“Thank you. Thank you,” the Sci Fi writer said, his eyes spinning with pleasure, and once more uttering “Thank you!” he meandered off.
Two major movie stars flanked Vic at the big dinner table. She was the only woman he’d ever seriously consider going straight for. A few years older than Vic, a star at seventeen, now a major actress whose every film got her more award nominations than Cecil B. De Mille could purchase; British, naturally; intellectual as they came; salty; tart-tongued; and if not a political Anarchist, then at least pretty darn close. To his surprise, the dark haired young-looking slender fellow across the table from her and to whom she addressed her most lacerating critiques and revolutionary concepts, was, although known as an infamous ladies man in the Hollywood Press, evidently her devoted lover, as who wouldn’t be. He would sit there quietly, listening to her vituperation about the U.S. Government, the CIA, the Pentagon, IBM, and General Motors, until his cute little nose would twitch like a bunny rabbit’s and suddenly he’d erupt with, “Now that’s just plain utter nonsense. Right, Vic? Tell her!” And Vic would have to mediate, looking first into Her scrumptious face and gorgeous, if angry, blue eyes, and then into His scrumptious face and gorgeous, if pissed off, brown eyes. At least twice he wondered which one he’d kiss first, given the chance.
Ed’s wife Jennifer only became a clear individual among all the weirdos and strong personalities after dinner, when she offered him a “tour of the place,” evidently an expected part of any visit in this city where the private and public blurred so seamlessly. Case in point: the feuding actors were now smooching in a not very hidden bower in the terrace off the study.
As there were photos of older children and an older wife, clearly Jennifer was spouse number two or perhaps number three.
“It’s so funny,” she said as she led him up the twenty-foot wide stairs that led, not to a throne room, but merely to the second floor, “but I only dated guys my age till Ed came along. And I was never satisfied with them. What can a young guy know? No offense, since from your books, you’re obviously maturer than your years. Ed kept pestering me to go out. Finally I said okay. Well he ran me off my feet. He’s unstoppable. The energy. The wide interests. So now I’m spoiled. He’d better stick around a while,” she shook her fist in Ed’s general direction, her cute face bunched up in a theatrical threat, “so I can try to wear him down. Now this is my sewing room. I do sew, in fact I’m an amateur clothing designer. I made this dress and also what J_____ (the female movie star) is wearing tonight. Whaddya think?”
Vic thought, now at last he could gawp at her very large breasts without seeming to ogle, and that the outfits were great and Jennifer was kind of a hoot: a buxom starlet who read, thought and sewed?
As they were wandering through the outside grounds, she took his arm and said, “He likes you.” Ed, she meant. “He wants you around more. He’s bored with the people around him these days. They’re no . . . challenge.”
“I like him too,” Vic admitted. “And you too, Jennifer. But I don’t think Ed realizes that I’m not exactly a free agent. I’ve got a new book out in two months that I must, by contract, publicize, and I’m supposed to hand in another novel by next September. A big one.”
She made a face, then brightened up. “Well, then—after!” She hugged his arm closer and he enjoyed her lemon verbena scent and her pillowly softness. “We get to New York a lot. Always for the holidays because of Ed’s kids. We’ve got a place in Midtown. You won’t escape us that easily.”
They made a tentative date for months in the future, by which time Vic expected to be safely brain-dead from novel-writing overwork, and she went to the kitchen to look over dessert as he wandered back into the house.
He found Ed alone in a library that looked as though it had to have been taken right out of a movie-set in a single piece, complete with vast stone fireplace and shelves of picturesquely dropped and angled-as-though-just-skimmed-through books. Ed was reading The New Yorker and simultaneously watching a football game on TV with the sound off.
“I do the same thing,” Vic admitted. “Two things at once. But what team is playing at this time of the year? Oh, it’s a film?”
“Videotape.” Ed shook the long rectangular box at him. “Some guys at the sports desk at the networks kinescope them for me. You know what videotape is, right?”
