Andy dropped the bag he’d been carrying and Victor had to make an effort to shut his mouth.
“The Ginger Rogers Memorial Suite,” Andy announced.
Only then did Victor see that each one of the pillows was embroidered and each chair-back pillow stitched with her signature, each silver framed photo and gold framed poster was signed by her, and pretty much half the knick-knackiana in which the room abounded was in direct reference to the perky blond movie star.
“It should be ghastly,” Victor said. “But instead it’s . . . kinda cute!”
“Well, I figured that your ego and hers were equally large, and so you’d fit well,” Andy explained. “Settle in. And you’d better nap a bit because heaven knows you must require lots and lotsa beauty sleep. We’ll meet for cocktails outside at the pool at five. Some people are coming. No one important. Don’t dress.”
Andy spun on a heel like Mrs. Danvers and was gone.
Victor scanned the over-themed room, thought he wanted to unpack and put everything away, wondered if he hadn’t made a Huge Mistake in coming here in the first place as Andy was so envious, then found himself suddenly and totally drooping.
In seconds he was nestled among photo-stills from her RKO-era films, his head sinking into her stitched-name pillow, flat out upon a pink satin coverlet edged in miniature representations of silver stilettoed pumps—and if Victor didn’t dream of her pirouetting backward in heels across a vast circular glass dance-floor, it surely wasn’t Ginger’s fault.
CHAPTER twenty-nine
“Oh! It’s you!” Dimitrios Juenger said, his mouth suddenly going all twisted with thought. He was wearing a Kimono-like outfit under which he was evidently clothingless and was barefoot. In the background, Cher was belting out her major hit anthem to the power of Belief.
“We confirmed yesterday morning by e-mail. Remember?” Victor asked. He was standing in the doorway of a large apartment with many wide windows—foolish Victor; he had assumed it would be an office—on the seventeenth floor of 9000 Sunset Boulevard, a great big black glass edifice that stabbed West Hollywood with Height and Night just as it was trying to quietly subside into posh residential Beverly Hills. Given Juenger’s evident bafflement, a great deal must have happened since that cyberspace agreement was made at 10:23 a.m. yesterday morning.
“Well, come in then,” he said. “I’m done with my ginko-biloba rub, and the ginger-root foot-massage can wait a sec.” He gestured to a grand sofa. Victor assessed it as American Beidermeir, ca. 1846, with lion-paw feet on rollers and elaborately scrolled ends. The upholstery was wheat-gold and quite shiny. The back and sides fan-palm mahogany. Very rare. Yet it fit well in this super modern space, filled as it was with Beaux Arts shiny swag curtains and gilt footstools with rose chintz covers.
Juenger vanished into a doorway out of which a tall, wispy blond lad emerged to peek. “Are you the guy deep into Kabbalah?” he asked. The masseur. Victor thought for sure he would be Asian.
“Hindu Astrology,” Victor glibly lied.
“Oh, right. Well, that’s okay!” And he vanished.
The door bell rang and Dmitrios shouted “Would you mind getting that? And if its Jaecklin, tell him . . . Never mind,” he added darkly. “I’ll deal with him myself.”
Victor opened the apartment door upon one of the loveliest young men he’d ever laid eyes on: tall, butter-haired, pale-green-eyed, clearly a model or . . .
He carried a medium-sized black leather portfolio case, and without even noticing Victor slumped over onto the other end of the sofa, propped his expensively shod feet onto the glass-topped, baroquely brass-legged coffee table, took out his cell-phone, and began checking his messages.
“Are you Jaecklin?” Victor asked when he was clearly done and not at all happy with the results.
“Why? Did he say I’m in trouble?”
Dmitrios chose that moment to enter the room, a bit more dressed with sporting pyjamas beneath the robe he’d had on and gold-leafed flip-flops. He swanned over to his desk, making a big show of barely noticing Jaecklin, and ended up sitting before his large computer screen.
“Santa Monica Casting: twenty minutes late. Ventura Boulevard Casting: forty-five minutes late. Ginny Goldberg Casting: no show.”
Jaecklin didn’t seem to care about the litany. Then it came out in a torrent: “Ricky Sachs chased me around his desk for forty-five minutes trying to get into my skivvies. So, of course I’d be late at Ventura.
