Hollywood Boulevard

by Janyce Stefan-Cole

  It took me a long time to shake Joe, considering the rough ride we'd had almost from day one. I'm not sure I ever did shake him. I've always been attracted to writers and this one was no slouch, though he could barely earn a dime on his work the whole while we were together. He had socialist ideas too, so that if I did bring in a nice check from time to time, a part in a pet- food commercial, say, that went national— with hefty residuals— it was right away suspect, like Chairman Mao or Lenin would get wind of Joe having had dealings with the capitalist devil.

  Joe had a lot of anger. Not because the world had been unjust to him but because it's an unjust place. For me, the world's too big to be angry at all in a gulp. Joe scolded old friends too, if they betrayed the code. He would go on for days about the crime of getting a book published for a sum that had to be corrupt. What kind of whore game did he play to get that advance? Christ! But the lapsed friend was only a pawn of the society that had wrought him, a culture of which Joe disapproved and felt punished living in. Joe's basic premise was if people at the top would only wise up and take less, things could even out.

  Happily, not even Joe could contemplate the distribution of wealth every day, and if he didn't bother too much about saving the world, he was just the guy I wanted. Basically, he lived simply, wanting most of all to read and write and think. The two of us, side by side reading in bed, Joe charming me with a passage of Yeats or Wordsworth pulled out of the air. Knowing when I was lost in my lines rehearsing for an off- off- Broadway play, a cold- water, firetrap stage. Showing up at late- night rehearsals, walking me home after midnight, streets solitary and slick, maybe one of those cat- sized rats running out from behind a trash can, Joe saying there were worse rats than them living in penthouse apartments. Giving me notes, really, really wanting me to soar; that was where I wanted my world to be.

  He kept me guessing too, not a dull bone to him; there was always a new corner to turn with Joe. I never got all the way inside. Then again, Joe didn't think it was possible for an actor to get truly close. Or did he mean that about me only? All those emotions, he'd say, faking it with a part, how would anyone know if the tears at home weren't just more of the same?

  Finally exasperated, I said, " Maybe they aren't ever an act."

  "That only proves it, even you don't know," he shot back.

  Worse than that was the time he said I was empty when no one was looking. It was only years later that the rejoinder came to me: How would you know? How could you possibly know, Joe? Was he knowing or only passing judgment? He'd get me all confused. Partly because I needed him to be right and partly because I needed him so much that I'd get muddled and couldn't think what to say, maybe couldn't think at all.

  It was moving to L.A. that finally did the marriage in. Harry was after me to settle out west from the first big job he landed me: four scenes in a star- cast movie, thirty lines. My character— Laurel, early twenties— was not a hooker but available to wealthy men with fetishes like foot sucking or egg rolling. My first scene had me in a slinky summer dress: I walk into a darkened hotel room, balcony shutters closed to the tropical sea beyond, strips of sunlight piercing through the slats. A thug slips out of the shadows.

  Thug: "What are you doing here?"

  Laurel, frightened but keeping her cool: "I left my hat."

  Thug: "Who let you in?"

  Laurel: "I'm a friend of Abe's."

  Thug, looking Laurel over like she's quick lunch: "Nobody's a friend of Abe's. Whaddaya, servicing his spanking needs?"

  CUT!

  It would be my one and only megamovie role. After that the studios made some overtures, smelled young blood in the water, but I wasn't interested. It wasn't as if Paramount was breaking down the door, but if Harry had his way I'd have cultivated myself, played along. Harry's line was that you have to wade through a little garbage to get to the high road you're meant to be on; that nothing good comes pure. Joe helped me steer clear of what he saw as Harry's hype. Some said Joe's steering might have ruined me. Anyhow, I got noticed in the medium- budget and indie- film worlds. Joe was okay with that. He'd ranted when I took the mega job, paragraphs' worth, and promised not to touch one penny of the filthy lucre I was paid, going so far as to set up a separate account for himself. He did live by his word.