“Oh sure. I did an article for a magazine about it, maybe six years ago. I’m waiting for it to get cheap enough to buy myself,” Vic added, realizing as he said it that after his last two advances he could easily afford a video player. Weird how he still thought like someone with a fifth of his new annual income.
“I like Jennifer,” Vic said. “She and I made a dinner date for your place in Manhattan for sometime this coming summer.”
“You may come to your senses yet. I tell you, Vic,” Ed’s arms waved to take in the study, “the life here is unbeatable!”
“From what I can see. But maybe I still need a little more punishment.”
Ed laughed, nodding outside. “Stick around with the love birds. They’ll provide all the punishment you can take. I can only say that because we’re good friends, you understand.”
“I do. Tell me, they’re not publicly together, are they?” Vic asked. “I mean I know they make movies together and all, but . . .”
“I wouldn’t say anything, no. And as a rule, I find it best to wait until a couple announces something,” Ed said. “Which in my opinion, those two never will do . . . You know, Vic, not everyone wants to be a Burton and Taylor.”
With champagne and Irish coffee was a homemade strawberry rhubarb pie with whipped cream, which someone must have discovered and then told the producer was Vic’s very favorite sweet.
He turned to Ed. “You’re trying to seduce me, Mrs. Robinson . . . Aren’t you?”
Everyone laughed.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“How good a party can it possibly be at four o’clock on a Sunday afternoon?”
“It’s an El Lay party. You’ll see,” Andy responded. They were talking car to car, Andy of course having a car phone, too. Didn’t everyone?
“The only reason I would even dream of going,” Vic admitted, “is that hot guy from New York who works for Long Meadow Records left a message at the hotel saying he’d be there. For him it’s a work assignment.”
“What guy? Is he cute?”
“You think I’d go all this way for a for a schmuck?”
“Speaking of schmucks—” Andy interrupted.
“Haven’t seen his. Nope.”
“Possibly you will today, since I expect this soiree is going to quickly devolve into an Oh Arr Gee Why.”
“At four in the afternoon? At tea and crumpets time?”
“It’s a Hollywood Hills party, Vic.”
“You ‘expect’ or you plan to incite an orgy?”
“Don’t have to. The B_____ brothers will be there,” naming actors he’d heard of, “all three of them. One B_____ brother among good looking gay men is a certifiable orgy flint. Three of them? Well, it might get out of hand.”
“Good thing I wore clean underwear,” Vic murmured then realized in an orgy it wouldn’t stay on long. Maybe he should ink his name into the back label when he disrobed, like kindergartners did with gloves and hats.
“It’s not that far now,” Andy insisted. “On Mount Olympus.”
“Isn’t that Northern Greece?”
“Try southern Laurel Canyon. Is that you in the pale blue Caddy?”
“Why? Where are you?”
“Directly ahead. In the ’63 charcoal Lincoln Continental.”
“You mean the one that looks like the Kennedy assassination vehicle?”
“La meme exactement! Okay, that is you, I can see your lip gloss reflected in my mirror.”
“Liar! Bitch!”
“Have your driver follow me,” Andy hung up.
“Meade, follow this guy ahead of us. The dark gray job,” Vic specified. “He’ll take us right
up to the house.”
The phone rang again two minutes later: this time, Gilbert.
Vic reported the near-incident with the super good looking room service waiter.
“The waiter was probably just surprised by your openness,” Gilbert opined. “He might be available. Just be ready for him.”
“Ready? What do I do if he says yes? What do I tip him when he arrives at five and comes at five fifteen?”
“Depends how big his tip is!” Gilbert chortled. “Never mind: a twenty. Unless he reciprocates. Then at least fifty.”
“Gilbert, you see it now, don’t you? It’s all in some kind of perverted inverse ratio. The more disastrous the film angle gets, the more sex I seem to get.”
“Inverse ratio? Oh you mean like, ‘the angle of the dangle is equal to the heat of the meat’?”
Vic chose to ignore that. “I go into any fern bar here on Santa Monica Bee and they’re lined up, these amazing pretty boys in a row. Each of them ripe for the plucking by guess who? At this moment Andy is taking me to a Mount Olympus party he assures me will be a stupendous, star-studded orgy.”
