Hollywood Savage

by Kristin McCloy

  Marriage, he says. Always, it is the same conversation.

  He seems to have an altogether European notion of it, infinitely cynical, but I will never forget, we had just started working together, walking in on him once when he was on the phone, long distance to Rome, shouting his wife’s name, Eva, Eva, tears streaming down his face.

  But you, he says now. You have no children, no?

  No, I say. But she works.

  She must want a holiday, too, he says. From this weather.

  She works for a magazine. She can’t miss deadline.

  I hear myself and think it sounds defensive, like I’m making excuses for her absence, but Lucci only nods, half-blinking, stunned as he skips through seventy-odd channels.

  Which reminds me, I say, not knowing what I’m saying, why I’m saying it, I have to call her.

  I leave him in front of the blue glare and go downstairs to stand in the kitchen. Strange to dial my own number, stranger still to think how long it’s been—those ten digits, the 212, begin to seem foreign, belong to someone else. Belong to her. Me, I think, I’m 213.

  Hello?

  Her voice takes me by surprise. Every time I’ve called this last week, the machine’s been on. She’s screening me, the thought came, each time, certain, and each time, I hung up without saying anything.

  It’s Miles.

  Her pause over the wire.

  Wait a second, she says, I’m on the other line—

  I hear the click but then she’s back, asking, Connor?

  No, I say. I can hardly believe it. It’s still me.

  Oh, she says, and clicks off again before I can say anything else. I wait, tens and tens of seconds, feel the thud of my heart, hard against my breastbone.

  She comes back. Hi, she says, all efficiency, as if nothing.

  How’s Con?

  Who knows, I never see him since this magazine.

  Really.

  … Has he told you? Or Peter …?

  About the magazine? (Dropping the question heavy, then waiting as if she might answer me, as if she might just say it: no, about us; Con & me.) Yes, I heard.

  Oh. Her pauses the same on the other side, measuring everything. I take it you’re not going to contribute, then.

  If anybody asks, I might.

  I guess they haven’t gotten around to it yet. Con thought scenes from your script—work-in-progress kind of thing. In fact, Peter even asked me for something. I figured he must truly be desperate, but I’m going to do it.

  Really.

  Yes, really, she says, that fury again! It knocks me off-center, makes me wonder if I do, in fact, have any idea what’s going on—

  Well, I say, I guess you’ve been spending more time with them than I have.

  She’s quiet at that, & then I can feel her thinking of me, leaning into the phone and thinking and thinking of me…

  It’s fucking freezing here, she says finally.

  It’s sunny here.

  She’s silent again, waiting. Me waiting, too. The way we play poker, with everything at stake.

  So, what, she says then. Do I have to invite myself out there?

  I’m taken aback, don’t answer, and she goes on before I can. Or are you having some kind of affair?

  If you thought that, I tell her, you’d be on the next plane out.

  Is that what you think.

  Just for a weekend, of course. You wouldn’t stay.

  A weekend’s all I can get off, she says. You know that— (& this, something in her voice, deep, anguished, is the worst, the most unexpected, yet.)

  Whatever, I say finally.

  Whatever, she echoes, and though I’m sure she meant to be mocking, all I hear is uncertainty.

  I knew it, I think it only after I hang up, filled with dread. She never wanted to come here; she doesn’t still.

  —13 march, hollywood

  Imagining Maggie here, in this state I now think of as Lucy’s, as Lucy’s and mine, makes me think about these two women, my mistress and my wife—how, different as they initially seemed, what I seem to notice more and more these days are their similarities … and then it comes to me: it’s precisely what they have in common that binds me; it’s a kind of integrity, a refusal to sugarcoat their world—a need, almost, for truth; where others close, or at least avert, their eyes to what they do not wish to see, neither Lucy nor Maggie wants it any way but straight.

  Neither of them can abide the hypocrisy so frequently implicit in the standard social encounter—the pretense of affection, say, or respect, where none truly exists; it’s the manner in which they deal with it that differs entirely.

  Lucy just avoids such situations; she will not accompany her husband on social occasions designed to further business, unless she truly likes the people involved. When I ask how he handles this, she says, with her usual simplicity, He no longer asks.

