by Rona Jaffe
There was a group of writers she had been watching, who showed up nearly every night, in twos and threes and alone, a core group that joined together until they were a squashed six, sitting in what had now become known as the writers’ booth. Tonight Bambi arrived earlier than usual, and when she saw they had become five she went over to say hello, and then instead of moving on she pushed into their booth and sat down with them. They were all guys, all straight. She liked being the only woman in a group of men. They went on with their discussion and she listened.
“I have real trouble making up names for my characters.”
“So do I.”
“Yeah, so how do you do it?”
“I use the phone book.”
“You do? My agent makes me look in the phone book to be sure the names I use aren’t there.”
“Why?”
“He thinks they’ll sue. He’s a very nervous type.”
“What if they’re unlisted?”
“Then he says it’s their problem.”
The new waiter came over—they were would-be actors, always leaving—and Bambi told him to buy the table a round on her. The writers smiled and lifted their drinks in a toast to her, and went on talking.
“I use my friends’ names. They love it.”
“Yeah, I know other writers who do that, too.”
“The problem is,” one writer named Matt said, “No matter how inventive I try to be there’s always somebody around with the same name.”
“Because it’s the law of numbers,” said Al obscurely.
“No. I mean like I put in the leading man’s girlfriend, it turns out it’s my friend’s new girlfriend. I hadn’t even known her name before. And this is weird: I put in an accountant. And I look in the phone book and it’s a real accountant. I mean, not just anybody, but another accountant.”
“You should use your own accountant,” Bob said. “It’s safe and he’s flattered. Only make him a detective.”
“All names exist out there in the atmosphere,” Bambi said. They turned to look at her. “They’re just floating around, waiting to be chosen. It’s the collective unconscious of names.”
“The what?” Matt said.
“Why not?” Bambi said.
He looked at her and shrugged. She noticed he had the most beautiful green eyes she had ever seen. His dark hair curled down over his collar and he was unexpectedly handsome. “Why not?” he agreed, and smiled. He had the cutest teeth, small and perfect except for the two eye teeth that were a little longer, and pointed. Cute little baby vampire teeth.
“Are you writing a movie?” she asked.
“Yeah, for Magno.”
“That’s wonderful,” Bambi said. A movie! She was thrilled to be here in the company of real working writers, listening to their shop talk and being a part of it. “Have you written for television too?”
“Endlessly,” he said, deadpan.
“Have I seen any of your shows?”
“You have if you looked fast. I’ve done three pilots that went on but never made it to series and a lot of series episodes that did go on.”
“But that’s wonderful,” Bambi said again.
“It’s not so bad. I have a house with a pool and a Mercedes.”
“And a ninety-nine-year mortgage,” Al said, and laughed.
“You know anybody in this town pays money?”
“I’ve been thinking for a while about writing TV scripts,” Bambi said.
Matt nodded. “Do you have an agent?”
“Not yet.”
“You need a script first.”
“Exactly,” Bambi said, although her thoughts about writing a script had not extended to the logistics of getting anyone to sell it. Her heart was beginning to pound. This was going to be her lucky night. Advice, maybe even help …
Simon was standing right over her. “Everything okay?” he asked pleasantly.
“Fine,” she said. She wished he would go away and not interrupt what was turning out to be a valuable contact.
“You’re on next,” Simon said.
“I’ll go on later,” Bambi said.
He took her hand. “I need you now.”
There was nothing she could do without making one or both of them look like a fool, and she was furious. “I enjoyed talking to you,” she said to the writers, especially Matt; smiled, and stood up graciously. “I’m sure we’ll talk again.”
“What were you doing?” Simon whispered as soon as they were out of earshot. “You’re not supposed to sit so long with them.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re the hostess, but they want to be alone.”
“I never heard such bullshit in my life,” Bambi hissed. “I was listening to the most fascinating secrets about their craft.”
“Maybe they didn’t want you to listen,” Simon said.
“You’re jealous.”
“I’m not jealous. I just don’t want you to be an intrusion.”
“An intrusion!” She had never heard him say anything so hurtful.
“Well, you know, we’re supposed to walk around and be nice, but …”
“An intrusion?”
“You don’t even know those guys,” Simon said.
“I intend to,” Bambi said sweetly.
“You should spend time with other customers too,” Simon said, very mildly, trying to deflect her wrath.
“I plan to,” she said.
He looked remorseful. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
“You did.”
Simon put his arm around her. “Was that our first fight?” he said. He nuzzled her ear. “Hey … do you want to go into the newly decorated, extremely romantic utility closet and make up?”
All she could think of were mops and pails. It was the first time that Simon’s nearness, Simon’s arm around her, his breath in her ear, failed to excite her. She felt dead. The shock of not feeling aroused by him frightened her, and she walked quickly to the small stage so he wouldn’t notice. What was happening?
