Hollywood Savage

by Kristin McCloy

  She swallowed unflinchingly, and it wasn’t till she looked up that I saw her face was wet.

  Don’t go, she said, voice hoarse. Miles, please don’t go.

  Baby, you’re being silly, I said.

  Why? Why do you have to?

  I made a reservation.

  Unmake it!

  The desperation in her voice both calmed and annoyed me (now, I thought, now she’s feeling it, what she put me through). It gave me a kind of courage, the necessary fortitude to say no.

  Lucy. Lucy Luce Luce. You’re being melodramatic, you realize this—

  I don’t care! Seizing my hands, pulling me toward her. Stay and I’ll do anything—I’ll call you back, every time, I’ll meet you wherever, I’ll get away—I’m not going to pull this good wife act again, I promise—I was just trying … I just felt, what if, you know, it faded … wouldn’t it be so much simpler, for you and—and her, and me, and Walter … Listen, I’ll be your fantasy chick, whatever you ask—I’ll meet you naked at the door when you come home from work—

  I work at home, I said, laughing a little. It was hard not to be pleased with such yearning, such need: yes, she left me, but it was finally crystal clear, just how difficult it had been for her. (For her, too.)

  She dropped my hands, bit her lip.

  Lucy. I tried to kiss her, but she turned her face from me, yanked the shirt closed again so her breasts, those abundant, beautiful mounds, were hidden again. I groaned, involuntarily, and saw the smile that twitched at the corners of her mouth.

  Aha! I cried, semi-triumphant, so that she began to laugh, she swatted at me, moving off the bed before I could grab her.

  Fuck you, she muttered, but the mood, her desperation, had passed (for the moment, anyway; she would pull back, regather her strength, and return, of this I was sure)—even as she half-skipped backward to leave the room (to do what? Apply lipstick? No, maybe Maggie but not Lucy, not my pure girl—no, she was going to the kitchen for something to eat—an apple, a hunk of cheese—or, best of all, the bottle of wine I’d left unfinished in the fridge, an excellent, if overpriced, California Chardonnay).…

  Where’re you going? I called out, too lethargic to follow.

  None of your business, I heard her say, and then, as her footsteps pattered down the stairs, the phone rang.

  I heard the machine click on, volume loud; later, it would seem to me that I was already wincing (and not just at the sound of my voice on tape, either)—that I had a premonition of destruction, already poised to strike like that many-armed Hindu deity Kali, every one of her whirling arms picking up speed, unstoppable—I only remember my heart pounding as I sat up again, all fear & apprehension, thinking I have no idea what—

  But nothing could have prepared me for what, in fact, came next, that high soprano declaring herself with a practiced falter, a little speech she had clearly rehearsed … and still, it was a female voice so completely unfamiliar at first that for a few brief instants I had the false relief of thinking surely it was a wrong number—

  … I came across your number, I’m guessing it’s your cell—I wouldn’t want to, like, rock the boat (high-pitched giggling), but anyway I called your friend what’s-his-name Lear that producer and he said wifey was out of town anyway, so it was safe (pronouncing this last with a hoarse sexiness before another little laugh)—hey, do you even remember me? (More disingenuous giggling.) Well you should you dog you did unspeakably dirty things to me in, like, a bathroom, of all places! I had half a mind to file, like, a complaint with the sex cops, too (barely repressed laughter here), if I hadn’t, like, come all over your face (wild giggling then, genuine for the first time, and I felt the treachery of my own cock, beginning to harden till I clutched it, as ungently as I could bear, tamping it down, willing my heart to slow, agony like bile rising in my throat)… Anyway, call me if you wanna, like, do it for real, you know, this time…

  There followed a quick recital of numbers, her voice gone radically efficient (three sets of them, ridiculously enough, land, cell, and manager’s—in case, one part of my mind helplessly processing this, I’d forgotten she was A Professional Actress—or Actor, no doubt, as so many young women here insisted on being called), and it occurred to me that what I’d just heard was more audition than anything else (she’d looked me up, I was suddenly sure, she’d seen my name in Variety and realized I might actually—despite my lowly “writer” title—turn out to be A Valuable Contact)—

  Such a long silence afterward, I thought maybe Lucy had left, had managed to sneak out without a single sound. The thought made me jump out of bed, I was already jamming one leg into my jeans when I caught a glimpse of her car through the window, still parked at the curb, looking like a hunched animal out there, shamed and lurking.

