Purgatory Gardens

by Peter Lefcourt

  Before she went over to see Sammy, she dressed the part of the fifty-five-year-old—she could get there with a really good cinematographer, a serious diet, and a wardrobe magician—the fascinating woman who would conquer the heart of whoever they got to play the ex-mobster in witness protection. Marcy Gray was already in makeup.

  This time, she waved at the reporters. That’s how good she looked. What harm could it do? They apparently already knew who the mystery lady in Sammy Dee’s life was. Or, at least, the woman who was showing up with casseroles.

  She brought pastries. Truffles and champagne were a little much at 11:00 a.m. So were the Manolo Blahniks that she had splurged on when a large residual check had fallen out of the sky last summer, but she looked incredible in them, and there was nothing wrong with the reporters getting an eyeful.

  Sammy answered her knock by opening the door a crack and letting her slip in. He was unshaven and wearing a bathrobe. She liked the look—Tony Soprano after a night of burying bodies.

  “Hey,” he muttered, and then added, “You look great.”

  “Thanks. I got an audition later,” she lied.

  “No kidding? What for?”

  For Clint Eastwood’s love interest. “Just some TV thing.”

  He took the plate of pastries from her, put them down on his kitchen counter, and started to pour water into his espresso machine. She sat herself on one of the kitchenette stools. Uninvited. Lately, they had unconsciously assumed the intimacy of a married couple.

  “So . . . this is all pretty exciting, huh?” she led with, trying to recast the incident in a more positive light.

  “It’s a pain in the ass, is what it is.”

  “Of course. But still, you know, there could be some good things happening for you.”

  “Like what?”

  “I’m sure people want to talk to you about your story.”

  “They’re coming out of the woodwork.”

  She took a moment, dangling her Manolos in an alluring fashion. “What’s so bad about their writing a book or even making a movie about you?”

  “I don’t need the publicity.”

  “There could be a lot of money, serious money.”

  “C’mon. Who wants to make a movie about a retired cement guy whose car happened to be parked in the wrong place?”

  “The writers will change all that stuff around. They do it all the time.”

  “Charlie Berns offered to set me up with something, and I turned it down. I don’t like the idea of being a celebrity.”

  Sammy took a couple of espresso cups from his dish rack, put saucers underneath, and extracted two tiny spoons from a drawer. There was something charming about his fastidiousness. He was going about his daily rituals in the face of threats against his life.

  “Money’s always nice. You can get yourself a nicer condo, travel. You don’t even have to see the movie. They’ll probably change the story so much that no one will even know it’s you. Just take the money and run.”

  He nodded, wavering, but still wasn’t biting. It was time for one final gambit. She’d go right for the ego.

  “What if they got like . . . Tommy Lee Jones or Harrison Ford?” The façade cracked just a bit, enough for some light to sneak through, and she went for the kill. “You’d have casting approval, of course.”

  “No shit?”

  “You’d be calling the shots. You could get, I don’t know . . . maybe Jimmy Caan, or even Clint Eastwood.”

  He let his gut out a little and shrugged. “I’m thinking more Al Pacino.”

  Bingo.

  While the literary agents in Artie Reman’s agency did a triage of their A-list writers, Marcy kept the pressure on Sammy not to back out. He seemed torn between the idea of cashing a big check and allowing his life to become public. Thanks to Evelyn Duboff, Marcy knew why. She was walking a very fine line.

  She came by at dinnertime with a lasagna and her Jimmy Choos—right behind the Manolos in her closet hierarchy—hoping to shore up the deal. She had called Didier and told him that she was under the weather, so he wouldn’t pop in for dinner.

  As soon as she saw him, she could tell that he was wavering. “Pacino’s gained weight,” he said.

  “Really? How do you know?”

  “I saw him on Letterman. And he’s got this beard that looks awful.”

  “It’s just probably for some role he’s playing.”

  “I don’t know. Besides, the guy’s not Jewish.”

  “So what? Paul Newman played an Israeli in Exodus.”

