“Those are my initials, remember? Stewart Stafford Hoag.”
“Allow me to rephrase that. Why are you wearing cufflinks?”
“Certain traditions are important to hold on to.”
“I liked you much better in that old motorcycle jacket you used to have.”
“Flight jacket. And I still have it.”
“Does filmdom’s favorite forehead like the way you dress?”
“She does, as a matter of fact. And must you call her that?”
“Yes, I absolutely must.”
“Why is that?”
“Because it bothers you. And you’re still overdressed, Mr. Fancy Pants. This is a clothes-free space.”
“I’m not stripping.”
“My house, my rules.”
Same old Reggie. Everything was a dare. “Fine, we’ll talk outside when you’ve finished meditating. I can wait.”
“You’re in for a long wait.”
“How long?”
“Eight hours.”
“You’re going to sit here like this for eight straight hours?”
She nodded. “Either strip or wait. It’s entirely up to you.”
I stripped. To those of you out there who aspire to a career in ghostwriting, I should mention that if it’s dignity you’re after, then you ought to grab yourself a nice judgeship.
“You used to be in better shape,” she observed after I’d shed my clothes.
“That’s not entirely fair.” I sat cross-legged on the floor facing her, paying no mind to the shooting pains in my knees. “When you first met me I still possessed the physique of a topflight intercollegiate track-and-field star.”
“You did?”
“Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten that I was once the third-best javelin hurler in the entire Ivy League.”
“Somehow that slipped my mind,” she said as Lulu sprawled out between us. “Are you doing any writing these days?”
“Some people call it writing.”
“What do you call it?”
“I call it crap. How about you?”
She lowered her gaze. “No, not for a long time.”
“How come?”
“I lost my mojo.”
“Think it’ll ever come back?”
“I don’t think about it at all. I can’t or I go bonkers.” She held out her bare arms so that I could see the thin white scars on the inside of her wrists.
“When did you do that?”
“Three years ago. Not to worry, I’m better now.”
“Good, because that’s the coward’s way out.”
“I happen to come from a family of cowards, remember?”
“Your mother was tripping. That’s different.”
Lulu had begun to doze with her mouth open, imbuing the snug warmth of the meditation solarium with a strong scent of the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
“Not a terrible place you have here, by the way,” I said, gazing out at her view of the Hudson River.
“It keeps me busy,” she said, brightening a bit. “My accountant hates it because I lose a steady million dollars every year, but it’s super gratifying. I can bring together knowledgeable people to debate pretty much any subject I’m interested in—overpopulation, ground water pollution, the World Wide Web, women’s reproductive rights—”
“Back up, the World Wide what?”
“It’s coming, Stewie. Up until now, computers have been information islands unto themselves. But a British computer scientist named Tim Berners-Lee has figured out a way to link millions of them together. They’ll be able to share information and talk to each other, and before long they’ll be—”
“Taking over the world. Okay, you’re scaring me.”
“Don’t be such a wuss. And you’re going to love e-mail, which is coming sooner than you think. Put every extra dollar you have into a company called America Online if you know what’s good for you.”
“I’ve never known what’s good for me. And I don’t have any extra dollars. Or cents.”
Reggie studied me curiously. “Does she know that you’re here?”
“Who, Merilee?”
“Yes, Merilee.”
“She encouraged it, actually.”
“Why did she do that?”
“She thinks I never got over you.”
Reggie blinked at me in surprise. “You did, didn’t you?”
“I certainly thought so.”
“Are you two back together?”
“We tried Paris together for a week last spring. It didn’t work out at all. And Lulu was miserable.”
“How come?”
“She doesn’t speak French.”
Reggie let out a guffaw. She took my hand and squeezed it. “I’ve missed you, Stewie.”
“You could have picked up the phone.”
“So could you.”
“I didn’t think you’d want to hear from me.”
“You did break my heart into a million little pieces,” she acknowledged, dropping my hand. “And I hated you for a long time. But I moved on. Only, it turns out that I suck at the whole girlfriend thing.”
