Fridays at Enrico's

by Don Carpenter

  “Where does it say that?”

  Since nobody was checking up on him, Charlie could have left too, but he had nowhere to go. Easier to stay in the little office and try to write. It didn’t come as easily as everyone said it would. It had been one thing to generate what he now understood was a loose, novelistic two-hundred-and-fifty-page draft, but he had a harder time reducing his ideas to the kind of clichés, the recognizable gestures, that screenplays seemed to be made of. Still, he plugged away, listened to Stan, and turned in his pages at the end of the day. What he got out of Ratto, when he finally spent some time with him, was unsatisfying. The meeting was for five thirty, and as he walked into Bill’s office, Ethyl came in with a bottle of whiskey, two glasses, and a bucket of ice.

  “Casting time,” Bill said, and they sat sipping whiskey and trying to decide which actor could best play Charlie.

  “Brando, of course,” Bill said, staring at his glass. “But I think he’s gone crazy or something. What do you think about Paul Newman?”

  Finally Charlie asked how Bill liked his pages.

  “Just keep plugging away,” Bill said. “If you have any questions, ask Ethyl or Stan Winger.” He shrugged and grimaced, the light bouncing off his glass. “Wanna smoke a joint?”

  When Charlie got back to the hotel in the evening he would call home. Jaime worked at home now, in his old office, and her book was coming along. Kira talked about moving to Hollywood, living in the hotel with Charlie. “What would you do?” Charlie asked her. “I’m away at work all day, just like anybody else.”

  “What do I do here?” she asked. Her voice was getting deep, he thought. “I’m sick of this, daddy,” she said one night. “When are we going to have a real family life?”

  Never, Charlie thought, and changed the subject, knowing he hadn’t gotten away with anything. After one of these calls he’d have a drink or smoke a joint, then go for a walk on the Sunset Strip. During the week Sunset wasn’t so crowded, and it was pleasant to stroll along, thinking about nothing more pressing than where he should have dinner. There were several restaurants he’d come to like, especially the Imperial Gardens, an ornate three-story Japanese restaurant where the waitresses were all Japanese girls right off the boat, most unable to speak English. Charlie liked trying out his rusty Japanese on them. If he didn’t feel like Japanese food there was Schwab’s Drugstore, across the street, where he could have a hamburger or a salmon steak. His evenings were otherwise intensely lonely, spent reading in his room. He read Stan’s published novels and was amazed at their quality, though they sometimes lacked in any basic reality. The action was good, the dialogue great, and Stan’s sense of irony was delicious. Stan was a much better writer than he’d ever be. He knew what Charlie had never learned, how to slam those words down on paper. Charlie felt an outrageous twist of envy at Stan’s ability to capture the commonplace, while Charlie himself was hung up on high ideas that never came out right. Or maybe Stan was writing pop trash, and Charlie was after so much more. Literature, High Art. Move over Leo. Step aside, Herman.

  At the end of six more weeks Charlie hadn’t solved the draft, as Bill Ratto put it.

  “Am I fired?” Charlie asked.

  “Oh hell no,” Bill said without smiling.

  75.

  They’d have a meeting with Bud Fishkin as soon as he got back from Paris. Meanwhile, Charlie flew home to San Francisco full of dread, as if he were coming home from school with a bad report card. Not that Jaime was his mother. Anyhow, he’d never brought home a report card to his mother, only his father, who’d burble on for an hour about responsibility and then pass out dead drunk. Sitting on PSA Flight 17 Commuter to San Francisco, thinking of his old dad, he felt even worse. Chuckmo, his friends called him. Ol Chuckmo from the lumber yard. He’ll load your truck, but don’t ask him to add the figures, because he’ll take half the morning and then get it wrong, his forehead furrowing, his grimy stubby fingers clutching the pencil. Poor old dad. Charlie never wrote him, never even wanted to go back to Montana. His father always had such great plans, he was such an optimist, and he was so stupid. There was no other word for it. It had been such a shock to Charlie to find out that what was the matter with his dad was stupidity. Not ignorance. Not just bullheadedness, although he was bullheaded. Stupidity. A man full of stupid daydreams.

