I motioned to the barmaid for refills.
“You going to write another movie script?” Jack asked.
“I don’t think so … Too much loss of privacy … I just like to sit around and stare at walls …”
“If you write one, let me see it.”
“Sure. Listen, why are your boys facing away from the bar like that? They looking for girls?”
“Naw, they’ve had too many girls. They are just easing up …”
“All right, see you, Jack …”
“Keep doing your good work,” Sarah said.
We went back upstairs. Soon Jack and his gang were gone.
It wasn’t much of a night. I kept going up and down the stairway for drinks. After 3 hours, almost everybody was gone. Sarah and I were leaning over the balcony. Then I saw Jon. I had noticed him dancing earlier. I waved him over.
“Hey, whatever happened to Francine? She didn’t make the wrap party.”
“No, there’s no media here tonight …”
“Got it.”
“I’ve got to go now,” said Jon. “Have to get up early and go to the cutting room.”
“All right …”
Then Jon was gone.
It was empty downstairs and it was cooler and so we went down to the bar. Sarah and I were the last ones there. Now there was only one lady bartender.
“We’ll have one for the road,” I told her.
“I’m supposed to charge you for drinks now,” she said.
“How come?”
“Firepower only rented this place until midnight … It’s ten after twelve … But I’ll slip you some drinks anyhow because I like your writing so much, but please don’t tell anybody that I did it.”
“My dear, nobody will ever know.”
She poured the drinks. The late disco crowd was beginning to come in. It was time to go. Yes, it was. Our 5 cats were waiting for us. Somehow, I felt sad that the shooting was over. There was something explorative about it. There had been some gamble. We finished our drinks and walked out into the street. The car was still there. I helped Sarah in and got in on the other side. We belted up. I started the car and soon we were on the Harbor Freeway going south. We were moving back toward everyday normalcy and in a way I liked it and in another way I didn’t.
Sarah lit a cigarette. “We’ll feed the cats and then we’ll go to sleep.”
“And maybe a drink?” I suggested.
“All right,” said Sarah.
Sarah and I got along all right, sometimes.
—HOLLYWOOD
the creative act
for the broken egg on the floor
for the 5th of July
for the fish in the tank
for the old man in room 9
for the cat on the fence
for yourself
not for fame
not for money
you’ve got to keep chopping
as you get older
the glamour recedes
it’s easier when you’re young
anybody can rise to the
heights now and then
the buzzword is
consistency
anything that keeps it
going
this life dancing in front of
Mrs. Death.
There it was. The film was rolling. I was being beaten up in the alley by the bartender. As I’ve explained before I had small hands which are a terrible disadvantage in a fist fight. This particular bartender had huge hands. To make matters worse, I took a punch very well which allowed me to absorb much more punishment. I had some luck on my side: I didn’t have much fear. The fights with the bartender were a way to pass the time. After all, you just couldn’t sit on your barstool all day and all night. And there wasn’t much pain in the fight. The pain came the next morning and it wasn’t so bad if you had made it back to your room.
And by fighting 2 or 3 times a week I was getting better at it. Or the bartender was getting worse.
But that had been over 4 decades before. Now I was sitting in a Hollywood screening room.
No need to recall the film here. Perhaps it’s better to tell about a part left out. Later in the film this lady wants to take care of me. She thinks I’m a genius and wants to shield me from the streets. In the film I don’t stay in the lady’s house but overnight. But in actual life I stayed about 6 weeks.
The lady, Tully, lived in this large house in the Hollywood Hills. She shared it with another lady, Nadine. Both Tully and Nadine were high-powered executives. They were into the entertainment scene: music, publishing, whatever. They seemed to know everybody and there were 2 or 3 parties a week, lots of New York types. I didn’t like Tully’s parties and entertained myself by getting totally drunk and insulting as many people as I could.
And living with Nadine was a fellow a bit younger than I. He was a composer or a director or something, temporarily out of work. I didn’t like him at first. I kept running into him around the house or out on the patio in the morning when we were both hungover. He always wore this damned scarf.
One morning about 11 a.m. we were both out on the patio sucking on beers, trying to recover from our hangovers. His name was Rich. He looked at me.
“You need another beer?”
“Sure … Thank you …”
He went into the kitchen, came back out, handed me my beer, then sat down.
Rich took a good swallow. Then he sighed heavily.
“I don’t know how much longer I can fool her …”
“What?”
