Miss Wyoming (18 page)

One night back in 1986, Susan came within an eyelash of being introduced to John Johnson at a party Larry Mortimer had thrown. Larry was eager to showcase Susan and to network her with as many people as possible.
Meet the Blooms
was riding high, and of the eighties crop of «It Girls,» Susan was the one most coveted by the networks.

For some reason there was a giraffe at the party. Susan heard somebody ask why, and someone else replied it was to help plug a disastrously overbudget chimp comedy that had tanked that weekend on 1,420 screens across North America. Susan was standing with people from Johnny Carson's production company. It was then that she noticed John speaking with that toilet-mouthed lady from Disney — Alice? — something about an Oxford don and a punt — and Susan deemed John dateworthy, and that he would be even more so once he had a few years to …
ripen.
She was going to ask Larry for an introduction when a woman on her right said, «Hel
lo
, Susan Colgate.»

Susan turned to the speaker who was, according to the framed photos on Larry's desk, Larry's wife, Jenna Mortimer, lovely, with hair like spun black glass, baby-doll features, dressed in a black chiffon evening dress that featured the linebacker shoulder pads of the era. This look, combined with a flash of teeth, created an aggressive posture.

«Hello — Jenna — Mrs. Mortimer. Hello.»

«It's a pleasure to finally meet you, Susan.»

«Oh — nice for me, too. How did we ever get this far without being introduced? Shouldn't Larry have done this, like, an hour ago at the very least?»

«Cuckoo, isn't it?» said Jenna. «Larry can be so forgetful. Such a business this is.»

«Larry's always talking about you.»

«I'm sure he is.» She motioned toward a buffet table. «Have you had something to eat?» She was making it clear that she was the hostess. Susan was overeager to sound like an appreciative guest and she blurted out a dumb lie: «Yes, I had some cheese.»

«But I'm not serving any cheese.»

Susan was flustered.

«Is your mother here?» asked Jenna, knowing full well that Susan lived on Larry's Kelton Street property. The truth was that at that exact moment Marilyn was scouring the streets of Encino hoping to find Don's car, hoping to find Don inside a bar with a slut, knowing there was a far greater likelihood of simply finding Don with a bottle, which was somehow worse.

«No. It's a lovely party. Really beautifully done.» Susan felt mature using the words «beautifully done.» It was the way she thought rich people spoke.

Jenna looked around. «It is, isn't it?»

«And the giraffe!»

«The
giraffe
just ate the neighbor's prize Empress Keiko persimmon tree. There'll be hell to pay tomorrow.» She looked at Susan appraisingly. «Clear shoes and nude hose — trying to lengthen our legs tonight?»

«An old show dog trick. Miss USA Teen, 1985.»

«Miss Nevada, 1971.»

«No!» Susan smiled. «What a racket, huh?» She found herself beginning to like Jenna.

«Oh yes. The
crap
I spouted during those pageants,» Jenna said.

«I always thought the good thing about being Miss Wyoming was that I'd get to go last when they called out the states. You know, the letter
W
— and that I'd get to see the other girls' ramp-walking errors, and learn from them.»

«Did you ever win Miss Congeniality?» asked Jenna.

«Me? Never. I should have won Miss Why Am I Here?»

«I
always
got Miss Congeniality.»

«Did you?» Susan was curious.

«Those nuns. Catholic school. They nabbed me when I was young.»

«I didn't go to religious school. We're hillbillies in our family.»

«The thing about Catholic school is that they manage to make you put a smile on absolutely anything.»

«Yeah?»

«Everything.»

Susan now understood where Jenna was working the conversation.

Larry saw the two women talking and bolted their way. «Jenna! Susan! I've been waiting for the special moment to introduce you.»

«No doubt you have,» said Jenna.

«Larry,» said Susan. «I didn't know that Jenna used to be a show dog, too.

Jenna said, «It was actually me who put Larry onto you. I read about you throwing your crown back in their faces. I wanted to send you a box of roses and a trophy. I figured it'd take a personality like a freight train to pull off a coup like that.»