  I began flying back and forth between New York and Los Angeles. With the bigger parts I had to stay out for longer spells, and the parts were getting bigger. I made a few friends and stopped making so much fun of the too- friendly Angelinos. There's too much space is the problem, that's why they're so eager to connect. I once had a woman start a chat from underneath the next toilet stall. That was technically not in L.A. but at a stop for date shakes at Hadley's on the 10 Freeway, the San Bernardino route to Palm Springs, out past the wind farm that took my breath away every time I saw those thousand arms circling crazily over the arid earth. But people talk to strangers in elevators, other customers in a store, standing at a stop light, all friendly and open. I never got used to it.

  I did get Los Angeles itself, a tactile place with big light and lots of texture where nature hasn't been conquered. Earthquakes lie in wait, full- blown desert only a hard drought away. Rub the surface of anyone who's been there long enough and you'll find a seeker. It doesn't much matter after what— L.A. is cult nirvana— some sort of god quest over the rainbow, born of that light and an underlying sense that all this gorgeousness can't last. The only thing people in New York City seek, my singer friend Dottie once let me know, is a way out. Dottie did her time in the Big Apple, but she was from Kansas and wide- open space was home to her and that translated into Los Angeles. In her case, her cabaret career faltered. We sort of reversed each other: I was always glad to get back to New York and Joe. I was never going to put down roots in that shallow western soil.

  My time in Hollywood— especially my first serious movie— was more like a prolonged in- passing friendship. Mostly I was holding my emotional breath. Joe and me having phone sex, trying hard to keep it real over long distance. Harry giving me no peace, making threats, saying I was hurting my career by not making myself available to the machinery, that I wasn't hungry enough and was being passed over. He said if I wanted things to happen I had to get out there and get dirty.

  "You're a Hollywood dame," he harangued. "Look at you, you blossom in the sunlight."

  I'll never forget that conversation. It was winter, it was cold and wet. I was wrapping up a part, my ticket home already purchased. "It's been raining in L.A. for three days, Harry."

  "Ardennes, Ardennes, Ardennes, when will you come to your senses?"

  "I'm a New York– based actor. For the umpteenth time: I'll come out anytime a good part calls, but home is—"

  He cut me off with a grunt and a half wave of his left hand, temporarily lifted off its perch on his belly. "Home! With Joe and the two cats, a dark, roach- infested apartment. Are the cats helpful there? Listen to me: What makes a rose more beautiful?" I lifted my hands to say, tell me. "Manure, that's what. Cow shit in the soil. See my point? You gotta taste it, Ardennes, you gotta sacrifice to it morning, noon, and night; you gotta want the prize, and you gotta make the journey to the prize."

  What Harry didn't see was that, different as we were, Joe and I overlapped in crucial ways. He could pick up a false note in my work and excise it like a surgeon. And I loved those two cats, Molly and Corot, and our too- small West Side flat. The dark streets of New York were like the veins along my hands, avenues and boulevards in my blood. I held New York close in my heart. "Success at what price, Harry?"

  He looked at me from below those heavy lids, scanning my interior, a stone Buddha, arms across his large front. "You think I talk of crass success? Dollar bills falling out of your brassiere, manse in the hills with the saline pool, ego billing on the marquee? You think I don't know you? Craft, Ardennes— A- R- T— is not going to settle for trysts and one- night stands, rendezvous in a bus station. A- R- T wants all of you! And all of you is all I want you to be."
/>   It sounded so enlightened.

  "Poetic, Harry," I said. I looked at my watch. "I gotta run, a night shoot today. I'm due on set at four." I stood up, reaching for my purse. I still didn't know why Harry had called me in that day. I was hoping for a month off, time with Joe.

  He barely stirred, ever so slightly lifted that left hand again. "You got the part."

  "What? You mean Separation and Rain? The lead ?"

  Harry nodded sagely. "You start one hour before this part ends. No time to go home and feed the cats."

