Ten of schmitz, p.13
Blue Plate Special, page 13
My two o’clock burrito is backing up on me. I stifle a burp, shift in my chair, and wonder what the hell this woman is talking about.
“I’ve read Rod Boyle’s poems, and they are so understated, so subtle as to lull one into a deep quietude of simplicity. Yet beneath that simplicity, beneath that mist, there exists a wild, discussive epiphany, almost palpable, yet at the same time withheld. His work as an actor mirrors the same sly resonance and tacit tension, whether he’s playing a lawyer in a town of Satan-worshipers or a comic book superhero mutated by nuclear waste. His words and actions move us and we think—oh yes—I’ve seen that man before. I know him. I know him. It’s a great honor to have him with us. Ladies and gentlemen, Rod Boyle.”
The crowd cheers as though he were getting ready to vault the podium rather than read from it. They whistle, applaud, and whoop. Someone even yells, “Go, Rod!” With knowing, almost weary aplomb, Rod raises his hand to quiet the masses. He mutters “Thank you” a couple of times into the microphone and then says, “Thank you, Star. Love that mist and epiphany stuff.”
Some in the audience chuckle and he smiles, “No, really. It was great,” but he’s just a little too coy to be sincere. He doesn’t fool me.
Quiet gradually falls over the audience as they watch Rod prepare himself to read by launching into a series of stretches normally associated with hatha-yoga. He expels a deep oojai breath and twists his torso, turning his neck from side to side, stretching himself into literary inspiration. He adjusts the microphone and rubs a hand over his face.
“Wow,” he says. “It always takes me a moment to get into a comfortable place, mentally, physically, spiritually. Because that’s where poetry is at—in this great alignment of all aspects of your being. You know what I’m saying?”
He looks out into the audience and the acolytes nod. I, on the other hand, can now hear only the florid voices of dissenting parliamentarians, who are occasionally right, as is the case when they scream: Get off the bloody stage, you pretentious wanker!
“So, here’s the deal,” Rod says. “They wanted me to choose some of my favorite poems to read. And I did that. So I’m going to read poems by some great writers: Rod McKuen, Jim Morrison, Yeats. But I also chose some of my own work because I think any poet should list himself as being among his favorites. If I don’t like my work then who else will? Self-love is the nucleus of creative expression.”
He cracks his neck again.
“Okay. This first one is called ‘Burnt Sienna.’ It was inspired by a little trip to Italy that I took with my wife last year. A much-needed vacation. And Siena was a place where I got in touch with a lot of”—he scans the air above him for the perfect poetic phrase—“heavy shit.”
A few people giggle but Rod remains grimly serious as he adjusts the microphone and begins to read.
“Curtains billowing in the afternoon breeze,
White sails of desire
Soaring through the windows of my mind.
You
Under me
Naked as a jay bird
Andiamo, mi amore
We hear in the streets below
As our bodies find that
Wild metronomic passion
Your mouth on my shoulder
My duomo rising with the hot life force
And then
A release, resolution
Basta!
And I lie next to you
Spent
like so many lire
I rise to the window while you sleep
And look out over the rooftops of Siena
Burnt from the sun
Or from our sudden blaze of passion?
I take a swig of tepid Evian
And remember I am forty years old today.”
The audience murmurs appreciatively, but doesn’t applaud, which seems to surprise Rod because he says, “Let me see if I can read one you really like.”
As a poet, the man should be burned in effigy, not photographed, but I start taking pictures anyway—a few from the side, one with the audience in the foreground. Then I move to the center aisle, walking lightly to minimize the creaking, and shoot Rod head-on as he fiddles with his sheaf of poems. I snap a shot just as he runs his hand through his hair, and then he stops his search for the crowd-pleasing poem and looks up from the podium.
“Stop doing that,” he says.
I turn around and look at the audience, thinking he must be referring to their whispering because the room falls silent. I turn back to him and take a couple more shots.
