Hollywood Boulevard (17 page)

    I looked around to neaten up, but nothing was out of place, so I paced back and forth in front of the big sitting room window. I took the new scarf and sweaters out of their bags and placed them on the bed. I realized I hadn't eaten and pulled what was left of a rotisserie chicken out of the fridge and made myself a hasty sandwich. The day had turned pleasantly warm and clear; I opened the balcony door and stood looking out over the hills as I ate. The mountains in the distance dissolved into a faded blue blur with a roll of clean white clouds balanced above.

    An hour came and went. No Detective Collins. I felt pretty silly. Eddie Tompkins hadn't done anything to me. Why did I assume he meant me harm? He only wanted a job. He'd seemed nice enough, if too all over me in the shoe store. He saw me as an opportunity and I'd dismissed him. I hadn't even bothered to mention him to Andre. There was a time when I was hungry for work, times I asked my mother for help with the rent. Things eased up some when Joe and I pooled our resources, and then I started auditioning for commercials and that stabilized us for a while. At least I'd never had to work in a shoe store. I must have looked like a sign from the gods to Eddie Tompkins. I remember telling Joe I had no choice: "You have to be aggressive. You can't just stand there bundled up with talent and hope somebody notices. There's tons of talent rolling around out there."

    Joe said an artist had to work her craft and that excellence came with time and concentration. Sure, he was right, but he wasn't an actor. He didn't have to trade on youth or sex or some physical quirk. He knew I was torn on that point. He knew I despised the sex- as- sales- pitch part of the business, but was I going to change that? I wasn't even standard beautiful. I was always going to have to crash through the gates. I'd crashed through all right and landed pretty high up on the heap. I never got to tell Joe just how much of what I found there I loathed.

    I was about to call Detective Collins, tell him to forget it; I'd overreacted. I'd call Eddie Tompkins and tell him, very nicely, I couldn't help. I would suggest he call what was left of Harry's business, assuming Machin Talent would continue without him. I could name one or two other agencies; he could use my name to secure an interview. I might not mean much these days, but Andre sure did. After that I would insist he not contact me again—

    My cell phone went off in my pocket. It was Detective Collins. He'd parked, but I hadn't told him my room number. I looked over the balcony wall and waved, indicating the staircase past the laundry, and held up a V for two, second floor. In a minute he was standing inside the suite, wearing a suit and overcoat, I think the same tie as the other week. He seemed taller, or the rooms smaller. He was so much more a guy than I what was used to; I couldn't help it, he was physically more masculine than all the other men I'd been with— put together. Acute manliness might be good in a cop.

    "Detective Collins, please come in." He walked past me, with authority. "I'm afraid I've wasted your time, Detective."

    He was busy taking in the sitting room, and then a glance into the bedroom. "Big windows," he said. The plate and glass from my lunch were still out on the balcony table. "There's a guy out there, across the hill. That your stalker?"

    I looked out. I'd been here days before I noticed White Shirt; the Detective cased him in ten seconds. "That's White Shirt; he lives there."

    " White Shirt, huh? Well, he's looking over here. Is that usual?"

    "It's his garden. And he's not the man I called about. Would you like to sit down?"

    "No."

    For a good- looking man he had a pretty lousy bedside manner. That movie line came back to me, the one that always got a laugh. I tried a variation: "How do I call off the cavalry, Detective?" The line fell flat. Maybe I couldn't act even if I wanted to; there was a thought.

    "Why the change of heart? You were threatened?"

    "No. The shoe store's just a job; the guy is an actor looking

for a break. He asked me to give his card to my husband, Andre Lucerne— he's a director. I might have done the same thing once upon a time."

    "Followed someone?"

    "Hey, I know a pair of actors who dressed up as heavies and went to Al Pacino's New York apartment with toy guns, demanding a job on his movie."

    "It work?"

    "It did, but they were only on screen for ten seconds."

    "Does your man have a gun?"

    "He didn't pull one." I sounded annoyed.

    "Does he have a name?"

    "Actors tend to be bleeding liberals, Detective, and show- offs with insides like scared little rabbits."

    "That include you?"

    "I quit the business, remember?"

    "So we drop it?"

    "I won't press charges."

    "If he's carrying a weapon, you won't have to."

    I handed over Eddie's card. Detective Collins studied both sides. "Where's the shoe store?"

    "Down on Sunset, the Shoe Horn or something like that."

    He looked up. "That discount dump near the In- N- Out?" I nodded. He looked at my shoes, then flipped the card over again. "This address is there." He lifted his chin toward the hills. " Maybe he knows your White Shirt pal? Maybe they're in it together . . . extortion, possible kidnap. Maybe
you're
in on some kind of setup."

    I shook my head. "Back up. White Shirt has a Mercedes sports car in his garage; Eddie's in the shoe store—"

    " Could be lovers."

"I'd have seen them."

    "They don't want to be seen. But they've seen you." He lifted a shoulder. "You have binoculars here?"

    "
No!
What do you think I am?"

    "You tell me."

    I sat down on the couch. This was turning out badly. What did I expect?

    "What did your husband say about giving Eddie a job?"

    My voice came out muffled. "I didn't give him the card."

    "No?"

    "Andre's on a movie; he's all over the place all times of day and night."

    "He's busy?"

    " Movie people make lousy spouses. You don't need a gossip columnist to tell you that."

    " Would that include ex– movie people?" I shrugged, looking down at a small brown stain I hadn't noticed on the carpet before. He said, "I guess they don't call it Hollyweird for nothing." Was he making a joke? I looked up and laughed. I couldn't help it; the line didn't fit the character saying it. "You have a nice laugh," he said.

    My cell phone rang. I let it ring.

