“Jesus Christ, Robin, what happened?”
Her voice went off into a whine. “I’m not going to cry. I’m not going to cry.” She took a deep breath and didn’t cry.
I pried the candelabra from her hand and set it on a table between two lavender-striped chairs.
“It doesn’t go there. It goes on the mantel.” She gestured toward an ornate marble fireplace.
“Robin, that’s William DeLane.” DeLane was a young and very successful screenwriter.
“Don’t you think I know that? At least give me credit for knowing who I killed. Nobody gives me credit.”
“Let me get Maurice.”
“No. Don’t you dare.” She grabbed a silk bathrobe off a chaise longue, slipped it on, and sat down.
“I need to think this out.” Her beautiful but remote violet-colored eyes studied me. “Delane said you two went out last week.”
“We had dinner together.” With a shaking hand I poured champagne into the two glasses and gave her one. “He wanted to talk with me because I was Colin’s wife. Widow. He wanted to know how Colin lived and worked.”
“Why?” She crossed her long bare legs. Perfectly manicured toes glistened red.
“I think he was searching for some kind of an example, or a mooring. Some sort of image to hold on to.” I took a long swallow of the champagne and avoided Delane’s shocked eyes.
“You mean like a father image?” she asked earnestly.
“More like a male muse. A creative guide in the jungle of Hollywood. He felt his success was based on sheer guts and ego.”
“Isn’t everyone’s?” Her remote expression became more intent. “Did he talk about me?”
“Yes. He told me he was having an affair with you.” His exact words were: ‘I’m having an affair with Maurice Hamlin’s wife.’”
“But it wasn’t enough, was it?”
“He was questioning his relationship to his success. Not his relationship with you,” I said carefully, knowing that sex and success were so intermingled in Hollywood that it was difficult to discuss one without the other.
She turned and peered at Delane. “Why would anybody question success?”
I forced myself to look at him. God, he was so young and such a hack. There was a time when Hollywood turned talented writers into banal, soulless creatures. Now they arrived in town without souls. They arrived schooled in the cliché and eager to be rewritten.
“He’s had three hit movies,” I explained. “And he couldn’t tell the difference between the first movie and the third movie. He felt that his words had no meaning. No connection to anything or anybody. Most of all they had no connection to himself. Why did you kill him, Robin?”
She didn’t answer. I opened a pair of French doors that led out onto a narrow foot balcony. I could see the spinning Ferris wheel and hear the music and the laughter of the guests inside the tent. I took a deep breath and watched Maurice embracing a tree. I looked again. A blue balloon floated out from under a leafy limb. I realized that between him and the tree was the redheaded actress, who’s chances for making it were looking better. I closed the doors.
“Delane sneaked up here to give me my birthday gift.” Robin gestured toward a stack of leather-bound books piled on the floor near the bed. “The complete works of Ernest Hemingway.”
“You killed him because he gave you the complete works of Ernest Hemingway?”
“No. But why give me some macho writer’s books?”
“I think he was trying to give his own life some meaning.”
“But why give me Hemingway’s books? Do you see what I mean? Why me?” Her voice quivered. She stood and began to pace, stopped, thought a moment, then went to her closet and pulled out a yellow dress. She grabbed some pantyhose from a drawer.
“Do you remember who I was having an affair with on my last birthday?” she asked, wiggling into the pantyhose.
“I didn’t know you then.”
“Philip Vance.”
Philip was a featured player. Not a star, not a character actor, but always working and always listed around fifth place in the credits.
“Do you know what he gave me for a present?” Robin pulled opened another drawer and took out a rhinestone pin from a small velvet box. The broach was in the shape of a heart with a ruby arrow piercing it.
“It’s cheap but I love it,” she said, sounding like a teenage girl.
I knew the pin well. Philip had given me one fifteen years ago. I never wore it. Philip had been giving out these rhinestone pins for twenty years and always with the same line: “I can’t afford diamonds but the heart is real.”
