For one white-hot second I am utterly convinced: she is there, my wife, her legs tangled in his scummy sheets, her eyelashes quiet on her cheeks, while he, stupefied with his great fortune, with this surely undeserved conquest, naturally much too excited to sleep, props himself up on one elbow and tries to get every last nuance down—what she said, what he said, how she acquiesced, the shocking silk of her mouth, the satin of her skin, the flax of her hair—
STOP IT.
Stand, pace, sit, stand. Suddenly, have to laugh. What better deus ex machina in these modern times than our goddamn telephone technology—made all the more ironic in that suspicion had nothing to do with why I listened to those messages … no, it was merely stupid, thoughtless habit …!
Called home to leave a message, then unthinkingly, automatically, hit the rewind button. The jolt of his voice, scoured with background traffic, loud in my ear, the half-shout of it:
Meet me at five!
Where, it was my first thought—and then I had to endure the rude interruption of my own voice, mere seconds after his; had to listen to its self-importance from three thousand miles away, a truly nasty joke.
Hung up on myself.
***
It’s two o’clock in the morning and I’m wide awake. Would like to have a drink in some anonymous dark bar, but this town is over, it’s closed, there is no place to go. Turn the television on instead & catch some piece of news about New York, footage—makes me childishly, but no less viscerally, homesick for its press of humanity, even the gridlock of it all. The brash opinions, the contact.
It’s all right there when I close my eyes—my neighborhood, its texture, the colors, the people on the stoops, everything. I have lived there ten years now, I am saturated with it. It extends out from me like some invisible radius, a hologram.
Now I’m in the desert. How appropriate to have been brought to my knees, here.
Turn the TV off, sit there without moving, ages. Occurs to me what a classic, what a cliché, picture I make: man sitting on the edge of his bed in a hotel, wondering if his wife is having an affair.
—8 january, Los Angeles
I’m in my hotel room the next morning, still undressed, unshaved, when Lear’s assistant calls; Lucci’s on the line.
Lear tells me, he says after we’ve said hello, your script is coming along fabulous—
He hasn’t seen a page, I tell him, not yet willing to admit I haven’t written one, either.
Of course not, he says, he is laughing. This is Hollywood!
I arrive to Los Angeles in only a few days, he adds. You will still be here?
Of course, I tell him. Absolutely, and he says, Good! At last I will see the face of the man who has written such a book!
It’s only when I hang up that I notice the little red light on the phone blinking: a message. Yes sir, the front desk clerk confirms. Your wife called.
Hope leaping, order another ridiculously expensive pot of coffee, then dial her at work:
Hi, it’s me.
Hi. Her voice, casual, backed by the muted cacophony of the office behind her, other voices, the phone, ringing.
I got your message, she says. Sorry I didn’t call you back—yesterday was one of those, not a minute.
She waits for me to say something; I don’t. I read everything into the brief pause between us, her guilt, her immediate reach for alibi.
Would’ve called last night, but it was so late when I got home … I met Isabel at a little bistro that just opened on Eighth Street and of course we drank too much wine. (How convincing she sounds, letting the fatigue of the hangover show in the seams of her voice.) Did you go out?
With Lear, I say, can hardly trust myself to speak.
How is Lear, she says, in that faintly mocking tone she reserves for everything Hollywood.
Full of shit, I say, give the words a harsh spin, but she just laughs, she seems entirely unaware of my state, and suddenly I think I am insane, I am a paranoid man, my wife loves me, she isn’t hiding anything—
Same as it ever was, she says.
How’s Isabel?
Too skinny, and she doesn’t eat a damn thing.
It was just the two of you? I ask the question and close my eyes (tell me, say his name and then I’ll know for sure, it was nothing, it was just one bad night, one endless, faithless night)—
Uh-huh.
(So what if he called, I think. She had plans, she didn’t see him. Meet me at five. She called him back, she said another time. She said what’s this about, can’t it wait. No it can’t wait I have to fuck you, I have to fuck you now—)
Anyone call?
