The Hollywood Trilogy (63 page)

So it was they sat on the little plastic molded seats among the hundreds who were flying to New York, he with his arms tight across his chest, she reading the columns of information in the front of
The New Yorker.

It did seem to him, on the way home in the warm purring back of the limousine, that he had put more into the affair than she had. A good deal more. He glowered at the back of Orfeo's head. There was no way he could ask about that goodbye kiss. He could fire Orfeo, but why? Exercise of power? All he knew was that for three weeks she had screwed up his life every day, he had been missing appointments, screenings, lunches, even his exercise periods, all for the love of her, and now she was gone, leaving a hole the size of . . . well, he could not think of an appropriately gigantic metaphor, but a huge hole in his heart, as if he had been nailed right through the heart with a 50mm shell, like a bazooka blast through the heart. And left him lying there wounded on the battlefield of love.

He had to snicker. Wasn't there just a teeny touch of
gladness
down there at the bottom? Didn't he feel just the tiniest bit
relieved
that she was gone, and he could put his life in order again?

“Orfeo,” he said. “What the hell was that big kiss about?”

“Oh, Boss,” he said. “She and I got to be good friends, we talk Spanish while we drive around Beverly Hills. She has good Spanish. I hope you're not mad.” There was nothing apologetic in his voice. Alex's heart brightened a bit. He had a pile of work on his desk. He would strip and shower, put on his comfortable old jeans and sweatshirt, some nice thick white cotton socks, and do a little working. That would be just fine! He would be feeling better in just a few minutes. He looked forward to the coziness of it all, and he probably wouldn't miss her much. Hell, it was just one of those things.

He was still running the tune through his head when Orfeo opened the back door of the car, and Alex felt the heat billowing in. How in the devil had he forgotten the heat?

CHAPTER SIX

SWEAT TRICKLED down Jerry Rexford's face as he sat hunched in front of his little electric SCM portable. Every window in his apartment was open, and through the screen door drifted the sounds of a radio somebody had on pretty loud out by the pool. Jerry was naked, sitting on a white towel spread over his kitchen chair to keep his ass from sticking to the plastic. Stacks of fresh paper, carbon paper and manuscript were arrayed on the little kitchen table, presenting the only order in the apartment. The sink was full of dirty dishes, the garbage sacks overflowing with aromatic grapefruit rinds and coffee grounds; the bathroom was all damp towels and dust rolls, and everywhere else were magazines, books, clothing—the dirty stuff rumpled in chairs and over the backs of everything, the fresh laundry sitting in ripped-open blue paper packages. Bachelor Hall.

But Jerry was truly oblivious. He was hacking away at his screenplay, and for once the ideas were coming thick and fast. No more did he worry about how the script “looked,” whether his notation was correct, whether anyone would know how amateur he was by his clumsiness. The story was happening in his mind now, all by itself, the characters speaking and things moving. It was all he could do to get the stuff down on the page. Then, coming to the end of a scene, he sat up straight, sighed, and realized he was finished for the evening.

He picked up the stack of manuscript, collated out the carbons and put the pages in order. Good heavens, he had written seventeen pages tonight! That was a lot! He leaned over so he could see the little electric clock in the kitchen. He had been working three hours. And it only felt like a few minutes. He sniffed. He stunk. He sniffed again, and wrinkled his nose. His body smelled fermy and overripe, although he had taken a shower only a few hours ago, after getting home from the day's work.

Jerry unplugged the hot little typewriter, patting its side as if it were alive and saying, “Good baby, thanks a lot.” He put the machine aside, leaving a cleared space for the editing process. This was going to be fun, seventeen pages to edit. Jerry loved to edit his own stuff. He sat happily sweating over his work for another hour. By then the radio out by the pool was silent and a bit of cool air was circulating in his apartment, making him shiver slightly.