She sat on her high stool under the pink spotlight and did the monologue that everyone always liked about the old woman, but this time she was looking out into the room at the writers’ booth and trying to see if they were paying attention. At first it was too dark out there to tell, but then the kitchen door opened and in the slab of light that spilled out she saw Matt’s face. He was turned all the way around watching her, and she realized this was probably the first time he had bothered to listen to her at all. When she had finished she threw in a second one: her sketch about two people on a date. It had dialogue, and she wanted him to see she knew how to write it. He kept watching, and Bambi looked straight into his eyes so he wouldn’t stop. Think I’m good, she prayed.
When she was finished there was the usual applause; mild, but not so mild as to be insulting to Simon’s wife. Did those idiots out there know she was a partner; not just a wife, not just an appendage, but an important person, better even than Simon was because she didn’t just help him run the place, she was an artist? She gave up her spotlight to a new guitar player and walked over to lean against the wall. She suddenly felt sick.
I love Simon, she thought, but he’s so weak, so ordinary. Since she had been in Hollywood she had noticed many spectacularly good-looking men; Simon had stopped looking special. Your respect and admiration for him made a man seem sexy. Simon had his own drive and energy, but it was confined to Simon Sez. He didn’t seem to realize that if she wrote for television it was a great leap forward from what she had here, and that contacts would be everything.
She had thought their lives would be different in Los Angeles, and they were: she was standing with her nose pressed against the window, starving at the feast. He had given her as much as he could. She was going to have to start doing for herself.
The next night she joined the writers’ booth again. Matt was there, and she sat opposite him, gazing intently into his beautiful green eyes, listening to him compl
ain about his deadlines for two scripts he was contracted to do. Two scripts!
“I’d love to read something you’ve written,” Bambi said. That way she could find out what a script was supposed to look like, how many pages it was, all those things writers were supposed to know. “If you could bring one some time, would you …?”
“I guess I have something around,” he said. He looked dubious. “Do you really want to be a writer?”
“Oh yes. I won all the writing awards at school,” Bambi lied. “My teachers told me writing would be my career.” She waited for him to tell her he had liked her act, but he didn’t, so she went on. “After graduation I was published in lots of literary magazines, but then I got sidetracked when I got married. I had to help Simon put the coffeehouse together, and of course the little sketches and songs I do here don’t give you an idea of my range.”
He looked more impressed. “What kind of things do you do?”
“I was a little avant-garde but now I’m more realistic,” she said. “I’m working on something now … well, I guess it’s bad luck to talk about it.”
“We don’t steal,” Al said.
“No, she’s right,” Matt said. “You talk about it all the time you’ll never get to do it.”
“That’s just how I feel,” Bambi said sincerely. She didn’t know what she was going to do, but she was sure she would get an idea.
“Do you use a computer?” the one called Bob asked.
“No. Should I?”
“I couldn’t get along without mine.”
“I don’t know what kind to get,” Bambi said.
They started discussing the merits of various computers. They might as well have been talking Swahili for all it meant to her. She started taking notes on a napkin. Simon had a computer for the business, but she had never paid much attention to it. All he ever used it for was numbers, and she had never thought of it as anything creative, and apparently neither did he. There was so much she still had to learn.
“If you want,” Matt said, “when you’re ready to buy one, I’ll go over to Computerland with you and help you pick it out.”
“You would? But you’re so busy—that would be so nice of you!”
“I know more about computers than anybody,” he said. “If you listen to these clowns they’ll have you spending too much money.”
“Oh, no, I’ll rely on you,” Bambi said. They smiled at each other. She had plenty of money in her bank account; they could go right away. “I’m always free days,” she said.
“I’m usually working, but sometimes I take a break in the afternoon.” He handed her his phone number. “Call me. If I’m not taking calls I just leave the machine on.”
She looked up to see Simon standing across the room looking at her. He crooked his finger at her and gestured toward the microphone. The cavalier gesture infuriated her. What was she, his chattel? She didn’t even feel like singing tonight. She was sitting with the people she wanted to know, so why waste time?
“Simon wants you,” Al said.
“Oh, I know,” Bambi sighed. “Having to entertain here at night is such a bore.”
That night when she and Simon went home, for the first time she had nothing to say to him. “What was all that scribbling going on tonight?” he asked.
“What scribbling?”
“With the writers.”
“I’m going to buy a computer,” Bambi said.
“Oh. Good idea. I’ll go with you.”
“That’s not necessary,” she said. “I’d like to do it by myself.”
When they went to bed Simon insisted on making love to her. Bambi felt numb again, and she was even more upset than she had been last night in Simon Sez when he had touched her and she had felt dead. He had been the only man in her life, the only one she’d ever wanted, her sexual ideal, and now, suddenly: nothing. If all the passion they’d had was gone forever she didn’t know if she could bear to pretend. His body on hers felt like an imposition, and when he nibbled at her she wanted to snap at him to stop. She tried to ignore what he was doing and let her mind wander.
