The Hollywood Trilogy (21 page)

“Relax,” I say to the glass, “You'll be flat before you know it.”

The bubbles hiss at me faintly. “So long, sucker,” they seem to say.

I was in full makeup wearing what my grandfather would have called a monkey suit, with the jacket off. I sniffed my armpit. Two hours ago I had come out of the shower clean as a baby, and now I smelled, not just strong, but
rank
, oily and acid, screaming stink of fear. I had not eaten since yesterday and would not until tomorrow, so my guts had nothing stronger to grip down on than mineral water. I kept getting intestinal threats of diarrhea accompanied by a gaseous buildup I dared not tamper with for fear of disgracing myself in the eyes of my dresser, now long gone and probably out in the house with relatives, since I had told him over an hour ago to fuck off. I sat for a few minutes, enjoying the agony, daydreaming the scene where the dresser is called back, his relatives look up, ahh, he's an important fellow, no? Yes, he must go backstage and change his master's diaper for him—what a wonderful story to dine out on among friends. So not even a whisper must escape my body. I can fart after the show. I can do any goddamn thing I want after the show. Not
this
show, the last show. Not the last show of the evening, the last show of the run. Then I will fart, strip and run naked through the desert.

I confess to a little stage fright from time to time.

I stared at the telephone. If it rang I would jump out of my skin. If it did not ring I would go crazy. But I would be dipped in shit before I would make a worry call. Let the rest of them worry, Ogle is in Meditation until The Arrival.

Jim, you motherfucker, I'm going to knock your fucking teeth down your fucking throat if you do this to me one more time. Exclamation point.

The mantra for today is “motherfucker.”

Everybody else backstage who has the slightest involvement in our act is probably going crazy, too, because among other stupidities, nobody gets to fret and wring their hands for fear of bringing on Nemesis. Everybody, from that master of methane Gregory Galba to Doris the waitress, has to go around smiling while their guts grind.

I insist on it.

Aw, hell, Dave, take a Valium, there's plenty of them in the medicine cabinet so thoughtfully stocked by Galba, certainly as a joke, but Gregory wouldn't mind if I went nuts. He had
filled
the medicine cabinet with drugs. It was a hit parade of stupefacients, the top ten of legal dope, the hall of fame for mindfuckers: Valiums, Percodans, Quaaludes, Benzedrine, Ritalin, amphetamines, biphetamine, the list goes on, and I won't touch a one of them. Not because I don't like the wonderful sensation of shredding apart, but ordinary precaution, like, if I take a Valium for this caper, what about tomorrow? Six Vals? Then on Tuesday I can have my convulsions. Screw that noise, screw Gregory, unctuous provider, and doublescrew Jim, who may have killed himself or God knows what while I am cursing him out.

No drugs. Not even marijuana, my dear old friend and teacher, the one who slowed me down; not cocaine, ol' nosedrip is back, not mushrooms, who wants to go out there and find a room full of flesh-plopping bipeds? No drugs. But God, how I would love to rush to the medicine cabinet or the secret compartment in my suitcase and stuff it all into my face and disappear into purple smoke.

I could even go out onstage while the drugs are getting ready to kick in and tell the audience that after a lifetime in show business I have chosen this moment to retire, and then, as the “AWWWWW!” rolls over me, spread my arms and sweetly fly out over their heads and . . .

I look up quickly. The door has spoken.

Click, it says.

I wait.

But, whoever it was decided to keep his head another day.

It certainly wouldn't have been Jim. Jim does not hesitate at doors.

Seventeen minutes late.

Laugh, laugh, laugh. Nobody gives a fuck about seventeen minutes; if the show started on time half the audience would faint from surprise. But you're supposed to
be
here.

But he's not really late until he's half an hour late.

Unless you think maybe he's two weeks late. Lying on the roadside trussed up in a dark green plastic bag, arms, legs, penis, head, severed; trunk, severed. Dead, oh, about
two weeks
. . .

For that matter,
I could sure use a drink
, for that matter. Three or four straight shots of 100-proof bonded whiskey would probably have some interesting effects on my stomach, and to keep the glow I could drink onstage, toasting the audience, slopping around, using the booze to get laughs. Then the second show. Um, how you feeling? Unghktlph . . .

The dressing room has four doors. One door leads to the bathroom, with tub and shower and a wicker basket full of corncobs, provided by Galba, beside the toilet, as well as a huge reading rack of the scummiest pornography he could find, water sports, enema clubs, child porn with outrageous titles like
FAMILY PARTY
, magazines full of women trussed up like hogs, strapped to crosses, bent into expository positions and wired down, magazines full of women in black leather costumes flicking plump, stupid-looking men with Sears, Roebuck riding crops, and on and on. And of course Gregory would not want me, at some fitful four a.m., to have to go to the drugstore for anything, so the bathroom was also equipped with a couple of huge enema bags and a set of extraordinary nozzles in a wall rack like dueling pistols; in a bowl on the counter with the two sinks was a wicker basket of assorted rubbers for “thrilling Milady with their deckle-edged plunger ripple action . . .” and a row of standing dildos of various sizes, textures and length and a bottle of amyl nitrite with a little hand-written card,
IN CASE OF EMERGENCY, SNIFF TWICE AND INSERT OBJECT
.

Gregory's crude mining-town scrawl, naturally.