“I mean, I don’t have any talent of any kind. It’s all just bullshit.”
“Beautiful,” I said, “that’s really beautiful. I admire you.”
“Thank you. How about you?” he asked.
“I type. But that’s not the problem.”
“What is it?”
“My dick is rubbed raw from fucking. She can’t get enough.”
“I have to eat Nadine every night.”
“Jesus …”
“Hank, we’re just a couple of kept men.”
“Rich, these liberated women have our balls in a sack.”
“I think we should start in on the vodka now,” he said.
“Fine,” I said.
That evening when our ladies arrived neither of us were able to perform our duties.
Rich lasted another week, then was gone.
After that I often ran into Nadine walking about the house naked, usually when Tully was gone.
“What the hell are you doing?” I finally asked.
“This is my house and if I want to run around with my ass in the wind, that’s my business.”
“Come on, Nadine, what is it really? You want some turkeyneck?”
“Not if you were the last man on earth.”
“If I were the last man on earth you’d have to stand in line.”
“You just be glad I don’t tell Tully.”
“Well, just stop running around with your pussy dangling.”
“You pig!”
She ran up the stairway, plop, plop, plop. Big ass. A door slammed somewhere. I didn’t follow it up. A totally over-rated commodity.
That night when Tully came home she packed me off to Catalina for a week. I think she knew Nadine was in heat.
That wasn’t in the film. You can’t put everything in a film.
And then back in the screening room, the film was over. There was applause. We all walked around shaking each other’s hands, hugging. We were all great, hell yes.
Then Harry Friedman found me. We hugged, then shook hands.
“Harry,” I said, “you’ve got a winner.”
“Yes, yes, a great screenplay! Listen, I heard you’ve done a novel about prostitutes!”
“Yes.”
“I want you to write me a screenplay about that. I want to do it!”
“Sure, Harry, sure …”
Then he saw Francine Bowers and rushed toward her. “Francine, honey doll, you were
magnificent!”
Gradually things wound down and the room was almost empty. Sarah and I walked outside.
Lance Edwards and his car were gone. We had the long walk back to our car. It was all right. The night was cool and clear. The movie was finished and would soon be showing. The critics would have their say. I knew that too many movies were made, one after the other after the other. The public saw so many movies that they no longer knew what a movie was and the critics were in the same fix.
Then we were in the car driving back.
“I liked it,” said Sarah, “only there were parts …”
“I know. It’s not an immortal movie but it’s a good one.”
“Yes, it is …”
Then we were on the freeway.
“I’ll be glad to see the cats,” said Sarah.
“Me too …”
“You going to write another screenplay?”
“I hope not …”
“Harry Friedman wants us to come to Cannes, Hank.”
“What? And leave the cats?”
“He said to bring the cats.”
“No way!”
“That’s what I told him.”
It had been a good night and there would be others. I cut into the fast lane and went for it.
—HOLLYWOOD
the orderly
I am sitting on a tin chair outside the x-ray lab as
death, on stinking wings, wafts through the
halls forevermore.
I remember the hospital stenches from when
I was a boy and when I was a man and now
as an old man
I sit in my tin chair waiting.
then an orderly
a young man of 23 or 24
pushes in a piece of equipment.
it looks like a hamper of
freshly done laundry
but I can’t be sure.
the orderly is awkward.
he is not deformed
but his legs work
in an unruly fashion
as if disassociated from the
motor workings of the brain.
he is in blue, dressed all in blue,
pushing,
pushing his load.
ungainly little boy blue.
then he turns his head and yells at
the receptionist at the x-ray window:
“anybody wants me, I’ll be in 76
for about 20 minutes!”
his face reddens as he yells,
his mouth forms a down
turned crescent like a
pumpkin’s halloween mouth.
then he’s gone into some doorway,
probably 76.
not a very prepossessing chap.
lost as a human,
long gone down some
numbing road.
but
he’s healthy
he’s healthy.
HE’S HEALTHY!
are you drinking?
washed-up, on shore, the old yellow notebook
out again
I write from the bed
as I did last
year.
will see the doctor,
Monday.
“yes, doctor, weak legs, vertigo, head-
aches and my back
hurts.”
“are you drinking?” he will ask.
“are you getting your
exercise, your
vitamins?”
I think that I am just ill
with life, the same stale yet
fluctuating
factors.
even at the track
I watch the horses run by
and it seems
meaningless.
