“I don’t care about Miguel,” Elaine screamed. “I don’t care if he drops dead on the job. But I do not—and please understand me—I do not want this . . . this . . . person here ever again. You got that, Lina?”
Lina gave another big dramatic sigh and raised her eyes to heaven. “Sure,” she said. “I got.”
“Good. Then get him out of here right now.” Elaine stalked back into the house and headed straight for the bar, where she fixed herself a double shot of vodka with one token ice cube. Unbelievable! Help these days! Impossible!
An old pickup truck flashed past from the back of the house just as a long black limousine pulled up at the front. Ross! Quickly Elaine checked out her appearance in the antiqued mirror behind the bar. She looked good. Wouldn’t it be nice if he noticed for once?
He didn’t. He strode into the house, wearing mud-caked boots over faded Levi’s, and a checked shirt with an old leather jacket. Lately Ross had taken to dressing young. It didn’t suit him. He looked like an over-the-hill cowboy.
“Darling!” Dutifully she pecked at his cheek, and was rewarded with rough stubble.
“Hot damn!” he exclaimed. “Am I glad to be out of that pisshole.” He flopped down on a white brocade sofa which Elaine had just had recovered at great expense and put his legs up, boots and all. “I’m friggin’ exhausted! Get me a drink—before I fuckin’ faint!”
The movie star was home.
• • •
Buddy whistled as he ran down the stairs from the apartment. Angel with the trusting eyes. She never bugged him, complained about the apartment or their lack of money. She never questioned him when he came home, or insisted that he tell her what he was doing every minute of the day. She was perfect. Golden lady. One day he would swamp her with furs and jewels and stereos and cars. Whatever she wanted—it would be hers.
When? That was the question. When would it all happen for him? He had been in Hollywood ten years now. Ten years was a long time—a real long time.
• • •
Running away from his mother the second time was easy, especially with two hundred dollars to help him on his way. Sixteen years old, wary as a fox, and determined not to be caught, he got out of San Diego as quickly as he could, jumping a bus to Los Angeles, then hitching his way down to the beach, where he hung out sleeping rough, scrounging food, and making friends. There were a lot of kids in the same position. Runaways with nothing to do with their time except the five big Ss—Surf, Swim, Sunbathe, Sleep, and Sex. With a few drugs thrown in whenever they could afford it. Buddy didn’t hesitate, he got into sex in a big way. There was no lack of partners among the girls. The boys, too, but that was definitely not his scene.
His first score was a big freckled girl who liked it rough. She loved to roll on the beach with sand penetrating every crack. He had her two or three times a day until she ran off with a fat man in a Cadillac who promised her Acapulco. Next came a little redhead whose specialty was “sucking dick,” as she called it. He didn’t like that, it made him feel too vulnerable, as if her sharp white teeth were going to clamp down and ruin his future. He moved on to a Swedish starlet who visited muscle beach to develop her pectorals. She taught him to drive her pale-pink Thunderbird, and to give head. He enjoyed both.
He got himself a job slinging hamburgers at a beach hangout, and that gave him just enough money to rent a room. A friend showed him how to play the guitar, and he wasn’t bad. He worked on his voice, getting together a repertoire of songs. Occasionally he landed himself a gig singing and strumming the guitar, which was a help financially.
The five big Ss remained constant. He was tanned all over, strong from surfing, muscled from working out. He had all the sex he ever wanted, plenty of sleep, and he never once thought of his mother. She was dead as far as he was concerned.
He was a loner. And that’s the way he wanted it.
He palled up with a would-be actor named Randy Felix, and once in a while he’d hitch a ride into Hollywood and hang around the class Randy attended, Joy Byron’s Method Acting School. Joy Byron was an old English broad with a voice like a hacksaw. She wore flowered dresses and carried a parasol at all times, even indoors. Her students adored her, and worshiped regularly twice a week in a disused warehouse on the wrong side of Wilshire. When Randy dropped out to pursue other interests, Buddy continued to go on his own. He loved every minute of the two-hour classes, and soon he was performing everything from Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire to Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby.