«You ought to meet my mother, the locomotive.»

Larry wanted to get the two women apart. «Susan,» he said, «I want you to meet this producer named Colin. He's from England, but he's still useful to us over here. Jenna, can I steal usan away from you?»

«I have a choice?»

Larry flashed teeth and escorted Susan toward the patio doors. Susan called back, «Bye, Jenna — nice to meet you.»

Larry moved her around a corner and said, «Christ.»

Susan said, «Larry, I can't see you anymore.» Her body began to feel as though it were rising upward like a helium balloon. A string had been cut.

He wiped his forehead with a paper doily from a table of mineral waters. «We'll talk about this tomorrow.»

«Yeah, we will.»

Larry stood still and appraised Susan's face. «You're young. It'll pass.»

«But I don't want it to pass.»

«It's called getting older. I'll send you the coverage on it.»

«Ryan O'Neal's here,» Susan said to change the conversation.

«I'll introduce you.»

And so the evening went on. Susan drank German mineral water — Sprudel-something, with a name like a pastry — and swished the water about inside her mouth, almost burning her tongue with bubbles — it tasted geological. She watched Larry squirm and lie to the people around him who were squirming and lying right back.

«Susan, this is Cher.»

«Hello.»

«Susan, this is Valerie Bertinelli.»

«Nice to meet you.»

«Susan, this is Jack Klugman.»

«Great. Hi.»

«Susan, this is Christopher Atkins.»

«Hey.»

«Susan, this is Lee Radziwill.»

«Hi.»

The party felt like it went on all night, when, like most film industry functions, it actually ended around nine. She couldn't have known that the party was to be her high-water mark within the entertainment world's social structure.

The morning after the giraffe party, a car from the production company picked Susan up at 6:30A .M. She sat in the back seat, memorizing her lines for the day. She performed her role. She stood for publicity photos with her TV parents and siblings. She had a fight with Larry and dead-bolted him out of the Kelton Street apartment. Days passed. Her strength passed. She let Larry in. She disgusted herself. She'd built no other substantial friendships during her TV blitzkrieg. It was either back to Larry or careen into outer space, and she couldn't face that. Any discussion of Jenna or divorce led to a brick wall which Susan acknowledged with the ever more edgy tag line, «Excuse
me,
Larry. Pope on line three.»

Susan was never a particularly good actor, but at the start of the TV series, she did have a naturalness that stood out and looked good against her actor-since-birth costars. But the naturalness began to wear thin and she became increasingly self-conscious about her body, her face, the words that came out of her mouth and the overall effect she had on people. The scrutiny was a thousand times more intense than any pageant. Her encounter with Jenna at the giraffe party opened some inner sluice of her conscience, and her acting became abysmal almost overnight. She told Dreama: «It's like the part of my brain that used to allow me to do an okay acting job got all warped. It's merging with the part of my brain that makes up lies. I can just
feel
it. I get a simple line like, “Mom, I'm going to volleyball practice,” and it sounds forced, like it's filled with all this innuendo. My retakes per episode are up like crazy. The network thinks I have a drug problem. The cast thinks fame is wrecking my head. And the thing is, Larry knows it's all because of Jenna and keeping our big lie going, and it's kind of turning him off. And that's freaking me out and making it even worse.»

Susan guested on
Love Boat.
She did a walk-on part in a James Bond movie. She was on the cover of
Seventeen
magazine. She had her wisdom teeth removed and discovered the Land of Painkillers. She mended the fence somewhat with Marilyn. Dreama also moved to Los Angeles and into Susan's apartment. Sex with Larry cooled considerably and, as Larry predicted, she grew older.

John sat beside his rescuer, Beth, in a security office adjacent to the private jet facility at Flagstaff's airport. Outside the wired-glass windows, in the warm gray air, hydro and aviation towers blinked rubies and diamonds. John was wearing clothes Beth had assembled from her husband's castoffs. His pale aqua shirt was crisply ironed and his skin was brown as if he were baking on the inside, like a bird just removed from the oven. His hair had been hacked off a few weeks before with a hunting knife in a Las Cruces, New Mexico, Shell station rest room. His eyes were clear and wide like a child's. Beth said to him, «I'm sorry about Jeanie and that tape. She's a wild one. I've never known what to do with her.»