  Maggie, on the other hand, speaks her mind—often witty, flashing a smile, she is nonetheless capable of a devastating cruelty, something that utterly silences the other party. She has embarrassed me, has infuriated me—what she calls candor is too often brutality masked as candor, and it’s been the occasion of great, of enormous hostility between us.

  I particularly remember when Rory, an old friend of mine, pompous though he could be, proudly announced his engagement (to his third—and counting, we all thought—bride, a woman twenty-two years younger than himself). Maggie, having had too much champagne on top of a particularly edgy bout of PMS, had rolled her eyes and gone off.

  Christ, Rory, do it or don’t do it but you’ve been married too many goddamn times to be engaged—believe me, if planning the wedding doesn’t break you up, that’s when you should go ahead and shackle up to your chosen ball-and-chain … if you want my opinion, she went on (despite the fact that neither he, nor anyone else, had in fact asked for it), I think the two of you should elope, then throw a prohibitively expensive party to celebrate!

  And yet, I confess to a grudging respect. She will not sacrifice her beliefs for the sake of another person’s vanity. Or, as she puts it, “so as not to rattle some asshole’s smug self-complacency.”

  People hate you for it, I said that to her once, quoted something someone had said when she left the room one time, not knowing I was still there, about how he’d heard that Maggie Moore was “a first-class bitch,” and now he knew it to be true.

  I am a bitch, she’d countered, all defiance & pride. Any woman worth her salt’s a bitch, and I’ll be the first to admit it.

  Refusing to admit she cares what other people think of her, though of course, like all of us, she does, very much. But unlike the rest of us, she has, somehow, remained—she remains—uncompromising.

  I’m the one praised for diplomacy, for tact—she’s like the Queen of Hearts, Isabel said once, running around saying Off with her head, off with his head! And you’re the King, coming up behind her, surreptitiously telling everyone she didn’t really mean it.

  But how many times have I stood, despising myself—the venom of my thoughts at times when I’m listening to someone, repulsed by every one of the statements coming out of their mouths, while I continue to smile and nod—incapable, apparently, of risking unpopularity even with people I truly dislike. (The hypocrisy of that—how Maggie would hate it …!)

  It makes me think she can’t possibly be having this affair, because if she is, how unlike her, how imposingly difficult it must be, to keep the whole event a secret; she, who will not lie—the uncompromised, compromising.

  And Lucy—what of Lucy, then? Can’t help thinking how, every night, she must face her husband, and be excruciatingly aware of her ongoing deception. I know the only way for it (the Situation, as I’ve come to think of it) to continue must lie in her capacity to focus on whatever truth is there, and it comes to me, I who so dislike such confrontation with the stark and painful truth: she must love him still.

  Seized with jealousy, a jealousy like rage, like fury—the fury with which I want to
fill her heart, her soul, her cunt, to overflowing—so that she will not, will NEVER, have room for anyone else—not him, not anyone …!

  And yet. She would not be who she was if she loved who she loved any less.

  Sometimes in the evening, sitting on the deck, smoking, I picture it—Lucy with her husband, their shared domesticity, the simple dinner she puts before him: soup, fresh bread, butter. A salad of bitter greens with walnuts, sautéed, with apples, a good cheese, perhaps some Roquefort, or a perfectly ripened Camembert. And wine, red, a Merlot.

  There are times (now) I torture myself, imagine her moving around him, serving him, sitting to watch him eat, refusing food herself. Imagine him reaching for her, this woman who is his wife, whom he possesses so unthinkingly, putting her on his lap, to tell her of the great and small trials of his day—and how she listens, the clarity of her silence, the weight and value of her judgments. How she rubs the back of his neck, kisses him tenderly.

  But other times I know, she is suffering. Whatever she does for him, the purity is gone; her gifts are tainted with guilt, and for that, she resents him, this last the most unfair of all—& that’s the worst of it, I know this, too. I’m overcome with tenderness for her, then, because it is nothing less than her essential integrity that she’s giving up, the greatest sacrifice of all, for me.

