Authors: Joe Keenan
“All right! Calm down! Did I say we wouldn’t come? I just need to talk it over with Claire.”
“Talk all you like, just get her out here. And by the way, you’re
welcome!
”
“Give me a break, okay? This is all a bit abrupt.”
“That’s how things happen out here,” he said, all cheery again. “It’s a very impulsive town. I’m fitting in beautifully. See
you at LAX!”
“Don’t hang up!”
“I’m late for a date. Your tickets will be at the counter. Bobby arranged it.”
“Bobby who?”
I asked, but he was gone. I replaced the receiver and turned to Claire, whose face had taken on that stern squinty look it
gets whenever Gilbert descends on our playground proffering candy.
“Well! How’s that for good news? He’s found us a job!”
“I gathered.”
“Hollywood, baby!” I said in my best Sgt. Bilko voice. “Our ship has come in!”
“Have you counted the lifeboats?” she replied and exited to the hall.
I locked the door and caught up with her in my building’s cramped vestibule-cum-gentleman’s lounge. She sailed grimly into
the drizzly night and I fell in beside her, wondering how on earth I could coax her onto that plane.
Y
OU MIGHT SUPPOSE THAT
a high-paying Hollywood job would not be a difficult thing to sell to a heartsick lady playwright whose most recent offspring
had expired quietly in the cradle. You would only suppose this, however, if you didn’t know Gilbert.
Claire knew Gilbert.
And even if she were willing, in the hope of financial gain, to overlook his complete lack of talent, his nonexistent scruples
and altogether tenuous grasp of reality, there remained still his most unique and troubling feature, i.e., the spectacular,
almost supernatural rottenness of his luck.
Gilbert’s friends and victims have long debated what lies at the root of his uncanny knack for misfortune. Some feel it’s
karmic payback for misdeeds in a previous life in which he must have been, at the very least, a Cossack. Others maintain that
a touchy sorceress must have been given the bum’s rush at his christening. Whatever the reason, bad luck trails Gilbert like
some relentless paparazzo. It dogs his footsteps, pops up where least expected, and rains disaster upon him and any hapless
confederates he’s cajoled along for the ride. Twice in the past Claire had (thanks solely to me) become embroiled in Gilbert’s
affairs with results ranging from mere humiliation to mortal peril. She was not eager as such to enlist for a third tour of
duty, no matter how generous the signing bonus.
I understood her apprehension, feeling more than a shiver of it myself. But, convinced that my alternative was Milo and necktie
land, I’d decided to view Gilbert’s previous debacles as a mere bad-luck streak that
had,
after all, to end
sometime.
“I can’t believe,” I said, as we settled into our favorite booth at Carmine’s, “that you’re thinking of refusing this.”
“I can’t believe you’re not.”
“C’mon! This is exactly what we need! After all we’ve been through. The timing’s perfect!”
“That,” said Claire, “is what scares me. It’s so typical of Gilbert. He always oils around with these offers just when you’re
at your most vulnerable. He’s like some—”
“Friend in need?”
“Opportunistic infection. And by the way, what’s this nonsense about him passing us off as a team? You don’t find
that
alarming?” asked Claire, who’d sooner have collaborated with Al Qaeda.
I replied that though a creative partnership with Gilbert was unlikely to prove the maxim that many hands make light the work,
his motive for proposing it was obvious. He’d clearly used his formidable powers of persuasion to talk his way into a job,
then, fearing himself not up to the task, drafted us as partners. “And a lucky thing for us, considering how bad we are at
selling ourselves. Anyway,” I added, playing my strongest card, “I can’t wait to see the look on Marco’s face when he hears
you’re scaling the heights in Hollywood.”
I could see that Claire had not yet viewed the matter from this perspective. Her scowl softened, and a smile, fleeting but
unmistakable, played across her lips. As any wronged lover knows, success is the best revenge, and nothing stokes ambition
like an unworthy ex begging to be left in the dust.
“He
never
took your career seriously. It’s one of the things I hated most about him.”
“It really is charming how willing you are to exploit my heartbreak for your own greedy purpose.”
“Your heartbreak,” I countered, “is half the reason we should go. What better time to take a free trip to Hollywood as guests
of a real live mogul! We’ll blow town, see LA. We’ll party with Gilbert and his mom—whom you
adore.
We’ll find out what the job is and if you don’t like it you’ll fly home. First class! At best it’s a job, at worst a vacation,
so cut the Cassandra routine and eat fast ’cause we need to pack.”
