Hollywood Savage

by Kristin McCloy

  Without so much as a beat of hesitation, I put my hands squarely under her ass (the only part of her body with the least bit of real flesh, something I can sink my fingers into), and lift her up, position her on the lip of the sink and, parting her sarong, so that the wrap falls open at the hip, leaving that sweet-fleshed cleft naked and vulnerable as an oyster on its shell … and though she parts her thighs even wider in an impressive display of flexibility, offering me a rare and now frankly pornographic view, her hands also reach to clutch my own, as if she’s just a little fearful—scared of my manly hunger for her (another artful move that fills me with a steeply rising sense of power, my cock swelling accordingly)—already lost myself in this fantasy of her fantasy, I’m jolted back only when I feel her touch the plain gold circle that is my wedding band, her fingers briefly gripping it, as if to ascertain its reality.

  I decide that this is yet another turn-on for her, like fucking on the sink of the unknown host’s bathroom—illicit, nasty—and I sink my face into her crotch, tongue already reaching for the inner edges of her, where I find her as wet as I could have wished for; she moans instantly (the sound absolutely genuine, I’m sure), as a no-doubt genuine shudder of passion ripples down her body, rocking her pelvis into my face—but before I can dive further in, she twists my hair in one hand, grabbing my head and pulling it back so that I’m looking up at her (the other hand gripping my ring again)—

  So you’re, like, married …?

  Your eyes aren’t really that—I mean, you wear those, uh, you know, colored contacts—or something, don’t you …?

  (It seems, right then, the only appropriate response—i.e., if we were going to start asking each other questions now—and I hear myself using the rhythms of her speech without realizing it, the way one picks up the inflections of a foreign language when one is in a different country…)

  Her eyes widen slightly, and it occurs to me that I might have insulted her.

  I mean they’re so—so incredible, so brilliant, I push on, trying to say what I think she wants to hear, suddenly wanting the wholly waxed, dewy rim of her pussy against my tongue again, my mind groping for whatever combination of words will successfully invite me back to it— Whatever it is, I say, feeling my own eyes go wide with sincerity, real or not, they’re just—you’re just—stunning.

  As I fumble for words, I anxiously measure her shift of expression, from perplexed … to suspicious … to borderline offended … to—somewhat uncertainly—pleased. She smiles. Bingo! I think (I hope).

  I open my mouth, another cache of adjectives (gorgeous, lovely, beautiful, a goddess) at the ready—but as it turns out, no other words are necessary. Her gaze now firmly fixed on my face, it seems she’s decided to seize the opportunity (so rare, in her profession) to act again, and she lets go my head, lets go my hand, to tenderly touch her own breasts again, tips of her fingers lightly circling nipple, eyes closed now (so as not to admit any other distraction?), she turns her head slightly to reveal yet another—truly—stunning angle, the poetry of cheekbone and lash, of exquisitely elfin chin just brushing the fine arc of clavicle—and then (this the clincher, in the extremely off chance that this deal hadn’t been made) she lets one hand trail south, manicured nails dropping briefly into the perfect innie of her navel before they are slowly, deeply, plunged into the wide open vista of her core—once, twice—at which point they travel, just as languorously all the way back up, to be just as slowly, and just as deeply, closed over by her rosebud lips and firmly, with the perfect ambient sound, sucked on.

  The tumble of thoughts tearing through my head, half-formed, oddly fueled by rage, will replay themselves with a grating monotony over and over again to me later—as she reached to unbuckle my belt, her fingers nimble now, deft—

  I pushed her hands away and coaxed my head back to headquarters, diving back into that ocean, trying to make my head go blank.

