Complete Unknown

by Louise Corum

  “You,” he said. “Though she wouldn’t admit it, she was in love with you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, come on, Caddy! Everyone knew what you two were doing. You flaunted it.”

  “No, we never did,” I said, but then Herbert’s words finally sank in and I finally began to understand how open we had been. He was right. We did flaunt it.

  “Oh really? Listen, everyone knew and they didn’t say anything. Things like that go on all the time here.”

  “Then what does it matter so much what we did?” I asked.

  “It really doesn’t,” he said. “But you have to know what a big can of worms you’re opening by continuing with this.”

  “Why won’t you help me?”

  He stared at me sadly. “You know why.”

  “Thanks a lot, Vic,” I said angrily and went to the door. “Thanks for being just like everyone else.”

  “Caddy,” he said and took my arm. “We’re all just like everyone else. Don’t fool yourself into believing otherwise. You always were so naïve.”

  “I was always honest, too,” I said and left.

  I next went to my former mentor, Charlie Marsh. I barged into his office to find that he was receiving fellatio from a young woman from the typing pool. They both jumped up when I came in.

  “Cadence, for God’s sake,” he said, zipping his pants.

  I stared over at the young woman. “Are you helping her with her writing, too?”

  She turned red.

  “That will be all for today, Miranda,” he said to her. She threw me a hateful look and exited. He settled behind his desk. “What can I do for you?”

  I glared at him. “I came here to ask for your help.”

  He nodded. “I’ve heard all about what kind of help you’re asking for.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Please, just tell me what I can do.”

  “You can go home.”

  “Fuck!” I hissed. “Why won’t anyone help me?”

  He chuckled. “Cadence, what are you trying to prove?”

  “There has to be justice!” I shouted. “I’m not trying to prove anything. I know that Duncan killed Carmen!”

  “You know yourself that Hollywood has its own rules, its own laws,” he said. “It’s not like everywhere else. People like Duncan are immune here. Do you understand that?”

  Yes, I did. I said, “But what about justice?”

  He sighed. “There can be justice, but you’re going about it the wrong way.”

  I sat down. Finally, someone was willing to talk, to help me. “What do you mean?”

  “What do you want done?” he asked.

  “I want to see Duncan pay for what he’s done.”

  “That would be nice, but as I’ve said, you’re going about it the wrong way.”

  “Stop fucking with me and tell me what you mean!”

  “I mean, you can go around the studio and maybe you might get one or two people to go to the cops with you, but then they’re all paid off, so they’re not going to help you at all. You might go to the press, but they’re going to tear Carmen to shreds, you know that right?”

  I sighed and nodded.

  “And they’ll tear you to shreds, too,” he said.

  I closed my eyes and thought about that. They would. I’d never work again. I’d be run out of Hollywood. I’d lose every single thing I ever worked for. But it wasn’t right, what was happening. I just couldn’t get that out of my mind.

  “Think about what you want done and then do it,” he said.

  “This isn’t really helping me,” I said sarcastically.

  He sighed. “Think about what I said.”

  “It makes no sense.”

  He shrugged. “Today, no, but who knows about tomorrow?”

  I stood, feeling very tired. “You’re no better than the rest of these people.”

  “No,” he said. “I’m not and you should have known that before you burst in here. I suppose I was the last resort?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “But I’m close to it, right?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Who’s next on the list?” he asked, bemused.

  “Go to hell, Charlie,” I hissed and turned on my heel and left.

  I next went to my sister. I met her in her new home, which she was sharing with her then-husband, a director of some sort who really warrants no description, as they divorced less than a year later.

  “Caddy, no,” she said.

  “I figured as much.”

  “Listen, I’m just an actress. I don’t have that much power or say-so anyway,” she told me. “You need to realize that neither do you.”

  I started crying. I’d rarely cried in front of her. We didn’t do that in our family that much. She looked away.

  “You must realize, no one is going to compromise their livelihoods for something like this,” she told me.

  “What if it was someone you loved, Andrea?” I asked, staring up at her.

  She sighed. “It wasn’t, so I wouldn’t know how I’d react.”

  I glared at her. “You weren’t raised like that.”

  “The hell I wasn’t.”