  I whooped, I spun, I clapped my hands. I was young enough to whoop and spin. I was big- eyed, all goals, virgin territory; I was all the places I would never get to that I would strive for until the last breath was out of me. This was big, colossal, this would move the earth: a plum part I knew I was right for, that I wanted badly, that would give me the chance to really show what I knew I had untapped inside me. This was my shot to breathe life into a character half alive on paper; this was my Michelangelo: Adam reaching out to touch the hand of God. Okay, I was not about to be God to some Adam, but I would make that character live. I would! Wouldn't I? I flashed on a memory of Joe and me stretched out on a blanket on the rolling grass of the Sheep Meadow in Central Park. Joe poured wine into a thermos so we wouldn't be caught drinking out in the open. We had a baguette and cheese, and grapes, I think. We were having a what- if- one- of- us- makes- it conversation we had a lot in those days, and Joe said I wouldn't be able to take it anyway if I did make it big. He was tender about it. He knew how uncomfortable strange surroundings can make me, and that too many demands send me into a confused tailspin so I lose my bearings and need to run away. "I should have been a librarian," I told him that day. Joe said, "Nah, not with that face; none of the boys would get any homework done." I smiled at him from my toes up to my heart. "Your home is with me," he said. That was a good moment, the kind that can make up for so much, that ought to be the real essence of being alive but somehow never is.

  "Harry, don't fool with me."

  Harry's eyelids widened a fraction. "I never fool," he said with mild indignation.

  "Then this is real!" I felt my breath catch. "The lead . . ." I sat down. This was a twenty- million- dollar budget with a solid script and a superior director. (I didn't know that day— and it was a few years off— that I would one day be married to Andre Lucerne, perhaps the most demanding director in Hollywood.) "You're sure? Andre Lucerne cast me?" I remember the doubts starting to creep in, that a mistake had been made, a mix- up in head shots or the audition tapes. I even suspected Harry might have bribed the producer, used blackmail, called in a life- and- death favor owed and I would be found out and dismissed as a fraud. I was working up to full- fledged panic when I heard Harry moving.

  He lifted his cumbersome frame out of the plush leather desk chair and waddled to a small fridge you wouldn't know was there, tucked beneath some shelves in the well- appointed, screaming- success office. He leaned down heavily and pulled out a split of champagne, and from a nearby cabinet two flutes. "If you didn't have work tonight, we'd celebrate properly at Spago, on the Strip. Will this do for now?" He held up a bottle of Cristal. Spago was the place to be seen; the Cristal cost about what a New York City immigrant garment worker made in a week. He popped the cork and poured out wine and fizz.

  I reached blindly for the glass Harry pushed toward me. I'd had my small victories; some— plenty of— actors would say I was in a good place even without this bit of luck, but I suddenly didn't know what to do, didn't know how to handle getting what I wanted. Harry was always saying luck had nothing to do with it, but that's not so; luck is either at work in a person's life or it's not. I sagged backward into the thick cushions of Harry's buffalo- hide sofa and put the flute down on the coffee table. Harry chuckled. I looked up; tears filled my eyes, ready to spill over. " Thank you, Harry," I whispered.

  "Don't thank me. All I did was make a few calls, let the world know an angel had descended. You did the rest."

  That snapped me back to my senses. I never knew if Harry bought his own lines or not. I jumped up, pointing to the phone on his desk. "I have to tell Joe!"

  Harry snorted. "Go ahead, call that chump. You're halfway up the mountain; see if he can't find a way to drag you back down."

  I smiled. "Don't ruin it, Harry," I said, reaching for the flute

  with my right hand as I punched in the numbers with my left. I raised the glass to Harry and took the bubbly down in one swallow. I listened impatiently to Joe's ring tone but hung up when the leave- a- message voice came on. I didn't leave one. I canceled the call and saw what I'd just done register on Harry's face. I looked at him as I chewed on my lower lip.

  "This is a game changer, Ardennes," Harry said. "Nothing will be the same after today." And nothing ever was.

  So here I am in L.A., climbing a mountain of remembering, killing a day piled high with the past. I should give Proust another try. I walked idly up to the pavilion to check on the condom before heading back to my freshly cleaned rooms. Remembrance of Things Past— I never got through it. Joe did; all seven volumes in one year, ten pages a night. Joe, what's he up to now? I miss his ironclad discipline. I've read all his books, four so far. Remembrance of Joe . . . There it is! Dropped a foot farther down toward the parking lot, lying in the dirt; sunshine has baked the rubber hard, the semen into crisp mica crusts. Do the lovers remember their fallen condom; is it part of their meaningful past?

