Third Girl from the Left (9 page)

He hadn't thought of that in years. He didn't know why he was thinking of it now. Angela was standing very close to him, not speaking. “Hey,” she finally said, “where'd you go?”

He laughed. “Thinking about Sundays when I was a kid. I don't know. You make me think, I guess. Don't do too much of that. I like to keep on the move.”

She smiled. “Let's take a walk. I'll tell you what I did on Sundays when I was a kid.”

She told him about a starched white dress so stiff it left marks on her legs when she sat down. She told him of hair pressed so flat it shone, of big white bows tied at the perfect angle. She told him about the Vaseline on her legs, the oil against the crinoline, the slippery way it felt between her thighs, the way it would melt and dust would stick to her ankles on hot days and the fans waving faster than fireflies all through the sermon.

She told him about the time she went to services with her friend Louann, who was Holiness born and raised and about the babble inside the church, the heat and the folks falling out, jabbering in tongues, their voices roaring from their mouths like poured gravel. The women falling backward into the gentle, strong arms of the men, the kids all sweating, watching the adults around them praise God with their bodies. She took his hand without seeming to realize she was doing it. People streamed past them all along the boardwalk. “It was like God put on a red dress and came down to wail with everyone. My church was so quiet. Everybody just prayed all to themselves, but there? There at Louann's church, I could feel God. He'd be loud, you know? That's why I like loud things. Big things don't tiptoe.”

He looked at her, mystified and charmed. “You got a lot going on in that head of yours.”

“I do.”

They walked a little farther. “So should we go back to my place?” he said after a while.

“Yeah,” she said. “Sunday's no time to be alone.”

“Well, let's eat first.”

They went to one of those little sandy seafood places in Venice and ate clams and laughed. She professed continued amazement at his boyhood in LA and at both their prospects for success. After a while, he said to her, “Do you remember when you met me?”

She looked down at her feet. “Well, we got off to a fast start.”

“No, not then,” he said. “I read with you at your audition for
Street Fighting Man
.”

She stared at him, then her mouth opened slowly, remembering. “That was you?!” she squealed. “I totally forgot!”

“I thought you forgot, but that was me.” He lowered his voice. “You should have gotten the lead.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Well, that's sweet of you. That's really sweet of you.” She smiled and he felt it all the way down his back. The air smelled of salt and heat, diminishing now. “Should we go?”

“Yeah, I think maybe we should,” she said. She stood up and held out her hand girlishly. He took it, bent over, and kissed it. He'd never done anything like that before.

This time, back at the house, it wasn't wild like at Wilt's. They knew each other's names now. He hadn't kissed anyone this way, long and slowly on the sofa, one hand just barely moving up to forbidden territory, since he was in high school at least. She was shyer now but still eager to please, first up, then down, then sideways. They left the stereo on, Marvin Gaye of course. Afterward they talked and talked and she fell asleep with her head on his chest, her hair rough wool under his nose. He wondered what it would be like to see her on a Monday or a Wednesday, or all the days after that, how she'd look with her hair braided up or wearing pajamas, what she looked like as a girl in that church. Time was passing, this life getting tired. She made him think about other days of the week, what else there might be. He hadn't met anyone who made him think of that stuff in a long time. She snored a little and he rolled over to sleep.

She stayed all night and he didn't mind. That was different too. But in the late morning he had to ask her to leave. He had an afternoon call that day. They kissed goodbye, lingeringly, and he promised to call the next day. He'd be shooting well into the night and she had to work at the club. But he was whistling as he arrived on the set that day. “You look happy, bud,” said one of the grips as he found his place behind a grubby old desk in the fake police station they'd set up. All the grips knew him. There was a small, tight fraternity of people who jobbed from film to film.

“I am happy. It's a good day.”

“Look like you got some last night.”

“Maybe I did and maybe I didn't.” Normally he would have replied with something unspeakably crude. But he sort of wanted to keep a line around her.
Getting soft
, he thought.
You getting soft, my man. Girl better be worth it
.

Rafe was cast as a cop in this one. He couldn't remember the name of the movie to save his life. But Fred Williamson was in it, and Rafe, who had worked with him before, had a scene with him this time. He sat behind his desk, a toy gun strapped around his chest, ready.

