Hollywood Savage

by Kristin McCloy

  Reached out, but she wouldn’t let me touch her, not even to dry her face—it’s as tho if neither one of us acknowledges the tears, they won’t exist, and then this grief (that’s how it feels, what it is—as if someone had died) won’t exist, either. Was everything I could do (seemed so important right then—as in nothing less than crucial) not to cry, too, might have been the most heroic act I could possibly muster up—the only thing that might (later) stand opposed to the monstrosity that she (now) saw in our (apparently) nakedly self-regarding relationship.

  She stopped talking; could hear both of us breathing as if after great exertion. I sat down on the couch, & she sat, too (opposite me, of course).

  I have nothing, she said. I can’t believe in marriage, it didn’t save me. And you didn’t save me, either.

  I just sat there, wanting to slap her.

  I told myself I was staying with Will for Walter, she said when I said nothing. But it wasn’t true—not really … or, at least, not entirely. It was my own cowardice, my own attachment I couldn’t give up. Eventually, I would’ve become bitter—it was inevitable, surely you can see that, too?

  When I didn’t offer any argument, her tone lost its combative edge.

  And Walter would’ve had to carry that weight through the rest of his days. She looked out the window, lights twinkling in the canyon below.

  I carried my mother’s … and I know—believe me, I know how heavy it can be.

  Found myself at a true loss for words, and when she didn’t go on, felt like the silence was accumulating some kind of weight—neither distressing nor cumbersome; rather, felt my shoulders stiffening beneath this new burden: a burden I had long ceased to believe in; i.e., Lucy (&, struck me for the first time, Walter, too) leaving me.

  The whole time, she continued in this rarefied atmosphere, I’ve been praying, in my own way, for a miracle of—I don’t know—faith, I guess.

  The revelation of the simple, I thought, but wouldn’t say. When she looked back at me, I understood she was going to tell me the conclusion she had come to (that she had, in fact, come to a conclusion).

  The most you can ever give a child, she said, is—first—wanting it. And after that, being yourself, not some fake version. I am who I am. Maybe if he sees that, he’ll feel free to be who he is.

  New Age crap, I thought, wanting to punish her w/ my refusal to speak.

  Look, I know I’ve said it before, but I just can’t go on this way—it’s too corrupting. I mean, I would corrupt myself, you know that—endlessly! … but not Walter. I mean everyone (she forced a smile) should be allowed to choose their own corruption, don’t you think?

  I shrugged, and finally she stood.

  The day the house burned down, she said, I realized there is only love, and the fear of not being loved (her voice shaking). Everything else lies in between.

  Physically painful then not to hold her, not to tell her she was nuts, not to call her a liar (what about me? What about all that bullshit about loving me??).

  All I know is that I am not a fit mother.

  (You want me to protest here? I thought. Go to hell!)

  Fit, she repeated, I can’t really say it more than once because then I lose the meaning—you know how that is? Did you ever—did you ever just—

  She could hardly talk, she was trying so hard not to cry (your turn, I thought furiously), but still she struggled for the most exact words—as if it were crucial that they be found, that they be said, and that she say them.

  Repeat your name? she finally finished. Over and over and over again, until it meant nothing to you anymore?

  I wished I had no idea what she were talking about, but in fact I had done that—I remembered doing it as a teenager, staring into the mirror, Miles. Miles. Miles. Miles—till the mirror & my face blurred together, & I no longer knew who, or what, or how, or why, that single syllable signified anything at all, besides a single paltry sound phoneme…

  I put my elbows on my knees & looked at the floor, listened as she walked to the door, heard the knob click, the door open, the wind outside.

  Well, she said. Should I—can I come by to say goodbye? Can I at least bring Walter?

  Hey, I said. It’s your call.

  Okay, she said uncertainly, and after an interminable pause, the door finally clicked shut behind her.

  As if her presence had been the only thing keeping me erect, I went so limp I sagged right off the couch till I was sitting on the floor.

  Had to keep my hands knotted together as I heard the faint sound of her VW’s engine turning over so I wouldn’t wimp out, go flying after her, fall down & beg her to please, just fucking stay.

