You Can Say You Knew Me When (40 page)

“Who cares if they get famous?” She puffed away. “Next job I get will be working for women. Not gay men who think they’re in touch with femininity but are just as sexist as straight guys.” She shot me a look. “No offense.”

“Guilty as charged,” I said, thinking of the woman in Venice—how the
bitch
I’d tossed at her had soured the air.

Colleen went to the bathroom to flush her cigarette. When she returned, she said, “So let’s get the hell out of here.”

“How about dinner? I’m starving.”

“No, I mean let’s go home.” She must have seen me deflate. “How did your interview go?”

“Nothing yet.”

“We can’t stay here. They’re paying for the room.”

“It’s paid through tomorrow, right?”

“Yes. But they’ll be here any minute to raise hell.”

We decided to go out on the town, get dinner and drinks, stay up late enough to avoid the fashionistas. Colleen broke out her credit card, and we grew tipsy and bold, making extravagant plans for the next step in her career (designing her own line, starting her own business) and mine (documenting her new venture for a radio segment, maybe even for a film: the birth of the next hot designer). It was the giddiest fun we’d had in months, though there was something vaguely histrionic about our conversation. We were trying too hard. Under the surface, our separate pressures were barely held at bay.

“Wanna go for a ride?” I asked her.

“Where to?”

“North Hollywood.”

We piled back in her car and bought a new map at a gas station. I found Dean Foster’s street and navigated us in that direction. We cruised the block twice before I settled on which house was his—the one masked by an overgrown front lawn, a couple of wild palms and a row of flowering bushes that bore the sign of long-ago landscaping abandoned to the elements. A Spanish roof, its curved terra-cotta tiles cracked and missing in places, peeked above the fronds. Only one light shone, at the foot of the driveway, its bulb aimed toward a sign:
BEWARE OF DOG
.

“He’s not exactly sending out a welcome,” Colleen said.

“I should just go ring the bell now,” I said.

“Jamie, it’s midnight.”

“Right.” But I continued to imagine it. The knock on the door. The surprise.

“So are you going to tell me who this guy is?” she asked.

I took a deep breath. It was time to tell her. “Remember that box I brought back from New Jersey? The guy in the head shot, my father’s old friend?”

Back at the hotel room, the message light on our phone sent out rapid red blinks. The automated voice announced, “You have six new messages.”

“I think these are probably for you,” I told Colleen. She took the phone, frowning through a series of emergency requests from Up and Down, who, of course, couldn’t do half of what had to be done without her. As she erased the final message, the phone rang again. “They’ll keep calling until I answer,” she said with a groan.

“Let me.” I grabbed the receiver. “Hello?”

“This is Dean Foster.”

“Oh.” I flashed wide eyes at Colleen, pointed to my chest. “This is Jamie Garner. Thanks for calling back.”

“What’s this all about?”

I scrambled to compose myself. “I’m in LA—.”

“You work in show business?”

“No. I got your name from your agent—.”

“So you’re in publishing?”

I remembered his outgoing message addressed to
professional inquiries
. “I’m a radio producer in San Francisco. Mostly public radio.”

“That’s not show business, that’s government. I got no time for the government. I’m a busy man, lot of stuff in development.”

“Well, do you have any time to meet tomorrow?”

“What I’m saying, kid, is what’s in it for me?”

“Mr. Foster, I’ve done a little research on your career, watched some of your films, and I’d be interested in talking to you. You could call it research and development.” I paused, not wanting to pretend this was all business. “You do remember that we also have a family connection?”

A deliberative gust of breath pushed through the phone. “What hotel are you at?”

I gave him the name; yes, they have a bar, I assured him, and a restaurant.

“But I’d happily speak with you at your house.”

“No, no. The landscapers are coming.”

“I see. How about in the restaurant at noon?”

“Have a Bloody Mary waiting for me. Extra Tabasco.”

“You got it.”

“Ciao.”

I said good-bye, but he’d already hung up.

Colleen took the car to meet a friend for brunch. I put on a clean shirt, loaded my recorder in my backpack, and went down to the restaurant, where I grabbed a small table. I told the waiter I wanted a Bloody Mary to arrive when my companion showed up. I emphasized the extra Tabasco. His face took on the stultification reserved for problem customers.

