All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers: A Novel (15 page)

“If you need a place to hide out, come down,” she said when she let me out on Geary Street. “I can always make room for you.”

I had no one to hide from, but I thanked her anyway. She was a hospitable girl. I felt almost cheerful. I felt as if I had found some possible friends. In the interests of healthiness I went in and cleaned out all the Fig Newton boxes and Dr. Pepper bottles. My room took on a more healthful aspect. I even tidied up my manuscripts. As I was going down the stairs with the last load of trash I met Wu. He had his ping-pong paddle in his coat pocket. Since I didn’t particularly want to go near Sally, he came to the Piltdown when he felt like a game.

“You are looking friendly,” he said. “If you will excuse, you have not been looking friendly lately. Are you having a mistress?”

“Nope,” I said. “I feel like some ping-pong though.”

“Sure,” Wu said. “Very good exercise. You will be having a mistress at a later date.”

We broke even, four games to four. I took a long walk through the Mission District, before I went home, and when I did go home I sat down and wrote Emma and Flap a nine-page letter, telling them all about the wild life I was leading. The next morning I reread the letter and decided it was better than my novel. Half of it was fiction, but it was inspired fiction. My novel was uninspired fiction, at least so
far. While I was rereading the letter Bruce called. He had been in Sausalito, with another love of former days. He wanted me to go to L.A. with him, immediately. “They” wanted to see me right away.

An hour and a half later, at the airport, I mailed the Hortons their letter. Bruce was very well dressed. I had never been on an airplane before, but I was ashamed to admit it. When we took off, Bruce tried to point out Atherton to me, but I couldn’t see it. I imagined Renata down there keeping beautiful. Bruce didn’t mention her. I imagined the New Americans, only I couldn’t imagine what they might be doing. Probably I had caught them on a quiet day. I liked the world of the sky. When we went above the clouds I really liked it. The world there was new and beautiful. I admitted to Bruce that it was my first plane ride and he couldn’t believe it. “How can that be?” he said, several times.

“I just never went anywhere before that I couldn’t drive,” I said.

He bought me several drinks and I watched the world above the clouds as I drank. Bruce was okay. He had got me laid and he was also giving me my first plane ride. By the time we got to L.A. I was so drunk that I missed my first hour in the city. When I came to myself Bruce was shaking my hand and wishing me good luck with “them.” I was standing on a red carpet in front of the Beverly Hills Hotel. Bruce was going to the Beverly Wilshire. His cab began to pull away. Several bellboys looked at me curiously. I sobered up just in time to get intimidated. The last time I really noticed myself I had been swigging an early-morning Dr. Pepper at the Piltdown and it was hard to believe I was standing here, high from gin and tonics, in front of the Beverly Hills.

It was not like having a fantasy come true before you’re
quite ready for it; it was more like having a fantasy come true before you’ve even had the fantasy. I had never given ten minutes’ thought to being a screenwriter. I had never even seen a screenplay. I felt as if I had suddenly become the puppet of remote but very powerful powers. The elegant bellboys kept looking at me, so I went inside. Everyone was extremely courteous to me. The remote powers had made me a reservation, and no one seemed to doubt that I was who I said I was. My room had a view of the city. I had some Dr. Peppers sent up, hoping they would steady my nerves, but they didn’t, really. The city I looked out on was smoggy. The palm trees had a gray cast. I had a huge television set and watched movies on it. I didn’t dare go out, for fear the remote powers would call me.

As I was finishing my third Dr. Pepper a bellboy arrived with a wrapped package. He assured me it was for me. I opened it and it was a large bottle of scotch. The card with it said Leon O’Reilly. While I was pondering the card the phone rang and it was Leon’s secretary. Leon O’Reilly was the power that wanted me to write the screenplay. I remembered that Bruce had mentioned him, but his was only one of scores of names Bruce had mentioned in the last few days.

