Hollywood Savage

by Kristin McCloy

  So, what? Don’t join the company?

  Don’t even think about it.

  Told her, With the cool you showed, you might have made a good spy yourself.

  I read somewhere, she said, that Marilyn Monroe knew how to do that—I mean, cloak and uncloak herself, but like on cue. It was an anecdote a girlfriend of hers told, about how once both of them were walking down the street, neither particularly dressed, or made up, so nobody was checking them out, when Marilyn said to her friend, Watch this.

  There was a physical element, sure—how she swayed her hips, the wattage of her smile—but she said there was something else, too, something she couldn’t begin to imitate … but suddenly, everybody was looking, was staring, after them … after her, the girlfriend added, rolling her eyes; nobody could look away.

  It’s the only story about her that really caught my imagination, Lucy mused, adding, Sometimes when I can’t sleep, I try to conjure it up, whatever it is she did … and all I can come up with is that it must have been genuine, you know? That smile she gave strangers.

  Maybe it was an orphan’s habit, she went on. The certainty, deep down, that she wasn’t loved … that she’d always have to work and work for it but that she’d never really get it. … I picture her looking into a sea of faces, one by one, with that smile, just offering herself to anyone who might maybe really love her…

  Someone, I started to say, and then we both said, in perfect sync, like you?

  Her legs over mine, our hips against each other’s. She had two hands in my hair, her lips on my face. I said Lucy, please don’t worry—I mean, I don’t want you to think I’ll ever do anything—

  Ssh, she said. It’s how much I wanted to run to you that scared me—I can’t stand to be that close and not be with you—

  Then of course it was my turn to make her hush.

  —27 june, Hollywood

  Woke the next day more unsettled than I’ve felt since I found myself sniffing at Maggie’s lingerie, NYC. Know it has to do w/ this idea of domesticity, the sense that I’m settled—or settling—down in a way that implies permanence, without her; without my wife.

  I keep remembering how she tried to talk to me that once, in the car on the way home from our (misguided) night w/ Lear—was she beginning to confess what was going on w/ Con …? Because if she was (if there, in fact, truly is something), how imposingly difficult it must be, to keep the whole event a secret for she, the one who will not lie.

  Keep thinking how she turned to me, & I refused her.

  Find myself poring over the moments when we were not speaking, when (I thought—or hoped) she didn’t know I was studying her—every little thing, from her posture to the quality of her silence—

  Have not been away from her so long that I’ve forgotten how I always learned the most about Maggie from watching her when she was unaware—times I’d see the small girl with white-blond hair that her babysitter (the French au pair her mother hired one summer) called Mags… Magpie with the “beeg mouf,” something Maggie would occasionally repeat to atone for one totally overwrought spiel or other—

  Have a sudden sharp memory of seeing her in the antique ivory lace slip her sister gave her for the (for our) honeymoon … she looked about twelve years old in it, how she’d pull it over her knees, then put her chin on them, hair framing her pretty little face—such a pretty little face she does have, with those enormous, smoky-topaz eyes…

  I remember once catching her watching me when she thought I wasn’t looking—God, the thought that she had always secretly watched me, too … looking back, it seems ridiculous that it was such a revelation, but it was; I was nothing less than stunned.

  (A Spy in the House of Love, the title comes back to me—one of those Anaïs Nin books she’d devour in the space of a single afternoon out at the beach, one leg slowly swinging the hammock back and forth, her eyes never once glancing up)…

  Even today, distant though it feels now, I find myself remembering the early years w/ her—the wild and turbulent, but undeniably good (actually, great) times, when we were young and nothing, as yet, had been denied us; we were brilliant, we were having crazy sex (hell, we thought we had invented it), we were living in the capital of the world, and we had each other: it had filled me to bursting.

  It still does.

  That evening, end up flipping back to some old lesson plans from my first couple years teaching (God, almost seven years ago—doesn’t seem possible!).

  Come across the odd note, something I’d written down, and whole scenes jump forth, alive before me, such as “There’s no such thing,” a professor of mine said once (& I remember the authority she had, how it carried every one of her succinct pronouncements), “as luck.”

