Fridays at Enrico's (34 page)

62.

What attracted Carrie so much was Stan's simplicity. Most of the men she dated were salesmen or office workers, men she ran into at work or
at Credit Managers. They were usually married or had other complications in their lives, but not Stan. After only a couple of dates, she decided he was just what he said he was, a book writer trying to break into the movies. She tried to read the book he gave her, but it was a man's book and she couldn't get interested. It didn't matter. And it didn't matter that Stan wasn't handsome. He wasn't ugly, and his face had character, but he wasn't the kind of man you'd call good-looking. He had soft eyes and a firm sensitive mouth and was gentle with her. Most of the men she dated didn't know how to make love, or were too uptight. Stan was different. More like a little boy, she decided, eager about everything but polite, like a polite little boy sitting down to a big dish of ice cream. She understood after a while that it was probably because he'd spent all those years in prison away from women. He wanted to try everything. He didn't seem to know the difference between ordinary sex and crazy stuff, he wanted to try it all. And then of course everything he did to her, she felt she had permission to try on him. Very liberating.

Stan was not only great in bed and getting better, he was a man with lots of money. She didn't have an eye on his money, but more to the point, he didn't seem to have his eye on hers. So many men these days were just looking for a place to crash. Or wanted to assume control of her savings. Or tell her what business to go into and how to run it. Some, after getting to sleep with her, wanted to tell her how to run the laundry business. Stan not only had no opinions as to how she should run her life, he was always asking her how to run his. Once she realized he was completely sincere, she felt sympathy. He'd been brought up without manners or social skills, thrown into prison with animals, and yet wasn't bitter or mean. One day she planned to take him across the Valley to meet her family.

The Grubers weren't a small family. Carrie had five brothers and two sisters, all living in Southern California, and her parents still held the family home in San Fernando. Carrie and her siblings had been taught to be independent, to go out into the world, to make and save, become financially independent, which she had done. She didn't much like her family, but she
was glad her papa had given her a good solid upbringing, exactly the kind Stan had been denied. She meant to teach him Gruber values.

But Stan was more than a piece of clay for her to mold. If his face was nothing to write home about, he still had a beautiful body, tanned and muscular, and he made good money in a glamorous business. Of course, she saw show business from a slightly different angle than most, working for Lyle Freed. Lyle had begun in high school as a cheerleader, then went into Special Services in the army, singing and dancing for the other men who had to fight. She'd heard the whole story a million times. His lucky break had come when a bunch of Hollywood people came to his army camp for a show. He was master of ceremonies and they liked his act, and an agent told him to call the day he got out of the service. The rest was history. A role in a series, the series a big hit. Lyle spent five years wearing the same clothes and saying the same dumb jokes until he wanted to kill himself, but he saved enough that when the show was canceled he could purchase the laundromats.

Lyle hated show business and everyone in it. Stan wasn't like that. He had nothing bad to say about the people who were keeping him dangling. He didn't even seem nervous. Lyle had told her so many times that nobody in show business was to be trusted, but Stan didn't care. Maybe his life in crime had made him immune to dishonesty, like a flu shot. All she knew was that Stan was the most decent and straightforward man in her life.

“He's an ex-convict, Papa, but he's going to be rich.” She could hear her father saying, “Well, how rich?” Stan himself never talked about marriage or even love. He was careful not to say, “I love you,” even when they were making love, and she was just as careful. But something made her think he did actually love her, in the same friendly way she loved him. They were friends, they were lovers, and they were compatible. What more to want? To show him her feelings, she went out and had her hair done blonde, just the way he liked it. Actually, she'd always wanted to be blonde. Stan loved it. “You're my Marilyn Monroe,” he told her.

They didn't have to get married. Why rock the boat? They'd go into business together. Stan would put money into any business she chose. Part
owner, silent partner, not taking over because he was a man, just investing in her because he believed in her. Naïvely he'd tell her he didn't know how to manage money and that she could do it for them both. “You can be my business manager,” he'd said. She told him about business managers. Lyle was almost poetic in his hatred of business managers. All they did was take your hard-earned money and put it into fly-by-night ventures. When things went wrong they'd just hold their hands up in surrender, like Jack Benny. “Gee, we didn't know!” They never went broke, just their clients. Carrie was pretty sure Stan would soon be in the big money, and she looked forward to helping him invest it. Not in her business, but in stocks and bonds.

These days she daydreamed of a candy store. Good for her, because she didn't eat much candy. Candy was like show business. In hard times, business would be good. The worse things got, the more they needed little treats. She had an idea for a very special candy store, one featuring candies from all over the world, exotic candies, the favorites of people everywhere. As the owner, she'd travel the world, searching for good interesting candies, getting the recipes and test marketing them here. There would have to be a chain of stores. She'd start with one, then expand. A real possibility. She and Stan could travel, have a good time, and sample candies. Stan could make the store a favorite with his Hollywood buddies.

Stan had no objection. “We'll open the first store in Malibu,” he said. “And live over it.” He was open to travel. “I've never been anywhere,” he told her, then tapped his head. “Except in here.”

They had the top down on his Cadillac, and Stan was wearing the Hawaiian shirt she had bought for him, wearing it the way she'd shown him, unbuttoned with a white tee shirt underneath, and his red bathing trunks with the white stripe down the sides. She wore her black bathing suit and one of his dress shirts open down the front. They both had on their sunglasses and it was going to be a wonderful day. She'd taken the day off just so they could go to Malibu when the beach wouldn't be crowded with hundreds of thousands of people, a sunny Tuesday morning, and Stan had told her he had to run downtown for a minute to visit his parole officer.