He counted on the expensive taste of his conquests. Knowing his ladies, as he called them, would never wear anything so obviously inexpensive, he was free to give the same pin to his next lady.
“It’s not that I have to have anything expensive,” Robin said. “Just something that’s sentimental. Something that means I was loved. ‘I can’t afford diamonds but the heart is real.’” She stared sadly at the pin, then tucked it lovingly back into the drawer.
“Do you remember when we were in acting class together?” she asked, stepping into the yellow dress.
“Yes.”
“And Rusty our teacher told us to close our eyes and tell him what we saw? What we imagined? Do you remember what you saw?”
“No.”
“A bird with a broken wing on a flagstone patio. A man’s wrist and the sleeve of his white shirt turned back. Do you remember what I saw?”
“No.”
“Nothing. I saw nothing. And then Rusty asked me to describe the nothingness. Remember?”
“Yes?”
“And I asked how can I describe nothing? I mean, you can’t. The closest I could come was a sort of a grayish black. Nothing is nothing. Zip me up.”
I zipped her up.
“Oh, God, I didn’t want to wear this.” She turned on Delane’s corpse as if he had commented on her dress. “He made me feel like nothing. I suddenly could see it. Feel it.”
“How did he do that, Robin?”
“He just couldn’t believe that when all was said and done, he was a writer who was having an affair with his producer’s wife. I could handle that. But he couldn’t. So he tried to make it more than it was. And he tired to change me. That’s when he made me feel like nothing.” She put on some lipstick and smoothed her hair.
“Change you into what?”
“He blamed Maurice for everything. He said it was his money and power that kept me from truly knowing who I was. I told him he was crazy that he was talking about himself. Not me. I told him it was over. That I didn’t want to see him anymore.” She stared defiantly at herself in the mirror. “I turned forty today and told a man I didn’t want him. I didn’t need him anymore.”
She sat back down on the longue and slipped her feet into bright yellow high heels.
“Then it should’ve been a great night. Why didn’t it just end there?” I poured her another glass of champagne.
“Because as I was leaving to go down to the party he said, ‘Please, do us all a favor and don’t sing tonight.’”
She tapped her long red nails against the glass, took another sip, and then slowly peered at Delane.
“Why didn’t he want you to sing?” I asked.
“He said people laugh when I sing. I’ve never heard anybody laugh, Diana. I told him that. He was lying on the bed just like he is now. I was standing by the fireplace. He said it was an uneasy laughter. That if I sang I would remind my guests of how untalented they really are. And how much money they earn for being so untalented. I grabbed the candelabra, turned, and swung it at his head. Not just once, but a couple of times.” Her eyes moved from Delane to me. “You’re going to call the police, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“But not till after I sing. Promise?”
“All right.”
She stood, downed the last of her champagne, and walked slowly out of the room.
<
br /> I poured myself another glass, opened the French doors, and stepped out onto the narrow foot balcony. I looked toward the tree. Maurice and the redhead were gone. Robin appeared on the verandah. She stopped and looked up in my direction and waved. I waved back. The emerald and diamond necklace shone like glass. Guests began to move toward her, surrounding her as if she were a movie star and not just another wife who had turned forty. They all disappeared into the tent.
The caterers wheeled a giant cake out onto the verandah. It blazed like a small brush fire. Christ, Maurice had them put all forty candles on the cake. They lifted it off the cart and carried it into the tent. A hush fell. I could hear applause then guests singing Happy Birthday. The Ferris wheel went around in a garish blur, its now empty carriages swaying under the cold eye of the moon. There was another hush. Then the sound of a piano. And soon Robin’s voice wafted up through the tent into the night sky. I didn’t know the song. Some rock ballad. She hit all the right notes, but she had a thin, wavering, unfeeling voice. Delane was right. She was relentlessly untalented. But not any worse than some others who have made it on just sheer guts and ego. Not any worse than Delane.
The tent reminded me of an evangelist’s tent. A place where people come to be told there is another world. A better world. Where people can believe that Hollywood will save them no matter what they do or how they do it. Her pathetic voice, unintentionally, questioned that belief.
