About fifteen minutes into the film a small group of men slipped into the seats next to mine. I nodded and they did, too, and we all fastened our attention on the screen. I did not notice them particularly, except to note almost subliminally that the man next to me wore a dark suit and a tie and had tiny, pointed highly polished shoes on small feet that almost dangled above the floor and that he smelled powerfully of something I could have sworn was Old Spice. Every boy in my high school class had worn it for dates and proms. But that could hardly be true out here, in this time, and so I tuned out the scent and lost myself in the images on the screen. Surely, any moment now, Laura would appear.…
Twenty minutes into the film I saw Laura walk up the aisle past me and out the doors. Light from the lobby flared and then faded. I turned around and looked after her; was she ill again? Had the morning’s nausea overtaken her? She had not looked ill; had seemed, in my brief glimpse of her, simply Laura, in her black and her expanse of bare tanned skin, vivid and arresting. She did not look at me or anyone else. I did not want to get up and rush after her and saw that Glynn still sat in her down-front seat, eyes glued to the screen. If anything had been wrong, surely Glynn would have known. There was a slight murmuring, like a wind in trees, in the theater, but it did not seem to have anything to do with Laura’s leaving. No heads turned when she passed. I settled down again to watch.
The man on the end of the row made a short, low sound when Laura passed us, and in a few moments he too got up and went out. I sat for a few minutes more, increasingly restless, and then the little man beside me left too. He did not speak to the two other men who had come in with him, only nodded, unsmiling, to me and went up the aisle in the spraddling waddle of a penguin. The two remaining men looked at each other, but said nothing.
It was only then that it occurred to me that Laura was not in this movie.
Shock and a swift, punishing grief kept me in my seat for a moment, motionless, and then anger jerked me out of it. This was why Caleb Pringle had not called her, then. He knew her part had been cut, of course he did; he would have to have known. It was he who directed the new version. He knew, and he did not tell her. Instead he let her see for herself, in a theater surrounded by everyone who had worked on the film, who knew what her part had been and what she and Caleb Pringle had been to each other. He knew and let her talk about both the part and the relationship to that poisonous little slug, Billy Poythress. Or, if he had not known precisely that, he should have anticipated such interviews. It was, after all, Caleb Pringle who had told her that her part was, to quote Laura, “best-supporting” stuff. I was so angry that I shook all over, so angry that my knees trembled on my way up the theater aisle.
I looked around for her, blinking against the pitiless fluorescence, but the lobby was empty except for a white-coated waiter leaning against the wall behind the buffet table, smoking a cigarette. Even the young woman in the ticket booth was gone. When I approached the waiter he stubbed out his cigarette and stood at attention.
“I’m afraid the bar isn’t open yet,” he said, showing his perfect white teeth in an opossumlike smile. Everybody in Los Angeles, I thought irrationally, had perfect white teeth. Maybe the Chamber of Commerce passed bleaching kits out to newcomers, or the Welcome Wagon.
“I don’t want a drink,” I said. “I’m looking for a young woman in a black dress, with blond hair in a braid. She came out a few minutes ago.”
“Yeah,” he said, rolling his eyes in appreciation. “She sure did. Went into the ladies’ room so fast I thought she was sick or something. Then some guy went in there, right after her. Some real squealing been going on ever since. Nothing to me; I don’t care. You see everything out here. But if that’s where you’re headed you might want to knock first.”
I glared at him and went swiftly toward the room marked “Ladies,” but paused at the door. I could hear the sounds of sobbing clearly, Laura’s sobbing, and a man’s voice speaking lowly, urgently, as if soothing her. It must have been the man in the seat down the row from me; obviously a friend from the production then, someone who would know what the amputation of her part would mean to her. I went back into the lobby and sank down on a steel and chrome bench. Her friend was probably in better position than I to comfort her, but I could not make myself go back into the theater. I had never heard Laura cry that I had not moved to comfort her. To sit still and know that this time I could not was agony.
I was still sitting there, wondering what on earth I could say to her, what she would do now, when Glynn came into the lobby, like me, blinking in the light.
