Hollywood Ending

HOLLYWOOD ENDING

Kathy Charles was born in Melbourne in 1978. She works in the film industry and divides her time between Melbourne and Los Angeles.
Hollywood Ending
is her first novel.

KATHY CHARLES
HOLLYWOOD
ENDING

TEXT PUBLISHING MELBOURNE AUSTRALIA

The Text Publishing Company
Swann House
22 William Street
Melbourne Victoria 3000
Australia
www.textpublishing.com.au

Copyright © Kathy Charles 2009

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

First published by The Text Publishing Company 2009

Cover design by W.H. Chong
Page design by Susan Miller
Typeset by J&M Typesetting
Printed and bound by Griffin Press

National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Charles, Kathy, 1978-

Hollywood ending / Kathy Charles.

ISBN: 9781921520679 (pbk.)

A823.4

For Christine and Peter,
who give me life.
And Evan,
until death do us part.

CONTENTS

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

TWENTY-FIVE

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SEVEN

TWENTY-EIGHT

TWENTY-NINE

THIRTY

THIRTY-ONE

THIRTY-TWO

THIRTY-THREE

THIRTY-FOUR

THIRTY-FIVE

THIRTY-SIX

THIRTY-SEVEN

THIRTY-EIGHT

THIRTY-NINE

FORTY

FORTY-ONE

FORTY-TWO

FORTY-THREE

AUTHOR'S NOTE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ONE

We hung over the fence at the Ambassador Hotel, watching the demolition. Benji stood beside me taking photos, his mouth open in disbelief. He was determined to document every moment. The bulldozers tore into the side of the hotel and the sound of crushing mortar made me feel sick. The Ambassador had a long, star-filled history. The building was a holy shrine for us, and this was like watching a death.

For the past year we had attended protest marches and signed online petitions. During that time the hotel had been used as a movie set and a cheap location for sci-fi and comic book conventions. But finally the decision had been made. The Ambassador had no future and the demolition was to go ahead. Los Angeles is a town that exorcises its demons—cursed properties are seized and razed.

In the golden days of Hollywood, the Oscars were held there. Marilyn Monroe lounged by the pool. In 1968, the allure of the hotel was tarnished forever when Senator Robert F. Kennedy delivered a heartfelt victory speech in the ballroom after winning the California primary, only to be gunned down as he tried to make his exit through the hotel pantry. Some people thought the CIA was in on it, but the general consensus was that RFK was assassinated by a Palestinian immigrant with a beef against the Kennedys, just another run-of-the-mill nut job in a town full of them. I preferred the theory that the Palestinian was just a patsy, that he'd been hypnotised into killing the Senator, like something out of
The Manchurian Candidate
.

Benji said he had a piece of the floor from directly beneath RFK's head. He bought it off eBay from a seller who claimed to be one of the workers hired to tear the building down. Benji said the dark stain on the corner that looked like barbecue sauce was actually Kennedy's blood.

Our mission for the day was to remove something from the demolition site with our own two hands. Benji had dressed in combat fatigues, convinced it would help him blend into the scenery. A couple of ex-cops in black T-shirts patrolled the perimeter, German Shepherds on short leads trailing beside them. We looked for ways to get through the fence undetected but couldn't manoeuvre around the guards. The Ambassador was just a skeleton now, its guts removed. After we'd stood around for an hour, hands in our pockets and staring through the chicken wire, one of the guards came over. He was wearing aviator sunglasses and had a gun in his holster.

‘Can I help you kids with something?' he asked.

‘Good morning officer,' Benji said politely, pointing at the crumbled ruins of the Ambassador. ‘Any chance we could come in and watch history unfold up close?'

The guard shook his head. ‘Private property,' he said, tipping his head at a sign that read WARNING—DEATH. ‘Dangerous, too. Why, a piece of rock could come flying off one of those bulldozers and hit you—bam!—square in the eye.' He threaded his thumbs through his belt, chewed gum with the gusto of a cowboy and stared into the sun like the sheriff of Deadwood. It was then I knew we would get what we needed.

‘Can I make you a proposition?' Benji suggested. He removed a black, studded wallet from his back pocket, snapped it open and pulled out a ten-dollar note. The wallet rattled on its chain. Benji lived to negotiate.

‘What do you mean, proposition?' the guard asked, adjusting his cap.

Benji handed him a note: freshly minted, clean and crisp.

