A Simple Scale Page 4

  “That’s why I’m asking you. I think when Berg and Walsh hear some of the work you did on Emerald Cutlass, the job’s as good as yours.”

  “Hear that, Angie? Job’s as good as mine. Let me guess. Berg’ll ask for Wagner with a touch of whimsy, because he wants Alfred Newman, but can’t afford to borrow him from Fox. Am I right?”

  “More or less.”

  “Okay. Put my name down. I’ll start thinking ‘Wagnerian Whimsy’. Or should that be ‘Vimsy’? Nothing too Russian-sounding, of course. Wouldn’t want to go scaring our friends in the West Block.”

  “You shouldn’t joke about things like that.”

  “Who says I’m joking?”

  “You’re always joking. Anyway. I have better things to do than stand around all day listening to your smart-cracks. Conrad. Miss Daniels.”

  When Henderson has left the room, you and Angela exchange a look, both of you wide-eyed and grinning. Angela slaps her hand down on her notepad.

  “Goddamn, Sol. Sole credit. That is good news.”

  “Don’t. Don’t jinx this.”

  “But Jesus, you must be happy.”

  “I’ll be happy when the job’s mine.”

  **

  Santa Monica Boulevard, roof down, a sassy version of Duke Ellington’s Caravan playing on the radio. You glance up at the rear view mirror and see the Hollywood sign in reverse. That thing was falling apart when you first moved out here; its letters a dusty shade of brown, the H caved in from where some drunk had crashed his car into it. Some of the studio old timers thought it was a portent, the end of an era, but since then it’s been given a fresh lick of paint and sits gleaming up there on the hill.

  This is a perfect Los Angeles evening. In New York it’s snowing, and struggling to get above 25°. When you hear something like that, it’s hard to miss the place.

  The canyon is always a surprise. Never mind that it’s been how long now? Nine months? Even after nine months you still take that right onto Laurel Canyon Boulevard, and the city is gone, replaced by brown slopes dotted with dark green. Italianate and art deco villas lining the hillsides, and the air rich with the almost overpowering fragrances of brickellbush and Jeffrey pine. You park up in front of the house, turn the ignition. The engine falls silent. The music cuts off.

  Inside, you pour yourself a scotch. No ice, just a squirt of soda water. The way Ron used to take it. He looks at you, smiling, from a picture taken out near Patchogue in the summer of ’47; the two of you in short-sleeved shirts. Both smiling, arms hooked around each other’s shoulders.

  Funny how deceptive a picture can be. You were happy that day, but the days and months surrounding it were miserable. Jobs were few and far between, and the little work you had – with off-off-Broadway theatre and a handful of TV networks – was far from well-paid. Ron secured you a few days, here and there, transcribing pieces for sheet music, and there were a few session gigs, but you were hardly the talk of the town. You watched as men your age wrote ballets and symphonies and Broadway shows, and you were consumed with envy.

  But that weekend in Patchogue was a happy one. The photo shows the Ron you knew, not the man who now gets written about by critics and academics. The man in the picture is the one whose voice you hear in letters you keep beneath your bed; smiling and carefree, at times almost boyish.

  Good God, you miss him.

  You sip your drink and look out through the window at the terrace and the lawn. Once again, it’s been trashed. Clumps of earth all over the place, the trash can on its side and trash spilling out everywhere. Looks like a warzone. Third time this month.

  “God… damn it.”

  The culprits nowhere to be seen, of course. Probably happened during the night. Didn’t even notice it this morning. Got up, got dressed, made coffee. You were in the car and driving into Hollywood, and the whole time your back yard looked like this.

  Out on the terrace, it gets worse. Whatever did this took a shit – or rather, a series of shits – all over the lawn, so that all you can see is shit.

  “Told ya,” says a voice from next door’s garden. “Shoulda put bricks on your trash can.”

  Mary rests on the fence with folded arms, a cigarette dangling from her lip in an ebony holder, the ash threatening to fall into her martini. Her eye shadow is a little heavy this evening, giving her look a touch of Dio de los Muertos. Other than that, her hair is as immaculately quaffed as ever, her gown – an oriental-style 1920s original, you’d guess – still fits. Garlands of orange and green costume jewellery hang around her neck.