  He was exactly like his father, whether he liked it or not. He too had unreasonable dreams. He too was unbearably stupid, though with a hell of a fine vocabulary. Charlie’s dream, if he looked at it closely, was to be king of the world. It wouldn’t be enough to write and be published. If that, why be fucking around with Hollywood? Hollywood had nothing to do with writing well. To the contrary, he was learning how to write less well. How to convince, to persuade, to bully people into belief. Suspension of disbelief. Unfortunately, Charlie had suspended his own disbelief, and now, flying back to reality, he saw he’d gotten nothing out of this trip, apart from the money in his bank account. Well, one other thing. A growing sense of cheapness.

  Seeing Jaime automatically sweetened his stomach and his disposition. She was late and didn’t meet him at the gate, but as he walked up the ramp into the airport proper he saw her small figure approaching. Her hair had gotten longer while he was gone, shoulder length, blonde almost white. And of course there was a guy trailing her, Charlie could see the guy’s mouth working as he tried to hustle Jaime. Big guy, jean jacket, long greasy black hair. Perfect.

  “Jaime!” Charlie roared, and started toward her, his arms out. She saw him and threw her arms up into the air, her face brightening, the guy behind her grinning stupidly while Jaime and Charlie embraced.

  “Oh God, Charlie,” Jaime said. They kissed hungrily and Charlie’s mind went blank. By the time he could think again they were walking arm-in-arm up the ramp and the stranger had disappeared. Too bad. Charlie had hoped the guy would start something, so Charlie could vent his frustrations on the convenient target.

  On the long drive up Bayshore Jaime apologized for not coming to Los Angeles to visit him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just freeze up thinking about Los Angeles.”

  “Oh, it’s a great place,” Charlie said. “You’ll love it. Let’s move down there. We can buy a little house in Laurel Canyon. Kira can go to Hollywood High, which is about as high as you can get. We’ll spend our time with the Fishkins and the Rattos and the Newmans and all them . . .”

  “Oh, stop,” she said. “I’m so glad to have you home.”

  They stopped in North Beach and had lunch at Enrico’s, sitting outside in the sweet San Francisco air, listening to the roar of the trucks going past on Broadway. An old married couple. No need to rush off to bed. With Charlie’s pockets full of Hollywood gold, there were drinks to buy, friends to brag to. They didn’t get home to Mill Valley until well after ten, and, incredibly drunk, they were lucky not to be picked up by the cops. All the way home Charlie told Jaime the things he was going to do to her, and she told him how much she wanted him to. But when they burst into the house Kira was up and waiting, a tall thin shape sitting alone at the dining room table.

  “Where the hell have you been?” she asked, in an eerie imitation of her mother. Charlie tried to gather her in his arms but she struggled out of his grasp, cursing and fuming in her young voice while Charlie laughed. “I’m home, God damn it!” he yelled.

  “You’re drunk!” his daughter said scornfully.

  “Oh, shut up and have a drink,” Jaime said, chuckling at her daughter.

  “I’ll never drink.” Kira slammed into her room. Charlie and Jaime looked at each other. Over the roaring in Charlie’s head he heard himself say, “What are we doing?”

  “We’re drunk,” said Jaime. “We have to go to bed now.”

  “This isn’t the homecoming I’d planned,” Charlie said seriously, but Jaime took him by the arm and led him into their bedroom. They undressed each other.

  “I want a shower,” Jaime said. “You stink.” She giggled, naked, and walked into thei
r bathroom. Charlie followed, and they ended up making love wet on the bathroom tiles.

  The next morning the place was quiet. He lay in his own bed, a slight headache from the night’s drinking, but nothing unusual. Outside, linnets, a scrub jay, the whistling sounds of swallows. Home again. He got up and went out into the house. The door to the office was shut, Jaime surely in there working. Kira was off to school, probably humiliated by her drunken parents. Charlie sighed, and went into the kitchen to make himself a cup of tea. While the water boiled he went out onto the lawn. The sun softened the haze over the East Bay, the scattering of boats. Fun, if he could, to go sailing today, and forget everything. He went back into the house, thinking, I have to get organized.

  He was still sitting there in his jockey shorts when Jaime came out of the office with her coffee mug. “You’re awake,” she said, and went into the kitchen. When she came out she sat down. “How does it feel to be home?”

  He grinned at her painfully. “It feels just like a hangover,” he said. “I think we’re getting old.”

  “I think we should get a divorce,” Jaime said, looking him in the eye. Steam rose from her coffee mug.

  Charlie waited for the punch line. After a few moments he realized he was expected to speak. “Really?” he said.

