Hollywood Boulevard (11 page)

    "I should have called first," I said. We were inches apart now.

    "No. It is good you came." Had he forgotten I was lunching with Harry? I was about to tell him the news, but the head gaffer, Quinn, came over about the lights. Carola followed. She kissed my cheeks, said how good it was to see me. She explained the day was going well so far after the horrors of last night, when everything possible had seemed to go wrong.

    "Give me a minute," Andre said to me, and he and Quinn went off to talk to the electrical crew.

    "There's coffee and stuff; unfortunately it's outside today . . . the small space in here," Carola said, her hand sweeping the air.

    I was in the way. I thanked Carola and slipped into the background, the part of the bar that would not be seen on camera, stepped over electrical cables as thick as my arms, black drapes over anything that might cast unintended light, a makeup table to one side, the extras in a clutch doing what extras mostly did: wait around. One of them caught my eye, and I quickly turned to go.

    "Okay to open the door?" I asked the PA guarding it. He nodded and I hurried outside.

    I drove back to the Muse, speeding on the freeway like a pro who'd never left L.A. I parked and went up to the freshly made- up room, fell on the bed and cried into my pillow. Harry had been a force, a man who'd cried when I quit, who'd stood by me— in his way— when I suffered, and who most of all had always believed in me. Harry Machin: half actor, half god; part fake, part sage. He was a limb lopped off an ancient tree. My tears fell into an anonymous hotel pillow. How many others' tears of woe, of joy or ecstasy, and how much loneliness had this pillow already absorbed? Harry Machin booked actors, fed the movie machine with their flesh and blood and demanded high prices in return and ten percent for himself. He used us and we used him and we all went like little piggies off to the bank. I was crying my eyes out into a hotel pillow for one of Hollywood's biggest deal- makers. There was something ironic in that, but for the moment it was lost on me.

I 
have always bounced back after darkness, found my way to the light, but this time, this darkness that has descended since Harry died on me like that, on top of my being back here in Hollywood, has knocked the light right out of me. Should I go outside later to see if the old man is there, reassuringly blessing the end of the day? I could introduce myself, fall at his feet seeking wisdom. Maybe Kitty will show up and rub along gates and trees and corners, inviting me to rub his thick coat in unconditional, sensuous love. No, I could not greet man or beast today. Is it the interrupted sleep since Harry? Was it the suddenness of his going and the bleakness of seeing myself now as a hopeless misfit, a piece in the wrong jigsaw puzzle? His death seemed to cut me off once and for all from all that I once was.

    Naturally, there was press coverage. Harry was a big deal. Heart attack, the papers and blogs said; a former client was with him,
Ardennes Thrush, once nominated for an Oscar for her part in Mark Wir
lach's haunting film,
Darkness During Daylight.
The actress retired
, one piece said;
rumor has it she was ready to sign up again with Machin,
return to the silver screen
. That would be a rumor the writer made up. The
New York
and
Los Angeles Times
kept the obit simple and respectful, with my name out of it. Only
Variety
intimated funny doings. Lundy let it be known— to anyone who'd listen— that Harry and I had argued and it had grown violent. "We did not argue," I told the
Variety
reporter who called me at the hotel. But Lundy's version won out. A freelancer called to ask if it was true I was going back to work, and could she have the scoop. No scoop, I told her; she had it all wrong.

    I'd had to drive to the Beverly Hills police precinct for questioning, way over on Rexford. To get there I drove past Doheny, in West Hollywood, where I used to get my hair done (and would need to again soon). I asked the detective interviewing me if I was up on an involuntary manslaughter charge— criminally negligent or otherwise— or perhaps some other evil offense.

    "You find the death funny?" Detective Collins asked, his expression a study in neutral.

    I wanted to ask him if he didn't secretly long to be a movie star. He had the looks. Detective Collins was a solid, tight William Holden à la
Sunset Boulevard
— I was thinking the scene where Gloria Swanson towels him off at the pool. I also sensed interiority, which I might not have expected in a cop, though that was probably too much Hollywood talking. What did I know about real cops, inside or outside? "I wasn't laughing," I replied, trying on my own version of tonal beige.

    "The housekeeper says you and Mr. Machin argued."

    "Wasn't she in the kitchen?"

    "Did you argue?"

    "No."

    "She said there was shouting."

    "Yes, but not me. Harry got overexcited."

    "Over what?"

    "Over me no longer acting."

    "He was your agent?"

    I nodded. We were quiet in the drab little interview room of the not- very- busy upstairs detective quarters, a setup involving mostly too many cluttered desks for the space. The Detective looked to be sizing things up. For a second I was afraid he was going to say something about me as a "personality." But he asked, "Any idea why Mrs. Lundy would say you killed Mr. Machin?"

    "She overreacted."

    "People seem to overstimulate themselves around you. I suppose that's a good thing in an actor."

    "I no longer am an actor."

    "Did you know of the heart condition?"

    "I knew he'd been sick."

    " Tough to prove, even if you did knowingly push him over the edge."

    "I'm assuming that's in the realm of fantasy?" If I was playing a part, I was doing a good job because I wasn't at all comfortable sitting in the precinct opposite the handsome detective. That was about when I started getting the bad feeling I haven't been able to shake since.

    Detective Collins stood up. "Thanks for coming in, Miss Thrush." I stood up too, and he escorted me to the top of the stairs, handing me his card, "On the off chance you think of something related to Mr. Machin's death." I stuffed the card into my pocket without looking at it. "You were a good actress," he tossed over his shoulder after I said good- bye.