  —28 august, nowhere, USA

  Fittingly, it’s only in the midst of all this that I finally hear from Lear. Typically, he doesn’t acknowledge the hostile lack of communication that has characterized the last five weeks (or is it seven? I’ve lost track) but talks to me in the same pseudo-hale manner he’s always used.

  Miles! Whasssss UP, dude?? You been stayin outta trouble? He chuckles disingenuously, as though it was only yesterday that he’d taken me to that colossally weird host-&-birthday-boy manqué Benedict Canyon party.

  Lear, is all I manage, nonplussed to the point of speechlessness (is he serious?? I’m thinking. Can he really finesse how many times he’s failed to “return,” never mind the pile of pink message slips Bonnie has undoubtedly & oh-so-dutifully piled up on his desk?). Can he honestly believe we’ll just pick up where (he thinks) we left off?? (As in, a couple of lads hitting the town together, looking for babes whilst simultaneously plotting the makeover of nothing less than the Great American Movie itself?)

  Dude, he barrels on (clearly, the answer to that is yes), listen, I got a guy ya gotta meet, he’s gonna help us out with the problems in the script—can ya make it to my office today, say, around three?

  Problems? I think, this being the first I’ve heard tell of any. WHAT problems? But, like the total wuss I’ve apparently become, my only response is to ask if Lucci’s going to be there (when of course what I’m wondering is if Lucci is the one who mentioned these problems).

  Lucci? (Lear pronounces his name as if it were an exotic fruit he’s never heard of before, which serves to further baffle me at the same time as it’s weirdly consoling). Oh, no, this is strictly a writerly thing, guy, strictly script. (He lowers his voice, using the tone he always takes when he thinks he’s telling you something you don’t already know.) Just between you’n me, this guy’s got a rep for being the best medic in town—I mean, if he can’t help us, nobody can, knowwhatImean?

  … Medic …?

  Come on, Miles, try to keep up, will ya? (Again, I get that disingenuously heinous chuckle.) The dude gets, like, a hundred thou A DAY, minimum, to fix other people’s SNAFUs, no shit! He guffaws, as if even he’s having a hard time digesting this, before throwing out: So! Whaddaya say, can ya come?

  I’m about to answer when he cuts me off.

  Miles, dude, I hate to wrap this up but I gotta take this call— I’ll see ya at three, okay, like, sharp? Because this guy, like, flips if ya keep him waitin!

  And without waiting for my answer, he hangs up.

  I spend at the very least a full sixty seconds staring at my phone (as if the receiver itself might yield up some industry secret I have yet to penetrate), before I give up, & replace it.

  Naturally, three o’clock (sharp) finds me parked outside Lear’s office, smoking my last cigarette, hell-bent on making this motherfucker, whoever he is, wait at least five before I make my entrance. I smoke it down to the filter, unable to shake the foolish feeling I used to have when I was fifteen, and trying my very best to imitate Bogart.

  Step outside to grind the butt out w/ my heel, grab my heavily notated, coffee-stained manuscript, & lock the car behind me with a beep-beep of the remote in one fluid motion.

  All the while I’m walking up to Lear’s curiously nondescript office (in yet another one of those nondescript semi-m
ini-malls—the structures I’ve come to believe define Southern California—every last one of them what I think of as prefab lite, empty of calories, longevity, & vision), am suddenly seized with the curious, if not altogether unpleasant, sensation that I am not wholly inhabiting 3D reality as I know it. Feels more like a dream, & somewhere in the back of my befogged mind, I understand that this is good—that I have, at the very least, some defense mechanisms still left in place.

  Bonnie’s not at her desk when I open the door—which, in my current state, I take as a bad omen (the fact that I’m thinking in omens is yet another sign, I understand, dimly—but of what, I’m not entirely sure)…

  I hear voices from Lear’s office—his, overly hearty (I’d know that pure false bonhomie anywhere, & I wince, not just for how many times he’s used it on me, but for how many times I’ve bought it, too), & somebody else’s, unintelligible & low. Expecting an undercurrent of hostility, I hit the door with the palm of my hand and swing it open (you want hostility? I think. Hey, I’m from fucking New York City, I will GIVE you hostility!).