  I stumbled down the stairs, saying her name, only to stop abruptly on the last one, my hand gripping the banister like a drowning man gripping his life ring:

  She was sitting on the arm of the couch in the living room, no light but the one she’d already turned on in the hall, her face pure white even in the shadows.

  Lucy—

  She seemed to not even see me as she looked up, but the sound of my voice acted like a kind of switch, throwing her into motion.

  Moving faster than I’d ever seen her—no, that wasn’t true—moving nearly as fast as she’d moved when Walter hurt himself in the park, she hurtled past me and in less than twenty seconds she had all her clothes in her hands, was scrabbling through her pockets for keys.

  Lucy, goddamn it—it was a stupid fucking party, Lear had a bunch, we did—I did too much coke—look, it meant nothing! Please, you have to—

  Don’t touch me. Her voice low, she nevertheless enunciated perfectly. She dressed with a blinding efficiency but only halfway: a matter of pulling pants & tee on, her underwear clutched in one fist.

  Look, you’re the one who disappeared, you’re the one who said—

  And to think I suffered over that, she spit the words at me: Suffered over you.

  Her eyes, when she turned to me, were so full of contempt, it was intolerable; I had to look away.

  Asshole.

  When I looked up again, it was only in time to see the door, closing. I winced, waiting for the slam, but at the last minute she must have stuck a hand back to stop it; the near-silence it made instead, clicking closed, was worse than anything, its finality absolute.

  I stood, hands hanging limply at my sides for I have no idea how long, aware only of an exhaustion so complete, my extremities felt numb.

  At some nameless later, I dragged myself back upstairs, my body like a carcass I couldn’t yet unload.

  I dropped into bed w/ my jeans still on, still unzipped, then lay with my eyes open for so long they started to hurt, but still I refused to close them—if I did, I was afraid I’d start to cry, and that, for some reason, would be the worst. Would be proof, I guess, of the loss that kept reverberating through me; death, I kept thinking, real death, without the possibility of an afterlife, must feel something like this.

  Must feel a lot like this.

  —30 april, hollywood

  So hungover, wish I were blind. Strapped into this seat, breathing the stale, overcirculated air, wonder how they could possibly make the space smaller, more confining. It’s worse than traveling by bus—at least on a bus you can get the fuck off.

  Damning myself for never having called Lear—now have no Valium, no Ambien, nothing but X PM, those little blue over-the-counter pills full of nothing stronger than liver-destroying acetaminophen and so much antihistamine I’m sure my sinuses will be drier than Sahara when I finally land NYC.

  Regardless, couldn’t imagine facing Lear. Facing anyone. Miracle I ever got out of the house and to the airport, in fact, let alone packed. Ended up stuffing the better part of my ripe hamper into a duffel bag, thinking fuck it, let the hotel wash them, astronomical though their laundry always is—I’m in the mood to waste money, to burn through it as rapidly, as stupidly, as p
ossible … aware of the sense, way in the back of my mind, that all of it feels ill-begotten anyway, as though it’s only prostitution’s wages (shades of Maggie there, the best reason to dismiss it as a line of reasoning).

  In fact, I know it has more to do with my behavior—which feels only truly shameful in the light of its discovery by Lucy… or, more accurately, in the light of the pain it caused her. (Otherwise, would I bother feeling bad? Did I, when Lucy came back? In fact, not calling up any terrible fits of conscience…)

  But then, I hardly had time—I was so stoned when she showed up, and her arrival such surprise, her throwing herself at me such mind-blowing pleasure, who had time for reflection, for Christ’s sake?

