by Luke Davies
The plane was whining, I could not hear, I could not hear my thoughts. I thought I would try to land on a street. I would lose my wings but possibly skid to a halt. But the thing was so hard to control. And I was gaining speed. And then it was absolutely too late. I planted my feet on the instrument panel. I tried to keep the nose up high to flare the ship and avoid a nose-down crack-up. I sheared the top of a house like a machete through balsa wood. I have been here before. It was only three years since Lake Mead. It all comes round in circles, in the living, in the telling, the initial scream and the answering echo, the rearing water and the upward rush of asphalt, and the last thing that happened before impact, I turned my head and read, with some curiosity, the street sign North Linden Drive, and finally I felt still and serene as I lazily smashed through telegraph poles, as trees, houses, mailboxes, roads, stood up one after the other to smack me in the nose. North Linden Drive. Those gentle letters on a filigree-edged sign, and the clipped hedges of a quiet neighborhood. Then for just a moment it seemed everything had gone silent, despite the gargantuan whining of the engines, and I could think again. You look at the screen and enjoy the movie. I was struck by the unreality of that view unfolding. But when the windshield shatters you realize how fast you are going. Then the gates of hell broke open. I caught fire. The plane stripped itself of itself, screeching all around me.
It was horrible but magnificent. As I sat on the sidewalk, bewildered, so far removed from pain yet so immersed in it, my clothes were melted into my skin and I yearned for relief from the pain as a man lost in the desert yearns for water. Everything was still all around me. The plane was in pieces, along the street, in yards, in trees. Noise wound down, as if the great industrial world had suddenly decided to no longer be, had switched itself off at the fuse box.
From out of the smoke a man emerged. Lloyd Durkin, visiting friends at 808 Whittier Drive. I have never forgotten his name, Jack, since he was the first man I saw in my new life.
Are you all right? Was he hissing, Lloyd Durkin? His head was stretched, his face did not stay in its skin.
I was alive, but I was no longer invincible. From behind the horrified face which loomed over me the late afternoon sun drilled into my retinas and in slow motion on the open sky the frenzied patterns of my blood vessels danced.
That is how I knew that eventually, that sooner rather than later, I must remove myself from the company of men.
UNCROWDED HORIZONS
AND THAT WAS that. My plane fell apart. I burst into flames. The day went quiet.
Life changing, as they say. I was taken to Good Samaritan Hospital. Crushed chest. Fractures to seven ribs on the left side, two on the right. Fractured left clavicle. Broken nose. Large laceration of the scalp. Extensive second-and third-degree burns on the left hand, a second-degree burn on the lower part of the left chest, cuts, bruises, abrasions, collapsed left lung, damaged right lung, heart pushed to one side of chest cavity; not expected to live through the night.
When I got out of the hospital I took stock of my life. I was completely amazed by its emptiness. But the good thing about emptiness is just how much space there is. So I made a decision to protect myself within that space. By participating in the world to the fullest I had somehow ensured that I would withdraw to a like extreme. Of course, I didn’t entirely realize it at the time.
Dr. Mason, a very kind man, gave me lots of morphine.
Memo, 1958: Delivering film
canisters to the bungalow
Park one foot from the curb on Crescent near the place where the sidewalk dead-ends into the curb. Get out of the car on the traffic side. Do not at any time be on the side of the car between the car and the curb. When unloading film, do so from the traffic side of the car, if the film is in the rear seat. If it is in the trunk, stand as close to the center of the road as possible while unloading. Carry only one can of film at a time. Step over the gutter opposite the place where the sidewalk dead-ends into the curb from a point as far out into the center of the road as possible. Do not ever walk on the grass at all, also do not step into the gutter at all. I will be watching these films, or these tests, or these dailies, in a darkened room. Think of what can be ejected from the surface of the celluloid as the film moves through the projector spools at such high speed. Walk to the bungalow keeping as near to the center of the sidewalk as possible. Do not sit the film cans down on the sidewalk or the street or anywhere else, except possibly on the porch of the bungalow area if the third man is not there. While waiting for the third man to arrive, do not lean against any portion of the bungalow or the furniture on the porch, but remain there standing quietly and await his arrival. When the third man clears the door, step inside quickly carrying the can (single) of film, just far enough to be inside. Do not move and do not say anything and do not sit the film down until you receive instructions where to sit it. If possible, stay two feet away from the TV set, the wire on the floor and the walls. When leaving, kick on the door and step outside quickly as soon as the third man opens the door.
