The Hollywood Guy

by Jack Baran

  “My contribution to shabbat.”

  “You’ll come, you’ll enjoy, and there’s always good talk.”

  Back at the Streamside the cicadas are making a last stand in tribute to the hot weather. Pete feels good and is ready to write the elevator scene. A DVD leans against the front door, “Lost In The Cosmos,” starring Desirée. There’s a photo of a curvy young babe with a mane of blond hair, wearing a Teflon bikini and stiletto heals, looking back over her shoulder. Curious, he settles on the couch to sample a few scenes.

  The movie is set in a villa overlooking a blue lagoon, the plot, incomprehensible. What’s memorable is the blond, legs high and wide, being fucked silly by a musclehead with a diamond stud in his ear. It’s softcore, late night fantasy sex, no penetration or come shots, but if these two are acting, they deserve an Academy Award for fucking because musclehead is pounding the blond into frenzy. Pete hits pause and takes a closer look at the woman in the throes of a never-ending orgasm. The credits identify her only as Desirée. Eyes closed, lips parted, no question, Cleo Johnson, writing her memoirs in Unit 15, could be Desirée, the bikini babe lost in the cosmos.

  Being celibate for almost three years never stopped Pete from having random hard ons or impure thoughts. The difference is the Hollywood guy acted on his impulses, the Woodstock guy learned to redirect them.

  His transformation actually began in Los Angeles during a private yoga session with Diantha. She wanted to make an instruction video and asked Pete for advice. He suggested she do it tastefully in the nude, in silhouette. They could shoot a test; he had a small camera with him. She thought he was joking, but he offered to take off his own clothes to put her at ease. When he exposed himself, Diantha flipped out.

  Pete turns off the DVD, banishes Desirée to the back of his mind. This is bullshit; he’s a professional.

  During his television years, a team of writers worked off Pete’s outlines. He would rewrite them, especially the dialogue. His characters liked to crack wise and were often narcissistic, but they never had inner voices. This will be new territory for him and if he can do the same with all the important characters, it would become the signature of the series. Bergman would have to give him co-created by credit and that would earn him a lot more money. He picks up the phone, dials. “Marcus, Pete.”

  “You caught me in an intimate situation.”

  “This will take a second. I thought about the other characters having an inner voice. Yes, absolutely, it will give the show nuance, psychological weight.”

  “Did you use the words nuance and psychological in the same sentence?”

  “We can go anywhere we want on this.”

  “Don’t go crazy here. Use the inner voice with Bobby, keep it unique to him. If I don’t like, we toss it. But let me remind you, what I’m paying for is your biting, irreverent wit. Make Bobby funny! Send me the elevator scene.” He hangs up.

  Pete steps outside. He was smart to leave Hollywood, how stupid to accept this job. Maybe he can get out of it. He knocks on the door of Unit 15, remembering why he started writing in college. Abby, the daughter of psychiatrists, with her deep set troubled eyes and perfect breasts told him straight out that only artists could be with girls like her, not doctors, lawyers or engineers. Pete, quick with the words, decided he was a writer and she believed him.

  Cleo opens the door wearing the same striped boatneck. Her feet are bare, toenails painted red; no makeup, her glasses are on. With short dark hair and questioning smile, she doesn’t look like Desirée at all.

  Pete hands her the Lost In The Cosmos DVD. “Excellent production values. Jamaica?”

  “Port Antonio.”

  “That was you?”

  “My sister.”

  “How many of these films has she done?”

  “Is ten many?” She gestures for him to come in.

  Most guest rooms are a mess, this one is neat, and she’s rearranged the furniture. Bettye Lavette’s torn voice pours out of her computer. “So you’re writing a memoir about her career in the adult film industry?”

  “My sister’s experiences making “Late Night” movies are a small part of a much bigger story that transported us from Iowa to the San Fernando Valley to Venice, Barcelona and Mexico.”

  “What do you have so far?”

  “The beginning.”

  “And you want to know what I think?”

  “It’s in the computer.”

