The Hollywood Trilogy (4 page)

That's the way it was, and I can understand how Jim thinks of it as the best night of his life, although at some point during the early morning hours Dotty McCarty slipped off (or was kidnapped, what did I care?) and I saw her no more, not that I gave a damn about her, but Forni was pretty sarcastic all the way back to my neighborhood, and for that matter it wasn't pleasant to have on all those fine duds and end up alone. But hell.

I DROVE from Sonoma Mountain to Hollywood on a Monday, eating my way south as usual, pancakes with raspberry syrup, fried eggs O.M. with fried potatoes and bacon, rye toast with apple butter, always an eightpack of Coca-Cola on the floor of the car for me to uncork, draw off about half and put the bottle between my legs, five or six handrolled joints in my shirt pocket, a little bottle of cocaine underneath the rug next to the eightpack just in case I got sleepy; B.L.T. on toasted white bread with tall glasses of milk and french fries, lots of french fries, sometimes stopping at a McDonald's for a couple of big orders of french fries because McDonald's makes the best, but not ordering anything else because nothing else measures up to the fries; vanilla milkshakes, orders of fried clams, and when I stop at the gas stations to fill the tank I have to spend a little time getting the grease off the steering wheel, a little coke on my lip and away we go, up through the long hot run of the San Fernando Valley with the floor of the car awash in Coke bottles clinking against the unused seatbelts, hot, sick, stoned and tired, sticky and smelly, glad to make the turnoff at
LAUREL CYN
and whip up over the hill to Hollywood, the hotel, a quick checkin and up to my apartment and the icecold shower I had been dreaming about for the last couple of hours, with the window open in the bathroom so I could look down Sunset Boulevard toward downtown L.A. in the reddish twilight as I soaped the trip off my body.

But it was all a waste of time. I was sitting in the living room with a big white hotel towel around my middle, watching “I Love Lucy” on the color
television set when the phone rang. It was Karl, our producer, and as usual he was in a state of panic, although he never liked anybody to know he was in a state of panic. We talked about this and that for a while, and then he said, “Jim's not here.”

“He'll show up,” I said.

“This is not the same,” Karl said, making reference to the fact that Jim is never on time anywhere. But he wasn't exactly late. I always show up a few days early to get some of the garbage out of the way before we really start shooting the picture, like reading the script, going for fittings, etc., but Jim would just show up finally one day, take a look at his pages and step into the lights. This drove nearly everybody crazy, especially Karl. Right now he was telling me in his soft, well-mannered Ivy League voice that this time was different, Jim wasn't any of the places he usually was, he was really missing, and Karl wondered if I had heard from him or knew where he might be.

I had made it clear a long time ago that I would not be responsible for Jim, and he would not be responsible to me, and so I said no and told Karl not to worry. Then he wanted to take me to dinner at Ray Stark's house, and I begged off because I was tired, and then he offered to introduce me to a girl, an actress friend of his who happened to be staying at the hotel, and I begged off that, too, although I wouldn't have minded, but I tried not to take favors from Karl, and again I told him I was very tired and would see him on the lot tomorrow, and finally got off the phone. “I Love Lucy” was just getting rolling when the phone rang again, this time Karl's gopher, telling me that my appointment with Karl would be at ten-fifteen at his office, if that suited my convenience, and I said it did, and hung up the phone, walked down to the lobby to the Coke machine and got a couple of Cokes, passed a little time with the desk clerk, when he said, “You got a call, why don't you take it over in the booth,” and I said, “Maybe I'm not here,” and he said, “I think you want this one,” so I went to the little phone booth across the lobby and picked up the phone:

“Hello,” said Jim.

“Hello,” I said back to him. I waited. There was a little crackling on the line. Long Distance.

“Where are you?” I finally asked him.

“I'm up at your place,” he said. “On the mountain.”

“That's funny,” I said. “I'm down here in Hollywood.”

“I know.”

I waited. More crackling. Finally I said, “How's everybody up there?”

“Just fine,” he said. “All but me.”

I made noises like a violin but he broke in:

“Hey can you come up? I want to talk.” After a little pause, he said, “I really feel bad, man.”

“It's okay,” I said.

“Oh, shit, I'll come down there. I'm acting like a goddamn baby.”

“No, it's okay, let me come up there . . .”

So it was all a waste of time, me driving down alone. Every year it's something.