  Ironically, it is only watching Lucy, knowing this, that would ever make me capable of forgiving Maggie.

  —13 (still) march, the hills

  She texted me this morning: “wmf seeks husband. u: tall, not-so-drk, hndsum. waiting 4 demi-blond femme fatale. me: fatale blonde, semi-femme. Look 4 used piece spent jet trash. Lax united #441, 11:11 am. xxx, m.”

  It’s Friday, can’t get through all day to Lucy (who refuses to own a cell) only the (their) machine. Obviously can’t leave a message, & I know she won’t (can’t) call tomorrow (Sat.): it’s the unavailable weekend of the married woman.

  And me, I want to show her: See? I’m married, too.

  Now, waiting for Maggie at LAX, I stand outside and smoke my last cigarette, then go hide the evidence: wash, then shove as many pieces of overpriced airport gum I can in my mouth.

  When she emerges from the stream of passengers, I am shocked, physically shocked, by her presence, the substance of it—of her. Hollywood-ready in tortoiseshell sunglasses and platform pumps, thinner than I remember. We kiss briefly, both of us nervous, head for baggage claim amidst a throng, infant-weary parents loaded down with all the accessories every fifteen pounds of baby apparently require, lovers clutching at each other’s sleeves. She talks, the endlessness of the trip, the kid behind her kicking her seat back.

  And of course David couldn’t let me off scot-free, God forbid, she says when I take her laptop to carry. Anyway, I have to work while I’m here.

  She looks different. I study her, covert, but it’s less than tangible; it’s in some new, some novel kind of carelessness, the casual tangle of her hair. She goes off to the bathroom while I watch suitcases falling out of a hole to spin slowly around.

  Can’t quite seem to reinhabit my body. I want a cigarette badly, badly, but have sworn to myself not to smoke in front of her. Three days, it’s every other thought, what’s three days. Glance up as she’s walking back, & then it hits me:

  She looks younger. My wife has gotten younger.

  Home from the airport, offer her tea.

  Tea, she repeats, she pulls the swirl of her dress over her thighs. Whatever happened to champagne?

  I thought you didn’t like to drink during the day, I say even as I head for the fridge—provoked, as always, to get her whatever the hell she wants. She gives me a look, like hatred, and challenge.

  It’s three hours later for me, she says, she stands abruptly. And obviously, I have arrived.

  I follow her out to the deck, struggling with myself to contain the absurd swell of pride I feel in this vista of mine—the fragrant trees and wild purple flowers, the hill beyond.

  Can’t get this in Manhattan, I say, I can’t help myself, and she shoots me another look, eyebrow arched.

  Moving west?

  It shakes me more than I can admit—not just the question, with all its implications, but how casually we’re speaking of it to each other. The change runs so deep … some previously assumed, some indefinable sense of unity, gone. We live in two different states now; our lives only intersect as much as we decide they will.

  You’d never know, she says when I don’t answer, how bad the air here really is for you.

  She goes back in the house, the hollow sound of her heels on the wood.

  A weekend, I think. We’ll never survive it.

  And yet, the pleasure of bringing her to Lear’s house that evening, a walled-off estate on Mulholland Drive; the effect she makes walking in, wearing clothes I haven’t seen before, a dress that clings, accentuating everything it covers (reminds me of a phrase someone who worked for her once coined, “less is Moore”—except, Maggie liked to add, when it comes to money and praise).

  Lucci comes forward to be introduced.

  Enchanté, he says, kissing both her cheeks, and she laughs, ready to be charmed, to be charming, but she already is, I know, the most unimpressed woman in the room. Her self-possession is her greatest asset (and, inevitably, the most irritating, too); she holds her own opinion in higher regard than anyone else’s.

  Miles, Lucci says, taking her elbow. You don’t mind?

  Please, I tell him. Enjoy.

  We have always separated at parties, Maggie and I, it’s a natural phenomenon between us; nonetheless, I remain ever conscious of her (the married, long-held habit). Walking around, chatting with people, I still note how Lucci leans toward her, how he listens when she speaks, then murmurs something that breaks her up. Her laugh deep, infectious, the laugh of a woman who knows how to fuck. Standing across the room with another group, I am aware of a helpless, proprietary pride: she’s my wife.

