The Hollywood Trilogy (42 page)

Jody made four lines and then rolled up a dollar bill. She showed Harry how to stick the bill into his nose and sniff the powder, one line per nostril, and then did it herself. Harry tasted medicine in the back of his throat and felt his nose go cold and then numb. He felt nothing else.

“Are you sure this is cocaine?” he asked her. “They sell a lot of things
as
cocaine . . .”

“It's coke,” she said. “Can't you get off?” She stood up. “Play some music, I want to boogie,” she said.

When the Chinese food came and they smoked another joint between them, this one laced with coke, and Harry had a couple more drinks and felt pretty good. “That's all I needed,” he said cheerfully. “I was hungry, that's all. Now I want to fuck you.”

“You're going to have to do it right here,” Jody said. “I can't move.” They were on the living room couch, the television set flickering, the radio playing
old-fashioned music. Harry felt mellow and distant, and he really did want to fuck her, only he didn't have the strength to get up. Thinking about fucking her was almost as good, he thought, and giggled. The stuff was affecting him after all. He had smoked marijuana before, but it had never really done anything for him. Perhaps it was the cocaine.

He awakened at near dawn, still on the couch in his bathrobe. The coffee table beside him was a litter of dirty plates and paper cartons, wadded napkins and glasses smelling horribly of whiskey. But he had no hangover, just a certain tiredness and a bad taste in his mouth. He got up and went to the bathroom, pissed and brushed his teeth and went to bed. Jody stirred when he got in beside her, and in minutes they were deep into making love. Afterward they lay back and Jody said, “You know, let's be evil. Let's just get into it. You want to?”

“Anything,” he said. He had been about to start thinking about work. This would be a way not to. They smoked a couple of laced joints and went back to bed and made love again, and then Jody rolled up a few joints for them to take along, and they went off to breakfast at Schwab's. After breakfast they planned to go to some secluded beach and get even higher, but it was a bright clear sunny Saturday, and Harry said, “The beaches'll be murder. Let's go back to the hotel.”

They had lunch delivered from Greenblatt's delicatessen, and just for the hell of it, a bottle of champagne, and spent the afternoon alternately dozing and watching old movies and cartoons on television. If the marijuana made Harry sleepy, the cocaine brought him fully awake and gave him a delicious sense of authority and power: there certainly weren't going to be any more problems on the picture because Harry knew now that all he really had to do was sniff a little coke and resume the reins of power. Indeed, as he watched the images on television he carried on in his mind several disjointed but seemingly clear fantasies about how to solve the major problems, which after a while faded out of his imagination and left him irritated and apprehensive. Jody was asleep on the couch, the late afternoon sunlight across her face, her mouth open as she snored lightly. He wanted to throw a glass of water onto her face and wake her up. It would be funny and she deserved it, for snoring. He actually got up and went into the kitchen for the water, but drank it instead, realizing that he was terribly thirsty. That was probably the champagne, he thought.

When Jody woke up it was dark again, and Harry was watching
The Sundowners
and crying silently, the tears running unchecked down his face. She watched him for a while and then said, “You're crying.”

“Movies make me cry,” he said. Jody got up and went in to take a shower.

Later they had a bitter argument about where to have dinner. Jody wanted to dress up and go to Chasen's and flash herself. Harry wanted to walk down to Musso & Franks, the image in his mind of the two of them strolling down the street arm-in-arm, stoned to the eyes, and then go into the quiet old wood-paneled room and have a lot of really rich and satisfying Italian food. The thing was, they wouldn't have to go to any trouble. But Jody was goddamned if she was going to put on clothes just to walk down to some joint on the Boulevard. Harry tried to explain to her that Musso & Franks was not some joint on the Boulevard, but a very high-class restaurant that had been a hang-out for Hollywood people since the Twenties. He even hinted that there might be some stars there, but Jody laughed at him. “Call the fucking Chinaman,” she said. “And come here.”