  “You think it’s raccoons?” you ask.

  “Gotta be. We had the same problem when we moved here, back in ’36.”

  “I just don’t get it. If they’re after the trash, why don’t they just go after the trash? Why this?”

  “Because they’re vermin. And they think this is their territory.”

  “Their territory? We’re in LA, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Don’t let that fool ya. We’re in the mountains here, Sol. About a month after we moved here my late husband – may he burn in hell – saw a cougar in the yard.”

  “A cougar?”

  “Sure. There’s cougars and coyotes all around here. Still, for my money raccoons are the worst. They’ll just tear the place apart. As you can see. Say… What’s your poison there?”

  She takes the cigarette holder from her lower lip and points its stem at your drink.

  “Scotch.”

  “Before six? A man after my own heart. Why don’t you hop over the fence, and bring the hooch. If you like scotch I’ve got a bottle I picked up in England around here somewhere.”

  “I don’t know, Mary. Shouldn’t you be saving that for a special occasion?”

  “Sol, I am fifty-one years old and haven’t had a call-back in months. If I save that scotch for a special occasion I’ll be cremated with it, and the explosion’ll take out half of Southern California.”

  You join her on her terrace. Similar to your own – both houses were built by the same architect – but busy with dying pot plants. Above the mountains the sky is lilac, and you can hear cicadas chirruping in the scrub.

  “I’m just not used to this,” you say. “I mean, raccoons? Cougars? I grew up in New York. The only wildlife there is rats.”

  “Plenty of rats in this town, too.”

  “It’s like living in a goddamn menagerie.”

  Mary laughs. She refills her glass and passes you the bottle.

  “Reminds me of Intolerance,” she says. “Every day, that set was like a zoo. Jaguars, elephants, donkeys and doves. Every day there’d be a new animal on set. And one day these two stagehands, they’re carrying a stone lion, except it isn’t really made of stone. It’s plaster of Paris, or some such. So they’re carrying this stone lion and they almost drop it as they’re walking past Seena Owen. She was one of the actresses. Had a bigger part than me, but we went way back. Well, Seena screams like you’d think it had crushed every bone in her foot.”

  You’ve heard the story before, but you don’t tell her this. Instead, you top up your own glass and add a dash of soda from the syphon.

  “And Mr Griffith, he just says, ‘Seena, Seena, Seena. Calm yourself, woman. That thing couldn’t have squashed a fly.’”

  A brief pause. Cicadas. A twin-prop airplane yawns and putters its way across the sky towards Burbank.

  “Is it true?” you ask. “What you said, about not having any call-backs?”

  “I am going through a real dry spell, Sol. It ain’t funny being fifty-one in this town. Too old to play the damsel in distress, too young to play grandmaw or mother superior. Besides, even when I am old enough to play mother superior, I don’t think I’m exactly the habit-wearing type, do you? My only habit is this stuff.”

  She lifts her drink and swills it around, the ice cubes jangling against the glass.

  “But you got it easy. Composers, I mean. Never past your prime. And the movies’ll always need music, for as l
ong as there’s movies. And if that don’t work out, there’s always TV. You know, I auditioned for a TV show last year. Some Buck Rogers piece of crap called Captain Video. You know what they told me? They said I was ‘too big for the small screen’. Gave the part to some radio actress. And now I hear they’ve cast Vivienne Leigh as Blanche in Streetcar. An Englishwoman playing Blanche DuBois! That said, same bitch went and got herself Scarlett O’Hara. Not that I’m bitter. Everyone auditioned for that part. I believe even Danny Kaye gave it his best.

  “Anyway. I called them up at the studio, I called them and I said, ‘I’m just checking my name is still on file’, because these things happen. Your file gets misplaced, and suddenly you don’t exist. So I called ’em, and I said, ‘Am I still on file?’ And they said, ‘Sure you’re still on file, Miss Lafayette.’ And I said, ‘Well, that’s funny, because last time I checked I was a Louisiana-born actress of a certain age and yet I was not asked to audition for Streetcar.”

