I have never walked down Fremont Street, stopped just anywhere for a cheeseburger and dropped my change into the slot machine. I have never read a Las Vegas newspaper, nor have I gotten married or divorced in one of the neon houses of worship.