“Mom?” Zack called plaintively.
“Honey?” Gary cried, bewildered.
Even the slut looked to her for rescue.
“Put ice on it! There are green peas in the freezer.” Worried Zack might try to catch her while she waited for the elevator, she hustled down nine flights of stairs, arriving breathless on the street, profoundly relieved to be clear of the mess of glass and muck that needed to be swept, scrubbed, bagged, and thrown out.
The air was freezing and the sky heavy with gray and black clouds. They filled in the narrow clearance between the Upper West Side’s brick towers, but she was not hemmed in. The first drops of an icy rain tapped on her skull. She lifted her face to the needles of water. She was free. She was free of lies she had told Gary all their married life. She was free and she had nowhere to go.
Best Friends Forever
February 2008
AFTER JULIE ALERTED him to the news of Klein and Rydel’s legal escape, Brian called Jeff’s office a second time, although that was a breach of Hollywood etiquette. He was told snappishly by Jeff’s English secretary that Mr. Mark absolutely couldn’t return his call until next week. Then he really crossed the line of proper film hierarchical behavior and tried the director’s home number in LA. Much to his surprise, Jeff’s third wife, Halley, picked up. He recognized her voice from her aborted career as a sitcom actress and her cameo in Jeff’s hit October Surprise, immediately prior to their becoming a couple. He did his best to sound very relaxed. “Hello. Is this Halley?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Hi. We’ve never met, but I’m a childhood friend of Jeff’s. My name is Brian Moran . . .”
“Oh sure! I’ve heard all about you, Brian. Jeff’ll be sorry he missed your call. Do you still live in New York? ’Cause he’s there now. Poor boy—tomorrow they’re doing another test preview in Jersey.” Not a trace of nervousness, and she was completely open about Jeff’s schedule. She doesn’t know a thing. Brian was not surprised by her being kept in the dark. That confirmed his suspicions about Jeff.
Brian told Halley that unfortunately he wasn’t in New York, he was in Paris on a movie, but he’d love to call Jeff to arrange something soon, and was this Jeff’s current cell number. He rattled off the contact info from his Hermès.
It wasn’t, of course. “Jeff has to change his cell every couple months,” Halley said. “The number leaks out and crazies call.” She didn’t give him a current one, lamely alibiing that Jeff hated talking on cells. She suggested Brian try calling him at the Four Seasons hotel. “Ask for Saul Klein,” she said, and a chill, an actual shiver climbed up and down Brian’s spine hearing an amalgamation of Jeff’s father’s first name and his mother’s maiden name. “That’s his alias on the road so fans can’t call his room,” Halley explained. At least he’s not calling himself Richard Klein, Brian consoled himself. Halley advised him to try Jeff’s hotel right away because he was heading out soon to have dinner to meet the cast of Mother’s Helper II after they had all been shown a final cut. She added, hilariously for Brian, “I bet Jeff would love you to see Helper II. It’s brilliant.”
So Jeff was in New York. Brian could confront him physically, much better than over the phone, perhaps as Jeff came out of the restaurant, tipsy and fattened up. He was tempted to ask Halley where Jeff and his cast were eating but feared that would seem very suspicious. He thanked her and hung up.
There was another source he could try, someone certain to know where the stars of Mother’s Helper II were having dinner with their director. He called Veronica Stillman’s personal cell, not her assistant’s. This hallowed number had been generously provided to allow him to stay in close touch while he rewrote her monologue at the climax of Sleep of the Innocent. He could pretend to be giving her an update about how that was going and casually ask where they were eating if her evening plans came up. That is, if she answered when she saw who was calling. He had no choice about disguising his number; a blocked one certainly wouldn’t be picked up.
“Brian! I’m so glad it’s you!” Veronica said without a hello and with convincing enthusiasm. “Guess who I’m about to meet for dinner?”
“You’re flying to Paris to have dinner with me and Aries at Taillevent.”
She chuckled. “I wish. No, I’m eating with your childhood buddy Jeff.”
“No kidding. I hope you’re making him take you somewhere very expensive and very very chic.”
“We’re going to Our Place, which everyone says is the new hot restaurant. Have you been?”