“Where’s Aunt Laura?” she said. “She left and didn’t come back; did you see her go by? Mom, I don’t think she’s in the movie. I think something happened to her part—”
“I think so, too,” I said. “It’s awful. It’s monstrous. Somebody should have told her. She’s in the rest room now, crying her eyes out, but there’s a man in there with her, comforting her. He was sitting in my row, so he’s got to be a friend. I think he’s the best one to be with her right now. We’ll stick around till she comes out and then we’ll take her home. She’s not going to want to go on to any cast party.”
I thought then of Glynn’s whole-souled anticipation of this evening, of going to a famous restaurant with movie stars, of meeting this Rocky MacPherson who loomed so large in her small pantheon of heroes.
“I’m so sorry, Tink,” I said. “I know how you were looking forward to tonight. But you can see that something like Spago would just kill her—”
“I know,” Glynn said. “No sweat. I heard somebody say Rocky’s not here, anyway. Poor Aunt’ Aura. This is not a good place, is it? Hollywood?”
“No,” I said, getting up and giving her shoulders a hug. Their sharpness, beneath the silky flow of her tunic, jolted me anew. I had almost forgotten the anorexia.
“Thanks for understanding,” I said. “You’re a neat kid. As if I didn’t know that.”
We went back to the bench and she sat for a moment, worrying her fingernail with her teeth. Then she said, “He should have told her. How can she be in love with somebody who could let this happen to her? If she was that close to him, why couldn’t she see what a jerk he is?”
“The old saw about love being blind is true, I guess,” I said. “Most people will bend over backward not to see the bad in somebody they love.”
“Then how on earth do they keep from being hurt all the time,” she said, pain sharp in her voice.
“They don’t. People do get hurt, most by the people they love. Otherwise they wouldn’t care. It’s a price you pay for the love. Most of us think it’s worth it. Most of us don’t get hurt this bad either; people who really love you just don’t sell you out.”
“But you can’t really know—”
“No. You can’t really know.”
“So. Love means hurting. Or it could. Wow. What a wonderful thing love must be,” Glynn said, anger and misery in her scornful voice. I did not answer her. How could you explain it to someone who had not yet known it? But Glynn loved; she loved me; I knew that she did. She loved Pom.
And she had felt the pain of that love. I knew that she had not yet drawn the parallel, perhaps would not. You start young to bury that knowledge deep. The hurt in my heart for my sister spread out to encompass my daughter. Damn you, too, Pom, I thought. She’s too young to equate love with rejection and punishment. You should not have yelled at her; you should not have punished her. Not when none of it was her fault. You truly should not have done that. You’re going to have to make that up to her. I can’t let that go.
The young man behind the bar came over to us carrying glasses.
“The bar just opened,” he said. “You two look like you could use a little something. It’s just white wine,” he added, taking in Glynn’s youth. “Or I could bring some Perrier or something.”
“No, wine’s fine,” I said. “Thank you. This is nice of you.”
“My pleasure,” he said, smiling at Gl
ynn. She kept her head down and did not smile, but she sipped at her wine.
“Thank you,” she mumbled. My good girl.
We had almost finished our drinks, sitting in silence, when the door to the ladies’ room opened and Laura came out. I leaped up and ran forward. A tall man in blue jeans and a tweed sports coat over a T-shirt walked beside her, arm around her. His head was bent to hers. His hair was dark and curled over his ears, and his face was snub-nosed and freckled and attractive in a boyish, unfinished sort of way. He seemed very young. He looked up at me and I saw that he had hazel eyes with laugh lines fanning out from them, and a network of tiny, dry creases about his mouth and on his forehead. Not so young, then, just seeming that way…
I knew instantly that this was Caleb Pringle. I could feel my teeth clench. My eyes moved, almost reluctantly, to Laura’s face, and I realized that I had been avoiding looking at her. Her face was red and swollen, and still damp from tears and undoubtedly a scrubbing with paper towels, but she was smiling, a misty, full smile. Her head nestled into the hollow where his neck met his shoulder.