  I looked away. I was beat. And I knew it. I’d never felt such hopelessness, such despair. I stood to leave. She grabbed my hand.

  “Caddy, what if I told you something?”

  “What?”

  She eyed me. “What if I told you I know where Nick was?”

  “I know where Nick is,” I said. “He’s in a Mexican prison.”

  She shook her head. “No, he’s not. He’s here. They moved him to LA County jail.”

  My mouth dropped. She nodded.

  “So,” she said. “You know where he is now.”

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  “I just do,” she said.

  “What good does that do me?”

  She looked away, then back at me. “I was saddened by Carmen’s death. I didn’t know her as well as you, but it could have been any one of us, really. We don’t realize the dangerous games we play sometimes.”

  “She wasn’t playing any games with him,” I said.

  “No, not with Nick,” she said and laughed a little. “Caddy, you’ve always been so naïve.”

  “I wish everyone would stop saying that to me.”

  “Well, it’s true,” she said and lit a cigarette. “She was playing Duncan.”

  “She was done with Duncan.”

  “No, she wasn’t,” she told me. “Do you know she had to sleep with him for her first part? And that she continued to sleep with him for many years after, to secure her position and keep getting good roles.”

  “That’s a lie,” I said. “Herbert and I got her that first part.”

  She shook her head. “No, it isn’t a lie. He told her if she didn’t sleep with him, she couldn’t have that role, no matter what the writer or director said.”

  “But Herbert and I secured that first role for her,” I said. “She didn’t have to sleep with him.”

  “But he lied and told her that she did,” she told me. “Besides, you know how she was. She definitely wasn’t above doing something like that, if you know what I mean.”

  “How do you know this?”

  She took a deep breath and said, “I know because I slept with him, too.”

  I was stunned.

  She nodded. “Carmen and I never told you, but we talked some.”

  “What exactly did you talk about?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “We mainly we talked about Duncan and what he did to us and the other actresses like us. She didn’t want you to know how he used her, or any of us. She didn’t want you to know just how far she would go to get a part. She thought it would mess with your head too much.” She chuckled and puffed on her cigarette. “You were one of the lucky ones, to have that writing talent and to not have to get involved with g
uys like Duncan.”

  “I never would have anyway,” I said.

  She laughed harshly. “Oh, dear, don’t say things like that. If the tables were turned, you’d be at the front of the line, begging him for a part.”

  “Did you beg him?”

  “Yeah,” she said bitterly. “What else could I do? A child actress does not a movie star make.” She paused and nodded. “Most of us have had to sleep with someone to get what we want. Good roles for women are a rarity. That’s just the way it works. If we want to continue to live our lifestyles, we have do it.”

  I looked away from her.

  “Carmen and I…” she began, then paused for reflection. “Well, we became allies, if not friends. I dropped by your house one day when she was staying there and you weren’t home. We just started talking and found our…shall we say…commonalities?”

  I cringed.

  “She hated Duncan,” she said. “Especially after what he did to Nick. But she did what she had to do and then she left, you know that. She was willing to let him get off easy, but he threatened her life. That’s when she bought the gun.”

  I nodded.

  “She was fed up,” she said. “I was, too, and I understood, I might even have encouraged it, her hatred of him. She told me that if he fucked with her anymore, she’d kill him, Caddy.”

  I was stunned. “Why didn’t you two tell me about this?”

  “Because it’s not exactly dinner conversation,” she said. “And we didn’t want you to have to deal with it, too.”

  “Oh, good Lord,” I said. “What is this bullshit? If you had told me, I could have gone to Andrew Millsap and done something about it!”

  “Nothing could be done about Duncan,” she said. “Nothing will stop someone like him but a bullet.”

  I stared at her, not getting her meaning.

  “I know what she was going to do,” she said. “She told me that she requested that he see her about the contract. She wanted him out of her life for good, Caddy. If he didn’t leave her alone… Well, she bought that gun for a reason.”

  “How do you know this?” I asked, shocked.

  “I know because she told me beforehand.” She looked away. “Because she wasn’t the only one who wanted him dead. There were many of us, Caddy. You know, I needed to keep my job. I wanted to. I had to do whatever I had to do and Duncan was willing to allow me in exchange for sex.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Why would I have done that? I didn’t want anyone to know what I had to do to keep working. Duncan is a pervert, but he’s mild compared to others I’ve heard about, but you know how men in this town are. When I found out he was in love with Carmen, I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t think he was capable of love. I thought all of us might be off the hook, but we weren’t. He still continued to see all of us.”