  While she lies in bed finishing his book, Pete reads about her growing up in Marshalltown, Iowa. Turns out, Cleo was a virgin until her freshman year at U. of Iowa. Boring.

  “Unbelievable,” she exclaims putting down his book.

  “You were a virgin all through high school?”

  “Amazing ending. The way you told Artie’s back story, interweaving killing his wife with getting involved in Doug’s life and ending with them climbing the Brooklyn Bridge, the younger guy trying to kill his mentor. How did you come up with a story like that?”

  “I worked with those two guys.”

  “For real… on water tanks, you?”

  “Summer job.” Pete’s voice is almost a whisper. “I was scared shitless, afraid of heights. Up there, Artie and Doug were kings.”

  “Top of the world.”

  “I worked the deck but I made myself climb the tank to show them I could.”

  “What do you think about my story so far?”

  “Thirty pages and you’re still a virgin? This is supposed to be the memoir of a porn queen.”

  Cleo regards Pete with disdain. “My story is way more complex than a tawdry film career. And, by the way, being a virgin in Marshalltown, Iowa, didn’t mean no experimenting.”

  “Where’s that part?”

  “You mean the masturbation, fellatio and other inventive ways we discovered not to do it?”

  “Yeah, readers like that stuff.”

  “I want my story to be more psychological.”

  “Like simulating intercourse on camera?”

  “Desirée never simulated, she was fucking for real, especially in that movie.”

  “Desirée your stage name?”

  “My sister.”

  “You’re Cleo Johnson, the tomboy, last among her friends to get her period.”

  “That’s me.”

  “I’d rather read Desirée’s memoir.”

  “At fifteen my sister was recruited onto the cheerleading squad; that’s when her life began to change, she loved the spotlight. Senior year, she and her boyfriend Tom were chosen prom king and queen.”

  “And Cleo?”

  “She won a full academic scholarship to the University of Iowa.”

  “Stick with the porn queen.” Pete starts to leave.

  “Curious how the story ends?”

  He stops in the doorway. “At the Streamside Motel?”

  “In Mexico, in the mountains not far from Vera Cruz.” She moves closer, lowers her voice dramatically, “My lover Carlos dying in my arms.”

  “Carlos?”

  “Carlos Esparza, he was shot as we came out of the Santa Fe Restaurant in Xalapa.”

  “Carlos Esparza from the Sinaloa Cartel?”

  “I was his girlfriend.” She smiles. “Great ending, right?”

  Cleo stands close. Pete had long been susceptible to the scent of a woman; hers is lavender. Pete steps back, asks the same question a professor once asked him. “What’s the purpose of writing your memoir?”

  Cleo thinks a moment. “Writing my story will give me insight into the psychology of my decisions. I was lucky to survive. Maybe other women will get a handle on their own lives through mine.”

  Pete is surprised that she’s actually thought about this. “A cautionary tale, you were involved with Carlos and lived to tell about it. If you want to stay that way, write it as a novel, you’d have more freedom, no legal problems and it would be safer personally. Call it ‘The Virgin and the Porn Queen’.”

  “Obvious title.”

  “You s
mell like lavender.”

  “Did you write a second novel?”

  “Started a couple but never got past page 50.”

  “Here’s your chance.”

  “No thanks. It’s your story.”

  “I can’t tell it by myself.”

  “Try.”

  “Never finished anything. You have the know-how, help me.”

  “I can’t see us writing together.”

  “Didn’t you work with other writers in television?”

  Pete isn’t listening, he’s visualizing musclehead fucking Desirée’s brains out, he’s thinking about celibacy. “I might help you get started.”

  “One thing, so there’s no confusion, I’m not going to fuck you, our partnership is going to be on a purely creative level.”

  “No problem, I’ve been celibate three years and anyway you’re way too young for me.”