“Yeah, it’s great. I won’t keep you. Just wanted to say your suggestion for including a more detailed description of how our heroine’s genitals were tortured, contrary to my misgivings, really does work. Works wonderfully. So thanks for the note. It was a great help.”
“Oh, I’m so excited. I’m so glad I’m doing our serious movie.” She lowered her voice. “Especially after this big-money, no-brains Hollywood sequel. One for them and one for us, right? So when can I see my lovely new lines?”
“Well, I’m in Paris. It’s two a.m. here and I can’t sleep, of course . . .”
“You weren’t kidding! You lucky dog, you really are in Paris.”
“Had to meet with Aries about the changes we’re making for you. I’m going to take a pill and pass out—I hope. I’ll e-mail the pages to your assistant tomorrow morning after I’ve had a chance to read them over and do a little polishing, but please, I beg you, don’t tell Aries I sent them to you before he’s approved them.”
“Never! Of course not. My God, I’d never do that. How could you think I’d betray you like that?” Hmm, Brian thought. She isn’t so good at lying in real life. Veronica asked if she could say hello for him to Jeff. He gave permission. That would confirm his telling Halley that he was out of the country and thus relax Jeff.
He gave his failing father dinner, cleaned up, and settled Danny in front of the TV with DVDs of The Wire. Brian then walked in a leisurely fashion to Our Place’s neighborhood, doing his best to keep his eyes from lingering on New York’s sexy pedestrians. He found the architecture no less stimulating. Brian watched the belly of a lingering storm cloud, bleached white by the city’s lights, pass languorously through the lance of the Chrysler building’s spire. The nude building was passive, its attitude like an artist’s life model, unimpressed by New York’s lunge through its generous stomach, all the more seductive for its bored display. Even the weather felt voluptuous to Brian, the air scrubbed and electric. The evening’s cold rain had deposited puddles that shimmered green and red from traffic signals, Christmas lily pads on the black pond of Park Avenue South. Again and again Brian had to force himself to avert his eyes from relishing painted faces and bare throats. He watched leafless trees waving their branches—streetwalkers beckoning customers to pleasure and to danger.
As he neared Our Place and the great confrontation, his eyes could no longer resist staring hungrily at New York’s dolled-up boys and girls. Since starting Paxil, he had stopped his nighttime prowling, but he was glad to be a hunter once again on the anonymous streets of his hometown where, as at a masquerade ball, you could become anyone, including your real self. Should he have just one more taste, a last fling before asking his shrink to double his dosage? For a farewell, he could instruct the Red Head or maybe train the Black Beauty or even, if they weren’t available, put the Chubby Cheerleader through her paces.
But he only looked, and soon the ache faded. Just as well. Later, with any luck, he would be busy with a reunion. He settled across the avenue from Our Place, waiting patiently for twenty minutes until he spotted a clue that Jeff would soon come out: a black stretch limousine lumbering on uneven New York paving, too long and wide for the narrow side street as it turned in fits and starts onto the more commodious Park Avenue, resting at last by the corner near the restaurant’s glass doors.
“How far we’ve come, Jeff,” Brian whispered to the cold, wet streets. “How far the geeky boys have come.”
/> As Jeff, Veronica, and five other cast members emerged, they were immediately swarmed by autograph hounds and paparazzi who seemed to sprout, like overnight mushrooms, from the damp concrete forest. A second long stretch awakened, lights coming on, its driver pulling out from a discreet parking space to join the other, the pair effectively cutting off a lane of traffic. Each star responded differently to the fans and photographers. A few—not Veronica—posed and signed autographs. Not for long. All continued to maneuver to the two limousines, accommodating celebrities efficiently scrawling signatures while they walked. Brian crossed Park Avenue South halfway, stopping at the center island for a better view. He stood shoulder to shoulder with the gawking rubes, the civilians, the outsiders, thrilled by fame in the flesh. And truth be told, like a rube from the sticks, Brian was fascinated to discover which stars Jeff would choose to ride back to his two-thousand-dollar-a-night suite, to sleep the sleep of the successful in the world’s most successful city, a city that had once paid the young Jeff Mark no mind, if not deliberately wished him ill.
