Joe flew over after I called to say I'd been nominated, making it to Cannes one hour before the ceremonies began. At least he wore a black sports coat over his jeans. He loved the hair. "Very gamine," he said in my ear. Cannes disgusted him as much as it did me. The water off Nice looked polluted from the plane, he said, like a milky stream of sewage pouring in next to the bathers. The road from Nice to Cannes was littered with an obnoxious string of minimalls— not Big Mac and Burger King but pan, pizza, poulet joints— fast food French style. The Ritz, where Harry had put me up, was over the top. Even the coffee shop was a four- star deal; luckily the room came with breakfast of croissant and bowls of café au lait. Joe asked if they didn't have a Motel 8 or something like it near the airport. I was worrying about how he was going to take all the after- ceremony parties I'd have to attend— de rigueur— just because I'd been nominated, so I didn't hear when they announced my name. Joe nudged me. "It'll be all right," I said. "We'll pop in, say hello, and scram to the next party, ten minutes each, max."
"What are you talking about? You won, silly goose." He held and kissed the palm of my hand. I stared at him. They said my name again, and I felt myself stand up among the audience as if I were being lifted on an ocean wave, my stomach bucking. Suddenly Andre was there, kissing both my cheeks, his hands on my shoulders, nearly knocking off the mauve shawl. Harry was squashed into a seat two rows behind me; he pushed himself up to come embrace me, his breath wet in my ear. An usher appeared to guide me to the stage. My legs were rubber doll's legs. I faced Joe with a get- me- outta- here look. But he was applauding along with everyone else. I didn't figure I'd have a snowball's chance in hell of winning so I had nothing prepared to say. One of my idols, Giulietta Masina, won best actress at Cannes— for Nights of Cabiria— was I worthy of her? Some genie moved my hands for me, tossing the shawl gamely over one shoul der, leaving the other bare, the strap of my dress slipping ever so slightly. Joe said later the hair and subdued sexiness of the shawl worked magic. The French papers next day exclaimed over my chicly original sense of style. Ha.
I stumbled through a thank- you. I felt I wasn't breathing. I kept my eyes down and spoke just above a whisper, thanking Andre and the cast and Harry and the producers and, oh, the French, "Viva La France!" popped out of my mouth, eliciting a puff of laughter from the crowd. I felt the surge of their energy: an almost out- of- body sensation. I paused and looked out at all those faces, just for a second. It was like firecrackers lit just for me, ten thousand fireworks and I was the Fourth of July; a thousand flaming torches— all for me. It was madness. Finally, I thanked the writer Joe Finn.
He was furious. We were up all night arguing after the parties Harry dragged us to in rapid succession. Joe had steadily downed the drinks, whatever the waiters were passing around. I watched him nervously; Joe wasn't much of a drinker. Back at the room I burst into tears. At one a.m. Andre called: Where was I? The big Separation and Rain celebration was just warming up and the star was missing. He sent up a bottle of champagne. I had the waiter open it, though Joe stood there glaring like poison. I went down to the party alone, a study in misery. Once again Andre stepped in, was gentlemanly and solicitous, guiding me through the night.
The next day Cannes was dead, a ghost town. Everybody was either in bed hungover or on a plane home now that no one would pick up their tab if they stayed on. Outside, sweepers were at work as the locals reclaimed their town. Harry woke me up with a phone call at noon: Why wasn't I at the airport?
My head was splitting, my mouth like old chewing gum and sawdust. "Can you change my ticket to a few days from now, please, Harry, and please don't ask me any questions."
"It's that moper, isn't it?"
"That's a question, Harry. Just please work some deal with my first- class ticket, cash it in for two coach fares back to New York in, say, four days. I'm begging you, Harry." I hung up.
We rented a car and drove up to Aix en Provence, stopping at a roadside stand selling cherries— cerise— that were the plumpest, sweetest we'd ever tasted. " These aren't cherries," Joe said, holding one up. " These are tree- grown orgasms." He turned the car around and we bought another half kilo. We drank Pernod at the café Des Deux Garçons, where Cézanne used to hang out. We visited his studio, up past a housing- project slum outside Aix. Inside were the painter's props and his straw field hat and black all- weather coat hung on a hook by the door, as if he'd only just gone out. The very same leggy germaniums, still- life jars and vases; only fresh pears and apples were missing. We had the place to ourselves until a small troop of tourists filed in, cameras like appendages hanging off their necks. Even Joe thought we'd stood on something like hallowed ground that day.
