Naked in LA (15 page)

The Formosa near Santa Monica and La Brea wasn’t much from the outside and not that much better on the inside. It had a black and white metal awning and a logo that looked like Chinese chopsticks. But the celebrity clientele didn’t go there for the chicken chow mein but for the convenience; it was right across the road from Warner Studios.

When I walked in, Sinatra was having lunch with a couple of Warner executives. He even acknowledged me with the faintest of smiles as I walked past.

“Nice car,” he said.

“Thanks.”

My agent, Ted Levine, was waiting for me in one of the red leather booths, dimly lit with red-tasselled Chinese lanterns. “Do you want lunch?” he said.

“I’ve eaten.”

“Great, because the food here is not good.” He ordered himself a whisky sour and a
mojito
for me.

“I got some good news, Maddy.” he said.

I hated him calling me that. I even flirted with the idea of calling him “Teddy.”

“I got you an audition for a movie called
Wings of Eagles
.”

“A war movie?”

“It’s going to star Steve McQueen. You’ve heard of him, right? He’s going to be the next big thing. And you’re not just getting a few lines. This is a supporting role.”

I tried not to look too impressed; it was the one thing Reyes had taught me about Hollywood: no matter what anyone said, always make a face like you were being cheated at poker.

“You think I should take it?”

Ted shook his head. “Jesus H. Christ, I got a hundred actresses who would die for this part.”

“So you think I
should
take it.”

“I think, you get this role, get some good reviews, I can make you a big time star, Maddy.”

I made a face like he was cheating me at poker.

“I mean it.”

“Let’s get the part first, Teddy.” He raised his whisky sour in a toast and I smiled but I didn’t pick up my own glass. I needed a drink but I could feel my hands trembling under the table and I knew I would spill it over my new André Courrèges skirt.

It was all happening so fast. My dreams were coming true, it was so close I could almost smell it.

Metro’s studios were over in Culver City, and this was where Levine had arranged for me to meet with John Huston and the movie’s producer, Artie Ranzen.

Ted didn’t seem to know much about the script, but I’d seen McQueen in
The Magnificent Seven
, and he had a lot of sex appeal. So I figured they were looking for a woman with the same attributes and I dressed the part; a mini skirt, a low blouse and Mary Quant boots.

When they saw me, Huston stared at me open-mouthed; Ranzen put his head in his hands. Clearly something was wrong and I hadn’t even read a word for them.

Huston gave me a page of the script, and I was so unnerved by their reaction I made a hash of it. When I’d finished the reading, Huston leaned forward and said: “You do know, Miss Montes, that you’re going to be playing a nun?”

I tugged at the neck of my blouse, but once men have seen your breasts, covering them up again doesn’t win you back lost ground. “I guess it’s good I didn’t wear my suspenders,” I said.

Huston grimaced. “Your agent didn’t tell you?”

But I must have done something right. They called me back for a screen test. I got the part.

Ted Levine’s house was perched high in the Hollywood Hills. It was vast and it was tasteless, a sprawling statement in glass and concrete, all sharp angles and stunning views. The garden was mostly sterile rock, so there were no Filipino gardeners watering grass or raking leaves when I arrived.

I tried not to appear awestruck as I walked in. Even though I was on my fourth picture, I still felt intimidated rubbing shoulders with Warren Beatty and Robert Mitchum, or standing by the pool bar with Montgomery Clift.

Natalie Wood and Kim Novak were dancing by the pool to a Chubby Checker song. Then someone started singing “Things.” It was Bobby Darin himself; he’d found a microphone and was singing over the top of his own recording. Sammy Davis Junior put an arm around his shoulder and joined in.

The party had been going for a few hours and it was already starting to get a little wild; half a dozen girls had peeled off their bikinis and were squealing naked in the Jacuzzi. When I went to the bathroom I found a B list actor doing lines of cocaine on the marble washstand. Part of me got a thrill out of it; another part, the one that was brought up a good Catholic and wore a mantilla veil to Mass at the San Cristobal, was scared and shocked.

I wished Reyes were there. Was I his girlfriend or not? I didn’t know.

I had four offers of sex, three from guys (one of them reasonably famous), and one from a woman. They all took their polite rejections pretty well, except the woman, who told me in a loud voice to go fuck myself then.

I found out later she was the wife of a well-known film producer. Ted was horrified when I told him. “Would it have hurt to sleep with her?” he hissed at me, after his fifth martini. “It could have helped your career.”

“Hi,” someone said, and I turned around. I recognized the man straight away. He was the British actor Peter Lawford, one of the famous Rat Pack. He had married the President’s sister, and Sinatra had famously nicknamed him “Brother in Lawford.”

“Hi.”

“My name’s Peter,” he said and held out his left hand. I remembered reading that he had injured his right arm very badly as a teenager. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

I was afraid he was going to come on to me as well, but it seemed he just wanted to ask me questions about my latest project. He asked me where I was from and seemed fascinated to learn that I was from Havana. I told him I was a great admirer of the President and his brother and the stand they had taken against Castro.

“Then you should meet them,” he said.

“I would love to.”

“Occasionally we have parties at our beach house,” he said. “I’ll make sure you’re invited.”

I thought no more about it. I left the party early, and as I drove back down the winding canyon I turned on the radio and listened to Ray Charles sing “You Don’t Know Me.” I thought about Reyes. I wondered where he was, and if he was thinking of me, and what parties he had been invited to, wherever he was in the world.

A couple of days later he sent me a telegram asking me to pick him up at the airport. He was coming home.

It is always the same dream; I am sitting at the kitchen table staring at a loaf of stale bread. The milk I forgot to put back in the refrigerator is now rancid. I have to scrape a jar of peanut jelly with a spoon just to get enough to spread a thin film on the hard bread. There is an envelope lying on the Formica table that I am too terrified to open. Even when the limousine picked me up in the morning to take me to the studio, that same cold dread was there, deep in the pit of my stomach, like cold fat.

The world was a dreadful place. I vowed I would never be poor again.

I stood in the arrivals hall waiting for a man I had known for five years yet hardly knew at all. I had his car but not even a letter for six months. I could feel Papi standing behind me, shaking his head. “What are you doing,
cariña
? What did I tell you about this man?”

Someone came up and asked me for my autograph. I figured they thought I was Jayne Russell. But they actually knew my name.

My life was getting stranger by the day. When the year started, I was living in a motel and staring through threadbare curtains at an empty swimming pool. Now I was living in Hollywood and waiting to meet the man of my dreams, in many more ways than one.

And there he was.

He loped through Customs, looking brown, lean and tired. The flight was direct from Hong Kong. It didn’t mean he had been there all this time, or if he had been there at all, except to change planes. What should I do? I wondered. Do I run up to him and throw my arms around him, or do I shake his hand and hand him back the car keys and take a cab home?

Which one of these?

I remembered how he had kissed me before he left, but that was months ago.

“How’s my car?” he said when he saw me. Then he saw the look on my face and scooped me up, grinning. “Good to see you again, princess.”

“It’s good to see you.”

And then he kissed me again, just as he had done months before, and took my breath away all over again.