Williamson strode onto the set and perched on the edge of the desk. Rafe sighed and Williamson turned to face him. “Hey, my man, you playing my partner?”

“Yeah, but I don't last long.” Rafe paused then, feeling bold, added, “You oughta know that, my man. You the producer.”

Williamson smiled slightly. He ran a hand over his face. “That's half the problem, trying to do all this shit myself. It's the only way we gonna ever get anywhere in this town, but damn.” He slid a hand thoughtfully over the smooth handle of the gun holstered around his shoulder. “It's a bitch doing all this shit. You lucky you just an actor.”

Lucky. Rafe didn't say anything. He just looked at Williamson's calm, prosperous back. He thought of all the auditions he'd been on, all the cops and bartenders and luckless younger brothers and nobly killed boyfriends he'd played. He didn't feel all that lucky. Just stuck doing something he'd be damned if he could see the way out of. But he didn't think about that too much. What was the point? “Action,” called the director. And the scene began.

S
HEILA JENKINS CAME TO LOS ANGELES FROM THE
hard side of Chicago about four years before Angela did. She was eighteen and beautiful, although she barely knew it. It didn't take her long to figure out what to do with that once she got to LA. In Chicago, all she'd known was cleaning up her mother's vomit after yet another binge, and ducking when her mother threw things. As soon as she saved up bus fare from her summer job, Sheila got on the first Greyhound west she could, leaving Mom passed out on the cold kitchen table. She called a neighbor from a nearly deserted bus stop once she was safely away. “I'm not doing it anymore,” she said to Miss Clarissa, their next-door neighbor and the author of the only kindness she'd ever known. “If I stay, she's gonna take me down with her.” Miss Clarissa agreed to go check on her and wished Sheila the very best.

By the end of her first week, Sheila had given blowjobs to two minor producers and slept with a director. By the end of the second week, she had taken a hard look at her clothes and looked around at what the pretty black girls on the street were wearing and decided that she was gonna have to use some of the money from the parts she'd gotten as a result of those two blowjobs to start acquiring a decent wardrobe. So she did. By the end of her third week, she had been hired as a Bunny and had realized that those first two blowjobs were only the beginning. She didn't like it, but she steeled herself to do it. She'd been told all her life that she couldn't do shit, that she wasn't shit. This was her chance to prove that wasn't true.

But no one found her on a soda fountain stool and said, “You're the one.” She didn't even like movies that much, that was the really funny thing. She just wanted to be someplace where she would be thought beautiful, found useful, not yelled at.

Once, after they had become lovers, she asked Angie why she had come to LA. “To be in pictures, of course,” she said. But then Sheila pressed, “But really, why? We all want to do that.”

Angela looked thoughtfully at the ceiling. She sighed and then scooted closer to Sheila on the sofa. “Did you ever see
Splendor in the Grass
?”

“Um, I think so. Is that that one with Warren Beatty?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, yeah. Damn, he was fine in that movie. He could do me any old time. You think we could get to a party with him?”

Angela sucked her teeth. “I don't know.” Then she laughed. “I mean, if anybody could do it, you could. But that's not why I brought it up. I saw that movie when I was eleven with my mama. And well . . . I don't think I ever saw anything so beautiful.”

“What do you mean, Ange?”

“I mean . . . it was like my heart stopped. When she was in the hospital after she tries to drown herself and she's muttering all crazy and he goes into the room even though the nurse is trying to stop him and he's in there for just a second and then he comes out and he goes to the corner of the hall and hides his face”—here she stood up and walked to the corner of the room and hid her own face for a second. Then she turned back around to finish her story. “Then he starts crying really loud and she hears him and . . . I could feel it all through my chest. Natalie Wood too. When she looks at him. Or when she's talking to her mother and she goes under the water and she comes up screaming about not being ‘spoiled'? I felt like I wanted to scream too. Like they knew how I felt all the time. Like they knew something I couldn't touch.” She sat back down. “Guess I thought if I came out here and got in pictures, I'd find some way to touch it.” She picked at a loose thread of the sofa, embarrassed now. Sheila looked at Angela's feet, which were twirling around in circles and bumping into each other the way they did when she was having trouble expressing herself. She reached out and rested her hand on one foot, stilling it. “Oh, Angie. I don't know how you're ever gonna make it here.” She pulled her down to the sofa next to her and kissed her. “I swear I don't. I'm really gonna have to look out for you.”

