The Hollywood Trilogy (12 page)

Dressed.

“What are you doing?” she asked me.

Now, here was a place where I could have used some advice. Maybe what I should have said was, “Changing my socks,” or “Just want my feet to breathe a little.” Something diplomatic.

But what I said was, “Putting on my birthday suit.”

She laughed, grabbed one of the joints and went outside. I finished taking off my other shoe and both socks and went out there barefoot to see if there was any way, any way at all, I could get the magic back.

SHE SAID, “I wish I'd brought my dog. I didn't know they let you keep your dog here.”

“That's what the hotel is famous for,” I said.

She was looking down at the little curved street that moved up from Sunset to the entrance of the hotel and around behind. “I can see somebody down there now with their dog,” she said.

“What kind of dog do you have?” I asked her. “I love dogs.”

“Oh, just a little rabbit dog, a beagle,” she said. “What's his name?”

“Pepper,” she said.

“I was sitting out on the steps of the hotel one morning waiting for the limo to take me to the lot when this car came squealing out around the hotel and the guy behind the wheel threw a bagful of dog turds at me.”

She gave me a strange look.

“Well, I guess he was really throwing the bag at the hotel,” I said, “but I was the one sitting there.”

“That's a weird story,” she said, “but I can understand how he might do that, you know, people walking their dogs in front of your house and letting them crap on your lawn.”

This conversation was careening off the track. “Pepper, huh?” I said. “Sounds like a cute little guy.”

“He's the third or fourth Pepper we've had. My daddy takes them out rabbit hunting and gets drunk and excited and shoots the dog instead.”

“Your daddy sounds like an interesting man,” I said.

“Oh, Daddy loves to hunt rabbits. He says you can learn more hunting rabbits than you can going to college.”

“Did you go to college?” I asked.

“No, and I didn't hunt no rabbits, either. They sent me to the New York City Ballet troupe when I was eleven, and after that drove me crazy I did underwear modeling until I had a nervous breakdown, then I went back to Texas and realized I hat'nt had a nervous breakdown at all, it was just New York. But no matter what, I like it better'n Texas.”

She started talking about Texas and her daddy and her uncles, nothing big or important, just little conversational items about her family, leaning back with the sun hitting her face, relaxing; and I nodded and said uh-huh and picked at my toenails. Just a quiet day in L.A. My palms were dry again and I felt good. She seemed to have forgotten my stupid remark, in fact, she seemed to have forgotten we were supposed to be heading for the beach and Karl's house, just relaxed and beautiful.

“Oh, look,” she said. “A butterfly way up here.” She was pointing at a big yellow and black butterfly who was fooling around the jade plant the hotel had growing out of a big cement pot on the terrace.

“Aren't they
beautiful?
” I said.

She went on to talk about her life as a teenage model in New York and made me laugh a couple of times, not just to get her in the mood, but real laughs, this girl was pretty funny. The mood was coming back, everything was going to be all right.

Except for that goddamn butterfly, who had managed to get caught in the web of a spider under the overhang of the building right above the French
doors, now open, that led to my bedroom. While she talked about life in Manhattan I sat still, praying she wouldn't turn around to see the spider rush out of his hole and grab the butterfly.

Maybe it went something like this:

       
BUTTERFLY
: Oh, help, help!

       
SPIDER:
I'm coming, I'm coming!

       
BUTTERFLY
: Oh, help!

       
SPIDER:
Here, let me give you some medication. There, does that feel better?

       
BUTTERFLY:
Oh, thank you. I feel sleepy now.

       
SPIDER:
Here, let me fold those wings of yours, you must be tired.

       
BUTTERFLY:
Oh, so sleepy . . .

       
SPIDER:
Let me just drag you here into the shade . . .

While all this was going on over my head, Sonny talked about herself and never noticed. I alternated between her face and the dinner show overhead. When the spider had finally folded the butterfly into a handy package and hauled it out of sight, I was sitting almost at her feet, listening rapt.

It was up to her to touch me, she knew what we were there for, and I was plenty close enough to touch, but she didn't touch me.

“Your hair,” I heard myself say. I reached out and touched her hair. She turned toward me. There was no expression on her face, her mouth a little open, her eyes looking right into mine, eyes like blue opals, and I pulled her to me and kissed her.

First kiss.

Soft little mouth, I put my tongue into it and felt her shiver all over, and then my hand slipped and I fell on my knee beside her loungechair.

“
Ouch
, godd
amn
it!” I said. My knee really
hurt
. I stood up and she started to laugh and then saw the pain in my face.