  In fact, it is gratifying, the way they both look up, sudden and surprised, Lear’s mouth hanging open in something at first resembling fear, then slowly turning into an expression of fake cheer when he sees it’s me.

  The other man is younger than I am, wearing an open-collar white shirt revealing the narrowest, most hairless chest I’ve ever seen on a man, ridiculously adorned w/ the kind of gold chain I thought was only used as a prop in facetious ’70s movies.

  Despite his youth, he sports a hairline that’s receded so far from his forehead he would’ve been bald if it weren’t for the heavy pomade he’s dumped on what’s remaining, the little of which has been combed back so aggressively one can see each distinct comb-tooth furrow.

  There’s something, I think, so utterly familiar about this guy—and then it comes to me. He reminds me of those dime-a-dozen guidos from Jersey, guys with necks as thick as their heads who wore acid-washed jeans and stood in line with their big-haired girlfriends behind some club’s velvet rope someplace in downtown Manhattan—guys the doormen never did not completely ignore and who never, ultimately (with, it must be added, the greatest of reluctance), left without mentioning their so-called mafia connections (Cosa Nostra, they’d shout, before finally getting into their souped-up Camaros, speeding out so fast they left rubber on the asphalt…).

  Here’s a man, I think, who has lived in Hollywood for 12 of his 30 years, who no doubt skipped college to come here and “take the film industry by storm” with his wild innovation, irresistible dialogue, and nonstop, unheard-of violence—and, 12 years later, has yet to see a single one of his own scripts actually make it up on the silver screen (let alone go straight to video).

  Hell, I’m betting he can’t even remember the last time he wrote one from FADE IN ON to ROLL CREDITS by his own, single, solitary self (write on spec? I can hear him yelp. Not since I was still jerkin off in my parents’ john!).

  I’d even go so far as to bet he hasn’t received so much as a partial credit—& furthermore that, by now, he’s been saying he doesn’t care for so long, he actually believes it.

  (Who gives a shit about credit, I imagine him confiding to the 21-year-old double-D-implant girls he hit on at last night’s club, when you can drive this year’s fully fucking loaded Porscha?)

  He thrusts his spray-tanned, bony hand at me, smiles an inhumanly white smile, & says, improbably, Davy Goldblatt, nice ta, hah?

  I shake his hand without a word, gauging his expression for Lear’s aforementioned tardiness intolerance … but when his smile holds, I wimp out & queasily smile back.

  Miles, I mutter, King.

  Oh, I know who you are, he says, raising one eyebrow. The next—what? De Palma? Tarantino?

  The notes these names hit are so off the mark I actually wince. Hey, I mumble, in what I hope sounds flattered, you want to get me blacklisted?

  At this, both men laugh, much too hard for the feeble joke it is, & I find myself smiling again, done in by the miserably degrading need, once again (Christ! Does it ever go away?) to be a member of the so-called inner circle, regardless how sleazy its other members seem to be.

  Okay, listen, Davy Goldblatt says, he claps his hands together (his subtle cue that we’re moving on to the business at hand), lemme run through somma the ideas I got while I skimmed through the script, ’kay?

  (Skimmed? I think, SKIMMED??)

  I shoot Lear a look, but he’s fixed on Goldblatt, staring at him as though about to witness the Second Coming.

  Have you, I start (have to clear my throat before I can get it out), have you, uh, read the book?

  The book? he asks (his tone implying that I’m alluding to a relic, something so passé it’s no longer worth referencing). Uh, yeah, listen—I’m gonna level with ya here, guy—ya gotta forget about the book to do the script—the book’s only gonna bog ya down—I mean, what I’m tryin to do here is take the interior and make it EXTerior, right? I mean, we gotta visualize the thing, see?

  He talks so fast he sounds like an auctioneer, words careening together too quickly for me to summon a response.

