Beauty, Disrupted

by Carre Otis

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  He just quietly stared at me. He was behaving oddly like Wheeler, the cold and enigmatic millionaire he would be playing in the movie.

  My heart sank. My stomach roiled. All of a sudden, the magic of the evening was deflated and a new set of apprehensions filled my chest. Mickey leaned over, pausing at my neck to take in a deep breath of me.

  “Good night, my dear,” he said sinisterly. And with that, he was gone.

  I stood alone at the bar, confused. I threw my drink back, swallowing it in just a few gulps. The only person who I thought would get me through this movie had just flipped a switch. I realized I was utterly alone.

  The next morning, through the darkness, I found my way to the small trailer marked EMILY. Next to it was a trailer marked WHEELER. It was triple the size of mine.

  I laughed, then pulled myself up and into what would be my home away from home while filming, Thankful to smell some coffee brewing, I smiled at my makeup artist, Hiram Ortiz. He would become one of my only friends and refuges during the long and arduous adventure to come. Unfortunately, Hiram would also become the chief source of cocaine that the country prided itself upon. I wouldn’t be the only one with an appetite for it and the need to escape the mounting pressures on set.

  We were well into our first week of shooting when the weather turned. Monsoon season approached, and there was one scene in particular that would lend itself nicely to a downpour. We were filming outside a dilapidated hotel, and although Mickey was not in the scene, he wanted to be there to make sure I “got it right.” It was a scene that required Emily to register a real sense of betrayal. After a few takes that were too flat, Mickey stepped forward from where he’d been watching.

  “Hey, Zalman,” he said. Zalman was clearly frustrated with me. Word was that he was beginning to doubt his decision to cast me as Emily. Knowing that made me more and more anxious in the role.

  “What, Mickey?” Zalman snapped. He looked at his watch and then back up at Mickey. Mickey moved closer in to whisper something in Zalman’s ear. Zalman slowly smiled and shrugged, “Yeah, man. Have a go at it.”

  Mickey stood in front of me, and I heard Zalman give the instruction to roll camera. And in an instant Mickey slapped me across the face hard enough for it to sting. Then he grabbed my dress, pulling it up, and ripped my underwear. I pushed him away, nearly falling. I was gasping as tears of humiliation welled in my eyes.

  “And . . . got it!” Zalman yelled. “Well done, kids.”

  I was in shock. I was in pain, but even more than that, I was furious. Throwing the books I was holding to the ground, I stomped away, Mickey close behind.

  “Otis! Otis, Wait up. I just want you to be the best you can be. That was only for reaction.” He looked into my eyes, a big puppy-dog expression on his face. I was totally confused. This wasn’t how I did things. This wasn’t how anyone I knew did things. I was hurt, feeling more and more shaken by Mickey’s erratic behavior.

  He wiped the tears from my eyes and threw an arm around my shoulders, pulling me to him in a friendly embrace. “Let’s go, kid. You done good.” And then he simply led me off set and back to the hotel.

  Mickey had arranged for us to have dinner in his room that evening. We had only a little while together, since there was still a full night of shoots ahead of us. I had never maintained such long hours and was beginning to feel not at all like myself. My world had been turned upside down.

  By this time the negative energy of the movie had tainted the sweetness I’d felt earlier with Mickey. And I wasn’t the only one upset by the whole tenor of things. Since we’d been shooting, major flooding had destroyed thousands of homes in the favelas that dotted the mountains around Rio. We heard that the locals were blaming us for their hardship.

  It was true that as filming went along, our production values appeared to stand in stark contrast to the immense poverty that existed there. It didn’t seem to me that we were giving much back to the locals, and the ramifications of that neglect seemed more and more real. There were rumors that we could be poisoned. In this superstitious country where Santeria was practiced by millions, we got serious threats of retaliation through black magic. Tragically, one crew member drowned at a nearby beach, compounding the uneasy sense that a dark cloud was hovering above.

  All of that was on my mind as we dined in Mickey’s hotel room. Before we ate, he poured us each a glass of red wine and swallowed a small pill.

