Hollywood Savage

by Kristin McCloy

  —13 august, hollywood

  Just when I think I might drown in my own melodramatic bullshit, nature suddenly reminds everyone who’s boss.

  Fire in the hills, fires even near the coast—fires everywhere, burning out of control, three days now. Been staring at the continual coverage on TV, staring the same way men have always stared at fire—mesmerized, unable to look away. The predictably unpredictable Santa Ana winds, so strangely warm in the middle of the night, are the cause of this disaster.

  Reminds me again how weather—especially here—can seem so biblical; flood, mudslides, haze, and fire—it’s so Old Testament. As if God cannot resist decimating paradise.

  Keep calling Lucy at home; of course leave no message (& even though she hasn’t answered, it’s inconceivable to me that she is not, that she—and Walter—would not be all right).

  Stare at the maps they keep showing, the red areas that designate fires growing bigger instead of smaller, but can’t seem to figure out if that’s where Lucy lived—lives—or not (so I suck at maps, Thomas Guide or no Thomas Guide; regardless, right now there’s no one I trust enough to ask for clarification).

  Call and call her cell, but no matter how frantic I am, know better than to leave any messages (what if her husband has access to her phone? Am not incapable of imagining the unlikely; am not a writer, after all, for nothing).

  It isn’t until the fire has raged for five days, consumed untold acres (the kind of stat I should have at my fingertips and do not), that they finally contain it. And it isn’t until then (i.e., next morning) that I tear myself away from CNN to venture out.

  Outside, it’s utterly strange, the sky neither cloudy nor clear; it’s a color, a haze I could only describe as apocalyptic: smoke like clouds, sun burning red behind it. Ash drifts steadily down from rooftops, trees, the sky itself, turning everything—my car, my clothes, my hair—a fine, sooty gray.

  Get in the car, pull out as if I were setting out for some aimless drive—to get, so to speak, the lay of the land—as if I didn’t know where I was going.

  Before I’m halfway there, the air quality gets so much worse, I stop to close the convertible (& still, keep making each turn as though I’ve driven this route a thousand times instead of just once) … and again, my mind goes blank … as if I’d flipped a switch, & shut it off.

  Later on, thought it was just as well, since nothing could have prepared me for the devastation—the growing, worsening, blackening ruin—that extended so far along either side of the last stretch I had yet to travel that it was completely unrecognizable.

  Where before there existed a mostly upper-middle-class semisuburban enclave of well-kept houses and larger-than-average lawns (along with their two-car garages and well-landscaped flora), now it was, all of it, land reduced to a charred, smoking stubble, still burning so strong it made your eyes water; the only way anyone might have known houses had ever stood there was from the occasional semi-crumbled brick chimney (or, even eerier, set of stone steps, now leading nowhere).

  Saw cars parked here and there, people wandering shell-shocked, cameras dangling around their necks, sooty faces tear-streaked. Was forced to drive slower and slower, the road so cratered it resembled the aftermath of an earthquake—but at that point, I admit, I’d totally lost any sense of my whereabouts.

  Not sure if I slowed down because subconsciously I recognized her, or if the ruins were what stopped me in my tracks … either way, it was only when I braked that I understood the figure standing on the charred lawn before me, turning in slow half circles, was Lucy.

  My impulse was to light out, just leave the engine running and grab her, carry her off & away—from here and everything that stood for here, everything that might remind her of all she had lost—not just a house but a home, with every sweet memory a real home contains: the clothes that make you feel exceptional, charming, famous; the shelves upon shelves of favorite books, the gifts from friends now lost (not to mention the LPs gone extinct), or the accumulated notebooks of random thoughts that add up to years and years of life; worse, the motley crew of photo albums dating all the way back to childhood—yours, your parents’, (your child’s) … or the weird eclectica owned simply for the pleasure they gave every time you looked at them—an inherited painting, your dad’s old sweater, the single tarnished trophy you ever won (state spelling bee, age twelve)…

  Walking up to her, I could only imagine the extensive dossier of all Walter’s color-crazed drawings, crude cards, the mold she’d told me he’d made of his (once) very tiny hands and feet (not to mention what I really didn’t want to think about—i.e., every large and small thing her husband had ever bought, found, leased, or in any other way provided for her pleasure…).

