Hollywood Boulevard

by Janyce Stefan-Cole

  Andre was never one for a good, meaty argument, not like Joe and I could go at it. He's too aloof for that, or controlled. His passion is reserved for his work. I noticed our arguments were of shorter duration these days. They don't resolve so much as peter out. Are we running out of ammo, the knives and darts growing dull, or are we tired or bored with the same old hurt? What is the same old hurt anyway between a man and a woman that the penis and vagina connecting does not bridge come the light of day or, better, lightless night? Some brief moment of tenderness soothing the ache?

  I was wide awake. I already regretted agreeing to see Harry. Dammit! It was cold. Silver moonlight shone along the balcony rail. I leaned out to greet her majesty the moon, lying leisurely on her side, owning the night. I think it a form of sin to fail to greet the heavenly bodies when we encounter them. But what's this? Leaning further out, bare feet and shoulders in my nightgown, the chill boring into my bones, my eyes glanced down to see a woman lift herself out of a large bed. I nearly gasped. The bed light shone on white- on- white linen, the same white sheets and white down quilt as on our bed. Flesh on white. I stood, rapt by the vision. Assuming the nymph had gone to the bathroom, I waited. After a minute I trotted soundlessly back inside for my cashmere shawl. " Naked girl exiting bed in still of night," I told myself. I held my breath. But wait, that was one of our rooms, that was one of Andre's people— the pretty little she returned to the bed. Lo! Another body! More white flesh on white sheeting.

  Was the bedmate male or female, youthful, smooth androgyny from where I stood, looking down. The back windows in the rear of that small unit, below and across the drive from us, are below grade— at about car level. Most units have frosted louvered windows in back, squat rectangles above the beds. This window was clear. Could the lovers imagine being seen? Imagine another guest wide awake with a bird' s- eye view of their nakedness? Would they have dreamed that an accidental witness would stay and stare, her breath nearly taken away as the two young bodies briefly intertwined when the girl climbed back into bed? And would they suspect her delight when the other person got up to use the toilet, his maleness now on view? Oh, happy view.

  Alone and under the quilt, the woman wiggled her hips. I knew the movement well. But was it a contented or an anticipatory wiggle? Had I witnessed the preamble or the postcoital moment? Oh, delicious moment to see the unconscious nakedness of lovers. The bathroom light went out. He returned, she sat up, and, legs tucked beneath her (I couldn't quite see her breasts), leaned in his direction. She seemed exultant, alive at every pore. Did I sense a slight hesitation or unresponsiveness on his part? This would have been sensing a filament, a quiver in the air surrounding the lovers. Ah, she reached over and turned out the light.

  I stood alone on the balcony, the aura of the scene stilling me, the intimacy of it. A mockingbird in mating was singing somewhere out to my left, the repertoire recited over and over. I walked quietly inside. What a gift this night had given me. Why did this delight me so? Voyeur, you will be punished!

  This brings me back to White Shirt. I can no longer locate the Provençal blue door. Did I imagine it? From the pool the other day, seated in a different corner, while hiding out from the maid— and the searing sun— I had a very different view of his house. There is a muddy sea- green door to the flat, boxy part of the house and a long brick stair leading up to it. Also, there is a door below the stairs, to the right, I think. I can be certain of very little. For example, I thought I saw a stroller in the yard last weekend. There was a woman, the first female I've seen with White Shirt and I assumed since she was acting with propriety that she was related in some way— sister, ex? And I thought a child sat in the stroller. An hour later, however, when I checked, the stroller was still in place and the afternoon had grown chilly. The light had changed too. Was it a cripple instead, in a wheelchair? Toward evening I had to conclude I was wrong on both counts. Who would leave an invalid or a child out all day into the evening, the heat evaporating fast as the sun went down? The car seemed to be gone from the garage too. How much do I make up; how much do I see only to correct later on? There was, as it turned out, no stroller, no child or cripple. I don't know what I'd seen— a lawn chair, a table? Whatever it was, it was gone.

