Breach of Promise (4 page)

After getting Maddie to bed I went to the computer to check out an industry website. It was my way of keeping up on the business I had my little toe in. While I was scrolling around I saw a link to an item that mentioned Antonio Troncatti and some “wild times” in Rome during the shooting of
Conquered.
Naturally I headed right for it.

As I did, I could feel my heart pulsing in my chest, like I knew what I would find. It had the feel of something inevitable and bad.
Here’s what I read.

A helpless, hot, grinding suction set to work on my guts. My hands and arms almost felt numb. And pictures formed in my mind, Paula and Troncatti. Couldn’t help it. I imagined the worst.

Shaking, I got up, looked at the clock. Figuring as best I could, I made it nine in the morning in Rome. I grabbed the kitchen phone and called the contact number I had for the set. I got the voice-mail message of Sting Ray Stephens, the PR person. I didn’t leave a message.

I called Paula’s hotel. The guy at the desk barely understood English. I said I was Paula Montgomery’s husband.
He said something in Italian and hung up.
I wanted to start an international incident right then.
I went to the computer and e-mailed Paula.
I need to talk to you right away. Can you call me on the cell ASAP?
That was it.
Then I sat staring at the monitor for I don’t know how long, chewing my thumbnail. It even bled, but I kept right on chewing.
No call.
I think I fell asleep around three
A
.
M
., watching an old Barbara Stanwyck movie on AMC.

Maddie knew something was up as I drove her to her day camp. “Why aren’t you talking, Daddy?”
Because your mother is eating my heart, honey. Because

Mommy is probably in bed with a sleazy Italian director while I’m here taking care of you. Wanna Happy Meal?
“Sorry, cupcake.”
“Your eyes look scrunchy.”
I tried to unscrunch them, but it didn’t work.
With Maddie safely at camp I drove around the corner from the park (somehow having Maddie close by, even though she couldn’t see me, helped). I called the hotel in Rome again and had to leave another message.
I tried to keep the anger out of it. Maybe there was an explanation to all this. Imagination can be a terrible thing.
Looking at myself in the rearview mirror, I thought I’d be ripe for a remake of
The Picture of Dorian Gray.
The bags under my eyes were like suitcases. There would be no need for makeup.
A star in the making.

“Ya think?” I said, trying to sound like I had some energy left for acting.
“Darling, you have an audition at two.”
“Is it a vampire role? I’m ready.”
Nancy Radford, my auburn-haired, middle-aged agent, pursed her lips. She was not in the mood for jocularity. She wanted to get me work.
Nancy herself worked for Talent Across the Board, a boutique agency in Encino. I was not a big-agency guy (as Paula soon would be—
Variety
said that Phyl was going over to AEA and bringing Paula with her).
Nancy had taken me on when I was hardly more than an exjock with all my teeth. She apparently saw something in me, enough to suggest acting lessons from a guy, Marty North, who has a studio in the Valley.
It was a good move, and I learned my stuff from Marty, who was a graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. I got some things going after that, some commercials, some income. The rest of my income came from waitering jobs, the best at Josephina’s in Santa Monica, where Roland worked. He got me the gig.
“Listen, kiddo,” Nancy said, “this is for a Showtime Movie, a great supporting role, and they’re not insisting on a name.”
Most casting lists for good parts insisted on “name only.” In other words, an actor who wasn’t me. An actor people had heard of.
“What kind of role?”
“Cop,” Nancy said. “Here’s the description.”
She handed me a copy of a fax. On the sheet it gave a oneparagraph sketch of a guy named Dex Wainright—thirty-two, burned-out cop, alcoholic, dealing with family stress.
“I can play this part,” I said, as if the casting fairy had dropped the perfect role in my lap.
“That’s why I’m sending you up.”
Just before I left, Nancy said, “How are things at home?”
Had she been reading the same gossip pages about Paula? Was this story all over town? Was I being whispered about in cafés and behind closed doors?
I looked at her with a cocked head. “Why?”
“Just asking. I haven’t seen Maddie in a while.”
“Maddie is Maddie. She’s a survivor.”
“Who’s watching her?”
“She’s at camp.”
“What about after? Will that ever be a prob?”
“Prob?”
“Reason I’m asking, it’s got to be hard, with Paula gone. You managing all right?”
Don’t I look it? Don’t I look like the bloom of youth?
“Sure.”
“You know,” Nancy said, “maybe now’s a good time for you to think about what you really want to do.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Nancy shrugged. “The business is tough enough. You have to really want it, more than anything.”
Putting my fists on her desk and leaning over, I said, “Nancy, I want this. I need this. I am an actor. That’s what I do. I’m not going to stop.”
She smiled. “Just what I wanted to hear. Go and make me proud.”