Another door leads to the elevator that leads to backstage and also to Jim's dressing room suite, just down the hall. The door to the closet was open, and I could see, just by moving my head a little, some of the late-night finery he had provided, again, how much of this is what his press agent told him was “gargantuan humor” to go along with his reputation, and how much was paving stones for the road to hell? With Gregory you never knew. He might have thought that every entertainer was an emotional circus and liked to get
up in women's underthings or rubber suits. There was also a very fine selection of resort clothes for me to wear around the pool or the gambling tables, although I never went to those places, and the row of identical monkey suits for me to work in.

The last door leads to the living room of the suite, with its own private entrance reached only by going through another special door with a cop to check your right to pass into the dazzle of backstage life. Right now I would guess the living room was full of friends and well-wishers, not the ones who were already at ringside out of politeness, but the close ones who were not exercising privilege but were giving me moral support, like, they were out there if I needed them. Ron and Jim, who write and direct our pictures and have for four years, a couple of real Hollywood guys, nice people who can deliver and who are able to say of something they have written, “Isn't that awful?” and not go home to the Valley and grind their guts about it. Jim spent his spare time writing mystery novels and indulging in domestic life with his family, and Ron was big in the Guild. They always came to our opening in Las Vegas and always brought their combined families and didn't demand six ringside tables, and I could always hear them laughing, Jim going
hughughug
, and Ron,
cackle cackle
, always on our side, always showing a cheerful front, getting a little thick through the middle, both of them, not doing what they had set out in life to do but making so much money they could hardly find it in their hearts to complain; they were out there, probably telling jokes to lighten things up. Of all people, they knew Jim and had faith in him.

But he has never done this before, Not two weeks. My own faith in Jim was not shaken,
trust your animal
, my grandpa used to say when the cat would run away, but
two weeks!
He left before we even wrapped picture, three days of pickups and some looping left to do, gone, snap, his apartment on the lot unlocked and empty, his home in Palm Springs still filled with his wife and her real estate salesman buddy.

Sure I fucked her. Out there in the backyard, while he went to get some champagne to celebrate.

The show biz hotels were checked out in order of rank and stature, first the Bel-Air, then the Beverly Hills, the Beverly Wilshire, L'Hermitage, the Chateau Marmont, the Sunset Marquis and finally the Montecito, but no Jim. The couple of times I exploded, thank God with nobody around, I
wondered why if they could locate us at Enrico's in San Francisco without a clue, why were they having trouble now? The only possible reasons:

           
1.
  
Jim does not want to be found.

           
2.
  
Jim is kidnapped or dead.

           
3.
  
They aren't telling me where he is.

Twenty-five minutes into Showtime.

I hit the Perrier button and picked up a copy of
Time
in order to appear to be doing something important. After a couple of hundredths of a second the waitress, this time it
was
Doris, hurried in with the tray and the fresh bottle and the bucket of fresh ice, even though I had my own icemaker over in the corner.

“Hi, Doris,” I said. “How's your little girl?”

“She's just fine and dandy, Mister Ogle. Thank you for asking.”

“Here's a little something, buy her a soda.” I gave her the fifty-dollar bill I had gotten out.

“Oh, Mister Ogle, you don't have to do that,” she said, but I forced the money on her with a good-natured chuckle and patted her hand like a pal and said, “God, I'm nervous, Doris, let's get somebody else to go out there.”

She laughed shyly and blushed, a young pretty girl with a good job, and left the room without trying a comeback. She had taken the money so nicely and been so perfect, what with her daughter and all, I almost cried. People are so wonderful, I thought, I should just let my face fall into the big open jar of cold cream and die.

Jim, Jim, Jim, are you laid up with some Mexican whore in Tijuana? Are you doing three-way nipups with a couple of gigantic black transvestites in Long Beach? Are you on the Parker Center tower, hanging from the cornice and hoping for the courage to jump?

Are you in your dressing room? Dressing? Drunk? In secret communion with a priest?

Who else was out there? Ron and Jim, Marty, our line producer who had gone without drinking for six whole months and then on the day Jim vanishes, and Marty is to within about eight cents of budget, he goes across the street and has the big Bucket of Gin, just one, and comes back to begin to try to find a way to cut the picture without the pickups. Marty will be out there with his wife, Zelda.

My relatives had all come early and were now in their seats, not great seats, but good seats. If I knew them, they were making friends with the booths on
either side, same kind of people up in those seats, big raw red American faces, now don't cry, Ogle, we know they're all swell folks, your fans.

The SALT of the FUCKING
EARTH!

SONNY WAS out there. As a friend, of course. Sonny and I had come to Appomattox the day Max Meador died and we all had to help Karl get straight before the worlds of art and commerce heard the news and came at him. At first I thought Karl was just grief-stricken at the loss of his father. That, too, sure, grief and shock, loss, but not the same for a man that age as a younger person. I felt it for Max, the whole bottom falling out, a black hole in space where a man had been, not as strong as for my own grandfather but strong enough, and I'm sure Jim felt some of that, too, but Karl was going berserk. One minute he would be sitting calmly telling stories about Max and the next he would wail and fall to the floor or burst out, “I can't bear this!” and start to run out of the room. Once he looked as if he had had a heart attack right in front of us, gasping for air and grabbing at his throat, his face turning purple, etc. We finally figured it out, it was simple, of course, but we were drunk, shocked and confused at first.

Poor Karl had just had the control of an empire dumped on him, all the energies of a billion dollars landing flash and sizzle right in the middle of his soul. He told us the amount as we were driving him to my hotel that morning. We didn't want him to officially find the body of his father, and we sure as hell didn't want to be the finders. Let the staff find him in the due course of time, that was our philosophy, since we got the breaks and it could happen that way. So we got Karl in the back seat of my car and headed up Sunset. Most of the way he either cried or boasted about how much he was worth.