  It really was amazing to me, then (as much as it is now), that I could not stop thinking what I did anyway—even as my prick was straining to be set free, and with my tongue gone wild in her (the sentiment so venomous in a situation this sweet—rank though I also knew it to be)—until I finally tore free of my clothes (to feel every thrust annihilating whatever unspoken loyalty I’d ever pledged to Lucy, the single other woman for whom I had forsaken my wife; as if cheating so casually on Lucy could somehow serve as an act of perverse, renewed loyalty toward Maggie)—

  I am fucking her savagely, my teeth sunk into her velvety throat, my grip on her waist bruising, cruel (thinking if I betrayed my wife, then I’ll betray anyone [Lucy])—because if I was going to be faithful to anyone it would have been—Christ, it should have been—Maggie!). I am slamming her hard now, sucking on her lips, biting down hard enough to taste the salt of blood, and she takes it, crying out yes but never moving to stop, as if this is what she wants, too, a kind of annihilation through sex (because—I cannot stop my thoughts—I have loved no one [Lucy] more, kept no one longer …!).

  Lear dropped me off just before dawn, my head pounding, huge tides of pain washing from eardrum to eardrum, pants sticking slightly to the dried scum along my thighs—the night’s (the woman’s, in any case) sole souvenir.

  Too much coke to even pretend to sleep, sat out on the deck instead, and held the sides of my chair as if to stave off the rising nausea. There was nothing to be done now, it was my only clear thought, but sit where I was, and watch the sun’s merciless rise.

  —3 april, in the hills, hollywood

  Intense period of productivity. For days, the cat (whom I’ve named Max) my only source of company.

  He sits on my desk when I work, sits under the lamp and watches me, blinking. He has a beautiful, feral face, a kitten’s face still, he has that incomparable ease with himself. He jumps off only when I smoke—which I do more and more often. (No longer using it as an excuse to take a break—the need too frequent.) Addicted.

  As if clairvoyant, Peter calls. He can hear the inhale, exhale of me smoking, predictably gives me shit. Tell him I’m just identifying with Savage up in the hills somewhere in Thailand, doing pipe after pipe of opium.

  He brings up that “hot new lit” rag again, then says, again (appeasingly?), that he wants “something” for it from me, but before I can answer, starts raving about Con’s piece.

  It’s like a mystery, he says, all enthusiasm and sunshine, feels compelled to add that “it isn’t genre—guess he’s not your protégé for nothing.” (More appeasement?)

  I ask if it’s any good, trying to remember the tone I used to take (genuine interest, bemusement, & something else—pride, no doubt … regardless; it’s a recipe I can no longer conjure up).

  Am almost sure I heard him pause before he said yes, he believed so—and then I am sure I can detect the careful overlay in his voice, too, a certain restraint…

  He’s seen pages, what Con’s written—maybe not in its entirety, but still. Gives me a sick feeling, not to have read it first; not to have been the first to have seen it, not to be the one passing it on.

  So you publishing my goddamn protégé or what, I ask, trying for lighthearted, but he ignores me—still, I know, trying to goad me into saying I’ll contribute, too.

  He talks about other contributors, the celebrated writer in London— Oh and Gina H., did you see the rave she got in the Times?

  I tell him to send hers to me, tell him I want a copy, too.

  Hit on her for me, I say, make her sign it, you know, I want a whole bunch of Xs & Os—

  Do your own womanizing, he says, I’m too busy trying to get into your wife’s good graces for a piece a hers, okay?

  Me answering casually, in total shock, Right, yeah—as if this isn’t the first I’ve heard (what piece?). Inquire re its length, implying I know more than I do.

  Hey, I offered her any length, he says. The subject’s so compelling, but she’s worried, says conflict of interest. I keep nagging her, talk to legal already, she always says yeah yeah, any day now— Lis
ten, maybe you could—

  All of this too much for me, have to interrupt to ask him what the hell is up— Are they defecting, or are you?

  I hear the pause again, think he must have heard the hostility there, my insecurity—shit, he’s my editor, he’s bound to catch on—but he changes gears, he’s nothing but casual when he asks, What’s up with you? Doing too much coke?

  Not my drug of choice, I tell him, shaken even though it’s been his ongoing joke—and for one brief moment consider telling, thinking how confession can render the most toxic of tales somehow pallid, how what is said loses its charge beneath the light of day, someone’s witness…

  Change the subject instead.