The call finally came at 1:12
P
.
M
.
I remember looking at the time on the phone, as if I needed to get it exactly, as if Jack Webb would come out of the grave as the
Dragnet
guy and ask me for the facts. I was in Starbucks on Franklin because my audition was just down the street at a studio on La Brea. I took the phone outside so it wouldn’t cut out. Also so I could yell if I needed to.
“I’m so sorry,” Paula said, her voice sounding remarkably clear. “We were shooting in the country for a few days and the whole crew was out there.”
“How’d it go?” I was keeping my voice as placid as possible. I wanted to get verbal cues from
her.
“Oh, fine,” she said. The verbal cue I got was
discomfort.
Something was definitely up.
“Great,” I said.
“You don’t sound too excited.”
“Neither do you.”
“Mark, it’s late. I’m really tired.”
“That makes two of us. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
“How’s Maddie?”
Slick change. “Maddie’s great. Maddie’s wonderful. I’ve been spending a lot of time with her, as you may well know.”
“Mark, what is going on?”
Should I let it all out now? In one big torrent? Here outside a Hollywood coffeehouse so the ratty-looking guy at the bus stop could hear me?
“You know, the Internet’s great,” I said. “I can’t be there with you, but it’s the next best thing. I get reports on the movie, how it’s going.”
Long silence. “You saw it.”
“Of course I saw it. What, were you going to keep it a secret from me?”
“No, Mark. This is so stupid.”
“What’s stupid?”
“This whole thing. We should both be happy, shouldn’t we?”
That seemed like a pretty loaded question. She was preparing me.
“Tell me straight up,” I said.
“Tell you what?”
“What’s going on with you and Troncatti?”
She whispered a curse, the kind that signals defeat. Or getting caught.
“We shouldn’t do this over the phone,” she said.
The guy at the bus stop was looking at me, like he could overhear the conversation. He couldn’t, of course, but it seemed like there was a spotlight on me and all the cars were not stopped because of the red light, but because they wanted to watch me lose control.
“No, let’s,” I said. “Let’s do it right now. Did you sleep with him?”
The silence was my answer.
“How many times?”
“Mark, please. For Maddie’s sake, for our sakes, let’s just wait until I get back. We need to talk.”
The Mayans, I once read, used to cut the hearts out of their human sacrifices while they were still alive. That way, the high priest could hold up the heart while it was still beating, showing the people the power of life and death at the same time.
I punched the End button and powered off the cell. I had an audition. It was time for my big break.

There are times when an actor sees something in the eyes of the casting people. A mixture of scorn and pity. A look of absolute amazement that here is a person who thought he could act, who thought he might have a future in this business. The room becomes an orchestra of forced smiles and coughs behind closed fists.