  “What’s that?” I asked, concerned.

  “Xanax. It’s for anxiety. I get really bad anxiety, Otis. Especially when I’m stressed.” I believed him. I’d seen Mickey pacing around the set with a brown paper bag in his clenched fist, at times seeming to struggle for breath. We’d never spoken about his attacks before that moment.

  “Oh. Would it work for me?” I had never really taken pills and didn’t know there were ones to relieve stress. I’d always been into street drugs or pot.

  “Sure.” He shrugged. Like so many other ­people at the time, Mickey seemed to think that if a doctor had prescribed it, then it was all okay. He broke off a quarter of the oval-shaped pill and handed it to me. I smiled, tossed it into my mouth, and swallowed, hoping it would do the trick.

  I learned to get through the filming of Wild Orchid with the help of one substance or another. Mickey’s pills came in handy, but they didn’t make the all-nighters that were increasingly required any easier. We must have been halfway through production when Hiram, my makeup artist, broke his little secret to me.

  I was overtired and constipated. That’s not a good combination. We had a seminude scene coming up, and . . . well, let’s just say I was unbelievably uncomfortable.

  “Sweetie,” Hiram cooed from outside the bathroom door in my trailer. “I have something for you.”

  “What?” I snapped irritably from the toilet. I really just needed to take a crap.

  “Open up the door, darling. It will relieve you instantly.” And with that, he handed me a small dark vial and a tiny silver spoon.

  “No way!” I screamed, elated. “Where did you score this?” I was no stranger to coke. But it had been years since I’d used it.

  “My dear, this is the land of the coca,” Hiram said with a laugh as he shut the bathroom door again. I hadn’t a clue. But it seemed that just the sight of the vial in my hand remedied my problem. I stood, flushed the toilet, and walked into the living room of our humble abode.

  He smiled and winked at me. “Not too much, my friend. Just on occasion. It will help us get through some of these long-assed nights.” Hiram was a beautiful boy. I knew he had my back.

  “But, sweetheart . . . I don’t think it’s good if the boys were to find out,” he added, nodding toward Mickey’s trailer. I stopped and thought about it for a minute. No, it wouldn’t be good if the boys found out.

  “Our secret, Hiram. Okay?”

  “Yes, absolutely.” He nodded exaggeratedly.

  And just like that, cocaine came back into my life. Fast and furious. It was also the first of many secrets I had to keep from Mickey. I’d spent enough time with him at that point to know what was cool and what was not, what would fly and what wouldn’t.

  In the same way that he had his friends and allies, I had mine. He had secrets, and so did I. I learned from the start that even if Mickey and I were to be together, there would always be a barrier between us. There was love, but there were also lies. There was passion, and there was abuse. Everywhere you looked, there were confusing contradictions. But when it was good, it was so damn good. I was hooked on the drama, on the thrill. I was in thrall to the danger and to the crashes. I had become addicted to Mickey. And to all the different forms that life with him took. I didn’t have a clue how to break that spell.

  The grind of our schedule was wearing everyone down. The script and filming continued to take shadowy and sinister turns. Life was beginning to imitate art. There was a dark sea of confusion around this film. I was struck by how m
any others in the cast and crew were doing lines daily, but definitely not Mickey.

  Although my costar Jacqueline Bisset was always cordial, I could feel her watching me from afar. One night, during the filming of the carnival scene, she came up to me, winked, and wiped her nose. “My dear, you must learn to be discreet,” she said, not unkindly. I was mortified and made an effort to reel myself in. It was hard, though. Emily, in the film, was becoming wilder. And so was I.

  As we neared the end, there were so many discussions about the notorious love scene that remained to be shot and about our approaching wrap date. It was at this point that Mickey told me he would be leaving early. We were watching a great black storm pass over the ocean from the window of his room when he shared the news.

  “What do you mean, ‘early’?” I felt shaky inside. I knew that the end of the film might potentially be the end of our relationship.