“I said stop doing that,” he repeats, only this time he says it when the room is quiet. I look around and find that all eyes are on me, and his meaning dawns on me yet doesn’t seem possible. After all, I’m from the L.A. Times. What aspiring poet wouldn’t kill to have his poetry reading covered by a newspaper with a circulation of over a million?
“You want me to stop?” I ask.
“Yes, I want you to stop. It’s the second time I’ve told you.”
I feel a slight dampness under my arms and my heart beats faster. Maybe he doesn’t know that I’m from the newspaper. Maybe he thinks I’m just a fan.
“I don’t know if Sage told you, but I’m from the L.A. Times?” I ask tentatively, as if using an inflection might make me more like Sage and therefore semitolerable to Rod.
“I don’t care where you’re from,” Rod says into the microphone. “You need to stop taking pictures. Now.”
In that moment of humiliation, I look over at Sage, desperate for some kind of support. But she refuses to contradict Rod or even look at me. No doubt she has learned when to stand in the path of the actor’s egotistical tornado and when to dive into the cellar. She’s letting this one blow on through.
The only person who does look at me is Nathan Janning, whose rather shocked and sympathetic expression offers some comfort but no refuge. He doesn’t have a voice here either.
“So, relax and sit down,” Rod says a bit more lightly. “Who knows? You might actually learn something.”
Most people would have sat down. Had it happened several months ago, when my father was still alive and I wasn’t subsumed by regret and grief, I might have written Rod Boyle off as an asshole and found my chair, too, abandoning any urge to fight. But all of the emotion I had been pushing away into dark, stagnant pools, the anger that occasionally seeped out over some irritation or perceived injustice, now careens around me and courses through me and subverts any rational thought. As Trudy might say, I go plumb crazy.
Like Clint Eastwood in a high noon shoot-out, I lift my camera, switch the shutter to automatic, and fire away frame after frame. Through the lens, I watch the contortions of his tanned face speed by as the drama unfolds: first Rod’s eyes closed, mouth open—looking like someone had thrown cold water on him; then a finger pointing at me; then his white teeth clenched as he sputters out the words, “I don’t know who the fuck you think you are! Sage, do something, goddamn it!”
I turn to snap a quick shot of Nathan Janning, who smiles at the situation.
Sage rises shakily and asks, “Excuse me, but he wants you to stop?”
I take a picture of her too, just for kicks, and say, “Yeah. I don’t think I’m getting his good side.”
That makes people laugh, but Rod isn’t one of them.
“Get the hell out of here!” he yells.
I turn on my heel and head out the door and into the parking lot. Despite my bravado, my heart pounds, and I can hear only the roar of a car engine and the frantic squeaking of my running shoes as I try not to run to my car. I want to get away from the scene of confrontation, fearful in my irrational mind that Rod just might commandeer Sage and company into an angry, bad-poetry posse.
Fortunately, the mob doesn’t form, but I find out the next morning from Cecil Plainfield that the trouble isn’t over.
“We have a problem,” he says to me as I walk into his office at 9:00 A.M. sharp.
“I can explain. The key thing is I got the shots.”
“You got a lot more than that. The head of publicity at Five-Star Films called the editor last night and he was—”
Just then an underling arrives and waits tentatively in the doorway. Cecil motions him in, signs a piece of paper, and hands it to him. He turns away and Cecil asks if he would be so kind as to shut the door behind him, which he does.
“The head of publicity is very, very angry,” Cecil says as he stands with his fingertips gently touching his desk. “Sage Henley told him you treated Rod Boyle horribly.”
“I treated him horribly? It was the other way around. He told me not to take any pictures of him.”
“And you did anyway?”
“Of course I did. That was my assignment. I had to get the pictures.”
“Julia, we are not talking about some celebrity coming out of the Hollywood police station. You don’t go around insulting stars over something as minuscule as a poetry reading.”
“But what was I supposed to do?”
“Just sit there. You still would have gotten paid.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“That’s Hollywood. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you, and the studios feed the media whether we like it or not.” Cecil starts to sit down but thinks better of it, no doubt waiting for me to leave in defeat. I search my mind for some way out.
