Shooting Hollywood

by Melodie Johnson Howe

  Diana The Undaunted tried again. “I was with Julie. We were walking down Fifth Avenue. She saw a little blue box with a white ribbon tied around it in a snow bank…”

  “Sure, Diana. She found the earrings all tied up in a Tiffany box.” Again Lucas slid his arm around my waist and drew me to him. “Would you really make me feel ineffectual?” “Yes. Excuse me.”

  I made my way across the room to Julie. She was standing at the buffet table with an empty plate in her hand staring down at the lush display of lobster, cracked crab, oysters, clams, and shrimp.

  “Can I eat any of this?” she asked me. “I’m on a macramé diet.”

  “Macrobiotic. Come here, I want to talk with you.”

  “You’re hurting my arm,” she said, as I firmly guided her over to a secluded corner filled by a desolate looking palm. Hotels must grow these plants in their basements, I thought.

  “You better not have bruised me, Diana. I’m suppose to have pictures taken for Vogue tomorrow,” she whined inspecting her arm.

  “Did you tell everyone that James gave you those earrings?” I demanded.

  “No. I told them the truth.”

  “So why do they all think he gave them to you?”

  “We live in cynical times. I can’t help it if people choose not to believe the truth. Isn’t lobster high in cholesterol?” She looked longingly back at the buffet.

  “You don’t have cholesterol. I don’t think you even have a pulse. Howard said you winked at him when you told him about finding the Tiffany box. A wink can undercut the truth, Julie. And you’re just the kind of actress who’d try such an obvious gesture.”

  Anger pulled the corners of her mouth down. “Remember, Diana, they’re talking Oscar. And Howard always thinks I’m winking at him.”

  “You want everyone to believe James gave you those earrings. That’s why you wanted to keep them, isn’t it? Cinderella, my ass.”

  “God, I didn’t realize how jealous you are of James and me.”

  “I’m not thinking of you two, I’m thinking of The Wife.”

  “Did you think about The Wife when you went to bed with him? I told everybody the truth. My conscience is clear.”

  “Be careful, Julie. A wife has a tendency to draw the line when she thinks her husband is giving expensive jewelry from to his girlfriend.”

  “What’s the worst she can do? Leave him?” She asked with feigned innocence.

  “You can’t really want him.”

  “He understands my abilities as an actress.” She displayed her perfect smile then turned on her heels, blonde hair fanning out, and returned to the buffet. I took a long swallow of warm champagne.

  “I’ve been trying to remember the first time we met.” Carol Barron approached. “It was James’ first movie, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “A long time ago.”

  “A long time ago.”

  “We met on the set. Do you remember?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’ve both changed a great deal since then.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry about your husband.”

  “Thank you. I never thought I’d go back to acting but I have to pay the bills now,” I chatted uneasily.

  Carol peered at Julie who, still holding an empty plate, was talking to The Tantrum.

  “Did James ever give you anything as beautiful as those earrings?” she asked.

  “Why should he?” I stammered, and then quickly added, “James didn’t give those to her. She found them in a snow bank near Tiffany’s.”

  Deep lines curved around her wry smile. “You must think I’m some poor desperate woman who has no self respect. And maybe I am. But don’t insult my intelligence, it’s all I have left.”

  “I know it sounds implausible, but I was with Julie when she found them. She’s just wearing them for tonight. Like Cinderella.” Oh, God. “She’s going to return them tomorrow.”

  “Cinderella?” She laughed harshly. “Julie’s just another bad actress in another of James’ bad movies. Do you remember when he made good movies?”

  “Yes.”

  “I loved him then.”

  I knew she was saying she loved him when I had had an affaire with him. We smiled at each other and sipped our champagne.

  “How can I convince you that Julie’s story is true?” I asked. “If you can’t believe her then at least believe me. I was with her.”

  “Why should I believe you?” she asked evenly.

  “Because…” I stopped. She was right. Why should she believe me? And why did I want her to?

  “Are you trying to correct a wrong, Diana?”

  “No. Maybe. Look, I do know the truth abut the earrings. That’s all.”