“Oh, poor Met,” she said tremulously. “Waiting to pick up the pieces. Oh, I’m so sorry you had to be here for this. It’s all right, Met, I promise it is. I understand now. It was Margolies who made Pring cut the part; he cut two others, too. He wanted the emphasis to be all on Lorna’s part. She’s his new patootie. I should have known that. Pring couldn’t argue with him on the cuts, not and save the picture. Not and get Margolies’s backing for the new one. Margolies made it clear that if he didn’t like Right Time he wasn’t going to put any money into Arc, and oh, Met, Pring’s got to make Arc. It’s going to be by far the best thing he’s done, and there’s already a script, and several parts cast, and Pring will lose the actors if he has to go back to the drawing board on money, and there’s this absolutely wonderful part in it for me, better than Right Time, better than anything I’ve ever done, the lead, really…”
She stopped for lack of breath, and laughed. It was a carol, a lark’s song. I smiled, in spite of myself.
“This is Caleb Pringle,” she said. “I forgot you didn’t know him.”
Caleb Pringle smiled. The pleasant, ordinary face bloomed into something extraordinary.
“This is my big sister, Merritt Fowler, Pring,” Laura said. “Of whom you’ve heard more than you probably ever wanted to know. To whom I owe everything. Be nice to her. I think she’s probably mad at you.”
“As well she should be,” Caleb Pringle said. His voice was wonderful, deep and smooth as dark honey. “I could kick myself for not making sure she got my message about the part. I called from Margolies’s place several times but by that time he was so paranoid about the way Right Time was going that I think he was bugging my phone calls. I couldn’t get Laura, so I called Stuart and told him to tell her, but apparently he forgot. I should have made sure—I know HIV gets to the brain eventually—but I didn’t. And believe me, I am terribly sorry, both for Laura and this big sister I have, indeed, heard so much about. I apologize to you both. I feel like a worm about Right Time, but it’s over and I can’t do anything about it, and Arc is going to be a very important picture for a lot of us. I hope…I think…it’s going to mean a lot more to Laura than Right Time ever could have.”
He stopped and looked at me, still smiling. I did not know how to respond. I was not ready to let go of my anger over Laura’s humiliation tonight; I did not want it tossed aside lightly. But I wanted to be happy for her if indeed this new opportunity meant so much more, and I realized that I knew less than nothing about her world and Caleb Pringle’s. It felt important to me to be fair. If he really had tried to get a message to her.
I saw Stuart Feinstein’s wrecked face and heard his voice: “I called in a lot of chips for her on this one.” And “There’s nothing more I can do for her but hold her hand and pray.”
Not the words of a man who would forget a phone message of such import. Not a man to let a cherished friend be ambushed by pain.
But I knew that HIV did indeed, in many cases, affect memory and reasoning. I did not know what to say. And then I looked at Laura’s radiant, ravaged face, and did know.
“As long as you take care of my little sister you don’t owe me any apologies at all,” I said.
“I’m certainly going to try,” Caleb Pringle said. He leaned over and kissed Laura on the top of her head.
“Laura told me everything about you except what a stunning woman you are,” Caleb said. “If there are any more of you at home I could cast a whole movie around the Mason women.”
I smiled politely, not wanting to be complimented just now. It would be very easy for my tremulous liking for this man to slump back into anger.
“There are, and here she comes,” Laura said, just as Glynn got up from the bench and walked toward us.
“This is my niece, Glynn Fowler,” Laura said. “Isn’t she something? Look at that face; wouldn’t a camera love those bones, though?”
Caleb Pringle didn’t speak, only looked at Glynn. He stood very still, and his face did not change expression. He did not move. He did not speak. Then he said, “I imagine it would, yes. Hello, Glynn. I’m Caleb Pringle, the director of this debacle, and I want to assure you, as I have your mother, that I meant no harm to your Aunt Laura, and that I have found a way, I think, to make it up to her. I hope that you will forgive me. I’d like very much to be in your good graces.”
