Stars Screaming
Page 30
Loretta says, “I don’t think I can enjoy my meal with him in the room.”
Burk remains silent, raising a lit match to the cigarette stuck between his lips.
“When you don’t answer I think you’re judging me.”
Burk looks at her briefly. “I’m not judging you. It just feels that way,” he says. A few seconds later he says, “Let’s see if we can have a good time.”
“You can’t feel the vibes? I can.”
At that moment the man in the booth behind them says, “That’s Don Siegel. He directed Coogan’s Bluff. They’re doing this thing called Dirty Harry at Warner’s.”
Loretta says, “See?”
The waiter arrives to take their order. They decide to split a Caesar salad, and Burk orders a steak, rare. “And I want another martini,” Loretta says. “Make it a double.”
Suddenly heads turn in the restaurant and Loretta’s eyes fly past Burk’s face: Walter Matthau is standing next to the maître d’; with him is an intense-looking woman dressed in tight black jeans and a black turtleneck sweater.
“That’s not his wife,” says the woman sitting behind Burk. “His wife’s a blonde. She used to be married to William Saroyan.”
“That’s Elaine May. She’s directing her first movie,” someone else says. “She wrote the script, too. I saw her and Mike Nichols live on Broadway.”
Burk and Loretta are listening to all this, listening in silence. The envy on Loretta’s face turns into pain. “Elaine’s a talented woman,” she says. Burk nods, keeping his face neutral. “Fuck it. So am I.”
The waiter returns with Loretta’s martini. She gulps down half in one swallow. The man behind her says, “I think the most gifted of the bunch was Nathanael West. Have you read Miss Lonelyhearts? Ninety pages and it took him four years. The sonovabitch was a stonecutter.”
“What about Chandler?” the woman asks.
“Chandler’s good but he’s not West. West hemorrhaged pain on every page.”
Once Matthau and Elaine May are seated, they are joined by Jack Rose and a tall brunette with an aloof, almost-pretty face. From another part of the restaurant, Burk hears someone mention the name of his script. Loretta hears it too. She closes her eyes. “I can’t stand this,” she says.
“I’m sorry,” Burk says, conscious that he looks somewhat pleased.
Loretta opens her eyes and lifts her chin. “Don’t look at me like that. Don’t patronize me.”
Burk feels anxiety burning into his stomach. The coke he snorted earlier is wearing off. He excuses himself. On his way to the men’s room he hears a woman say his name. He turns around, trying to put the face with the voice; she’s in her forties, willowy but brittle looking. Flanking her at the bar are two men wearing leather jackets and cowboy boots. All three are smoking cigarettes.
Burk thinks, They don’t know who I am, but they know I’m here.
Loretta has already started eating her salad when Burk returns to the table. In between bites she looks at the side of his face and sees that his eye is blinking. “Are you okay?” she asks him.
Burk nods, looking into space.
Loretta shakes her head. “Go easy.”
The waiter returns with a round of drinks. “Compliments of Mr. Rose,” he says.
Burk and Loretta don’t speak again until Burk pushes aside his plate. “I’m not hungry,” he says.
“Because you’re wired.”
“Maybe.”
“You should pace yourself, Ray.”
Burk points at Loretta’s empty glass. “Like you.”
Loretta smiles, unable to hide the anger in her eyes. “Fuck off.”
Burk’s knee is jumping. He lights a cigarette and blows a cloud of smoke above his head. “We lost our sense of humor, Loretta.”
“Tell me about it.”
A handsome couple move by their table on the way out the door. They are holding hands. Staring after them, Loretta says, “When was the last time we held hands, Ray?”
Burk can’t remember.
“What about the first time?”
Burk looks away. He’s reaching back, past his relationship with Loretta. He’s with Sandra now in Madison, walking across the grass in front of the university library. They’re laughing at each other’s jokes. He takes her hand, and a moment later her leg comes up and she toe-kicks him in the butt.