“I warned you he’d try that.”
“You didn’t warn me that he had the limbs of a giant squid. And that Almond woman at Dominguez Hills? I mean that was a hour’s drive and all she did was wave me over to have five polaroid shots done by some sub-sub-assistant in two minutes while she spoke on the phone and totally ignored me.”
“It’s The Biz, Babe.” Dmitrios had no sympathy. “And now you’ve got a two-thirty at the Gower Boulevard Studios. Eight lines. It’s now one-twenty-four.”
“I learned the lines. Dumb as they are. I’ll be there.”
“Leave in exactly three minutes. Take a magazine if you’re early. Sit in the damn car and read. Here!”
Jaecklin and Victor glanced at the cover of what he’d tossed: Freshmen, featuring a nubile strawberry blond named Jon, shirtless and slowly pulling down his sweat-pants to reveal more than half of his doubtless strawberry blond-covered glutes. Jaecklin dropped it onto the coffee table. “I’m straight. Remember?”
“Oh, right. I always forget. I wonder why? Well, you’ll have to get your own Penthouse.”
Jaecklin picked up a six month old copy of Premiere and began leafing through it.
“Do you know how many auditions I got for Buddy Gee, yesterday?” Dmitrios asked the air. “One. And for Tom Trithon? None. You get five in a day and screw them up.”
“I appeared at three of them, eventually,” Jaecklin said, now in a black mood which Dmitrios picked up as he instead turned to Victor and, changing tack in a headwind, expostulated, “Actors! Now Victor Regina here is a famous writer. And if Fate does right by us all, I’ll be managing some of his books. Show Victor your portfolio! Maybe we’ll do a film and he can hire you. Meanwhile, and excuse me Victor, thanks to Tom Cruise the Second here, I’ve got many, many fences to mend!”
The next fifteen minutes were spent with Victor and Jaecklin going through the younger man’s five-page portfolio consisting almost entirely of photos, only two of them from roles he’d had, one in a college production of Our Town (“Every school on the planet does Our Town,” he commented). The other still from a community theater production of The Fantasticks. (“Ditto with this play,” he added.) Behind them, Victor heard Dmitrios on the phone in a voice too low to make out.
“Is there a role for me, Victor?” he handsomely asked.
“Sure, if we ever sell, Never Can Say Goodbye. You look just like how I describe Tim Brautigan in that book.”
“Gosh,” Jaecklin was all Candid Young Man and was even more winsome. “I know that book. Half the cast was reading it when we were doing The Fantasticks. Wow!” Suddenly he was thoughtful. “Gosh. You really are someone famous, aren’t you? Wow!”
Victor suddenly remembered what Andy Grant had said to him the last visit before he’d moved here, when they’d gone to dinner at Spago. “I phoned and they said they had no tables open all night. Ten minutes later I phoned again, this time saying I was an assistant needing a table for my boss, the New York writer, Victor Regina, for two at the window. And here we are! Overlooking Sunset Boulevard and Tower Records parking lot!”
“Meaning?” Victor had asked. Goldie Hawn, Kurt Russell, and her two gorgeous teenagers had just been seated at the next table.
“Meaning! If you want to live in El Lay you ought to possess at least one of the following: youth! looks! wealth! talent! fame! Having one, talent say, will just about get you in the door. Having two, talent and fame say, as we both saw tonight, exponentially increases the perks.”<
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“And having them all . . . ?” Victor wondered aloud.
“Having two is plenty. Be content,” Andy had said.
Handsome Jaecklin was now confirming that fact.
Dmitrios suddenly came swooping at them, shouting. “Time to go! Go! Go! Pose! Speak! Act! Make Mother proud of her baby!”
Jaecklin leapt up from the sofa, grabbed his portfolio and was out the door in seconds.
The masseur followed him a minute later.
“Now that the children are gone,” Dmitrios declared, “let’s have a civilized cup of tea and chat. Do you like Raspberry Zinger? We’ve got a half hour until more of the chickadees come flapping in with broken wings and flattened egos, all needing to be mended.”
“How many actors do you manage?”
“Too many for any peace of mind. Not enough for a real income. Now I heard you talking about Tim Brautigan in Goodbye as a role for our little Blond Godlet. He’d be per-feck-shun!”