  It occurs to me that it might be a good idea to call Maggie … to call someone, at any rate—Izzy, or Peter, or even, his name rising phantomlike and unwelcome (but rising, incredibly, nonetheless), Con…

  Immediately, am besieged by such anxiety my palms get slick. Hit the call light to summon the pretty young air hostess and order two Bloody Marys (hair-of-the), then only manage to finish one before I’m compelled to bolt out of my seat and seesaw to the back of the plane to retch it all up; what comes out so acidic, it literally burns the back of my tongue. Talk about colors not found in nature.

  Serves you right, motherfucker, I think to myself, then press my blasting head against the frozen cold window of thirty thousand feet and close my eyes, knowing, with a roiling, sickening certitude, that I won’t sleep.

  —2 may, someplace over America

  New York an assault on every one of my senses, how is it possible I had forgotten, even for one second, how it is here?

  First, and overwhelmingly, the slam of the kind of heat I would’ve expected in July, not now, in the prime of spring (but global warming is just a rumor, right…) the heat. Must be eighty degrees out, with humidity to match; the second I step through the automatic doors at JFK it blasts me, the air gritty, my shirt instantly sticking to my lower back, dampening beneath my arms.

  Stand in line for a cab, trying to stamp down the imperiousness rising within (I’m too fucking rich for this shit, I should’ve booked a limo)—but the line moves fast (something else I’ve forgotten: how much faster a human being is processed in this town, hallefuckinglujah!), and before a quarter of an hour has elapsed I’m jouncing in the back of a beat-up Yellow, feeling every pothole along my spine, and listening to the crazy babble of what I’m guessing is Pakistani pop coming through the static-riddled radio.

  We’re headed for the Chelsea Hotel, that infamous fleabag rock ’n’ roll dirt palace (more hostile than hotel, Maggie used to say) on the West Side, far enough from my own neighborhood and usual haunts that I should be safe from being spotted, a decision I only made in the split second between being asked by the cabbie where to and answering him.

  Not, that is, that I had actually considered going home—home now a concept that’s become unmoored in my mind anyway, corresponding to exactly nowhere. For a while there, the house in the hills had started to feel at least familiar, but it’s clear to me now that it was only a haven while I was sure of Lucy, of Lucy’s growing love for me.

  At the same time, and especially after Maggie’s brief visit, the loft has morphed into her place, where she lives now, without me (with Con? I try to boot the thought away before it can fully articulate itself, but as always, the effort is unsuccessful).

  Staying at a hotel—especially one as run-down as the Chelsea, at the same time as it is quintessentially New York (I think the rooms shelter more residents than visitors, in fact)—is the only thing that feels, if not quite right, at least viable.

  It isn’t until we emerge from the tunnel and into the city proper that my heart starts beating faster, and despite my wretched state, I feel a kind of elation take hold of me, irrepressible: I’m here, in the place that gave me, without any question, the happiest years of my life.

  I’m back.

  Eyes closed, am sure I would know this mélange of voices, horns, music, and sirens, its particular cacophony, anywhere; it has its own frequency, a sense of mass and anarchy, that I’ve never heard/felt anywhere else, not London, Tokyo, Rome, or Bangkok.

  It has its own distinct aroma, too: exhaust and spice, the distant scent of fried food together with a faint whiff of garbage, all of which is laced through with the surprise of a salt breeze, cool and welcome against my face, reminding me that we are, indeed, on an island.

  As the cabbie wends recklessly west, I pull out my cell and impulsively, before I can think twice, dial the loft, thinking if she answers I will tell her I’m here, I will ask her if she wants to see me, if she wants to go to Temple and have one of their huge, ice-cold, ten-dollar martinis—

  I hang up at the split second the machine picks up, knowing from experience it won’t be enough time to register caller ID.

  I check the time, add three hours: it’s past ten P.M. here, really only dinnertime.

  She could be anywhere, I tell myself, but my stomach has begun its churning (how our bodies seem to know everything we want not to, or is that just paranoia speaking? I have no fucking idea)—she’s probably out with Izzy, eating at Julie’s or maybe splurging (shit, I can hear her saying it, he makes enough money!) at Provence, the two of them sharing an entrée, flirting with the waiters, drinking too much wine…

  Hotel Chelsea, the cabbie announces, rousing me from this latest wave of misery (though he pronounces it with the emphasis on the first syllable: HO-tel).