I moved back into the room and again forced myself to look at the body of the young, successful Delane. I couldn’t bear the surprised look in his eyes. After three hit movies his words had finally connected. I pulled the white silk coverlet over his face.
Killing the Sixties
I was so tired of hearing the hype about the sixties that I wanted to kill the decade off just to give other generations a chance at defining themselves. Alas that doesn’t make a short story. It wasn’t until I heard that a rock star my husband and I knew from that decade had had a liver transplant. I began to wonder what would happen if a debauched aging rock star received a new liver; and what if he began to believe that his healthy organ would allow him to regain the success he had as a wild rock star in the sixties. I now had my theme and my story.
WHAT DO YOU WEAR to meet an ex-lover who is now an aging rock star with a new liver? Well, a used liver, but new to him.
I decided on my blood-red linen dress.
The last time I saw Leon Ashe was in Chasen’s about ten years ago, just before the restaurant closed for good. He was drunk and in a fight with the maitre d’ over the location of his table. As the waiters dragged Leon unceremoniously out of the restaurant he spotted me sitting on the banquette with my husband. “Diana!” he yelled. Then in his plaintive drunken voice he began singing the song he had written about me in the sixties; it was appropriately named “Diana,” and its success had made him a giant rock star.
I didn’t see him or hear from him again until last week, when he called to announce that he had a new liver. He asked if I’d come up to Oak Point, where he now lived, and spend the day with him. He suggested I meet him at a restaurant called Avanti. I was between movies, as most middle-aged actress are, and with some coaxing on his part I agreed to drive up the coast to see him.
The reason I needed coaxing was because I never trusted Leon Ashe, even when I was madly in love with him back in the sixties. Leon thought of women the way he thought of the songs he wrote: the next one was always going to be Number One. The trouble with Leon is that “Diana” was the best song he ever wrote. You can hear it today in elevators and if you’re holding on the phone. Funny how time equalizes everything. After all these years, the significance, the genius of Leon Ashe is reduced to muzak. An outcome he never anticipated in the sixties.
There was another reason I hesitated to see Leon: He always had an ulterior motive. Leon wanted something. I knew one thing he wouldn’t want—to be lovers again. I’m too old for Leon now, even though I’m ten years younger than he is. His current and fifth wife is twenty-two. But, as I said, I had time on my hands, and despite everything, I always had a soft spot for Leon. After all, he wrote a beautiful love song for me when I was a tearful eighteen-year-old girl.
Oak Point is an expensive little village, nestled between the San Ysidro Mountains and the Pacific Ocean, just south of Santa Barbara. From my home in Malibu it took me about an hour and half to get there. The village consists of small shops, four or five Italian restaurants, and homes worth millions and millions of dollars. Many Hollywood people have moved up to Oak Point to get away. But I’ve been around long enough to know that you can’t get away from Hollywood. Like smog, Hollywood moves and settles wherever it wants to. It doesn’t matter if you’re a success or a failure, you’re always breathing it, living it, hoping for just one more chance from it. In other words, while the Hollywood people were retreating to Oak Point, they were still waiting for the phone to ring.
Avanti is a small, comfortably chic outdoor restaurant. I parked the car, smoothed my blood-red dress, combed my determinedly blonde hair, put on some fresh lipstick, and went into the patio area. Shadowed from the sun by market umbrellas, the Oak Pointers were busy eating. The women, mostly middle-aged, were lean, taunt, and as determinedly blonde as I. The men had an air of robustness about them that comes more from money than fitness. Behind them the San Ysidro Mountains rose in jagged grandeur. Clouds carved ragged white holes into a brilliant blue sky.
“Diana? Diana Poole!” Leon stood when he saw me.
“Hello, Leon.”
We embraced. Then, holding me at arms length, he leaned his head back, squinted as if I were a newspaper he was trying to read without glasses, and said, “You look great.”
It’s the one compliment that fits all middle-aged women, and because of that it irritates the hell out of me.
