AN AVID WOMAN I CAN TRUST: SOMEONE WHO WANTS TO lick every inch of skin, poke her tongue into every hole. That’s fine. That’s natural. That type of woman doesn’t expect too much. Jill expected too much, and respected too much. She respected things that weren’t even there, and she didn’t seem to want to know every single thing about my past, like most women would. They always want to get control of your past—it’s smart enough, I guess.
But Jill didn’t go about things that way. She was too private, too discreet, and ten times too polite. She waited to be asked, which is no way to go about anything.
We got dressed up before the screening so we could go to dinner afterward. All during the picture she kept playing with a gold chain I had given her for her birthday, wrapping it around her fingers and then unwrapping it. I saw her smile a few times, but she didn’t laugh out loud. It made me nervous. If she had giggled a few times, I would have felt better, but there were no giggles, and when it was over, there was the kind of awkward pause that you usually get when a screening ends.
The pause lasted about five seconds, which was long enough for me to begin to wish I hadn’t met Jill. She wasn’t going to lie. She thought it was crappy and she was going to say so. I knew it. I watched her. I don’t know, I think I would have fallen in love with her if she’d lied at that point. It would have been as good as avidity. Anybody who won’t lie for a lover is warped, somewhere. I was surprised at how much I wanted to hear her say it was a nice film. Then we could go eat, and go home and fuck, and who knows? Maybe I would have married her, who knows? She was pleasant to live with—a little strong on the health food, but pleasant. But if she wasn’t going to tell me what I needed to hear, then fuck it. That’s too basic.
“All right,” I said. “You hate it. Fuck you. Do you want to go eat?”
“Yeah,” she said, and tried to take my hand.
I shoved her hand away and got up and walked out. She caught up with me at the car.
“Owen, don’t get that way,” she said. “I don’t respond quickly to films. You know that.”
“Oh, fuck off,” I said. “I don’t want your explanations. I don’t know what I’m doing with a woman your age anyway. People come to California for youth, not wrinkles.”
She got in the car without a word. I shut up. She can ignore twenty minutes’ worth of insults, so it was a waste of breath.
“Partly, I felt strange because it was Jimmy Boyd who cut it,” she said. “Jimmy Boyd grew up with Johnny. I’ve known him since he was five.”
Johnny was her son. She had such guilt hang-ups about him that I never brought him up, or encouraged any talk about him. He was nearly grown and off living in a commune somewhere in New Mexico. I guess the two of them had rejected one another, but I didn’t really care. The last thing I needed was a teenage kid hanging around, hating me because I was fucking his mother.
“I mean, he’s good,” she said. “It’s a good piece of editing, and I know you didn’t do it because you don’t have the patience. A little kid I used to make popcorn for did it. It made me feel strange, that’s all.”
“That’s just a cop-out,” I said. “I couldn’t make a picture you’d like, and you know it.”
I was so mad at her that I almost ran over the kid who parked cars at the restaurant. It was the yellow restaurant. At night it wasn’t so full of uptight executives.
“You have no knack for saying the right thing at the right time,” I said when we were seated. “I know you think your fucking integrity prevents it, but it’s really just selfishness. You’d rather be right than make people feel good.”
She played with her napkin, a faraway look in her eye.
“You still haven’t told me what you thought about it, other than that you popped popcorn for the cutter,” I said.
“I guess I just don’t like satire that much,” she said. “It only tells one side of the story, and that seems too easy. It’s really easy to make Elmo and Winfield and the rest of us look like slobs. I could make you look like the cheapest hustler in town, if I handled the camera right.”
“But it’s true,” I said. “I am a cheap hustler, and they are slobs. If you’re so big on the truth, why don’t you admit it?”
She shook her head. “There just has to be sympathy,” she said. “Some satire’s all right—we all deserve it. But you could show us with a little sympathy. A lot of people worked hard on that picture, and we’re not all as ridiculous as you make us seem.
“It’s why I respected Tony,” she said. “He got a little sympathy into his pictures, at least.”