  Maybe if I’d acted on that impulse, my life would’ve turned out (what, how, I don’t know)—just, differently …

  But of course, I did not; to behave that way would’ve been to invite the worst kind of speculation (is that man crazy? Are they both mad?). Or—more to the paranoid point, and much, much worse (could any of this have been his doing?).

  Bizarrely, she didn’t seem the least surprised to see me; now I realize she was in about eight kinds of shock: having watched her house, with everything in it, burn to the ground, there probably wasn’t much left that could surprise her.

  Her face was blackened, her eyes red-rimmed; when she looked at me, it was with a thousand-mile stare. I clasped her cold, clammy hands.

  Lucy, I said, scared to ask the single relevant question—fortunately, didn’t have to.

  He’s fine, she said, automatically. Walter’s fine. Will took him to his mother’s… I wanted to see if there was something—anything…

  She trailed off, staring at the rubble where she’d once lived; didn’t think she was going to say anything else, when she gave a strange laugh—the mirthless, utterly disbelieving kind—before finishing, that I could save.

  She didn’t look at me, just kept staring at the remnants of her former residence—as if the spectacle were too fantastic to look away from.

  Honey, I said (though I was, in fact, equally mesmerized), it’s only stuff, right?

  Yeah, she said. Stuff.

  All at once, her shoulders sagged under my arm.

  I just keep thinking—all Walter’s baby pictures, all Will’s blueprints … the pearls my grandmother gave me the day I got married—oh, God, every letter my dad ever wrote me…

  But before I could attempt any comfort, she pulled away; I got it (sympathy will break you down faster than calamity), but it still bugged me.

  I tried again, taking one of her hands between both of mine, trying to rub some warmth back into them. Come and get a cup of coffee with me, okay? Please?

  She let me keep hold of her hand, and I was sure she’d blow me off when she turned around.

  A chocolate milk shake, she said, her voice a child’s, tentative and entreating. With whipped cream …?

  Whatever you want, baby, I said. Whatever you want.

  Led her to the car, where she sat docilely while I buckled her in, still staring as we pulled away.

  On the road, neither of us spoke. Found a radio station playing some old Stevie Wonder song, & felt absurdly proud when I heard her humming it faintly under her breath.

  I took her back to the coffee shop on Beverly where we’d once met for lunch when Maggie was in town, entertaining the (extremely slim) hope that the memory of what had happened in the motel next door would jog her imagination—or, at the very least, make her think of other things…

  In fact, she didn’t seem the least aware of where we were; I led her to a booth and got her seated, unfurling the napkin on her lap as if she were an invalid, incapable of looking after herself; the fact that she allowed this said more about her state than anything she might have actually said.

  When the waitress approached, I ordered a chocolate milk shake and two grilled cheese with a side of fries, certain it’d been days since she’d eaten anything.


  Luce, I began. I’ve been calling and calling, you never picked up, I thought— Listen, I just want to know you’re okay.

  She was wholly preoccupied with tearing her napkin into thin, even strips; it was as if I hadn’t spoken at all.

  I woke up this morning facing this—disaster, and all I could think of, she said, head still bent to her task, was that this is the least I deserve. I mean, what did I think would happen to me, when I was behaving that way? God, we were so blatant!

  (Were, I thought, past tense?)

  I know it’s egomaniacal, she said, I know I’m not important enough for the Furies to smite ten thousand other people because I, listless student and mother of one, betrayed my vows… But you can’t really help what you think, can you?

  She glanced at me then, but so briefly all I caught was the barest flicker of dark blue eyes. And the fact is, the only consolation I can find is … I guess just the relief, you know … of finally facing it.