  “Newman was half-Jewish.”

  And you’re Italian. “Sammy, they’re talking to Sorkin.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “The man has an Academy Award.”

  “They give them to writers?”

  Jesus. This man was a serious civilian. She knew more about cement than he knew about the movie business.

  “You’re damn right, they do. Writers are big players in Hollywood.”

  “Well, I never heard of him.”

  They ate for a while in silence, Sammy playing with his pasta, as if he weren’t hungry. Then he said, “So, instead of Pacino, what do you think about Kirk Douglas? He’s Jewish, at least.”

  “He’s also ninety-seven, and he’s had a stroke.”

  “What about his kid?”

  “Why not?”

  Later that night, she lay in bed and indulged in the luxury of evaluating the men she wanted to play opposite. Clint really was too old. They’d let him direct, and there’d be endless script rewrites, and the movie wouldn’t be made for years. She’d already worked with Jimmy Caan, who, at 73, was still doing Sonny Corleone. Pacino was in his seventies, too, and they’d never cast her as his love interest. She’d wind up as his older sister, or, worse, his therapist.

  Maybe she should give Sly a call. Hey, Sly, how’re you doing? Remember me—the complex, damaged USO worker in Bangkok you had a one-night stand with in Rambo—or was it in Kabul in Rambo III?

  She drifted off to sleep with the fantasy of walking the red carpet at Cannes, where her powerfully understated performance in “The Sammy Dee Story” had gotten her a lot of buzz. When she gave her acceptance speech, she would make sure to mention all the people who’d never hired her.

  The next day, Artie Reman called with news that they were in negotiations with a Triple-A writer.

  “Who?”

  “Can’t tell you until it’s closed.”

  “Who are you negotiating with?”

  “Can’t tell you that, either. Let’s just say it’s with a major studio.”

  “What about me?”

  There was a pause on the line—a pause she knew well. Whenever Artie Reman had bad news to communicate, he sucked in air like a vacuum cleaner on a dusty carpet.

  “We’re getting a little pushback there.”

  “What do you mean, pushback?”

  “The studios don’t like to be locked in on casting.”

  “Did you explain that there’s no deal without me?”

  “You can’t put a gun to their heads, Marcy.”

  “If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t have access to Sammy.”

  “I’ll get you an associate producer’s credit and some money.”

  The old back and fill. Three steps forward, four steps back. Deals fell apart every hour, if not every minute. They just swept you under the rug and moved forward. Okay, they wanted to play hardball? She was ready.

  “Listen, you just better hope that Kirk Douglas dies before the first day of shooting,” she said with edge in her voice and hung up on him. Five seconds later, her phone rang again, and she let it go to voice mail.

  “Marcy, I’ll make it work. Somehow. Maybe a smaller role—a supporting role. You could get a nomination . . .”

  She went over to Sammy’s in platform shoes and a pair of toreador pants that she knew did marvels for her bottom. She had worn them on their first date, at the Olive Garden, and if she wasn’t mistaken, he had bee
n very happy to see her.

  They sat outside on his resurfaced patio and talked, in a desultory manner, about the upcoming holidays. She had hated this time of year ever since her divorce from Neil Breslau, forty-odd years ago. Especially in Palm Springs, where there were no sleigh bells or snowmen to cheer you up. There was nothing but the canned carols in the malls and plastic poinsettias. Her mantelpiece was bereft of Christmas cards. Her fridge was sans fruitcake.

  The doorbell rang. Thinking it was a reporter, she went to answer it and found a thin, balding man in a wrinkled linen suit and a Panama hat standing there.

  “Kermit Fenster. Nice to meet you.”

  At the sound of the name, Sammy came in from the patio, as if he were expecting the visitor. The two men shook hands, and Sammy said, “Marcy was just going.”

  The little man smiled through his gold inlays. “Marcy Gray, am I right?”

  She nodded. It had been a long time since anyone had recognized her in public.

  “Loved you in The Last Hard Man. You blew Jimmy Coburn off the screen.”

