The Hollywood Trilogy (7 page)

These little snatches of songs are never the ones he records. They are always songs that are not his style, leading me to believe that Jim isn't all that comfortable with the “Isn't it wonderful to be in love on a day like this” songs, even though those are the ones that bring home the gold.

Jim drives fast or slow according to his mood, rather than traffic conditions, which adds an element of suspense to the whole business. Usually he is deep in thought and drives very slowly, slowly enough to make you crazy if you want to get somewhere, but just as you are about to speak up and ask him to drive faster or pay closer attention to the road he will burst out in song and the car will lurch forward and start weaving in and out among the trucks and police cars. Police don't bother Jim. They pull him over and he charms them out of giving him a ticket. Jim is never smartass with the cops, just humble and modest and agreeable, always admitting he was in the wrong and apologizing, with that little bit of a smile that makes you want to hug him, and the cops mostly would rather get his autograph than give him a ticket.

As we slid down 101 toward the Golden Gate Bridge Jim was singing along with himself, a happy love song, naturally, since it was on the radio, when he interrupted himself and yelled at me, “Hey there's a girl I use to know in Sausalito, okay?” and cut off the freeway in front of a truck at the Marin City exit. Jim talked enthusiastically about the girl, Linda or Susan her name was, and how they had had a fine time last time Jim had been through, as we drove past Gate Five, and while I was trying to remember how many years it had been since Jim had been in Sausalito, Jim tried to find her house. We drove up one street and down another, all the streets in Sausalito being on hills. We had KJAZ on the radio and the windows down and had just
finished smoking a joint, so I felt pretty good, even though Jim did not seem to be able to find the place. Twice we stopped and he said, “This has got to be it,” and we would get out, open the big wooden gate that both places had, walk through the expensive gardens, with the rhododendrons and azaleas, the hanging fuchsias, the cymbidiums and all, with the mockingbirds and finches singing their heads off in the sunlight and the big jaybirds squawking; up onto the big porches and knocking on the door, but neither place was the place, and after about an hour of hapless wanderings up and down the hills Jim said, “Well, maybe she moved,” and we drove down to Caledonia and parked the car so we could get something to eat. Jim was a little pissed.

“I wonder where the hell she went?” he asked me as we walked into the big health food store. We were going to buy fruit and stuff to eat on the way to the airport instead of “wasting time” in a restaurant. Poor Jim.

Anyhow, it was a good thing we stopped in at the health food store, because while I was looking over the pippins, Jim picked up a couple of women. Their names were Lucie and Mimi, and they were probably housewives, dressed in their tennis clothes, buying stuff for their families.

Lucie was tall and blonde, with incredible tits, and Mimi was short and dark and hot-looking, with perfect legs. Obviously Mimi was for me, the way she kept staring at me with hot Spanish-looking eyes, her expression saying, “Relax, you're going to get just exactly what you want,” as me and Jim kidded around and helped them pick their groceries. After we all got outside Jim offered to drive the girls home, but of course they had a car there, so Lucie said, “Why don't you come over to my place for a cup of coffee?” and we said yes and followed them. It was only a couple of blocks. Jim said nothing except, “Couple nice-looking tomatoes,” and I agreed.

The apartment was all wooden beams and big expanses of blue linoleum, with a nice-looking terrace comfortable with redwood furniture like mine, looking out over the little bay and Tiburon beyond. The trees at the sides of the building gave the terrace a nice privacy, and we had our coffee out there, Mimi fixing mine and bringing it to me and sitting beside me giving me that soulful dark horny look from time to time. We answered their show biz questions with jokes and kept them laughing and having a good time through two or three cups of coffee apiece, and so when Jim and Lucie disappeared into the back of the apartment and were gone for about ten minutes, I knew it was time for love. I had to take an extraordinary piss. I excused
myself and went inside, finding the bathroom door open and the bedroom door closed.

I could hear the murmur of voices coming from the bedroom, but I wasn't feeling all that hot about things. The fact is, I was pretty nervous. All Jim has to do is look at a woman and she melts. He can say the most outrageous things to any woman alive and she will only laugh or blush, and never be put off, as she would be if I said any such things. I have heard him say to wrinkled old hags in elevators, “goddamn, honey, I'd sure like to have you lick my cock!” and he'd grin and look her in the eye, and instead of hitting him or calling the police, she would throw her head back and laugh, and by the time we would get off the elevator they would be jabbering like old friends. I don't know what it is. One woman told me Jim had no meanness in him when he said these things and that women could sense that he really liked them, but there must be more to it than that.

Anyhow, I was feeling a bit nervous as I came out of the toilet and knew I had to make a pass at Mimi or sit and talk to her while we both knew what was going on in the bedroom, and how she would probably be disappointed if I did not make a pass at her—whether she took me up on it or not—and of course I was not always sure I could live up to billing, if you know what I mean.

But it was all right. When I got back to the terrace Mimi had taken off her top and was prone on one of the loungers. I sat next to her and talked to her, stroking her hair, until with a lovely smile and parted lips she turned toward me and I saw that she, too, had magnificent tits. God and nature took over.

Mimi and I had a rousing good time, and afterward she told me about her two little boys in Country Day School, and about her husband's good job and their boat and their two cars and the cabin at Alpine Meadows and the snowshoe trip all four of them were going to make through the High Sierras when the boys were old enough, and about singing whales and how awful the Japanese and the Russians were to kill such animals, and about the time she had played tennis with Herbert Gold and beaten him, and about Vitamin C and the common cold. I lay there with my eyes shut until she said, “I think I'll go see what they're doing,” and I felt her get up off the lounge, leaving me more room to stretch. The sun was hitting my legs and felt good, so I lay there a while, about twenty minutes, and realized that Mimi had not come back, so the son of a bitch had them both in there.