Glynn did not blush or drop her eyes or stammer. She looked at Caleb Pringle for a long moment, an adult’s whole, measuring look, and then said, “I love Aunt Laura very much. I hope you will be good to her.”
She said it in a soft, grave little voice, a near whisper, and he smiled. It was a smile of quick, pure delight. It had been an extraordinary thing for a very young girl to say, and I was flooded with pride in her.
“I’ll try not to disappoint you,” he said. “And for a start, will you three be my guests at dinner tonight? It’s at Spago, and the food is really very good. I expect you’ve heard of it. I want Laura to show the flag, and I’d love to show you two off. Most leading ladies’ relatives are fat and wear aqua polyester pantsuits.”
Glynn giggled, a soft little snort.
“Mom has one of those,” she said, grinning. “She almost wore it tonight.”
“I do not, and I did not,” I said.
“Well, she would have lifted the taboo on aqua polyester pantsuits forever, but I like her just like she is,” Caleb said. “You, too. You look just like a new young star on her way to Spago. The paparazzi will fall all over you. Will you come?”
Glynn looked at me, her face luminous with hope, and I looked at Laura.
Okay? I asked with my eyes.
Oh, yes, hers said.
“We accept with pleasure,” I said, and he nodded and said, “I’ll have my car brought around. We can pick up yours later. I’ll tell you a little about the movie on the way over. Oh, by the way, weren’t you sitting down the row from us, Merritt? Next to Margolies?”
“That was Margolies?”
“Aka the penguin. They tried to get him for Batman. How did he seem to be liking the movie?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “He left before I did, just after you.”
He was silent a long moment. Then he said, casually, “Was he smiling, do you know?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t believe he was.”
“Shit,” Caleb Pringle said softly, almost savagely. And then, “Well, he will. Come along. Your carriage awaits without.”
The carriage was a stretch limo of such length and dazzling, sepulchral whiteness that I was embarrassed to get into it. Laura, however, slipped in without even looking at it, and I heard Glynn give a little gasp of joy. This would be incendiary stuff with her small crowd at home. The driver, a diminutive Hispanic in correct livery, nodded and bowed and smiled us into the car.
“Lord, but this is chopping tall cotton,” I said, looking around me at the limo’s interior. It h
ad a bar and more electronic gadgetry, including a tiny television set, than I had ever seen, and there were fresh flowers in a bud vase. Peruvian lilies, I thought. Telephones sprouted all over.
Caleb Pringle laughed.
“The studio hired it,” he said, and pressed a button. The privacy shield rose noiselessly. “I’d much rather drive my old Woody, but Margolies is in love with these things. They must cost Vega as much as Ishtar did. I’ve always thought these things were like riding in a coffin on wheels. Jesus here, however, is a jewel. He thinks I’m working for Ryan O’Neill, who seems to be his idol. I think it’s because I once told him I was working for Orion, because now every time he drops me off he says, ‘Tell Orion O’Neill Jesus say ’allo.’ Oh, well. The first time I shot in Mexico, my Spanish was so bad I told everyone I was making a gorilla. I was a sensation there for a while.”
We burst into laughter and Caleb Pringle popped open a bottle of champagne that rested in a silver bucket and poured it, and passed it around. We all took a glass.
“To Arc,” he said. “Because this is where it starts.”
He raised his glass and looked at Laura, and she smiled dazzlingly and raised hers.
“To Arc,” she said. “And everything else.”
We drank. “Mmmm,” Glynn said, her nose buried in foam. “It’s like drinking perfume.”
“The old monk who invented it said it was like drinking stars,” Caleb said, smiling at her, and she said, “Oh, it is! That’s much better!”
He told us a little about Arc as we ghosted through the spangled night toward the restaurant. The people and cars on the street looked as unreal, as phantasmagorical, as images in a fever dream. The limo’s glass was tinted, but I thought that they would have seemed ephemeral, anyway. I had the notion that legions of Los Angeles’s homeless were watching our rococo progression and felt myself redden in the sheltering dimness, even as I knew it was an absurd thought. There were no homeless in Beverly Hills. At least, I did not think so.
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