No … She says it like she’s thinking, and I will her to tell me (Maggie, for Christ’s sake, just say his name)—
Nobody?
Not that I can think of.
In the background then I hear her assistant’s voice, Maggie covering the mouthpiece before she speaks—Tell him I’ll be right there.
I gotta go, she says to me.
Who’s more important than me?
No one, she says, But the Senator hates it when I keep him on hold.
Connor, I think. I grip the receiver and can’t let go.
… Miles?
Listen, there’s something I have to ask you—
Can’t it wait? I really—
No, it can’t.
There is another pause, and I hear her voice again—Tell him I’ll have to call him back.
What is it? she asks me, and then I’m sure I hear it, trepidation, apprehension—
Lear wants me to stay out here, I say, the lie presents itself to me spontaneously.
… What do you mean, stay?
For a while—to write it. A couple of months, maybe. Maybe more.
She doesn’t answer, and I try to imagine the expression on her face, the way one hand comes up, shading, hiding, her eyes—
He thinks the collaboration will be smoother if Lucci and I spend some time together, I go on. Get to know each other, instead of just faxing pages.
Oh. I read nothing but caution in that single syllable, certainly no disappointment, no dismay—
Look, it’s not strictly necessary. It’s certainly not part of my contract.
Protest, I think when she is silent. Tell me to fucking come home.
Well, what do you think? Her tone is nothing but solicitude, well mannered, alien.
I said I’d have to talk to you about it first.
Do you want to?
It seems, I say, words that feel like extraction, like a good idea.
A long pause and then she says, It’s your project, Miles. I don’t want to stand in the way.
I realize too late that I am not, I was not, prepared for this: her total lack of dissent.
In the background, her assistant’s voice again, words indistinguishable.
I’ll be right there, Maggie calls, and to me, Listen, I really have to go, I’ll call you when—
Right, I say, I cut her off. Bye.
—9 january, Los Angeles
Get up, the will to write an iron fist in my gut, but then sit down to the same restlessness, paralyzing my brain. Driving, the sense of motion, seems the only means of assuaging it.
I drive through the streets of Hollywood, its sidewalks empty, singles in cars, shouting when somebody cuts them off, a nearly apoplectic rage, palm trees incongruously graceful along these graceless boulevards, and over everything, the light. As ever, remain in a state of disbelief at the light—the sheer, astonishing amount of it. After fifteen minutes in the convertible, I’m drenched with it, soaked, saturated, gold like platinum when directly overhead, the valleys become bowls of golden haze by five, six, and the sunsets an unearthly red in the exhaust-filled air.
It resembles no winter I’ve ever known, certainly not the gray swollen overhang of the East. (Here, Lear told me, winter is the season of clarity. Oh, we have four seasons, he went on, guilelessly—the season of clarity, the season of drought, fire season, a
nd, of course, pilot season. Very funny man, Lear is.)
Find myself on the same route as the day before, heading toward Griffith Park—it’s the trees, I think, and remember the woman, her gesture…
Intend to drive higher up this time, park somewhere else, but then I see her Buick, and the strangled letters of her plate. The pleasure of this, something even remotely familiar, comes over me, gives me an unexpected sense of direction. I park.
They are there, the woman and her son, she’s sitting up against a tree this time, the same book doubled back in her hands, her face over it intent. I want to say something, hello, but I am a stranger, I am a man—imagine her looking up, wary, suspicious.
Instead I walk, unobtrusive as possible, to the same redwood table, put my notebook down without looking up.
Write, I tell myself through gritted teeth. Work.
Had my first meeting with Lucci over the phone. He was in the Middle East, just finishing some otherworldly epic—
Miles Lexan King, he said. Are you he?
The distance between us audible on the wire, our voices lagging behind the speech so that we kept interrupting each other.
I’m sorry, I kept saying, but Lucci was unfazed, his laugh genuine. It is always like this in Italy, he said. Even without the long distance!
Hi.
When I look up, Walter is standing by the table; his fair head barely clears it.