  The insides of her fingers were stained yellow with nicotine—sometimes the way she raised a hand, you could just imagine the cigarette there, and I pictured her drinking Scotch and soda, squinting against her own smoke, raising that cigarette and making her point—The simple declarative, I remember her saying this, too, is your best friend. Use it.

  Just say it, she’d tell us, with the least amount of words possible. Practice economy.

  I still have the tattered notebook I copied those words down in; I dug it out and referred to it continually when I was composing the lesson for my very first class. (Sweat trickling down my lower back. The sheer, mind-numbing terror of walking into a classroom full of young, expectant faces, to stand before them and assume the position of One Who Knows More; i.e., Teacher.) Mentor.

  A year and three semesters later, remember also the ease, the mindlessness of the same assumption. How I would stop speaking abruptly when people leaned to whisper to one another to: (1) Stare at them. (2) Hold the stare. (3) Say nothing.

  (CIA tactics for making someone—anyone—squirm. For making them talk. If you want all the power in the room, my dad used to say, simply say nothing.)

  Inevitably, the same chatterboxes would come up after class with their blurted excuses, they could not speak fast enough. I was just, they always began, then something along the lines of I was reading so-&-so & it/he/she said blah blah blah and I was just wondering, what did you think …?

  Ass-kissing.

  If I was in a cruel mood, I’d lean back in my chair, letting them stutter and mumble and wring their hands. Listening to them repeating themselves, their anxious apologies. Finally, I would smile. It’s all right, Ms. X (and I always, always memorized their names; a teacher’s single most effective tactic: singling them out). Don’t mention it, Mr. X.

  Their attendance, the rest of the semester, would, more often than not, remain impeccable. Though there were always, to make the rule, of course, the exceptions…

  (Remember specifically Francesca M.— Christ. Speaking of student bodies … a girl-woman to make your armpits moist. Her prose was always sexual. Not quite pornographic, but not soft-core, either. I want, she said in the personal manifesto I made them all write halfway through the term, to describe the human body without shame. Well, I used to think, don’t pussyfoot around on my account!)

  Ryan Robert (pronounced the French way—his father was French, his mother from Tennessee) and I would park ourselves in the teachers’ lounge and smoke his heavy, unfiltered cigarettes, just waiting for her to pass—there is no difference, Robert used to say, between ourselves and these pimply freshman idiot boys.

  Except, I’d remind him, we can handle our hard-ons.

  In the end, I’m pretty certain he slept with her. She used to come by his office hours, he told me, barefoot, her hair uncombed, dirt under her fingernails, that “bee-witcheeng” smile, as he put it, and torture him.

  She never asked him anything about his subject (Freud—what else).

  None of that even references Connor, but just reading back through the years before my 3rd book hit The List, the seminar I taught at NYU (when Maggie still loved me—or should I say, respected me), brings it all back, incl. the first time I noticed him: sitting so far back, he could
tilt his chair & lean against the wall—& did—arms crossed, watching me intently (apparently w/out need of notes, since he wasn’t taking any).

  Then next class he surprised me by sitting one row up, and continuing to move closer, session by session, till finally he’d worked his way to the front (tho he always sat along the fringe—his idea, I guess, of being low-key).

  Fringes or not, he stood out, not least since everybody else pretty much kept the same seat they’d chosen, haphazardly or not, the 1st time they came to class (what creatures of habit we all are—what nameless comfort sameness gives us …!).

  That, & how he rarely took notes, those are the first things I noticed about him—& yet, it was obvious he was listening; I’d learned by then to spot attentiveness, even peripherally—it’s all in the posture—the slight lean forward; the upturned face; the lack of restless twitch.

  Seem to remember that he copied my somewhat (okay, very) dramatic summations—my “pronouncements,” Maggie dubbed them—tho really, the most obvious stuff. Like “study the writers that excite you—analyze their style, figure out how they do it, then imitate them shamelessly!” Or that the most difficult thing about writing isn’t, in fact, writing (that’s the 2nd most difficult thing); the first is figuring out what it is you have to say (meaning, what it is that you must say. Because only then can you begin).