“We were in line to see Catch 22,” Loretta says. “In Westwood.”
“That’s right.”
“You don’t remember.”
“Yes I do.”
Loretta kills her drink. “You’re lying to me, Ray,” she says calmly. “Let’s get the check.”
On the way back to the Beverly Hills Hotel, Loretta quietly begins to weep. Because he’s too stoned, Burk is unable to summon the words to console her; the best he can do is to reach out and touch her arm.
At North Foothill Road he turns left and parks under a streetlight in the middle of the second block. Loretta rolls down her window and angles her head to the side so the night air can dry the tears on her face.
“That’s where Groucho Marx lives,” Burk says. He’s pointing at a redbrick two-story house on the opposite side of the street. “I was inside there once. Back in high school, me and Timmy Miller crashed one of his parties. We used to do that a lot during the summertime: cruise up and down the streets until we found a big bash, then sneak in.
“There must have been three hundred people at Groucho’s that night, most of them outside, all around the patio and the pool. Anthony Perkins was grilling steaks on a huge barbecue. I remember that because Timmy and I had just seen Psycho the week before. Betty Grable was there too. She did a tap dance around the deck with a champagne glass balanced on her head. A lot of old-time stars were there. But there was a young crowd, too.
“I remember Dennis Hopper consuming endless gin and tonics. Elizabeth Taylor was there. Timmy told her he was a premed student at UCLA. She acted like she believed him, telling him all about some back problem she had, but I was sure she was putting him on.”
“What did she look like? Was she beautiful?”
Burk closes his eyes, nodding and grimacing a little as he retrieves another memory. “Lana Turner came to the party. She was with the guy who played Tarzan in the movies.”
“Johnny Weissmuller?”
“No. The one after him. Big stone-faced guy. Lex Barker! That was him. They were married once, but I think they were divorced. He was drunk, I remember that,” Burk says, and when he opens his eyes they are bright, maybe too bright. “He got up on the diving board and did this yell, not a yell like Tarzan but something different, howling like he was in terrible pain. I remember people applauding like he was doing some kind of act. But he wasn’t. Eventually he sat down on the end of the board and started to cry. Tarzan, crying. It was so weird. I mean it seems weird now, but I don’t think Timmy and I ever talked about it.”
Burk rubs the palm of his hand across his forehead, as if he is trying to erase some painful thought or image that is forcing itself into his consciousness.
“I saw my mother the next day,” he says suddenly, startling Loretta. She looks down: His right hand is on the seat between them, his fingers curled in a way that seems to be drawing her to him. “I was working at the Ambassador Hotel. My dad knew the manager. I was a lifeguard that summer. That Sunday, the Sunday after Groucho’s party, I gave a swimming lesson to a twelve-year-old girl who was blind. She and her mother had come out from Ohio to go to Disneyland. The girl’s name was Eden and I remember supporting her in the water, teaching her first to float. One hand was under her legs and the other was flat against her stomach. As I turned her in a circle, her hair fanned out in the water and I could feel her heart racing underneath my palm.
“When I asked her if she was okay, she said, ‘I’m fine. I’m just excited.’ Then she turned her face toward my voice and asked me whether I thought she was pretty. I said she was and she said, ‘Is my body pretty, too?’
“’One time my mom came in while he was rubbing me and she told him to stop. She said it in a really mean voice. He said I was as much his as hers, and they started shouting at each other. After school the next day she asked me if I wanted to meet Mickey Mouse. I said yes and we drove to the airport.’”
Burk closes his eyes and lets his forehead rest on the edge of the steering wheel. He feels Loretta take his hand and squeeze it in a familiar way as she slides across the seat. In silence he thinks about that Sunday, the shock of the little girl’s story and his clenched teeth at the end. Just before he speaks again, Loretta slips her arm around his shoulder and kisses him tenderly on the cheek.