This tough-love approach, abetted by wine and more catty allusions to Marco, eventually won the day. She agreed to join me
so long as I understood that she was not committing to anything whatsoever.
Her subsequent references that night to our “glittering new careers” were all made in the droll manner of a governess humoring
her delusional charge. But for all her glib ironies I could detect in her quick smiles and flushed cheeks the first reluctant
stirrings of hope. I knew that beneath that wry, guarded exterior she burned with the girlish desire to win some small sliver
of Hollywood fame, then stab her sweetie in the eye with it.
My own optimism was less guarded and soared higher as the level in the wine bottle descended. I marveled at how my fortunes
had rebounded and chided myself for my earlier pessimism. How absurd that a man of my gifts and obviously shining future had
allowed himself to wallow in morbid, cravat-themed fantasies.
Swell talk show story though!
M
Y THOUGHTS WOULD NOT
return again to old Milo until a bleak and drizzly afternoon the following February.
Gilbert and I, reeling from the latest in a seemingly endless string of catastrophes, had wandered numbly into the Beverly
Hills Neiman Marcus in the preposterous hope that a spot of shopping might cheer us. We discovered a bar on the top floor
and agreed that a cocktail might soothe our nerves and quiet the facial tic I’d recently developed.
As I nibbled morosely on my olive, I glanced up and noticed the necktie counter, where a well-dressed man about my age was
meticulously arranging the latest merchandise. How cheerful he looked. How content to spend his days among so many pleasing
fabrics and designs. How blissfully unencumbered by lawsuits and threats of imminent incarceration.
The song playing over the Muzak system ended, and another began, something old and familiar from
South Pacific.
I couldn’t place the title, but hearing it, I felt a sharp, inexplicable pang.
“What’s this song?” I asked Gilbert.
He listened a moment.
“ ‘This Nearly Was Mine.’ Why?”
I
F THERE SHOULD BE AMONG MY
readers any underpaid couriers who are contemplating giving notice, I can tell them right now that there’s no more agreeable
place from which to do so than the first-class compartment of a 767 just after the free champagne’s come around.
“Carlos!” I said, ebulliently addressing my foul-tempered supervisor. “Cavanaugh here.”
“About fucking time!” replied Carlos, to whom an expletive-free sentence was a pale and juiceless thing. “Where the hell are
you?”
I told him, not omitting reference to the champagne. He countered incredibly that if I did not promptly report for duty I
could consider myself fired. I assured him that I comprehended the gravity of my situation but could not focus on it fully
at the moment as I’d just been handed a menu and couldn’t decide whether to have the merlot or cabernet with my steak au poivre.
“Any suggestions?”
He had one, of course, and, after making it, hung up.
As I pocketed my cell Claire nudged me and said, “Looks like the in-flight entertainment’s starting early.” She directed my
attention to a drama unfolding on the other side of the cabin. It involved a dispute between a large disgruntled businessman
and an aging Hollywood actress.
When I say she was an aging Hollywood actress, I do so not because I recognized her, for I did not. But everything about her
dress and bearing so clearly announced this as her station in life that a child of three, beholding her, would have lisped,
“Look, Mommy, an aging Hollywood actwess.”
The face was still pretty in a pixieish way with an upturned nose and a pert little chin. She’d traded in her wrinkles for
the taut, pink translucence of the frequently pulled and peeled. Her vivid orange hair was teased high in the front, cascading
down to a flip at the nape of her neck, giving her that aging cheerleader look familiar to anyone who has spent even two minutes
on Rodeo Drive. Her outfit was chic in a retro “cocktails with Ike and Mamie” sort of way. She wore a kelly green travel cape
and beneath that a blouse of copper silk with a high neck such as Katharine Hepburn favored in later life. Also deployed on
wattle-hiding duty was a flowing red silk scarf. Charm bracelets adorned both wrists, and her ears sparkled with costume diamonds
the size of doorknobs. This ensemble was finished by large dark glasses meant to convey the laughable pretense that she desired
anonymity.
She was sitting in an aisle seat, scribbling intently in a small notebook and ignoring the many-chinned fellow glaring down
at her.
“I said
excuse
me. You’re in my seat.”
She affected not to hear this and a passing flight attendant asked what the problem was.
“This woman’s in my seat and she won’t move.”