That was all right. These pages, God save the mark, were “keepsies.” The script was now seventeen pages longer. Not every night's work was half so good, and some of them ended bitterly, with Jerry tearing pages in half and dumping them in the overflowing wastebasket. Jerry looked around himself and saw the mess of his apartment, once again feeling the guilty pressure to clean things up a little, now that he was finished with his work session. But it was too depressing. A man who has had a seventeen-page day deserves better.

He thought about showering, dressing and going out. The bars were just getting started. But it would cost money. Sighing again, he looked in the refrigerator, removed a beer and popped it open. There were no clean glasses, so he had to gurgle his beer from the can, and got some of the icy sticky liquid down his front. Now it was definitely time to shower.

No! Now it was time to go swimming!

A quick sluice, another can of beer, and Jerry felt so good he just wandered out by the pool, a towel firm around his waist. If there was nobody around, he would have a little naked swim for himself.

But there was a couple on the lawn across the pool, wrapped up in each other, kissing, Jerry imagined. He quickly turned his back and returned to his apartment. His face was hot and he was very angry. Not with himself or even the necking couple. Just angry. He felt primed for action, something, anything but hanging around the clammy apartment staring at his mess (you couldn't close the door and windows when it got clammy like this, because the place would immediately turn unbearable again).

Jerry took stock. He was afraid. He was a very fearful person. He was afraid to go into a room full of strangers, like a bar, and he was still afraid of his own patio and pool, which he should not be. All he had to look forward to was six a.m. and the donut shop, a bit of friendly conversation and coffee, up to the office to open early, and settle down to the day's work. He had tried, for a while, to do his daily stint of writing in the early morning hours, when his mind was freshest, but that left his evenings a great yawning gap between dinner and sleep, a gap he simply could no longer fill with television or reading. So this way was working out better, but there was still a bit of a gap. Working left him tired but jacked up. For a while he had cured this by hitting the whiskey, but there was a horrible side-effect: he would awaken, instead of at five or six, at about three, and be wide awake until dawn. Then he might fall into a light snooze which would produce a string of vivid nightmares. He would waken late for work and off-key for the whole day.

So now instead of whiskey, he would have a few beers, which helped him over the hump without dashing him awake in the middle of the night.

Jerry flicked on the television and got a third beer. There were a bunch of Hollywood big shots on a panel show, and he watched them without much interest, except to think that these were the people he hoped to live and work among, these overdressed oafish people with their coiffed hair and braying voices. He hoped to become important among them, and he couldn't even take a swim in his own pool. But of course it would be different when he had a private pool, and it would be much different when people saw how well he wrote. Then he would have great confidence, and would be able to make his way among these people, go on television, plus his pictures, marry a movie star and become the First Earl of Rexford. “Lord Rexford?”

“Yes, Pimpleton?”

“The maid is here to brush your teeth . . .”

Jerry cackled to himself. He was beginning to feel pleasantly sleepy.

THE NEXT morning, when he got to the donut shop, it was empty. Jerry was a little disappointed, because he wanted to tell Toby about having a seventeen-page night. Toby could be tremendously encouraging because, sarcastic hipster that he was, he never belittled Jerry's efforts to become a Hollywood writer, and if Jerry confided to him some piece of news, such as
a good night's work, he eyes would light up and he would say something encouraging, like, “Way to go, man!” or “Hot damn, they'll have yer star on the Boulevard by Christmas!”

But no Toby. Maybe he was stuck by a customer over at the dirty bookstore. Most of the customers, Jerry had been told, were furtive and wished to keep the transaction down to dollars and cents, but some of them, knowing they had a captive audience behind the counter, would hang around and burble about their lives while Toby sat dead in his chair, staring glassily into the middle distance, hoping the goddamn bore would finally get the message, pick out his porn and move along.

“Lonely assholes, most of 'em,” Toby said gloomily.

Jerry filled his cup from the coffee self-service and smiled at Helen, the tall blonde waitress. She gave him a wonderful smile back and wished him good morning, and went back to her work, cleaning out the big metal container that held the glaze. Jerry stared at her ass for a while, fascinating in tight uniform slacks. At first, he had thought Helen was flirting with him, the way she would look deeply into his eyes when they spoke, and that had been part of why he had looked forward to coming to the donut shop in the mornings—she was the only person in Los Angeles giving him any kind of a tumble. He had feverish daydreams about her.