“You’re never coming back, are you?” Gilbert asked.
“So last night, before I’m to see Perfect Paul fourth night in a row, there’s this dinner party that Ed, the executive producer, is giving in his humongus, half-timbered castle somewhere in the Hills above the Sunset Strip. My driver is off for the latter part of the night, so I have them call me a taxi to take me back to the Bee Aitch Aitch. Who shows up? Some twenty-four year old unemployed actor. Muscled. Darkly handsome. Green eyes. Thick, chestnut hair that falls like it’s been ironed. Ratty surfer tee shirt that looks glued on with perspiration and jizz. Ditto for the ripped surfer shorts. Shorts, and flip flops, for chrissake, Gil! At night! Left nothing to the imagination.”
“And we know that as an author you’ve got a great imagination. But you were about to see Perfect Paul?” Gilbert reminded him.
“Exactly, so I am shut-mouth quiet until we are two streets from the hotel on Sunset when he suddenly pulls over to the curb, stops, and turns around and says could he ask me a question.”
“No!”
“Honest to Diana Ross truth, Gilberto. So I say ask away. Seems that a nice looking middle aged fellow the night before gave Surfer-Dude a Cuban cigar as a tip and said he’d been thinking about what that cigar would look like in the driver’s mouth the entire ride home.”
“Shut! Up!”
“This is what The Surfing Cabbie tells me. He says he stripped off the cellophane and put the Cubano cigar in his mouth for the guy, who tipped him and got out.”
“Uh-huh?” Even clever Gilbert couldn’t see where this was going.
“So the driver asks me, ‘What do you think that was really about’?”
“You mean,” Gilbert asked, “because Freud said sometimes a cigar is just a cigar?”
“Looking at this guy, Gillo, and how he was more and mostly less dressed, Freud does not apply. So I was bored and a little ’stunada from dinner’s fourteen wines and I said the first thing that came into my mind. Which was ‘Your fare wanted you to blow him.’”
“You didn’t?!”
“I did. I was bored. I was high. What would you think?”
“I’d think it; I wouldn’t say it.”
“Well, I said it. ‘Really?’ Driver Googie asks, not at all offended. And I said ‘Really!’ and then for verisimilitude, I added, ‘Your fare probably was holding some other twenties in his hand, like this,’ I splayed out my hand with three of them, one for the ride and two others.”
“Oy! The writer and his verisimilitude,” Gilbert groaned.
“And the Surfer-Dude says, ‘He was holding them out. Just like that!’”
“Saints alive, Miss Sofonsiba!”
Vic went on, “Then I added, ‘Which he wanted you to have. Or, I might be wrong, and instead, you being cute and all, maybe he wanted to blow you.’”
“Tell me you didn’t actually say that, in the back of a cab on Sunset Boulevard and . . . where were you?”
“I don’t know. Foothill. Alpine. One of them. It was fascinating, Gilbert, watching all the counters tumbling around behind that perfect face like in one of those slot machines. I kept holding out the twenties at Sir Gidget the Hunky Cabbie and suddenly all the counters fell into place going blink blink blink in those money-colored eyes and I swear I all but heard them go ka-ching! He snatched the twenties, stuffed them in his tee shirt pocket and said, ‘But understand, I gotta stay in the car in case I get a dispatch call.’ So he drove up a block or two behind the hotel and came into the back seat and I had a big steak for the second time that night.”
“All because . . . ?” Gilbert hadn’t quite gotten the ‘moral’ and he now needed one for closure.
“All because . . . I was about to meet Perfect Paul and didn’t care if I sucked off this handsome, unemployed surfing actor’s eight incher. Ergo I was casual enough about it for him not to be threatened in the least.”
“You . . . are . . . the master of the hetero pick-up, Vic-tor-ee-a.”
“I’m now hanging up, Zhil-berte.”
“Go to the leather bar premiere!”
“I said no, Gilbert! No!” and hung up.
At which moment Vic realized he’d not completely shut the window between the front and back, and the tall, ugly driver had heard every single word.