“Since when?”
“Since it turns out that I don’t know how to pretend I’m happy. That seems to bother most men. You need to feel like saviors. You also prefer something in a younger model. I’m not exactly a hot young babe anymore.”
“You look mighty good to me. In fact, I’m finding it very difficult to keep my eyes off those perky nipples of yours.”
“You’re flattering me now. It’s working, too, damn it. You’re such a sweet-talker. And I forgot how handsome you are.”
“Now who’s sweet-talking whom?”
“I mean it, Stewie. When I opened my eyes and saw you, all of the breath went right out of my body. I’ve had this incredibly powerful feeling all week that someone was about to come into my life. It never occurred to me that it would be you.” Her eyes bored into mine. “What are you really doing here?”
“Chasing a wild goose.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means I’m here on a fool’s errand.”
“Are you getting paid to do it?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Then you’re not a fool, you’re a hooker. You should be wearing hot pants and fishnet stockings.”
“It’s about Monette.”
Reggie’s face darkened. “My sweet, darling sister? I’ve been reading all about her idiot husband and his pregnant teenybopper. Patrick sure has a thing for lowlife People cover girls, doesn’t he? First Monette, now Kat Zachry. But what does that have to do with me?”
“I take it you haven’t been in touch with Monette.”
“Not for years. Why? What’s happened?”
“Your dad has written a letter to her. Or so it appears. He told her that he wants to come in out of the cold. And he wants me to help her tell his story.”
“Why you?”
“Possibly because of my connection to you.”
“I don’t believe one word of it,” she said with a shake of her head. “Sounds like classic Monette bullshit to me. She’s spent her entire life making up stories about Dad.”
“You think she’s concocted a fake letter from him?”
“I don’t have a doubt in my mind.”
“It appears to have been typed on your dad’s old typewriter. How can that be?”
Reggie shrugged her smooth bare shoulders. “She has it. She must have taken it when we cleaned out his apartment together.”
“You don’t remember?”
“I’m afraid not. I was stoned a lot in those days.”
“The author of the letter used a nickname for Monette that your dad gave her when she was a girl.”
Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Olive Oyl?”
I nodded. “Monette claims there are only three people on the planet who know about it—your dad, her and you.”
Reggie let that sink in for a moment before she said, “You’re not asking me
if I wrote the letter, are you?”
“Did you?”
“Do you honestly think I’ve been sitting up here in the woods with my dad’s old typewriter hatching some bizarre hoax? Why would I do that? How can you even think it?”
“I’ve been a celebrity ghost for a while now. My mind burrows into all sorts of strange, sick places. Has your dad been in touch with you?”
“No.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“No.”
“I find this whole thing very odd. If it’s for real, I mean.”
“It’s not.”
“Just for the sake of argument let’s say it is, okay?”
She let out a sigh. “Okay . . .”
“Why would he reach out to Monette? She’s the one who made a name for herself by blasting him in print. You were his loyal defender. Wouldn’t you be the one who he’d write to?”
Reggie considered this for a moment. “No, that part makes total sense, actually. If he’d chosen me I’d have tossed his letter in the trash and caught the first flight for Bangkok. He’d know that Monette would make a big fucking deal out of it, because that’s what Monette does.” She gave me that long-distance squint of hers. “You’re going out there, aren’t you? You’re flying out to L.A. to find out if it might actually be for real.”
“I’m chasing a wild goose, like I told you. Want to come?”
“Not a chance. I have no desire to see Monette again.”
“Don’t you want to meet your niece and nephew? They must be in high school by now.”
“It was good to see you again, Stewie,” she said, her huge eyes shining at me. “I thought it would hurt, but it doesn’t. I guess that means I’m all grown up now. Or something. Let’s have dinner in the city some night, okay?”
“Okay.” I climbed slowly to my feet, shaking the numbness out of them. Lulu stirred, yawning hugely. “I’ll be in touch.”