  “When do we start?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Pete knew all about Carlos Esparza’s assassination, the Mexican drug wars being one of the stories he avidly followed. The Zetas allegedly shot him coming out of the Sante Fe Restaurant in Xalapa just like she said. It was reported he died in the arms of his girlfriend, an unidentified blond. The deceased was a charismatic figure who had risen through the ranks of the Sinaloa Cartel as an enforcer to become under-boss to Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman. Songs about the dead narco, banned from the radio, play in the cantinas of his home state. They chronicle his violent rise to power and the benevolence he bestowed, funding free health care facilities and soccer fields for the people. His story is like a Sergio Leone film: a nine-year-old boy witnesses the murder of his father, a poor farmer. On his thirteenth birthday he takes revenge, killing the killer. To undermine Carlos Esparza’s growing legend, the government released lurid pictures of the dead narco. One taken on a cell phone moments after the shooting shows him in the bloodied arms of the unidentified blond. Pete zooms in on his computer, but can’t make a definitive ID because the blonds’ golden locks shield her face. It could be Desirée.

  Carlos and Desirée, the drug lord and the porn queen, a fantastic story but not the one Marcus Bergman is paying him to write. Pete needs to get to work because he’s easily distracted, especially by the news and has to resist watching a replay of Charlie Rose’s show about the government’s bailout out of General Motors. Pete is not too big to fail.

  Bergman wants laughs; he’ll get laughs. Behind the chief’s professional façade, a sarcastic inner voice comments on the mayor, a Condoleezza type in a tight skirt and flat ironed hairdo. She plays Bach on a Baby Grand to relax; the chief likes R. Kelly. She has grand political ambitions, congresswoman, senator; he likes his job. The audience will love seeing Condoleezza’s buttoned down sexuality aroused in the confines of a stuck elevator. Bobby’s inner voice does a lascivious play-by-play but denies how turned on he actually is. Because it’s hot in the elevator, the mayor needs to take off of her jacket. This being cable, they can show some skin. Modest, but blessed with beautiful body, she strips down to her bra. The chief takes the opportunity to take off his shirt and flaunt an old bullet wound. Pete is a master of titillation; no kissing in the pilot, coitus deferred until the last episode of the season.

  Back to the beginning, Pete punches up all the dialogue leading to the six-page elevator scene. As a coda, he adds the mayor’s inner voice for the first time, commenting that if the chief had dared to touch her, she would have filed charges. Loathing masks desire, these two want each other. Is this the best scene he’s ever written? Before he can change his mind and decide its crap, he sends it to Marcus and Bobby.

  The telephone wakes Pete at noon, he’s overslept. He never oversleeps.

  “Hey, Dad, I heard you were working again.”

  “Annabeth?” When was the last time he talked to his daughter?

  “You don’t recognize my voice?”

  “Who told you I had a job?”

  “Mom. Your agent told her.”

  “She’s still friends with David?”

  “They… thought…

  “Why should they think anything?”

  “No reason. Remember saying if you ever did another Hollywood job you’d buy me a round trip ticket to Paris plus pay some of my expenses?”

  “I must have been high.”

  “Probably, but I have video.”

  “Bethy, is your mother dating David?”

  “What does their relationship have to do with my going to Paris?”

  “Relationship?”

  “Dad.”

  “Have you visited me once since I moved to Woodstock?”

  “Are you reneging, going back on your word?”

  “I know I’m out of the loop but aren’t you in your junior year at Santa Cruz?”

  “I’m taking the semester off to get my head together.”

  “What drugs are you taking?”

  She hangs up.

  Was that a cry for help or was she working him? And what about Barbara and David, are they an item? Pete practices deep breathing as he measures the beans and grinds the coffee.

  • • •

  When Bethy was nine she went through a bad patch academically. Pete thought she was too social; Barbara informed him their daughter was dyslexic, explaining why she read below her grade level. Mom did research, spoke to colleagues, found therapies and Annabeth overcame her disability. This established the pattern of supermom to the rescue, while average dad was absent as usual. That’s what Barbara called him, she could have said he was working, somebody had to.

