The Girl with Kaleidoscope Eyes

by David Handler

  I’m not terrible when it comes to being an invisible pen for hire. In fact, I’ve done the Claude Rains thing on three number-one bestsellers so far. My background as an author of fiction certainly helps, since celebrity memoirs should never, ever be mistaken for nonfiction. So does the fact that I used to be a celebrity myself. I know how to handle stars. They don’t frighten me. Hell, they can’t do anything to me I haven’t already done to myself. On the downside, my second career has proven to be more than a bit hazardous to my health. Celebrity memoirs tend to be about juicy secrets, past and present. There are people near and dear to those celebrities who want those juicy secrets to stay safely buried. And will do anything to make sure that they are. And I do mean anything.

  Still, I’ve survived. And Merilee and I have managed to reach a civilized détente, which is to say that we get along quite well as long as we aren’t together. But I’m not exactly a kid anymore. That year found me staring forty right in the eye. Not only was forty winning but I was growing more and more certain that I would never, ever write a second novel. I was also growing increasingly fed up with the ghosting game. A memoir used to represent the culmination of a lifetime of achievement by someone who mattered. A great movie star. A transformative political leader. A pioneering business titan. But that was then. To be considered memoir-worthy these days all you had to do was ring your married boyfriend’s front doorbell, shoot his clueless wife in the face and—faster than you can say Joey Buttafuoco—you went from being an anonymous suburban teenager to being the world-famous Long Island Lolita. Fame? It’s just a shot away. Practically every publisher in New York was throwing major bucks at any woman on the planet who had big hair, big boobs and a reasonably plausible claim to having been up close and personal with Bill Clinton’s pecker. The Silver Fox had dutifully called me twice in the previous few weeks with highly lucrative tell-all offers. I said no to both. Electile dysfunction is not my thing. Neither are dinosaurs. I’d also said no to penning a memoir for Barney, the stuffed purple-and-green T. rex likeness that was the hottest phenomenon in kid vid that year.

  That’s what was, or I should say wasn’t, happening on that particular rainy December afternoon when the Silver Fox asked me to meet HWA’s new vice president of Literary Synergy at Wan-Q.

  I had the cab driver drop me at West Ninety-Third and West End. Lulu and I walked the remaining half block toward Riverside, me with my hands buried deep in the pockets of my trench coat, Lulu picking up speed as we got closer to home. The rain had stopped, and a cold, blustery wind had picked up. I could see the clouds breaking up in the dusky western sky over the Jersey Palisades.

  There was nothing in my mailbox except for an extremely early Christmas card from my accountant and a discreet past-due notice on my dues for the Racquet and Tennis Club.

  My apartment smelled of the dried remains of Lulu’s favorite canned food, 9Lives mackerel for cats and very weird dogs. I hung my trench coat and hat in the narrow hall closet, scooped the desiccated mackerel into the trash and rinsed out Lulu’s bowl while she stood there in the kitchen with her large black nose pointed directly at the refrigerator. She wanted a treat. Her idea of a treat is an anchovy. She likes them cold out of the refrigerator. The oil clings better. I gave her one. She wanted two. I said no. She woofed at me. She has a mighty big bark for someone with no legs, and I have mighty touchy neighbors. So she got two. Don’t ever try to out-stubborn a basset hound. You’ll lose.

  There isn’t much to my apartment. My desk with my Olympia set atop it. My books and records. My stereo. One good leather chair. One not-so-good corduroy loveseat. And a bedroom that’s barely big enough to hold a bed. I put some Erroll Garner on the stereo, unfolded the letter that Monette Aintree had supposedly received from her father and looked at it. As the Little Elf had his way with “I Cover the Waterfront,” I poured myself a jolt of eighteen-year-old Macallan and sipped it, gazing at the framed letter that hung on the wall directly over my desk, the one that I’d received in the mail two months after Our Family Enterprise had been published. It was one of my most prized possessions. A fan letter that had been typed on plain white typing paper and folded into a square so that it would fit inside the small, square envelope it had arrived in. The envelope was right there inside the frame next to the letter. My address had been typed on it. No return address. Just a postmark from Missoula, Montana. The letter read:

  Your book doesn’t suck. I think you are genuinely talented. Very few are. Don’t fuck it up.

