Hollywood Boulevard

by Janyce Stefan-Cole

  I'd been critical of the script when I first read it in New York. Andre deflected my angry words, saying the script could be changed as needed.

  "Don't lie!" I said, theatrically loud. "This isn't a draft."

  "I thought you would like it."

  "My liking it or not has nothing to do with anything."

  "And why not?"

  "I don't act anymore!" I gestured dramatically toward the script lying on the coffee table between us, a silly flourish. We were in New York, Andre's loft, where I'd moved after our island wedding. I still kept my apartment uptown. I'd sublet it to actor friends I'd known since the starving theater days, way back. They were my only link to Joe because they'd remained friends; he'd inherited them from me. I charged only maintenance and taxes, utilities. They would never get past struggling in the theater world, but at least their quest was uncorrupted, which translated into their being broke. Anyhow, I got to keep my apartment, my just- in- case escape hatch. I'd learned to keep escape hatches at the ready.

  "Tell me what is so terrible in this script?" Andre asked, watching me, scrutinizing me with those director eyes. I kept silent. "So," he shrugged, "you don't act anymore. You still think; you still understand how to read a script, no? It is paper, it won't bite you. Amuse me." He smiled.

  " Humor me; you mean humor," I said, instantly regretting my nastiness.

  "Go on."

  "Okay. For one thing, how is an actress supposed to play this?"

  "This what?"

  "This, this running joke idea—"

  "What running joke?"

  "That she is joyous and funny— goofy— this laughter she wants to elicit from that horror Lawson. How do you direct that? How would I— how would the actress play such a vague concept?"

  "This is not difficult to solve. . . ."

  "And why would she fall for Lawson in the first place?" I was growing heated. "Plus, this business of not using Lawson's first name; it's contrived. Even in bed, Andre?"

  "He was her guide; she is a performer, aspiring, young but an original, a force . . . yet with all the sensitivity and doubts of a great talent . . . she needs him."

  " Great talent; that's not specific!" He'd said the word aspiring with that European emphasis that sometimes made me hate him because he sounded so certain. I've never trusted immaculate certainty. Not since Joe.

  "Okay. Why would she fall for him a second time? She's not aspiring anymore, not after the broken legs. And he abandoned her. She would hate him."

  "Ah, the actor here is critical. He is older— remember that— twisted, yes, but a magnet nonetheless, very attractive, worn, a bit worn, but . . . the lines can be changed to satisfy, to convince the actress."

  He meant "magnetic," but I'd run out of steam to mock him. I didn't want to mock Andre, play the bitch. I stood up, trying to gather my thoughts. Something about the script was bothering me and I wasn't getting at it. I walked over to the wall of windows. It was raining outside, hard, like a Kurosawa film.

  Andre had lived at the loft with his second wife— bought it with her. I was a case of marital musical chairs, I'd joked. I'd added a few touches, taken a back room for a small studio, my inner sanctum, my private corner of earth. I'd thought briefly of renovating the state- of- the- art kitchen, but that was ridiculous, only something to bury myself in. I'd let Andre believe I was taking notes in my studio for a possible book. I was in fact keeping a notebook. Not a diary. Writing and reading diaries is deathly boring; the last one I'd kept was as a tiresomely sincere eleven- year- old. Mostly I lay about and read books in my inner sanctum.

  After quitting, I walked. Everywhere. I went to museums, sometimes to the country, to an inn I liked upstate or to visit friends with country houses. I did not go to plays, but I went to many movies. I usually kept Andre in the dark about my days and whereabouts. We knew not to question each other, to give each other space. His casual beddings were apparent from our beginnings, but he was discreet, never in the gossip columns. I could have had affairs too, if I'd wanted, but I lacked Andre's distance, his director's way of seeing people as objects outside himself. Anyhow, New York is generous in its anonymity; it was easy enough to disappear. Once in a while I'd be approached, spoken to in that way the public has of assuming an actor is their personal property, part of the price of a movie ticket. But I was free for the most part to simply be a woman in a city. Garbo came to mind more than once.

