The Hollywood Trilogy (45 page)

The next morning it was just too damned hot to walk down to the Boulevard so Jody made breakfast for herself in the apartment, and then when she finished her shower and was about to get into her bathing suit she
remembered about Alonzo's middle-of-the-night call and visit. He would be at the pool waiting for her. He would be attentive, and there would be that look in his eye, saying that they were soon going to go to bed together but that there was no hurry. She did not think she could put up with it. He had a fine body and she liked hairy men and she needed somebody to make love to, but not Alonzo. For some reason, just not Alonzo.

“Damn it all!” she said aloud. The maid was due, and she wanted to have someplace to go. She telephoned down to Jan and there was no answer. Looking out the window she could see a few people out by the pool, but the big avocado tree was partially in her way and she could not tell if Jan was there or not. She called the pool extension and saw Alonzo trot over to the phone.

“Central casting,” Alonzo said.

“Is Jan Kosky out there?” Jody said. She would be goddamned if she would disguise her voice, but apparently he did not recognize her. She watched him turn away from the telephone, and then turn back. “Nope,” he said.

It got hotter. When the maid came Jody threw on her bathing suit and went out by the pool. Maids embarrassed her.

Alonzo took her to a place just off Sunset where they had hamburgers and beer, and then down to Santa Monica to a bar crowded with unemployed actors and the kinds of people who liked to hang around with actors. They joined a group near the door, and when Alonzo went to the toilet two of the men propositioned her, one whispering in her ear and the other squeezing her hand and trying to get her to look into his eyes. She got drunk early and paid no attention to anybody, and when they got back to the Chateau Bercy Alonzo followed her into the apartment. She could not have cared less.

“I'm not going to fuck you, Alonzo,” she said tiredly without looking at him. She went into the kitchen and got a bottle of whiskey, ice and two glasses. In the living room Alonzo was sitting in the middle of the couch. Jody sat next to him because it was convenient to put the things down on the coffee table. Alonzo took over at once, making the drinks.

“Do you have bottled water up here?” he asked her. “I used to order it but after a while it got too damned expensive. Besides, I think they just fill those special bottles from the tap. Don't you?”

“The water thing's in the dining room,” she said. She decided to have her
nightcap straight over ice. The bourbon tasted very good. Alonzo, seeing her already drinking, raised his glass in a salute.

“To us,” he said.

“Jesus Christ,” Jody muttered. She was drunk, but not that drunk. “I'm just not going to fuck you. Do you get the message? I thank you for the dinner and the drinks, but that's it.”

“What makes you think I want to go to bed with you?” Alonzo asked in a light voice. He was smiling at her as if she had made some terrible social error and he, her only friend, was correcting her. Jody knew the look.

“Good, then you don't,” she said.

“What makes you think I don't?”

She knew a good way to get rid of him: act aggressive. He was probably unmanned by aggressive women. She could lean over, give him a big wet tonguey kiss and then grope him. He'd probably jump a foot. Then she could murmur about needing a
real man
, the kind of man who could make love to her
endlessly
. She could tell him that her old man only gave it to her a couple, three times a night, and she was hot, endlessly hot, and needed the kind of loving Alonzo seemed to be promising. That would send him running. She laughed.

“What's funny?” he asked.

“Good night, Alonzo,” she said. She drained her glass, got up and went down the long corridor to the bedroom. As she was undressing she heard her front door open and shut. Either he left, or he wanted her to think he had left. She giggled. He's probably behind the drapes, waiting for me to go to sleep. All right. Into bed and to sleep.

For the rest of the week she heard nothing from Alonzo. She and Jan went each morning to the beach just below Venice, near the Marina del Rey breakwater, spread their towels and things, including Jan's portable AM-FM radio. It was just too hot to stay in LA, and as long as they had the freedom, the beach was only an hour away. They were hit on regularly by men ranging in age from seventeen to sixty, singly and in pairs or threes, but after a while everyone who hung around this particular beach got to know them, and the hitting-on slowed down.