Mr. O’Reilly hoped I was enjoying Los Angeles, his secretary said. His driver would pick me up at eight and Mr. O’Reilly would have dinner with me. I said that was fine. The secretary hung up, leaving me alone and at a loss in my huge posh room. It was nicely carpeted and had lamps and tables and closets and a huge bathtub in the bathroom. The bed was as large as the bed Renata Morris had. Nothing in the room bore scars. The carpet was white and looked like no one had ever walked on it. There was no sign that anyone had ever slept in the bed, or turned on the television set, or taken a bath in the bathtub. There
were no hairs in the lavatory, no ring around the toilet. The room had led a spotless life and I felt that any move I made might blemish it. It was so different from my room at the Piltdown that I felt like someone I didn’t know. I had the creepy feeling that I was living my first hours with someone I was about to become. The changing of the years always disorients me. I never feel quite right in January, not because I worry about getting old, but just because I hate for particular years to go. I hadn’t really adjusted to the fact that it was 1962 instead of 1961, and the quiet, luxurious room only made my January melancholy the more pronounced. The room was so unlike any of the other rooms of my life that I felt like I must have skipped several years. It was the sort of room I shouldn’t have been living in until the 1970s, or maybe the 1980s, after I had become famous and begun a rich decline. The room made me uncomfortable but I knew right away I could get to like it. I was beginning to be able to imagine having forty thousand dollars—or even more. Renata Morris would probably come to see me, if I lived in such rooms.

The whole tone of my fantasies would begin to change. Soon it would be the Piltdown that was unimaginable. It wasn’t that I liked the Piltdown. I didn’t like it, and I didn’t like poverty either. It was just that I had expected it to take longer than three hours to leave them behind. I was zooming again and there was no telling where I’d stop.

To slow myself down a little I went outside. After I walked a block or two I noticed that I was on Sunset Boulevard, which gave me a real thrill. I like to walk on famous streets. The farther I walked, the more normal I felt. The Beverly Hills Hotel receded behind me and I felt happy to have escaped from it, if only temporarily. I walked along, staring at things, and when I got down into Hollywood I felt normal enough to be hungry and stopped and ate two
chili dogs. I felt slightly rebellious. Bruce would have been disgusted. They were great chili dogs—far superior to any I’d eaten in San Francisco. These were huge baroque L.A. chili dogs, with melted cheese and onions and even tabasco if I wanted it. I had mine with tabasco and drank a malt to cool me off. I felt like it might be my last real meal. Once Leon O’Reilly’s driver came for me there was no telling where I might have to go, or what I might be required to eat.

The tall, soft-spoken kid who made my chili dogs told me he was only working at the chili-dog stand in order to get enough money to go to the Islands, where he planned to spend his time surfing. He had a friendly grin and his face was so innocent that it was impossible to imagine him ever being forty years old. I often try to imagine teen-agers as they will be when they’re forty years old, but it wouldn’t work with this kid. “Waves are my life,” he said shyly, as he was making himself a malt. I had no reply. For the time being, zooming seemed to be mine.

SHORTLY
after meeting me, Leon O’Reilly grew despondent. I don’t really think it was my fault. We were in the back seat of his yellow Bentley, and his fat secretary, whose name was Juney, sat between us. Leon was a small, neat man, with neatly combed hair and a neat black tie. His tie was very thin. Juney held one of his hands in both of hers and looked at me as if she expected to become despondent too. She was obviously standing ready to hold my hand, if the occasion required it.

“Danny, I want you to know I think your novel’s great,” Leon said, when we were shaking hands. He avoided my eye when he said it, and I avoided his. We almost looked at each other accidentally, while we were avoiding each other’s eyes. I felt very embarrassed. I hadn’t gotten used to the fact that strangers out in the world had read my novel.

“I’m out here wasting my education,” Leon said a little later. We were purring out the Hollywood Freeway, in the Bentley.

“I was brought up to believe that a gentleman does as little as possible with his education,” he said. “I think I’ve
achieved pretty near the minimum. No one could expect me to do less than I’ve done.”

Juney looked at him tenderly and patted his hand. She was a motherly blonde. “Tough it out, baby,” she said. Leon did not respond.

“Leon went to Harvard,” she said, turning to me. “He operates from a very high level of taste. He really hates ostentation and affectation, but let’s face it, in this industry you can’t escape it. You have to be ostentatious, you have to have affectations. Leon actually has to
affect
affectations. It’s a sad thing. This Bentley is one of the affectations he’s affecting. He doesn’t really want to drive a Bentley.”

I couldn’t see why not. I was already in love with the Bentley and planned to buy one the minute I reached that level of affluence. I loved the way the leather seats smelled and the quiet way the car purred along. It obviously worked no wonders for Leon O’Reilly though.