  I refined my cooking— with little excuse not to make dinner at home, though Andre liked to dine out several times a week. I even learned how to put together small dinner parties. For a while that was interesting, but I always imagined Joe watching me as I attempted to justify to myself the bourgeois ritual of witty conversation, good wine and clever desserts. Andre didn't care about the dinner parties one way or the other, and they soon petered out. This would be when he was in town, but he was often not, chasing down his next film: research, financing, securing his actors and the all- important script— he was always in on the script. Where Andre was consumed, I was adrift, and I could feel his disapproval grow as time passed and he understood I really meant it when I quit acting. The ruse that I was planning a book was a way to try to keep his disapproval at bay. That pretense followed me to Los Angeles, along with the workbook, which is at my little desk in the bedroom, in the drawer below the computer. It is a grade school, black- and- white, lined notebook.

  Anyhow, rain was slithering down the windows that New York evening in metallic sheets, making it impossible to see outside. The daylight was gone, replaced by orange crime lights and a murky blue gray. Once all the paperwork was in place Andre would leave for L.A. He had finalized his cast and crew, his director of photography, designer, locations— the whole company. He would begin the yearlong journey of making a film. So why was he asking me about a script already in place? I turned away from the windows. " Would you like a drink?"

  "I would like to hear your objections to the script. If, for example, you imagined yourself playing the part."

  "On a rainy day in hell, Andre."

  He tilted his head. "That is cute, that saying. Maybe today is such a day." He affirmed his thought with a double nod of his head and a solid smile. I laughed. Andre had a thing for rain in film; it was almost a trademark, the number of rainy scenes in his movies. His actors and hairdressers could plan on difficult hair days. We looked at each other, hearing the rain pour down from the heavens, tapping on the glass. He laughed too.

  I couldn’t stop myself going over and over the tape in my head. Had I gotten the lines right, delivered the goods, owned the words? Why care how I read to Andre and Carola? I'd done him a favor; it would not happen again; I would make sure, beg as he might— like the penitentes I'd seen in Mexico, walking on their knees over Coke- bottle caps, sharp side up, begging Dios to forgive. Really, how dare he do that to me? I felt cold and hot at the same time. I recognized the feeling, the doubts mixed with desire; hanging on for the director's approval like an orphaned child. Suddenly the rotisserie chicken from earlier wasn't sitting so well. I ran to the toilet, making it just in time to vomit.

  "Oh, Joe," I said out loud, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand, a line of thick spit trailing along my chin. I used to vomit like that over a part; my doubts, my terror of not getting the character right mangling my gut. I couldn't see any way around it.

  "Is it worth it?" Joe once asked, standing over me, my head halfway into the toilet bowl. I remember draping my arm over the cold porcelain and looking up at him and saying I didn't know. He reached down to gently pull the damp hair off my cold, sweaty brow.

  "I've seen you look pretty drawn over your work. So I guess none of this comes cheap." He sat down next to me on the bathroom floor.

  "No. I guess not."

  He pulled me to him. "Come here; you're done puking for now."

  "I stink. . . ." I said, leaning into him, my breath like a city dump.

  "You know you're good. You don't need to beat yourself up. Just be co
nfident; the goods are in place for you to use: Go ahead and use."

  There was no one to pull my head up out of the toilet bowl when I was throwing up my brains over a role while living alone in L.A. No one but Harry to tell me I had the goods. Ah, Harry, whaddaya have to go and die like that for?

  After I finished flushing the chicken out of my gut, I lay down on the bed, the curtains drawn and lights off. My phone rang next to me. Before I committed to coming out west, when I was still in New York, torturing us both with indecision, Andre insisted that I have the phone on me at all times. We'd joked about our coast- to- coast leashes. I still kept the phone nearby. I picked it up and glanced at the number: id blocked.