I leave early after buying tickets on the
remaining races.
“taking off?” asks the mutuel
clerk.
“yes, it’s boring,”
I tell him.
“if you think it’s boring
out there,” he tells me, “you oughta be
back here.”
so here I am
propped against my pillows
again
just an old guy
just an old writer
with a yellow
notebook.
something is
walking across the
floor
toward
me.
oh, it’s just
my cat
this
time.
ill
being very ill and very weak is a very strange
thing.
when it takes all your strength to get from the
bedroom to the bathroom and back, it seems like
a joke but
you don’t laugh.
back in bed you consider death again and find
the same thing: the closer you get to it
the less forbidding it
becomes.
you have much time to examine the walls
and outside
birds on a telephone wire take on much
importance.
and there’s the tv: men playing baseball
day after day.
no appetite.
food tastes like cardboard, it makes you
ill, more than
ill.
the good wife keeps insisting that you
eat.
“the doctor said …”
poor dear.
and the cats.
the cats jump up on the bed and look at me.
they stare, then jump
off.
what a world, you think: eat, work, fuck,
die.
luckily I have a contagious disease: no
visitors.
the scale reads 155, down from
217.
I look like a man in a death camp.
I
am.
still, I’m lucky: I feast on solitude, I
will never miss the crowd.
I could read the great books but the great books don’t
interest me.
I sit in bed and wait for the whole thing to go
one way or the
other.
just like everybody
else.
8 count
from my bed
I watch
3 birds
on a telephone
wire.
one flies
off.
then
another.
one is left,
then
it too
is gone.
my typewriter is
tombstone
still.
and I am
reduced to bird
watching.
just thought I’d
let you
know,
fucker.
Bring Me Your Love
Harry walked down the steps and into the garden. Many of the patients were out there. He had been told that his wife, Gloria, was out there. He saw her sitting alone at a table. He approached her obliquely, from one side and a bit from the rear. He circled the table and sat down across from her. Gloria sat very straight, she was very pale. She looked at him but didn’t see him. Then she saw him.
“Are you the conductor?” she asked.
“The conductor of what?”
“The conductor of verisimilitude?”
“No, I’m not.”
She was pale., her eyes were pale, pale blue.
“How do you feel, Gloria?”
It was an iron table, painted white, a table that would last for centuries. There was a small bowl of flowers in the center, wilted dead flowers hanging from sad, limp stems.
“You are a whore-fucker, Harry. You fuck whores.”
“That’s not true, Gloria.”
“Do they suck you too? Do they suck your dick?”
“I was going to bring your mother
, Gloria, but she was down with the flu.”
“That old bat is always down with something.... Are you the conductor?”
The other patients sat at tables or stood up against the trees or were stretched out on the lawn. They were motionless and silent.
“How’s the food here, Gloria? Do you have any friends?”
“Terrible. And no. Whore-fucker.”
“Do you want something to read? What can I bring you to read?”
Gloria didn’t answer. Then she brought her right hand up, looked at it, clenched it into a fist and punched herself squarely in the nose, hard. Harry reached across and held both of her hands. “Gloria, please!”
She began to cry. “Why didn’t you bring me any chocolates?”
“Gloria, you told me you hated chocolates.”
Her tears rolled down profusely. “I don’t hate chocolates! I love chocolates!”
“Don’t cry, Gloria, please … I’ll bring you chocolates, anything you want.... Listen, I’ve rented a motel room a couple blocks away, just to be near you.”
Her pale eyes widened. “A motel room? You’re there with some fucking whore! You watch x-rated movies together, there’s a full-length mirror on the ceiling!”
“I’ll be nearby for a couple of days, Gloria,” Harry said soothingly. “I’ll bring you anything you want.”
“Bring me your love, then,” she screamed. “Why the hell don’t you bring me your love?”
A few of the patients turned and looked.
“Gloria, I’m sure that there is nobody who cares for you more than I do.”
“You want to bring me chocolates? Well, jam those chocolates up your ass!”
Harry took a card out of his wallet. It was from the motel. He handed it to her.
“I just want to give you this before I forget. Are you allowed to phone out? Just phone me if you want anything at all.”
Gloria didn’t answer. She took the card and folded it into a small square. Then she bent down, took off one of her shoes, put the card in the shoe and put the shoe back on.
Then Harry saw Dr. Jensen approaching across the lawn. Dr. Jensen walked up smiling and saying, “Well, well, well....”