“But Brautigan is gay. I mean flamboyantly, wildly gay in the book.”
“He will be in the flick too,” Dmitrios confirmed.
“But Jaecklin is . . .”
“Gay for pay, honey. They all are. Show-Biz lesson number thirty-five: if you wanna work, you gotta play by no rules at all.”
“But you don’t really think anyone would want to turn Never Can Say Goodbye into a film, do you? I mean the one agent I talked to about it over at CAA when it first came out said it had a snowball’s chance in hell.”
“That’s exactly why CAA is no longer Aitch-Oh-Tee!” Dmitrios said. “I don’t see why not. It’s a best seller, right?”
“In four languages.”
“International market!”
“Who would we show it to? A producer? A director? I only know one or two people in Hollywood any more,” Victor said. “And I’ve not spoken to them in a while.”
“Names?” Dmitrios was suddenly Ann Southern as Bob Cumming’s secretary, his pretend pencil-nub wetted, his imaginary pad held high.
“Well, one was an agent. I’m not at all sure where he is now. Or even if he’s still around, Ever hear of a fellow named Joel Edison?”
“Oh, he’s definitely still around! He runs talent, I mean he absolutely is talent at William Morris! And the other?”
“Well, I could see Joel remaining on his feet,” Victor admitted. “But I’ve totally lost sight of this guy I worked really closely with in the Eighties and I’ll understand if you don’t at all know of him. His name is Sam. Sam Alan Haddad?”
This time Dmitrios stood up and inadvertently knocked over his chair.
“S.A. Haddad?! You don’t fool around, do you? Haddad took over the two Indy lines at Fox. His films grossed almost as much as Disney last year.”
This was less than welcome news to Victor. “Maybe we should forget about Sam. He and I didn’t end up all that terrifically. But Joel, he always wanted to get into my pants, so that must count for something.”
“Well, now you’ve got me fascinated, and as the woman says in that old Bette Davis movie, a fascinating man is more than fascinating: he’s downright fascinating! Victor, you’ve got eighteen and half minutes before the children come tumbling in and I want to hear everything and I do mean everything! Hold back nothing! And to prove it,” he added, “Keep talking and I shall freshen up our teapot.”
He’d decided that since he was only a few blocks away, he’d drop down into Boy’s Town and stop in A Different Light Books and get that gay novel Ed White had blurbed (this month; he blurbed so many!) and then actually recommended by phone to Victor.
San Vicente Boulevard began at Sunset right here and swooped down to West Hollywood and then further on, and it didn’t end until way past Mid-City.
Right on the sidewalk were two young men running down the steep hill of the street. One had dark hair and wore Aviator sun glasses a bit too big for his face and looked kind of Nerdy-Cute, albeit he was a bit chunky. He wore close-fitting white shorts, and an oversized black wife-beater that read “Rio is Better,” and was wearing what looked like two-hundred dollar running shoes.
The bigger surprise was the guy running next to him, speaking to him all the while, or maybe yelling at him, urging him on. It couldn’t be, but it was, Don Wright.
Victor pulled up to Cynthia Street at the light, where the Big Dig for the new fire station was still a mess on the other side of San Vicente, and the two thundered down past and sure enough it was Don, wearing black basketball shorts, an A-shirt, and a silver sweat band around his handsome head.
Victor beeped twice and they turned. Don recognized him, and stopped, yelling to the other guy, “Go. Don’t stop. I’ll catch up.”
“Hiya, neighbor!” Sweat trickled down his perfectly sculpted neck past his Audrey Hepburn collar-bones and down the sternum hidden by the shirt.
“You’re a fitness trainer!” Victor said.
“Gotta’ make a living somehow!”
“You’re busy. I won’t keep you.”
Someone beeped from behind for Victor to move.
“Ciao!” Don Wright saluted and ran on.