But Jan had a date Friday night with her casting friend Stan Bird. She promised to ask him where they could get some more marijuana. “See if he can score some coke too,” Jody said.

“God, it's so expensive,” Jan said on the telephone.

“Don't worry,” Jody said. “Daddy will pay.”

Jan loved it and promised to ask. Jody and Jan were getting along just fine and would sit ripped or drinking, watching television together and making nasty cracks about the actors and stories. But tonight Jody was alone. It was a Friday night, and she did not like to be home alone while everybody else was out boogie-ing.

By ten o'clock she was wound up tight, wired, ready to do anything but stay alone or sleep. Sleep was impossible. She was not hungry. The smell of booze would have been enough to make her sick and she had no dope. All the capsules Alonzo had given her were long gone. Jody paced up and down the apartment, trying to get her mind together enough to watch television. But the thought of it made her sick. She threw on some clothes and combed her hair and went down to the lobby. There wasn't anybody in the elevator, and nobody in the lobby except the clerk, a dried-up old person who could have been a man or a woman, Jody did not know or care. She leaned on the cigarette machine and folded her arms. No one came through the lobby while she was there. Eventually she got back into the elevator and went back up. She thought about getting off at four, where Alonzo lived, but pressed eight instead. When she got out of the elevators she heard the sirens outside, faintly, and when she got into the apartment, whose windows were open against the heavy warmth of the night, she could hear the fire equipment in the street right outside the hotel, on the opposite side from the swimming pool. She went to her window and looked down at a burning palm tree.

The palm was a tall one, with a cluster of dried and weary-looking fronds. Apparently somebody had thrown a cigarette out of a window and it had ignited the tree. As Jody watched, a fireman climbed a ladder and put out the blaze with a fire extinguisher. Jody could see a lot of people drifting out of the hotel and looking up at the fireman, so she went back downstairs and outside. At least it was something to do.

There must have been fifty people out on the sidewalk and leaning against parked cars, watching the firemen dismantle their equipment and prepare to leave. It was a very warm night, and the firemen looked hot in their helmets and protective coats, but the watchers from the hotel were dressed casually, some of them even in pajamas, and a couple of the men, including Alonzo, wearing only pants. Jody recognized most of their faces; they were the actors
and actresses who filled the roles not taken by the stars. Jody even saw a couple of men who had had their own television series, way back in time. Now here they were, spending their exciting Hollywood Friday night watching the fire department put out a blaze in a palm tree. Some of them even looked as if they were hoping the television newsreel cameramen would come around. She was certain that Alonzo had taken his shirt off before coming outside. On the other hand, maybe she was being too cruel; maybe Alonzo was just loafing around his room naked, nothing to do. She thought about making her way over to him. If he had seen her he hadn't made any sign.

“Well, back to the rathole,” said a voice from behind her. It belonged to a tall man with longish white hair, wearing a striped polo shirt and grey slacks. He seemed about fifty and sad, although he was smiling. He looked down at Jody and said, “I've been living here four years and this is the most exciting thing that's happened.”

Jody liked him at once, and smiled at him. Without speaking further, the two of them began to drift back toward the lobby with a lot of other people. Jody looked back and saw Alonzo looking at her, and just at that moment the man with the white hair touched her elbow, as if to gently guide her. Giving Alonzo her profile she smiled again at the man and entered the lobby ahead of him.

“Eight?” the white-haired man said. It was not really a question. He got out with her.

“I'm not being forward,” he said. “I happen to live on this floor myself.” He walked her to her door, smiled faintly and said, “Harry would kill me,” and put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her. It was a good kiss.

They looked at each other. He still had his hands on her shoulders. Jody knew that all she would have to do would be to say, “Come in,” and he would follow her, she could have him. But they kept looking at each other, and neither said anything, and finally he dropped his hands and with that same almost sad smile said, “Good night, Jody,” and went off down the hall. Jody went to sleep thinking about the way his hands had felt on her shoulders and his lips on her mouth.