I had nearly finished the Bloody Mary I’d ordered for myself when Dean walked in, a half-hour late.

He was Robbie the Greek plus twenty-five years and a few dozen pounds around the middle. His hair remained thick and black—too black; the curls twisting from the V-neck of his turquoise-blue sweater were more salt than pepper. I wouldn’t have been surprised if somewhere under his sweater and the high-waisted, cream-colored trousers was a girdle. He didn’t wear a gold medallion, but it would have fit the look.

I stood and waved. As he made his way over, I couldn’t help but wonder if his eyes were scrutinizing me behind his dark glasses; I remembered how Ray had been struck by my resemblance to Teddy. But Dean gave no such indication. We shook hands, exchanged names. I thanked him for his time.

“Where’s the waiter?” he asked gruffly, eyeing my glass of tomatoey melt-off.

“I’ve ordered one for you,” I said.

“I like them with extra Tabasco.” He scanned the room impatiently, without speaking, until the drink was placed in front of him.

“I’m so glad you agreed to meet me,” I began.

“Tell me about this radio show.” He was leaning forward on his elbows, his hands clasped. I noticed a pinky ring with a heavy, cobalt-blue stone.

I embellished, telling him about my past assignments and how I was gearing up for a return to radio, looking around for story ideas, most likely something on San Francisco history, as I’d been talking to people who had come of age in the forties and fifties.

“I was never in San Francisco,” he said. “Hollywood, that’s my turf.”

He adjusted his sunglasses. I noticed that their frames were the same shade of blue as the stone in his ring.

“I was under the impression that you’d visited San Francisco before you moved to LA? Back around 1960?”

“No way. Never liked that city.”

“There was something in one of my father’s letters, or journals, that made it sound like he went to San Francisco because you’d gone there first.”

At
my father,
his posture shifted. He glugged his drink without replying. Perhaps I was charging in too quickly. I shifted gears. “Tell me about your movie career.”

“I made pictures for twenty years. And got ripped off every step of the way.”

“You had great screen presence,” I said, mentioning the titles I’d seen, offering inflated praise. I asked him about his literary ambitions.

“I’ve been working on my memoirs for decades,” he said, his voice swelling, “but they’re so hot no one will touch them. I’ve got dirt on every mover and shaker in this town. You don’t spend your life in show biz and not learn a thing or two.”

“I would think there’d be a big market for gossip.”

“I’m not talking gossip,” he barked. “I’m talking scandal! I’m talking sensational stuff! They ran me out of town for it. I made five pictures in Italy before I came back.”

“What do you mean, ran you out of town?”

“And you’re damn right there’s a market for it. It’s just the gatekeepers you can’t get past.” He leaned in closer. “You talked to those shysters at Schwartz and Fields? Don’t believe anything they told you.”

“All they did was send an address.”

He leaned back, assessing. “You tell them you’re in radio?”

“Yes, but I don’t want to create a false impression, Mr. Ficchino. I think you know, from the letter I sent you—”

His forehead went white. “The name is Foster.”

“I’m sorry. Of course, my mistake.” I felt my skin heat up, and I spoke faster. “Actually, I brought my recorder today. I thought we might consider this a pre-interview.”

He crossed his arms. “You got a contract?”

“I’m not sure we need one. At this stage, this is mostly personal for me.”

“Order me another beverage,” he said. He sat with his arms folded, silently intimidating, while I placed the order, including another for myself even though I hadn’t eaten breakfast and was already buzzed from the first. After the waiter left, Dean opened his hands wide. “Who are you, kid?” he demanded. “What are you up to?”

“I’m Teddy Garner’s son. I want to know who he was. And I think you can help me.”

“That’s it? That’s your pitch?” He swelled with annoyance and, no doubt, with vodka; I heard in his voice the menace of
The Criminal Kick
. Two women at the next table paused their conversation to gawk at him. “You call me out of the blue, drag me from my house at a very busy time and expect me to take a fucking stroll down memory lane? You better try harder than that.”

“Okay, how about this: I want to know if you had sex with him.”

He fell back in his chair. The clatter of the dining room filled the vacuum. I was glad to see I’d unnerved him. I hadn’t come all this way to be bullied.