THE EMPEROR OF EMPIRIN
IT IS DEEP in the night, and one floor below me Jack Real sleeps the sleep of the dead, as they say. Or the jetlagged, at least. I don’t move. I can’t move. I’m exhausted from all my thinking and planning and remembering. But no, there is nothing to worry about. The medicine will see me through.
It is difficult speaking of failure. I feel I have been fighting my way through some dense thicket out of which, every now and again, I emerge into a clearing.
The medicine and the memos, these are my tools. These are how I keep the world in place, or rather, the forces at bay.
Because that was the last crash, Jack—the XF-11 I was telling you about. There weren’t any more after that. And these memos are the reason why. What the crash meant was that I had not taken care of every little contingency. I hadn’t covered all the possible angles. My plan was not detailed enough. My plans, I should say. And I had to start protecting myself from the things that could go wrong. I had to plan better. Because it was easy to forget. And I was always very comfortable writing lists. And then gradually the lists became … instructions. Because then the Mormons were in my life. And you cannot trust that everyone is as smart as you. You can’t make that assumption.
The thing is, if I might elaborate for a moment, sometimes I just used to … get stuck. You see, Jack, there was a loop, and it was hard to get out of. It was like a wolf, always there, always waiting for you to make a mistake. I think you’re following me. It would take you down and you were gone: the loop began, it fed on itself, it just kept eating and eating. And what people don’t understand is that the medication keeps the loop at bay. Codeine allows, somehow, miraculously, the thoughts and the words to keep on coming out, in sequence, in the right order. That is the opportunity, that is the moment to get it down in the memo!
And then nothing can get out of control.
Sometimes, in those years before I got serious about the medication, sometimes there was a lot of terror. Because when you think of the thought, and the words to say it, that is fine. But when you think of the thought and the words to say it and then you say it, but then immediately you are not sure if you said it or merely thought it in preparation for saying it, this can get you into awful trouble. It’s just a little short-circuit in the wiring. It’s just a millisecond, that harmless moment before déjà vu takes effect, but if you get trapped on the inside of the loop then the milliseconds suddenly multiply like a virus. And then everything is out of control. You’ve got to stay outside that thing, Jack.
Back when this was happening, Noah Dietrich was getting awfully worried about me. I would call him up, say, to talk about moving the RKO stock options. So what I needed to say was: Noah, we need to talk about those options. So that’s what I’d say. Maybe there was a moment in there where I’d think, Okay, did I say it? Is it out of the way? This is called the speech act.
But the next thing, there’s Noah’s insistent voice on the end of t
he line, interrupting me, Howard, Howard, Howard, HOWARD, slow down, slow down.
What? What?
Howard, do you know what you’re doing?
We need to talk about those options. Yes.
Yes, I know. But you keep saying it. I just counted. Twenty-three times, Howard. You just said “We need to talk about those options” twenty-three times.
Well, it was shocking, of course. Because Noah, he doesn’t play practical jokes. So I know it’s the truth, even though it doesn’t feel like it happened. Which can only mean I am losing my mind.