We went to the market for fresh goat cheese, bread, fruit, wine, tomatoes, and olives for a picnic at the base of Mont St. Victoire. I recall stopping the car to pee in the woods, and the glassy light in the forest, the reddish tree trunks and a wash of silver in the air. I remember thinking Cézanne had seen that light and captured it on canvas. We laughed out loud arriving at the view he'd painted so many times, the tumbledown boulders of St. Victoire. I said to Joe, "That's it, that's cubism right there; he painted what he saw!"
"Good old crotchety Cézanne. And Hortense, his wife: the ball and chain," Joe said with a wink.
"Hey!" I shot back. "What about 'Theory shits,' what he said to his painter pals in Paris, Monet and Pissarro and the others, before he took off for the south, never to look back."
"A man who knew what he wanted and wasn't afraid to go after it," Joe said.
We worked to patch things up under that pale Provençal sky that seemed as if it could cleanse any human sin. I thought Joe was angry at me for thanking Andre and everyone else first at the ceremony, but he sneered at that. "Andre?" he said, exaggerating the name (Ahhhhhndray). "All right, the man has talent, but all Andre does is Andre."
I decided I'd skip that part. "Is this about you taking that electrical work? You don't have to."
" Really? You took an apartment in Los Angeles; now we have two rents to pay."
"It's just temporary, and I can handle both, Joe; it's way cheaper than a hotel." I made my voice small because money talk could cause an avalanche.
"Do you think about what you're doing, Ardennes?"
"Taking the apartment? I'll get more work if I'm out there. . . . I wish so much you'd come, just for a little while. The cats could fly out too."
"I'm saying: Is this what you want?" His tone was like a clamp on my throat.
"It's what I do, Joe; I'm an actor. It's just, I— what do you want me to do, act in documentaries?" I'd done everything in my life to be doing what I was doing; what was I supposed to make of Joe's question? Was I any different than Cézanne going after his art? "I don't see your writing saving the world from hunger—"
"—Just forget it!" he cut in. (That was his fallback position.)
After a tense silence I said, "I couldn't have done the award without you. I can't do anything without you."
He dismissed that idea. "Ah, cut it out. You won all by yourself. Just keep me out of the cheesy stuff is all I ask. I'll boost my own career."
Oh, I said to myself, I shouldn't have called him a writer. He is a writer! I felt so helplessly sad. It was impossible to keep guessing at what was going to work with Joe. It seemed like I was wrong seventy- five percent of the time. I must have looked like unhappiness incarnate, my face falling like a car wreck. Joe put his arms around me. "It's all right, don't fret, Ardennes."
I brightened like a dumb flower that can't help itself when the sun peeks out from behind a cloud. I muttered the word cerise into his warm shoulder. We finished our picnic in peace and that night had magnificent c'est ci bon French sex. The next morning I was briefly recognized for my prize— it was all over the newspapers that week. I was afraid Joe would get mad again, but he was quiet as I thanked the concierge of the inn for congratulating me. He presented us with a bottle of Châteauneuf du Pape, asking first if I preferred
red or white. Then he asked us to wait one moment while he ran back inside to present us with a bottle of white as well, kissing first me and then Joe on each of our cheeks.
Joe beamed. " Looks like pretty good wine," he said, holding up the Châteauneuf.
We returned home to a pile of scripts for me to read. All I wanted was to bask in springtime New York, rest up and be normal again, cook us dinner, walk the city, visit friends. Instead I picked up walking pneumonia. "At least I get to be here for longer," I told Joe. "No one would hire me now. I look like an old sock." He nursed me with teas and soups and antibiotics. I slept while he wrote, the cats keep ing vigil at the foot of the bed. I weeded through the pile of mostly junk scripts as spring outside heated up toward summer. By the end of July I was back at work, on location in New Orleans, a supporting role again. Whatever cachet I'd gained from the Cannes win had little currency across the Atlantic. Harry blamed the haircut.