Joy Byron said he was good, and she should know. In her day she had acted with the very best—Olivier, Gielgud, all the English greats, or so she said—and Buddy was inclined to believe her.
As acting fever struck, so the beach lost its appeal. A move seemed logical, and Randy, who was sharing a house with two girls in West Hollywood, said there was always room for a fourth. Just before he hit twenty, Buddy moved in.
The house was a dump, the girls were dykes, but living in Hollywood was living in Hollywood. Buddy felt at home in no time at all. Only problems: no money, no car. Getting by at the beach was one thing. Making out in town was another. Randy always seemed to be reasonably flush, so Buddy asked him how he did it.
“By gettin’ paid for what you’re givin’ away for free,” Randy explained. ‘I got me an agent takes twenty percent an’ arranges everythin’. No hassle. No sweat. I sell dick—to ladies. It sure as hell beats shovelin’ hot dogs!”
“You sell what?”
“Give it a try, Buddy. I get a commission on every stud I bring in.”
They both started to laugh. “Really?” Buddy asked between bouts of mirth. “Really?”
Randy nodded. He was five feet nine inches tall, pleasant-looking but nothing special. He had a large nose, small eyes, and no back teeth. When he laughed this was very noticeable.
“I’ll be a son of a bitch!” Buddy exclaimed.
Randy took him to meet his agent, a black homosexual dressed from head to toe in tight white leather.
“No . . . er . . . male customers,” Buddy mumbled, hardly believing what he was getting himself into.
“No males?” sniffed the agent, affectionately known as Gladrags by his stable of active young studs. “What are you, some kind of a weirdo?”
So began his life as a hustler.
The first time he wasn’t sure he could get it up. He met the woman at an apartment Gladrags had arranged. She turned up twenty minutes late, a middle-aged lady in a severely cut business suit. “You’re new,” she remarked casually, implying she was familiar with every one of Gladrags’ boys. “I don’t take my clothes off,” she announced, hitching her skirt around her waist and removing sensible white panties. “But I want you naked. Strip.” She lay down on the bed and watched him as he fumbled his way out of his clothes.
Jeez! He felt as if he were en route to the dentist! No way could he get a hard-on until desperately he remembered Randy’s advice—“Close your eyes and use your imagination.” Quickly he flashed onto a memory of a girl he had balled recently. Nineteen. Pretty. With a trick of licking his balls until he felt he could shoot his stuff twenty feet in the air.
It worked. Suddenly he was in business.
He never looked back. Servicing women for money was no problem. It paid the bills and enabled him to pursue an acting career. Joy Byron fixed him up with an agent, and he got some pictures together and began going on interviews. Almost immediately he landed a two-liner in a Starsky and Hutch, followed by a small part in a Burt Reynolds blockbuster. He was on his way! He was going to be a star!
It didn’t exactly work out that way. There followed a lean patch—the Starsky and Hutch episode aired and he was not in it, and the Burt Reynolds movie played and he was not in that either.
The humiliation of ending up on the cutting-room floor twice was too much.
“Never mind,” Joy Byron consoled. “Something else will come along.”
She was a funny old bird who had taken to in
viting him to her house for “extra coaching.” He was flattered, and he certainly enjoyed acting out scenes from all the great plays with her, although sometimes, in the dusty living room of her Hollywood Hills house, when they were in the middle of a scene, she would move a little too close for comfort. He was servicing women for money regularly, but the thought of getting it on with Joy Byron was not to be relished. For a start she had to be at least seventy years old. And he respected her. She was a great actress. She was his teacher, for crissakes.
One night she said to him, “Buddy, I have a wonderful idea. The workshop will put on a special performance of Streetcar. I will invite agents, casting directors, studio executives. I know these people, and if I invite them they will come. You, of course, will play Stanley Kowalski. A perfect showcase for you.”
“Hey . . . terrific,” he began.
She grabbed him before he could finish the sentence.
It wasn’t that bad.
It wasn’t that good.