“Well, I could never hope to equal a great like Tony Maury,” I said. “I don’t think I’m the right man for you. Every time I turn around I bump into some pedestal.”
It wasn’t a festive evening. I got depressed. Jill tried to make light of it, to cheer me up. She even lied a little about the picture, but it was too late. Her timing was terrible. Everything she said sounded phony, and phony coming from her was worse than if it had been coming from a natural phony.
As soon as we got home I got drunk. She got drunk too, probably in an effort to keep me company. It didn’t help matters, because she’s as phony a drunk as she is a phony, and she was just going to be sick for about ten hours when it was all over. I felt disgusted with her and even more disgusted with myself for having gotten involved with her. It’s hard to believe that knowing what I know I had hooked up with a woman whose opinion would make a difference to me. With millions of women in the world who wouldn’t know a documentary from a pile of crap, I had tied on with one who knew something. What made it more stupid was that I didn’t really need to have anything going with a woman. I could get what sex I needed off the streets—particularly the L.A. streets.
None of it made sense—I felt cornered. There’s no easy backing away from a woman like Jill. You can’t just say, “Whoa, ma’am, my mistake,” and back out the door. A woman like her destroys all the simple appetites. I could still fuck around, but it just made me restless. I felt like things had been going up and down for months, like I was on some crazy ride at an amusement park.
The only thing to do was to start trying to get off. It would probably take months, but I was ready to start. Later on in the evening, when Jill crawled on top of me, expecting to get fucked, I kicked her out of bed. I got a foot in her stomach and shoved. She landed up against a chair halfway across the room. It seemed to surprise her.
“Why’d you do that?” she said.
“Because I have no sympathy,” I said. “I’m just a hustler from West Texas. I don’t give a shit about sympathy and I’m sick of you.”
She thought she could change my mind. She eased back in bed. I grabbed her, rolled her over me, and dumped her on the floor on the other side of the bed. This time she hit a bookcase and about a dozen little pottery ducks fell off it. She couldn’t stay away from pottery ducks.
“So are you—happy birthday,” I said. “I do it better than you, like almost everything else. I don’t know what you can do, except sympathize.”
She picked herself up and got some clothes on and left. I didn’t pay any attention, and she didn’t say another word. She looked like she might make it out of the building before getting sick, but I didn’t care. It was just the beginning of something that would take a long time. I had done it before, twice. She might be back in the morning, or it might be a couple of days, but she’d be back. In the meantime she would talk to about twenty of her creaky old buddies, all of whom would tell her that I was a total shit. They would point out to her that I was completely wrong for her, that she was just being masochistic and self-destructive in seeing me, that it had no future, that I didn’t love her, that I was just leeching off her reputation, and a lot of other things that were probably half true. Maybe they were all true: it wouldn’t make a nickel’s worth of difference, except maybe to them. They could congratulate themselves on having given good advice, and commiserate about the trouble Jill was in, and agree with one another about what a prick I was, and none of it would matter. Jill would be right back. She wasn’t an organized woman, like Lulu. Lulu could turn it on and off like a faucet, but not Jill.
The big joke was that I wasn’t an organized man. That’s where I had them all fooled. I’ve always aspired to pure opportunism, but I never make it. If I’d been a pure opportunist, I’d have stayed with Lulu. In time I could have persuaded her to pack old Digby off to the dope farm, and I would have had it made. But I didn’t like the taste of Lulu—not really—so I ended up being bossed around by my impulses, just like Jill. I hated Jill’s style, but I still liked the taste of her. Long after I thought I wouldn’t care if I never fucked her again, she kept turning me around. It kept happening, even after both of us had decided we might as well quit.
I guess it was a good thing for both of us that Hollywood is nowhere near as ruthlessly efficient as it likes to think it is. There were a couple of superhuman types like Bo around, but mostly the town consisted of half-assed opportunists much like myself. They dress like professionals, but most of them are just fuck-ups. Naturally most of them end up fucking the wrong people and making the wrong pictures. Jill was actually sort of right to hang out with the crews—the crews have to be professional or they get fired, or don’t get hired.