  Wow, I said, trying to interrupt this train of thought, I can imagine—

  Really? (Sarcasm? I think, dismayed, from Lucy?) Well I guess it’s your job, isn’t it, because I had no idea—none at all—how fast your whole life can just unravel.

  Listen, I didn’t mean to imply—

  It’s blinding, she cut me off. You can’t imagine.

  When she finally looked at me, I got the nauseating sense she was seeing right through me.

  Makes you realize how hard it really is to hold it together, she went on, she was relentless. It’s such a constant effort, just to maintain … I’m serious, haven’t you ever felt how just keeping clean alone, day after day after day, requires a kind of monumental energy …?

  She covered her face briefly, & I knew she was wishing that, when she lifted her hands again, all of this would be revealed as a nightmare, and she’d finally wake up. I tried to think of something, anything, to say, but everything that came to mind was entirely banal—an arsenal of clichés; I refused to subject either one of us to them.

  Instead, I reached across and pulled her hands down so I could just look at her, hoping she would sense it—my love for her, my enormous sympathy—everything but how shitty the distance she was enforcing made me feel.

  I thought I knew what fear was, before, she said. But now I realize I had no idea … (Her pupils so wide her eyes looked black. I gripped her hands even more tightly, but she didn’t hold mine back.) I haven’t got the slightest idea what’s going to happen—nobody does. We just pretend we do, we pretend everything’s going to be okay—when really, every day of our lives something could—I mean, we could lose our limbs, our hearing, our sight—and worse … it could be much, much worse …!

  Knew she meant Walter and, also, that she was too superstitious to utter it; instead, she kept enumerating:

  We could come down with some long, paralyzing disease, or one of those obscure ones so rare they don’t even do research on them…

  I knew better than to attempt reassurance.

  Jesus God, Miles, she said suddenly. Everything I had—everything that was mine in this world … is gone.

  This time when she looked at me, it was as though she actually saw me for the first time. She said, And you know what? All I could think was, what if it had been your house … what if it had been your papers?

  It was my turn to stare at her then, stunned. I shook my head, wanting to say no, I would have lost nothing, my work here is worthless, utterly—but before I could even formulate the words, she was speaking again, this time with a weird kind of serenity.

  Well, she said. That’s that.

  I felt an inner lurch, and the growing disconnect I’d been trying to ignore set within, heavy and final as concrete. I was sure she was leading up to the ultimate, the final breakup; the one she would never take back. Tried to tell myself that maybe what I was sensing was just shock, pure and simple—that the ultimate revelation was that she loved me, not Will.

  I jumped up and got into her side of the booth, grabbed her, afraid she’d push me away, but she submitted without a word, meek as a lamb—it was worse, somehow.

  There you are, folks! With a sudden clatter, plates were being set in front of us, what looked, all at once, like an obscene amount.

  No, Lucy said abruptly, as if the sight of it had pushed her back to reality, I can’t, I have to go—

  She tried to stand.

  Luce, wait up—let’s at least get you some of this stuff to go, it’ll only take a sec—

  I can’t, Miles! She shook me off as though I were someone else’s dog, shoving his snout into her crotch. She must have seen the expression on my face then, because she lowered her voice.

  Walter’s so freaked out … I can’t leave him alone, I’ve already been gone too long. Much, much too long.

  Wait, I said (refused to ponder what her last phrase meant). Let me at least give you a ride!

  No, she said, in a tone that would brook no argument. I’ll grab a cab. Please, Miles.

  She extricated herself from the booth (from me), didn’t stop for so much as a chaste kiss on the cheek.

  I’ll call you, she said, distractedly, and left.

  I sat there and watched the food growing cold in front of me, congealing in its own grease.

  —19 august, los (inflammable, flammable) angeles

  Two days, no phone call. Not from anyone, let alone L. When it finally rang on the 3rd, snatched at it, hoping (tho not believing) it’d be her w/ some kind of update, at least (if not a crazy plan along lines of “getting Mexican divorce, let’s elope,”), but when I said hello, got a male voice instead.