  Statements everyone took down, but Connor (it seemed to me)—he only copied the ones I personally imagined as highlights: they were the most simplified truths, & ultimately, what I built my lessons around.

  Whatever—true or just imagined, it impressed me (as anyone who thinks the way we ourselves do impresses us.

  (All attraction, I have thought, has to do with the degree to which others are like us. When we ask our lovers to change, what we are really saying is, be like me. Be more like ME.)

  Well, there was no doubt about it; he was an immensely likable young man (esp. once he started talking), his questions cogent, his comments witty. Also it didn’t hurt that he had the kind of looks, the kind of face, other men wanted—not too pretty, but perfectly proportioned, w/ dark hair just unkempt enough (used to wonder how much product it took to achieve that effect) to continually fall into his eyes, & he’d perfected the slight toss it took to flick it back. Eyes an unusual green, dark but not murky—no, he was focused, & w/ those straight features, he could seem almost noble. It was easy to picture him as an actor (he’d be cast on looks alone).

  I mentioned this once—later, when I’d got to know him better—& his reply was brief but vehement:

  Jesus, no, he shot back (and then, w/ such passion I was forced—even as I admired it—to suppress a smile), all I want—all I’ve ever wanted—is to write.

  At term’s end, when the last assignment was a short story they’d either worked on in class or something new altogether, nearly everyone chose one they’d had help improving, and many, I was pleased to note (taking as much credit as possible), were so improved they hovered on the edge of being almost good.

  None of this was dramatic enough for Connor, however, God no; he turned in something completely new—a story that kept me in my chair from first sentence to last period … it wasn’t till I looked up and saw that my office was almost dark that I realized I’d been squinting to finish it.

  Connor’s piece was light-years ahead of everybody else’s.

  The story itself revolved around a single event, a young woman attending her stepbrother’s funeral, and even now, I remember how perfectly he captured her, just a few key details and you knew, instantly, the kind of girl she was; it was the delicacy of such details that amazed me … that, & the lightness of his touch.

  It was a very poignant story, but its strong sense of humor was established at the outset, & never dropped (if at times it was shockingly black, where better to get away w/ gallows humor than at a funeral?), and it saved the narrative from any kind of preciousness, let alone sentimentality.

  “The Burial of Tommy Whiplash,” that was its title…

  I remember showing it to Maggie—while generally too impatient to get through a student’s piece, she was always good for the quick perusal, synopsis, and review (the last sometimes so quick, it was merely the sound of her blowing a raspberry, loud).

  Went into the kitchen to open a bottle for dinner; when I came back out she was still sitting on the arm of the couch, head bent over his pages, one shoe off, the toes of her bare foot slowly traversing up and down the length of her other calf. So engrossed she didn’t hear me come in.

  Finally, she looked up; it seemed to take a while for her eyes to focus on me, on her surroundings—as though she’d gone someplace far away, and now had to readjust.

  I think he’s ready, she said, stretching luxuriously, showing me her taut belly button, to go sit in the corner.

  It was our long-standing joke about writing as punishment, the original time-out: sitting by yourself, staring at the corner (all that was missing was the dunce cap). That, we used to tell our friends, was what writers did. (But hey, I added the third year I was teaching, it beats office politics any day.)

  How long was it after that, when Connor spent the better part of an evening talking to me about Maggie?

  I remember the unusually sincere way he mentioned how “comfortable” she always made him feel—I think the phrase he used was something about how nice it was to be “egged on”…

  Intolerable, the recasting of every happy dinner at home & out, of every ramshackle East Village party, & every time they went off somewhere (“going for cigs!/wine/ice cream/cab,” whatever)—looking at all of it now through the lens of suspicion, of near-certain knowledge—Christ, what an incredible fool they must have thought me … what a fucking chump!

