Hollywood Boulevard (25 page)

    She didn't argue that Christmas night, didn't try to convince me to go to college, waving her hand impatiently when I told her I despised the whole concept of school, gearing up to pitch my case. "Don't use a word like
despise
as if it was chewing gum, Ardennes. And try not to exaggerate; words are powerful tools as they are. What will you do if you don't go to school?"

    I glanced at Dad's chair to see how I was going over with him. Naturally part of me was bluffing. I meant what I said, but the pros pect still scared me and I was game to being talked out of my decision until maybe summer— I needed a bit of wise resistance to test my resolve, but that was Daddy's job. It's so inconvenient when people die. You can go ahead and imagine what the deceased would say in a given situation, but you're only filling in blanks. Dead means dead. I think it came home to me in that moment, when I needed him to say it was okay for me to break my promise. He probably would have talked me into trying one semester, but he was silenced for keeps. I was on my own.

    As I looked at his empty chair my lips began to quiver and my eyes filled with tears and my face got hot and I fell on the floor and threw myself over my mother's lap — drama queen in pain— and cried until I was weak. She kept her hand on my back until the flood subsided, her dress drenched with my hot tears and snot. "Get us each a glass of red wine," she told me when I was played out.

    "For real?" I said. We were going to share a glass of wine?
Quelle
sophistication. I was suddenly grown up! That meant being fatherless hardly mattered in that heady moment; it would be Mom and me from now on. And so the two of us made a plan: I'd stay in the Riverdale apartment with her, and I'd audition at the Actors Studio or maybe sign up at HB Studio. If no one would take me I'd find a theater group, some acting venue: hit the sidewalk auditioning for plays all over New York. There were theater groups like weeds back then, from Brooklyn to the Bronx; artists could still live and work on the cheap — the city had not yet been made over in the image of big- box developers artificially ratcheting up rents and profit margins in real estate heaven. We'd give it a year, we agreed, and see where I stood. Then, like an utter child, I sat at my mother's feet and opened my Christmas gifts. My mother gave me Uta Hagen's
Respect
for Acting.

    "Mom! You knew all along." I threw my arms around her, ready for another spasm of overwrought emotion.

    She gently pushed me off so I was seated on the little stage; a tableau of mother and daughter, father gone missing.

    "Ardennes, listen to me. . . ."

    I turned my face up in rapt attention; I would obey my queen's every command. "Ardennes, you have a kind of drifting mind . . ." I was no longer rapt. "I can't think of another way to put it. Acting— listen, now—" I was ready to bolt, off the stage, out of the room, race down the hall to my room and slam the door shut behind me. "Steady," my mother said, using the one voice I had yet to disobey, which she used only rarely and which on that day had an added note of fatigue. I heard the note and stopped.

    "I'm listening, Mother."

    "You have talent to spare; I have no question of that. But you will make things harder for yourself than they have to be."

    I had no idea what she meant.

I 
still don't. My head in the refrigerator, I was wondering, as I often have since she made her inscrutable pronouncement, exactly what my mother meant by a drifting mind. Way in back I found some cheese to put with crackers to feed to Carola and Andre, who were downing scotches like lemonade on a hot day. If my father could weather setbacks, so could Andre, once he stopped bottle diving. It wouldn't help at all for him to learn of his wife's recent indiscretion with a cop, so I could in reasonably good conscience bury that for the—

    Who was that knocking at the door? My face must have blanched at the sight of Grant Stuart standing on the other side when I opened up, smiling under a young head of beach- blond hair. Had I left something on his floor: panties, perhaps, a bullet fallen from the Detective's holster? Was he here to warn me, unaware his boss was at home?

    "Ms. Thrush . . . it's an honor— I mean, we met before." He held out his hand.

    I barely brushed it with mine, thinking what the honor could be, this time or any other. I waved him in. "It's Grant, right?" He nodded solemnly, not quite taking his eyes off me, just shy of staring. It seemed as if humor had deserted Andre's production company altogether. " Andre and Carola are inside," I said. "Can I get you a drink for the funeral party?" I indicated the living room area.

    "What? Oh, no, thank you." He walked toward the others in the sitting room. Grant looked Midwest trusting to me— Iowa, perhaps— too trusting to suspect his floor had been the recent scene of illicit activities. What was Grant Stuart doing in a dirty business like film production anyhow?

    Andre and Carola were on their separate phones. I followed Grant. He sat down heavily next to Carola, on the couch. I stood leaning along the dividing wall to the kitchen.

    Andre ended his call. "Grant?"

    "Sir." He stood up. Such Midwestern manners, probably votes conservative, queasy in his sexual orientation— deep down— and that neatness to his room; nothing against neatness, just a little out of touch with himself, I'd say.

    "We have a situation— care for a drink?" Grant declined again. "I have no idea how long production will be halted, Grant, but it will be."

    "I know. I was thinking, Carola is doing great and Timmy O'Malley is ready to step into second AD. I'd like to be excused— no contractual difficulties or anything— I just want to head back out to Iowa."

    Huh, got it on the first try.

    "You have not been happy?" Andre queried.