  A place for hos, I think to myself, grimly amused, and for this reason alone I give him a twenty-dollar tip. He smiles at me dazzlingly, his teeth insanely white (and not, one can be absolutely sure, from any kind of cosmetic bleaching), and runs around to grab my suitcase out of the trunk.

  If there’s a bellman, or a porter-person, I don’t see one. I pick up my bag and walk into the lobby, grateful to feel AC, tepid though it is.

  Christ, it’s like a sauna out there, I say by way of greeting. The desk clerk, an older man with a wild fringe of gray skirting his otherwise bald head, nods in the world-weary way of the native New Yorker.

  I get a suite on the seventh floor, a room full of blocky off-white furniture, with a near-threadbare rug, one queen-size bed and two armchairs facing a glass coffee table (this, I gather, is the “suite” part), a couple of standing lamps, and one surprisingly beautiful mirror over the dented dresser, its frame antique (pewter, maybe—the kind of thing Maggie would unthinkingly know).

  Despite its dinginess—or am I getting this wrong, is it because of it?—the room-plus is surprisingly homey, lacking the spotless sterility I usually associate with hotels; I can see why people choose to live here full-time.

  I unfold my bag, hang it from a large brass hook on the back of the door, the only gesture I’m willing to make as far as de-packing is concerned, then sit on the edge of the bed, exhaustion and nerves competing inside me, a jangling duel.

  Also, déjà-vu. For long seconds I am overcome by it, the sense of having lived this before—and then it comes to me: that first night in LA at the Chateau, when I’d called home (back when it still was that, Jesus, it seems aeons ago now) and heard Con’s voice … almost incredible, really, I think, how those four terse words activated the chain of causality that threw everything I had taken for granted as my life (my wife, for instance—i.e., having one—& the city I lived in, i.e., this one) up in the air…

  Now I’m back, I’m tempted to say having come full circle, but that would be incorrect; I’m back but I’ve lost my inner passport, the attitude every native learns to project; I have reverted to just another FOB, the homeless transient.

  I can hear Manhattan teeming outside, the usual cacophony; I’d imagined requiring some time to reacclimate, imagined its volume alone would feel like an onslaught, at least for a while, but it’s just the opposite: I am as instantly accustomed to it as if I’d never left.

  Consider lying down, immediately reject it—the other thing one never forgets
: the methamphetamine nocturnal energy this city possesses, the absolute reverse of LA’s soporific effect (if everything shuts down at ten P.M. there, it’s only just awakening here).

  Realize also that now that I’m actually here, I can’t not call Izzy—why I’m provoked by local proximity when it’s still, just (only, ever), the fucking phone, I don’t know—but the sense of betrayal, of betraying not just Maggie but Peter and Isabel—and who the hell knows, maybe even Con, too—by coming back & not telling them, seeing them (them, my pack & posse, my circle—my friends, my guardians, my angels, the inner sanctum)—is too much.

  I’m also aware of wanting to preserve Isabel’s innocence (so to speak) in all this mishegoss; phone in hand, find myself dialing her number without even knowing what my fingers are doing (couldn’t even say what her number is, only know the unique melody of her atonal combo, the off-key tune that means Iz); she answers on the second ring.

  Hello?

  Call waiting.

  Miles! Hang on, let me just— The hurried click, then she’s back (the righteous sense that of course it is me she would choose—chooses, has chosen—to speak to): To what do I owe the honor?

  Come on, don’t make me say it.

  Love me, miss me, can’t live without me?

  Hear your voice, all that.

  Well Jesus H. It’s about fucking time, what.

  Yeah yeah yeah, I say. When she speaks again her tone has thawed, from scolding to warm.

  How are you, then, My-My? she asks, using a nickname she deploys with a Polynesian-type accent (the exaggerated sweetness of some simple, servile native), and for maybe the hundredth time I wish Maggie and I could have this ease; but of course I know from whence it comes (rather, from whence it doesn’t; namely, sex; the lack of).