A Stranger Like You

  When he called Ida, her voice sounded groggy. “I need a favor,” she said, and asked if he’d be willing to come over and read her script, she was having trouble with the ending and wanted another opinion. She had a deadline. “I’ve been up all night.”

  “I happen to be good at endings,” he told her.

  Ida lived in Westwood, on Roebling Avenue. The neighborhood catered to people from the university. She lived in a white stucco duplex with black shutters. He found a parking space down the street and ran through the rain all the way to her door. Ida’s neighbor, an opera singer with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, was singing in her apartment—whatever it was sounded familiar to him—it was Italian, he knew that.

  “La Bohème,” Ida told him, letting him in. The place smelled of coffee. “I always cry when I hear it.”

  “Has she broken any glasses yet?”

  “No, silly.” She gave him a hug.

  “You’re not going to cry, are you?”

  “I’ll try not to.” She smiled up at him. “It’s good to see you.”

  “You too.”

  She made him breakfast, a cheese omelet, and they drank coffee by the big picture window, watching the rain. Then they went into her den to read her script. They drank a pot of coffee as they turned the pages. They sat on adjacent couches, the same sort of setup as his therapist had, but in this case it was conducive to reading the script out loud and he liked the way her face looked when she read, like a third grader giving a school presentation, a mixture of pride and a little fear. The script was about a boxer struggling with Lou Gehrig’s disease. In the beginning, the man is an asshole and a drunk; in the end, just before he dies, he’s practically a saint. The story was based on her father’s life. It was the sort of script Hedda Chase would have loved, he thought. “You’ve underestimated yourself,” he told her. “It’s very powerful.”

  Ida smiled as if she were relieved. “That means a lot to me, coming from you.”

  “You don’t know me very well, Ida,” he said grimly. “I’m not who you think I am.”

  “No?” She tilted her head, thoughtfully appraising him. “Who are you?”

  He shrugged. “I guess I’m trying to figure that out.”

  She looked dissatisfied with his answer.

  “With you? I feel like I’m myself,” he tried to explain. “But before, back in New York, back with my wife, it was like being somebody else. Someone I didn’t like. Does that make any sense?”

  “We’re all imposters to some degree.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s true.”

  “Who are you pretending to be?”

  “Me?” She hesitated and frowned. “I’m not pretending.”

  “I don’t believe you.” His smile leaked out.

  She laughed nervously.

  “You’re a big fucking faker and I know it,” he said. “Come over here.”

  She came over to him and sat down on the couch and let him kiss her. “We’ve barely opened my suitcase,” she admitted.

  “The truth is difficult.”

  “Yes, but it’s all we have.”

  They stumbled into her bedroom, a tiny room with a single window and a torn yellow shade. He watched her as she pulled off her shirt then took off her pants, all the while hearing nothing but the rain. Stripped to her underwear, she stood there waiting for him. She was small and square and round hipped and busty. She was a woman on the verge of something, he thought. Defeat, maybe. Like the boxer in her script, she had one more good fight.

  “I want to know you,” she said. “Is that okay?”

  “I can’t promise anything.”

  She nodded like a person at a funeral. Her eyes were glossy and black. Her skin mottled with the tiny shadows of raindrops. She kissed him and her mouth was soft and lovely and very warm. The rain fell harder. They stood there kissing with the rain running down the windows, washing everything clean.

  Foster’s film was called Transients Welcome. The screening was at the Film Forum in Hollywood, in one of the old theaters. Entering the crowded lobby with Ida at his side made him wistful, bitter over the years he had wasted being somebody else. He held her close, protectively. They had rolled around in her bed for hours just kissing, her skin flushed, hot to the touch. He had turned her onto her stomach and had run his hands down her naked back.