«It doesn't matter.» said John.

Beth bought two weak coffees from a grumbling vending machine. «Here,» she said, «take one.»

«Oh — no thanks.»

«Go on.»

John held on to his coffee with the same unsureness he'd felt when holding a baby for the first time, Ivan and Nylla's daughter, MacKenzie. A fuel truck drove by in a mirage of octane. Beth said, «Your friends really have their own private jet, then?»

John nodded.

«Jeanie never would have done it if she hadn't found out about that jet.»

«It doesn't matter. Really. It doesn't.»

Beth's daughter, Jeanie, had sold the tape of John's naked climb from the ditch and the hour that followed to a local network affiliate. It would be a lead story on a nationally broadcast tabloid show the next night.

«What makes me mad,» said Beth, «is that she's going to use the money to pay for her boyfriend's car, not even her own. Dammit, she doesn't have to do
that.
Royce has a good job already.»

«Young people.»

«You said it.»

A shrillness called out from the black air, and John, staring at the floor, placed it as quickly as a dog recognizes the firing pattern of the cylinders in his master's engine. It was Ivan and the G3. John heard it land and then taxi. He heard the heavy metal staff doors opening, footsteps and voices: Ivan, Nylla, Doris and Melody.

«John-O?»

John stood up and tried to raise his head, but his eyes were too heavy. «John-O?» Ivan crouched down and looked up at John. «We're here, John-O.» But John couldn't speak or look up. The coffee dropped from his hand and the cheap plastic cup rattled on the floor. Nylla, Doris and Melody kissed him on the cheek and John could smell their perfumes, so kind and decent that he choked.

Ivan looked over at Beth, who was holding John's laundered clothes inside a paper grocery bag. «Are you … ?»

«Yes, I'm Beth.»

Ivan handed John over to Melody and Nylla. «Thank you for your …»

«It was nothing. But your friend here, he's in a bad way.»

Ivan handed Beth an envelope from which she pulled out a stack of hundreds. «Jeremy from my office got your address and numbers?»

«He did.»

There was nothing left to do but go out onto the tarmac and into the plane and head west. Beth said good-bye and hugged John, whose arms flailed out from him as if made from straw. The two younger women escorted John on each side up the stair ramp, and Ivan followed behind, a glen plaid jacket draped over his left arm. Soon they were up in the warm night sky, but John had yet to make eye contact with his old friends.

«Johnny,» said Melody, «can you hear me okay?»

John nodded.

«You're not on drugs are you, John?» asked Doris.

John shook his head.

Melody said, «Do you want a drink? Ivan, where's that whisky? Pour him a shot.» She held a crystal glass up to John's lips, but the taste triggered a convulsion. He felt as if his chest were being crushed by ten strong men.

«John,» said Nylla, crouching down beside him, «breathe. Breathe deeply.»

«What's going on?» asked Ivan.

«John,» Nylla continued, «please listen to me. You're having a panic attack. You're panicking because you're safe now. Your body's been waiting all this time until it felt safe enough to let go. And you're safe now. You're with your friends. Breathe.»

John's stomach felt as if it had been given a swift boot. Melody sat on the floor and held him from behind as he rocked. «Johnny? Where've you been? Johnny?»

John said nothing. He'd wanted those rocks and highways and clouds and winds and strip malls to scrape him clean. He'd wanted them to remove the spell of having to be John Johnson. He'd hoped that under a Panavision sky he'd wake up to find the deeper, quieter person who dreamed John Johnson into existence in the first place. But there was nothing any of them in the plane could say or do. They were just a few pieces of light themselves, up there in the night sky, and if they flew twenty miles straight up, they'd be in outer space. It was a quick flight and soon they were back at the airport in Santa Monica, and they drove into town.