  —Richard Aintree

  I took the frame down from the wall, set it next to Monette’s letter and removed my magnifying glass from the top drawer of my desk, feeling my pulse quicken as I compared the two letters. I’m no NYPD crime lab scientist but they sure looked to me as if they’d both been typed on the same Hermes 3000. The capital letter I was out of proper alignment. Struck the page a bit higher than it should. And the space bar had an irregular jump to it—what Mrs. Adelman called “a hitch in its giddyup.” The scrawled signatures looked identical, too. I sat there for a long moment, staring at the two letters. Then I grabbed a couple of worn paperbacks from the bookshelves, Sneaky People by Thomas Berger and Giles Goat-Boy by John Barth. Drank the last of my Macallan. Put on my shearling greatcoat and the dark brown Statler from Worth & Worth. Turned off the stereo and lights and headed back out into the cold New York City evening.

  As I made my way to Broadway I noticed yet again how many Yushies were swarming all over my charmingly old-fashioned Upper West Side neighborhood. In the past year I’d lost my mom-and-pop Jewish deli, my Chinese laundry, Greek shoe repairman, Polish butcher, German baker and Italian fishmonger. All had been driven out by deep-pocketed chain stores like the Gap and Banana Republic that catered to the Young Urban Shitheads. Trendy sidewalk cafés with one-word names like Zoot or Toot had started springing up, too, the kind that served foamy, overpriced cocktails and mesquite-grilled everything. There was no getting around the horrifying reality. My home turf was chic.

  But at least one thing hadn’t changed. My favorite pair of street vendors were still anchored on the northwest corner of Broadway and West Ninety-Second. The two of them looked out for each other. Flopped together at an SRO somewhere on Amsterdam. One was a longhaired kid with a scraggly moustache who sold used LPs and yammered nonstop at the people walking by, trying to convince someone, anyone to show an interest in his wares. The other was an old man in a tweed overcoat who sold used paperback books and never spoke or made eye contact with anyone. Just sat on a battered folding chair by his meager little display of books and scribbled madly away in a lined yellow legal-sized pad. The city is home to many mad scribblers. Last year there’d been a middle-aged lady with uncombed hair and bare, filthy legs who sat on a stoop down the block from my apartment scribbling day after day. I used to buy sandwiches for her until she disappeared one day and never returned. I share a special kinship with mad scribblers. I’m victimized by the same chaos inside my own brain. Teeter on the edge of the very same cliff. One good shove and I could easily be one of them.

  So I pay homage. Donated the two used paperbacks I’d brought with me and reclaimed the two paperbacks that I’d brought him the day before—Don Martin Steps Out and Don Martin Bounces Back, illustrated collections by Mad magazine’s maddest artist, whom I consider one of the underappreciated comic geniuses of the past thirty years. The mad scribbler accepted the five-dollar bill I put in the cigar box before him without looking at me or thanking me. He never seemed to notice that I kept donating and buying back the same books. Or that I ignored the hand-lettered sign that read: all books fifty cents. He was a rather well-dressed old man. His Harris tweed coat and red cashmere muffler were stylish and in good condition. I know this because they used to belong to me. I gave them to him a few weeks back when the weather turned cold. He was a tall, gaunt old man with a full white beard, long, greasy gray hair and a battered nose that looked as if it had been broken many times.

  I gave the kid an ext
ra twenty dollars. “You may not see me for a while.”

  “Cool. Oh, hey, can I interest you in the Brothers Gibb on vinyl today?”

  “Not today. Not ever.”

  The kid grinned at me. “Have a good one.”

  Lulu immediately growled at him. She hates that expression.

  The two of us strolled down to West Seventy-Ninth and then over toward Amsterdam, Lulu ambling a step ahead of me, her nose, ears and tummy to the ground. We ate dinner at Tony’s, a neighborhood Italian place that hasn’t changed its menu or décor in twenty-five years. I had their homemade sausages with a plate of pasta in garlic and olive oil, and a bottle of Chianti. Lulu had the fried calamari. As I ate, I found my thoughts starting to drift their way back through the years to Reggie. What we’d had together. Why it had gone bad. But I reined those thoughts in. It was not healthy for me to let them roam free.