  They shuffled into the middle of a crowded row and took their seats. Ida was wearing her smart little half boots and a short skirt. It was an outfit Marion wouldn’t be caught dead in, but then Ida was younger than Marion by a good ten years. Hugh liked the fact that she was younger, it made him feel superior. Perhaps he could guide her in some way; he could have a positive influence on her life. The theater filled rapidly. The people seemed excited. Ida put her knees against the back of the seat in front of her as if this sort of thing were old hat. She was like a gangly kid, her knees greenish and knobby. She’d been out here for years, trying to make it. She had deals in the works. Even though none of her scripts had been produced, she’d made good money; she was a good writer and they called her when they needed her. The room hummed with excitement. People talking, removing their jackets, settling down. He could see Tom Foster in the first row, sitting next to a dark-haired woman in a red dress. Tom had on a black blazer and a white scarf. The lights dimmed and a man came onto the stage, a man people seemed to know. They laughed at his jokes. He spoke about Tom Foster, his work, his courage, his past films, his awards. “Enjoy this spectacular film,” he said as the room went black and the large screen filled with light.

  The film was dark, raw. It was like a poem, Hugh thought, a somber, beautiful love song. The sound track evoked his compassion with a single piano. The film was shot in color, its hues spare, unvaried; serene. Foster had found beauty in ordinary places. A child’s shoe left in the road; a dented beer can tumbling in the gutter; a junkyard at twilight; a sulking mutt pacing by the fence; the metallic carcasses of dead cars. Sunrise like the smeared rouge on a whore.

  The first story was about a bearded man in a pink raincoat. At one time, he’d been a noted mathematician. He’d worked at a think tank in Santa Monica. At the think tank he’d come up with new ideas, change. People knew his work, his brilliance. Then one day, quite suddenly, he stopped. His wife left him. He stood there in an empty house. He walked out and never returned. Watching the man’s face in closeup, Hugh felt tears burn his eyes. There were so many people living the wrong lives. Hugh understood; he knew what it was. It was a heartbreaking dilemma. Now the man was living in the shelter on Argyle Avenue; he was a better man now, he told the camera. His life was honest.

  When the next story began, Hugh saw a familiar face. It was the girl from his motel room, Daisy. Hugh could hardly believe his eyes. He found himself clutching the armrests of his seat. His hands had begun to sweat. The waif-like creature who had slept in his motel room now wandered the streets of Hollywood with her little pet rat. She had on a long black coat and saddle shoes and there were ribbons in her hair. In voice over, she told the story of her life, growing up in rural South Dakota, how she had left home, an eighth grader with a broken arm—she could not bring herself to talk about the incident, only shook her head and wept. Since the arm hadn’t been set properly, it would never heal right and you could tell it was slightly crooked, something like a broken wing. She had no money; she had nothing. For a while she’d been a prostitute. There were scenes of her putting on makeup like a child playing dress-up. Then she’s in a motel room, kneeling in front of some creep—you saw nothing of the creep or of what she was doing to him, only his hand entwined in her golden hair, and you could hear the guy breathing, the sounds he was making. Watching it made Hugh squirm in his seat. For a while she slept in a playhouse in someone’s backyard. The playhouse had been purchased at Toys R Us. It had yellow shutters that you could close and a little red door. If she curled up real tight she could fit and nobody saw her. During the day, after they went to work, she crept into the p
eople’s home, a bungalow somewhere in L.A. She’d seen the maid using the key, stored in a drainpipe alongside the house. She marveled at the toddler’s room, the expensive toys, the clouds on the ceiling. The stocked refrigerator. The spotless bathroom. She helped herself to whatever she wanted, the freshly baked cookies, the change that had collected in a dish on the windowsill, always careful to keep things precisely as they were. She looked at the pictures of the family on the refrigerator, a life she’d never known. She knew their schedule; she’d watched carefully. She found things out about the couple; the husband was having an affair. He’d bring the girl home on his lunch hour. It had made Daisy so sad that she’d written the wife a letter and put it in the mail. A week later the wife and her little girl moved out and Daisy went to the shelter. There were shots of Daisy doing a hula hoop, there were shots of her playing a harmonica. She could play Bob Dylan. She was pretty good.