  My vomit- sore belly tightened. It was him again. Or was it? Whoever it was. The phone was still playing its jingle. Do I pick up, only to be hung up on? Where was Detective Collins?

  I pushed talk but didn't say anything. Once again whoever was there hung up without a word, not even heavy breathing. I hit end, laid the phone back down on the bed beside me and closed my eyes. "Is that you, Eddie? You're making a big mistake. The sheriff 's in town."

  I was asleep and it was dark outside when the phone rang a second time, and this time it was the Detective. I must have sounded like I was answering from the crypt. He asked if everything was all right. The answer was everything was all wrong, but most of that had nothing to do with him, so I said I was fine.

  "I ran Eddie Tompkins's tags; there's nothing out on him. His address is the bottom of Hillcrest Way. So he's not watching you from there."

  I didn't know what to make of that, so I said, "Oh."

  " Maybe he is just after a job, like you said. You didn't report him— officially— so I couldn't do much more. I asked him if he was a friend of yours."

  I sat up on the pillow. "What did he say?"

  Detective Collins sounded irritated. "He said no."

  "Why was he following me?"

  "He said he wasn't."

  "He came to the hotel—"

  "You want to file a report yet?" I shook my head. "Ms. Thrush?"

  "No."

  "Didn't think so. The next time you see him hanging around, call the East Hollywood police. Okay?"

  "No."

  "Why not?"

  "Someone called my cell again, number undisclosed. They clicked off when I answered. That's three times it happened." There was silence on the other end. "Detective Collins? Thank you for what you've done—"

  "I don't see Eddie Tompkins for this. I'm still not sure there is a 'this.' What we have is an out- of- work actor, a couple of coincidences near where you and he live. And the phone calls . . . could be the press, could be the same jerk can't dial his phone right."

  "You think I pushed the panic button?"

  " Could be . . . If you see Eddie again, call me. Or anything else gets the hairs up, call."

  "I can call you?"

  "If it's important." I was tempted to ask how he defined important but thanked him again and hung up.

  I supposed the Detective knew his stuff and I should stop worrying about Eddie Tompkins. That left the phone calls. I couldn't explain anyone wanting to harass me. What for? Still, three coincidences? I doubted Detective Collins really believed that.

  I stood up too fast and felt woozy from all the throwing up. I was thirsty like dry dirt. I waited a minute until my head cleared and went to the bathroom to run a hot tub. I had no idea where Andre was or when he'd be in. With the water running, I didn't hear the phone when he called to let me know he'd be very late. After a half- hour soak I felt better. Maybe I could eat something, if there was something there to eat. Oatmeal appealed. I wrapped myself in the hotel waffle robe we were not supposed to be privileged to up here in the poor cousins' quarters, but Alma had brought a pair up for us and now we were spoiled and there were always two clean white robes at the ready.

  I picked up my blinking phone on the way to the kitchen. Andre's message said he'd be at an important meeting: "Things going on." Problems in movieland, I guessed. I decided I shouldn't return the call, that I'd be an interruption. I stopped, hearing noises outside on the driveway and the parking areas, cars pulling up and people calling out. I recognized Andre's crowd. I slipped out onto the balcony, hugging the wall so as not to be seen. The crew was coming home, and by the sound of it in jolly spirits. Someone yelled that he'd get the beer and be right back. I recognized Renny and a few others. Then I heard Carola's distinctive voice and Portuguese accent.

  If Andre was still working, how could everyone be here? Meetings? Okay. But without Carola, his right arm? She was in on everything. Now I would definitely not call Andre back. I slipped inside and closed the balcony door. Was Andre coaching Luce Bouclé, one- on- one? Desperate to make it work, using flattery, seduction? Or insults, proffered in private? Andre was known to try anything to get the performance he wanted. I stirred oatmeal into soy milk and water, the flame under the pot on high, picturing the actress's responsive face.