  Hey. Miles. (It’d been so long, couldn’t even place his voice.) You hotshot screenwriters don’t do dialogue anymore?

  Wasn’t till I heard the uneasy laugh that I knew.

  Connor, I said (calm only because it was so surreal). Well, hello.

  I know. Long time no, right?

  You always were the brightest bulb in the class.

  He laughed again, the same disingenuous ha-ha, then spoke all in a rush:

  You left, you never came back—it wasn’t the same.

  Con, I said, very deliberately, what the hell are you talking about?

  I’m going to London, he said. It wasn’t an answer. They asked me to come—I guess I’m gonna be some kind of “contributing editor”—you know, to that Granta sister lit mag they’re launching …?

  (Silent this time because I didn’t know, refused to admit it.)

  I thought Peter—well, I thought Maggie—I thought, he finished lamely, you knew …?

  London, I echoed (couldn’t believe my own cool). For how long?

  Don’t know, he said. As long as it works, I guess.

  He laughed again, & this time I heard the depth of his ambivalence, a mixture of pride and misgiving.

  I let him stew awhile longer before I answered. Well, I said, congratulations. It sounds like quite an opportunity.

  Exactly, he said, voice flooded w/ relief. Exactly.

  Listen, he went on (suddenly I remembered what an eager—what an avid—student he had always been), you got any advice for me?

  Absolutely. Do not, I don’t care how tempting it may be, or how cosmopolitan it may make you feel, do not, on pain of death, allow yourself to develop a British accent.

  He cracked up, genuine for the 1st time.

  Come visit me when I get settled, he said, & I knew it was an invitation he either truly meant or truly wanted to mean. We’ll be American spies together.

  And Maggie? That’s what I really wanted to ask—what about her? Instead said, You got it.

  —22 august, hollywood

  Didn’t see Lucy again for seven days, tho she was good enough to answer the phone when I called; didn’t say much, & I didn’t press her; knew she was overwhelmed, living in a hotel, dealing with crisis, insurance claims, how to explain to Walter. Kept wondering if, & what, she was going to tell her husband (all, really, I wanted to know, but I refused to be yet another
situation for her to manage).

  But when she showed up per her latest MO (no call, no warning), knew instantly she’d made a decision—she was filled with purpose, it suffused her posture, and her features, too.

  I froze. Everything I wanted to say, all my planned eloquence (leave him; come live with me), vanished like LA’s morning fog.

  I’m taking Walter up north, she said as soon as I said hi.

  Up to Pacifica, it’s just south of San Francisco, she said, answering the question on my face. To my mom’s.

  … When?

  Soon. As soon as I figure out—as soon as we can get ourselves together.

  For how long?

  I don’t know. A while. Until— I don’t know. Until I figure out what to do next, I guess.

  You’re going to live w/ your mom?

  I know (small laugh). But she’s sick … she needs someone, who else has she got? Anyway she sounded so happy when I told her—she didn’t even ask about Will.

  Uh-huh, I said, but when she didn’t elaborate, I was forced to ask.

  … Is this—are you leaving Will?

  I don’t know. She averted her gaze. Maybe.

  … But you’re not—

  Miles.

  I knew everything as soon as she said my name, but of course I had to say the words (had to make her say them).

  So. You’re not.

  Miles, don’t—

  Going to leave him to come live with me—

  Please don’t—

  —And be my love.

  Miles, she said (a forcefulness I’d never heard before), I can’t do it anymore! This whole year, it’s been me—me, me, me, me, me! I can’t stand it anymore, and sometimes I wonder how you can, either—

  Opened my mouth, but she wouldn’t let me talk.

  I go into Walter’s room at night to watch him sleep, I hover over his little bed—it has a railing, did I ever tell you that? Because he used to climb out in the middle of the night, and walk—or crawl—in his sleep, and I used to think—I used to imagine, oh, such terrible … him opening the window, climbing out—I used to torture myself—