  I have not seen the woman again. I did see a tall balding man one day. He and White Shirt were walking on the lawn in a friendly, familiar way. I thought that day that White Shirt might be gay. The gay theory held until there were no further sightings of the balding man, or any other man. But that leaves the sheets. White Shirt hangs an inordinate number of sheets out on his line for someone who appears to live alone. The question is: Am I bothered by the idea that White Shirt might be gay? Just how far are my musings willing to go?

  Okay, I admit, I want clues, a never- ending supply of clues. I want to know what goes on, but from the safety of distance. I want to feel good somehow in my discreet peering into others' lives. And I do mean discreet. And to feel good, not sensually but more that things are harmoniously in their place and all is as it should be and, and, and what? What? I don't know. A wash of good feeling— what's wrong with that? Nothing, except I want the dark corners too, the shadows created by thick bougainvilleas on a sunny day, the soft light at night, the person awake when they should not be; I want all to be well and yet— mysterious. I am not interested in the normal and well- rounded, the life of overt purpose and presumptions.

  I sense no such purposefulness with White Shirt. For one thing, like me, he has too much time on his hands. He hangs out the sheets nearly every day. No intimate apparel or shorts or shirts. A single male who hangs out his wash, is home a lot, and putters. Divorced? He's not old. Not middle- aged; late thirties or early forties? I don't see other clotheslines on the hills; maybe they are there, but I don't see them. How much would a cheap pair of binoculars cost? Is that too much of a commitment? Have I committed myself to spying on White Shirt? He has a sports car, but he hangs his sheets out to dry. Thinking about it, White Shirt is the only one there for me to observe. Where are all the people? Is he a watcher like me? A furtive slinker into corners?

  I glanced up the other day— that's not true— I stood up from the couch, where I was reading that endless novel, feigning interest, and walked to the large window just in time to catch a glimpse of White Shirt before he slipped behind the very tall pine tree that hides much of his yard. Of course he didn't slip behind the tree. He moved behind a tree on his property in the service of some gesture or other, perfectly natural; a chore, or working in the garden— perfectly in order. It only seemed that he slipped into the shadow of the tree. Possibly it wasn't even him. I looked again, this time from the large bedroom window. No one there. Had I only imagined someone slipping out of sight? The car was in the garage— I checked, so I knew he was at home.

  He could be a self- conscious observer, possibly a writer. He could feel illegitimate some of the time, he could work and then not work, he could feel he has purpose and then feel he has none. He could dwell on a fringe, not fully embraced or embracing. He could be a perpetual outsider, a criminal of the soul, so to speak, a person slightly out of tune with others while possibly, if unevenly, attuned to his society of one.

  It was nearly two a.m., time for bed. All in all it had been a very rich night.

  We slept in the next morning. Thank goodness Harry scheduled for two o'clock. He had a client coming and would lunch late. We awoke at eleven. Andre was surprised to see me lying next to him. He was perfectly gleeful when I said I'd be having lunch with Harry. "That's excellent," he said, watching me as I got up to shower. He said it at least three more times over the course of the morning. I smiled, biting down the question: What was so excellent about me lunching with Harry Machin?

  We ate breakfast. I made tea; Andre made the Wolfgang Puck coffee the hotel provided. He cooked us eggs and toast and insisted we eat outside at the round balcony table. It felt like a little holiday with our plates of breakfast in the sunny morning. Jam and butter and an orange s
hared. "There's a man out there," Andre said, not pointing. He meant White Shirt. "There, across the way, looking." He looked at me. "Do you see?"

  "Yes," I said, keeping my eyes on Andre, "I've noticed the man."