    "Answer it." He nodded once toward the phone in my hand.

    I picked up the call. "Andre?" I listened, then said okay and we hung up. "My husband is stopping by for some new sides— script pages— he forgot. With his assistant director," I said, facing the officer of the law whose presence in my hotel room was beginning to unnerve me.

    Detective Collins stuffed Eddie's card into his pocket. "Mind if I keep this?" He didn't wait for an answer. "I'll go up the hill, check out this address and get back to you," he said, moving toward the door.

"You don't want to meet Andre?"

"What for?"

    Detective Collins wasn't gone six minutes before Andre and Carola came in. They'd probably passed each other in their cars.

    I guess I took my cue from the Detective and didn't bring him up to Andre, or Eddie Tompkins either. I kept up a busy chatter, giving Andre the scarf, showing him the new sweaters. "A good color," he said. "And cashmere. Perfect." He gamely tossed the scarf over his shoulder. He glanced in the mirror, made an adjustment, and thanked me with a kiss to my cheek. Turning to Carola— who I only then noticed looked pale with worry— he said he'd look over the new pages now. He found them on the table, where until a few minutes ago Eddie Tompkins's card had sat. "We will see if they are an improvement for her." The word
her
was loaded, a freight train of contempt. I understood Andre had been calmly indulgent about the scarf, that his mood underneath was murderous. He put his glasses on, moved toward the bedroom, and read the pages.

    Carola confided to me in a low voice the lead actress was proving a disappointment.

    "Can't learn her lines?"

    Andre looked up from reading. "She is a whore." His tone was glacial.

    Carola shook her blond head, chewed a fingernail. "She knows the lines but brings nothing to them."

    I knew the actress's work. Luce Bouclé was all right, if too reliant on her physicality over a character's interior, not gorgeous but compelling to watch, French. I'd joked when Andre cast her, "Have you fallen for another actress?" And he'd joked back that I was jealous at last. I wasn't.

    "She is impossible, devoid of spirit, a
corpse
!" Andre almost shouted. Poor Carola visibly shrank. Andre was not a man to raise his voice, so when he did, it was that much worse. His burst of anger would have to do with the fact that he alone had cast Luce Bouclé, had auditioned no one else. I was tempted to ask if she'd auditioned well, but this was not the moment to suggest that a mistake had been made even if I meant it humorously.

    Andre tossed the pages onto the bed. He'd read them standing in the double doorway to the bedroom. He'd had the writer come up with changes that would nurse the actress along, give her less to say but more reaction. "This is all explanation," he said of the fix. He picked the three pages up off the bed and swatted the paper with the back of his hand. " Utter junk." He handed the pages to me. "Ardennes, will you read this?" I scanned the first page. "No, no, out loud, please."

    He was asking me to read cold? I glanced at Carola. She was a wreck, biting whatever was left of her fingernails. I breathed. I took a minute to read the first page to myself, breathed again, exhaled, and read as convincingly as I could.

    "No," Andre said. "Stop. Don't go on, please. This is terrible.
Terrible
. Carola, have you the original with you?"

    Carola nodded, dug into her bag and pulled out a script. She looked up at Andre, a question on her face. Andre looked at me. "The pages?"

    Carola hurried through the script, found the needed pages and handed me her battered copy.

    "Andre, I'm not a circus dog to bark on cue."

    "Ardennes, just, please, read for me." He spoke in his director's voice. I felt a chilly spasm down my neck, and my buttocks clenched. What I wanted was to carefully put the script down, to say firmly, no, I would not just please read for him or for anyone else. But Andre had on that demanding yet wide- open listening face I knew so well. It was a face I'd not been able to challenge as an actress. I wet my lips, suddenly deathly thirsty. "Ardennes? Will you refuse to help us for one moment of your day?"

    I looked at the page. At a glance I could see the writing here was real, lines an actress could chew and digest. The character, Anne, is talking to the police. I let out a hard breath and began: "Mr. Lawson is no longer at this address, Officer. He's gone, you see, and now there is laughter again. There's a trail of lies and slime behind Mr. Lawson, and no one cares where he's gone. . . . Do you know how to kill a garden slug, Officer? You lay traps with stale beer; they die and the flowers live. I wonder who sat down and made that discovery about the beer. Have you ever heard of that trick, Officer?" I continued with the scene, already feeling Anne's ache and her crazy hope. The directions called for her to execute a little dance, suddenly to dance, her body knowing she is free ahead of her mind. The dance is not described. Andre and his actress would have to work it out. I thought of Beckett's
Godot
, Lucky's dance. But no, this would be faster, lighter, stiff— because Anne is lame— but graceful.

    Carola and Andre were silent when I finished; they looked rapt. I broke the silence, handing the script back to Carola. "I have such a headache all of a sudden." Andre looked steadily at me for what seemed like a very long pause, even for him.

    "Come, we'll go," he told Carola.

    "The sides?" she asked him.

    Andre shook his head. " Leave them; they are worthless. We know now how the lines are meant to be spoken." He went for the door. "Oh, before I forget, Ardennes, here is the extra key to Grant's room— 302— on the other end." He gestured toward the room to the right of the landing. "I have lent him the printer you were using. If you need to, just go take it." He tossed the plastic pass onto the table and went for the door again. I hadn't realized the printer was gone and wondered when it had been taken off my desk, and by whom.

    Carola reminded me that Grant Stuart was the second AD. I glanced at the white- and- gold passkey on the table and nodded. She said she hoped my headache would soon pass. She followed Andre out, closing the door. I felt sick on top of a splitting headache, so when Zaneda knocked on the door soon after they left, it wasn't my make- believe ankle injury that was killing me. I'd forgotten I was supposed to be hurt.