  Afterward, I strolled back uptown on Central Park West and found myself in front of what had once been my building, gazing up at those eight glorious windows that overlooked the park. The lights were on. Merilee was there. Good. I intended to phone her when I got home.

  Lulu had other ideas. She let out a low whoop, went barreling into the grand lobby and started pawing at the elevator door.

  George, the evening doorman, always had a soft spot for Lulu. Me, he didn’t like. He held up a big white-gloved hand to stop me as soon as I set foot in the lobby. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “She’s home, isn’t she?”

  “Maybe she is, maybe she isn’t.” He called her on the house phone and informed her that I was there. Listened briefly, then hung up and reluctantly acknowledged that I could go up.

  Lulu started whooping again in the elevator. As soon as the elevator doors slid open, she tore her way down the tile corridor to her mommy’s open door and circled around and around her, whimpering, her tail thump-thumpeting. Divorce is always hardest on the children.

  Merilee knelt in the doorway to stroke her and hug her. “Oh, sweetness, how are you? Yes, I’ve missed you, too. Yes, I have.”

  Then she stood and we looked at each other and I got lost in those green eyes of hers the same way I have since that night we first met at the Blue Mill a million years ago. Merilee Nash, pride of the Yale School of Drama, will never be mistaken for a fashion magazine cover girl. Her nose and chin are too patrician. Her forehead is way too high. Plus she’s no slender, delicate flower. She has broad, sloping shoulders, a muscular back and strong legs. Standing there in her size-ten stocking feet she was just under six feet tall. Her waist-length golden hair was brushed out and gleaming. She had on a silk target-dot dressing gown that was identical to my own. In fact, it was my own until she stole it and I had to buy myself another one. Holding on to my clothes had been a genuine problem when we were together. She always looked better in them than I did. Under the gown she wore a pair of white pima cotton PJs with blue piping. Men’s PJs, because she insists they’re better made. She sews the fly shut, in case you’re wondering.

  “What an unexpected pleasure, darling,” she said in that magically cascading voice of hers.

  “Is this a bad time?”

  “A slightly hectic time, but not bad. Never bad. May I get you a whiskey?”

  “No, I’m all set.”

  She stowed my coat and hat in the hall closet and stood there inspecting me. “My God, I forgot how good you look in a navy blue suit.”

  “You look good in everything. And I haven’t forgotten.”

  “Don’t flirt,” she said, coloring slightly.

  “You started it.”

  “Did not.”

  “Did.”

  She’d furnished the apartment in Mission oak after I’d gone, but not just any Mission oak—signed Gustav Stickley Craftsman originals, each piece spare, elegant and flawlessly proportioned. There was an umbrella stand and a tall-case clock in the marble-floored entry hall. In the dining room she had a hexagonal dining table with six matching V-backed chairs around it and a massive sideboard with exposed tenons and pins. The living room, with its floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Central Park sixteen stories below, was anchored by a seating area consisting of two Morris armchairs and a matching settee of oak and leather. The coffee table was heaped with scripts.

  I sat in one of the chairs. Merilee curled up on the settee. Lulu promptly joined her there and plopped her head in Merilee’s lap, gleeful argle-bargle sounds coming from deep in her throat.

  “Is your daddy taking good care of you?” Merilee asked her. “Are you getting enough to eat?”

  “She’s been supping in fine fashion,” I said, feeling my chest tighten. It was painful to return to this place, this life where I once belonged.

  The phone rang. And rang. Merilee ignored it.

  “Do you need to get that?”

  She shook her head. It stopped ringing. All was quiet again—until a horrible grinding noise came out of the kitchen.

  “Merilee, are you milling your own grain in there?”

  “It’s my fax machine, silly man.”

  “I can’t believe I was married to someone who owns a fax machine.”

  “Hoagy, you are a hopeless trog.”

