HOLLYWOOD DOOWYLLOH

She wouldn’t see him for ten days, then suddenly he’d turn up. Completely available for her. She started to think that he did exist after all, that he wouldn’t walk out of her life just like that. In silence, she endured his interludes of silence. Put all her efforts into keeping quiet about her empty days—more heartbroken than empty.

They usually saw each other at her place. He liked the layout, upstairs, the living room; he could work at night without disturbing her; at Jessie’s (that’s how he referred to his place) the bed was in the middle of the loft. But at Jessie’s, she argued, there was a pool, a really private pool, not like the one in her apartment block. She could go swimming naked. She liked that pool.

‘Come on, it’s lovely,’ she said, splashing around, her two small breasts like floats. ‘A real little fish,’ he said admiringly, before returning to the shade of the loft. She floated on her back, eyes open onto the Californian sun. Let herself be dazed by the glaring light and by the listless palms, in the blue oval of the world. She could stay there forever, him working inside, her floating outside, in a place of their own.

She started to dream about Christmas. She had planned to spend a few days in France; actually she already had her ticket, bought three months ahead of time, business class but a good deal. She didn’t dare enquire about his plans. All at once, it seemed vulgar. Anyway, was it an important date for him? Was he even Catholic?

She gave him a spare key and introduced him to the concierge. The concierge laughed and said that they had already met, thanks. And an astounding thing happened: Kouhouesso said some outlandish syllables and the other guy responded with similar extravagant sounds, and she stood there, gaping, like a fish out of water.

It was camfranglais. ‘How did you know you were from the same place?’ (She said ‘place’ the way you’d point out, with your finger, a white spot on an explorer’s map.) He laughed and replied that she, too, recognised her tribe, the many Basque people in Los Angeles. When he laughed like that, she lost heart. She was overcome by the particular weariness that seemed to be connected with their relationship.

He went away. Unmitigated waiting. Oh, she knew about waiting: waiting between films, between takes. But this waiting was different. She lived only for his approval. She waited for life to start up again.

She tried to remember what she had been like before, the way, when you’re sick, you try to remember being healthy: a state of being that you take for granted. She had been ambitious; she had crossed the ocean. Her agent was one of the best; she had been in major films, bit parts, for sure, but major films nonetheless. She had a project with Floria, quite another thing from the role as the Intended. And Soderbergh was sniffing around. Yes, she had waited, she had believed in her talent, she had kept her figure and looked after her body. She remembered all the time she spent choosing vegetables at the health shop, making her own smoothies, and doing her yoga with her teacher. And what else? She probably read, she waited for the delivery of her lunch, calorie-calculated by her dietician, she took elocution lessons, she called friends. In the evening she tried on clothes, she went to screenings, to opening nights, to dinners, occasionally to TV screenings. Buying her Bel Air home had monopolised her time and she had to work a lot to keep up the mortgage repayments. And, during all that time, he was in the city. And she didn’t know. What a surprise: she didn’t miss him. Before meeting him, she was fine without him. She wasn’t even aware of his magnetic field: she was completely, blissfully unaware of him.

From now on, the instant his car drove behind the Hotel Bel-Air, she stayed at the bay window as if a fish bowl had dropped on top of her. She fluttered around, gasping for air. The instant at the bay window was the beginning of emptiness, if emptiness is the form of a distraught urge, wanting so much to follow him and banging into the glass. On the other side: life.

After two days, she reached rock bottom, under a white, clinical light. It couldn’t have been clearer. She called; he didn’t pick up. She was familiar with the humiliation of texting without a response. Yes, he replied. He always ended up replying, but so long afterwards that it was not a reply: it was an event, a surprise, the sensational return of the hero.

One day he booked two tickets for the Cindy Sherman exhibition at MOCA. So he liked contemporary art? Cindy Sherman made up as a clown, Cindy Sherman disguised as a witch—she remembered that at her place, in the study, he had left a small poster of Cindy Sherman. He must have wanted to please her.

‘What a fabulous actress,’ he said. She was annoyed. Until now, he had not watched any of her films, except the first one. He had arrived one evening bursting with questions: how had Godard directed her? Did Godard give you the script beforehand? Did Godard make you redo scenes? Godard, Godard: she was eighteen when she’d acted for Jean-Luc; she didn’t have a clue who the guy with the Swiss accent was. ‘He was always ducking off to play tennis.’ Kouhouesso burst out laughing.

Did he think she was good, at least? Did he think she was so much younger?