  “Thank you, but that was Barbara Hershey,” she pointed out, flattered nonetheless.

  “They should’ve given you the role. You’re better-looking.”

  Blushing, she walked out the door, into the firing range of Leicas with telephoto lenses. The police had made the photographers move a hundred yards away, across the street, which was fine with Marcy. These days, she looked better in long shots.

  Back in her own condo, she wondered who this strange man was and why Sammy didn’t want her around. Kermit Fenster didn’t look like a mobster, or some federal marshal from witness protection. He looked like Harry Dean Stanton in Cool Hand Luke. Harry was too old now to play him in the movie. They could go out to Richard Jenkins or, better, Greg Kinnear. A little young for the role, but better box office sales.

  They could make him the cop who tries to protect Sly from the mobsters who want him dead. And she could play a scene, maybe two, with him, working to keep the man she loved alive. In the end she would go into witness protection along with Sammy, running off with him to a life in the south of France, where they could walk the beach hand-in-hand as the surf crashed against the shore and the credits rolled.

  Just as it was all coming to fruition, as the elements were coming into place, as the writer’s deal was closing, as Sammy was almost leaning toward Sylvester Stallone, the deal fell apart. Abruptly, fatally.

  “The deal’s going south,” Artie Reman said on the phone, in the same tone of voice he used for good news.

  “Why? What happened?”

  “You didn’t watch TV last night?”

  “No. I went to bed early.”

  “Turns out your guy’s car was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some Taliban crazy put the bomb under the wrong car.”

  “Huh?”

  “Sammy Dee was parked next to an Afghan informant who was working for the CIA.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. I’m afraid your guy couldn’t get arrested now if he walked down Hollywood Boulevard with his dick hanging out.”

  The familiar wave of disappointment washed over her—the feeling of a role slipping away to another actress, or of the evaporation of funding, or of any of the hundred other reasons that a movie job fell apart. It had been years since she had allowed herself to indulge in the exquisite surge of self-pity that these moments brought on. She would wallow in them, assuaging her pain in an orgy of self-destruction—taking to her bed with a half-gallon of mint chocolate chip ice cream and a bottle of Portuguese rosé.

  “No movie?”

  “Nope. Even Lifetime’s walking away. Maybe there’s a web series in it. I don’t know . . . some guy whose life is changed by his accidentally being mistaken for someone famous, but I think it’s a serious long shot.”

  “Jesus, Artie. I was going to call Sly.”

  “Stallone only sells movies in Bulgaria these days. Sorry about this, doll.”

  And he hung up before she could humiliate herself further. Typical. No consoling remarks, no reason to hold out hope, not even false hope that the situation would improve. The man had no bedside manner. Never had.

  Marcy walked over to the window, opened the blinds, and looked out. The reporters were gone. There was no one there at all. Not even the homeless and the curious.

  Sammy Dee was now officially chopped liver. And with it, her. For a long moment, she stood at the window and gazed out into the void, trying to look at these events in a positive light. This was good news, wasn’t it? Sammy’s life was no longer in danger. He could start his car once more without worrying, that is, of course, when he had a car. He still hadn’t replaced the Lexus.

  She forced herself to let some light into her thoughts. They could go back to their life before the explosion. Reporters were no longer besieging Purgatory Gardens. She could stop with the fucking casseroles.

  Try as she may, however, she was fighting a losing battle with the delicious pain of her rejection. It had been so long since she had even been in the position to lose out on a role that, in some sick way, the defeat actually felt reaffirming. She was in the game enough to strike out.

  Exhaling deeply, Marcy went to get her car keys to drive to Vons. She had an irresistible yearning for mint chocolate chip ice cream and Portuguese rosé.

  Two days later, a liberated Sammy—now just another senior citizen, free to come and go as he pleased—came over to ask her to co-sign the lease for a new car. A Porsche. Marcy agreed to do it with the same lack of concern that she’d had when she’d co-signed the contract for his new patio deck. He showed her the brochure—silver gray, with racing stripes.