  What I think we gotta do, see, is punch up a bit of the guy’s overall likability, ’cause I’m thinkin we do that, everything happens afterward’ll be so much more impactful—but then I had another idea, lissen to this, he hurtles onward, warming to his subject & sending Lear a sidelong glance (I catch Lear’s approving nod, realize it’s an idea that’s doubtless already been rubber-stamped by the studio execs), I was thinkin we could make him, like, a double-double agent, huh? Huh? Get it? So that way he’s really workin for our side! Plus, and get this, get this—

  Here he scoots to the edge of his seat, making a kind of goal sign with his hands, as if we need a target to visualize what he’s going to say next—

  What if at the end we find out … He looks from Lear to me and back again, rubbing his hands together now, clearly relishing the suspense, that the guy’s dad’s actually still alive!

  When I just stare (too incredulous to speak), he clears his throat. Because, he says (w/ faint trace of defensiveness?), how’re we supposed to root for the guy when he’s anti-American? I mean, come on …!

  Still dumbstruck, I dart a glance at Lear, hoping he is, too, but am, instead, shocked—sickened—to see a look of—is that revelation??—on his face instead (even as he assiduously avoids my gaze).

  Try not to think myself lost, but know I am. Know the project is, too.

  Apparently, Davy Goldblatt takes my silence as that of the awestricken variety, because he jumps up and claps his hands together, absolutely pleased not only—but mostly—with himself but also with how the entire three-minute meeting has gone.

  O-kay, he says. Hate to cut this short, but I really gotta run. He checks his trillion-dollar watch in an ostentatious gesture meant to underline this remark, salutes us both with two fingers to the forehead, and says, Guys—I’m outta here.

  At the door, he stops to cock a meaningful eyebrow at Lear. I’ll tell my accountant he’ll be hearing from you.

  Righty-o, Lear says cheerfully (righty-o?), and with that, Davy Goldblatt is, indeed, gone.

  So? Lear asks, still using the same aggressively cheerful tone. Whaddaya think?

  You’re kidding, right?

  Hell, no. I never kid with the studio’s money, dude!

  Jesus Christ, I say. I let my head fall into my hands—it’s almost too cliché to bear, I think (and right on the heels of that, so bitterly it’s a taste in my mouth—just how much Maggie’s going to love this).

  —3 september, hollyfuckingwood

  Over the next couple days, after a series of arguments back & forth between Lear & me, when I finally think it’s all been resolved, that “Davy” (I’m betting his name is in fact Ralph, as in NOT pronounced Rafe) has been fired, I find out (from Bonnie, guiltily whispering into the phone after swearing me “on your mother’s grave, SWEAR,” not to tell on her) that Lea
r simply went to Lucci behind my back, “and told him it’s the only way.”

  I can imagine Lucci, too, justifying it all—for the sake, naturally, of his family, his wife, his vineyard, his daughters, his mistresses past, present, & future—I can just hear him (“I want the writer who is not already knowing everything. He is a writer, yes, but of books—he is not the expert of film, but he thinks yes, he is. I cannot work on another draft like this—besides it is not so much that needs to be finished, only a few changes. If this is not possible…”).

  Shit, I can imagine it all, the badly translated syntax, the eloquent shrug, the way he’d turn his gaze to something else, a window, any opening, as if he cared not one bit if this went his way or not (because, in fact, as long as he gets his astronomical sum, it WILL).

  And Lear, I can imagine him, too, the absolute lack of pause before he turns his back on me, his “great friend,” not to mention “the most talented motherfucking writer I have ever! worked with” … oh, and of course, “anything” (this the most insufferable hypocrisy of it all, his rationalization): “anything for the film.”

  Think of Lucy saying, that’s your job, I guess, and wish, for the thousandth time in my life, that I were qualified to do anything else.

  —5 september, hollywood

  Been doing everything in my power not to think of Lucy. Half-assumed her gone—only to find myself totally unprepared for her voice on the phone, asking, Can we come say goodbye?

  … Now? (Thinking no, absolutely not; it is unacceptable.)

  If it’s not a good time…

  No, no … that’s not what I meant—

  We’re all packed, she says then, her voice suddenly louder, cheerful, and I understand her husband has walked into the room. So it’s now or never!

  Jesus, Lucy.

  Okay, then, she says. I can’t stand the way she sounds, I hate saying goodbye anyway—

  Goddamn it, I say. As if I had a choice!

  She doesn’t answer, and for a second I’m afraid maybe she hung up—