“So does the Grand Canyon, Leon,” I laughed.
“What?” he muttered, distractedly, eyeing a lone man sitting at a table, reading a newspaper.
“You’re looking well,” I said.
“Feel wonderful. Sit down. Sit down.”
His once shoulder-length black hair was now gray and shaggy. His dark beard was only a memory, but his eyes were still the color of glistening oil. His deeply lined face was thinner, causing his aquiline nose to appear larger. He wore a perfectly pressed blue work shirt and jeans. His black sports jacket was cashmere.
“God, I can’t tell you how good it is to see you, Diana.” He smiled his charmingly crooked smile.
“It’s been a long time.” I smiled back.
“But that’s going to change.”
“What is?”
“Now that your husband is dead. Oh, I’m sorry to hear about that by the way. I should have written you. When did it happen?” He talked fast. His dark, furtive eyes roamed the patio. He wanted to get the subject of death over with.
“More than a year ago.” Again the feeling of being set adrift from everything I knew and loved swept through me. Waiting for it to pass, I looked up at the mountains; the clouds had lowered and were trying to drape themselves over its peaks and ridges. The feeling of loss ebbed and I let my gaze drift back to Leon. For the first time I noticed the half-empty bottle of white wine.
“I saw you in that movie,” he announced, “where you played Uma Thurman’s mother. Kind of a small role for you, wasn’t it?”
“It gets tougher the older you get.”
“It doesn’t have to.” He poured himself a glass of wine. “Is Uma seeing anyone?”
“You asked me to come all the way up here to find out if Uma Thurman is seeing someone?” I joked.
“I just wondered, that’s all.” His voice was serious. “Possibilities, you know what I mean?”
The waiter swooped by, tossed menus on the table, and poured me a glass of wine.
“We’ll have another bottle,” Leon ordered.
“Should you be drinking?” I asked when the waiter left.
“I have a second chance at life,
Diana,” he said, excitedly.
“That’s wonderful. But I thought that drinking and drugs is what got to your liver in the first place. I remember when you were on stage and told everybody in the audience to drop acid.”
“But that’s just it. I’m gonna do it all over again, Diana. Well, not acid. Though I think for a short period it did make me more creative. Back then I would’ve tried anything to be more creative.”
“Do what all over again?”
“I’m going to live my life over. How many people get that chance?” He downed his wine. “It took me thirty-some years to need a transplant, so I figure I have another thirty years before this one gives out. Then it won’t matter. Who wants to live past eighty?” he asked, sounding like the young Leon I had once loved.
“I remember when we didn’t want to live past thirty. I don’t think that’s the way it works, Leon. Do your doctors know you’re drinking?”
With a suspicious glance he leaned close and whispered, “Is that guy staring at me?”
“What guy?” I looked around.
“Jesus, Diana, don’t be so obvious. He’s sitting alone. Pretending to read his newspaper.” He sneaked a peek. “He’s not watching me now. You can look.”
I peered at a man who was about Leon’s age sitting at a table for two. He had a slight belly, thinning grayish-blond hair, and was dressed in khakis and a baby-blue polo shirt. After sipping his beer he patted his neatly trimmed mustache and seemed to be thoroughly engrossed in the Wall Street Journal.
“He is reading his newspaper, Leon.”
“The doctors say this happens with a transplant. It’s a kind of temporary paranoia. You know, you feel guilty for getting to live while the others…” He paused, shifting restlessly in his chair.
“Others what?”
“Others on the list. The ones that didn’t get the liver, the ones who’ve been waiting a long time.” He tossed back some more wine. “Let’s face it, it helps to have a name, it helps to have money. I took advantage of that. Why shouldn’t I? I was dying. People wanted me to live. I wrote some great songs, man. They still love me for that. I was part of their youth. No, I helped create their youth, their memories. That’s why I want to start writing again. I owe it to them.” He slammed his hand on the table. A sparrow scavenging for bread crumbs flew away. A few heads turned. The man reading the Journal never looked up.
Shooting Hollywood Page 4