TWENTY-SEVEN

JAN KOSKY was terribly excited. Over dinner her casting friend Stan Bird had told her that on Monday morning at eleven o'clock she had an appointment with F. Wayne Cole the famous director, who was casting a picture that would be shot in Durango, Mexico.

“The part I'm up for,” she told Jody as they sped down the Los Angeles freeway toward the south coast, “is this chick who's captured by these Mexican bandits.” She giggled. “I get tortured to death. Five days shooting for me. But the director and everybody else will be in Durango for at least two months, maybe three. Stan told me if Cole likes me, I mean if I get the part and he likes the stuff I do, I could maybe stick around for another week or two.”

“It sounds great,” Jody said. “How much money?”

“Oh, we didn't even get into that. Stan says that what I should do is after the audition if the director likes me he'll get me an agent. Stan will. He knows all the agents in town naturally, and they all want to do him favors. I never realized how much power these casting people have. God!”

It was a hot weekend and so they had decided not to go to any of the local beaches. Instead they were driving south, just to see the countryside. They got as far as San Juan Capistrano, where they had lunch and looked at the old mission with a group of other tourists. It was too late to go on and try to make Tijuana, so they turned around and headed back for Los Angeles.

“I didn't see any goddamn swallows,” Jan said with a laugh. She drove with verve and style, weaving from lane to lane, keeping to a steady seventy miles per hour until they got back into the Los Angeles freeway complex. Then things slowed down. The air was thick and heavy and the traffic down to almost a standstill. Finally, by dusk, they were inching their way along the Harbor Freeway. Both Jan and Jody were hungry, tired and had to go to the toilet, but there was no way out of the mess. Neither of them knew the streets of the city well enough to venture off the freeway, and so they had to sit in the miasma, the car radio blasting out, until with darkness the traffic seemed to break up and once again they could make speed. They got to the hotel at nine-thirty.

Jody felt better after a long shower, and just as she came out of the bathroom, naked and loving the coolness of the air against her skin, the telephone rang. She thought immediately of the white-haired man from last night. But it was Harry, from Atlanta.

“I called to tell you I love you,” he said. “I feel terrible.”

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Sure,” he said. “Except that I feel terrible I'm fine. We've been beating around the backwoods. Gargolian almost got in a fight with some cracker in a bar. There was this sign behind the bar saying, ‘track of the American chicken,' with a peace sign. It doesn't matter. We still have about twenty places to look.”

“But you're back in Atlanta,” she said.

Apparently the location survey was not going too well, except that the men were getting acquainted with each other's styles and that was good. Harry sounded hysterical and petulant, and Jody guessed that he was very tired.

“It's late there, isn't it?” she asked.

“Just past two, I think,” Harry said. “What about you? Are you getting along okay? Do you have enough money?”

“I'm fine,” she said. “Getting a lot of sun.” She wanted to ask him about the white-haired man, but she did not, and after exchanging I-love-you's they hung up, leaving Jody feeling empty and somehow lost. Her skin was dry and hot now, except for trickles of sweat running from her armpits, and her palm, which had been cupping the telephone too tightly.

She could imagine Harry in his little hotel room, unable to sleep although he was terribly tired, calling her at two in the morning, in fact probably calling her all evening and not getting an answer (she was sure now the box in the lobby would be full of little message slips—she hadn't bothered to look), no one else to talk to except the men he had spent the day with. And Jody knew from her own brief visit to Atlanta a couple of years before with a man whose name she could not remember, that on Sunday Atlanta was dry as a bone, so Harry had nothing to look forward to but a day of lonely rest. Jody found herself wishing Harry would call a hooker and at least relieve himself. But then maybe he had, and that was why he was calling her to tell her he loved her. Jody had known men like that, probably most men were like that.