  After the film, Hugh scanned the audience to see if she was there. He didn’t see her at first, and then he spotted her splintered blond hair as she walked up the aisle on the other side of the theater. She had on makeup and looked older. Her boyfriend was young, maybe in his twenties, with longish black hair and the gritty shadow of a beard. He walked with a limp and wore a loose-fitting camouflage jacket in the colors of the desert—for some reason he looked familiar to Hugh. She suddenly looked across the sea of red seats and caught Hugh’s eye and for a moment held his gaze. Hugh couldn’t tell whether she recognized him or not. He hadn’t mentioned Daisy to Ida. He felt awkward about the fact that he’d had the girl to his motel—he doubted Ida could understand that part of it. Out of the context of the street, she was like an actress or a celebrity, not some poor, homeless girl. She flashed an apologetic smile and raised her hand to wave, but was swiftly obscured by the crowd. The moment made Hugh uneasy and he turned toward Ida and they walked down the sloped aisle toward the stage. Foster was standing down front, next to the woman in the red dress who tossed back her dark hair like a restless horse. When Tom saw him, he smiled apologetically. “Hey, thanks for coming, man. I’m sorry I left you stranded the other night.”

  “The film was terrific.”

  The woman looked Italian, and had a compelling gap between her two front teeth. “This is my wife,” Tom said. “Lucia.”

  “It’s very nice to meet you, Lucia.” Her hand was slim and cold, slightly limp. “This is Ida Kent.”

  “We’re having a small party if you want to come,” Foster’s wife said in an Italian accent.

  Hugh started to decline the invitation, but Ida spoke up. “Of course we’ll come.”

  Foster owned a mid-century glass cube in Laurel Canyon. The house had been built in the fifties by a famous architect but had been ignored by a succession of indifferent tenants, mostly rock stars and actors. On the outside, the place had a seedy, forlorn appearance, overgrown with desert grass that looked silver in the moonlight. Everybody was around the pool on the crumbled cement decking, their faces lit from below by the small patio lights, creating a theatrical effect like footlights on a stage. The pool was oval, painted black, a bottomless pit—an abyss. Hugh thought of jumping into it. In his mind, he pictured himself at the bottom in complete darkness, with nothing to cling to, nothing to pull him out.

  He wondered if the girl would show up; he hoped she wouldn’t.

  After a while the wind picked up, gusting at their elbows, their necks and hips, rolling across their backs. Hugh looked over the side of the cliff and saw that it was steep, complicated with dark clusters of brush. Ida wanted to go inside to see the house. She knew about Tom’s photography collection. They went in and helped themselves to a tour. They went down a narrow corridor and found Tom’s bedroom, lit only by the skylights. The floor was scattered with books; Ida stepped on them as she crossed the room like stones across a stream. Tom’s diploma hung over a desk in a small alcove—he’d gone to Bowdoin. There were some photographs too, of his parents and brothers, a swell-looking family around a table at their country club, and another photograph of his lacrosse team at Deerfield. “Quite the pedigree,” Ida said.

  “We should get out of here.”

  They drifted back out to the crowded living room. Hugh smelled weed, but couldn’t locate the joint. People were crammed into the kitchen, trying to get up to the counters for more booze. Tom and his wife were sitting with some people around a glass table, the base of which looked like the stump of a sequoia. They were drinking and eating peanuts, cracking them out of their shells. As if partaking in some impromptu ritual, they scooped a handful, opened the shells, popped the nuts into their mouths, and tossed the shells into a pile that had formed in the center of the table like a castle of sand. Hugh watched Tom’s wife, Lucia, with interest. She took out a package of Gauloises cigarettes and lit one and sat like a man with her legs spread out and her elbows on the table. She had changed out of her red dress and was wearing a pair of baggy trousers and a white blouse that she’d buttoned improperly, accidentally revealing the satiny strap of her bra.

  Ida nudged him fiercely and whispered into his ear, “That’s Leo Zaklos.”

  “Who?” The man was sitting at the table next to Foster’s wife.

  “You know, the screenwriting guru,” she hissed. “He teaches at the Conservatory. Let’s go in there.”