JILL STAYED AWAY FOR three days. I didn’t call her, she didn’t call me. I played a little poker and got turned down flat by Carly Heseltine, Bo’s secretary. It didn’t surprise me—I knew she had a boss hang-up. I just thought I’d give it a shot.
Jill finally walked in just as I was thinking of driving to Vegas or somewhere. L.A. was beginning to get on my nerves. She was wearing a dress and carrying a script, so something must have been happening.
“Are you still mad?” she asked, a little hesitant.
“You could have called and asked if I was alone, before you came,” I said. “You don’t live here, you know.”
“I know,” she said.
“So call, like a normal person. This is not a public place.”
“Owen, I think you’re overdoing the snottiness,” she said. “I’m sorry about the other night. I wasn’t very nice about your picture and I realize your feelings were hurt. Can’t we forget it? I have some news.”
“Why would I need your news?” I said.
She ignored it. “I had lunch with Bo today,” she said. “He really likes your picture. I think he’s going to spend some money on it.”
“So let him tell me if he likes it,” I said. “You’re not my wife, you know.”
Of course he had probably tried to call. I had been letting the service take the calls, and I hadn’t bothered to call in. That hadn’t been too brilliantly professional either, but that was the mood I was in.
Jill just shrugged.
“You’re not much on nonverbal communication, are you?” I said. “What do I have to do besides kick you in the stomach. Most people would take that to mean they’re not welcome.”
“I took it to mean you were pissed off,” Jill said. “Not to mention drunk. I didn’t take it as a final statement.”
“Why don’t you go back home and pretend we had a great romance,” I said. “Otherwise I’m apt to tell you about some of the ladies I’ve been fucking.”
That shut her up for a minute. She thought it over.
“I don’t think I could pretend it was a great one,” she said. “I guess I just like to think it’s something.”
“It might have been, if you weren’t so hipped on work,” I said. “You’re not too exciting when you’re exhausted, you know.”
She looked a little impatient.
“Name some ladies,” she said.
“How about Lulu?”
She lifted her eyebrows, and waited. “Just one?” she said. “Aren’t there any more names?”
“You wouldn’t know the rest of them,” I said. “They were what you might call casual fucks. One here, one there.”
“I see,” she said. “I guess that explains why you seemed a little worked down at times yourself. I knew it couldn’t have anything to do with your arduous labors in the cutting room. You’re not always exactly breathtaking, you know.”
She tried but she didn’t say it right. Some people can’t insult. When it came to meanness, Jill was undersupplied, but she did have anger. Her jaw was trembling and she got up and paced around the room, looking for something to smash. If I had had anything to smash she would have smashed it, but I have no possessions to speak of. All she could do, when her anger burst, was to throw the script in my face. A script is hardly a satisfying weapon. Her face was red with anger.
“Why’d you quit her?” she said. “You’re perfect for one another. Neither one of you knows anything, or cares to learn about anything, except your deals. If you teamed up the two of you could own Hollywood in a few years.”
“I don’t think I’d want to share it with a cunt like that,” I said.
“Well, you won’t get it without her,” she said. “You aren’t smart enough. Bo can think circles around you. Hell, I can think circles around you and I can hardly think at all. You want to know something? I’m glad you fucked her. It proves what I really already knew: how dumb you are. It will help me a lot, your doing that. Now I won’t bother to count on us any more. I just won’t bother . . . to pretend it’s going to work.”
Then she turned and left. She was about to burst into tears, but I wasn’t going to get to see that.
I called the answering service and found a few calls from Bo and some from Lulu. But Jill had thrown my head off. I had no taste for business.
I got in my Mercedes and drove down to Redondo Beach, taking along the script Jill had thrown at me. I spent the afternoon reading the script and watching the little teenage truants in their mini-kinis flop around in the sand. About half of them had middle-aged lovers with gray hair and potbellies. It was a revolting sight, but I preferred Redondo Beach to the spiffier beaches. It was sort of the equivalent of my apartment, only with an ocean to look at.