  “You don’t really love us anymore,” she said calmly.

  “I called every night,” Charlie heard himself saying. “What the hell are you talking about? Divorce? Why?”

  “You don’t love us anymore. It doesn’t matter how many times you called. It wasn’t every night, by the way. The truth is, I don’t think I love you anymore, either.”

  “Who is it?” Charlie asked coldly.

  “It isn’t anybody,” Jaime said too quickly. She picked up her coffee mug in both hands. Her hands were trembling. So it was real. Charlie’s face went cold, then hot. Some bastard.

  “I’ll kill him,” he said to Jaime, as evenly as he could. “What’s his name?”

  Jaime went back into the kitchen. Charlie sat wondering why, when his life was collapsing, he felt this tiny flicker of joy.

  76.

  The house belonged to Jaime. All Charlie had to do was sign some papers. They didn’t bother with an immediate divorce, since neither had any marriage plans. Plenty of time to get a no-fault for twenty-five bucks, saving a lot of lawyer fees. They both hated lawyers. Jaime would sell the house and move with Kira back to San Francisco, and Charlie could keep the apartment on Telegraph Hill, which is where he moved the day Jaime told him she didn’t love him. Or, of course, he could go fuck himself. Move to L.A. He was a free man. Possibly for the first time in his life. Up in Wain he’d been terribly constricted by small town life, fled to the army, felt terribly constricted by army life, got shipped to Korea, where the Chinese grabbed him and threw him in prison. Then Operation Big Switch, Tokyo and the TB ward, where he put the noose around his own neck by becoming obsessed with literature. Then he trapped himself into the institution of marriage, where he’d languished for thirteen years. Now, at last, free. He felt terrible.

  Why not just walk down Telegraph Hill, that first night, get as drunk as he could, pick up some girl, and start his life over? He hadn’t counted on being depressed. Descending the Kearny steps he remembered the night he and Jaime had climbed them together for the first time. She like a little chamois, jumping, Charlie huffing and puffing. His lungs, you know. By the time he got to Broadway tears streamed down his face and into his beard. Poor fucking Charlie, he thought. There wasn’t a bar he could go into that wouldn’t have memories of her. Not Tosca’s, nor certainly Enrico’s, Jesus Christ. Nor Vesuvio or Twelve Adler or the Jazz Workshop, where they’d held hands and stomped their feet to Dizzy Gillespie. Thank God Mike’s Pool Hall was gone, because he couldn’t have gone in there either, or up to the Yank Sing where they’d eaten dim sum together. He walked into City Lights and found himself looking into the eyes of Shig Murao behind the counter, Shig who’d always flirted outrageously with Jaime when they came in. Charlie felt his eyes wet and without saying anything walked back out. On Columbus there was a topless bar catering to Filipinos, and Charlie went in. Here, over a badly watered gin and tonic, he realized North Beach was hers. San Francisco, in fact, was hers. He’d have to move to Los Angeles whether he wanted to or not.

  So, a career in the movies? Well, he certainly hadn’t made it writing fiction. A beautiful young Chinese woman danced nakedly on the bar, and Charlie sat looking into his drink. How had he fooled himself all these years? Not just about writing, but about everything. The great realist was not only truthfully a romantic, but ridiculous. The Chinese girl wasn’t completely naked. Charlie watched her shiny red-heeled shoes, not wanting to look any higher. All cunts look alike, he told himself, then was immediately ashamed. Jaime wasn’t a cunt. And this Chinese girl was just making a living. Charlie got up and left and the cold foggy air felt good against his face. He walked slowly back up the hill to his apartment.

  He couldn’t sleep. Jaime was all over the apartment, of course. And his daughter. Who’d returned from school to find her life destroyed. Kira had burst into tears and run to her father. Charlie explained carefully that it was nobody’s fault, but Kira glared at Jaime through her tears and said, “God damn you, Mother,” then run into her room.