But over the days and weeks he came to believe that Helen was a very simple, very direct person, and looking deeply into his eyes only meant that she was paying attention to him, not flirting. Helen was not all that terrifically intelligent, he decided. When she spoke to customers over the donut counter in front, Jerry noticed after a while, she always said the same things in response to the same questions. This was natural. What made it interesting was that she did so freshly, not as if she were bored, or tired of saying the same things, or as if she had memorized every possible response to every simple donut-shop question. No, freshly, brightly, as if she had just heard the question for the first time, and was just thinking up the answer for the first time.

“Miss, how much are these donuts?”

She would recite the entire price list, always in the same order and the same manner:

“Anything with a hole in it is twenty-two cents, jelly donuts are twenty-eight cents, the twists are twenty-two cents and the cinnamon rolls are twenty-two. Holes are twelve cents apiece.”

“How much are these right here?”

“Twenty-two cents.”

“How about these?”

“Twenty-two cents. Everything with a hole in it is twenty-two cents.”

“How about this one?”

“Twenty-two cents.”

People buying donuts early in the morning were often very picky and indecisive. Some of them were clearly hostile, as if they expected Helen to give them an argument:

“I'd like a half-dozen donut holes . . .”

“Oh, with
your
waistline?”

But of course she never did, always had a smile for everyone, and sold them their poison cheerfully.

Now that Jerry was a regular, she took to telling him about her life, her boyfriend and his problems with motorcycles, her animals—Helen lived with her mother on a semi-chicken ranch out in the deep valley—her alarm clock, and her boss, a mystery figure who came in the darkest of night and made all the donuts, vanishing by six a.m., but calling once in a while on the telephone. Every time Helen mentioned her boss she would smile and roll her eyes. Exactly the same every time.

Jerry stopped fantasizing about Helen one morning at coffee break time, when he was down picking up everybody's coffee orders from the office. Helen was alone with a man of about forty, dressed like a dude, checked slacks and light tight leather jacket, his white hair curly and hip, his tan dark. Jerry did not like the man immediately, and kept staring at him out of the corner of his eyes while Helen filled his order.

“The usual?” she asked, and Jerry nodded. Helen could remember “the usual” for a bewildering array of people, so she wasn't all that dumb.

The man was talking to Helen about sex. This really bothered Jerry, but he kept his mouth shut.

“I bet you got a lot of boyfriends,” the man said.

“Nope,” said Helen, bent over the donut counter. Jerry saw the man ogling her ass and felt like going over there and punching him out. “Watch it, you old fart!” he wanted to snarl, but didn't.

“I bet you've got all the boys upset,” the man persisted in a kidding tone.

“I guess so,” Helen said. She was putting Jerry's order into a cardboard
cup-carrier. The man got up and came over to her, reaching out to touch her on the side of the head, saying, “You've got the most beautiful head of hair.”

Jerry was about to push him away, but Helen just stepped behind the counter and the man stumbled forward, and she laughed at him.

“Better watch your step,” she said cheerfully, and the old gasbag had to sit down again, his face red as a maraschino cherry.

Helen exchanged a secret look and a wink with Jerry, and Jerry felt a thrill of comradeship.

SUNDAYS WERE the worst. On Saturday, Jerry could explore Los Angeles, those parts of it he wanted to know about, taking walks along Hollywood Boulevard among the throngs of inhabitants and misguided tourists, happily discovering that the Boulevard had a fine collection of new and used bookstores, from Larry Edmonds' old shop specializing in Hollywoodiana, to the Cherokee crowded with stacks of old comic books, big-little books and fantasy, occult and science fiction sections. Then there was a Pickwick, a gigantic store with all the new books and a fairly good backlist. Jerry had to be careful shopping, because he would have enjoyed taking home an armload of stuff every time he went out.