by Tim Green
Since she’s filming a video in Los Angeles when I get the news, I grab my plane and head out there for a visit, promising her dinner at Chez Nous. We land in Burbank earlier than expected, and instead of going to Hotel Bel-Air, where Helena’s staying, I have the car take me directly to the studio on the Warner lot where they’re already shooting the video for her next single. During the ride, “Love to Hate You” comes on over the radio and the DJ makes the appropriate fuss over the hot new artist named Helena.
I tap my foot as I listen and drum my fingers on my leg. Buildings and the trunks of palm trees glowing orange in the late-day sun whiz by on North Hollywood Way. The lot is snuggled up next to the back side of the dusty green Hollywood Hills. The limo passes through the gates after only a brief stop. We go by French Street, where Bogart met Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca and come to a stop in front of a studio the size of an airplane hangar. The doors are open partway and they’re wheeling a helicopter inside on a massive dolly.
Darwin is waiting and opens the car door. His face is flushed and beads of sweat have broken out on his forehead even though the shadows are long and cool.
“She’s fucking lost it,” he says.
“Easy,” I say. “What happened?”
“Money is money, but this is too much,” he says, his face pinched. “Put a fucking gun in my ribs. You believe that?”
“What’d you do?”
“Me? She won’t fix her hair. Won’t wear the costumes put out. Won’t stop cursing like a sailor. She’s a mean bitch, I’ll tell you. Makes Ozzy Osbourne look like he came out of charm school.”
“What’d you do?” I ask.
“I just told her,” he says. “One top ten single isn’t shit. You know that. I told her if they can’t see her tits, they turn the channel.”
“Well, you shouldn’t have said that.”
“Tits are tits. This is the record business.”
I press my lips tight and look at him in his flowery silk shirt. He’s much more respectable in a tie.
“I’ll talk to her,” I say, pushing past him and walking into the dark cave of the studio.
“Not now,” he says, catching up. “They’re almost ready to shoot.”
An enormous man with long stringy blond hair and a face as big as a shovel is down on the floor in the middle of it all with a camera on his shoulder. Joe Pytka. He shouts directions, and every time he barks a ripple passes through the brightly lit set. There are fifty people milling around, some of them in tall canvas chairs clustered around a monitor, servers behind a catering table complete with a roast beef under a heat lamp, but most of the people are hurrying to and fro with lights and electric cords and power tools. The helicopter is suspended from a crane now and its rotors are twirling lazily.
There is a girl with Helena’s proportions hanging out of the open door of the helicopter with a wind machine blowing back her long brown hair. A stand-in wearing a low-cut purple dress and lots of cleavage.
After a minute, without removing his eye from the camera, Pytka shouts for Helena. There is a flurry of activity in the back corner of the set. Young men and women wearing headsets and carrying clipboards suddenly part and from behind a curtained area Helena emerges with a makeup woman dusting her face, the hairstylist fussing, and the little old lady glaring up at her and running her mouth.
Helena doesn’t see me, but she makes a beeline for Pytka and, standing over him with her legs set apart, says, “I’m wearing this.”
She’s dressed in faded jeans and a snug purple T-shirt.
“Goddamn it,” Pytka says, struggling upright. “We’re already two hours behind.”
“You said the color had to be right,” she says. “Now I’ve got your goddamned color.”
“The hair color certainly isn’t right, but that’s not my fault,” the bald hairstylist says with a hand on his hip.
“Who the fuck asked you?” Helena says, turning on him.
He wilts. The little old lady presses her lips tight and closes her eyes.
“Darwin!” Pytka bellows.
“See?” Darwin says to me. “See?”
He waddles toward the director with his hands raised.
“Helena,” I say.
When she sees me, her face lights up. She runs and jumps and wraps her legs around me, kissing my face until I can’t help smiling.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Shooting a video,” she says, kissing my lips and climbing down.
She takes my hand and squeezes it.
“We’re at number seven.”
“You pulled that gun on Darwin?” I say, making my face stern.