He says, “The Philadelphia Phillies checked in later that morning. Usually the baseball and football teams stayed downtown, at the Biltmore, to be closer to the Coliseum where the games were played. But a convention of dentists had reserved all the rooms that weekend. We were filled too, mostly with foreign tourists and families. The Hollywood types stopped coming in the early fifties, except for Walter Winchell. He always stayed at the hotel for three weeks every summer. He was there that Sunday, sitting in front of his cabana in his street clothes. I remember he was interviewing Coleen Gray.”
Loretta says, “Coleen Gray. I remember her. She was the girl John Wayne lets get away in the beginning of Red River.”
“She was a has-been in 1960. Either Winchell was screwing her or pumping her for gossip, or both. There was another actor in the pool that day,” Burk says. “The blond guy you liked in Sometimes a Great Notion.”
“Richard Jaeckel.”
“He was doing some bullshit teenage picture. Platinum High School or something. When I noticed him, that’s when I saw my mom. She was directly behind him, sitting with a couple of the Phillies. I recognized her voice first, then her smile. Her hair was different, though. It was cut short and dyed a dark red.”
“Did she recognize you?”
“No. Her eyes passed right over my face.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“What did you do?”
“Just watched her. She seemed to know all the players, but she was especially friendly to this older guy. I think he was the pitching coach. She was wearing his cap tilted back with the bill snapped up. Boy, it was really weird, Loretta, seeing your mom like that with a bunch of men. Seeing her, but her not seeing you.”
“How long had it been?”
“Four years.”
“You probably looked a lot different. Why didn’t you just go over and say something?”
Burk shakes his head. He is frowning. Telling the story makes him feel helpless. “She was with these guys,” he says. “Don’t you get it? A bunch of ballplayers. I saw what was going on. She wasn’t there to see me. That night I told Gene. He didn’t believe me. He said I was fucking crazy. Then I showed him the last postcard she sent us. It was from Bradenton, Florida, where the Phillies go to spring training. It was postmarked the second of March. He still didn’t believe me.”
“I believe you, Ray.”
“I was off on Mondays,” Burk says. “On Tuesday and Wednesday the Phillies played the Dodgers in day games, and they checked out before their game on Thursday night. My mother never showed up by the pool again, and she wasn’t registered at the hotel because I checked. Under her real name, anyway. Just that one Sunday she was there, on the deck, drinking rum drinks and playing kneesies with that old man. I don’t get it. I just don’t get it,” Burk says, staring meditatively through the windshield. Then he starts the engine. “That was the last time I saw my mom, Loretta. Okay? End of story.”
Loretta says, “What about the blind girl? What happened to her?”
“I gave her two more lessons. By Friday she could do a width of the pool without my help. Before she left the following Sunday, her mother came down to the pool and gave me a fifty-dollar tip. She was wearing a Disneyland T-shirt. I asked her if Eden got to see Mickey Mouse. She said, ‘No, Eden can’t see. But she gave him a hug and he let her feel his ears. She said they were as soft as silk.’”
PART SIX
THE DARKNESS AROUND US IS DEEP
Nineteen
And the Stars Will Make You Blind
April 14, 1983
Sandra Burk died in Los Angeles with puke and blood crusted around her lips in April 1983 in the middle of a cold rainy spring. For the last four years of her troubled life—a life that confounded Burk and was the source of endless guilt—she lived alone in a tiny apartment above a garage in West Hollywood. This property and several others in the predominantly gay neighborhood were owned by Eddie Cornell, Gene’s partner for one year back in the mid-sixties, when they worked undercover vice out of the Hollywood division.
“She drank herself to death,” Gene told Burk on the morning that her body was discovered. “At least that’s what Eddie thinks. He said there was no sign of any violence, just her cats and an empty half-gallon of cheap vodka. The coroner said she probably had been dead for three days.”
Burk was silent. He had the sensation of feeling both furious and relieved at the same time. When he was able to trust his voice he said, “This is hard to take in, all of a sudden.”