I finished my bowl of cereal and, tiptoeing, took a shower and dressed.It was ten o'clock. No signs of life from Andre under his pillow. His cell phone, on vibrate, rock-'n'-rolled on the dining table. I looped the MAID Please Make Up This Room sign, on the side that showed a sleeping, smiling quarter moon and a Do Not Disturb message, over the door and went out. One of the maids I'd seen before down at the main hotel greeted me in Spanish. The others spoke to me in Spanish first too. I have picked up a blush of sun on my naturally pale olive skin, but do I look Latin? Andre tells me I am secretly Ethiopian, calling me his dark mistress. I am occasionally taken for Mediterranean but never for a great beauty, though my grandmother would have had me believe otherwise. "Striking" has been used to describe me in reviews. Godard's Anna Karina comes to mind: unassumingly sexual, but look closely and the nose is just the wrong side of big, the teeth a disappointment, the mouth wide for her angular chin, yet so intriguing on camera, even into her sixties. Or take Anouk Aimée: Is she beautiful? Is she in a class with the gold heat of Bardot or Grace Kelly's burnished radiance? What is beauty anyway? I mean, what does it mean? Joe always said beauty had to be earned. Good thing the camera liked me because in person I think I'm funny- looking, with big light brown hair and faded blue eyes, large teeth— none of it quite going with my skin tone. I don't know about all this supposed darkness either. Andre says it comes from the inside. Does he mean that I am dark, as a metaphor?
"A metaphor, yes," he once said. "But, more, you are not white."
I look white to me, in the mirror. Maybe the darkness metaphor is why I was offered so few leads.
Annoyed, Andre told me I knew perfectly well the camera ate me alive and served me up to a responsive audience. I didn't respond that I knew nothing perfectly well. And he didn't add that I couldn't expect the lead if I quit.
Leaving him to his sleep, I walked down the steep hill, out the heavy security gate and on down to the avenue, pulling my new magenta silk scarf closer around my neck. The verdigris cotton sweater I'd tossed on was not sufficient against the morning chill so I walked faster. At least the jeans and sneakers made sense as I practically trotted to Hollywood Boulevard. When I lived and worked here I never walked the Walk of Fame. I tried not to step directly on the actors' names. I've never heard of half the immortalized stars; why, for example, did Dolores Hope merit a star?
I moved along in my usual interior way, taking in the street while trying to remain invisible. "What?" I said, sensing someone pushing through my barrier. It's not unusual for me to be mentally miles away.
"Excuse me," said a youngish man. I think it might have been for the third time. " Would you agree to be interviewed for television?"
"What?" Luckily my sunglasses were large and dark.
"It's for the Style Network."
I thought, sure, Hollywood Boulevard: Jason from Friday the13th, Elvis, Batman, Darth Vader, Tinker Bell out trolling for tourists dumb enough to pay to have their photos taken with them; why not a pseudo TV shoot? I assumed I was supposed to be impressed, flattered, the tourist rube from Podunk suddenly on TV. "Why me?" I said, sarcastic. "Do I look stylish?"
"Yes," he said, "as a matter of fact, you do." And, pronto, a camera was thrust in my face, and a miniboom. Out of nowhere the personnel appeared, including the babe who would interview me, made up to seduce: coiffed, petite, pretty and perky. The director took over, telling me what questions I'd be asked. "It's about a new perfume," he explained, upbeat and positive, as if he were making an important feature, not a grade- B infomercial. Another fellow held high a smoky- glassed bottle of perfume, reached for my wrist, and sprayed two clouds of an organic, peaty, nighttime scent.
The camera started to roll. "No!" I said palms up to protect my face. "No, no, no!"
The camera stopped. The operator peered out from behind his giant lens. "Hang on a minute," he said, "isn't that—" He turned to the director. "Isn't she—"
"I'm sorry. I have to go."