He got to give up whoring. He moved into Joy’s freaky house and she took care of all the bills.
He got to act day and night, night and day. Joy was always ready. He zipped through all the great playwrights. He zoomed through a stack of old screenplays. He emoted until he was blue in the face.
Joy Byron taught him plenty about the business. Everything from makeup to lighting and the best camera angles. She coached him in mime, and diction, and posture. She kept him very busy, and true to her word she starred him in a student production of Streetcar.
Several important people actually did turn up, including Frances Cavendish. The flinty-eyed casting agent was one of the best in town because she never missed an opportunity to view new talent.
Buddy looked sensational. Torn T-shirt. Skin-tight jeans. Marlon Brando move over. He had seen the 1951 movie many times on television. He had studied every nuance and gesture of the great actor’s performance. Now he had it down perfectly, and he knew he was good. It did not surprise him when Frances Cavendish sent back a note for him to drop by and see her.
He waited a week. Did not want to appear too anxious. Then he sauntered into her office, perched on the side of her desk, and mumbled, “I hear ya wanna make me a movie star.”
She adjusted her glasses and stared at him. “Shift your buns off my desk, sonny. They’re casting a horror movie at Universal. I think you might be right. Get yourself over there pronto.”
He got the part. Three days. No lines. There followed a series of similar bits. A week on a gangster movie. Two days on Police Woman. A shaving-cream commercial. A two-part Vegas, his best role yet. Finally—his shot.
“I think you’re right for the lead in a new pilot,” Frances said, and actually smiled. “This might be it, Buddy.”
He was floating. The producers liked him. He ran home to Joy with a script and a stomach that wouldn’t lie down. He was going to play the lead in a new pilot. He was going to be a star.
Joy Byron read the script and pronounced it “Crapshit!” She could be very salty for an old lady. “We’ll shape it into something worthwhile,” she told him with a theatrical sigh.
They worked long and hard. Joy gave him motivations, she told him exactly what to do and when to do it. She even accompanied him to the set to make sure he changed none of her instructions.
On the second day, directly after the producers had viewed the previous day’s shooting, he was fired.
“So what?” snorted Joy Byron. “I told you it was crapshit!”
He left her house in the middle of the night while she slept. He was sick with disappointment and anger and frustration. When was Buddy Boy going to become a star?
He drifted right back into his old way of living. Only now he began to drink too much, and do too many drugs. A girlfriend introduced him to Maxie Sholto, an unsavory agent who was into arranging Hollywood parties—the kind where the hired help performed for an audience. At least he was getting seen. So what if it was with two bimbos crawling all over him? He was on show. And the women at the parties loved him.
One day he bumped into his friend Randy. “You’re gonna be dog turd in this town if you don’t watch it,” Randy warned.
Buddy was flying. “I’m makin’ big bucks. Y’want some of my action?”
“Where’s your big bucks gettin’ you? All I see is snow up your nose an’ grass down your throat. Straighten out, or you’ll be finished.”
He straightened out. Three nights later. In the middle of an orgy with come streaming down his face from a fat record producer, and a thin girl riding pony on his joint, he caught his reflection in a mirror, and he also caught a camera in action, which pissed him no end.
He threw the girl off him, smashed the camera, beat up the record producer, and stormed out of the place. He was Buddy Hudson. He was going to be a star, and nothing would stop him.
The next day he hopped a plane to Hawaii, where he dried out, got himself a job singing in a piano bar, and met Angel.
• • •
So, Buddy thought to himself, as he climbed in his wreck of a car. What to do now? Returning to L.A. with new bride in tow all ready to set the town on fire was one thing. Reality was another. He needed money, and there was only one sure way he knew how to get it.
• • •
Neil Gray glanced around the VIP lounge. He nursed a large Jack Daniel’s on the rocks, his second.
Across the room sat Gina Germaine. Blond, bubbly, bosoms and bum. She was surrounded by admiring airline personnel tripping over each other to grant her every wish. He had greeted her briefly when she entered. Two people who knew each other only vaguely. Christ! But his balls were aching for her. He couldn’t wait to be with her on the plane, maybe jam it to her in the toilet if she would let him.