“Oh, he’s an ass,” she says, tugging at me. “Come look at this trailer. It’s a star trailer.”
She’s smiling, but I can see the water in her eyes. I let her pull me outside the studio. Her trailer is around the corner. She’s talking to me fast, telling me about songs and clothes and the people that she’s met. I stop her on the steps.
“Helena?”
Her face crumples up and two tears streak down either cheek. She gives her head a quick shake.
“I’m sorry,” she says, then turns and runs around the back of the trailer.
By the time I get there, the engine of her yellow Boxster is racing and the car takes off with a screech. I run back to the front and jump into my car.
“Follow her,” I tell the driver. My driver is excellent and we keep up. It’s after the rush, so the thick flow of traffic is moving steadily. She’s not trying to lose us, but she’s not stopping to talk either. She takes 134 out to the 405 and all the way down to Manhattan Beach as the sun drops into the Pacific. She parks the car right next to the stairs to the beach, hops out into the hazy dusk, runs out along the wooden walkway, and disappears. My heart hammers inside my chest. A blood-red sun smolders beneath the smoky purple clouds. It’s as if she’s been swallowed up.
I jump out before the car has even stopped. When I reach the stairs, the warm salty smell of ocean laced with dead sea-things hits my face. Helena is halfway to the water, and when I call her name it’s swept away by the breeze. I run through the sand, kicking my shoes off as I go to increase my speed. When Helena reaches the water, she goes straight in.
When she’s ankle deep, she drops to her knees.
She starts to splash water up onto her face. When I reach her, she’s crying hard.
“This shit,” she says, furiously rubbing her cheeks and eyes, smearing the heavy makeup and making a mess of her face.
The surf rolls and crashes, sloshing water up over the waist of her jeans. I kneel beside her and hold her to me, clutching her head to my chest. She shudders and the red is gone from the sky by the time she stops. A star flickers and an airplane blinks, crawling toward Asia.
“Don’t you want this?” I ask after a time.
“I used to come here when I was a girl,” she says in a whisper, looking out at the night. “There was this old whore. I hated her. I think she did it to make me feel how small I was, come here at night and see the stars. The ocean.
“She’d stand there with her arms crossed and I could always smell her cigarette, even though the breeze goes the other way.”
“I told you,” I say. “That’s all gone now.”
“I’m so dirty,” she says.
“You never did anything wrong,” I say.
“I did so much.”
“They did it, not you,” I say. “Stop blaming the victim.”
“I know everyone is trying to help,” she says, “but I can’t stand them telling me what to do. What to wear. My body.”
“It’s an act,” I say. “It won’t change you. Your voice is beautiful. They said it in Rolling Stone, but that’s not enough. It’s a business. Your look. How they sell the act.
“Come on,” I say, lifting her up out of the water.
“You’re wet,” she says, flicking the water off her fingertips into my face and giggling.
“Can you behave y
ourself?” I say, holding her arms.
A wave crashes.
“Will you still take me out to dinner to celebrate number seven?”
“After we dry off.”
“Okay,” she says. “Then I might.”
37
BERT CALLS ME from the airport and tells me they’re here. I choose a black suit, white shirt, and burgundy tie from the closet, checking myself in the mirror. My hair is short now, a wild mess of gel and dark blades. The fashion in L.A. My skin is bronzed, the result of mixing my mother’s Mohawk blood with lots of sun. Dark eyes stare back at me, nearly empty except for a distant glimmer. Water at the bottom of a well.
I might be fifty or I might be twenty-five, and since I’m much closer to the former, the corners of my lips curl up into a smile.
In New Orleans, outside the Omni Royal Hotel, I sit with my legs crossed on a cast-iron bench nestled in a bower of red geraniums. It isn’t more than ten minutes before a long black car pulls into the brick-paved circular drive. Out on the river, a freighter blares its horn. Closer by, a carriage horse clops along on the street. The humid Louisiana air is thick with the smells from a nearby bakery tainted by last night’s leavings of garbage, spilled beer, and horse dung.