After another minute or so they stopped and there was a tap on his side window. Andy. They’d arrived.
By his seventh day in town, Victor had ceased to be amazed by the interior decor of the Los Angeles homes he saw. Their sheer nuttiness was only outdone by their expense and by the fact that given the chance, he’d move in to any of them in a second.
This one, contemporary stone, steel, and glass, was set in woods, making it totally private; only the roof deck had a view. The house sported what El Lay people referred to as “various water features”: brooks, rills, little cascades, larger water falls, and several pools, including the first infinity version he’d ever seen up close, as well as a lap pool, two hot tubs, and several foot baths. They were all over the house on every level. Filled with hot guys frolicking—either naked or in speedos.
Since it actually was a publicity event for some new Disco Diva discovery for Long Meadow Records, the entry and main rooms had the appurtenances of such, at least as Vic had come to know them: a long table set up with copies of her “fabulous new single,” as well as an eight minute, longer version for club deejays to spin, along with photos, bios, and such-like. The Diva herself had already been there and was expected to return and sing a number after she had made a surprise appearance at some club on The Strip.
And there at the table was Mark Chastain, dressed in dark slacks, tan and black silk moire shirt, and brown penny loafers. He looked professional. They’d only met once before. Vic had forgotten how manly, but not how handsome, he was.
As Vic and Andy arrived and were greeted by their host and Long Meadow Records’ owner, a feisty little bulldog of a hot Jewish New Yorker named Hal Dern. Their host was wet but not quite dripping, wrapped in a rainbow colored bathrobe; Dern was dripping, clad only in a speedo with a two-sizes-too-small A-shirt on top.
Andy took one look at Mark and said, “Honey, get those clothes off so we can see all your muscles. All of them, I say, child!” He soon enough vanished, arm in arm with the host, while Hal recognized Vic and gave him a hug.
“The big man!” he announced as though there were two hundred and not six other people in the room. “The famous writer! Out in Hollywood making deals!”
“The big record producer!” Vic declaimed back. “The famous Star Maker! Out in Hollywood launching a Diva.”
Having failed to embarrass Vic, Hal left muttering something.
“What’d he say?” Vic had to ask Mark.
“He’s got some single-cut coke back in his bedroom.”
“I’ll pass. Did you have any?”
“On
e line. Hours ago. So!” Mark looked pleased. “You showed up.”
“You doubted?”
“I’d heard you were very busy.”
With Perfect Paul, he means, Vic thought. Wonder who . . . ?
“Working for some film company,” Mark completed his thought.
“If you call that work. But it looks like you really are working!”
“Well, I’ve got to stand here and greet everyone and offer them a disc and this material,” he handed them to Vic in a shiny plastic bag.
“And you can’t go into the water and show all those muscles, child!” Vic added.
“Not until six. Our plane is at 7:30. That gives me about . . .”
“Three minutes in the water.”
“That’s what I figured,” Mark looked unhappy. “And I arrived yesterday morning on a red-eye. With Her in tow, and I mean in tow given her size and heft. And I was with her or setting this up all the rest of the time.”
“And now you’ve got to go home. Doesn’t sound like much fun.”
“It’s a job,” Mark admitted.
“Where’s Will?” Vic asked.
“Will?”
“Will Traylor?
“I guess back in New York. Why?”
Wlll had introduced them. Actually, Will had brought Vic to meet Mark one day at the offices of Long Meadow Records, talking about Mark in detailed adoring length before and after said meeting.
“Nothing. I just got the impression he was . . . you two were . . .”
“Did Will tell you that?” Very sincere and concerned.
“Not in so many words. Maybe I just assumed it.”
“Oh?”
Maybe because Will wanted me to assume it? Vic thought. Because Will knows I’d never bird-dog anyone he was dating.
“Look, it’s not important,” Vic said.
“But you came anyway?” Mark asked.
“I thought you’d want support . . . you know, a familiar face in a strange town . . .” Vic trailed off.
“You came out of loyalty?”
Justify My Sins Page 6