“People in the audience have probably forgotten about it already,” I say.
“Maybe they have but Rod hasn’t and Five-Star certainly hasn’t.”
“What can one movie studio do to you?”
That’s when Cecil’s tersely polite facade begins to crack. He looks at me, shakes his head, and picks up a nearby copy of yesterday’s movie section of the paper.
“See these ads?” He holds up the page and points like a schoolteacher. “They are money for us—lots of money. Now, I don’t think Five-Star is angry enough to start pulling them, but it’s definitely damaged our relationship, not to mention the reputation of the paper with them and therefore possibly other studios.” He folds the pages and drops them on his desk. “And that means I’ve got to cozy up to Five-Star’s publicity people even more than I do now, which I didn’t think was humanly possible, so that they’ll forget about this incident and give me first dibs on interviewing the latest celebrity sensation in their latest forgettable film. Quid pro quo. So I assure you: only one movie studio can do quite a lot of damage.”
“I can’t believe this.”
“Well, neither can the arts editor. She wanted to try to hold you responsible in some way, which she can’t do legally. I told her I would forfeit your pay, which seemed to appease her. I know it’s a cliché, but you probably won’t work in this town again—at least not for the L.A. Times or for any studios.”
“Would an apology help?”
“Hollywood means never having to say you’re sorry,” Cecil says. “You just take the blame, get exiled, and fade away.”
“But I’m a nobody. Who cares what I did?”
“I’ll let you in on a little secret. The smaller you are the crazier they get. The studio can pull rank with impunity. They know you’re a nobody. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Five-Star is getting back at us for reporting about Fiona Simone getting busted for crack. As if we had a choice not to run the story when it’s all over the national news.”
It’s beginning to sink in. All of my work over the years—the phone calls, combing the city for interesting photos, the networking—ruined by one little incident. I want to be brave and not give in to that nauseating feeling of despair and fear that makes my stomach sink the way it might if I were, say, dangled by one leg over the edge of a cliff. But it’s no use, and I feel the tears coming on when I think about the prospect of starting over again, of staying at Mangia! with no end in sight.
Cecil quickly moves from behind his desk, walks the three steps with me to the door again, and says, “Don’t worry. There are plenty of other jobs in this city.” I could beg to differ, but I don’t.
He shuts the door as soon as I clear the threshold. I take the elevator down to my car and sit behind the wheel, sobbing for about twenty minutes before I can calm myself. I finally regain my composure and try to figure out where to go because I don’t want to be alone.
I go home anyway and call Trudy, but she doesn’t answer. Just dialing her number filters her and Harlan’s kindness back to me, and I realize how much I miss Trudy. Even if you live with people for just three days, you remember how nice it is to sit in the same room with another person. You don’t even need to talk. And there’s something about her knowing my history, my people, that makes me feel visible, real, and connected to a world outside of this nomadic city.
I make a cup of tea, try unpacking, try doing the dishes. I can sustain every activity I begin for only about five minutes. What would Trudy say if I told her the tide that turned became the tsunami that destroyed everything? She might say I wouldn’t want to work for people like that anyway. And maybe she’s right. But what about my role in everything? How do I justify that? I wonder whether I should even tell Claire what happened and decide that I won’t. I already feel like a screw-up when I compare myself to her, and what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her. I lie down on the couch, the only place in my hovel that feels clean and comfortable, and decide to stay submerged for a while—floating deep within the roiling ocean, as silent as the fish who dart in between jagged coral reefs.
8
A Bicycle Built for One
It’s 11:00 A.M. and I’m looking at photos from the “High Tea” shoot to make sure the scones and the lettuce in the finger sandwiches have the right amount of shine. The whole set-up, with its centerpiece of ornate silver, is designed to give readers “a sumptuous air of civility and elegance.” If only they knew the ugly truth.