    I turned around on the stairs. "Cops go to the movies?" I said.

    He turned around too. The smallest suggestion of a smile played across his mouth like a breeze over the surface of a mountain lake. "They're allowed to," he said.

    He hadn't officially said I was not a person of interest, and part of me wondered if I
hadn't
killed Harry, involuntarily. That was not a good thing to be wondering, even if I knew the idea was mostly madness.

    The next morning Andre said it was just coincidence it had been me there at lunch. It could have been anyone; it could have been the Lundy woman he'd dropped dead on. I'd wanted to ask why he'd been so happy that day about my having lunch with Harry, but Andre put a stop to any further Harry Machin speculation. He was probably right, but that didn't stop my brain from repeatedly raking over those last few minutes: I should have left when I'd said I should leave, or Harry saying he was going to stay calm and then losing it. All he wanted to know was why I quit acting . . . I'd never even had a chance to answer the million- dollar question. All the seconds that might have turned out differently . . . if only . . . If only I'd had a flat tire, if only I'd said no to lunch, if only I hadn't picked up the house phone, if only I had gone to the set with Jarrad the night before . . . who knows, I might have canceled the lunch and Harry might still be alive . . . If only.

    As I was spinning on that mental carousel, the house phone rang, almost like a joke. I stared at it as if it were a live, dangerous animal trapped in my house. It wouldn't be the police; they had my cell number. If it was a reporter I'd hang up, but I didn't think it would be. Harry's story was dying of inertia, his obituary yesterday's news. I waited for the mechanical voice to put the human one on, looking out toward White Shirt's house as I did. My time of spying on him now seemed a bygone, innocent era.

    "Ard, honey? I see by the papers you're back in town." Not the smallest suggestion of resentment in her voice that I hadn't called her. Dear old Dottie.

    "Dottie! Oh, Dottie, Harry died."

    "I read all about it. I'm surprised you're not in front of a firing squad by now."

    "I am so glad to hear your voice, Dot." She sounded close and familiar, as if we'd just had dinner the other night. It must have been a couple of years since we'd spoken.

    "Why not come see me? I'm right down the street."

    "Where?"

    "I sold that old Pasadena house a year ago. I'm doing my own version of assisted living right here on Hollywood Boulevard, tenth floor of the Roosevelt. They have a new music bar downstairs, and room service sends up the driest martinis in the neighborhood. Why not come take a sample this afternoon?"

    "Four o'clock okay?"

    "I'll keep a lookout."

    I checked the clock: two- thirty. Dottie may have just saved me. I killed some time changing my clothes and wrote out a couple of the curly old postcards I'd bought to send to friends in New York, but I had no stamps. When I first arrived I'd made calls back east, but that stopped. I was here; they were there. Dottie's call shamed me into writing absent but not forgotten greetings. By then it was time to drive down the hill.

    Dottie looked older, thinner, drier— like a stick— but she still wore those snazzy Chanel suits, her ash- blond hair pulled back, sparkling diamond earrings catching the light, and she still had that breathless vitality into her midseventies. She performed privately now, in the homes of die- hard rich fans, all of whom apparently owned baby grand pianos.

    We spent two martinis together. Dottie's suite had an upright, and she nibbled at the keys with her long fingers after we'd hit a lull in things to say. There wasn't much to catch up on, on my end. Dottie knew not to push. She did say, sitting on the piano bench with her rod- straight posture, that that was where she proposed to end her days. "Ard, honey, I just don't know what I'd do if I stopped playing. They'll pull me off the keys in rigor mortis before I let go." I guess I knew what she meant but had nothing to say except that maybe acting was a different saddle to try to die in.

    We discussed poor old Harry, and she pretty much felt as Andre did that there was no point in dwelling on it. "Everybody in town knew he wasn't well," she said, adding, "I s'pose it's the end of an era, Harry's passing."

    "I suppose so too," I said, thinking how close Dottie might be to that fading era herself. Hollywood is so unkind to the elderly, as if age were an affront to the sunshine and swimming pools, the gym- and- yoga culture. She was right, though; if she kept at her playing, she'd beat the system, or play it her way.

    The martinis settled down with the hors d'oeuvres Dottie put out, and I said I'd better head back up to the hotel. It was going on seven. Andre was on days and would be back by nine.

    "How are you two?" Dottie asked, walking me to the elevator.

    "I don't know," I said truthfully.

    "He still chase the ladies?"

    "The other way around: They chase him."

    "He could run a little faster."

    The elevator came; I kissed Dottie's powdery cheeks and slid down to the lobby in the cushioned conveyance and walked out to the car valet.

    Forty minutes later I was stranded in the lobby of the Hotel Muse. My door pass had demagnetized again. I was locked out for the second time that week. As I waited, I overheard the desk flirt, Sharif, saying something to another guest about it being the anniversary of the fire. I had to pee from Dottie's hefty martinis but didn't want to walk all the way out to the bathroom servicing the pool area. I felt a wave of irritation at having to wait, but what was all this about a fire? Sharif was busy regaling a heavy woman in a too- bright sports outfit. I heard him again say, "The hotel fire." Finally she left for her room.

    "I'm so sorry, Ms. Thrush, a new guest. We like to give them all a warm welcome . . . not your key again? I nodded. "I'm so sorry. Give me one second." He quickly did whatever they do to reactivate the key and came back to the front. "I apologize again," he said, handing me the plastic card.

    "What's all this about a fire, Sharif ?"