They went to bed and made love for a very long time, but neither of them seemed to have any desire to come, and so after it got actually boring, Harry pulled out and they lay together looking at the ceiling, until the doorbell buzzed with the Chinese food.

It was not possible to sleep that night. In fact the only thing Harry wanted to do was get deeper into the cocaine. He wasn't interested in the marijuana. It was all right for something to get high, but the cocaine was different. Now that he was into it, he could see how people could become addicted; not so much what it did to you, but everything was all right when you were coked. Harry could feel rivers of power flowing from his fingertips, and with utter clarity he realized at last, aided by the cocaine, why he was in the movie business, why he put up with the shit-eating, the back-biting, the sleepless emasculate nights, the awful, stomach-walloping changes in plan, the day-to-day crises: it was for this sense of power, this feeling of controlling destinies, not just his own but everybody's. This feeling he had now. Jody was there, he could exercise his power on her. He could talk to her, fuck her, cut her to pieces. He could order her out of his apartment. He could make her beg to stay. Ah, he thought, coming out of this odd reveries, some day I'm going to have to do just that, and the sense of power faded and Harry found that he was grinding his teeth. I need to brush my teeth, he thought.

He began to learn something of the other side of cocaine when he caught himself throwing his toothbrush into the shower stall in a fit of rage because the toothpaste had fallen off into the sink.

At around four in the morning Jody snapped off the television set and said, “I'm hungry again. Let's go to a Denny's or something.”

“Oh God,” Harry said. “I just got ripped again. I don't think I can drive.”

“You can drive. Snort a little more lady.”

So that was how it was done.

They slept until nearly two on Sunday afternoon. Jody talked about going out by the pool and spending the afternoon getting some sun, but by the time they had sent for breakfast, gotten stoned, made love and taken their baths, the idea was no longer charming, and the sun had almost gone down. For several hours Harry was under the impression that it was Saturday, and when “The FBI” came on the television Harry took hold of his head and rocked back and forth. “Jesus H. Christ,” he said, “what the fuck kind of life is this?”

Jody did not take her eyes off the set. “I lived like this for a couple of years once,” she said. “In New York. It's easy.”

“You mean stoned every day and every night? What the hell's the point?”

Her eyes flicked over toward him, and then back to the screen. “My boyfriend was on skag,” she said. “His mother used to send him money, and we'd go cash the check, score, and head back to the room. That went on for a couple of years.”

Harry knew skag was heroin but he could not believe that Jody had been a heroin user. “What were you doing all that time?” he asked her. She just laughed drily and kept watching television. Harry said, “No, wait, I want to talk,” and went over and shut off the set. Jody looked faintly irritated for a moment but then smiled and came over to Harry's side of the couch.

“What do you want to talk about?”

“Heroin,” he said. “Did you actually use it?”

“Don't be a pest, I'm watching the show.”

“No, goddamn it, I want to talk. You'll either talk to me or get your ass out of my apartment.” He had not realized until he opened his mouth just how angry he was, but now, on his feet looking down at her, he could feel himself trembling with a rage that was almost joyous. “Did you hear me?” he said in his most cutting voice.

“Oh, you'll get over it,” she said.

“Fucking bitch,” he said, and went into the kitchen. He could not understand why he did not hit her. She had disobeyed him. This was his apartment and she should have either gotten out or cooperated with him. Instead she was sitting in there watching television. It occurred to him that he was helpless. Obviously he could not physically throw her out. He did not even want to throw her out. All he wanted was for her to do what he said. That was not too much to ask. But she would not do it.

“Hey,” he said to her.

She looked up at him. “I'm sorry,” she said. “The coke makes me into a bitch.” She got up and turned off the television and came to him, putting her arms around his waist and her cheek against his chest. He could smell her hair and it made him dizzy with love. “I'm sorry, sweet baby,” she said, and took him to bed. They made love for half an hour, their bodies slippery with cold sweat. Finally they just stopped moving, and as Harry lay on top of her he wondered if he could get to sleep without some more dope. But tomorrow was Monday and he would have to get back into it, so it would be better not to take any more. Not now. Not until next weekend in fact; but next weekend seemed years away. No more coke until next weekend. No more marijuana. And he should really quit drinking too.