    Grant sat back down. "Oh, no. It's just I may not be right for this sort of thing; I've enjoyed immensely— working with you has been an education, an honor—"

    Double bingo; I must be psychic today: He doesn't belong in this dirty business, and he knows it, sensible boy. None of this was funny. . . . I was just the odd wheel in the room, and a broken one at that—

    "I think you said you wanted to write screenplays, no?" Andre said. Grant nodded, looking humbled and slightly noble. "You are dismissed with all my good wishes. And you will receive credit on the film." Carola was now off her call and listening. "Carola will handle your room bill with the hotel, and any monies due, of course."

    That would certainly take care of any future hookups in room

302. Any taint of sin would shortly be scrubbed away by Alma and Zaneda.

    Carola nodded. "I'm sorry you're going," she told Grant without waiting for his response. She turned to Andre. "That was Quinn just now, and the others, they wanted to know—"

    "Does he want to jump ship too?"

    Grant stood up. "I should go. . . ."

    "No, he only wanted to know the latest," Carola answered Andre.

    No one noticed Grant leave. Well, I did. I walked behind him to the door and smiled at him as he left. I thanked him. " Thank
you
, Ms. Thrush," he said. As a writer he'd need work on his rejoinders, poor kid.

    "No news to anyone for now, Carola; they must sit tight," Andre was saying as I turned from seeing Grant out. "We'll see what the money hounds have to say. . . ." His phone rang again. He let it ring. "Ardennes!"

    I came around the corner, cheese plate in hand, my expression quizzical at hearing my name called with such vigorous determination. I wanted to say,
Yes, dear
, but knew I was in no righteous position at the moment to use an endearment. I placed the plate on the coffee table.

    "Ah, there you are. We are going to Century City." His phone rang again. He looked annoyed as he glanced at the caller ID. "Come, Carola—" He seemed to think better of it, excused himself, and went to use the toilet.

    "We have to see the producers," Carola said weakly. She looked as if she'd rather be going to an abortion clinic for a D and C.

    I glanced at the empty glasses on the coffee table. The cheese and crackers sat, unwanted. "What do you think they'll do?"

    Carola shook her head. "I've never been in the situation before." Her Portuguese accent was thickening; the stress, no doubt, or the scotch.

    I carried the glasses to the sink and started to wash them. Andre came out of the bathroom, all manliness in charge, on the phone again. He was confirming whatever was being asked of him on the other end. His voice sounded off. He stood in the kitchen looking at me. I turned off the tap, a wet glass in my hand. His call ended.

    "Andre? Get a PA to drive." I rinsed the glass and followed him into the sitting room, drying my hands on my pants. My doing so usually annoyed Andre, but not today.

    "Sorry? Ah, Carola can drive. I want to keep the crew out of things for now. Come, Carola."

"She's had as much to drink as you."

"I'm fine, Ardennes, really." She remained seated.

    "You don't look fine, Carola. You don't either, Andre. Is it imper ative that you go to Century City today, this afternoon? It can't wait until morning?" My God, I sounded just like my mother.

    "Absolutely not," Andre said.

    At the same time Carola said, "No, we must be at that meeting!"

    And that was how I ended up driving to Century City, where Andre would face the producers to answer for firing his lead. My preference was to be on a plane out of California bound for almost anywhere else in the world, but my preferences were about to be thrown off a cliff.

C
entury City was home to Campion Productions, a Hollywood powerhouse. It was a city within a city, an island of tall, gleaming buildings west of downtown, out toward the Pacific. Not a short ride from the Hollywood Hills without traffic. Carola sat in back, her phone silent, her eyes shut. I wondered the landscape didn't spin on her with all that scotch; that the boat didn't rock. Andre was on the phone more or less steadily, and I did my best not to listen while fielding early rush- hour traffic. Off Hollywood, I headed for Fairfax to Santa Monica Boulevard for the haul to Avenue of the Stars, on to Constellation Boulevard and finally Garden Lane. A long drive along dreamy- sounding streets that were anything but, the GPS girl smoothly telling me when to turn, rewarding me with bells.

    "Andre?" He was off the phone for once. "What time is the appointment?"

    "Hmm? Ah, no concern, when we get there. They are waiting." None too happily, I'd guess. Traffic was gummy but moving

steadily. With luck we might make it in under an hour. The GPS cooed with updates. Andre closed his eyes and briefly the mood in the car was pleasantly quiet, as if a storm that could break into deadly chaos over our heads had been averted. Andre didn't look like a man in trouble, but he wouldn't. The quiet was giving me a chance to think, and I did not want that chance, so I was glad when my cell phone pealed off a ring.

    I reached for it, out of the top of my purse. "Hello?" It was Detective Collins. "I'm driving," I said, "one hand on the wheel, one with you." (That was suggestive; why'd I say that?)

    "A brief update." He sounded official. "There's a warrant out for Eddie Tompkins's arrest."

    "What for?" I sounded excited— or scared.

    "I don't know yet. I was informed because I made those recent inquiries. . . ."

    "I thought you said you didn't do that?"

    "Well, I did. I'll fill you in when I learn more. Meantime, both hands on the wheel." He paused. I was about to say good- bye. "Are you alone?"