  But then I’ll remember the hours he spent at the loft, shut up w/ me in the den, the inexhaustible excitement he had about the book (more, sometimes, than even me), going on about the ways a script might be used to greater effect, showing me the places (my book, dog-eared & underlined—in pencil, which touched me so deeply I never let on), the amount of thought he put into it all just crazy—will never tell (anyone) how many of his ideas I’ve used.

  How many times I’ve thought that sometimes, the worst part of it all has been my inability to confer w/ him.

  Think back to that first night at the Marmont, the careless call home, how his message, the way he’d addressed my wife, had flooded my body w/ adrenaline, its taste metallic on the back of my tongue.

  It’s the double betrayal I can’t imagine (not ever) forgiving—it’s not just the (let’s face it) banal knowledge that my wife is having (has had) an affair (in itself unbearable), it’s that she chose my protégé—a guy I think I was tutoring not merely re lit but (more importantly) to be the male friend I’d never had—

  Even now, thinking of how many long afternoons we spent talking books, movies, people, switching from coffee to Scotch, Maggie always in the background, occasionally sticking her head in to roll her eyes, to tell Con “not in here!” when he snuck a cig—she was immaterial, neither one of us paid her any mind. I’m crazy, I conclude, Connor would not—it isn’t in his character—oh for Christ’s sakes, I tell myself, how paranoid can you get—Con would never …!

  … And then I remember the way he’d look at her, nights she was on, wearing something so sheer her lingerie was visible (“what’s the point,” she’d say when I objected, “of buying La Perla if nobody’s going to see?”), flirting outrageously w/ absolutely EVERYONE—from the toothless bum on the street to the just-off-the-boat Cuban busboy to the Great Dane AND the woman walking him—

  She was irresistible when she was happy, she couldn’t contain it, & it was contagious, made up as it was of equal parts glee, intelligence, and sex—she could walk through a room and you could feel the wake, everybody noticed (whether it elicited a smile or a smirk)—and Connor, it seemed, esp. that last year NYC, was in the middle of it all, drinking a beer w/ me while she dressed, or coming out to meet us at mid
night, one, two, even three A.M. (“for one drink,” he’d say sternly, glancing at me, “I’m working”)—

  Comes back to me now (such clarity it’s painful), how it was always Maggie who’d call (incl. when he just showed, an appearance I welcomed at the time w/out questioning why, or how?)—saying wait, wait! Making everyone stop while she begged or borrowed somebody else’s cell (since more often than not she managed to lose or fuck up the many, many ones I’d get for her, always denying her basic carelessness by claiming “you have to say no to continued obsolescence somewhere—and really, who wants to be accessible 24/7? Where’s the goddamn mystery in that?”).

  Torture myself going back and forth, back and forth, trying to find a single instance that cannot be negated—just one thing to hang my faith on.

  What I do know is that he’s deeply invested in this script’s success, there’s no doubt in my mind about that (okay, there’s one thing)—but fuck him (that came out wrong): it’s mine.

  (Even as I write that, immediately think it’s not true, not anymore—it’s Lucci’s now, too. Terrifying, this giving one’s child to foster homes because one can no longer afford to—because one will be paid so well to not?—keep it.)

  The one thing I know absolutely is that Lucci needs to get his face out of Bonnie’s lap, because if I don’t get back to work, and fast, I’m going to lose my goddamn mind.

  —1 july, Hollywood

  Since my ill-fated (pseudo)-stalking incident (choose to think of it as a recon mission, personally), L. full of surprises—trying to one-up me? She wouldn’t even grace that theory w/ comment (unless you count an eloquent roll of the eyes); i.e., just last night on our way down La Brea to the Pearl for “a pastel drink w/ an umbrella in it,” suddenly felt a tug on my sleeve. She said, No, wait, let’s go there—it’s so much closer.

  Imagine my shock as she directed me into the parking lot of Crazy Crazy Crazy Girls (italics mine)—a place (I admit) I’ve entered for the occasional (hops & barley) lunch (though not, let me hasten to add, lately). It was closer, she was right about that, I reasoned, even as, incredulous, I had to keep asking, Are you sure?