And this got worse and worse, this getting caught inside the loop. Because you need to make sure you get everything right, because you need to be in control, because you can’t let things fall apart. You can’t relax. But back around this time, I may have been overcompensating. I got trapped in a men’s room, overcompensating, caught inside the loop. Washing a sauce stain off my shirt, but the water spread, so I kept on washing, washing the stain out, washing the water out, but the water kept spreading till I took off my shirt, then the whole shirt was wet. So I was trapped in there, with Jane Greer waiting patiently in the restaurant, and I couldn’t tell her, had no way of letting her know, couldn’t interrupt the sequence of events, one thing at a time. Wash it, and dry it, and get the shirt back on. Which was impossible, of course. The maitre d’ broke the loop, pounding on the door. I’ll be out in a minute. I had to sit back down with Jane, with my shirt wringing wet. It was very uncomfortable. Not to mention the shame. My life was limited, I know. But you have to be methodical, one foot in front of the other. Every step accounted for. I was drowning, Jack, I was drowning. Then the drugs came along, breathing into my blue lips their serene oxygen. Do you see what I mean? Everything I ever dreamed of, the peace of the oasis, the whiteness of the blossom, in Empirin, in Valium, in Librium, in Ritalin, Our Lady of the Amphetamine, Our Lord of Morphine raining down His gifts. I had a Condition which needed Medicating. It was nothing to be ashamed of.
And so now I attack the problem from two sides: there’s the medication, and there are the memos. The first makes me all right inside myself, ensures that my thoughts and actions will all be correct. The second ensures that those working on my behalf act with neither ambiguity nor uncertainty. Then the whole world can get on famously with itself.
COUNT OLEG THE BRAVE
SOMETIMES THAT WOLF took on human form. I was never one for violence, all that strutting manly business. Most men frankly dismayed me. At school I had scuffled with Stanley Rowley while the other boys, Dudley included, looked on and cheered. There were flailing arms and fists that may or may not have connected, but we wound down to stalemate in a heaving wrestle of headlock and throat-constricting adrenalin. Nor was I much of one for sport, which was really just violence with stricter rules. So when Oleg Cassini, a lowly fashion designer who should really and may well have been a fag, whooped me one night with a piece of two-by-four, it was an awful minute of powerlessness and fear.
Because I had been seeing his flame Gene Tierney, and he did not like it at all, with his greaseball macho pride, faintly ridiculous Rudolph Valentino darkness and a certain European arrogance. He treated me, an honest hard-working American, like a bumpkin, which merely made me more determined to continue fucking, on the sly but without overly comprehensive security, the lovely Gene, with her crooked teeth, tiny lisp and oh so licentious overbite. In order to irk him.
I had seen Gene in Laura and, like half of the country, had fallen in love with her. Setting up a date was of course no problem. Her romance with Count Oleg (what kind of stupid name is Oleg?) was at this stage only budding. I didn’t see that as a problem either. It wasn’t that I wanted what I couldn’t have; I could have pretty much anything. It was the annoyance that other men would even bother to compete. I couldn’t stand these greaseballs. Sinatra had the same stupid chip on his shoulder about me and Ava Gardner. As if I cared. The little wop shit (Sinatra, not Cassini) thought he could lord it over me. I’m a patient man. Twenty years later I bought a whole casino just to cancel his engagements. Anyway, it really made me mad that Gene could be quite happy to fuck me but that she didn’t take my proposals of marriage seriously. (They weren’t serious. I just wanted her to take them seriously.) In her Westwood apartment I offered her a diamond ring, a necklace of pearl. She seemed genuinely disturbed and said, Howard, this is lovely, but I can’t take this. Out of sight, out of mind, no harm in trying, worth the effort, all’s fair in love and war, what did it really matter? Fuck her. I consoled myself with Linda Darnell, moonshine on heat.
Some weeks later I took Gene’s call.
Howard, I want you to hear this from me before you read it in the papers tomorrow. I’m going to marry Oleg.
I told her she was making a very grave mistake.
She said, Thank you for your kind thoughts, but Oleg is a more balanced man than you. He’s simpler, Howard.
Well, I said, I wish him well with his balance and simplicity.
They got married. Needless to say I wasn’t the best man. Later they had a child but it was born a retard. I tried to express some magnanimity by showering them with money for specialist treatment. Gene resisted and I insisted. For the good of the boy and his future, I said. I wanted to appear to prove I could rise above the rivalries of men. At the same time there was an element of wanting to make Oleg feel less than a man. I never pretended life was simple. There are many motives running parallel.