“I have the only private jai alai court in the United States,” he said. “It’s lit, too. I could play jai alai at night if I wanted to. I also have a twenty-two-pound rat. We bought it for a science fiction movie I produced a few years ago. I kept it. It only weighed seventeen pounds at the time.”

“Those are some of his other affectations,” Juney explained. “You have to make the people in the industry feel like you’re one of them.” She patted Leon’s hand in sympathy. There was no doubt but that her heart bled for him.

“Nobody wants a movie producer to have a Harvard education,” Leon said. “I’ve had to adapt. I hope you won’t be offended by this restaurant we’re taking you to. It’s a relic of another era. We always take writers there because writers seem to prefer that era. I’ve never understood why.”

“You don’t have to worry about me,” I said.

“He can’t help it,” Juney said. “Leon’s a born worrier.
He worries about every detail. All his pictures bear his individual stamp. I think you’ll find he’s the most meticulous person in Hollywood.”

The restaurant was Scandinavian in decor. It had a tiny little sign on the front gate. The sign said
THOR’S
and was far and away the tiniest thing about the restaurant. After we parked we got in a boat. It was a Viking warship, poled by a muscular young man in Viking costume. He poled us up an imaginary fjord. The bluff they had cut the fjord through was only about ten feet high, but I was impressed anyway.

After the boat trip we had drinks in a huge mead hall, full of a lot of other muscular young guys in Viking costumes. One banged rhythmically on a huge skin drum. The drink Leon ordered for me tasted like honey, but it affected me like straight whiskey. Leon and Juney sat holding hands. Leon was looking a little less despondent. Just as I was beginning to get drunk he stood up, snapped his fingers and said, “Coats, coats!” He became authoritative suddenly. Three young Vikings came running up and helped us into three huge fur coats with big fur hoods. Leon’s coat weighed more than he did, but it didn’t daunt him. We were shown into the room where we were to eat dinner. It was an ice cave, or perhaps the inside of an iceberg. The walls were literally of ice. Literal ice. The room was freezing cold, which seemed to invigorate Leon O’Reilly. He looked happier and happier.

“In the old days this was the place,” he said. “All the great stars came here in order to be able to wear their furs. It’s the most vulgar restaurant in Hollywood. There won’t be anything like it in another ten years. I absolutely hate it but I thought you’d appreciate the experience. It’s like a set by De Mille, don’t you see? It’s life copying art. We’re going to have raw fish. When you go to Thor’s you have to
go all the way. All the great stars ate raw fish here. What the hell, Juney. Anybody could have taken him to Chasen’s and fed him chili mac. We’ll show him a little of the Holly-wood that was.”

It was an eerie place and we were the only customers in it. Little seal-oil lamps flickered on the tables. Three shivering Viking youths brought us three huge raw fish and three huge knives. I touched my fish and it was cold as an ice cube.

“Maybe he should have had the seal,” Juney said, noting my hesitation. She looked at me from deep in her coat. I was even deeper in my coat and I was freezing anyway. Leon didn’t seem to mind the cold. He was hacking at his fish with the huge knife, and his eyes shone.

“Nonsense,” he said. “No seal. This is Viking food, not Eskimo food. I’ve always objected to them having seal on the menu.”

Leon seemed to love raw fish. He lectured us learnedly on its nutritional values while he ate. I felt as if I were freezing. Fortunately the shivering Viking youths returned with mugs of hot buttered rum. Juney and I seized them gratefully. Juney even choked down some of her fish, out of dedication to Leon, but I wasn’t that dedicated. I swallowed a bite or two without chewing it, but I spent most of the meal cutting the fish in bite-sized pieces and throwing the pieces under the table. Leon didn’t notice. I drank two mugs of rum, to keep warm, and almost fell in the fjord as we were getting back into the Viking warship. Leon had a few squid for dessert and he took more squid home with him in a doggy bag.

“I want the rat to try them,” he said.

Later, at Leon’s house, I was shown the rat. It lived in a very clean cage in one corner of Leon O’Reilly’s greenhouse, and it went at the squid like it had been eating squid all its
life. Juney said she couldn’t stand to watch it, so she went outside and watched Leon’s teen-age son ride his Honda around and around the jai alai court.