  Forget sleep. Remember Kim Song, where “Fuck Everybody!” was the rule of the day. Save yourself, asshole. Charlie got up and dressed. It wasn’t even midnight. He considered the apartment. There wasn’t anything he wanted to keep. When he’d moved into this place in ’57 or ’58, he had only his typewriter, his sleeping bag, a few books, a few changes of clothes. Now it was full of Jaime’s things. A few books were his. Mostly school books, nothing worth keeping. His important books were at the house, Kerouac, Hemingway, Steinbeck, Faulkner, O’Hara, Jones, Melville, Tolstoy, Joyce, the heavyweights, the contenders. He could go to Mill Valley in the morning for the books, just his, none they’d bought together. But no. How childish. The books are for Kira. With that, he knew there was nothing, absolutely nothing, to keep him from going out, getting into the little Porsche, and driving south. Jaime could rent a car. Jaime could close the apartment, deal with the realtors and lawyers, and he’d sign whatever she asked him to. So be a perfect Buddhist about it. Possessions, faugh. Heartbroken, he recalled their long conversations about Buddhism. He didn’t want to see her again. Cowardice, of course. If they met to exchange stuff and he broke into tears she’d wonder what it was she ever saw in him.

  She’d done it not because of another man, but because he’d not lived up to his promise. When they met he’d been the hotshot, scholarship, Saxon Award, a monster manuscript everybody thought was going to be the next big war book. The next big war book had been Catch-22, which Charlie read with grudging admiration the first time, and then unabashed love the second and third times. And then the next big war book was The Thin Red Line. Jaime had married a fraud. When he’d gone Hollywood, the last straw. She’d stood being married to a failure, an honorable failure, even a bartender, but not a prostitute.

  So, Hollywood had sucked him down into its vortex. Fair enough, he’d blame Hollywood. Charlie was just a country boy, he didn’t know any better. He’d done his best, trying to write a work of art, but they wouldn’t let him. He packed the few personal items he could find. He’d go down to Hollywood and leave all his literary baggage behind him. Be a movie writer. Coldly. Efficiently. Writing crap for money. Stan could help him. Stan knew the ropes. God knows how he learned them in prison all those years, but he did, and Charlie meant to study him. In the back of his mind somewhere was the thought that if he made enough of that Hollywood gold, he’d win her back.

  “You’re pathetic,” he said aloud to himself. He put down his cardboard box to lock the door for the last time. When he first opened this door he’d known exactly who he was and what his life was going to be. Now, all blown to hell.

  77.

  Stan worried. His old friend came back from North
ern California looking as if someone had killed his dog. Charlie refused to say anything, however, just grunted that everything was fine. Stan wouldn’t pry. It was great to have Charlie around. Life at home wasn’t all that good, and Stan needed a drinking buddy. In truth, he was having a terrible time adjusting to married life. Not that Carrie lacked anything, just the opposite. Carrie ran her business, kept the books, cleaned the apartment thoroughly, cooked dinner, was nearly always ready to make love, and tactful enough to know when Stan didn’t want to. What was the matter with her? Nothing.

  So why did Stan feel so trapped? It was as if he’d been, upon parole, issued a life. Life, 1 ea., w/ blonde wife. Arguing against himself, he wondered if he hadn’t sold out for a pair of big tits and some shiny blonde hair. Despicable thoughts, but he had them. When he’d first been cut loose he loved her. She’d done everything for him. It was all so new, having someone who cared for him, so he sat back and let it happen, devoting his energies to the business of writing. Which was what was so great about Hollywood, where writing was indeed a business. But his string of good luck gave him a sticky feeling. Sure, he’d had a long string of bad luck, so maybe this was just some kind of balance. But no. There was no balance anywhere else in life, he’d observed, so why should there be any in his? Something else was working, something he didn’t like. The con factor. How much of his good luck was because he was an ex-convict? Usually it worked against you, but Hollywood wasn’t like any other place, and here, for Stan, it seemed to be working quite well. Both Fishkin and Ratto were happy to hang out with an ex-con. Stan could be certain of this because when somebody came into the office or they went to lunch together it would always manage to come out in the conversation. Fishkin and Ratto had been bragging.

  At first Stan enjoyed it, but after he’d been violated back into the system he had a lot of time to think, out under the hot sun, bent over hacking at the manzanita. Meanwhile his big book deal fell through and nobody from New York or Hollywood came around, called, wrote, or even admitted he existed. His whole life on the outside boiled down to one person, Carrie. When he came out, there she was, sturdy, beautiful, waiting to take up their lives together. Of course when they heard he was out, when he called Ziggie and said, “Sorry it took me so long to get back to you,” his Hollywood friends flocked around again happily. The deal for The Fifth Hot Day in a Row, as they were calling it again, had been dropped only until he got out, and would now be revived.