They pulled into the parking lot next to the State building and Stan got out of the car, walking around to her side to give her a kiss, when another car pulled into the lot and this big fat Mexican man got out. He wore a light brown suit open in front, and his belly hung over his belt. He looked about fifty, and he stared at Stan angrily.

“Do you know that man?” she asked him. Stan turned and grinned. “That's my parole officer,” he said, waving at the man, who walked toward them, his face hard.

“You're dirty,” he said to Stan.

Stan looked very surprised. “Huh?”

The parole officer was taller than Stan, and looked down at him coldly. “You're violated.”

Stan's face contorted, then he seemed to get control over himself. “I'm not dirty.”

The officer looked at him in his open shirt and bathing suit, sunglasses, brand new Cadillac, his girlfriend with the big tits and the blonde hair, and said, “Bullshit. Up against the car.”

“Stan, what's going on?” she asked. She was scared, but Stan looked at her as if he didn't know her. “Stan?” He didn't answer, as the big Mexican man handcuffed him.

“Stan!” she cried. “What about the car?” But neither of them answered as Stan was led into the building. She learned later that he hadn't been sent back to San Quentin, he wasn't going to be punished that hard. They were only sending him to Los Padres National Forest, to a road gang, where he would cut brush for two years.

PART FIVE

Freedom

63.

Charlie hadn't thought about his novel in a long time. He didn't even know where the damn thing was. He'd gotten three big packages of paper from Bill Ratto six or seven years ago, but wasn't sure what he'd done with them. It certainly wasn't in his home office, because he ransacked the office right after Bill called.

“Remember me?” came the fake Ivy League voice over the telephone.

“Are you calling from New York?” Charlie asked, just to seem provincial. But Bill Ratto had left publishing and was now a producer in Hollywood.

“No wonder your voice sounds so clear,” Charlie joked.

“I was just sitting here thinking about you. Remember that novel you wrote, that brilliant Korean War novel?”

“Oh, the Korean
War
novel,” Charlie said.

Bill Ratto had been thinking. Charlie had disliked the version of his novel that Bill came up with, and Bill had no problem with that, he even tended to agree. “I think I turned a silk purse into a sow's ear,” he said. But never mind the past. Bill had the beginnings of an idea. “Why don't we make a movie?” He perfectly agreed with Charlie that it would be foolish of them to get back into the novel per se, but, now consider this, what about using the novel as the source material for a really serious big film about the Korean conflict. “Korea hasn't been done, you know. Not really, not the way we could do it.”

“Everybody hates war,” Charlie said dryly.

“That's just it!” Bill's voice was filled with enthusiasm. “Everybody hates war. Time has passed. These days everybody agrees with you. It could be one of the great pacifist movies of all time.”

Charlie didn't know how to take it. He sat at his desk, killing the morning until he had to go to work. Looking out the window he could see a light haze over the bay. It was going to be a nice warm one. Another perfect day in paradise. “What the fuck are you talking about?” he asked abruptly. “I quit writing years ago.”

“Charlie, that was a mistake. Quite possibly you didn't have the skills for writing the novel you set out to write, a very ambitious book. But this is a movie we're talking about here. Movies don't require the same skill level. Are you following me?”

Right into the sewer, Charlie thought, and then was ashamed. There was nothing wrong with movies. Charlie loved movies, especially bullshit movies. “So, what do you want of me?”

What Bill wanted was permission to think about making a movie out of Charlie's manuscript. But he didn't have a copy either of the original or the “modeled” version he'd so painstakingly put together. The version that was more Bill than Charlie.

“I don't know where that fucking thing is,” Charlie said. “Maybe we threw it out. That was a long time ago, man.”

“It doesn't matter,” Bill said. “Could you hold a minute?” And he was gone. Charlie analyzed his feelings. He wasn't a writer, but it didn't hurt anyone. He'd never really been a writer. His literary ambitions, like all his ambitions, were not so much absurd as obsolete. Why bother? Yet what Bill was talking about did sort of interest him. To make a movie would be to get over all those nagging literary problems, and pull the thing straight down into plot and dialogue. As a kid dreaming about his giant war novel, he'd always imagined it would be turned into a giant epic movie, though at the time he was cynical and thought they'd wreck the book if they didn't hire him to write the screenplay, because Hollywood hacks were, well, hacks. No wonder he was being sarcastic. He didn't want to get his hopes up. Poor Little Charlie.

“Are you there?” Bill asked. “Here's what I had in mind. Find that book, read it over, think about it, and give me a ring.”

Charlie hung up and looked at his watch. He was working the eleven to six shift at the no name bar. The bar opened at eleven thirty to accommodate the Sausalito alcoholics, but he still had an hour before he had to leave home. He could look for the manuscript. He felt calm, but there was a film of sweat on his brow that hadn't been there before. Maybe the call made him more nervous than he cared to admit. Was he still ambitious? His old novel had been ambitious, so ambitious, so full of shit. Also the center of his life for ten years, until he met Jaime. Like his first child. She, he, and Bill Ratto, a man he didn't quite like, go out into Potter's Field, dig up the little corpse, clean off the dirt, put makeup over the corruption, and sell the body to the American public? Hmm.