None was the answer. Brian goggled as the once goofy Jeff kissed the hand of the star of Critical Care, the gorgeous twenty-two-year-old Kate Hooper, and actually helped her into the limousine as if he were Sir Walter fucking Raleigh. Brian shook his head to see the once unpopular Jeff embrace the supercool Steven Zaban, fresh off his smashing debut as the latest incarnation of Spider-Man, as if they were blood brothers. He grunted as his once skinny friend with a honking voice, now a bald middle-aged auteur with a good start on a substantial paunch, tousle young Billy Frederick’s blond hair (How Richard Klein would envy him that, Brian thought), and he watched, astonished, as Jeff seemed to have a funny or warm-hearted comment for each of the spouses, mothers, and celebrity dates of his stars. He even did a funny dip of tall Veronica, pretending to hurt his back so she could playfully punch him on the shoulder. With his stars in the vehicles Jeff signed three autographs with a gracious flair and posed long enough for the paparazzi not to become angry or frustrated with him, but not long enough to seem desperate for their attention, then stood calmly on the corner as they all departed—movie stars, limos, paparazzi, and autograph hounds—as if he were master even of his own vanity, as if he not merely enjoyed fame, but could watch it recede with a philosophical air.
Brian had planned to hail a cab, follow Jeff’s limo to the Four Seasons, and catch him in the lobby, demanding a tête-á-tête in his room. He was about to take advantage of Jeff’s lingering on the sidewalk, watched respectfully from a distance by a few fans, when Jeff did something unexpected. He reentered the restaurant.
Brian was still debating whether to go in after him when Jeff reappeared, now wearing a Mets cap low over his head and a very long raincoat that nearly touched pavement. He deliberately looked up and down the avenue, evidently checking that all fans and paparazzi were gone, then abruptly turned onto a side street, walking west briskly.
The Four Seasons was uptown, didn’t require walking west to hail a cab. If Jeff wanted to be a true proletarian and take the subway, he would head for the Lexington Avenue line on Twenty-third. But he was heading west. To ride the E? The long ride to Queens and the old neighborhood? No one lived there now. They were all gone: Jeff’s mother and father, Brian’s mother, everyone. The parents of their school friends had escaped to the suburbs in the seventies. Everyone was gone. Even Mrs. Rosen in 5A, always in that floral nightgown, smelling of onions, permanently at her post, leaning on her windowsill watching them play ball as if they were her particular business. Their neighborhood was erased by a tsunamis of Latino and Asian immigrants who had replaced the eastern Europeans. The city eroded every mark, washed the sand smooth of all human tracks, including the powerful. Jeff’s newest picture could outgross ET and sooner or later the city would forget him.
Jeff appeared to welcome New York’s cloak of obscurity, choosing a deserted route crosstown, hugging the dark buildings, disappearing into their shadows, still walking, despite the pear shape of his middle age, with a hint of his youth’s awkward bony gawkiness, moving past half-gentrified blocks of brownstones and low brick office buildings partially converted to lofts. They had long ago ceased to house the old New York of tailors, bakers, and candlestick makers but were not quite fully ready to accommodate the short but brilliant life span of that fragile butterfly, the childless young investment banker. At night, most of this neighborhood wasn’t residential, hosting modestly illegal activities—high-stakes poker, low rent brothels—nothing that ought to be of interest to one of the world’s hottest directors, which made it all the more puzzling when Jeff stopped at a public phone (forswearing his cell), first looking around as if to check on whether he had company, and produced a piece of foolscap from his pocket before feeding it a quarter. Brian concealed himself in the cubby of a doorway with an overpowering smell of urine. He watched closely as Jeff consulted the paper before he dialed each digit. The number was unfamiliar.
When Jeff reached the other party, the conversation was short. Before he hung up, he leaned out of the booth, searching for a landmark being described to him, and then made a beeline across Fifth Avenue, into a loft building twenty feet on the other side. The short, chubby director moved so fast that Brian barely reached the corner in time to notice which of the dark, rather ominous doors Jeff had chosen.