Aging Hollywood Actress looked up and removed her sunglasses, blinking strenuously in an unpersuasive show of surprise.
“I’m sorry, were you addressing me? I get so engrossed when I’m working!”
“I’m sorry,” said the attendant after verifying the man’s claim, “but this isn’t your seat. May I see your boarding pass?”
“There’s no point in my showing it to you. It’s a mistake. It says I’m supposed to be at the back of the plane.”
“Did you purchase a first-class ticket?”
“I didn’t purchase it. The producer of the play I was doing— fabulous production, raves everywhere — bought it for me. I’d
made it quite clear to him after my horrible flight east that I wanted first class going back. He said he’d see to it, but
then the lady at the counter — dreadful woman, I’m fling a complaint—claimed to know nothing about it and stuck me in the
back. Can you imagine!”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but you’ll have to return to your original seat.”
“Sorry. Quite impossible. I was recognized by the man next to me. He began asking one question after another so I had to get
as far away as possible!” She laughed ruefully. “The price of fame!”
“I see,” said the attendant, who clearly hadn’t an inkling who she was. “Look, I’m sorry for the mix-up —”
“Ah!” said the actress triumphantly. “So you admit there was a mix-up?”
The attendant said she’d instruct her cabin-class neighbor to respect her privacy but she had to return to her seat immediately
as she was holding up the flight.
The actress gasped dramatically. “Holding up the flight!” She turned and addressed the whole cabin, hoping to rally support.
“ ‘Holding up the flight,’ she says! As though I’m some sort of terrorist!
Me!!
” She gestured to her seatmate, a young Donna Karan–clad woman who’d been staring wretchedly out her window through the whole
contretemps. “Perhaps this young lady — or
someone,
” she added, pointedly eyeing the rest of us gawkers, “would be kind enough to change seats with me. I’d be immensely grateful.”
This request inspired a sudden cabinwide fascination with the in-flight magazine. The actress cast her eyes at the unchivalrous
souls around her, shook her head in disgust, and addressed the attendant.
“Send more champagne back to me. It’s the least I am owed.” And with that she rose and, donning her shades, indignantly withdrew.
There are few things so wounding to a young homosexual’s self-esteem as finding himself unable to identify a bejeweled Hollywood
actress over seventy, however obscure. Claire too found her vaguely familiar and we bandied names for a moment before turning
to the more pressing question of what films we should watch on our personal DVD players.
My savvier readers are no doubt stroking their chins and thinking, “This mystery woman—she’ll be back.” And of course she
will or I’d have left her out entirely. But our bizarre entanglement with Lily Malenfant (for that was her name) was still,
like so much else that lay before us, happily beyond our power to imagine. I didn’t think about her again for the rest of
the flight. I was too busy savoring the wine, the warm mixed nuts, and my frequent and pleasant chats with our handsome steward,
who somehow managed to coax from me the news that I was bound for Hollywood and cinematic glory.
G
ILBERT, TRUE TO FORM,
arrived at the terminal ten minutes after we’d retrieved our bags. I didn’t recognize him at first. His tan was very deep
and his chin now sported a Hollywood hipster goatee. He wore a tight, navy short-sleeve shirt and de rigueur Hollywood sunglasses,
a choice I took, incorrectly, to be satiric.
“Darlings!” he cried, embracing us both in a single hug. “Welcome to my town!”
“You’ve been here three weeks,” said Claire.
“Work fast, don’t I? Oh, Dimitri!”
A short, stocky man wearing a dark suit and an unfortunate ponytail materialized at our side wheeling a luggage cart.
“Dimitri, these are my dear friends and writing partners, Philip and Claire. Dimitri works for Max.”
The chauffeur nodded deferentially and, displaying surprising strength for a wee fatty, hoisted our bags onto the cart. He
murmured an order into a scarcely visible headset, then wheeled the cart outside, reaching the curb just as a limousine long
enough to bowl in pulled up. An assortment of onlookers stared at it, eager to see what celebrity it had come to fetch or
disgorge. Gilbert, never one to waste an opportunity for drama, made us hang back in the terminal till Dimitri had opened
the rear door for us. Then, shielding his face, he dashed from the terminal and into the car with a fleetness meant to suggest
years of paparazzi dodging. Claire and I, relegated to the role of entourage rolled our eyes and sauntered behind, passing
the rubberneckers just in time to hear a teenage girl say, “No way! Brad Pitt’s much cuter — and he’s
not gay
. ”