  We said good- bye at our cars. I headed for Beverly Hills, Andre to the day's location. We agreed to phone each other later. "Excellent," he said again as I lowered myself into my car. I set Harry's address in the GPS and pulled out. Andre waited for me to go first. He pulled over when one of the PAs drove up behind him and tooted, not Jarrad. I sped off. I continued straight for as long as I could before cutting over to Sunset. I passed Gardiner Street and thought of the bungalow I had once lived in, the big floral upholstery I'd once cried into.

  It took a long time to reach Harry's. The Los Angeles streets were achingly familiar as I drove. I knew the minute I pulled up to his house I'd made a mistake. Harry opened the door, his housekeeper, an Englishwoman of stout proportions, at his side. He looked as if he'd been to the grave and back and there was something else, a fierceness I'd not seen in him before. I sensed Harry had a different hold on things and that every gesture counted. His pallor was waxy gray, and he was not so much thin as loose. Poor old Harry. He was tired just walking out to the garden. "It's polluted today," he said. The view of L.A. smeared below us was dim, as if a Vaseline glaze had been rubbed on the camera lens. Even this high up the air was not inviting to breathe, and the day was suddenly very warm.

  "We'll eat in the dining room," Harry told Lundy, the housekeeper, who would have to reset the table. The house was hushed and impersonal. Harry kept photos of some of his more famous clients hanging in a large downstairs powder room. The living room was comfortably decorated. Not by Harry. There were overstuffed couches and big- leg chairs in spacious rooms, a low, sprawling house. I think Harry'd always been more at home in his office. The grounds appeared extensive, but that was the typical illusion created by pricy gardening contractors. I looked out of a large bay window, and I could have been on a ranch, a small farm or a suburb. L.A.: It's all smoke and mirrors.

  Harry groused some about the client who'd come up to see him earlier. An actor on the way up who couldn't accept the smaller parts Harry was bringing in for him. "I'm getting him regular work to build on; he threatens to fire me? He should do me the favor."

  No, he answered me: He only got down to the office maybe twice a week. He missed it, but so much was done online now, and the actors were willing to come up to the house, so he managed. " Harry still has it," he said, coming as close to smiling as he ever did.

  We sat down to lunch, and I was desperate what we'd talk about. The phone rang and the housekeeper told him who it was and Harry said he'd take the call. The food was as flavorless as promised. I ate while he talked. It was the actor from earlier, apologizing for being a hothead. The conversation went on a bit, with Harry saying okay, he'd get back to the producer today and see if he could audition for a bigger part and so on, all of it sounding painfully familiar.

  "I guess nothing's changed in movieland," I said.

  Harry looked at me. "Everything's changed. The whole damn studio system is on the way out. That whole approach. Streaming videos, animation, 'straight to DVD' . . . The star system is dying, Ardennes."

  I took a sip of wine.

  "I liked it better in the old days, but I guess every old fart says the same damn thing." He waved his hand dismissively, with more energy than he had ever shown before, no protruding belly now to tuck his arm back onto. I felt sudden compassion for Harry. Not because he'd been so sick or because the times were changing and some of the light had gone out of his once- upon- a- time sharp eyes but because of that once- upon- a- time itself. A time when Harry Machin called the shots, was mother hen, pissed- off daddy, and fighting superagent who could make me feel anxious or secure, who'd shaped so much of my and others' lives. Maybe it was a wave of compassion for my own past too. I pictured Harry walking heavily down the Croisette, at Cannes, after a press conference, telling me I'd done well. Telling me the plan if I won Cannes, how we'd take the whole world. Harry was going to see to it that I arrived and that I got there in style. That was the day he tried to buy me a new dress for the award ceremony.

  The table was cleared and tea brought out, green for Harry, black for me. I asked for milk. Harry was scanning me, that old Buddha scan, quiet and penetrating. "What?" I said, knowing what was coming.

  "I could work you. Goddammit, you still have it. You have it more than you ever did. You're just approaching peak. Don't you know that? This is a crime."

  Was I a horse? Place your bets? "Harry . . ."