  Where did I see that rosemary the other day, along one of the paths? I wanted to pick a few stems on the off chance I'd grow ambitious in the little kitchen and maybe cook a chicken.

  I gave up on the rosemary and turned toward the stairs that led down to my suite. That was when I spotted a cat walking behind a man. They were on one of the footbridges connecting the top tier of rooms, in back. Some suites are permanent apartments with tatty screen doors and potted plants and other domestic touches along the balconies. The man was pale— hair, skin, voice, stooped posture, he looked to be a full- time renter with a noticeable Californianess about him, a certain stratum of weed smoker with few ambitions.

  When you've haunted as many hotels as I have you spot the underlying characters, the tensions, the esprit de corps— or lack of it— among the workers, the essence of an establishment by the quirks encountered. The cat was striped rust and black, with splashes of white. Pale Guy said yes when I asked if the cat was with him. I said, "Hey, Kitty," in a high- pitched, girlish voice. "Hi, Kitty," I repeated quietly, remembering Joe and my long- gone sister cats. I thought of telling Pale Guy I loved cats but moved around too much to keep them— though that was more my former working self. Thankfully, I held my tongue. I did say, "He doesn't run away?"

  "Not when he's hungry."

  " 'Bye, Kitty," I said, half wishing the cat would follow me instead. I'd put out a saucer of milk, buy a can of tuna, make a little bed in the corner. Pale Guy continued on his way, Kitty in tow, tail hoisted high. I guess they've seen enough guests come and go not to bother. Pale Guy and Kitty were nuggets, though, not gold, but solid pieces of the texture of the hotel. I looked down and saw the rosemary right there at my feet. I bent to pinch a stem, thinking, as I always do when I pilfer flowers, if everyone did this there would be none left.

  The Hotel Muse is old by Hollywood measure, a nightclub originally, from the late '40s, featuring acts better suited to a cir cus sideshow. The hotel was added later. Halfway up the hill is the upper part where we are situated— modest cousin to the main hotel on the avenue. It's the director's whim that his wife and principal crew (mostly imports from the East Coast) be installed up top, forming a kind of colony. Andre likes the availability of his people grouped together, but there are fewer amenities up top. Be low, the pool is heated; Turkish bathrobes, wireless, DVDs, and cable are provided— perks for those who prefer sanitized luxury. With us scruffier sorts above, services are hit- and- miss; no DVDs or wireless. Internet and breakfast are had by trekking downhill to the main lob
by area, laptop in tow. The lobby is small so most mornings Internet users from uphill gather around the pool, rain or shine, chill or warm, huddling under patio umbrellas. I've noticed a number of German film types at breakfast. They talked loudly on Skype as they pace, necks swathed in scarves, woolen caps pulled low.

  Andre's quirks usually pay off. I like his crew, and the arty types up here, for once inheriting the earth— or the spectacular view, anyhow. Our outsized, east- facing balcony overlooks a coral tree where wild green parrots squawk and screech each morning among the bright red flower petals. The landscape reminds me of the south of France, houses and villas tumbling steeply down the hills in a hodgepodge of styles, an architectural balancing act. The view to the right veers neurotically into L.A.'s urban sprawl and the sudden verticality of downtown. Straight ahead I can see the gray dome of the Griffith Observatory. On mornings when fog or the yellow- brown curtain of smog lifts, the San Gabriel Mountains are visible, snow- capped and reassuring in the distance. Brown- dotted hills segue into mountains in snow, urban and wild in the same snapshot. I hear there are lions in those mountains. I look out each day and imagine the city living on borrowed time, that the earth under Hollywood will someday shift and shrug houses and people, the observatory, trees, birds, coyotes, squirrels, cats, snakes, and everyone's dreams off the hills into the yawning abyss.