  She thought he was a little old for a midlife crisis. It was one thing to dye his hair, but quite another to tool around in a car with racing stripes. But who was she to criticize his vanity? She had spent almost as much redesigning her face.

  “So I guess it’s good that no one was trying to kill you after all, huh?” she said.

  “Oh yeah. A load off my mind.”

  “I bet. And thank God those reporters are gone.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “You got to be careful where you park your car these days,” she said with a smile. And he smiled back. It was the smile she liked, the Lino Ventura smile that she hadn’t seen in a while.

  Oddly enough, however, as the danger around Sammy Dee dissipated, so, to some extent, did his allure. He was no longer a man people wanted dead, but a poor schlub who had parked his car in the wrong place. Accordingly, he inched back down the short list to his previous position, more or less parallel to Didier’s.

  Then Didier got his patio deck redone. And things really got crazy.

  IX

  DIDIER

  The botched attempt on Sammy Dee’s life in the Vons parking lot pissed Didier Onyekachukwu off. He thought he had been dealing with professionals, but now it looked like Acme Exterminating and Patio Decks didn’t know what they were doing. If you’re going to put a bomb under someone’s car, at least make sure that he’s in it when it goes off. In Ouagadougou, for one-tenth the price, he could have hired an out-of-work colonel to gun the Italian down in his doorway. It wouldn’t have been pretty, but it would have been done.

  Now he would have to wait for another shot, and the shot would be more difficult because Sammy was aware that someone was trying to kill him. To complicate matters, the man was now some sort of celebrity, the place surrounded by reporters. He was barricaded in his condo with the shades drawn, not answering his phone.

  Worst of all, the whole business wasn’t helpful to Didier’s pursuit of Marcy Gray. Being the target of a foiled assassination attempt had given Sammy Dee cachet. The press was making him into some sort of national hero, a target of Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, North Korea, you name it. And Marcy was rushing over there with cooked dishes.

  Didier had half a mind to make the truth public: that Sammy Dee was the target of a neighbor who wanted him out of
the way for romantic purposes. That he’d escaped his fate only because he walked into a supermarket at just the right time. A minute or two earlier, and he would no longer be around. Instead, Didier would be standing beside Marcy Gray at the Italian’s funeral, consoling her with great tenderness.

  As soon as he saw Marcy heading to Sammy Dee’s condo with dinner, Didier selected a bottle from his wine rack and followed her over. It was a shame wasting good wine on them, but it was the price he had to pay to neutralize the Italian’s growing allure.

  They sat around and ate Marcy’s under-spiced casserole, sipping first-growth Bordeaux, until Sammy fell asleep at the table. Then Didier was out the door after her. He walked her to her place, squeezed her hand with empathy, but refrained from greater familiarities.

  He knew enough about women to understand that it was not the appropriate moment to make a move. She was preoccupied with the attention surrounding Sammy Dee. In fact, Didier had the impression that she was actually enjoying it all. Since the photographers were outside the building, Marcy had been dressing as if she were on the runway in Paris, and not merely bringing a covered dish to a neighbor in a condo complex in Palm Springs.

  Didier debated whether or not to contact Acme and find out what the timetable was for the next attempt. It would be nice to know that they at least had a plan to try again. There was nothing in the patio deck contract that provided for a refund if they didn’t do the job. And taking them to court for non-performance was obviously out of the question. Though in this country you could find a lawyer to take any case—even failure to assassinate. And they could probably even get a judge to order that Acme fulfill its contractual obligation as stipulated.

  In France, if Didier got caught, they’d give him five years, or even less, because it was a crime passionelle. They’d put him on the late-night talk shows, direct from prison. Women would flood him with propositions to wait for him until he got out. Imagine—a man who killed for love. What more fitting tribute to a woman you adored? Quel sentiment exquis! Didier sent Acme a note asking if there was an adjusted date for his patio installation. Three days later, he got a pre-printed Christmas card.