  "What are you doing these days? Writing haiku, flower- arranging classes? Ah, a memoir, perhaps?" The sarcasm came with a kind of bluing of his lips. His eyes were dark underneath.

  I started to stand. "I should probably go."

  Harry held up his hand. "I'm going to stay calm, though I'd like to slap you around, to make you come to your senses. Do you think life gives you a choice?"

  "I don't know what you mean." I felt heavy and tired and sank back into my chair.

  "If you have something to give the world, it is your duty, your God- given duty, to take that something— talent— and make it live, push it to the limit, and bring it home." As he spoke his left hand tapped each word out on the table.

  "Don't, Harry. This isn't necessary."

  "Not necessary?" That fierceness I'd sensed when I'd arrived was piercing now, like a knife blade in the sun, a hawk about to dive at its prey. "Then give me a reason; tell me what you would not tell me before."

  I shook my head slowly.

  "WHY DID YOU QUIT?" he thundered, banging his hand on the table.

  I flinched. The housekeeper came running into the dining room. "Mr. Machin! Mr. Machin? You mustn't upset yourself." She gave me a dirty look.

  Harry waved her away. He stood up, hands grabbing the edge of the table. To me he said— his eyes boring into my smallest, most curled- up corner— almost in a whisper: "Why?"

  2

  H o t e l F i r e

  The blush is off the rose. I have no wish to see the setting sun or snow- capped San Gabriels, the pomegranate ripening in the tree that I'm only guessing is a pomegranate, the squawking green parrots; all the charming fragments that held my fragments together. I did venture up the other day, forced myself. The old man was there with his jar of wine and unassuming dog with the appealingly ugly face, faithfully witnessing another day sink into the graveyard of spent time as another Hollywood night approached: beauty, brilliance, power, the desire to outshine the sun. Does it all boil down to power? Not for the old man and his dog.

  Joe used to say greed was the only deadly sin and that all the others fit neatly under that banner. If you gave in to greed, you gave in to lust and envy, wrath, gluttony, sloth, and most of all pride, wanting it all for yourself. "Rapaciousness rules," he'd say. Joe believed the growing corporate plutocracy was ruining us and pretty soon the neo– robber barons would be broke too because they'd broken the buying public, who in turn could no longer purchase their junk. Joe's solution? Simple: Find a better motivation than making money. He didn't mean the wage- earners, of course.

  Harry's been dead nearly a week. No more deals and percentages for him, no more raking it in, no more power. No more tomorrows, no sunsets: no Harry. A monument thrown into the dust, he just toppled over. Lundy stood there and screamed her British head off. "What have you done? You've killed Mr. Machin!" she shouted at me.

  Why was she shouting? was my first thought. Well, my second. The first was that Harry wasn't breathing. He seemed to rear up; the chair toppled over behind him as he clawed his chest, and then he dropped to the dining room floor like a sack of potatoes. That fast.

  "Harry?" I said, and for some reason I thought of my father.

  She wouldn't stop yelling. What happened to the English stiff upper lip and all that proper proper? She was verging on hysteria. "We need 911," I said, pulling out my phone.

&nb
sp; "She did it!" she told the police when they arrived, about a minute after the ambulance. I wondered how they'd made it up the winding hills so fast. She pointed a stubby finger at me, housekeeping hands blotchy red. "That woman killed Mr. Machin."

  The emergency technician kneeled over Harry and shook his head toward the police officers: " Looks like standard heart attack to me."

  "She did it!"

  "Ma'am, I'm going to have to ask you to calm down," one officer told Lundy. The other cop took me into the living room, where we could still hear her carrying on as they covered Harry with a sheet. I briefly wondered where the sheet had come from. Did emergency workers carry them around like those ubiquitous latex gloves?

  "Can you tell me what happened in there?"

  "We had lunch; he got upset. His heart was bad. . . ."

  "What is your relation?"

  "I was his client."