“I’ll be right here.” Reggie closed her eyes, returning to her silent meditation.
I gathered up my clothes and got dressed downstairs, then headed back down the path with Lulu. The Jag was the only car in the parking lot now. The VW was gone. Lulu hopped in and got herself settled in the passenger seat. I started it up with a roar and sped on out of there. When I made it back to New Paltz, I stopped at a gas station, fished my AT&T calling card from my wallet and called the Silver Fox at her office to tell her that I was in.
The next morning I flew out to L.A.
Chapter Three
I flew first class. HWA was picking up the tab, and Lulu has been known to get truculent if she has to fly coach.
I never trust my Olympia to baggage crews. I carried it on board along with the antique doctor’s bag that I use for toting around Lulu’s bowls and supply of 9Lives and anchovies. I’d dressed casually in a blue chambray shirt, khakis, kid leather ankle boots and my battered old Werber flight jacket, which is an ideal weight for December in Los Angeles, where the forecast called for a high of seventy-three going down into the fifties that night.
The stargazing in first class was exceptional that morning. I was privileged, privileged to witness Pauly Shore, the slow-talking MTV stoner comic, logging face time with Richard Simmons, the screechy, hyperkinetic TV exercise guru. The two of them bore such an eerie yin-yang physical resemblance to each other that I began to wonder what might happen if we encountered air turbulence and they accidentally bumped into each other. Would they fuse into one giant, jiggling, protozoan blob? Happily, Richard went bounding off to yammer with one-half of the sizzling hot hip-hop duo Salt-N-Pepa. I think it was Salt, but I can’t swear that it wasn’t Pepa.
I took a pass on our in-flight movie, a smarmy $65 million Bruce Willis flop called Hudson Hawk, and contented myself with that morning’s New York Daily News, which carried a page-one banner headline that read “WHO’S YOUR DADDY?” above a photo of Kat Zachry and her noticeable tummy strolling down a West Hollywood street in a loose-fitting camisole and sweatpants. The New York Post, not to be outdone, went with “KAT IN THE HAT” and a photo of her in an L.A. Dodgers cap as she and her tum-tum were getting out of a BMW convertible in a coffee shop parking lot. The Daily News, citing “sources close to the production of Malibu High,” disclosed that it was becoming “increasingly difficult” to shoot around Kat’s “increasingly obvious” pregnant state, which was “an obvious taboo” for a character who was a high school senior. According to the Post, several evangelical Christian and family values organizations were calling for a nationwide boycott of the top-rated show unless the network fired the young actress for her “immoral” behavior.
The Gray Lady of American journalism, the New York Times, went with the breathtaking news that bestselling lifestyle author and TV talk show personality Monette Aintree, elder daughter of legendary novelist Richard Aintree, had just signed a seven-figure book contract that would team her with “former literary wunderkind” Stewart Hoag on a project that would, according to her publisher, “surely rank as one of the major literary events of our time.” No details about the book’s subject were disclosed. Monette Aintree’s literary agent, Boyd Samuels, vice president of Literary Synergy at the Harmon Wright Agency, would neither confirm nor deny that it would concern itself with her famous missing father.
I set the newspapers aside, vowing that I was not going to obsess about those smug shitheads at the Times calling me a “former literary wunderkind.” One of these days I would write another novel, an even better one than my first, and they would fall all over themselves raving about how great I was. Until then, I wasn’t going to let them ruin my morning. Instead, I spent the flight reading a collection of short stories by John O’Hara, which is something I do every few years just to remind myself what good writing is.
A uniformed driver was waiting for me by the baggage carousel at LAX to take me to Monette’s home on Rockingham Avenue in Brentwood. He collected my bags and led Lulu and me to a black Cadillac Brougham that was parked outside in the loading zone, where the warm Southern California air was scented with a rich mix of jet engine exhaust and morning smog. I instructed him to drive me instead to a converted prop warehouse on La Brea, one block south of Olympic. Dirk Weir, the brother of an old college classmate, owned a garage there that supplied movie producers with specialty vehicles for period shoots. I would need my own wheels while I was in town, and what you drive when you’re in L.A. is as vital as the air that you breathe. Or can’t breathe, as the case may be.