I got dressed and let myself out and went for a walk. Down to Bridgeway and across to the yacht harbor, walking along the boardwalk looking at the hundreds of white sailboats in their slips. For a while I thought about my grandfather, who probably never set foot on a sailboat in his life, but then gradually I forgot about him. There were girls in summer shorts and tee shirts to think about, and by then I was out of the yacht harbor and walking down the street of shops among the tourists, my hands in my pockets, minding my own business. Jim can't do this because people always recognize him and always crowd around him, wanting to get part of him, I guess. This almost never happens to me. I don't want it to happen, and I think people understand this, except for the odd drunken asshole who is always so dumbfounded that you are shorter than your pictures, but Jim draws them like flies and cannot so much as go into a drugstore to buy a pair of sunglasses without attracting people. Maybe because of this I have a very short fuse about being interrupted, and a reputation for coldness, and Jim has developed into a master of diplomacy, getting out of more tight uncomfortable spots than you could imagine.

I walked all the way down to the Trident at the north end of town, went in for a piece of carrot cake and a big mug of apple juice and then back to Lucie's place. I was outside, about to ring the doorbell downstairs, when Jim leaned over the balcony and said, “Be right down,” so I waited.

“Let's get rolling,” he said.

We curled up out of Sausalito slowly, Jim quiet and tending to his driving, and onto the Golden Gate Bridge.

“This bridge is a fucking knockout,” he said, when we were about halfway across. There was a bank of fog hanging off the coast, but on the bridge it was blue and sunny and brisk, the city all white and glistening like candy on one side and the ships down below passing under the bridge and out into the ocean and adventure—it was hard to believe that the people on those ships weren't heading into adventure, outward bound like that.

WE HAD a small argument about which was the best way to the airport. I said we should go down the 19th Avenue exit and take Park Presidio out through the Avenues and catch 280, which at this time of day was practically empty. Jim held out for Bloody Bayshore because he said the Avenues, as he
remembered them, were a pain in the ass if you missed even one light, and a big hangup, etc&etc., but the argument wasn't serious. Jim was behind the wheel, so of course we went past the 19th Avenue exit and down to Lombard Street.

“Let's stop at Enrico's for lunch,” he said.

We still had the bag of fruit, candy and pop in the back of the car, but I didn't bother to say anything. I didn't mind going to Enrico's; I hadn't been there in a long time, but I liked the place. And the Broadway exit led right to the Bayshore, so it was on the way.

Jack parked our car in the lot next door after giving us a big hello, still running the lot after all that time. Jim and I had gotten our start in North Beach and knew a lot of people there.

Enrico's is a sidewalk cafe on a major truckroute, and so you sit at the marble tables sipping your espresso while the big tractors and their loads rumble through the gears, and the walking wounded of the quarter lurch past on the sidewalk.

Most of the entertainers who come to San Francisco spend time at Enrico's; for one thing, nobody makes too much of a fuss over you, and for another, the place stays open until three or four in the morning, although not serving liquor after two. I started to walk through the sidewalk part, but sitting at one of the tables and looking like a little wooden dummy of himself sat Grimaldi, Pierre Grimaldi, Uncle Peter, with his beret, his tremble and his double Martini.

“Uncle Peter!” I yelled and went over to him.

“Uhn, godd
amn
, if it isn't, what's-his-name, Dick Ogilvie,” Grimaldi muttered, and started to try to get to his feet. I pushed him back down in his chair and sat down. He was alone and looked terrible, old, shriveled, shaking, his chin in constant motion. But he sat as always erect, with his old hands folded neatly at the base of his Martini glass, and his eyes sparkled. “How are you, you old son of a bitch,” he said to me. “Where's Doctor Jim?”

Jim came around the corner then and spotted us and broke out into a big dazzling smile and hugged Grimaldi, kissed him, peeked under his beret, took a sip of his Martini and generally made the old bastard feel like the King of England.

“Grimaldi, you old fart, I thought you were dead,” Jim said.

“I
would
be dead if the women had their, uhn, way,” Grimaldi said slowly.

Enrico came out of the back of the cafe and shook hands with us. “Hello, you old wop,” he said to Grimaldi.

“I'm no wop, goddamn it,” Grimaldi said. “I'm a fucking Swiss.” But Enrico and his sidekick and a couple of dogs who had come out of the back of the place were gone by the time Grimaldi finished talking. He was always a slow talker, but now he was really slow. Back in the days when he had his club, Grimaldi always went around with at least one young pretty girl on his arm, even though he was already fifty or so and starting to totter from the combined effects of booze and tobacco. “I've drunk more kerosene than you've had liquor,” he said once to some punk who had patronized him about the number of Martinis he put away. Grimaldi's club was where Jim and I first got our act together well enough to make a living at it, and in fact Jim had started in the house band there. But that was a long time ago.

Now Grimaldi didn't have any club. He had sold it at the height of the North Beach real estate boom, just before the topless craze turned Broadway into a war zone, and unlike a lot of the big sports who made money out of night clubs, he put a lot of it away and owned a couple or three apartment buildings on Russian Hill. “All full of Chinese,” he told me with a trembling grin. “Pay in gold, weigh it out every Friday night, we share a glass of
Ng Ga Pai
, and everybody's happy.”