He waited for a few minutes, in case Jeff exited, before finally taking the chance of crossing the avenue, empty except for taxis hurrying passengers through this deserted barrier between the busyness of midtown to the delights of downtown. Brian strolled past the building in question, glancing casually at the door. Jeff could hardly have chosen a more forbidding and unwelcoming entrance, a dented metal door, covered with thick black curlicues of graffiti meaningless to Brian. It looked like a service entrance. He wondered for a moment if he had made a mistake. Could this really be where Jeff had gone? He tried to think of an innocent explanation. Perhaps these were his old loft digs, where the young, struggling film student had lived and which the famous rich director had never sold?
No. Why would Jeff need to phone ahead for directions to his own place? Okay, he was up to something sleazy, unwilling to risk summoning a call girl or call boy or she-boy up to his Four Seasons’ suite where a nosy paparazzi might spot a sex worker entering Jeff’s room.
So what? Who cares what self-indulgence Jeff Mark is up to? I have my playmates, he has his.
But he wanted to know. Brian’s frustration at the blank obstacle mounted. He tried to reason it away, reminding himself his objective was to expose Klein and Rydel, not Jeff. But he decided to confront Jeff when he came out and that’s when he noticed the intercom: a small black plastic box, set discreetly into the brick to the left of the door, nearly invisible in the shadows of the night.
He moved into the well of the doorway to study it. There were six buttons, marked crudely One, Two, Three, and Three-A and two others not marked at all. Beside One was a cheap stick-on label that read STUDIO, the S and T peeling off from the top edges. Two and Three had spent the money to have a slide-on nameplate made that covered both spaces to read BROADWAY PRINTING, and Three-A had also made the effort to get a nameplate, which read RICHARD REISER, CPA. Two, Three and Three-A were obviously daytime businesses, except perhaps Mr. Reiser during tax season. Only the mysterious studio could be a nocturnal enterprise. And Brian knew well what studio was a euphemism for.
It couldn’t be just a regular hooker, male or female. This had to be at least a tranny, someone Jeff daren’t risk summoning to his hotel, who couldn’t be alibied as a masseuse, because venturing to this dingy location was no more discreet than indulging in his room. And far less safe. Leaving a star-studded dinner, gutters awash in paparazzi, to walk through deserted streets, phone for directions, and disappear behind a metal door was really dangerous, a terrible risk. No, this was self-hatred and self-destruction, this was Jeff Mark acting out a perverse need, and Brian was pleased, very pleased, to discover that Jeff wasn’t unscath
ed.
He should play it safe and wait. The general knowledge ought to be enough to give him leverage when he confronted Jeff. He could probably bluff the truth out of Jeff or at least provoke him sufficiently to learn the general neighborhood of the poor sap’s lusts.
But he wanted to see. I always want to see, that is the cause of my tragedy, he had rhymed as a teenage poet.
Brian dialed information on his iPhone. He asked for a listing of a “Studio” with that building’s address. The operator immediately objected to the vague name, but Brian insisted that since he had a particular address it oughtn’t to matter. The operator relented, was silent for a moment and then, with some satisfaction, informed him there was no listing for “a Studio at that address.”
He glanced at the time. Twelve forty. He guessed Jeff had been inside for ten minutes. He returned to the anonymous door, moved into the darkness of its well and stared at the Studio button, trying to calculate how stupid what he was about to do might be.
Embarrassing, he decided, surely not dangerous. He pressed the intercom. He didn’t have long to wait. “Who is it?” a harassed and irritated female voice asked.
Brian leaned close, almost kissed the grill of the intercom to reply, “Hi, I’ve lost your number. I’m sorry, I know I should call ahead, but I lost your number and I was in the neighborhood, so I was hoping you could squeeze me in tonight now. Or I can come back in a half hour and buzz again. Or you could give me your number and I’ll call in half an hour. Whatever you prefer.”
There was a beat, presumably of confusion, before the harsh, hoarse female voice demanded, “Who is it?”
“Richard,” he said. “It’s Richard Klein.” He wondered for a moment if this indulgence of irony was a mistake. What if Jeff were listening in? But then there would be a certain satisfaction in having revealed his presence with that moniker—imagine the horror on his friend’s face hearing Klein’s name in the middle of whatever revolting act of sexual gratification he had chosen for his flabby middle-aged body. “I haven’t been in New York for a year. That’s why I can’t find your number—”
The Wisdom of Perversity Page 24