Through chugs of his cocktail he snarled, “You got balls, you know that?” He drained his second drink. The ice was still rattling in the bottom of the glass and already he was looking for the waiter. I had no idea what this place charged for a Bloody Mary.

I reached into my bag and pulled out the letter Teddy had written to Danny, the first one I’d found, stuck in the binding of that
10 Perfect Days
book. “He wrote this to you. For some reason he never sent it.”

He removed his glasses and cocked his head back to scan the page. “I recognize the scribble,” he said, with a glance at me. His eyes were rimmed by dark lashes and still held a hint of his youth beneath age-heavy lids. It was my first glimpse of the Dean Foster whose glamorous picture I’d been staring at for months. An almost weary gesture seized his upper torso. A sway of disbelief. “Jesus Christ. Rusty fuckin’ Garner.”

“I wouldn’t ask if you weren’t family.”

“Family? Don’t fucking insult me.” A gallows laugh, bitter. “Did my brother put you up to this?”

“Angelo? No, Angelo is—.” I stopped myself from completing the sentence, but he was waiting, clearly curious. “He passed away six years ago.”

A shadow fell on him, his eyes losing their furious spark, his lips bleeding of color. He put his glasses on again. I started an apology, but he held up his hand to shush me.

Over his shoulder I saw the waiter approaching. I couldn’t get away with putting this tab on Colleen’s room; she’d already checked out. Maybe I could put it on her bosses’ room; she probably wouldn’t mind sticking them with the bill.

Dean Foster pushed back his chair and stood up. “Without a contract I can’t talk to you,” he said.

The waiter asked, “All through?”

I looked desperately at Dean, who had risen to his feet. “Stay for another,” I pleaded.

He turned to the waiter and said at full volume, “This is the worst Bloody Mary in the whole fucking city. Weak and bland.”

The waiter stammered an apology that went ignored.

Dean’s eyes were on me now. “I don’t know what the hell you’re up to, kid, but I got nothing for you.
Nothin’.
You can take your nosy questions and your public radio and your friggin’ family, and stick it where the sun don’t shine.”

With that, he walked away, disappearing through the lobby and out the glass door, swallowed up in bright light. I called after him, to no avail.

The bewildered waiter was still hovering. “Sir?”

“I have to follow him,” I said, grabbing my backpack and hopping up from my seat. Something—the bag swinging in the air, my leg knocking against the table—jostled a glass and sucked it into my lap, flooding my groin in scarlet. He held out a napkin, but I backed away. “I can’t deal with this now.”

“What room shall I charge this to?”

I pulled a number out of the air—415, the SF area code—and hurriedly traced Dean’s path to the street. Air conditioning gave way to the asphalt’s chafing heat. I felt the cold spill soak through to my underwear. The sidewalk was cluttered with porters loading luggage in the hotel’s curved driveway while patrons on phones stood idly by. Dean couldn’t have gotten far, but I saw no sign of him. I didn’t know where he would have parked, what his car looked like. I rushed to the nearest intersection, looking in every direction but finding nothing.

I couldn’t believe how badly this had gone. But it was about to get worse: When I gazed back at the hotel—a three-story hotel, no fourth floor, no room 415—I saw the waiter pressing through the front door, a security guard at his side, their heads swiveling like predators.

I saw myself return to them, apologize, explain the situation.
I gave you the wrong room number? An honest mistake. Here, why don’t I pay cash?

I saw all this unfold, but I had already reacted, I was already sprinting away at full speed, controlled by an impulse that said,
You don’t owe them nothin’.

A fugitive dash through oncoming traffic, brakes squealing nearby, angry horns punctuating my every step. I looked over my shoulder, saw the security guard in pursuit. The recorder in my backpack banged against my spine. I cut onto a side street lined with dappled West Hollywood homes, turned a corner, then another. Unsure where I was going. Certain I would be trapped. Respectable gays lived here with security signs staked into lawns, SUV’s waiting in driveways. You can hide behind a big car like that. The true purpose of a monster car: concealment. Me hiding behind an SUV. Dean Foster hiding behind dark glasses. Danny Ficchino after all these months. Ranting at me. His story still a secret. Now I’d never know.