  “And what did they say?”

  “They said Mr Feldman and Mr Kazan already had an actress in mind, and that open auditions were not held.”

  Mary throws another couple of ice cubes into her glass, and drenches them with scotch. The ice cracks.

  “But they can all go to hell,” she says, and somewhere in the mountains, as if agreeing with her, a coyote howls.

  **

  You love Los Angeles at night. People on street corners. Music from bars. The air cooler, but never cold. The city’s lights glide along the contours of the car, and you smile at your reflection in the mirror; a lopsided grin weighed down by whisky, though you’re not too drunk to drive.

  You park near Pershing Square and stroll across, trying to look like a man walking home or at least walking somewhere. There’s a statue of Beethoven, incongruous in a square lined with palm trees, and around its base stands a group of men, none any older than twenty, twenty-one years of age. Preppy-looking, in their blue jeans and plaid shirts. Hair slicked back. Nearby, three beat cops who would rather be anywhere but Pershing Square on a Friday night.

  One of the young men glances your way. He says something to his friends before leaving them and strolling towards you.

  “Hey! Bill!”

  Not you. Someone else. Seemed too good to be true. He’s very attractive.

  “Bill!” the kid says again. He’s looking right at you.

  “I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else,” you say, quietly so the cops won’t hear. “My name’s not Bill.”

  “Oh, I know that,” says the kid, smiling and grabbing you by the hand, giving you a firm, manly, hey-there-old-buddy handshake. His accent sounds southern. “That’s just for them,” he adds, tilting his head towards the cops. “We start talking like we never met before and we’ll end up in jail. This way, we’re just two buddies who happened to see each other. So. What is your name?”

  “Sol,” you tell him. “Solomon.”

  “Like King Solomon! Well, hi, Sol. I’m Nick.” And he shakes your hand a second time, as if you needed reintroducing. “You from LA?”

  “New York.”

  “I love New York,” says Nick. “I mean, I never been there, but I’m sure I’d love it if I did. I am from Wichita Falls, Texas. You ever been there?”

  “I haven’t.”

  “You ain’t missing much.”

  He asks what you do, and you tell him you’re a composer for the movies. Not too much of a stretch. You’ve written music that’s been used in films. You just haven’t seen your name in the credits.

  “Well, ain’t that a coincidence?” says Nick. “I’m an actor.”

  He grins, the smile of every kid who thinks this could be his big break, that you might be his ticket, because maybe you know someone who knows someone. You ask if you might have seen him in anything, and he tells you not yet, but you will one day. His confidence, his certainty, is appealing; the kind you only ever see in those who haven’t been here very long. Give him another month and it won’t run anywhere near as deep.

  He asks where you live, and you tell him you live in Laurel Canyon. He says he lives in West Hollywood and asks if you have a ride.

  “Because if you have, maybe you could take me home. If you’re already going that way, I mean.”

  **

  The kid has a quiet intensity about him. Maybe not the sharpest tool in the box, and he has more swagger than you would normally find attractive, but there’s something behind his eyes, a spark of something. You’re just not yet sure what it is.

  Remember the first guy you brought back here? You’d been in Los Angeles three weeks. Picked him up at that place on Sunset Strip where you press a buzzer to get in, like a speakeasy. He was a slab of beef; handsome enough, and square-jawed. He reminded you of somebody. You know who he reminded you of. It may have been a long time ago, but still. Did you think this guy would be the same? Did you think that night would be as special? Fat chance. This guy had nothing going on between the ears. Wouldn’t have been so bad if he was any good in bed, but instead he just lay there, as if you should be grateful, as if your role was simply to worship him, and his was to bask in it.

  Every chance this kid will be the same – they usually are, the ones aware of their own beauty – but right now you’re too anxious to even think about what happens next. Instead, you pour the drinks, Nick staring at you from the doorway the whole time.

  He tells you that you have a nice place, and you thank him, and he says, “You must be making a whole lot of money to have a place like this.”

  “Not really.”