  Unexpectedly alone by the bathroom later, we both fidget, nervous as strangers. She talks, her usual precise torrent, but underneath I feel the strain—as if she, no less than I, were playing, rather than being, herself.

  What is it with people here, anyway? I mean, is everybody younger and thinner than me? Wow, she interrupts herself to gaze surreptitiously at a woman walking by. Check out those biceps—who does she think she is, Angela Bassett? Her eyes sweep the room as she talks, taking it all in. They have everything—I mean, the hair, the tits, the legs, the clothes—Christ, the clothes … I bet no one’s got on less than three grand! But you add it all up and—I don’t know, is it just me?—it’s almost as if they were less than the sum of their parts— Objectively, you’d have to say yeah, they’re beautiful, but somehow they have zero sex appeal … maybe it’s just jet lag, but I have yet to meet anyone I find truly attractive…

  I didn’t know you were looking, I say coolly. She makes a sound, exasperation, and it dimly occurs to me that I haven’t been attracted to anyone—to anyone here, at least—either.

  But Lucy, the thought follows, inevitably—Lucy could hardly fit Maggie’s description less. I have to look away, Lucy’s name in my mind so intimate it only makes my wife increasingly foreign—more distant, somehow, now that she’s here.

  Neither one of us speaks then, so long she finally turns to me, her body poised, expectant—and still, I have nothing to say.

  Stop looking at me like that, she says abruptly.

  Like what?

  Like you’re trying to remember what it was like to love me. She turns away before I can recover, walks out of the room. Moments later I hear her voice in the kitchen.

  Is there any more of that champagne …?

  There is, as it turns out, an endless amount of it, and everyone’s drunk by nine o’clock, all the ashtrays overflowing. Haven’t met most of the people before, though I recognize some up-and-coming young actor and his model girlfriend. All Lear’s friends seem to be industry, they talk of nothing but movies, feverish, unashamedly
quoting “the gross.” (WHAT? I ask Lear, and he rolls his eyes, incredulous. Box office, he says, gross. Indeed.)

  New people arrive and there’s a flutter of excitement, forays to the bathroom. Later, I’m standing by the pool with Lear, sneaking a cigarette, when Nina, one of Lear’s co-producers, joins us. She is unbuttoning her blouse, oblivious to the chill.

  Want to see my tits? she asks. They’re new.

  High on champagne and something else, she flashes us & I see black stitches above her nipples; below, a series of bruises in a rainbow of colors, eggplant, lavender, mustard, and lime.

  For Christ’s sake, Nina, Lear says. You look like a battered wife …!

  No, I used to be the battered wife. Now I’m the gay divorcée, remember?

  She has always flirted with me in a businesslike fashion, as if it were part of her job. She has a certain quality I’ve noticed in others, too—singular, I think, to this town: a willingness to endure endless compromise—humiliation, too—if it means any kind of proximity to fame, and the famous.

  Maybe it’s the (required) company I keep, but it seems increasingly true that the one, the only thing people in LA do necessarily involves movies (“pictures” if you’re old school, “the industry” if you’re new—and no one ever needs clarification re which industry. There is only one).

  It’s so different in New York. I think of the people we know, what they do, who they are, and every answer’s different—publishers and editors, okay, but also bartenders (très useful), bankers, plumbers, carpenters; we know therapists, people in advertising (true evil), teachers, painters, lawyers, journalists, photographers, comics, doctors, students, drug addicts (yes, it IS, unfortunately, an identity), critics (the scourge), grocers (okay maybe not grocers), chefs (even more useful), dozens of waiters/waitresses/bar-backs (none of them, unfortunately, professional)—and every wannabe in between—which, frankly, in New York, seems a lot more likely to become a real-be.

  I think of dinner table conversations there, idle talk struck up with strangers in bars, at bus stations, in waiting rooms, and how often the subject of work doesn’t even come up. It’s more, somehow, about who people are, what they think, what they say, than what they do.