John's old house and its James Bond contents had been sold to pay off the IRS. With his royalties caught in a legal snag, he was cashless. As though traveling back in time, John returned to his old bedroom in the guesthouse. Doris was now a living, breathing
mille-feuille
of ethnic caftans and clattering beads. During his first few weeks home he tried to give the impression that all was fine with him, like a defeated nation embracing the culture of its conqueror. Each day he wore a suit and tie from a selection Melody bought for him. He went without drugs. To see him on the street one would think he was swell, but inside he felt congealed and infected. He felt as if he were soiling whatever he touched, leaving a black stain that not even a fire could remove. He felt as if people could see him as the fraud he knew he was. His skin was sunburned, his hair had grayed, and sunlight now hurt his milk blue eyes, which he was unable to look at in the mirror, as if it could only bring bad news.

He tried finding shaded cafeterias in the drabber parts of Los Angeles, where there was no possibility of encountering old acquaintances. He occasionally spotted geriatric scriptwriters from the DesiLu and Screen Gems era beached like walruses in banquette seats eating Cobb salads, but he never made contact. John would sit and read the daily papers, but they held the same sterile appeal of grossly outdated magazines in a dental office reception area. He wanted to go home, but once he got there, he felt like a bigger misfit than he did out in the city. He tried but couldn't think of any single
thing
that might make him feel better.

A few months passed, and nothing within him seemed to change. Then without at first being aware of it, he one day realized he was taking a measure of comfort in following a rigid schedule. He quickly developed a notion that he might just be able to squeak through if he could keep his days fastidiously identical. He told this to Ivan, who then lured John back to the production offices with the absurd promise that his days would be «utterly unsurprising.» Both Ivan and Nylla were at wits' end as to how they might reintegrate John back into L.A.
Mega Force
finished while John was away, was scheduled for release, and there was no doubt that it was going to hit big. Test screenings in Glendale and Oxnard evoked memories of the old days of
Bel Air PI
— yet to John it was nothing, not a flash of interest.

Among industry people John was considered a mutant. Consensus had been reached that he really
had
been out crossing the country on some sort of doomed search. This made him seem charmed in an interesting but don't-get-too-close way. In a deeply superstitious environment, John was bad and good luck at the same time. If people wanted to do business, they went to Ivan. If they wanted a bit of gossip to pass along at the dinner table, they popped their heads into John's office.

Around Doris, John felt like a burden. She'd come to enjoy her privacy and unaccountability over the years. While she was patient with John, he couldn't help but feel like an anchor roped around her waist — and yet the thought of being alone in a place of his own was inconceivable. Ultimately, beneath Doris's
Darling!
-rich exterior John also sensed a veiled hostility — and he couldn't quite identify its root.

Until one night, just after John had returned home from the offices of Equator Pictures — six fifty-five, in time for the news on TV — Doris came through the door in a filthy mood. Her car had been broken into during her lunch with a friend at Kate Mantilini, and her favorite dress, just back from the cleaners, was stolen, along with a sentimental cameo brooch she kept in the dashboard's beverage caddie. She cut her fingers removing the pile of shattered glass strewn about the driver's seat, and she'd driven to Bullock's to meet another friend. There she realized, after waiting in a long lineup, that her credit cards and ID had also been swiped. She worried she was getting Alzheimer's because she hadn't noticed sooner. She had a fit, and during an angry drive to the police station, ran a red light, receiving both a ticket and a scolding from a traffic cop. She was mutinous.

«Oh
God
, do I need a drink,» she blurted as she scrambled for the liquor cabinet. «Want one?» John said no. «You don't have to be such a
priss
about not having a drink, John.»

«I'm — not — drinking — these — days,» he said in precisely metered tones.

«Aren't
you
a saint.»

Out the side of his vision, John watched Doris pour a Cinzano, gulp it down, pour another, this time with a lemon zest, gulp
it
down, and then in a more relaxed state, pour a third. He wondered what was going on with her, but he didn't want to miss the news.