  “I wanted to talk with you, Otis.” He looked into my eyes, and we sank into that familiar place with one another. It was a place past secrets. A place that truly did hold love.

  “I’ll be leaving a week before you. I wrap early. I’m going to miss you, baby.” He ran his hand through my hair. I gazed out toward the ocean.

  “What does that mean, Mickey?” I asked. “Was this just a movie thing? Will I see you again?” I didn’t want to appear desperate or needy. But in a way that’s exactly what I was. I was young, caught up in the intensity of things, too deep into it emotionally to turn back.

  “I want you to move in with me,” he said out of the blue.

  “What?” I was shocked. I knew there were “loose strings” at home, mostly with another model/actress he’d dated on and off. And I knew that his home in Benedict Canyon was very much under construction. Then again, I didn’t really have a home. Since I left the apartment I’d shared with Ethan, I’d been living in hotels and on the couches of friends. “Move in where? When did you decide this? Are you sure?”

  Was I sure? I was still stunned.

  “I want to leave Joey here with you while I’m gone. He’ll get you home safe and sound. I’ll find a place for you to live . . . um . . . for us to live. Just do me one favor, Otis.”

  My mouth hung to the floor. He was serious. And I was as excited as I was terrified. “What’s that, Mickey?”

  “Just be a good girl. While you’re here and I’m at home. Just be a good girl.” I had a strong feeling that if I wasn’t, he would know.

  I mustered all the innocence and strength I could find and smiled, looking into his eyes, steady and strong. “You’ve got nothing to worry about, Mick. Nothing.” I leaned in and gave him a kiss, my arms wrapping around his neck. I climbed into his lap, and we sat there together, quietly watching the waves, feeling each other’s rhythmic heartbeats and each other’s every breath. Feeling both safe and confused, I rested in the arms of the first truly adult man I’d ever loved. At least the first since my father.

  The one scene left to shoot before Mickey’s departure was the love scene between Emily and Wheeler. I had no idea what to expect. My nerves were flying high, and there was tremendous apprehension around the culmination of their relationship in the movie as well as about Mickey’s and my relationship in real life.

  But when I walked onto the set, the bed was surrounded by bright lights and sound guys. It was a lot like any other scene in the movie. We were not alone. As much as Mickey and I could generate chemistry, there were angles and marks to hit, and ours was a highly choreographed tumble and embrace. That’s not to say we weren’t able to get into the moment and lose ourselves and our bodies in genuine, rollicking passion. But we were also on a movie set. We had to break up our embraces each time the sound guy or the lighting guy or Zalman himself would quietly interject and say in an awkward tone, “Um, can we get that shot again? Sorry, guys.” We would freeze for a moment, laugh uncomfortably, and get into position to repeat the take. And then Mickey and I would be lost once more in our moment.

  My naïveté and lack of experience no doubt led things awry. My judgment was off. I had no frame of reference. I never realized that the way the scene was shot might suggest that more was happening than actually was. Almost immediately after we finished filming, the rumors that Mickey and I had actually had sex in the scene began to fly. Zalman King and his producing partners did nothing to squelch those rumors. Quite the contrary: When it came time to promote the film, they did everything they could to exploit the sensation around that one scene. Against my will the producers sold the footage to Playboy magazine, so still images of the scene could appear in the publication. This was only one of the many humiliating and maddening moments of exploitation that ensued from my role in Wild Orchid. It was the beginning of some very painful and public lessons for me.

  This promotional tactic worked. The press seemed to go crazy when some of the footage was leaked. “They had sex!” the papers screamed. Of course, that became the inevitable and unavoidable question during every interview that followed. For better or worse, the controversy over “the scene” overshadowed questions about my poor acting. What was to have been my breakthrough role as an actress was, as one reviewer called it, “wooden at best.” But at least the poor box-office showing would not be placed on my head alone. Mickey had already been in a string of films where his acting had been far from praised. He was just entering a long downward spiral.