Two young men get out of the limo. Allen Steffano, Lexis’s boy, is tall and angular with brown eyes and a face that is so similar to his mother’s that my stomach turns cold. His friend Martin Debray is in his mid-twenties. Debray is a friend of the Steffano family and a surrogate older brother to Allen. He is freckle-faced and redheaded. Built lean like Allen, only not as tall or as muscular.
The two stretch and blink up at the bright midday sun, then slap each other high five, excited like the rest of the visitors to be at the Super Bowl. Allen tells the captain that the bags are in the back, then takes out a pair of sunglasses. His black T-shirt is skintight and his jeans are baggy and frayed at the bottoms. His moccasins go for $345 a pair.
The captain takes a twenty and gets back to work, slowly shaking his head.
Allen has wavy dark hair. He’s lean, but with wide shoulders and the thick upper arms of an athlete. Up close I see his eyes are shot through with shards of yellow. As if he senses the intensity of my gaze, they meet mine, and I look away.
While they check in, I cross the lobby toward the elevators. When they get on, so do I.
“Excuse me,” I say, looking at Debray. “Are you with the NFL?”
“Not me,” Debray says, smiling and shaking his head.
“But we’ve met, right?” I say. “Seth Cole.”
“No,” Debray says, shaking my hand. “I don’t think…”
“In London,” I say, cocking my head and snapping my fingers. “That’s it, Debray, right? Martin Debray. At the Dorchester Hotel. Oh, you were pretty messed up, but I’d lost my wallet somewhere in their bar and you paid my bar tab. I was already checked out. Had to catch the first flight out. God. Small world.”
He brightens and says, “That’s where I stay.”
“Well, thanks again,” I say. “Talk about embarrassing.”
“Not a problem,” Debray says. He sees me looking at Allen. “Oh, I’m sorry, this is Allen Steffano.”
I shake Allen’s hand and say, “Listen, I’ve got some passes to the commissioner’s private party tonight at House of Blues. Any interest?”
They look at each other and their mouths drop open.
“The NFL commissioner?” Martin says.
I nod and, taking the tickets out of my suit coat pocket, I say, “Lots of players will be there. A few of the owners. How about if I meet you there at ten and buy you back a couple drinks?”
Martin looks at Allen and smiles. He looks back at me and says, “Great.”
“Sounds good to me,” Allen says.
I make a show of extending my wrist so they can see my gold Cartier watch and say, “Great. Ten, then. I’ll find you.”
That evening, I have dinner with Woody Johnson-the owner of the New York Jets-at Commander’s Palace, where the New York Strip steak is as thick as my fist. The truth is that after the crap I ate for twenty years in jail, I can’t get enough of the taste of rare meat and red wine.
It’s just past nine-thirty when we stoke up cigars for a short stroll down Prytania Street to close the deal. The air is cool, and the smell of tobacco smoke is refreshing after a day of the swampy New Orleans humidity. When we’re finished, I raise my hand and a long black Humvee rolls up to the curb, appearing from nowhere. Bert hops out of the back wearing a tuxedo and opens the door. Woody stares and shakes his head at me, saying he’ll walk back when I offer to drop him off.
Five hundred dollars got us a motorcycle escort for the night. Behind the cop’s spinning blue light, we slice through a Quarter swollen with traffic and milling with drunken sports fans, making it to House of Blues by ten.
I see the boys standing at the bar drinking and swiveling their chins around like bobblehead dolls at the star players and the girls decked out in tight tops with bare midriffs. I greet them with warm handshakes and order another round. The drinks haven’t arrived before the commissioner-who’s standing close by-breaks off his conversation with Falcons owner Arthur Blank to introduce me to his wife, Jan.
“It looks like Seth is going to be the new owner of the Jets,” he says to his wife.
Allen looks like someone just tossed a drink in his face. The commissioner introduces Arthur Blank and his wife, Stephanie, who grabs Michael Vick. The boys’ eyes are wide and they set their drinks down on the bar and stand up to shake hands. Small talk, and then we’re alone again.