Doris was looking across the room at John, his posture self-consciously erect, sitting on a stool watching reports from some war-torn ex-Soviet province. It was like he was six and sick again, trying to be a good little boy. The emotions she'd been feeling about her crappy day did a 180, and without warning, her heart flew back to the New York of decades ago when John was the child who didn't want to be sick or a burden.

The shutters were drawn, but late afternoon sun treacled in through the chinks. Doris had the sensation that the hot yellow air would feel like warm gelatin against her body were she to venture outside. She sighed, and suddenly she didn't want to drink anymore. She felt chilly and old. She wanted to slap John. She wanted to hold him, and she wanted to chide him for his recklessness and to tell him how much she wished that she'd been out there with him, out in the flats and washes and foothills and gorges, begging God, or Nature or even the sun to erase the burden of memories, and the feeling of having lived a life that felt far too long, even at the beginning. She called to him, «John …»

He looked around. «Yeah, Ma?»

«John …» She tried to find words. John pushed theMUTE button. «John, when you were away — out on your jaunt a few months ago, did you …»

«Did I what, Ma?»

«Did you find …» Again, she stopped there.

«What, Ma? Ask me.»

Doris wouldn't continue.

«What
is
it, Mom?» John was now alarmed.

And then it just flooded right out of her, in a rush: «Didn't you find even
one
goddam
thing
out there during the stint away? Anything?
Anything
you could tell me and make me feel like there was at least one little reason, however subtle, that would repay me for having been sick with fear all those nights you were gone?»

Doris saw John open his eyes wide, religiously. She immediately felt queasy for having been so vulgar, and apologized, though John said there was no need for it. But John knew his mother was mad at him because he was still seemingly unchanged at thirty-seven, because he was still alone and because she'd pretty much surrendered hope that he would ever acclimate, marry and procreate like the sons of women in her reading group.

«It's my back,» said Doris, thumping the base of her spine as though it were a misbehaving appliance. «It hurts like stink and I have the one Beverly Hills doctor who doesn't like to overprescribe for his patients.»

«It's still that bad?»

«As ever.»

«I thought you were trying a new — »

«It's not working.»

«Can't you go to another doctor? Get more pills?»

«I could. But I won't. Not now. I'd feel so — I don't know,
slutty
, openly hunting for drugs like that. And Dr. Christensen knows my life story. I'm in no mood to start from scratch with someone new.»

«So you'd rather be in pain?»

«For the time being? Yes.»

Her temper was brushed over. When the CNN news ended, John had an idea. He went into his room and looked through his old address book. All these numbers and names and not a friend in the lot. John wondered why it is people lose the ability to make friends somewhere around the time they buy their first expensive piece of furniture. It wasn't a fixed law, but it seemed to be an accurate-enough gauge.

He flipped through pages of numbers and memories and meetings and sexual encounters and deals and washed cars and flights booked Alitalia and Virgin, and tennis games catered — a small stadium's worth of people who would find John Johnson whatever he needed.

He removed his working clothes and shed them into a pile in the corner. He was sick of being Mr. Corporate Office Guy. He rooted about his cupboard and found some old clothes Doris hadn't thrown out — old mismatched shirts and pants used for painting the kitchen drawers and for yard work. Every day was now going to be casual Friday for John.

He returned to his old address book. In it he located the name of Jerr-Bear, a child actor of the
Partridge Family
era who as a grown-up had gone terribly skank, dressed in the homeless version of Milan's latest offerings, with matted hair that smelled like a barn. John tried to remember Jerr-Bear's full name and couldn't, yet he fully remembered Jerr-Bear's portrayal of the loyal son on a long-vanished cop show.

Jerr-Bear may have gone skank, but the goods he carried were the finest. John looked in his bedside table and found eighteen hundred dollars remaining from a five-grand float Ivan gave him for the month. It was all in twenties and looked sleazy sitting in a heap the way it did. He dialed Jerr-Bear, and against the odds, Jerr-Bear answered.