  Haven’t learned a goddamn thing, but I can’t afford to let him know this: how I’ve lost my wife.

  Haven’t heard from Maggie since she left, three weeks now, the longest stretch I think we’ve ever gone without contact since the night (Jesus God, more than 10 YRS ago??) I made her admit it—our (her) commitment, making her say the word (girlfriend). Remember overenunciating, making her repeat it, how she pretended to gag, pulling the covers over her head before finally reaching one hand out to wave her underwear … white, a flag of surrender.

  Usually she’s the one who breaks—the silence anyway, if not down—she was always the one who couldn’t take The Treatment (caps hers).

  Refuse to imagine her in that void, what other consolation she is reaching for. Sometimes the need to talk to someone about it, about her, comes over me like a physical urge, in the back of my throat like thirst.

  Peter telling me it’s cold again, after one brief week of sunshine, temperatures in the sixties. Can hear the oppression of winter’s long siege in his voice, the overcast day after day.

  Told him it was (still) sunny here—and hot—to make him groan. Didn’t say how terribly light can oppress, too, its relentless demand.

  He asks am I ever coming back, this amused tone, but the idea that I could be seduced by mere weather—it throws me; for a second, I have no answer.

  He says my name, his editor’s tone: talk to me.

  What the hell do you think?

  I think, he says, Hollywood’s getting to you.

  I hang up, everything I haven’t said swollen inside me, undisgorged. This, I think, is when it might be useful to have a shrink. Not an active one, nothing so cliché or overpriced as that—no, just someone from the past, who might have gotten me through other, difficult times, who might still know the cast of characters, and my own peculiar tricks d’esprit.

  Makes me think of Isabel, who has not just one but a minor collection of former shrinks, aside from her “current.” Whenever she comes across what she calls a “lifer”—any decision that will definitively change her status quo for better or for worse—she often consults them all. It makes me grin, thinking of it, of her, throwing up her hands, her logic flawless: If ever I needed a second opinion!

  Try to imagine who I could tell—not her, not Peter, either, and who else is there. Try instead to think of it as Savage might: classified information; the necessity of containment (and then of course the possibility of humiliation; what if they already know). Gives me an absolutely solitary sense of self. Maybe that’s the urge to write—to escape the annihilation of secrecy.

  Strangely enough, it’s Con who comes, who came, immediately to mind—the quality of his attention, his youthful thirst for confidences, the idea of men confiding in men.

  Outside, the cat is standing absolutely immobile, transfixed by a hummingbird come to feed, his eyes slightly crossed, his muscles still as the wood he’s poised on. It is then it occurs to me, the poisonous idea. What, after all, could be more challenging than the truth itself?

  I have to look his number up; it seems I have unmemorized it. Don’t need a shrink to decipher that one.

  He answers almost immediately, with the tone of one almost out the door—or the opposite, just in, and unaware of how many times the phone has rung. In any case, there is a breathlessness which serves to calm me—already, I am thinking, I have the advantage.

  Connor, I say, my voice quiet.

  There is a pause—electric, I think, and then what I have not considered before: that she is there; in his one-bedroom bachelor’s apartment, that L-shaped portion of space—there amidst the entropy of an unengaged young man’s life, used paperbacks and DVDs, the latest bunch of high-tech gadgets (MP3, BlackBerry, iPod, iPad) still being paid off—and of course the bed, permanently unmade.

  Miles?

  You’re guessing, I say, I can hardly fathom my own tone—thick, somehow, silky; impenetrable.

  No, no, it’s just— Wow, how the hell are you?

  Oh, you know—harassed. Beleaguered. And yourself, I inquire, I hear you’re very busy these days, most productive.

  No, he says, he’s the one who seems harassed—upset, even—hardly!

  That’s not what Peter tells me.

  Okay, so did you— It was you who put him up to it, right? He seems breathless still, it is so easy to picture him leaning on the arm of the sofa, shoes on, caught (on his way to meet her? Is that it?).