  In the progressive, private schools Annabeth attended she excelled at what interested her, like English (she was now an avid reader) and sports, especially tennis. As for the rest, she made passing grades. Always popular, she had an ebullient personality most of the time and was sulky when she didn’t get her way; both parents indulged her. For Barbara that meant supporting her daughter’s every whim from sailing to horses, all expensive. Pete was no better, letting Annabeth get away with too much, rationalizing her behavior because she was special.

  Unknown to both of them, she and her friends began smoking pot when they were thirteen, stealing Pete’s gourmet bud. How was it possible he didn’t notice? Absent as charged.

  He and Barbara were in denial about their daughter having accidents with various family cars, believing Annabeth’s explanations for missing class or not being where she was supposed to be. They were also preoccupied with the disintegration of their marriage then in the ugly stage. When they finally confronted Annabeth, she called them hypocrites.

  Pete moved out the summer before her senior year, the same summer she was busted for possession of less than an ounce of marijuana and a wide assortment of pharmaceuticals.

  For him, drugs were a mind-expanding doorway into the subconscious, a kick-start to creativity. Pete prided himself on being a productive maraholic, but who was he fooling, it started as recreation.

  Barbara convinced Annabeth to go to rehab and found a wilderness program on the Upper Peninsular in Michigan. She went and pulled it together, returning to school in the fall, even making the tennis team.

  As mother and daughter’s bond strengthened, Pete felt more and more guilty about the kind of father he was. When the divorce became final, he was officially disenfranchised. They were happy to see him go.

  Pete sips his morning coffee at noon, opens the NY Times Business Section to check the slide of his safe investments, reduced forty percent in value last year, producing less and less income. Better not blow the Hollywood job when his life is approaching deficit.

  Pete goes to the motel office and sits down with Jamie his manager to discuss the current financial state of the Streamside. She was Pete’s first hire, charming him with the story of how she was conceived at the Woodstock Festival. Her mom and dad, a sandal-maker and a weaver, lived out the hippie myth. Their summer of love ended in a car crash on Route 28. Baby Jamie survived and was adopted by very stric
t Catholics from Saugerties. She became emancipated when she was sixteen, a single mother by the age of twenty. Her son, Jackson, the guitar wizard from the pizza parlor, never met his father, a horn player from Memphis.

  Jamie, forty-one, is a ball of energy with a radiant smile. “I’m a people person,” she told Pete when he hired her. She started out cleaning rooms and within three months was managing the place. Pete concentrated on the renovation; she was the front person and the reason there were so many repeats. She’s excited when Pete tells her about the writing job. “You were letting your talent go to waste, boss.”

  “Jamie, I’m proud of what we’ve done here. Writing is a con.”

  “Don’t be negative, Mr. Stevens.”

  It’s drizzling when he returns to the house and redials Annabeth. “Is your mother actually dating David or am I inventing?”

  “You always said you wanted mom to be happy.”

  “Not with my agent.”

  “I’m glad you’re working again.”

  Everyone is happy Pete is writing but only he knows it will probably end badly. “What’s owning and operating a 23 unit motel supposed to be?”

  “Honestly Dad, the motel business is so not you.”

  “So how long has it been going on between David and your mother?”

  “Ask mom. Bye dad.” She disconnects.

  “Ready to work?” It’s Cleo, sneaking up on him. She’s wearing the Red Sox cap again.

  “I need couple of hours for personal hygiene, yoga, chores, that kind of thing. Are you from Boston?”

  “I know one of the players, he gave me the hat.” She jogs out of the parking lot, across Sully’s Bridge, turns left and disappears down the road on the other side of Mill Stream.

  Kevin Youklis’ uncle owns a bar in Tribeca. Cleo must have fucked Youk, the Red Sox third baseman. Pete drives to the local video store and finds two more titles starring Desirée, bumps into Brother Ray in the parking lot, schlepping grocery bags from the health food store. The Buddhist monk is eighty, looks sixty, retains a child’s sense of wonder and does Tai Chi every morning. They say he walked out of China during the Cultural Revolution, took five years, but he rarely talks about it.