Hello. We smile at each other, both of us, it seems to me, inordinately pleased by this exchange.
Walter, don’t bother that man— Her voice raised up, and I’m not sure if the edge there is for her son or for me.
He’s not bothering me, I say quickly, putting a hand on his shoulder to reassure him, then immediately taking it off, to reassure her. She is standing, uncertain.
I’m procrastinating, I say. I smile wide, gesture at my paper. I consider any distraction an act of God.
She smiles just a little, but her hand is out, she is motioning for her son, and he is already turning away, running with his small child steps toward his mother. She bends and he throws herself into her arms with utter abandon, and I’m caught off guard by a sudden, sharp stab of envy—a son, I think, she has a son.
He’s marvelous, I say, and it comes out uncensored, almost reluctant. Her smile generous then, changing her face, the same illumination I glimpsed yesterday, and I am reminded of someone, some image I cannot place—she leans down and asks him to run and get her backpack from under the tree, a task he assumes with the gravity of absolute conviction.
Are you a writer?
On my better days.
She stands nearby, dressed just as plainly as she was yesterday. Faded jeans and a man’s sweatshirt inside out, enormous on her; mustard-colored tennis shoes, the laces looped big; no jewelry except her wedding ring, a wide and simple band, and again, not a trace of makeup. Maggie, I think, wouldn’t be caught dead.
I wait for her to ask if I’ve published anything she might have heard of, wait expectantly to answer with just the right degree of carelessness, for her to recognize my name—but all she asks is if I read.
Wonder if this is a joke, or if I’ve misgauged her, and she is, in fact, just another California airhead—
Because a lot of writers, she pauses around the last word, don’t. Or at least not the ones I’ve met.
Screenwriters, I guess, and she nods.
Are you?
No, I say, the response automatic, and then I’m forced to correct myself, unwilling to fall into her category of doubt.
Actually, I’m trying to adapt my last novel for the screen—I have to admit, the medium’s much more difficult than I’d presumed.
You write books, she says then, with such pleasure we both smile.
The attempt, I confess, is literature.
But that’s not, she says; she gestures at my paper, asking.
This, I tell her, isn’t even an attempt.
Must be hard, starting the same thing all over again.
Are you speaking from experience?
Oh, no. I’m just a student.
Philosophy, right?
There is a moment in the pause before she answers when she looks at me, her gaze utterly frank, and I’m struck by the sudden sense of being in the presence of another mind, bright, glimmering with unknown depths.
You saw the book, she says; she lifts the Nietzsche.
I did.
He wrote it in the sanatorium, she says. He had to smuggle it past his sister—there’s some dispute as to its authenticity, but it’s hard for me to believe anybody could do Nietzsche like this except Nietzsche.
She refers to him almost protectively, as if there is a relationship there, personal.
What’s in it that his sister might have objected to?
His confession, she says, of their incestuous affair.
What’s that? Walter asks, appearing beneath her elbow, and both of us grin involuntarily, the twitch of adult corruption.
I know, he says when she doesn’t answer right away, it’s a kind of bug.
He has a solemnity that gives his small child’s voice a distinct weight, he has the face of an angel. And she, who it was she reminded me of comes to me then—a painting I saw in Europe once, Madonna and Child. What I remember most now is how real the woman had looked to me, how human, reaching for her baby.
You know what? she asks Walter, and he nods, he does know what.
What? I ask.
We have to go, he says, then puts the backpack down and hugs me, little arms around my neck, his hands sticky. She stares at me, the surprise in her face.
Okay, bye, he says, and turns to his mother, ready to run.
I want to say something, to put my hand out, stop her, ask her name, ask if I can come with them, but she lifts the backpack over her shoulder, takes her son’s hand, and we are strangers again, she is a woman, I am a man.
Nice talking to you, she says.
Yes, I say. And Walter—
Already leading his mother to the car, he turns, he waits for me to speak.
I’ll see you. It comes out like a promise, and he accepts it carelessly, without doubt.