  “Only I can correct what is wrong. Let’s talk about something else. Do you know you’d be perfect for the role of the zoologist in James’ next movie?”

  “Really? What’s it called?” I marveled at how I could still play the game even while I was trying to ease my own guilt. I was too old and too jaded. And God knows my feet still hurt.

  “I don’t know the title. Something about two men and a Giraffe. I’m tired. Will you tell James I’ve gone up to our room?” Carol extended her hand. I took it. It was a cold dead thing. I wanted it to tremble. I wanted it to be a sparrow again. I wanted to believe that I hadn’t helped in draining the life from her.

  “Thank you for trying, Diana, but it’s too late.” She hurried away.

  A palm frond tickled my cheek as I watched The Tantrum watch Julie tilt her head back, open her mouth, and swallow an oyster. She’d finally found something to eat. He let out one of his happy-baby giggles then dipped his forefinger into the bowl of caviar and began to greedily suck it.

  I made my way across the room to James. The cinematographer’s eyes were now at half-mast. He was using the wall to prop himself up. James peered over his dark glasses at his party as if he were studying a scene he couldn’t get right.

  “Diana, you finally came over to greet your host,” he said as if I had been the flaw.

  “It’s a lovely party.”

  “But?” He talked in the quiet bland tone of a man who was used to dealing with other people’s emotions.

  “Carol asked me to tell you that she’s gone up to the room. Could we talk alone?” I glanced at Marcus who was now resting his chin on his chest.

  James grinned at him. “We are alone. What do you want to talk about? The earrings I gave Julie?”

  “You heard?”

  “Actors whisper so loudly.”

  “But you and I know you didn’t give them to her.”

  Marcus muttered what sounded like the word ‘glare’ then slid down the wall and sat on the floor. Since Marcus usually ended up on the floor no one paid him any attention.

  James peered at me over his sunglasses. “When did I stop being a genius, Diana?”

  “I’m worried about your wife, not your career,” I spoke more bluntly than I had intended.

  “So am I. Carol was willing to believe a genius. But she isn’t willing to believe a hack. That’s why I’m standing here trying to figure out when I stopped being a genius. Was it two movies ago?”

  “I’m afraid Carol is going to do something drastic.”

  He tilted his head as if to get a better angle on his career. “How could I not recognize the fact that I’m not a genius anymore? Carol did. Was it three movies ago?”

  “You still have it,” I lied. “They’re talking Oscar for Julie.” I had to stop saying that. I had to leave this alone. I had to take my shoes off.

  “I have a new project in the works,” he said, momentarily forgetting he wasn’t a genius anymore. “It’s about two men and a Buffalo.”

  “Really?”

  “There’s the part of a zoologist you’re perfect for. I’ll get a script to you when we get back to L.A.”

  “Thanks.” So I’d work again. The actor’s salvation.

  “Strike the glare,”
Marcus announced, blinking up at us.

  “Julie thinks I’m a genius,” James observed, adjusting his dark glasses.

  “Of course she does.”

  I was suddenly exhausted. I excused myself and went up to my room.

  Around two thirty in the morning I awoke to someone knocking on my door and the sound of Carol Barron’s voice in the hallway. I threw on a robe, turned on the desk lamp, and opened the door. Carol walked in and sat on the sofa. She wore a quilted blue silk bathrobe and stared at the gun in her hand as if she’d picked up the wrong evening bag.

  “He lost his touch,” she said.

  Julie appeared in the doorway still dressed in her lime-green gown. “You bitch!” she screamed at Carol. The earrings shimmered. A few hotel guests, disturbed by the noise, peered sleepily out into the hall. I jerked Julie into the room and shut the door.

  “What happened?” I demanded.

  “Most wives leave. They take the money and leave,” Julie said, furiously pacing back and forth.

  “Even your pacing is a cliché,” Carol observed dryly.

  “Where’s James?” I asked.

  “He lost his touch,” Carol repeated, rubbing her forehead.

  “He’s dead. Where do you think he is?!” Julie stamped her foot.