But he felt a tickle of panic in his chest at the thought that he would not be able to sleep that night.

After what seemed hours, Jody asleep at his side, Harry got out of bed, went into the living room and, sitting in semi-darkness, smoked the last of the marijuana. Then he went to the window overlooking the city and saw that there was a nearly full moon in the western sky. He watched the moon for a while and then went to bed.

TWENTY-THREE

ON MONDAY morning things began to pop. Harry got to his office at a little before ten, still muzzy from the weekend, and found that a director had been picked, “subject to his approval, of course,” and that Harry, the director, Lew Gargolian and the as-yet-unpicked cameraman were scheduled to leave for a location survey at the end of the week.

Harry had a secretary now, Alice Wanderove, whose long teeth and thin lips irritated him almost enough for him to complain to the studio, but Lew had recommended her highly as efficient beyond the requirements of the job, and so Harry swallowed his irritation (which, he realized, might be another side effect of his drug weekend anyway) and settled in to work on the budget with Lew.

The new director showed up for his appointment with Harry at a little after twelve, and they crossed the street to the Cinema Grille on Olive for a quick lunch. The director's name was Jack Meltzer. Harry had met him a couple of times through the years, once at the kiosk out in front of the commissary at Universal, where they were introduced by Martin Abramowitz, Jack Meltzer's agent, and the other time in the lobby of the Director's Guild, where the two men had arrived with separate parties to watch a screening of
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
. Jack Meltzer had directed at least thirty pictures, Harry knew, and was regarded around the industry as a man who could shoot a fast clean movie, come in on budget, and most of all, as a man who had very little personal stake (ego involvement was how Fats put it) in the shape or consistency of his pictures. Jack was hired by producers who wanted to retain control over the shooting, and by stars whose pictures were less works of art and more personal vehicles.

Lunch was pleasant. Jack was not much older than Harry, and both men had been in the business most of their lives. They knew many people in common and more importantly, at least from Harry's viewpoint, they shared an attitude toward the industry, an attitude which Harry once summed up by saying, “Hollywood keeps changing but Hollywood remains the same.” The remark had been made to a young woman who had been excited by the sudden outbreak of long hair and paisley fashions among studio executives some years ago. Over their hamburgers, Harry and Jack talked and laughed over the men who had come and gone the past few years—corporate geniuses sent from the East by conglomerates, boy-wonders who sprang from the agencies to take control, descendants of moguls, like Karl Meador, who had happened to suggest Jack Meltzer for this particular job.

Jack was a stocky man with a tanned lumpy face and small sharp blue eyes. He had a pronounced overbite which he knew how to use to make himself look stupid, but Harry was not fooled and neither was anybody else who had ever worked with Jack. Now he sat across from Harry in the tiny
crowded restaurant holding his bottle of beer and smiling slightly so that his two front teeth showed their tips.

“I read the script last night,” he told Harry. “It's not bad. Who do you have in mind, anybody?”

Harry very carefully kept the surprise off his face, and kept himself from asking Jack whether he meant the whole script or just the treatment. As far as Harry knew, the whole script had not yet been turned in. But it might have been, even over the weekend. It might have been turned in to Fats, which meant that something funny was going on. “I thought we'd wait for the director to cast,” Harry said. “Nobody's tied to the project yet at all.”

As they discussed the screenplay and possible actor choices Harry could tell that Jack had read the full version, and so he guessed that the first draft had indeed been turned in to Fats, probably over the weekend or perhaps even on Friday. It was even possible that Fats had gone down to Marina del Rey and gotten it from the writer. Harry wondered if Jack Meltzer knew that he had not himself yet read the full first draft, but there was no telling from anything Jack said. He was too careful for that.