L.A. Success (28 page)

“I try to make a part in his afro around the eyes every morning, but by lunch time it closes up again.”

She led me into her living room, which was decorated in shades of violet and pink. All of her furniture was upholstered in plush, much of which looked worn away from friction. I sat down on the couch and sank in until the angle formed at the back of my knees was less than ninety degrees.

Gertie picked up a glass of wine and began to stare at me. I had the impression she had already forgotten what I'd said at the door. To prevent another invitation to join Tommy and her, I explained again.

“So Gertie, I came over to ask you about—” I said but was interrupted by Tommy's voice coming from the other room.

“Gairtee! I yam red-ee,” said Tommy.

“I'm talking to someone here!” yelled Gertie. “I want you to take a shower anyway, mister. And make sure to soap up that coat-wearing worm of yours!” She looked over at me and said, “You won't believe what I find in that European dong of his. There was a piece of pizza crust in there once. It's like the hose of a vacuum, that thing. For all the shit that gets stuck in there, he must flop it around catching stuff with it like a frog catches flies.” She paused and once again forgot why I was there. She struck a seductive pose, figuring since she was half naked it had to be for a related reason.

“As I was saying, I need to know something. I wrote a screenplay about you and sent it to that director—”

“I knew you were obsessed with me,” she interrupted. “This is something we're going to have to learn to control because things are getting serious between me and Tommy. At least until he goes back to wherever the hell he's from,” she said and then whispered, “we'll do it in the houses. Everything happens in the houses.”

“That sounds great,” I said, knowing she wouldn't remember anyway, or rather she'd remember what she wanted to remember anyway, no matter what I said. In Gertie's drunken memories I was probably always trying to get at her. “But I gave my screenplay about you to Spieldburt—”

“Who?”

“Spieldburt—the E.T. guy.”

“You mean Spielberg,” she said.

“Spielberg? He's the E.T. guy?” Gertie nodded, and I wondered how I could have gone so long getting his name wrong. That prick Grant hadn't corrected me once. “Well, yeah. That guy. And there was more or less a misunderstanding. He thought I wanted some money, and then the next thing I knew, I was on the ground getting kicked in the ribs.”

Gertie's face lost her normal sheen of lustiness, and she went quiet for a moment. She downed the rest of her wine, went over to her open kitchen and poured herself another glass. She then walked over to one of the drawers of her entertainment center and took out a photo album. She came back and sat down next to me. She put the album on my lap and opened it. The pages were filled with pictures of disco-looking, curly-haired people. All the photos were so old that the colors looked off, like they had been taken on a planet that orbited a blue sun. I turned the pages uninterestedly. I assumed Gertie had forgotten why I had come again. I prepared myself for the eventual jolt of dirty pictures that I imagined lay after every turn of the page. Then I recognized a young Gertie, wearing hip-hugging, bell-bottom jeans and an obnoxiously bright, flower-pattern shirt. Her hair was parted in the middle, feathered back ridiculously, and had obviously been lightened with bleach. She was leaning on a scrawny, curly-headed guy, and her hand was resting on his chest.

“Hey, that's you,” I said. “I almost didn't recognize you. Your skin was so dark.”

“Non-stop tanning. And it took work back then. We had to do it the old-fashioned way. None of this tanning-booth crap. Back in the day, all the girls went to the beach to tan year round. The men would come after us like sharks. Nowadays men don't know how to hit on girls at the beach because they only go there after they've already met their ladies. It's ridiculous. Back then, you could see all the goods up front. This modern, meeting-people-at-the-bookstore thing was invented by flat-assed college girls. I can't believe men bought it.”

“Who's this guy?” I asked, pointing to the curly-haired man.

“That's Spielberg—my Steven. We had been seeing each other for several months when this photo was taken.”

“You were a couple?”