It’s just that, while I didn’t mind sleeping with any number of women at a time, I really felt it rubbed me the wrong way when a woman chose to spread herself around among the men. And what right had Oleg to partake in anything resembling a competition?
But passion cools off and marriages too, and the stress of bearing a retard certainly couldn’t have helped. Plus ultimately every Hollywood actress is only as good as her currency in this week’s scandal rag and last week’s box office. Only as stable. They have an image of themselves that could hardly be said to come from within. In any case, the focus tends to be on the career. A year or so after the birth of the unfortunate child I was back between Gene Tierney’s lanky legs for a little while, and Oleg none too happy. At a dinner party at Jack Benny’s he shouted me down in front of the other guests, Gene saying, Please, Oleg, please, not here. He called me a fraud, among other insults and insinuations. You leave my wife alone, he said. I’ll whip you like a dog, he said.
Mr. Cassini, I said, you’re talking ancient history. You’re embarrassing yourself.
I’m gonna embarrass you, he sputtered. You’re gonna have trouble picking your teeth up off the floor when both eyes are closed up!
At this point I left the proceedings. Almost immediately—I waited only a week—I made the point of making Gene Tierney an offer she could hardly refuse: promises of talks regarding a specious movie deal, and a weekend for two in Las Vegas. She took the bait. God only knows what she told Oleg she was doing.
Alone once again, she really relaxed. That weekend in Vegas I loved Gene Tierney as much as ever, as much as any other woman ever, I mean. She smelled so nice in her armpits, you could inhale so deeply, you could breathe it in like your life depended on it; oh, there were bouquets of hyacinth hidden inside her. She laughed so deeply at the roulette table, I was happy just to sit beside her, to bathe in the presence of uncomplicated joy. Greaseballs and retards may well have been light years away. I was happy to help her relax.
But when we came back to LA, it was all a little complex, and Gene went strange and cold on me, as if we barely knew each other. And I had to work very hard, and do another Vegas trip all over again, but this time she was stiffer. They had been married little more than eighteen months. That is the whole problem with marriage as I see it: it divides your loyalties between duty and desire. After that second trip, back in LA, I was trying to be discreet, I was taking out her luggage from the trunk, I was not in front of her house but hidden from view by a hedge in front of the house next door when out sprung Count O
leg the Brave, like a crazed Visigoth, wielding high in the air his lump of wood, only the stars behind it.
I screamed in terror.
I tried to throw Gene’s suitcase at him, but it was too heavy and it skidded sideways from my hands.
He brought the weapon down across my shins, twice, thud, thud. I crumpled to the ground. I tried to crawl out of harm’s way. Gene was screaming, Oleg! Oleg! I held my hands over my head. But the Count was savagely attacking my legs and lower torso. This is just a lesson! he kept saying, as he hit me, oomph, oomph, across my buttocks and thighs. I don’t care who you are, you stay away from my wife!
I somehow made it to my car; perhaps Gene was restraining him. Lights were going on all over the neighborhood. He dented my bonnet with the two-by-four as I sped away. The trunk flapped open, mouthing, Goodbye Gene! A Tierney hatbox spilled out from it, disgorging its contents as I took the corner, two-wheeled and panicked.
Every day was an adventure, Jack! The past is so far away. Only the infinite is left. Looming away, as it does. I never liked violence, I never saw the point of it. My bruises were like a map of sorrow. For days there were continents drifting tectonically down my thighs. I walked with a limp for at least a week. I never fucked Gene Tierney again.
SELF-MEDICATION
YOU SEE, THE problem is, waking is insufferable.
BUT THERE WERE STILL MOMENTS
I WAS AWARE, of course, of the great divide between simplicity and complexity. Sometimes that awareness was cluttered, like a thought half-realized on the edges of one’s day-to-day turmoil. Other times it was simple and pure, and I simply sat, within myself, as if that perfect fit was all there was.