  “He’s in her bedroom,” Carol spoke calmly. “Sprawled on the floor by the bathroom door. He was trying to hide from me in there. Another cliché.”

  I held out my hand to her. “Give me the gun.”

  “I can’t do that, Diana.”

  “Give her the gun,” Julie demanded.

  Carol pointed the barrel of the gun at Julie. “I can’t do that until I figure out which one of us is the bigger cliché. The Girlfriend or The Wife?”

  Julie froze, eyes narrowing with fear. “What is she talking about, Diana?”

  “She’s wondering which one of you is less meaningful, or more hackneyed.” My voice sounded unreal, empty of all emotion, like a United Nations interpreter.

  “What does that have to do with anything? And how about, Diana? She had an affaire with him too,” she whined, pointing at me.

  “James didn’t give her earrings from Tiffany’s.”

  “But I found them in a snow bank.”

  “Be quiet!” Carol snapped.

  Tears began to roll down Julie’s cheeks. “It’s true. Tell her, Diana.”

  Carol tilted her drawn pale face up to mine. “Don’t, Diana. Don’t tell me. Just get the earrings from her.” She waved the gun at me.

  I brushed back Julie’s hair from her wet face. While she cried I unscrewed the post from behind her left ear and slipped the diamond and emerald earring from her lobe. Then I did the same with the right one. I handed them to Carol.

  “You don’t want to harm anyone else,” I pleaded with her. “Please, give me the gun.”

  “I have to put an end to it, Diana.” She weighed the earrings in her hand. “These insult my intelligence.”

  “I just thought James could help me with my career. Like Woody Allen and Diane Keaton,” Julie was talking frantically now. “I wanted to be a movie star… Everybody wants that… And everybody has affaires… So why do you want to kill me? They’re talking Oscar… And I did find them in a snow bank… I did… I did…”

  “Oh, shut up,” Carol said in a weary voice. The gun exploded.

  I jerked back. Julie’s hands flew up to her face. Carol dropped the gun and grabbed at the bright red wound between her breasts. She pitched forward onto the floor. I knelt down and held her hand; it quivered in mine and then it didn’t. I gathered up the earrings.

  Peering over her fingertips Julie began to babble, “She didn’t kill me… she killed herself… not me… not me…”

  I went over and slapped her hard. Stunned, she fell silent.

  I left her. Ignoring the disconcerted expressions of the guests once again peeking from their rooms, I walked down the hall to Julie’s suite. The door was ajar. I walked through the sitting room into the bedroom, stepped around the body of the man who had lost his touch, and took the little blue box off her dresser. Placing the earrings inside of it, I dropped the box into the pocket of my robe. I called the Tantrum. He took charge of getting Julie and I new rooms. He gave her sleeping pills so she wouldn’t have to talk to the police. It was left for me to deal with them.

  In the early dawn I sat alone in my room and stared at the little blue box. I was waiting.

  I was waiting for Tiffany’s to open.

  The Talking Dead

  Aimlessly channel surfing, I was standing in my kitchen wearing sweats, hair pulled back, and no makeup, gathering my courage to go into my office to write. Then I saw myself on the screen acting in the series Bewitched. After I got over the shock of how young, beautiful, and filled with hope I had been, I realized that all the lead actors in the series were dead. The dead were rerunning. In fact, TV is filled with the talking dead. I went into my office and began to write this short story.

  “AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST I would like to thank my father who loved his booze more than me. But when he was half-sober and feeling melancholy he would take me out in the backyard at night and teach me to talk to the moon. Thanks, Dad.” Tears filling his eyes, Brendan Kincaid raised his Golden Globe in the air and bowed to the audience, the TV cameras, and the world. I adjusted my pearls and black silk suit jacket and forced an appropriate smile. Even for an actor, Brendan Kincaid cried too easily.

  As the ballroom filled with applause I peered around the glittering centerpiece on the table and nodded at Alison, Brendan’s wife. Kneeling in front of her like a suitor about to propose marriage was a man in a tuxedo, balancing a camera on his shoulder, capturing her tired but triumphant expression.