Matt … She saw his face and wondered what his body was like under his jeans and bulky sweater. Nice, she’d bet. Matt … She imagined the mouth on hers was his, the body his, the penis filling her was his; and suddenly, without even trying, she felt the familiar heat and throbbing and began to thrust, push, clutch at him until she melted away into one of the best orgasms of her life.
She thought about the experience all the next morning when she was alone in the house and Simon was at work. Nothing like that had ever happened to her before, and it was so powerful that she wandered around in what seemed like a trance. It had to be destiny; what else could it be? After a while she got into her car, the Honda Accord sedan she’d bought because it was the closest thing she could find that looked like a Mercedes, and drove up the mountain to the plateau under the Hollywood sign where her heart had flown out of her body. It looked different in the daytime, and the sign seemed shabby. That was because it was so old. How many people had lost their dreams trying to get what that word represented? She didn’t intend to be one of them.
She drove back home, and in the afternoon she called Matt.
He happened to be taking a break, and Bambi asked if she could stop at his house to pick him up before they went to Computerland, so she could first look at his own computer and maybe also borrow one of his scripts. He said fine, come on over. When she hung up Bambi realized her hands were shaking; but she felt less nervous than euphoric.
Matt lived in a small Spanish-style house with a pool in the back, and he gave her a tour. What impressed her most was his den; the things he had written, the photos of actors and actresses who had appeared in them, the life he had made for himself. Now he would teach her to have it too …
She looked in the bedroom. He had a king-size bed and a lot of stuffed Garfields lying on the furniture. “You like cats?” Bambi said.
“They belong to my ex-girlfriend. She likes Garfield.”
“If she’s your ex, why do you keep them?”
“We might get together again,” he said.
Bambi twisted her wedding ring. “It’s so easy to make a mistake,” she said. She looked away wistfully.
“Problems with Simon?”
“Yes.”
“He seems like a nice guy.”
“He’s not so nice.” She sighed.
“Do you want a beer?”
“Sure.” She gave him a little smile.
They went into the kitchen. Matt opened two bottles of beer and gave her one. “I’m not so nice either,” he said. “I’m self-centered and I have a short attention span.”
“Who told you that?”
“My ex-girlfriend.”
“You should hear some of the terrible things my husband says to me.”
“People are stupid,” Matt said.
“I know.”
“So I try to lose myself in my work,” he said.
“Me too,” Bambi said.
They stood there looking at each other. He smiled. “Of course, I don’t always succeed.”
“Neither do I.”
He ran his fingers lightly along her bare forearm and the little guard hairs stood straight up. “Look at that,” he said softly.
“Mmm.” She felt his touch clear down to her toes. She moved closer to him. Wouldn’t he die if he knew about her sex fantasy about him last night! She wondered how the reality would be. Already she felt the signs that it would be the same. Without a word they both put their bottles of beer down on the counter at the same time, and then he kissed her, at first tentatively, then deeply. It was just like her fantasy. “Oh God,” she breathed.
They stood there kissing for a while and then he led her into the bedroom. They were holding and caressing each other and trying to get their clothes off at the same time, her heart pounding, his too, she could feel it against her own. She was breathless and stunned with the excitement of this newne
ss with a near stranger, the astonishment of their quick passion, her first lover. His penis sprang up like a stone flower in her hand, and then she heard a soft thump as he tossed fat Garfield off the bed and enfolded her in his arms.
Afterward he kept drawing his finger over her body as if sketching her. “You are something,” he said.
“You are too.”
He glanced at the clock on the bedside table. “I guess it’s too late to go for the computer today.”
“Tomorrow,” Bambi said.
He grinned. “We’ll have to meet there or we’ll never get there.”
“Do you think I have so little self-control?”
“No, I think I do.”
She kissed him. She felt like a woman of the world.
They bought the computer a week later, after five hopeless tries to get out of Matt’s house in the afternoon. When Simon asked how she had been spending her time she said she had been taking a computer course. In the evenings Matt stayed away from Simon Sez because he needed to make up the lost writing hours, and because he said it made him uncomfortable to face Simon. Bambi sat in the writers’ booth and talked to her new friends. When she finally got the computer and printer home Simon put them together for her, and then she put her mind to studying the bewildering instruction books. Matt had chosen a second program disk for her that formatted scripts. Life was good.
She tried to feel something for Simon, but whatever they used to have was gone. She was tired anyway, from her afternoons with Matt, and put Simon off as long as she could. After ten days she couldn’t make any more excuses, so they went to bed together, and the only way Bambi could feel anything with Simon was to pretend he was Matt. That worked, and it actually wasn’t so bad.
Then Matt went away for the weekend, and when he was supposed to be back Bambi called but all she got was his answering machine. He didn’t return her calls, even though she left a message saying what time Simon would be gone. She was getting frustrated and annoyed with him. And then one night, two weeks after they had first made love, she went to say hello to her pals in the writers’ booth and there was Matt with a thin blond girl Bambi recognized from one of the photographs in his house. The girl was acting much too possessive.