Allen says, “You’re buying the Jets?”
“It’s not official, yet,” I say, sipping a Heineken.
“He’s buying the Jets,” Allen says to Martin.
“Allen plays at SU,” Martin says, pointing at his friend with a bottle of beer. “He wants to be Chad Pennington.”
“I love the Jets,” Allen says, his eyes shining.
“To the Jets,” I say, raising my glass and touching it to their bottles of beer. I have to force myself not to stare at Allen’s face. The nose, the shape of the eyes. All Lexis.
Santana croons from the stage and the crowd hoots and cheers. Music and smoke swirl together, soaking up the beams of flashing colored lights. Red. Blue. Yellow. Green. We talk in shouts above the music.
“You really play?” I say, looking into his eyes and not at his face.
“Quarterback,” Allen says, looking right back at me.
“He’s got a chance to be the starter this year,” Martin says, raising his bottle and clinking it against his friend’s.
“What are you studying?” I ask.
“Well, I’m gonna go to law school,” he says, “but right now I’m actually studying painting.”
“Painting to law school?” I say. “That’s different.”
“My dad wanted me to study finance,” he says. “Finance and football. He was pissed when he heard, but my mom calmed him down. Anyway, I get to paint for four years. Then I either make it in the NFL or it’s law school. Something useful.”
“There are plenty of useless lawyers,” I say. “Not enough good painters, though.”
Allen cocks his head to one side and says, “You sound like my mom.”
I keep the drinks coming fast, and after an hour we’re all best friends. The boys are going to join me for the game tomorrow in my box on the fifty-yard line. The drinking becomes a small unspoken contest with me the loser. Finally, Allen is swaying. Martin’s eyes go in and out of focus and he looks at his bottle and mouths the words on the Budweiser label to himself.
I look at my watch. Midnight. When I look up, I see her. A woman moving through the crowd attracting the attention of every man within twenty feet. Her hair is long and straight. Brassy blonde. It’s hard to decide which is more impressive, her figure or her golden face with its powder blue eyes and red lips. She isn’t tall, but wears a pair of white pumps that match her snug satin dress. She stop
s when she sees Allen, and stares. A smile pulls back her delicate lips to show perfect white teeth.
When the girl turns and disappears into the crowd, Allen grins at me. I nod and he staggers after her. Another girl sits down next to Martin. He raises his head and dives in. Bert appears and I tell him to take Martin and his new friend back to the hotel. I leave by the back, my shoes clanging softly on the wrought iron stair that takes me down into the brick alley. I jog for two blocks before I spot the white dress. Allen is right there with her, stumbling to keep up. His head bobs and his hands dance in the space between them. She laughs at him in a high-pitched chirp, then touches his cheek. He takes her arm and they keep walking. I follow, staying on the other side of the street and half a block back.
They plunge into the mob on Bourbon Street, but the girl’s dress is like a beacon. They go up one block then leave the throng, turning down St. Peter. By the time I reach the turn, they are at the dark end of the street, a bad and dangerous place where the blight of the battered Creole cottages is disguised by the starlight. The din of Bourbon Street is almost distant now and what was only a moment ago the sound of celebration has taken on a fiendish quality. Mad laughter. Breaking glass. Trumpets and grating shrieks.
A dull breeze rattles the leaves overhead. Shadows stir and begin to spill from the porches and out into the street. Dark shapes of men materialize and close in a loose ring around Allen and the girl in the white dress. Perfectly orchestrated.
I stop in my tracks to watch.
38
THE HALL ON THE TOP FLOOR is long with red carpet and gold trim around the doors. Laughter floats out from behind a door. A tray of chicken wing bones and an empty beer bottle rests outside another. Allen has a suite of rooms down the hall from me. Debray is passed out in his own room, the girl already gone. Allen lets his arm slip from my shoulder and he falls onto his own bed, rolling face up. He smells like alcohol and his eyes shine up at me.
“My father says, ‘I always have to bail you out,’” Allen says in a slurred voice. “But you bailed me out this time.”