  “Oh, Diana, Brendan is so sensitive,” the young—some say too young—actress, who played Brendan’s TV wife, gushed into my ear.

  I am one of those who say she is too young. But that’s because I tried out for the role of Brendan’s wife and didn’t get it. I wasn’t age appropriate meaning I was too old, meaning I was Brendan’s age.

  “I love how he talks about his life. Don’t you?” She beamed. I nodded politely even though I didn’t agree. Brendan talked about his life as if no one else had one.

  The fickle cameraman moved away from Kincaid’s wife and focused on the young actress. She began to applaud wildly. I know all the tricks of the acting trade, but again I marveled at how quickly tears appeared in her creaseless eyes. If there is one more award show, I thought, Hollywood would drown in its own tears of adulation. Maybe I was too old.

  Sitting on my right was Theodora Woods; she had just accepted her own Golden Globe for being the creator of the newest, hottest sitcom: The Life of Brendan Kincaid. She also happened to be Brendan’s lover. I was her guest at the table. Theo liked my work and always made sure there was a part for me in her shows. I nodded and smiled at Theo. The cameraman now pointed his lens at her. But she wasn’t applauding and she wasn’t smiling. As the star-filled audience, clad in tuxedos and evening gowns, got to their feet giving Brendan a standing ovation, Theodora remained seated; her intelligent dark eyes shined with betrayal. Her short dark hair was cut at sharp angles. Her mouth, lipstick long forgotten, was pressed into a thin resentful line. The cameraman, not one for nuance, lurched away toward another more easily identifiable face.

  “What’s wrong?” I whispered in her ear.

  “TV saps your soul.” She downed the last of her wine and placed her napkin firmly on the table. The thin strap of her purple velvet gown slipped from her bony shoulder as she stood and stalked with great purpose out of the Grand Ballroom. A frown deepened the lines around Alison Kincaid’s eyes as she watched Theo leave. In shock, the young actress’ tears dried immediately as if they were made out of polyester.

  Theodora Woods forgot to take her award.

  People don’t walk out in Hollywood. They are pushed out, kicking and screaming and clutching their multi-million dollar golden parachutes. So when
Theo got up and left during a standing ovation for the star of her show it was an unsettling event. Even Brendan was rendered speechless upon his return to the table. It was quickly decided that Theo must not have been feeling well and I, her friend, should take her award home for safe-keeping. They considered me her friend because Theo got me work.

  Since my husband Colin died of a heart attack I live alone in our un-remodeled beach house—euphemistically called a teardown—in Malibu. That night I placed Theo’s award on the mantle next to Colin’s two Oscars, which he had won for best screenplay. The two awards and the house were all I had left. Having to earn a living, I had gone back to what I knew best: acting.

  I called Theo and got her machine. After leaving a message I crawled into bed, took my sleeping pill, and turned on the TV. There was nothing I wanted to watch; I just wanted to fill the silence even while I slept. Closing my eyes I wondered what Theo was doing. She wasn’t the kind of woman you worried about; but her behavior, even for a writer, was odd.

  The next morning I was standing in my kitchen drinking coffee and channel surfing my way to the news when on some obscure station I saw the shocking image of myself at eighteen. I was acting in a segment of Bewitched. Samantha, the witch, was wiggling her nose, trying to turn me into an ugly old hag so Darien, her husband, would not be attracted to me. I no longer knew that young blonde-haired woman who was once me. Her face was filled with such hope and beauty that she broke my heart. She also looked young enough to be Brendan Kincaid’s TV wife. The doorbell rang. Pulling my husband’s paisley silk robe more tightly around me, I ran my hand through my now determinedly blonde hair and went to answer it.

  Brendan Kincaid burst in. “Where is Theo?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Brendan was tall and woodenly handsome. He reached out his arms in a hopelessly dramatic gesture that reeked of bad acting; it was his larger than life mannerisms which had no connection to the reality of the moment that made Brendan such a comic success on the small screen.

  “I’ve been calling her all night. I keep getting the machine. I went to her house this morning and she’s not there.” He peered forlornly down at the little alligator-insignia on his pink polo shirt as if it might help him.