illuminated an odd-shaped room full of boxes, obviously a former maid’s quarters.
“Of course, we’ll move this crap somewhere.” She stood in the doorway, scratching her dirty hair. “So what do you think?”
It was cold in the room, though I couldn’t tell if it was because it had been closed off or because the heat didn’t work. A stained mattress leaned against the wall. What a fucking dump. But it would probably save me close to $800 a month and there might be some fringe benefits. “How much would you want?” I asked her.
She shrugged. “Oh, I don’t know. What do you think? Couple hundred?”
Not bad, for in a mansion in Los Feliz. Wouldn’t that look good on my portfolio. Even if I would have to wash the dishes in bleach.
And so I joined the ranks of the oddly housed. Los Angeles is full of us-house sitters, subletters, permanent house guests.
It wasn’t much of a move-clothes, a few books, a TV and boom box, and my laptop. But it took two days to clear the boxes out of the room. Memorabilia, just as Richard predicted. A gold mine. Letters from Belmondo and Bertolucci and Bianca Jagger, David Bowie’s
But the pictures made me sad. How bright she had been, blindingly alive, lit up from inside like a circus midway. And now here she was, a single lightbulb that had almost burnt out. I could smell her sadness, sitting next to me, in a pilled mustard sweater, and those lips, and her square cut emeralds dull with dirt. The way people’s lives turned out when they just ran them into the ground, like a rental car.
As we moved the boxes into another room across the hall, I saw something I didn’t much care for-rat droppings in the corners. Mariah said not to worry, she used these little traps that didn’t hurt the poor rats, you could carry them out to the backyard and let them go. I didn’t say anything, but later went out and bought some traps big enough to kill a cat. When I heard them pop in the night, all I felt was satisfaction.
So I hung out with Mariah, and took class and visited Richard in his apartment, around the corner from the bookstore on Vermont, the second floor of an old Spanish quad. It was small but dramatically decorated with handpainted red walls and gilded beams. Not at all what you’d expect, but that was Richard. His bed took up most of the floor, covered in brownand-black-striped cotton. Made seductions simple-there was nowhere else to sit. I teased him, that he should just come to my place sometime.
“Oh, you don’t want a stream of men interfering with your new friendship,” he said, tracing spirals on my skin.
I tossed the Bertolucci letter onto the bed, lay back, and folded my arms under my head. “She knows you, doesn’t she?” I asked.
He didn’t say anything, opened the letter, read it.
I pinched him. “Tell me. Was she a good fuck? Good as me?”
“She was very beautiful.”
It hurt. I was surprised how much it hurt.
He laughed and caught my hand, put it on his cock, which moved again. When I fucked him, I didn’t care how beautiful Mariah McKay had been, she looked like a bag lady now, and she wasn’t fucking anyone, unless it was the delivery guy from Whole Foods.
“I want you to do me a favor, Holly,” he said. He sipped his wine, arm tucked behind his head, the pillows piled up there, the fan of his pit hair like a dark blossom. His smell drove me mad.
I pulled gently at that nest of hair. I knew I would be attracted to hairy men for the rest of my life. “It wouldn’t be anything illegal, would it?”
“Oh, Midwest,” he said, drawling with irony. “Oh, Pioneers.”
I sat with Mariah on her row of theater seats, watching
What I could do with a part like Neely O’Hara. Not fucking Laura Wingfield, whom Chris had given me. He wanted me to find my soft side. Talk about miscasting. “It’s your job to find her, Holly. Allow her to live in you.”
I watched Mariah in her weird crocheted sweater and tights, unconsciously splitting the ends of her ragged hair. Her and Richard. Really? I wondered whether he was just yanking my chain. And how long ago?
“Poor Sharon,” Mariah said, watching the screen, Sharon Tate doing her breast exercises. “Did you know the La Bianca house is right around the corner, across from the nuns?”
The first Manson killing. Right here in Los Feliz.
It was a cold afternoon and I shivered, thinking of that freaky guy with his flock of bizarre little girls, exactly the kind of thing people in Kearney worried about when they thought of L.A. I wrapped my fingers around the packet of white powder Richard had given me. I was supposed to put it into Mariah’s drink. Some ground-up barbs to knock her out for a few hours. So far I’d taken a few things-a letter here, a signed picture there-but it was time to get into her Deco bedroom for a little scout around.
Yes, Grandma, there was lots to worry about in L.A., and they didn’t always look like Charlie and his girls. There were people like Richard. People like me.
And yet, I couldn’t help wondering how he knew her. If they’d really been lovers. She might have known him when he had hair, and she was a movie star. I was jealous of her, having had him, this fuzzy-headed has-been in the goat-hair sweater. I could imagine them together, how it was. I thought of it all the time, knowing what it was to have Richard; I’d never known sex could be like that. He was a drug. He hardly even came, just got you off about twenty times. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
“I met this guy at Orzo’s,” I said, sipping my Corona. “He said he knew you.” I was taking a chance, but couldn’t stop myself. I didn’t know one fucking thing about Richard. Who his friends were, what he liked to do besides fuck. “His name was Richard something.”
She shrugged, sipped at her Scotch, watching Sharon Tate and Lee Grant on the flickering screen.
“Kind of intense, brown eyes?” I added.
The speed at which she turned to me, I knew. And it was either big or recent. But it hadn’t been good. She looked downright scared. “Was he tall, lanky? Attractive in a sort of reptilian way?”
I backpedaled fast. I didn’t want to tip her off. “No, this guy was stocky. Sort of like a wrestler. He said he interviewed you in the ’80s. You snorted coke together.”
She relaxed, went back to watching the TV. “Oh, a journalist. Yeah, I seem to remember someone like that. Richard somebody. Stevens. Sheehan.”
Onscreen, Sharon Tate was launching a porn career to care for her declining husband.
“So,” I said, natural as all get-out. “Who was this other guy?”
“Someone I had a thing with,” she said, not turning away from the TV. “Years ago. But what a psycho. I had to get a restraining order.”
I thought of Richard. Had he threatened her, had he hurt her? Was he capable of that? I had imagined him as dark, but was he dangerous?
“Anthony. Karras. I had him fired off a set. People don’t take too kindly to that.”
“That’s kind of harsh, isn’t it?” I searched for my inner Laura. “Makes you kind of feel sorry for him.”
She patted my leg. “You’re a nice kid. Don’t feel too sorry for him. He was one of those guys who’s exciting in a kind of bad boy way… and then you get involved, and they’re just freaks. I got wise and told him it was over, to move the fuck out, but he wouldn’t. Had to call some people to get rid of him. He said he’d kill me. Showed up at my house. Called my friends. I took him off the picture and got a restraining order. Told the casting agents to