If she would let him indeed! Gina Germaine would let him fuck her in Trader Vic’s on a Sunday night if he told her that’s what he wanted.
God! Was he getting senile? Why this obsession with some blond movie star? There was definitely something the matter with him. Had to be. Taking her to Palm Beach with him was sheer lunacy. The risk of getting found out . . .
The risk was giving him the best erection he’d had all year.
8
New York could turn you schizo. If you weren’t already.
What mean streets. Dirt and grime and low-down filthy reality. Rats. Cockroaches. The streets were crawling with them—the human kind too. A stroll through the city could guarantee no end of meetings with the insane.
Deke kept himself to himself. He walked with a purposeful stride, his chin tucked down, his bleak eyes hooded and watchful.
Once two kids tried to jump him on the corner of 39th and Seventh Avenue. It was not yet dark, and people were plentiful on the street. No one came to his aid as he struggled with the two crazed teenagers, one armed with a knife.
Deke fought back. He thrust and lunged and clawed, until he was able to grab the knife from his assailant and shove it into the boy’s chest, surprise spilling out of the boy’s stoned eyes as blood spilled out of his body.
The other attacker ran, and Deke strolled casually off while passersby scurried along the street, eyes studiously averted.
It gave him such a good feeling—a tremendous surge of power. It reminded him of Philadelphia. That night—that special night.
His step quickened as he remembered. . . .
The machete he had bought from a pawnshop for twenty bucks because he liked the look of it. It had hung on the wall of his bedroom unused for two years, although occasionally he had taken it down and struck a pose in front of his dresser mirror. He had never imagined the day would come when he would use it for real.
He thought of Joey. Of her squat body, spiky hair, and wide red mouth.
Joey Kravetz.
• • •
“Hey—hey. You lookin’ for some fun, buster?”
Deke attempted to walk past, but she blocked his way, planting herself firmly in his path. She cocked her head on one side
and winked lasciviously. “I don∍t wanna rip ya off, nothin’ like that. I just wanna get in your pants an’ give ya the hottest bounce y’had all year. Can y’dig it?”
He stared at her. She was almost pretty, but her nose was off center, one eye had a slight cast, her lipstick was smudged over a red cavern of a mouth. “How much?” he muttered.
“A buck a minute. Can’t be fairer than that.” She squinted up at him, for he was much taller than her five feet two inches. “Ya won’t regret a dime of it, cowboy!”
Cowboy. He had never been called that before. It made him feel good. “Okay,” he mumbled, knowing the event would take no longer than five minutes. “Where?”
“I got me a little jive-ass palace.” She grabbed him by the arm. “Two blocks down, ya can tell me the story of y’ life on the way. My name’s Joey, what’s yours?”
He had never met a girl like her before. Sure, he’d had plenty of hookers with sour mouths and empty eyes; and girls he had dated, who smiled politely and never let him so much as touch them. Joey was different. She seemed to want to be with him as they walked along the rain-soaked street.
Her “palace” was a small room two flights up with a sink in the corner, a bed lounged on by a fat white cat, and one lamp draped with a singed pink chiffon scarf.
She shooed the cat off the bed, threw off her plastic raincoat, and said, “Nice, huh? Sure beats my last dump.”
He stood hesitantly in the doorway and wondered if it would be as usual. Money out first, then a furtive hump against a silent piece of meat.
Joey undid the side zip on her tight black mini-skirt and wriggled out of it. Underneath she wore bikini panties with “Tuesday” embroidered in red. It was Friday.
Deke groped in his pocket for some money.
“Put it away, y’don’t know how long ya gonna stay,” she giggled. “Sure y’ don’t wanna change the deal? Fifty bucks for as long as ya like?”
He shook his head.
“Suit yourself, buster,” she said, pulling her sweater over orange spiky hair and flinging it on the floor. She had very small breasts with cheaply rouged nipples. The color had smudged; so had the mascara under her lazy eye.