“OK,” Angela said, a shy look on her face.

“OK.”

 

Sheila knew the men were necessary. And she knew that what she and Angie were doing had to be hidden. Men loved to watch two girls get it on; Sheila had been in a couple of those scenes. But to feel the tenderness she felt for Angela, the desire to be with her all the time, the way you would a new and extra-good boyfriend . . . that was freakish. Dykesville. Uncool. So she kept it to herself. Lots of girls had roommates, after all. No one knew what they did after the lights were out.

Sheila found that being Angela's lover made all the men's greedy hands feel less offensive to her. Having someone to come back to who knew how to touch her, someone she longed to touch, made the men's eager sighs and lickings easier to manage.

Angela didn't talk about Rafe too much, even though they saw each other pretty steady. Sheila found it easier if she got high or made sure she was out when he came by to pick Angela up. She played it cool, though. Rafe was pretty nice. She and Angela both still talked sometimes about maybe meeting a nice guy and settling down after their movie careers were over, but more and more this seemed like idle talk. Sheila found that it was even beginning to annoy her when Angela brought it up. One time they were at Venice Beach on a rare day off together, their feet dug in the sand, the sound of the Temptations drifting over their heads, when Angie brought up the idea of the mythical nice guy again. “You think so, huh?” said Sheila.

“It's gotta be
some
nice guys in Los Angeles.”

“Look like you got the last one—and he ain't even kinda talkin' about marryin' you, is he?” said Sheila.

Angela squinted a little “no.” Then she looked at Sheila. “I don't know. I'm just talkin'. Don't know if I really want to get married anyway. I just like the idea of having somebody who could take care of me.”

I'll take care of you
, Sheila thought. How she wished she could embrace her right there on the sand.
If it wasn't dykey, I could
, she thought. And that thought made her sad. She moved her foot closer to Angela's. “We do all right together.”

Angela looked at her lover, her eyes suddenly soft and considering. “Yeah. I guess we do.” She looked back out at the waves. “We do.”

T
HE SKIN WAS THE FIRST THING, THE SKIN ON THE
back of his neck, where his hair was a little more closely cut. It was like a child's, downy and soft and then shading up into a mass of kinks. Angela loved to touch and kiss him there, thought about it when she wasn't with him. Or the way he kissed her, without ever asking, without ever checking to see if it was all right. He knew it was all right, that whatever he might do would be what she wanted. He never hesitated right from the first. He never hid anything from her, his hands frank and knowing, moving easily over her body, his tongue in her mouth like it belonged there, so she couldn't think of anything else or anyone else, just the sweet moments she was suspended in with him and waiting for them to continue.

She still loved Sheila too. Sometimes this confused her. Other times, she didn't see why she should have to choose. She and Sheila slept in the same bed every night she was home, curled around each other like cats, all but purring, their breath rising and falling together. Angela loved the smell of their skin together, the way they looked so much alike and could share clothes and eyeliner and make each other come without even thinking about it much. Like they were the same flesh. She loved that too. Was that possible? She was doing it. But she kept wondering.

She didn't lie to Sheila. No point in lying to each other. After all, the first time she slept with Rafe, Sheila was next to her. And they both slept with men regularly, for business and pleasure. A girl couldn't get anywhere in town without it. Angela would sometimes fleetingly wonder how far she was getting with it, but it didn't pay to think that way often. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other was the only way to keep going. Sometimes she thought of Rafe as she made love with Sheila, sometimes vice versa—a double exposure. She was aware of Sheila, of her affection for her, the life they'd built, with its rickety self, the pleasure they gave each other so easily and confidently. And she knew Sheila loved her too. Sometimes she saw her giving her a quick look in the mirror as they put on their lipstick in the morning, or the way she always seemed to want to be touching some part of Angela when they were sitting on the sofa. They didn't own each other. But they kept finding ways to be together. They both wanted that. Angela found it easiest if she just moved through it and didn't think too much. When she started thinking, she got scared.