The guard paused for a moment, took the bill and examined it. He held it to the sun as if the light would confirm it was real. ‘What the hell is this all about?' he asked, looking around to make sure no one had seen the exchange.

A crane crashed through the ceiling of the hotel and a dust cloud made its way across the lot, shrouding everyone in ash. Benji coughed and brushed dirt from his clothes. ‘We want some bricks,' he said.

The guard stared at him. ‘Bricks?'

‘Flooring too, if you can find any. But bricks would be a good start.'

The guard gazed out across the site, incredulous. His boss was sitting in the watch-house taking a nap, feet hanging out the window.

‘Make it twenty,' he said, turning back and licking his lips.

Benji had been expecting this, too. He took another ten from his wallet and handed it over. He always carried many denominations, always started small. Once people knew what we were after they would jack up the price—capitalism at its finest.

‘All right then,' the guard said, and grinned. He folded the bills and put them in his top pocket, then set off at a jog across the lot. Benji let out a high-pitched whistle and the guard turned around.

‘Not that way,' Benji yelled over the bulldozers and cranes. ‘That way.'

He pointed to where the ballroom had been and the guard changed direction. A minute later he was running back, two full bricks in his hands. He carried them against his chest, puffing and wheezing all the way. He dropped the bricks on the ground and started to cough.

‘Careful,' Benji complained. ‘I paid for those.'

Just like you paid for the one off eBay, I thought…only this time he could authenticate it.

The guard spat on the ground then composed himself.

‘What the hell do you kids want those for anyway?' he asked. ‘What's so special about a couple of bricks?'

Benji picked up the bricks and cradled one in each hand. He held the smooth, red surface against his face and breathed in, then cast a victorious glance in my direction.‘Feel this,' he said, handing the brick to the guard, who gave me a quizzical look.

‘Take it,' I said. ‘It won't bite.'

He took the brick, sniffed it, weighed it in his hand, then handed it back to Benji. ‘It's a brick,' he concluded.

Benji shook his head. ‘It's not just a brick. This piece of building, this element, is a living, breathing organism. This brick has witnessed some of the most amazing events in American history. It was there when
Gone with the Wind
received the Oscar for Best Picture. It watched Marilyn Monroe being photographed by the swimming pool. Perhaps it made up part of the room where Jean Harlow stayed, or Howard Hughes, or Nixon. Listen.'

He held the brick up to his ear as if it were a shell. The air was suddenly still and the crash of demolition momentarily ceased.

‘It's telling us its secrets,' Benji said. ‘These pieces of building, they are part of history. They talk to us. They tell us stories. Robert Kennedy might have been our President if he hadn't died here, on this very site. Wouldn't America be a very different country today if that had happened? And how do we repay him? We tear the place down, as if what happened here doesn't matter one bit. People will forget it was ever there.'

There was an explosion and rubble rained down over the ground. The guard jumped and spun around as if he'd seen a ghost. Benji pulled a plastic bag from his pocket. I took some newspaper from my backpack and handed it to him. He wrapped the bricks in the paper, lovingly folded down the edges and placed them in the bag. The guard scratched his head.

‘You kids are crazy,' he said, and started to walk away.

Benji looked at me and smiled, pleased with himself.

‘Did you have to freak that guy out?' I asked.

Benji laughed. We walked over to his car and he put the bricks on the back seat.

‘You wanna put seat belts on them too?' I asked.

TWO

We drove to Barney's Beanery in West Hollywood where we sat at Janis Joplin's booth and ordered poached eggs with hollandaise. The food at Barney's wasn't the greatest but the ambience more than made up for it. In the old days Barney's was a hangout for Hollywood's rock elite, like Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison. Now it was full of tourists and frat boys with their girlfriends, playing pool. No one cared about the significance of the place anymore, no one except a few educated tourists, and us. Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison were now members of the Forever 27 Club, along with Kurt Cobain and Janis Joplin. It was kind of creepy how many awesome musicians had died at at the same exact age of twenty-seven, but at least they were in good company.

Benji drank coffee and loaded photos onto his laptop from his camera. I looked at the ceiling where one of Barney's old tables had been hammered up so that everyone could see it. Someone had scratched their name into the table larger than the others. The lettering was messy and jagged but the name was unmistakeable. Janis. It was rumoured she'd had her last screwdriver at Barney's, one final drink before departing this world in a pool of her own vomit. I imagined her in all her junked-up glory, plying her face with pastrami on rye and hacking at the table with a bread knife. I felt honoured to be sitting in her booth.