“Oh, you
hurt
yourself,” she said. “I'll run get something for it.” She came out in a couple of minutes with a coldsoaked washrag. I was limping around the terrace cursing and crying.

“Here, sit down,” she said.

I sat and pulled up my pantleg to where I had skinned my knee, and she pressed the cold washrag against it.

“Oh,” I said, “that feels good.”

“Do you have any iodine?” she asked me.

“I hope not,” I said.

She was looking at me like I was a wounded Boy Scout and she was the nurse at school. I was not crazy about this, and hopped after her, through the bedroom and into the bathroom. The sun was streaming in the open window over the shower and bouncing off the white towels racked everywhere, making her glow. She had the cabinet over the sink open and was going through my shaving kit.

“I ain't got no iodine,” I said.

“It's okay,” she said, “I have some down at my place. It'll only take me a sec to run downstairs and get it. You don't want an infection.”

She started past me and I grabbed her by the arm. “What's all this concern for my health?” I asked, and kissed her on the mouth, hard. This time I could feel her whole body tense up in resistance, and for some reason this pissed me off. The case was closed, we were going to fuck, skinned knee or no skinned knee, and I didn't care if it was in the bedroom or the bathroom, just as long as we got into it and over it.

She pulled away a few times but I just grabbed her some more and kept kissing her, and let my body sag so that we were both pulled down to the tile—it was the elevator dream all over again, only real this time, and cold, and angry, I don't know what got me so angry. While I was kissing I was also grabbing at her body, and she was trying to get me off her, grunting from the effort and talking whenever she could get her mouth free.

Finally she scraped her fingernail across my knee and made me howl, and then jumped back, into the bathtub.

“What the hell's the matter with you?” she asked me.

I got up and went after her. She tried to get around me, her eyes wild but not frightened, and I grabbed her and turned her around so that I was pressing up against her ass and that head of hair was crushed against my face. I could smell it, woman-smell, the first womansmell we all go crazy for as kids, clean hair and plenty of it, one arm around her waist and the other on her tits.

“goddamn you,” she said, “You can't just up and fuck me . . .”

“Why not?” I asked her, and pulled her into the bedroom.

We didn't get as far as the bed, though. I started unzippering her jeans and had them down around her knees when we toppled over and hit the carpet, but even scraping my bleeding knee on the pile didn't stop me, I pulled her
plaid shirt open, she didn't have anything on underneath, and her tits just sprung out at me. She was talking in grunts this whole time but I wasn't listening. I pulled down her underpants, ripping them a little, and then turned her over on her back and held her down with one arm around her while I pulled off my own pants.

“You can't . . .
do
this!”

“Like hell I can't,” I said in an amazingly normal voice.

I stuck my cock deep into her, no hesitation bumps, just one long diving thrust to the bottom.

She was moist and tight and perfect heaven. She gave a long groan as I went into her, and then not a sound. I had her rammed up against the wall between the bed and the closet door, one leg up over my head and the other, with the jeans and torn underpants still on it, tucked under my arm.

“Oh, hell, you're right,” I said, and I pulled out of her and got to my feet.

I was panting like I'd run up ten flights of stairs. She was still crammed up against the wall, her legs apart, her mouth open, her eyes on me.

She looked a little disappointed.

I went into the kitchen and popped open a beer.

“You want a beer?” I called to her. No answer. I drained off about half and went back into the bedroom. She was in almost the same position. I could hardly pretend not to be interested since my cock was dancing around in front of me, so I just stood there, sipping at my beer, while she got to her feet and pulled up her pants.

“That wasn't very nice,” she said at last.

“I guess you're right,” I said. I felt okay, and she didn't seem any the worse for wear. I sat on the edge of the bed and watched her finish dressing.

When she turned around from combing her hair in the mirror I stood up and started to tremble. “Texas bitch,” I said, and we came together, touched and disappeared.

WE DIDN'T really disappear, it just felt that way. The next thing I knew everything was coming back into focus and I was lying next to the most beautiful creature I had ever seen. I won't describe the way we made love, there's only a limited number of choices after all, but what we did glowed
and seemed brand-new, our experiment, our invention. Naturally, people have been inventing these sweet pastimes since the beginning and thinking they were unique. Is this love? Who knows?

But it sure felt good, and I wanted more, lots more. I didn't know how Sonny felt because I never know how other people feel, but she looked all rosy and clung to me and seemed to radiate hot love for me all the time we were in that room, and I wish we could have stayed there together forever, because nothing is ever the same.