“Everybody was seeing everybody back then. I was with all these people,” she said, making a sweeping gesture with her hand. “But Steven, now he needed special attention. I only started up with him because he was so unconfident that it was endearing. All these muscle-bound guys at the beach hitting on girls right and left, and then there was Steven, standing way off with his feet in the surf and staring at me. I walked over and had to pounce on him to keep him from running away out of nervousness. He started feeding me what I thought was a line of bullshit. He said he was working in TV and was hoping to do a TV movie soon, and he threw out a whole bunch of names I didn't know. I pretended to be interested in all this, and it made him confident. Then he told me all about his dream project, his big movie idea that he wanted to direct one day,” she said and went quiet remembering.

“Did he tell you about alien shit?”

“Oh no. Back then he was into some weird stuff. He said he wanted to make a film about Sigmund Freud and his sidekick, a guy named Missouri Fred, a rugged adventurer who always got the girl. In the movie, Freud and Missouri Fred would travel to exotic places making criminally insane villains good people by psycho-analyzing them and helping them understand that it was okay to want to do their mothers. But the larger objective of the two was to track down the Vagina Dentata and destroy it, thus saving the world from impotence. Occasionally, they'd get death threats from the Vagina Dentata. It would leave cryptic clues about its next victims. Freud and Missouri Fred would travel to ravaged European hamlets, where teary, limp-dicked peasants would give them a hero's welcome and help them prepare for the journey ahead. He called the whole thing 'Dentata'.”

“What the hell is a vagina dentata?”

“It's a pussy with sharp teeth. It'll bite your dick right off.”

“That's not true...is it?” I asked.

“We have always tried to keep it a secret.”

“You don't—”

“You'll never know, unless you come in for a little spelunking,” she said.

“So anyway,” I continued, “why does Spielberg want to beat me up now?”

“Well, he and I started to get serious back in the day. After a few years, we even began seeing each other exclusively—at least it was exclusive from his side. The Gert was born to run. Everything was going along great, but then I got sick of him spouting off new adventures of Freud and Missouri Fred. I told him if he was going to write something about scary teeth, it needed to be something men would go see, because 'Dentata' was only going to be a perverted chick flick. I said 'why not an octopus or a squid with big teeth? People will understand that you're talking metaphorically about a toothy vagina.' He went away for a few weeks and came back beaming. He had fed the idea to a screenwriter and had an entire movie ready to go, but with a shark.”

“So he was happy with you, then.”

“No. He acted like I had nothing to do with it. I told him he was acting like a child, and we started fighting. He went away, and I didn't hear from him until about five years later. He called and told me he'd made a film inspired by me, but me in the future.”

“Which one was that?”

“E.T. I went to see it as soon as it came out. I was flattered at first because he had taken my name and given it to those kids, and I was thinking about all my good qualities that he had given to those brats: my innocence, my optimism, my honesty. I was so moved by it that I was ready to reconcile with Steven. I drove to his house and rushed up to his door. When he opened it, I threw myself into his arms and was ready to do anything for him. I told him that now that I knew how he really felt about me, I was ready to join my future to his.”

“You guys got married?”

“No, I had misinterpreted the whole thing. There I was in his arms, but he was just holding me stiffly like you would hold someone who had fainted. I looked up at him, and he had a stone-cold look on his face. Then he gave a wry smile and led me into the living room. He took out this album and showed me the photos on the very next page.”

“Wow, that's amazing. So I need a favor from you, if you don't mind,” I said.

“What—you're not going to turn the page?”

“Oh yeah,” I said and turned it. In front of my eyes were pictures of classic Gertie poses, some I had seen before, some I had only been forced to imagine.

“Do you recognize this from the movie?” she asked, pointing to the first picture. It was her in the twilight of the evening, obviously upset with someone because she was giving the finger. But in the same hand she was using to flip the bird, she also held a cigarette, which stood straight up alongside her middle finger. The glowing cinder of the cigarette protruded just enough to make it look like the red light was coming out of her nail.

“No!” I said.

“Oh yes. And look at this one,” she said, pointing to a picture of a bedroom scene. A young Gertie, wearing nothing but a smile, was spread out seductively on the bed. There was a line of little chocolate candies leading up to her. The man taking the picture was not visible, but his hand was caught in the frame reaching up for a candy.

