He helped Michele dry herself off; she was a little shaky. She wanted to be alone in the bathroom for a moment.
The hotel maid had already turned down the bed and closed the curtains, but Jack opened the curtains to get a look at the view of the Hollywood Hills. The room had floor-to-ceiling windows; it was a spectacular view, but not even the Hollywood Hills could divert him from the sound of Michele retching in the toilet. Jack went and stood next to the bathroom door, to be sure she wasn’t choking. Later, when he heard the toilet flush and the water in the sink running, Jack went back and stood at the giant windows.
It was 2003. He’d been in Los Angeles for sixteen years. He was trying to remember sleeping with that model at Jones—the one who’d said that his penis was small—but he couldn’t remember anything about her. When he closed the curtains, Jack was thinking that he’d seen enough of the Hollywood Hills.
When Michele came out of the bathroom, she was wearing one of the hotel’s terry-cloth robes; she seemed shy, and relatively sober, and she smelled like a whole tube of toothpaste. Jack was sorry that she wanted to sleep with him—he’d been hoping that she wouldn’t want to. But he couldn’t turn her down a second time, not when he knew she was still thinking about the first time he’d rejected her.
It was only later that it occurred to Jack that Michele probably felt as resigned to the act as he did. And there was nothing remarkable about their sexual performance, nothing that would override the longer-lasting impression—namely, that they hadn’t really wanted to sleep with each other. (They had simply expected it would happen.)
“Just what is so terribly universal about this place, anyway?” Michele asked him, after they’d had sex and Jack was touching her breasts. She was lying on her back with her long arms held straight against her sides, like a soldier.
Jack guessed that she meant the name of the hotel, the Sheraton Universal—or where the hotel was located, which was Universal City—but before he could say something, Michele said: “I can tell you one thing that’s universal about tonight, and that is it’s a universal disappointment—like loneliness, or illness, or death. Or like knowing you’ll never have children. It’s just one big universal letdown, isn’t it?”
“Actually, it’s the name of a studio,” Jack said. “Universal Studios.”
“Your penis isn’t too small, Jack,” Michele Maher said. “That model was simply being cruel.”
“Maybe she had a nose job since I last saw her,” he speculated. “I mean, she’s a model—she could have had her chin done, or her eyes done. I’ll bet she had some kind of face-lift. There’s got to be a reason why I don’t remember her.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Michele said. “What about us? In a few years, this isn’t going to be memorable, is it?”
So much for that expectation, as he would one day tell Dr. García. It would come as no surprise to Dr. García, but one can appreciate what a blow it was to Jack to discover how quickly Michele Maher could become forgettable.
36. Claudia’s Ghost
Bad things happened after that. Jack’s psychiatrist tried to shed a positive light on his failure to connect with Michele Maher. Maybe this would disabuse Jack of what Dr. García called his “if-only romanticism about the past”—meaning if only it had worked out with Michele Maher the first time, he might have been spared the ensuing years of incomplete relationships.
“You always attached too much importance to your botched opportunity with Michele, Jack,” Dr. García said. “You never attached enough importance to what worked with Claudia. At least that relationship lasted.”
“Only four years,” Jack reminded her.
“Who else lasted an eighth as long, Jack? And don’t say Emma! The penis-holding doesn’t count as complete, does it?”
But Jack resisted his psychiatrist’s efforts to shed a positive light on anything. He was down. He embraced the movie-magazine version of himself, his bad-boy image. Jack didn’t care how many models he wouldn’t remember a month later. He had ceased caring about what kind of “nookie house” he lived in, too. (His “Entrada Drive state of mind,” Dr. García called it.)
Jack was in that state of mind in May 2003 when he went to New York to make a movie. He had accepted the Harry Mocco role in The Love Poet—a film by Gillian Scott, the Australian director. Gillian had also written the screenplay.
Harry Mocco is a crippled male model—“half a model,” Harry calls himself. His legs were crushed in a New York elevator accident. He has always wanted to be an actor; he has a great voice. But there aren’t a lot of roles for a guy in a wheelchair.
Even as a model, Harry’s career is marginal. He is often seen sitting up in bed in the morning—just his top half, naked. (The rest of him is under the sheets.) These are advertisements for women’s clothes; the female model, usually in the foreground of the photograph, is already dressed or half dressed. Her clothes are what’s being sold; the top half of Harry, in the background, is depicted as one of her accessories.
Or, if he’s the one modeling the clothes, you see Jack-as-Harry sitting at a desk or in the driver’s seat of an expensive car. He does a lot of ads for wristwatches, usually in a tuxedo—but the naked, half-a-male accessory in those advertisements for women’s clothing are his specialty.
Harry Mocco doesn’t really need the money. He made a fortune suing the building with the elevator that crushed his legs; in and around New York, where the film is set, Jack-as-Harry is quite a famous and photogenic cripple. The modeling is more for what little remains of his dignity than it is a financial necessity. He actually lives pretty well—in one of those New York buildings with a doorman. Naturally, Harry’s gym is wheelchair-accessible. He lifts weights half the day and plays wheelchair basketball—even wheelchair tennis.
Jack-as-Harry also memorizes and recites love poems, or parts of love poems—not always a welcome activity, especially since he’s not with anyone. He’s always urging his friends—gym friends, male-model friends—to woo their girlfriends with love poetry. No one seems interested. Harry knows a lot of supermodels—some of the hottest female models in New York. But they’re just friends; the supermodels are unmoved by the love poetry.
Jack-as-Harry has sex only once in the first hour and fifteen minutes of the film; to no one’s surprise, it’s a disaster. His partner is a young woman who frequently dresses him for the photo shoots—she’s very plain and nervous, an unglamorous girl with a pierced lower lip. The love poetry works on her, but his being crippled doesn’t. Jack had to give Gillian Scott credit for capturing a sex scene of award-winning awkwardness.
The voice-over, which is Harry Mocco’s, is all love poetry. Everything from the grimmest of the grim, Thomas Hardy, to Philip Larkin; everything from George Wither to Robert Graves. (There was too much Graves, in Jack’s opinion.)
Harry Mocco usually doesn’t get to recite more than a couplet, rarely a complete stanza. Nobody he knows wants to hear a whole poem.