Victor watched him in his side and rear view mirror all the way to Santa Monica Boulevard
“He’s a fitness trainer,” Victor repeated to himself. “Of course he is. What else would he be?”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Two cars were parked in the shadiest area under the gigantic rose oleander where Victor had parked previously. Rats! And there were two cars parked inside the gated driveway. He recognized Andy’s “Lesb-mobile,” a lime-green Subaru Forester four-wheel-drive wagon. But that gigunda chrome and purple Oldsmobile had to be Tobey Hatch’s. Who else was here this weekend? He recalled the phone conversation with Andy three days back and decided that, of course! Those two unwashed beige Crown Vics must belong to the so-called Church People that Andy had spoken of. No one but the L.A.P.D. and the Religious Right was dense enough to buy a gas-guzzling V8 that weighed three tons anymore. Even straight guys with small weenies had switched to Hummers.
As he unpacked his own car, Victor tried to recall exactly how that phone conversation had gone.
To begin with, it had come as a surprise. Only a few weeks after his first visit to Palm Springs, his childhood friend had called and asked when he was coming to visit again. Given their track record over the decades, Victor had replied, “I thought . . . maybe . . . sometime next year?”
“No, no, no! You mustn’t think that way,” Andy had astonishingly replied. “That was the old Andy Grant. The Hermit-of-the-Canyon Andy Grant.”
“Okay. When would you like me to come visit?”
This coming weekend it turned out, and Tobey would be there. Andy so wanted them to meet. Victor would love Tobey. A Munchkin. And adorable. And he knew so much about Old Hollywood and where so many corpses were buried. Why didn’t Victor plan to come Friday by noon?
It meant rescheduling a Sunday brunch, and the weather was at last moderating so he had been looking forward to that rarity this year—some local sun in El Lay—but it wasn’t, Victor admitted, actually “impossible.”
“Great! We’ll have such fun!”
That should have been the tip-off. The human person, Andy Grant, and the word “fun” didn’t exist on the same plane. Victor had temporized, asking, “Did someone ask for me in particular?”
“No, it’ll just be us three. Unless of course Tobey asks some of the folks from the Church to drop by.”
“The Church of the Ever-kneeling Fellator?”
“I wish! No, unfortunately. Just the people from some church Tobey’s gotten . . . interested in lately. They’ve been awfully kind to him. Visited him regularly during his radiation sessions and all. But he’s feeling much better now that he can keep down solid food. So we’ll have a barbecue! Just we three—and Cassius and Portia!”
Of course, all this was the very first hint Victor was hearing of Tobey and any even vaguely proble
matical health situation. Nada during the entire last visit here, nor in any phone calls. Piecing it all together now three days later, on the very doorstep of their shared domicile, Victor knew there was still some mystery involved. He sensed it and wondered if he really and truly wanted to get at that mystery’s little black heart.
Andy was sitting on the side terrace looking depressed, an equally silent Sheltie on either side of him. He sucked for dear life on a woebegone joint of grass and contemplated what might have been lethal-to-the-planet fast-spreading algae on the surface of the pool. He barely noticed Victor walk up and drop his bags.
“Well! I’m here!” Victor declared. “I can see you’re simply too thrilled to even respond.”
At that moment the front door of the house swung open. The Shelties growled as low as such small animals are capable of. Andy quickly, surreptitiously, dropped the weed, stamped it out with a flip flop, and stood.
Two tall people came out of the house, he bald and washed-out looking, she wearing some kind of hair-net and a very long skirt with white socks and nurse-like shoes. Very 1954, Victor thought, if otherwise non-distinctive. They were followed by a leprechaun, an orange-haired elf, a . . . it must be Tobey!
“Good meeting, was it?” Andy asked, some unclear emotion apparent in his voice.
“We prayed together, Brother Andrew,” the bald man said. The elf turned and noticed Victor and a bit of life came into his eyes.
“Prayed for our brother, Tobey,” the drab woman added unnecessarily in a toneless voice.
The man looked at Victor with his own spark of interest, but Victor turned away so as to not encourage any possible introduction, never mind the humiliation of being “brother-ed” by a stranger.
The Tall Two said a few words very quietly to Tobey and were soon out the wrought-iron gate.
He waited until their cars had started up and taken off, then turned to Victor and almost squealed, “You must be the boyhood pal!”
“Everything Andy said about me is a lie.”
“And to think I believed you.” Tobey said. “But then, you must have heard I’ve had my mind surgically removed—Not! Come on in! Let’s have a cocktail! I’m not supposed to. But my test results are the best in months, so we oughta celebrate.”
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