“Thanks for coming in, Mark,” the director said. But it sounded like some guy saying,
Abandon all hope.
Funny thing was I didn’t really care. All I could think about was Paula. Losing her. Feeling like a prize chump. Wanting to kill Troncatti. Wanting to die myself.
Fighting traffic back into the Valley I almost got in a couple of road-rage confrontations. It wasn’t me driving; it was some version of Mr. Hyde. Only the thought of Maddie, waiting to be picked up, kept me from totally freaking out.
I was half an hour late to the park.
“We do not appreciate this, Mr. Gillen,” the matronly gestapo agent with the Camp Sunshine T-shirt said to me through the car window.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “Traffic.”
“We’re not being paid to babysit, you know.”
You vill obey!
“Yes, again, very sorry.” My voice was vacant, far away, like one of the pod people in
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Maddie was getting into her car seat in the back. She did not look pleased.
“Where were you, Daddy?”
“I’m sorry. Let’s go home and eat.”
“I want to go to Wendy’s.”
“We had Wendy’s yesterday. How about I cook us up something nice at home?”
“I want to go to Wendy’s.”
We were pulling onto Laurel Canyon now, into traffic. A black Cadillac Esplanade, regal and shiny in the late afternoon sun, cut in front of my Accord without signaling. I honked. Hard. The driver, some yoohoo with a cell phone to his ear, momentarily pulled the device from his head so he could give me a one-fingered salute.
“I said Wendy’s, Daddy.”
“No.”
“Yes!”
There is a famous newsreel clip of Benito Mussolini, fascist dictator over Italy during World War II, looking at a cheering crowd. He folds his arms, juts out his chin, and protrudes his lower lip.
I am your master,
he seems to be thinking.
Bow down to me.
I mention this only because that is the pose Madeleine Erica Gillen took whenever she wanted her way. Like now.
“We are going home,” I said.
This time Maddie screamed, as loudly as she could. “NOOOOOOO!”
I almost hit a kid on a bike when she did that. Adrenaline blasted through my body, mixing with all the anger and hurt and lack of sleep that had been pooling up in me for hours.
Without a thought between scream and act, I half turned and slapped my child’s arm. Hard. It made a crisp popping sound, like a gunshot.
The pause that followed was the worst part. In that silence I could feel Maddie’s shock, her sense of betrayal. Never had I struck Maddie, not even the time when she was three and refused to use the potty and deliberately peed on the floor in front of me.
In that long, haunting pause I thought I had lost the last thing on earth that loved me.
And then she wailed. She cried like I’d never heard her before.

Our apartment was on the second floor of a building on Archwood, around the corner from the Department of Water and Power building. It had a reasonable rent for the space, and was close to the freeway. That made it convenient for Paula to get to Burbank for her soap and me to get to auditions in various parts of the city. I could reach Hollywood in seven minutes, the west side in fifteen to thirty, depending on traffic.

As soon as we walked in, Maddie ran to her room, slamming the door. I waited a minute, then poked my head in her room.
“Maddie?”
She did not look up from the floor, where she was working on a coloring book.
“Maddie?” I knelt down.
“I’m coloring.”
“Can I talk to you?”
“I’m coloring.”
“I see that. What are you coloring?”
“This.” Still not looking up.
“I did something terribly wrong,” I said.
Half a look.
“I was angry and I hit you.”
“It hurt, Daddy.”
“I know. I was so wrong. And I’m so sorry. Do you think you can forgive me?”
Now she looked full on, confused.
Forgive.
Something her little five-year-old brain had not yet taken in as a lasting concept. A word, I realized, I had not used around her or Paula. Now I was asking her to understand it.
“When somebody does something wrong or bad to you and wants you not to hate him, you can forgive that person. That means you sort of decide not to be mad about it and pretend everything is okay again.”
Pretend? Was that the right word?
“I don’t hate you, Daddy,” Maddie said, looking at the coloring book and the sienna crayon in her hand. “But it really hurt.”
Enough reasoning. I picked her up and held her close. She let me. I tried not to let her see my tears. Her arms were tight around my neck.
I walked her to our sliding door, and onto our little balcony. It was too early for the moon, too late for the sun. So I swayed with her in the dusk, and that was enough.