  They went into the kitchen. People appraised them casually, but made no effort to welcome them. Apparently, it was the VIP table and they didn’t rate. They stood there, leaning against the wall, trying to look casual as they drank their drinks. Apart from his reputation, Zaklos, a stocky Romanian, might have been cast as a grubby, commonplace thug. Hugh figured his outfit, a black leather motorcycle jacket and blue jeans held up by suspenders over a Mickey Mouse T-shirt, was not accidental, and neither was the straggly white ponytail or the gypsy rings on his fingers. In any case, Ida seemed terribly infatuated. Stacked on the table before him were a couple of rumpled poetry books, Theodore Roethke on top. At his feet lay a black Labrador named Lily who, unfazed by all the attention, rolled onto her back and snored. The whole place smelled like dog.

  “You’re Leo Zaklos,” Hugh said, shaking the man’s hand. “I’ve always wanted to meet you.”

  Zaklos looked up at him and smiled half-heartedly and shook his hand warily, as if he might catch something. “Do I know you?”

  “Hugh Waters,” Hugh said sheepishly. “I’m from New York.”

  “Waters. Why does that sound familiar?”

  “He’s a friend of Hedda’s,” Foster said.

  Hugh could feel Ida looking at him. He said, “We knew each other back in the eighties.”

  “Ah, Hedda,” Zaklos said. “Love of my life.”

  Lucia snorted with distaste. He decided that Tom’s wife had the social grace of a porcupine.

  “Here, sit down,” Tom said abruptly, as though it had just occurred to him how rude he was being not offering them a chair, as though he felt sorry for Hugh and his drippy, insignificant girlfriend, as if letting them sit at the VIP table was an act of mercy. He reached for two folding chairs and set them up like a magician preparing to do a trick. Everyone watched, expressionless. Hugh and Ida sat down, insinuating themselves into the circle.

  Lucia snorted again and waited for Tom’s full attention. “Why do you have to bring her up?”

  “Shouldn’t she be here?” Zaklos asked.

  “She wasn’t invited,” Lucia said. “I don’t socialize with my husband’s girlfriends.”

  “Apparently she’s away this weekend,” Tom muttered to Leo, covertly suggesting to Zaklos that there’d been a breach in their love affair.

  “Getting a little spa action for the Cannes trip, perhaps,” Leo suggested. “Are you going?”

  “Of course we’re going,” Lucia said, then started talking to Zaklos in Italian and although nobody else at the table spoke Italian, including Tom, they were hanging on her every word. Tom met Hugh’s eyes across the table. Hugh nodded with sympathy. There was a bond bet
ween them, only it was a secret. It had been established that night at the strip club, Hugh thought. They were like brothers, and words were not necessary. They only had to look at each other to know what the other was thinking. In truth, Hugh had never had a relationship like it, not with anyone, let alone another man. For a period of time he had thought he might be gay. Once, in high school, some of the boys in his gym class had accused him of getting a hard-on in the showers—it wasn’t true, but the rumor had had an effect on his status with girls at the time—they’d veer away from him in the halls—and it had been something he could not talk about, he’d had to deal with it silently, like some kind of disfiguring virus. From time to time he let himself dream about being with a man, but the idea never seemed to stick.

  “I have your tapes,” Ida said to Zaklos. “They’re marvelous.”

  “Thank you, my dear.”

  “Every script must have a premise!”

  “I can see you’re a good student.”

  Hugh thought his tone was patronizing, but Ida didn’t seem to notice. “What do you mean exactly?”

  “One thing leads to another,” Zaklos explained.

  “Lust leads to betrayal, for example,” Ida said. “That’s always a good one.”

  “Betrayal leads to destruction,” Lucia said darkly.

  “We are all bound to be destroyed,” Tom said dramatically.

  “No doubt.” Zaklos nodded. “Destruction can be sexy.”

  “Only in movies,” Lucia said. “Not in real life.”

  “You want to show how people change,” Zaklos clarified. “A character starts here and ends up over there. Protagonist, antagonist, conflict, resolution. It’s pretty simple, actually.”