“But this is the worst one,” she said, pointing to a picture of her and Spielberg, basically in the same position she was in when I walked in on her and Tommy, except that she was facing away from him in this one. If I hadn't known her, I'd have been turned on by this, but I couldn't keep the modern, wrinkly Gertie from creeping back into my mind.

“He used to call this position 'the bicycle',” she said. “When I thought about that scene in the movie where they fly off in front of that big moon, it all made sense to me. I couldn't believe it. Then I asked him why he would choose such an ugly-looking thing to turn me into, and he said he got the idea by imagining what I was going to look like after fifty years of year-round tanning and smoking. Did you know he actually hired a two-pack-a-day smoker to do E.T.'s voice?”

I looked at Gertie. My mind's eye did a slow morph of her features, twisting them into an E.T.-ish, wine-drinking, cigarette-smoking mess. She could tell what I was doing.

“Stop that! I don't look like that alien, and you know it. But damn it, once you get the idea in your head, you can't imagine anything else.”

“So what did you do? Didn't you want to kill him?” I asked.

“I was stunned. I could barely hold it together. I gave him a good slap and ran out the door with the photo album. After a few minutes of crying in my car, I decided to kill him before anyone could find out about what he had done. I thought that if it got out, I'd never be able to go anywhere without someone calling me E.T. Back in the day, you could buy guns immediately, so I went into a pawn shop and asked for one. Well, I guess my makeup had run all over the place, and even though the pawn guy was sleazy, he refused to sell me what I needed because he could see I was too emotional. He told me to calm down and think everything over for a while. He gave me a replica of James Bond's gun and told me it'd be better if I just scared the shit out of whoever it was I wanted to kill, since that way I'd avoid the slammer. That sounded smart to me.”

“So you pulled it on him?” I asked.

“Nope. I stuck the fake Walther PPK in my glove compartment, where it has stayed ever since.”

“What? Did you just chicken out or something?”

“Oh no. I drove back to his place and was refreshing my makeup—a girl's gotta look good even with a gun in her hand or else she's just not taken seriously—when I realized I already had the best weapon for revenge. I went back in and laid it all on him. I told him I'd show these pictures to everyone and explain where that wrinkly little alien bastard had actually come from unless he forked over some serious cash. He thought it over for a long time. He calculated what he thought he'd lose in merchandising if parents decided E.T. dolls were perverted, and he made me a deal. I took the money and started up my real-estate business.”

“Why do you still have the photos?”

“I told him I was keeping them in case he ever tried to put me in a movie again. He didn't like the idea, but I gave him my word that I'd never milk him for more over the E.T. thing.”

“So he must think I found out about all this. He must think I'm trying to blackmail him now.”

“I'd be careful if I were you. He's had to deal with a lot of stalkers over the years, and it's only a matter of time before he cracks. You're lucky he didn't send professionals after you.”

I heard the shower turn off and decided to get out of there before a wet, naked Tommy made an appearance. I closed the album, handed it back to her and stood up.

“I'm going to take off now, but I might need you later,” I said.

“Nothing's free, kid,” she said.

10

Back at home, I swallowed another handful of pain killers and watched the TV for a while. It was way past dinner time, but my dad still hadn't come out of my room. I went over and knocked lightly.

“Hey dad, I'm going to pick up some burgers. We'll eat when I get back,” I said and waited for a response. I didn't hear anything, so I turned the knob and peeked in. The light was off. I reached in and flipped the switch. The room was empty. I walked over to my bathroom, but that was empty as well. Then, on the off chance he had decided he liked Tommy's room better, I checked in there but once again found nothing. I went outside and walked around the house, but he wasn't there either. Then I remembered that I had told him he'd be sleeping at Dennis' place, so I went over there to look for him. All the lights were off, and he was nowhere to be found.

I was feeling terrible even with the painkillers, but I drove down to Venice Beach to see if I could find him. I looked in all the places he used to hang out. I even looked under the pier. The dozen or so drug dealers who came up to me as I searched hadn't seen him, and neither had any of the other homeless guys I recognized. I circled around the same places for another hour before I forced myself to give up and go back home.