I was mad at myself for not stopping Jill, making her cry, having a real fight, fucking her, something to take the edge out of the day. As it was, I was all edge. I couldn’t tell what was happening, or what I wanted to happen. It was all crazy. At last I had what I had been looking for, a little start, and instead of being over at Universal, conning Bo up one side and down the other, I was sitting on Redondo Beach, getting sand in my asshole and watching the kiddies getting ready to fuck the grandads.
It was all because of Jill. For someone who was supposed to be leeching off her, I wasn’t getting much. It was like she had broken my concentration. The same kind of thing had happened to me in high school, only then I had been lucky: the cunt jilted me for a fullback. If that hadn’t happened, I’d still probably be back in Plainview, Texas, hoping it didn’t hail out the fucking wheat.
It was a big irony, really. Joe Percy and Henley Bowditch and all those other old turds were sitting around commiserating about how I’d ruined Jill, and instead of me ruining her, she was ruining me. They thought I had her bewitched or something, which was horseshit. If I had left a mark on her anywhere, it didn’t show. I could fuck her silly, but that wasn’t a mark. I could act shitty and make her cry and walk out, but that only lasted a day or two. So far as I knew, she was an unchangeable woman. I didn’t love her, I didn’t know her. I just knew I was the one who was losing his bearings, not her. She had her bearings, okay. She wasn’t sitting around Redondo Beach.
I was too disgusted with myself to be in the mood to do much of anything, but eventually I got through most of the script Jill had thrown at me. It was a Western, set in West Texas, about a frontier madam who gets hung because the big ranchers think she’s helping the little ranchers rustle their cattle. The script was by somebody I had never heard of, and it was good: if it hadn’t been good, I wouldn’t have read ten pages of it, in the mood I was in.
Eventually it got to be twilight. The sky, the beach, and the ocean all got gray and gloomy—as gray and gloomy as the flats of the Panhandle on a March evening. It didn’t drive the teenagers off, though. Some of them had on fluorescent bikinis—they flitted around on the beach like fireflies. Behind me I heard the roar of traffic on the San Diego Freeway, louder than the surf.
I got in the Mercedes and let the traffic suck me in. It carried me for a while, like a long wave, and threw me ashore in Hollywood. My mind started working a little bit again. I drove up to Jill’s house. She was sitting at her drawing board, with a cup of tea on the window ledge beside her.
“Hi,” she said. “Are you feeling any better?”
“I’m feeling dumb,” I said. “I’d like to go someplace for a couple of days. Maybe out in the desert somewhere. You want to come?”
“Sure. Let’s go,” she said.
We were out past San Bernardino before we said two words. We didn’t even look at one another. Somewhere near Riverside we stopped at a diner and ate. Jill ate some fried shrimp—she always ate shrimp if they were on the menu.
“You’d eat those things anywhere,” I said. “Why do you want to eat shrimp in a desert?”
“I like them,” she said.
We stared at one another for a while. At least she had a sense of humor. She knew what a big joke we were. She was happy to be chewing on shrimp in the desert, and began to smile at me.
“I don’t know why you came,” I said.
“You asked me,” she said. “A lot of people respond to being asked. I’m glad you brought yourself to do that, though I have no idea why you did.”
“Probably inertia,” I said.
“I’m sure,” she said. “Men are so goddamn lazy. Once they find someone who’ll fuck them steady, they just go right on, click, clock, click, clock. I don’t know why women are thought to be the passive sex.”
We ended up in a motel in Glamis. I wanted to go on to Yuma, but Jill had been wanting to stop for an hour, so I stopped. It was a big deal for her, coming to the desert. The motel was crappy, not enough towels. Her legs were still damp when she came to bed.
“Someday I’ll find out something about you,” she said. “You can’t hide forever.”
It was crazy, being with a woman who would make a remark like that just when we were getting ready to fuck. I let it go. What was I supposed to say? She couldn’t seem to shut up, even when she was excited. I had even got so I could sleep while she was talking, which is what I eventually did.