  Outside, the cat swipes, so lightning fast I don’t even see his paw in midair … just the hummingbird, shimmering away. Faster.

  What?

  Taking me on, he says, certain I’m leading him on, and now it is I who’s left breathless—the suspicion confirmed, but worse, how Peter dodged it, knowing, it’s clear now, how it would hurt—so then what else, the spur that follows, what else isn’t he telling?

  Of course not, I say (when caught unaware, another one of Dad’s maxims—in fact whenever possible, especially if lying—is use the truth … or as much truth as tenable; it’s the only infallible).

  No, I go on, Peter doesn’t make business decisions based on friendship.

  He laughs, pleased, and in that sound I hear the old eagerness, the alacrity with which he has always joined me. It is not possible, I think it again, the thousandth time, he would not, he could never, betray me …!

  How’s it going? Con stepping up to bat now, I imagine him settling, his shoelaces still unlaced (let her wait—what a great story this will make!).

  I tell him a couple of choice anecdotes, Lucci’s manner of working, the latest in character development, sketch broad strokes, saying more by what I omit, knowing instinctively how to paint this in the most enviable fashion, everything implied. He grunts, says huh, and uh, and uh-huh—silenced again, I know, by this life of mine, this life I am leading which he would so like to be his own.

  It sounds amazing, he says finally.

  It’s okay, I say, letting him know I have transcended it already, I remain unimpressed, I am waiting for more. It’s now, I think, or never.

  Listen, I say, I need a favor.

  Anything.

  I need you to check up on Maggie for me.

  His silence lasts a split second, it cannot be judged.

  Me? he says then, I could swear his voice has risen half an octave.

  We haven’t … we’ve been on the outs, I tell him, amazed at how easy this is—more, the relief of it, voicing it, saying it to anyone! For a second I almost want to laugh, the absurdity of the situation, but I go on: I don’t think she expected it to last this long…

  He says nothing, and I am aware that I am speaking ambiguously; that I could be speaking of anything.

  Me, I say then. Being out here.

  No, he says at last, I don’t think anyone did.

  I cannot interpret this last.

  Have you seen much of her? Grit my teeth asking that; like laying my head on the block.

  No, he says, too fast, and then, as if he realizes it, sometimes, she and Isabel call me up, we have dinner…

  And how does she seem? If nothing else, I tell myself, I’ll make the little bastard squirm.

  I think, he begins, then hesitates. I think she misses you.

  You couldn’t swear, I say then, dripping irony, and he laughs (he is definitel
y flustered; I would swear he is flustered).

  It’s hard, he says, I mean you know how she is—she doesn’t say what she means, and I don’t—

  Yeah, I say. I can’t stand this suddenly, it is too intimate; I don’t want to know what he knows, or how he doesn’t know—the fact is, he has access, something I have been denied. Picture those laminated cards, All Access, that people wear like necklaces backstage at concerts.

  So she’s going out with Isabel, I say, done with this conversation, the whole notion.

  Yeah, he says. They both smoke and drink a lot and they never eat dinner.

  Yeah, I say, this seems perfectly probable.

  It would be better, he says then, if you were here.

  I hear the caution of his tone, taking care to say no more than what he presumes.

  He always was the brightest student. Steep learning curve, I used to say (how his face would light up; always was so easy to please…).

  And drugs, he says all of a sudden. I think they’re getting high, too. (Gee, I think, I wonder who’s supplying them!)

  Goddamn Izzy, is all I say. She needs to grow up.

  She’s got a problem, he says. That’s what she says.

  I snort, I know Izzy’s excuses. Who doesn’t?

  Don’t get married, I advise him suddenly (I’ve said it before). It just fucks up the friendship.

  Okay, he says after a moment, then laughs.

  All right, I say, it seems time. I better go.

  Hanging up, I’m aware of a strange reluctance to say goodbye, and I think how lonely I’ve become out here, in this house that hangs off the edge of a wild canyon, talking to no one—living a life I cannot speak of.