  “Then how’d you afford it?”

  “I had an inheritance.”

  “Your folks?”

  “A friend.”

  “Well, it’s a real nice house.”

  He talks about acting, and says he never really studied it, he just knows he’d be good at it. And they’re making so many Westerns these days, why, they must be crying out for actors with a voice like his. He says there’s a bunch of actors living at Sunset Towers, but they’re New York types. Serious types. He lives in a shared duplex off Fountain Avenue. He asks if you ever met anyone famous, and you tell him you once met Edward G. Robinson.

  “The gangster?”

  “He plays gangsters, sure. My father and he grew up together on the Lower East Side. He took me to see him in a play when I was nine or ten. We went backstage and met him.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “I don’t remember much. He wasn’t so famous then. His dressing room smelled of pipe smoke.”

  “Gee,” says the kid, genuinely impressed. “Say. You ever meet Montgomery Clift?”

  You tell him you haven’t.

  “I have,” says Nick. “This one time. He’s the best. You ever see that movie of his, The Heiress?”

  Of course you did. Copland’s score is the favourite to win the Oscar, and if he can do it, if he can come out here and write movie music…

  “That was a great movie,” says Nick. “It had Montgomery Clift and what’s-her-name from Gone with the Wind. Olivia DeHavilland. That was a great movie. And say, you kinda look like Montgomery Clift. Anyone ever tell you that?”

  He’s flattering you, though he isn’t the first person to say so.

  “Never,” you say.

  “Sure you do,” says Nick, moving a step closer. He takes his drink from you, and with his free hand reaches out to touch your face. “Same eyes. Same nose. Same mouth.”

  He leans in close and kisses you, his mouth soft and fleshy and a perfect fit with your own. When you part, he says, “Say. You even kiss like him. Do it again.”

  Chapter 4:

  MANHATTAN, OCTOBER 2001

  Three more beers. A cheeseburger from the counter near the window, served up on a paper plate. She carried on drinking. Everything was a little fuzzy now. When she placed her hands on the bar she couldn’t tell whether it was her hands that were shaking or the bar. A guy in a Hawaiian shirt sat on the stool next to hers and deliver
ed a rambling monologue about how Britney Spears was this century’s answer to Billie Holiday.

  “We need our icons to suffer,” he said. “They die for us, if not literally then through their art. We need them to fail.”

  People like him had once seemed a part of the city’s theatre; as if the authorities hired actors to play them. Now they were mostly a nuisance. Wasn’t New York crazy enough? And no sooner had the guy in the Hawaiian shirt left her alone than another man – lilac pompadour, Burt Lancaster teeth – sat down and began filing his nails. He smiled at her without saying anything and when he was finished grooming himself he ordered a bowl of Wasabi nuts, picking at them daintily.

  “You want one?” he asked. “I’m sure they’re terrible for one’s waistline, but I can’t help myself.” He popped another little green nut into his mouth. “They say you are what you eat, which I suppose must make me a bitter old rice queen.”

  A moment later his attention was drawn away by a young man in a snug grey t-shirt.

  “Hugo, darling!”

  Natalie was alone again. Just how she preferred it. It wasn’t healthy, the way some people needed constant company; and if not in real life then in online chatrooms. Why did everyone have to be talking all the time? She couldn’t understand it. Just leave me alone on this stool and I am Zen. I am the calm centre of the universe.

  She finished her drink and walked across the Village to East 12th Street. It was night time now, and the apartment was dark. She turned on a few lights, opened a cupboard. Schnapps. Half a bottle. The bodega near Thompson Square Park would be open, but the man who ran the place always lingered when handing over the change, and she only had a ten dollar bill in her purse. Schnapps it is. She sighed and poured herself a glass. She heard muffled TV rockets and explosions coming from the apartment below.

  Her roommate, Gino, had been away since early September, touring Europe with a dance company. Theirs wasn’t the biggest apartment – four rooms wedged into one corner of their building – but it felt large and empty without him. Neither of her parents had ever seen the place. Her mother hadn’t visited the States in over a year, and when last in New York she had stayed in a hotel.