“I wanted to see some of the country.”
“Should have been here a few weeks ago, the leaves were at their peak.”
When we hit the outskirts of Fairview, Jack turned to me. His face had assumed a rigid intensity. He was either about to lie to me or he was going to try some of his acting.
“Listen, uh, M…”
“María.”
“I remembered! Come on. María, of course, listen, I’ve been invited to this dinner party and they said bring a date and I called Paul and he couldn’t come up with anybody this late and I know this is kind of short notice, but, hell, do you wanna come?”
“Paul won’t be there?”
“No.”
“I’ll come.”
“What’s the matter, you don’t like Paul?”
“No.”
“Lot of women don’t like him. He’s a good guy, you know, comes across as a bit of an ass. But basically a good chap, a really good egg.”
“Yes.”
“Can you tell that that was an English accent?”
“I don’t know, I’ve never drunk tea or met an Englishman in my life.”
“Lucky old you. L.A. is plagued by them. They’re all very insecure. I know a couple of writers. They’re the worst. Chain-smoking Marlboro reds, ridiculous.”
“You know English writers? Have you read the poet Philip Larkin?” I asked him.
“The what? The who?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Anyway, where were we? Oh yes. So you’ll come?”
“To a party, yes,” and wordlessly I added It’s been a trying day.
“You’ll come? You’ll be my date?” he asked insecurely.
“I said yes.”
“Ok, well, don’t freak, but I’m kind of on my way over there right now.”
I wasn’t following him. “Why would I freak?”
“It’s a party. Don’t you need, like, three hours to get ready?”
“No, but I’ll bet you do.”
He laughed. “Low blow, yet strangely accurate. We’re all fags now, although I’m not as vain as some, believe me, I could tell you stories,” he says, fluffing his gelled hair in the rearview.
“But I do want some time. Look at me.”
“You look great.”
“Pull in there.”
Gas station. He spent a small fortune filling the Bentley while I washed my face and attempted to make my hair slightly interesting with the hot-air hand dryer.
I pinched some color into my cheeks and applied red lipstick.
I looked ok and if anyone said I didn’t I had a sledgehammer and a Smith & Wesson to change their mind.
“Whose house is it?” I asked when we’re back in the car.
“Oh, no one you would know, unless you read the trades, which you probably don’t. Not someone conventionally famous, but very A-list, a producer, big enchilada in a behind-the-scenes kind of way.”
“What’s his name?”
“Alan Watson. Look him up on IMDB, more movies this year than Judd fucking Apatow. Producing or coproducing credit on half a dozen flicks. Playa with a capital P. Total wacko, of course. All the big ones are. The house is only two doors away from the Cruise estate at the top of the mountain. And with Cruise shooting pickups for that Nazi movie, this week Watson is the big bear on Malibu Mountain.”
The house was indeed only two doors from the Cruise estate at the top of the mountain, but those doors were at least half a kilometer apart. The homes up here were all huge poronga affairs, faux Swiss chalets or supersized mountain ski lodges with ample grounds, guesthouses, outdoor Jacuzzis, pools, stables. Esteban said that Cruise and a few others had their own private ski runs to the valley and even chairlifts that ran back up to the house.
Watson’s house did not have a private ski run that I could see but it did have three floors and was the size of a small Havana apartment building. The style was Spanish hacienda with ultramodern features: radio antennae, quadruple garage, satellite dishes, swimming pool, solar panels, and a wind turbine that probably massacred local birds by the score. Even without Esteban’s and Jack’s prep it would have been obvious to me that Watson was in the upper echelons of the power elite.
Judging from the cars outside, the party appeared to be a small but upscale affair. Two Mercs, a Rolls-Royce, a Ferrari, and Jack’s Bentley.
We rang the bell and I admired the paintwork on the cars. In Havana all vehicles except for the very newest are finished in glossy outdoor house paint, but these were in subtle attractive shades: racing green, midnight blue, morning gray. As you got wealthier, I speculated, your tastes rebelled against the primary colors of the common herd.
Jack had yet to learn that lesson with his white Bentley.
We rang the bell again and someone said, “It’s open!”
We walked through a bare marble foyer into an equally spartan dining room that looked west upon a sunset and eight or nine layers of mountains. We were the last to arrive, and a fortysomething redheaded woman in a beautiful emerald couture dress hastily introduced us to the four other guests. Jack knew only one of them personally-a shaven-headed man wearing a black polo-neck sweater, black sweat pants, and diamond earrings.
“Mr. Cunningham, this is my friend María,” he said.
Cunningham took my hand and kissed it.
“Delighted to meet you, miss,” Cunningham said with such a warm smile and wonderful manners that I knew he was homosexual. Actually, it turned out that all the men were gay except for Watson, who, as Jack had predicted, proved to be a bit of a wacko.
I was seated next to the redheaded woman, who called herself Miss Raven, and a young man in a plaid shirt, jeans, and glasses who said he was “Mickey, just Mickey,” in a throwback New York accent straight from the Yuma movies of the fifties.
Miss Raven opened two bottles of sparkling wine and the chat flowed between the men. They talked fast and I found myself dipping in and out of their conversation.
“Jack, I loved you in that thing you were in. Your acting is an homage to a bygone age.”
“What about those writers?”
“What about them? Jack Warner said they were ‘scum with Underwoods.’ ”
“No shop talk. Did any of you see that Richard Serra show? It was appalling. What a confidence man that character is-all those pseudoscientific names for his pieces. That’s how you spot a bad artist-the pseudoscientific name. ‘Trajectory Number Five.’ ‘Tangent on Circle.’ Of course, the New Yorker review and Charlie Rose were positively supine.”
“I hardly read The New Yorker, not since they got a pop music critic called Sasha Frere-Jones. Frere-Jones indeed. I imagine some twenty-three-year-old Barnard girl whose parents are influential condo board members in the East Seventies. I occasionally glance at the odd movie review. Such poor grammar. Lane’s sentences have more clauses than a fucking Kris Kringle convention.”
“I saw him once in Vail.”
“Vail? Good God, I wouldn’t be seen dead in Vail.”
“Clooney loves it.”
“He’s a bullshit artist like all the others. I mean, do you really believe Clooney when he tells us that Budweiser is the King of Beers?”
Miss Raven didn’t speak but smiled at me from time to time, as if to apologize for my exclusion from the shop talk and gossip. I appreciated her concern but I wasn’t getting annoyed. The wine was delightful and the view excellent and from the kitchen came the smell of good things. I could see that Jack was frustrated, though, itching to jump in, but he lacked pluck. Why they’d invited him was a mystery-perhaps he was a last-minute replacement for someone else.
When we were halfway through the second bottle of sparkling wine, Watson appeared with hors d’oeuvres on a silver tray. He was wearing a leather bondage suit, a leather mask, handcuffs, and leg irons. When he served us he kneeled on the floor next to Miss Raven until she clicked her fingers and he removed the empty tray.
I had been in Havana’s many brothels dozens of times and had seen a lot worse. Jack, too, appeared unruffled, always acting, this time giving us the fixed smile of someone dancing with a little girl at a wedding.