WHEN I flew back to the ranch all my relatives except Grandpa had pulled out. Whether from some kind of Okie delicacy or just because they all wanted to go to Laguna Seca and watch the automobile races, I don't know, but when the taxi pulled up at last in front of the ranchhouse there were unfinished projects everywhere in sight, piles of sheetrock, bags of cement and an old broken-down cement mixer from some previous tenant, a couple of the cars opened and spread about in mid-operation, several cans of paint and brushes left to soak. My relatives could rush into the middle of a project faster than anybody I ever saw, but then the pace would get leisurely, consultations would begin, and after a while everybody would be up on the porch in the shade of the house, sitting on the cushioned redwood outdoor furniture or on kitchen chairs dragged outside and brought back in at supper time, smoking and talking about their various projects. Grandpa alone failed to join these afternoon board of directors meetings. He spent most of his time out in the heat, cultivating the ground to get it ready for a second crop, having missed the first crop because I was up here alone at planting time and didn't plant anything. Grandpa went ahead and planted, after he had conditioned the soil, and then of course the rest of the summer would be spent in warfare. But usually I only heard about these things over the telephone, when Cousin Harold or somebody else would answer the phone (most of my relatives, including Grandpa, didn't like telephones), and so coming back like this, only two days gone and yet so much changed, was a little bit of a shock.

I paid off the cab driver and watched him bobble and slide his cab down
the rock road until he was out of sight among the trees, and then turned and walked up onto the porch. There were all the chairs out from storage under the porch, the cushions already puffed and shaped to the behinds of the sitters. I looked around. Everything seemed dead, except for the chairs and the open French doors to the living room. Down in the orchard I could see Grandpa doing something at one of the trees, and I waved and yelled, but I don't think he heard me because he just kept on doing whatever he was doing.

I went in through the doors and into the kitchen, hoping to find something to eat. Jim was there, wearing an apron and huaraches and a pair of jeans, washing some dishes.

“I don't think I ever saw you doing dishes before,” I said.

“Hello, Ogle,” he said. “Everybody went to Laguna Seca for the races. They'll be back in a day or two.”

“I don't miss them,” I said.

“Neither do I,” Jim said.

I poured myself a cup of coffee, Grandpa's coffee, took a sip and sat back. “What was for breakfast?” I asked.

“Oatmeal pancakes,” Jim said. He kept doing the dishes. “All gone, though. Sorry.”

“Another time,” I said.

“I could call Grandpa in,” Jim said. “He'd probably be glad to fix you a stack.”

“I doubt if you could get him to do it,” I said. “Does he know you're back?”

“I yelled at him.”

Jim kept doing the dishes. He looked all right. I went out on the porch and sat in the sun, and after a while Jim came out with a cup of coffee and sat on the rail, looking down into the frog pond.

“This is nice up here,” he said. “What do you do all winter?”

“Jerk off and read,” I said. Knowing Jim, I knew he would get around to it after a while, or not. There was no prying at him, that's what most of the people who deal with him learn right away, don't push Jim.

“I don't blame you for liking this place,” he said. “But don't you get lonely all alone in the winter? What do you do for pussy?”

“I go to town, just like everybody else,” I said.

Jim took out a little gram bottle of coke, shook some out onto a fingertip and snorted it. He passed the bottle to me, and I snorted some, too.

“I haven't been to sleep in a few days,” Jim said.

“Why not drink a fifth of whiskey? Put you right out.”

“I tried booze, but all that happened was I got boozy and coky instead of just coky. Had some pretty bizarre fantasies. Let's walk down and see what Grandpa's doing.”

“You better put on a shirt,” I said.

We walked down to the orchard. Grandpa, wearing overalls and an old striped polo shirt of mine and a straw hat he'd had for at least ten years, was inspecting the trees. We said hello and kissed and he told me that my trees were going to rack and ruin, and that it was hopeless. I said I didn't care, and he told me I was a damned idiot for wasting fruit trees. I said he could have them and he grunted, which I took for a laugh, and, treating us like boys, shooed us away: “Go on, now, I'm
working!
” and me and Jim got out of the orchard.

“Have you ever seen the spring?” I asked Jim. He hadn't, so I took him across the drive to the edge of the woods where there was a big apple tree with a rock spring almost between its roots. A long time ago somebody had sunk a half barrel down around the spring, with a barrel cover, so that after lifting off the rocks put there, and taking up the cover, you had about two feet of icy cold spring water, even in the hottest summertime. We cupped our hands and drank, and then sat back in the shade of the tree. Everything was bright green where the spring leaked out and went back underground. The birds had pretty well stopped singing for the day, and the insects had taken over; they would go at it until about noon, and then everything would shut up, and all that might happen would be a hawk or vulture cruising overhead on the thermals. You can't tell me they're hunting, at that time of day. Nothing's moving at noon for them to hunt. I think they're just fucking around up there, staying out of the heat. I told this to Jim and he laughed and we had some more coke.

“I'm going crazy,” Jim said after a while. “And it's no fun at all.”