“I know. You’re in shock,” Gene said. He waited a moment. Then he brought up the question of funeral arrangements.
“I want her cremated,” Burk said. “I think she’d prefer that. I don’t know why, exactly. But I just do.” There was another silence, in which Burk could feel his tears start to come. “I gotta call Louie.”
“Ray?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re gonna be okay.”
“I know.”
“I’m here if you want to talk.”
After he hung up the phone, Burk thought back to the last time he and Louie had seen Sandra. It was in San Francisco, in the summer of 1975. Warner Brothers was sneaking Take Me Home at the Coronet Theatre on Geary, and she arrived unexpectedly with Eli Cook, a skinny guitar player she’d met at Serenity Knolls, an alcoholic rehabilitation center in Petaluma.
“I saw your name in the ad and screamed. I had to be here,” she told Burk, when she found him in the corner of the lobby, smoking nervously, surrounded by friends and a steady stream of well-wishers. Cook was standing behind her, looking slightly dazed and uncomfortable. “Where’s Louie?”
“Inside. He and Timmy are sitting together.”
“Timmy is Ray’s best friend. They went to high school together,” Sandra told Cook, who tossed his rock-star hair behind his shoulders before he stuck out his hand and introduced himself.
Sandra said quickly, “Eli loved Pledging My Love.”
“Yeah. Cool flick.” Cook nodded and smiled dumbly, retreating a step with his eyes half closed.
It was obvious to Burk that Cook was stoned out of his mind, probably on downs or some extra-strong grass. But Sandra was standing straight and clear-eyed, dressed in a man’s white shirt that was tucked into tight bell-bottom jeans. “Why don’t you grab a seat?” Burk suggested. “We’ll talk after the show.”
Sandra started to walk away. After a few steps she stopped and looked over her shoulder, weighing the question she was about to ask. “Is she here?”
“Who?”
“Your girlfriend. The one you met on the airplane.”
“We’re getting married in November.”
Sandra made no reply to this as she stared at Burk, allowing a silence to develop that lasted for several seconds. Finally she took Cook by t
he elbow and walked him inside the theater.
Just before the lights went down, Burk found his seat next to Barbara Nichols in a small roped-off section on the side aisle. Two rows ahead he could see Louie’s head bobbing up and down as he bounced nervously in his seat between Timmy and his girlfriend, Juliet.
Barbara reached down and squeezed Burk’s hand. “Good luck.”
“Thanks.”
This would be the second time Burk had seen Take Me Home, the first with a paying audience. Earlier that month, at the screening for the cast and crew in Los Angeles, the response was enthusiastic, but he was still bothered by a long talky section in the second act where everything seemed to sag. “It’ll get decent reviews,” Burk told Barbara when he phoned her that night. “I don’t know about the box office.”
“Was Gene there?”
“Yeah.”
“What did he think?”
“He liked it.”
“Well?”
“Barbara, he’s my brother.”
For the sneak in San Francisco, there was a new song by the Beach Boys and several scenes were either shortened or edited out, clarifying the story and vastly improving the film’s overall pace. Also, the audience seemed looser and less judgmental, laughing in all the right places. And as far as Burk could tell, the people who did walk out came back after buying popcorn or using the rest room.
When the movie ended and the people around them were applauding loudly over the closing credits, Burk whispered to Barbara that Sandra was in the audience. Barbara’s face, which a split-second earlier was glowing with excitement, now took on a look of blank disbelief.
Burk said, “You wouldn’t have enjoyed the movie if I told you before it started.”
Barbara shook her head. She was smiling, but her face expressed disgust. “I cannot believe this.”
“What was I supposed to do, tell her to leave?”
“Yes.”
“I couldn’t do that. Besides, I had no idea she would show up.”
“So now what happens?”
“Nothing. She wants to say hello to Louie. That’s all. It’ll take five minutes.”