The limo driver dropped us there before he continued on to Monette’s house with my luggage. I moseyed through the bustling garage in search of my wheels. Strolled past a white 1956 T-Bird that was a dead ringer for the one Suzanne Somers drove in American Graffiti, then an immense, mouthwatering 1930 Duesenberg dual-cowl phaeton before I found the ride that I’d reserved—a truly classic 1947 Indian Chief Roadmaster, complete with sidecar. The bike was in beautiful condition. Brilliant red enamel body and fenders. Gleaming chrome everywhere else. A sport windshield, leather saddlebags.
Lulu jumped into the sidecar and let out a whoop of delight.
“She’s got good taste, I’ll give her that,” said Dirk, who had a ponytail and was missing several teeth. He was grinning as he handed me the key.
I climbed on. Worked the choke, gave the throttle a quarter turn and stepped down hard on the kick start. The 1,212 cc side-valve air-cooled engine roared to life unlike any engine before or since.
“It’s got new points and plugs,” Dirk assured me after I was done revving it like a gleeful kid. “Shouldn’t give you any trouble.”
“Can I take it on the freeway?”
He nodded. “It’ll cruise smooth as silk at sixty-five. Helmet?”
“Never use them.”
After I’d signed the paperwork, I eased on out of the driveway and headed north on La Brea, getting used to the feel of it and drawing wide-eyed stares from the other drivers on the road. Lulu, who, let us not forget, has an actress for a mother, rode wit
h her nose high in the air, loving the attention. I don’t believe I’d ever seen her happier.
When I got to Melrose I stopped off at Pink’s for two chili dogs and a root beer because I can’t go to L.A. and not stop at Pink’s. Then I continued north on La Brea to Sunset Boulevard and hung a left, making my way past Laurel Canyon and Crescent Heights toward the Sunset Strip, the glitzy, fabled onetime home of Ciro’s and Dino’s and the Pink Pussycat. These days the Strip was home to Spago, Wolfgang Puck’s A-list Hollywood restaurant, Tower Records and a smattering of rock and comedy clubs that were meant to be seen after dark. They looked tacky and tired in the midday sunlight. But, mostly, the Strip was famous for its gigantic billboards. If you wanted to find out who was hot all you had to do was cruise the Strip. Calvin was hot. You couldn’t miss the strikingly naughty black-and-white Herb Ritts photo for Calvin Klein jeans that featured a semi-naked waif model named Kate Moss straddling a semi-naked white rapper who went by the goo-goo handle Marky Mark. But nobody was as hot that season as Whitney. There was Whitney on one huge billboard promoting her smash hit film, The Bodyguard, a treacly interracial romance that starred her opposite a semi-catatonic Kevin Costner. And there was Whitney on another huge billboard promoting her smash hit soundtrack album for The Bodyguard. It was a mighty impressive feat considering that Whitney had no acting chops and possessed a singing voice that was of no value whatsoever unless you wished to shatter bulletproof glass from a half mile away. Loud. Whitney could sing really loud.
When Sunset crossed over into Beverly Hills at Doheny, the billboards gave way to palm trees and the color palette switched over to lush green. There was a center divider that was lavishly planted and immaculately shorn. And, on my right, there was the elegant Beverly Hills Hotel. Just past the hotel, at North Whittier Drive, Sunset made an extremely sharp right bend that was famous to anyone who remembers the music of Jan Berry and Dean Torrence. I took it good and slow, still getting used to the Roadmaster and its sidecar. It handled well as I took it through the curves into Holmby Hills. When I hit a red light at Beverly Glen a young, caramel-tanned blonde on a Vespa who was wearing a bikini, a windbreaker and no shoes pulled up next to me and blew Lulu a kiss.
The Girl with Kaleidoscope Eyes Page 5