I hurried away, past the pretend made incarnate: Darth and Elvis, Edward Scissorhands, Freddy Krueger, Dorothy complete with a stuffed Toto. I walked on. I stopped when I came to Frederick's of Hollywood, still selling sexpot lingerie after all these years. I looked in the window, remembering seeing a Frederick's catalog as a child, but where? Whose? My long- widowed grandmother? My mother? I remembered a sense of arousal, looking at the pointy brassieres and revealing nighties at a time when I was only just becoming aware of arousal. Busty women with blond, bouffant dos; breasts pushed into bra cups, nearly spilling out; pasties and G- strings and see- through panties— it got my attention then and now. I moved on when a guy sidled up to me and I saw us reflected in the window, him too close. I pictured the unsheathed penis- under- a- raincoat cliché and moved on, past other sex boutiques with names like For Play and Naughty, and bong shops and cheap eateries, the seedier part of the boulevard where you might not want to be immortalized with a star. Here stains and chewing gum marred the pink stars trimmed in gold. If they ever get around to giving me a place on the Walk of Fame it'll be in this unglamorous, stagnant stretch: punishment for quitting. I didn't slow down again until I was at the corner of Vine.
I was just walking. I had nowhere to be and was in no hurry to get there. I stopped in front of a kiosk of postcards, two for fifty cents. They were not the most up- to- date and they'd been out on the rack a while, curling in on themselves and sun- faded. I picked out four. I asked the man inside who took my dollar what else he sold. "Posters," he said. "Pictures of the stars, gen- U- ine autographs," he added, emphasizing the last word as if letting me in on a steamy secret. Would he have an autographed image of me lying about somewhere, on the off chance? There were photos of me in existence, even posters, but I doubted this fellow had any.
"A real Hollywood store," I said, peering briefly over my glasses, letting him think I believed him. Plenty of suckers would.
"Yup," he said; a friendly schlump in his dump of a shop. I'd bet an arm he didn't have a single original autograph, but a truckload of fakes. The whole concept was sickening anyway: a sorry, sad public willing to play along, to be photographed with an actor posing as a character from a movie, twice- removed- from- reality Tinsel Town. And the fans: praying to touch the magic, shamelessly begging for a glance, a smile, the contact of a handshake equaling bliss, waiting hours along the ropes for their favorite star to stroll by in a tux or sequined gown, roaring as the limo doors opened. An old Kinks song came to me— the name wouldn't— I used to sing it at parties. This was after Fits, some other, forgettable guy on my arm. I was working again, staying busy and dumb and distracted. I'd devel oped a post- Joe ironic tongue, as if I were channeling him to make up for what I'd become. I took most of the parts Harry sent my way, auditioned, returned calls; wore my hair long and done up by the right salon, fitted dresses when I had to, slouchy on my own, though, the real me sometimes having trouble making it out of the house, in horror of being seen.
I drew the line at nudity. I was probably too skinny anyhow. Harry feigned horror: Nudity is not what Ardennes Thrush i
s about. Wasn't he kind not to say no director had asked? My sexiness, about which I was confident even back then, was not of the silver- screen style. Dumb, extravagantly good- looking guys don't usually daydream my type. I'm a touch independent, a shade intimidating. Producers tend to be fairly predictable guys that way. Not that I'm offering excuses. Hepburn, for example, was about as sexy as a perfect piece of furniture. If you want sexuality that looks you in the eye, I'm your girl. That's what I think they meant by striking.
I had an on- set conversation once with one of those knockout boys, an obviously handsome, not- my- type lead who'd send some women into spasms merely walking into a room. The film was a quirky whodunit. The actress opposite Knockout was having trouble lying flat on an expensive carpet, in a swoon— or maybe she'd been hit over the head, I forget. Fifteen minutes were called. Knockout and I sat down to wait. We'd be on camera once the starlet got it right. I was playing a tough lawyer sucked into my client's (Knockout's) involvement with a murder. Of course he and his love- girl turn out to be innocent while I provide the juicier dark content. The director was having a tête- à- tête with his crew, and Knockout turned to me, out of the blue blue of his eyes, and said, "Can't she even play dead? I mean, those lips could stop a train. . . ." He shrugged.
Hollywood Boulevard Page 5