When we did the shoot last week, I tried to be as unobtrusive as possible, silently dabbing the lettuce and scones with my mayonnaise-covered Q-tip, while Sally circled around me like a territorial beast. She didn’t fully trust Stone ever since she claimed he botched a spread on shortcake, so she decided to be a fly on the wall during the whole thing. Unfortunately, I was caught in the middle. Stone told me, “more glaze” or “more lettuce” or “more shaving cream on the strawberry tart” to which Sally countered, “Are you sure?” He said yes and she said that he knew best. This kind of exchange took place at least ten times during the hour-long affair, each one becoming increasingly terse. It was awful.
So I’m not surprised when Sally walks into my cubicle this morning and orders me to “check that moron’s work.” She has a habit of reading whatever is on my desk, and I am fortunate enough to have tucked the brochure about therapy into my drawer. She examines her cuticles as she says, “If he got too much glaze on those scones, I’m going to hang him by his balls.” Then she turns on her heel and walks down the hall and into her office. As usual, Sally will wind up calling him a genius when she sees the results. Stone may be silent, but he knows what he’s doing.
The advantage of being an underling is that I don’t have to make decisions that might anger Sally. I simply do what I am told and don’t ask questions, which is all I seem capable of anyway. Since the Rod Boyle disaster two weeks ago, I feel worse than ever about being at this job, in this city, in my apartment—stymied by the harsh, myopic reality of my L.A. world.
Like an automaton, I trudge out of my apartment every morning, climb into my Honda Accord, and drive the surface streets to work. My eyes squint at the hazy, terminal brownness in the air, withered palm trees, garish billboards cutting off the horizon, homeless people sleeping outside of Ralph’s supermarket.
Lately, I’ve had trouble falling asleep, so I find myself channel surfing through late-night talk shows, old movies, cooking demonstrations, and trashy celebrity biographies. On nights when the tube is just too inane to watch, I’ll crawl back in bed and turn on the radio. I find the most comfort in classical music, or mystery theater on the AM dial, because Trudy and Harlan’s nightly ritual involved listening to those kinds of programs, and hearing the dramatic voices and melodies in the dark brings the farm and them right back to me. Yet that comfort is short-lived. And when my senile neighbor stands outside my door and begins yelling at me at 1:00 A.M., it’s enough to make me think about going back to the farm for good.
Mrs. Sanchez’s outbursts used to be manageable, directed toward things in her own apartment, but she decided, somehow, that I am her mortal enemy and now hurls all of her hostility at me. She stands in the hallway outside of my door and in her broken English yells, “I know who you are. El diablo, el diablo. Come out! Are you afraid? I know who you are.” Sometimes she bangs a pot with a spoon after she says it. Other times I hear her spitting. Most people in the building know she’s crazy. Even if someone did hear her raging outside my door, they wouldn’t bother to walk up to the third floor to see what’s wrong. They would say, It’s only Mrs. Sanchez.
When I couldn’t take it anymore, I told her to stop and go back to her apartment, but that only made her yell louder. I called the police in an effort to rein her in, but she had stopped screaming by the time they arrived, so they could do nothing. My neighbor Ellen on the first floor speaks Spanish and is the only person who Mrs. Sanchez allows near her. When asked about why she yells at me, Mrs. Sanchez denies ever having done so. I called the landlord and found out that the poor woman has no family left on earth to claim her. The landlord has contacted a social worker who is arranging for her to be put in a home at the state’s expense, but it’s a long and complicated process.
During the two weeks that I’ve been back at work, I’ve been keeping to myself and haven’t told anyone except Claire about anything—Constance, Mrs. Sanchez, or my insomnia. Stone keeps asking if I’m all right because I keep spacing out during shoots. I say I’m fine and try not to look at his greasy strings of hair. Claire tells me he’s a nice guy, but I think he’s too weird and grisly to feel comfortable around.
Despite the benefit of our closeness, seeing Trudy again perhaps accounts for why the image of my mother dying finds me in those sleepless hours. I suppose the last thing my mother taught me was how to die. She was graceful and refined even as she took her last breath. I always imagined it would be a gruesome scene, gasping and thrashing and calling out the names of loved ones. Something out of a TV movie. But it wasn’t like that at all.