  I made it through that last lonely week of filming and boarded the Varig flight back to LAX. I was exhausted and disoriented. I knew that the life I was returning to would look immensely different from the one I was coming from. I didn’t feel like a star. I didn’t feel like I was on top of the world. I felt wounded and scared, and more exposed and exploited than ever.

  But seeing Mickey waiting as I came through customs at LAX was a relief. He was my family. My friend and partner in the madness. And I would have to trust him. He was all I had in that moment.

  But, in truth, I was more on my own than I had ever been.

  BIRD IN A GILDED CAGE

  We drove through Beverly Hills in the back of a limo, the air-conditioning sending a chill through my body. When I reached over to lower the window, Mickey wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close. I protested. I just wanted some fresh air, but Mickey began to smother me with kisses, telling me how much he’d missed me.

  “Were you a good girl?” he asked me, playing with the button on my blouse.

  I felt small and insecure. Was I good? I wasn’t so sure. But I nodded yes as I watched the trees whiz by. How else could I answer a question like that?

  We drove past Mickey’s house in Benedict Canyon—the one that was still under construction. As impressive in size as it was, it stood lonely and perpetually unfinished. It was a money pit of indecision and would eventually be reclaimed by the bank when Mickey went broke. The limo didn’t stop.

  “So where are we staying?” I asked, confused.

  “Not far, just up and over Mulholland, the Valley side. You’ve got great views, and Bruce has fixed it up real nice. We already got your stuff out of storage for you. You’re all moved in.”

  Gulp. That was one huge decision taken care of.

  The Alta Loma Terrace house sat on the top of a hill, behind iron gates at the far end of a cul-de-sac. It was huge and dark, and it couldn’t have looked more remote or less inviting. Mickey was beaming, assuring me I’d be happy here. I was bewildered. He seemed much more interested in impressing me—and isolating me—than in spending time with me. That wasn’t the Mickey I thought I knew.

  Bruce, who was perhaps my favorite member of the entourage (and the only one who had the courage to stand up to Mickey), came bouncing out of the house as we drove up, wrapping me in a brotherly embrace as I stepped from the car. Mickey didn’t follow.

  “Otis, I have a meeting. Gotta run. Bruce will show you around.” The limo driver shut the door, and they sped off down the hill. Bruce grabbed my bags and walked into the house. I trailed behind, stopping to linger on the door
step. The air was warm and dusty, the view admittedly spectacular. I felt a wave of loneliness wash over me. I would never have chosen a house like this, gated and so far removed from the heart of the city. I had the strange feeling I was a little bird being put in a gilded cage.

  Bruce gave me an enthusiastic tour of the kitchen, explaining that Mickey had asked him to stock the refrigerator with all my favorite things. Nice, I thought, but also necessary. I didn’t have a car and was at least a mile from any store. After the kitchen Bruce took me through the rest of the house, finishing in the huge master bedroom. The place was well furnished and immaculate, but soulless. Even with Bruce beside me, I felt utterly alone.

  “Otis, you cool?” Bruce had noticed my mood and was looking at me with concern. I turned away from him just in time to hide the tear that spilled down my cheek.

  “Yeah, Bruce. I’m just tired.” That was partly true. But there was also something else, a sense of foreboding. The house seemed more like “mine” than “ours.” The complete absence of anything that was identifiably Mickey’s made it hard to feel otherwise.

  After giving me the number at which I could reach him whenever I needed something, Bruce said his good-byes. As he opened the front door to leave, I stopped him. “Wait . . . do you know when Mickey will be back?” Bruce grimaced, as if he’d hoped to make it out the door before I posed that question. He forced a reassuring smile. “I don’t know, Otis. Not sure about that.” He shrugged his shoulders and left. I listened to the fading roar of his Harley as he headed back down the hill. And then, exhausted, I went straight to bed.

  Two days later Mickey finally appeared. I’d had no number at which to reach him, no idea where he was. I was hurt and angry. I felt rejected, and also humiliated. Above all I felt confused. So when I heard Mickey pull into the driveway, I came running out of the house to greet him.