At what pace did he want to go round the exhibition? Would he prefer to talk or stay quiet? Be alone, or share his impressions? Cindy Sherman in despair next to a telephone. Cindy Sherman as obese depressive. Cindy Sherman as granny with doggy. Cindy Sherman as blue-stained corpse. The dreadful impression of seeing her future unfolding.

He had stayed back. An old lady was talking to him. Elegant, French perhaps. Her eyelids, a delicate bluish tone, were wide open, her gaze fixed on him. Her chin raised, every part of her thin little body tense, it was like fate, the future, something missing. Eventually she rewarded Solange with four words: ‘You like Cindy Sherman?’ The subtext, factual and depressing, was ‘How lucky you are’.

Old women adored Kouhouesso. So did middle-aged women. And young women. Even little girls. Over the months to come, all those months swept along by the Big Idea, she would see countless little girls leap onto his knees, and countless old ladies, with the same naivety, force their way through crowds, come straight up to him, to ask if he liked contemporary art/the panpipe/rattan furniture/silkscreen painting.

Afterwards they went driving around Los Angeles. Driving for the sake of driving, for the city, for the night. She liked his car, a Mercedes Coupé from the eighties. It smelled of him. Incense and tobacco. It was like huddling inside his embrace. Assimilated. Integrated. With a solid chassis, her seatbelt tight, and the luxury of letting her hair blow in the wind. And if they missed a turn, they would die together.

The voice of the GPS spoke for them. Beverly Glen Boulevard. Mulholland Drive. Ventura Freeway. Pronouncing names, names of places for which they had crossed the world. The ghosts for which they had emigrated. The city, way down there, glittering like a sky. And the letters of HOLLYWOOD in one direction, DOOWYLLOH in the other. The further they drove, the further they went back in time. The Observatory from Rebel Without a Cause. Silhouettes in the mist, palm trees from the fifties against a sky from the fifties. In the glow from the lighthouses, the mist rolled back over and over, the night welcomed them with every spin of their wheels. They were sinking into the Californian dream, and it was inexhaustible.

She remembered the interview with Cassavetes, in black and white, right here on Mulholland. Cassavetes so cool and sexy in his convertible under the bright light, Cassavetes who wanted to film Crime and Punishment as a musical comedy, Cassavetes saying of this town, ‘People never meet here’, and ‘California Girls’ starts up on the radio, starts right at the moment when the camera is filming Cassavetes. Start there, in life itself, in the present, forever, the Beach Boys forever as a soundtrack to Cassavetes direct from Hollywood time.

She looked at him side-on, at the wheel, in the hills at night. Yes, you could see it…the resemblance…the same mouth, the same forehead. Cassavetes as a black guy: without the dreadlocks, okay…but that irresistible feeling of déjà vu, that devastating motion blur where she kept on seeing faces she knew…The Cassavetes night had just fallen; Cassavetes was going home while they continued to drive, from that day to that night where she was here, in the canyons, with this man who looked so much like someone.

‘Crime and Punishment as a musical comedy?’ Kouhouesso shook his head. ‘What a stupid idea.’ According to him, it would have been a disaster: microphones in the fields, drunken actors, a hysterical Gena Rowlands, the place on Mulholland made up as a Russian log house. Once he had finished Heart of Darkness, he planned to shoot a musical—a serious project, about Miriam Makeba.

She assumed her knowing look. Fatigue hovered around them again; they would have to drive faster, leave behind this strange burden. He kept exceeding the speed limit (he hated automatic cars), he conceded that Cassavetes was probably brilliant, okay; but what about Polanski; what about Kubrick. Even Sydney Pollack. Professionals. Truly great filmmakers. The framework of cinema was a combination of genius and technical mastery. The New Wave had done a lot of damage to cinema.

She sniggered. ‘Sydney Pollack!’ He protested: he’d mentioned Polanski first. Cassavetes’ films were all over the shop, scraps of films, trial films. She praised the passion of his hysterical women, extolled the virtues of the unsuccessful films, films all the more brilliant for the flaws that illuminated them. He lit another cigarette, blew hard: he despised shoddy workmanship—the more he scorned the idea the more he rolled his rs—he would be the first filmmaker born in Africa to have the necessary resources, serious resources, professional resources!

She had never disagreed! The mist had dispersed. The night was sparkling, sharp and dry. He accelerated. Faster and faster, the GPS rattled off the list of places that were hastening her home. Wilshire, South Beverly Glen, Copa de Oro, Bellagio, end of the road. He parked in front of the metal gates of the apartment block, got out to open the door, but didn’t turn off the engine. He was tired.

She begged him. She didn’t want to go into her empty home by herself. No, he wasn’t in the mood. He gestured with his arm for her to let go of him.