They drive away, and I am left alone in that sunstricken spot, unrecognized, the paper blank beneath my hands.
—10 january, Los Angeles
Peter calls, wants to know what’s going on, what’s up with the script?
Nada, I say, tell him I’ve spoken to Lucci once, haven’t written a thing.
Not like you, he remarks, my editor, this man who knows what a GOOD BOY I am, how I never come to school without my homework finished, elaborate ideas mapped out in my head.
Listen, he says, getting to the point, I spoke to Maggie last night and when she said you were actually going to stay out there I thought she was making some terrible joke—your wife’s sense of humor sometimes, Christ—
She said that? I interrupt him sharply, regret it instantly, know already this is not something I am prepared to talk about, but it’s a shock, hearing it from somebody else, her apparently immediate acceptance of this new condition, when we have yet to speak of it again (refused to answer the phone last night, though she called twice—let her stew, I thought, let her miss me—it had more of the desperate quality of prayer, it came to me much, much later, near dawn and me still awake, please God, let my wife miss me …!).
So what, she was pulling my leg, right? Peter goes on, and when I don’t answer, Don’t tell me this is actually true?
Looks that way.
I’m shocked, Miles, he says, and though it comes off as ironically as he means it to, I can hear the incredulity in his tone nonetheless, the real query there.
Me, too, I answer; I’m not giving him anything. Ask him instead how Maggie’s doing, my tone as casual as can be.
She seems just fine—in high spirits, even, she’s got some hot number to interview. Didn’t even occur to ask if she missed you.
This last, I know, merely meant to be a bit of humor
, poisonless, just something to make me react, to come back at, but instead the information sinks anchor into the pit of my stomach.
I want to know, he goes on, wholly unaware of its effect, has it happened to you yet? The starlets, the cocaine?
For breakfast, I tell him.
Try to remember art, he says, but if you get in some kind of, you know, bind with it all, I can catch the next flight out.
I laugh and manage to hang up on a note of normality, having simply conducted the business between colleagues, and friends.
(She seems just fine—in high spirits, even … didn’t even occur to ask if she missed you…)
Think of Savage leafing through old letters from his father, looking for clues, for evidence of the possibility of betrayal to come. Thought how life imitates art, then immediately how nasty it is, this business of writing altogether. As James Leo Herlihy said when someone asked him why he didn’t write anymore, “Because I don’t have to do that to myself anymore.”
One day, I promise myself: one day I’ll stop, and never write another word again.
—11 january, Los Angeles
Finally, called home.
Choosing the time, some sense of control (ha).
Waited most of the afternoon.
Sat in the chair by the window & watched the unmoving, the unmovable, the dead Marlboro Man, standing tall outside, overshadowing everything. … At some point, the flare of a siren outside, a sound I never even noticed in New York anymore, it was so frequent (find it oddly comforting here, too—the idea of emergency being handled on such a regular basis).
At four started counting ahead—four here, seven there… seven & she’s at the office packing up, stuffing papers into the slim leather portfolio I gave her on her thirty-third birthday, making that last (then maybe one more) phone call… then it’s seven-fifteen & she’s out of there, shrugging into her coat, waggling her fingers at the security man downstairs (“Bye, Ronnie P.!”).
Still sitting in the same chair, I imagine it all—propose it to myself as a writing exercise I used to assign my students, the specificity of visualization: the brief walk from her office to the subway before the five-, ten-minute wait at the station (“the worst part—waiting”), magazine folded back in one hand, how she has to keep looking down the tunnel (always quotes the poet Lowell, “when you see the light at the end of the tunnel, it’s probably that of an oncoming train”); the breakneck purposefulness with which she walks from the station home, stopping at the bodega on the corner for a quart of milk & the Times (flashing a smile at the Pakistani clerk behind the counter whose name she undoubtedly knows but who is ever after referred to as Apu, and who has long learned by now her neurotic need to count exact change, to get rid of these pennies!).
Hollywood Savage Page 2