When Chet got home, there was a message from Horvitz. He turned off the machine; he would listen in the morning. Then he’d call and quit — death takes a holiday. He fell fast asleep and dreamed Aubrey was a guest on the old talk show. The theme was “People Who Have Recovered from AIDS.”
Troy Capra
Troy got a curious phone call from Quinn, the gaffer.
They’d worked together on scores of X-rated productions and Troy planned to use him for lighting on Skin Trade. An occasional performer, Quinn saw most of his action off-camera — as a bisexual pretending to be straight, he was a crossover hit.
Quinn was eager to talk about a recent “scene” with Moe Trusskopf, the well-known celebrity manager. They had been joined by Trusskopf’s beau, a studly stud and nicely knight with the moniker of Lancelot who happened, in actuality, to be none other than the famous Rod Whalen. Ring a bell? Troy blinked, trying to place the name. Quinn reminded him of the young dancer in Guys and Dolls who gave him his big directing break.
“Jesus, how do you even remember that kid?”
“You told me about him. I became a fan of his work. You forget I’m an aficionado.”
“I thought he’d be long dead.”
“Just long.”
“How did my name come up?”
“I made the connection. You know, I never forget a pretty face — especially one I’ve sat on.”
“Don’t start talking like a queen. Please, Quinn, not you.”
“Listen, I got this idea, right? You have a copy of that, don’t you?”
“A copy of what.”
“Your first film! Come on, Troy, I know you.”
“I may have it somewhere.”
“You have it, Troy. What was it called?”
“Up in Adam.”
“Up in Adam! Right! Okay, here’s what’s happening: Trusskopf really wants to see it — he’s like, been looking for it, right? He’s burning, he would kill for a copy. And the kid is, like, game. I said I’d talk to you and arrange a little screening.”
“At the Directors Guild. Have it catered.”
“You should do it, Troy. They’re having a party Sunday. We should go over with the tape.”
“You go over.”
“This could be good for you, Troy.”
“Yeah. I can have a scene with Moe and Curly.”
“Moe Trusskopf’s a heavy, okay? And he’s smart, Troy, he’d like you. You’ll like him. The movie’s just an entrée.”
“And your dick’s the aperitif.”
“You want to do Skin Trade, don’t you? I mean, you want to exploit it, right? To be in that position once it’s done? Just get into a conversation with him, Troy, and tell him what your plans are, right? Or whatever. You don’t know where this shit leads, he could fucking sign you. Tell him all your theatrical bullshit, he’s from that world. And he knows all those guys, he knows everybody, right? I’m telling you, man, you should do it.”
On Sunday afternoon, Troy and Kiv looked at houses. That was her idea, because with the expense of the coming show, there’d barely be money for rent let alone four-point-four million for a shanty in the Bel Air hills. It was only practice, Kiv said — she wanted to know what it felt like to be a “lady of the Pantheon.” Besides, convincing the realtor she was “a nouveau” was a good acting exercise. Driving through the West Gate in his near-jalopy of a Mercedes, Troy felt uneasy. He already had a pretend life.
She was starting to nest (that’s what the house-hunting game was all about) and Troy wasn’t happy. Kiv slept in his bed most every night now. She sipped morning cappuccinos and went on about sofas and ottomans, trying to impress with her thrifty, no-nonsense ways. She called him honey a lot and stroked his head as she stared into space, theorizing about drapes — muslin or parachute? — then off she’d go to a hard-core shoot. It was everything Chet tried to avoid, to shun, to cast off: the pornographic Middle Class. Soon they’d be on Sally Jessy Raphaël with the other porn couples, expounding on the Lifestyle, sugary and witless.
His muffler echoed through the streets like the canned laughter of an old Beverly Hillbillies. He made the mistake of idly recounting his conversation with Quinn, and Kiv was all over it. Quinn was right, he’d be stupid not to “play along for the connections”—she wanted to go to the party too. By the time the realtor hove into view, grinning like a moron beside her billion-dollar BMW, they had almost come to blows.
Champagne wishes and caviar dreams! The woman smelled a fish but kept a stiff upper lip throughout the tour. The house, former residence of John Huston, George Harrison, George Hamilton and Roger Moore, recently rented to Tom Arnold for thirty-five thousand a month. Their guide proffered a lavish binder stuffed with magazine profiles. Not a room had been spared the photographer’s lens — the master bath itself lovingly showcased in Diane von Furstenberg’s big book of celebrity loos. A guest house sprang from the villa’s cunningly designed gardens like a hallucination, stupendous enough to briefly lift Troy’s grim, vindictive spirits. It looked like a gargantuan Roman column snapped off at the center. The thing even had windows. The realtor called it a “folly,” the replica of a house that stood in a forest outside Paris; the owner made the commission after seeing a photo in Architectural Digest. As Troy approached the surreal structure, Kiv’s hickish oohs and ahhs broke the quixotic spell. With great annoyance, he walked to the car and waited.
“Feel better now?” he asked, venomously. They were back in the car, rattling down the hill. “Feel rich?”
“Fuck you!” Kiv started to weep. A minute later, coasting round a turn, she told him she was pregnant.
“Oh shit,” he said, pulling over to a fiftyish woman selling maps to stars’ homes. The vendor made a move, then held her ground.
“I’m having this baby, Troy!” she sobbed. “I’ve had too many abortions, I can’t do that anymore. Troy, I love you—”
As they reached Sunset, he thought of jumping ship — making a mad dash, but where would he run? Back to the folly, to be swallowed by the rabbit hole. There had to be a rabbit hole—
“We can be so happy, Troy! So happy…”
He laughed and Kiv shot from the car, storming across the Boulevard in a haze of tears, beating him to it. It was just like a movie, except there wasn’t a pile-up in her wake. And — the movies again — Troy gave chase.
Bernie Ribkin
Edie was a big creature who bellowed when they made love.
It was strange, but something about her, something chalky and carnal, took him back to those whitewashed yards of Baltimore. His cousins’ faces floated up as he rode the pale, doughy, mole-flecked country of her flesh, smelled the cooking of ancient neighborhoods in her hair, saw dreary storefronts in the bone beneath her breast. Under her arms were trolleys and hydrants; nipples conjured washtubs and linoleum; her long, flat fingernails, the dirty birds of a public park. Her face, during the act, looked stylized and anguished. She was like a powerful wrestler, scissoring the air with broad, indefeasible strokes. Her eyes were the deepest brown he’d ever seen, and when he looked within, Bernie saw himself as a boy standing tentatively in a sawdust-strewn saloon out of The Iceman Cometh, heard the chink of billiard balls until they shooed him away, running home through wind that tore open his cheeks; had only to smell the gray-white hair at Edie’s temples to summon tracts of sidewalk, his sidewalks, their spidery cracks, graffiti and Crayola’d arabesques evoked by a whiff from the tough, translucent seashell of her ear — had only to nuzzle an eyebrow to step on the burnt-yellow lawn of the downtown house where he once lived. Edie’s teeth were bad (the warped and splintered sun chairs of the falling-down porch where his mother waited) but the breath was always fresh.