  I ate at the computer while trolling for news on Lucille Trevor. Information was slim. I was just about to call it quits when her name popped up under an old movie- star fan magazine. Someone had sat around and archived old fan rags, going all the way back to the silents. There used to be dozens: Star Album, Movie Fan, Movie magazine . . . gossip and scandal— Clark Gable, Liz Taylor, Robert Mitchum, endless Garbo, Brando, Monty Cliff, Kim Novak . . . the list went on and on. Movie stars! When I was a kid my dad sometimes called me his little actress. If I was being particularly emphatic I'd be labeled his own little Sarah Bernhardt. Until I understood who he was talking about I thought he was saying Sahara burn hard, like I was giving him indigestion. My grandmother, also misunderstanding the reference, would buy me movie magazines, which I devoured huddled in an armchair at her house. Finding me with my nose in one when she came to pick me up from Grandma's one Saturday afternoon, my mother asked why her daughter was reading garbage.

  "I thought the child wanted to be a movie star," my grandma said.

  "I do!" I shouted, poking my ponytailed head out from behind the magazine, though it was the first I'd heard of the idea. My mother asked what happened to nurse or doctor. "You don't get to wear evening gowns," I said. My grandmother nodded approval. To her a girl was meant to dress up, to be as beautiful as she could be and put it to good use.

  My mother promptly put a stop to the magazines. "My daughter is a more perfect version of me; her motivation must find its way beyond costumes and airs," she told me— more than once.

  It turned out Lucille was from Delaware and grew up in Wilmington. I'd pictured her as a Midwesterner. Instead she was from the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution, thereby becoming the first state in the union (that bit of trivia was in the issue: padding for Lucille's lightweight resume). The fan mag linked me to the Wilmington News Journal— called the Journal Every Evening at the time— and here was where I sat up straight in my uncomfortable hotel desk chair: A clipping from the local news: " First State's Youngest Ballet Dancer Takes First Prize."

  So then, Lucille was a dancer. A dancer? Not an actress?

  The clip said at eight years old she was the youngest ballerina from Delaware to audition and win summer placement to study with the prestigious New York Ballet Corps. There was nothing more until an accident report in the same paper nine years later:

  Lucille Trevor, fifteen, of 55 Maple Avenue, was hurt when the car her father was driving was struck by a delivery van on the morning of April 10th. David Trevor, a decorated war hero, was listed in critical condition after the crash. The driver of the truck, Reginald Barr, insisted Mr. Trevor's car ran a red light. There were no witnesses. Lucille Trevor sustained severely broken legs, thus ending, her mother said, her daughter's dreams of becoming a professional ballerina.

  I stared at the blank wall above the small desk. I'd moved the desk to the other side of the bedroom, away from the window and glass balcony door, so I was in a kind of cave. I'd bought a used desk lamp at a thrift store
, and a cushion for the hard chair. This was my tiny haven, equal to the surface of the desk, where Andre believed I was at work on a book. The wall was a calming off- white and empty. The Muse was free of the usual banal hotel art, matching the couch or bedspread fabric. There was a modest flower print in a simple frame over the bed and two forgettable but not irritating prints in the sitting room. I'd tried to move them, but they were stuck in place. Staring up at the wall with only the soft glow of my shaded thrift- store lamp creating an arc of yellow light, I felt sick. Not throw- up sick. The oatmeal had done the trick settling me there. No, this was a more profound sickness, a dull sensation that gravity might fail, the earth slip off its axis and the sky turn permanently black. I felt the noose of something tightening and I did not know what that something was. Coincidence, a little voice let me know, the eerie kind that wants to upset all previous knowledge, coming out of nowhere and making a scary kind of pattern where none should reasonably be: Lucille Trevor's legs were broken in an accident. An aspiring ballerina . . . hopes dashed . . . sound familiar, Ardennes?