  I glanced at Grandfather’s Benrus. It was nearly nine. “Who’s faxing you at this time of night?”

  “My agent’s sending me the final details of my deal. I suppose I ought to see what they are.” She climbed out from under Lulu, padded into the kitchen and came back with a sheet of paper, peering at it. “My goodness, that’s quite a lot of zeroes, unless I’m seeing double.”

  “Here, let me . . .” I glanced at it. “My goodness, that’s quite a lot of zeroes. What are they for?”

  “If we can agree on the dollars, which it appears we have, I’ll be leaving on a jet plane to play Brett in a remake of The Sun Also Rises. I still have some issues with the latest draft,” she said, gesturing at the pile of scripts on the coffee table. “But it’s quite good, and the director is someone with whom I’ve always wanted to work. Not that I was his first choice, of course.”

  “Who was?”

  She sat back down with Lulu. “Meryl, who else? She’s everyone’s first choice for everything. It’s a good thing that she can only be in one movie at a time or they would have no need for Sigourney, Glenn, Michelle, any of us.”

  “Who’s playing Jake Barnes, dare I ask?”

  “I’ll be starring opposite People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive.”

  “Dear God, please don’t tell me you’re flying off to Paris to film The Sun Also Rises with Patrick Swayze.”

  “No, silly. He was last year’s. This year’s is Nick Nolte.”

  “Oh, him.”

  She gazed at me through her eyelashes. “Why, Hoagy, are you a teensy bit jealous?”

  “Not at all. I’m just not happy about you flying to Paris without me. Paris is ours.”

  “You’re right, it is. And I’m not. Flying to Paris, that is. I’m going to Budapest.”

  “What’s in Budapest?”

  “Paris is. It seems that it isn’t in Paris anymore. Not when they want a vintage look. Budapest stands in for it.”

  “When do you leave?”

  “Tomorrow morning,” she said as she stroked Lulu, whose tongue was now lolling out of the side of her mouth.

  “Shouldn’t you be packing?”

  “I’m still a trouper at heart, darling. It takes me five minutes to pack for six weeks on the road. I’ve spoken on the phone with Nick several times. He’s intelligent and serious. I’m looking forward to working with him.”

  “I can’t remember, did you ever work with Patrick Van Pelt?”

  She arched an eyebrow at me. “America’s number-one television hunk? No, I never have. Larry Olivier he’s not, but Patrick’s had an amazing career out there. Why, I’ll bet he hasn’t missed a leading man’s paycheck in fifteen years. That is not easy to do, believe me. Mind you, one does hear things . . .”

  “Things? W
hat things?”

  “That he’s difficult, not to mention a p-i-g. Knocking up little Kat Zachry was certainly not an enlightened move. She’s nineteen years old. He should have kept his sword in his scabbard.”

  “I’ve missed your quaint little expressions.”

  “Are you sure you won’t have a whiskey, darling? It’s awfully chilly out, and I have the Macallan you like.”

  “All right.”

  She dislodged Lulu, who was dozing contentedly now, and went to the sideboard in the dining room. Came back with my single malt in a heavy vintage bar glass that fit comfortably in my hand. “Why this interest in Patrick Van Pelt?” she asked as she settled back on the settee with Lulu.

  “Actually, my interest is in Mrs. Patrick Van Pelt.”

  “Monette Aintree?”

  “It seems that her father may be about to reappear in her life.”

  Merilee’s eyes widened in shock. “You’re kidding.”

  “No, I’m not. She’s received a letter from him that appears to be authentic. He wants to come in from the cold. There’s quite a story to be told. I may get involved in the telling of it. It’ll mean going out to L.A. for a while. It’ll also mean . . .” I sipped my Macallan. “I have to go see Reggie.”

  “Oh, her.” Merilee smiled at me sweetly. “You’re such an old-fashioned gentleman. I love that about you. You and I aren’t a couple anymore and yet you still came here to ask me if I mind you visiting her.”

  “Actually, I was wondering if I could borrow the Jag. She’s living at a meditation retreat outside of New Paltz. The only way to get there is by car and you know how allergic Lulu is to rental cars. She starts sneezing and can’t stop.”