  She looked away and seemed ashamed of what she revealed.

  “I hate sometimes that I did what I did,” she said. “But I didn’t feel I had a choice. And I hate that he’s walking around while she’s not.”

  “You couldn’t hate it anymore than I do.”

  “No,” she said. “I understand that.”

  “What can I do?”

  “Go see Nick.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “Caddy,” she said and sat down next to me. “You know what it means.”

  Suddenly, it dawned on me then, what to do, what I had to do. I understood what Charlie Marsh had been talking about. I had to go see Nick. I had to find him. For some reason, I knew now that Nick was in Los Angles and that they’d hurriedly transferred him back that night Carmen was killed. It made complete sense.

  I stood.

  “Where are you going?” Andrea asked.

  “I have one last person to see,” I said. “Then it’ll be done.”

  She smiled at me and nodded. “If you need me, I’ll be here.”

  “I know you will,” I said. “I have to leave now.”

  So, my last stop was to see Nick. After the guards brought him out to see me, we hugged each other as if we’d been old friends or something. It was a little strange, but I went with it. He told me how sorry he was for everything. And I knew he was. He and I cried for Carmen together, for the love we had both lost. It was a relief to do that with someone who felt the same way as I had about her.

  When we finally stopped crying, I said, “You know why I’m here, don’t you?”

  “Yeah,” he said and nodded. “I was waiting for you to come.”

  I nodded. “So you know what happened? You know that Duncan—”

  “Shh,” he said and put a finger to his lips. “Did I ever tell you about my friends?”

  I shook my head.

  “I won’t tell you about them now, either,” he said and winked. “You go home now, Caddy, okay?”

  “But—”

  He shook his head and said, “I was just waiting on you to come, Caddy, that’s all.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You will,” he said. “Now go home. It’s over.”

  I stood and turned to leave, then turned back around. “Nick?”

  “What?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I just didn’t understand and I’m so sorry for what I did. I’m sorry for what happened to you.”

  “You only did what you thought was best for Carmen,” he said softly. “And for that, I can’t hold any grudges. I could have done better, I know that now.”

  “I know,” I said. “But I just wanted you to know that I’m sorry.”

  He smiled at me and said, “Me, too.”

  The details that followed are not that important, I don’t suppose. Duncan was gunned down outside a restaurant a few months later. There were no suspects. Andrew Millsap, the studio head, lost his job, as did I. My sister Andrea went to work at another studio and Herbert went on to win a big award for his movie. Both are still living in Hollywood and are as old as me. I hear from Andrea often, but never Herbert. I miss him so.

  I never saw many of those people after that. I moved to Arizona and began to write my romance novels. I have lived a quiet life ever since. There have been a few lovers after, all male. Oh, I have loved, as they say, but I’ve never loved like I did then. Carmen was the only woman I ever loved.

  No, I never had any children and I never married. I have a few cats and a dog that sleeps outside. I have a few older friends who drop in whenever they feel the need. We chat and sip wine and gossip. But no one ever asks about Carmen, perhaps because they don’t know I was once involved with her. Marabel, you are the only one who knows what really happened besides myself and only a few others who are either dead or don’t want to relive it. You are the only one who’s ever asked about Carmen. For that, I am eternally thankful.

  I still think of her always, that dear sweet young woman I knew. I still think about us and about how wonderful it was to live in the glow of such a strong love for the time we had. It was an amazing gift. I don’t regret anything. I don’t think I should.

  This reminds me of something she once said to me. She said, “Caddy, don’t you think that the word wonderful is wonderful?” That was Carmen in a nutshell, finding the wonder in ordinary things.

  And Carmen and I will meet again. I will see her smiling face and hear her laughter. And when I see her, I will tell her, “I have never stopped loving you.” And, if I am lucky, she might reply, “I feel the same way.”

  And, that, dearest Marabel, is all I know.

  With warmest wishes and kindest regards,

  Ms. C.V. Weeks

 

 

 
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