Fifty Grand

13 THE PRINCES OF MALIBU

The white Bentley, Jack leaning his head out the passenger’s-side window.

“Yes, please,” I replied, and once again I was annoyed that I wasn’t wearing lipstick or looking my best.

“Get in. Ever been in a Bentley before?”

“No.”

“Get in, get in. I’ll put the top down. You can’t put the top down without a beautiful girl next to you, it’s obligatory, says it right there in the owner’s manual.”

I sat in the passenger’s seat. He pressed a button and the roof slid back. The Bentley accelerated away from the curb with a feline roar.

“I’m probably the oldest ‘girl’ you’ve had in this car.”

“How old are you?”

I gave him what I hoped was an ironic look.

“Yeah, I know, not the sort of question you’re supposed to ask. Tip-don’t ask actors, either.”

“I know how old you are,” I told him.

“You looked me up in Wikipedia?”

“I don’t know what that is. At that party you had I heard you say that you tell producers you’re twenty-nine, but your older résumés say you’re thirty and really you’re thirty-one.”

“Goddammit, in vino veritas, eh? Shit.”

“I don’t think it was vino.”

“No it wasn’t. A-rated, two-fifty-a-spliff Vancouver hemp-that’s what it was. We got it in for Pitt, except he didn’t stay. His loss-supremo shit. Course I don’t need to tell you, you’re from Mexico.”

I gave him another look that he missed. “If that acting career doesn’t work out, I’m sure they’ll hire you in the diplomatic corps, Señor Jack.”

He burst out laughing. “Yeah, I guess that was a bit crass.”

I smiled to show I wasn’t in the least offended and for some reason this made him grin like an idiot. He touched me on the leg. The Bentley had barely been going thirty but as the undulating road flattened out he gunned it up to seventy. It accelerated so smoothly it was as if we were in a studio and the landscape was a back projection.

“Beaut, isn’t she? Valet parkers fucking kill themselves for the keys. Like it?”

Like it? Nothing in Cuba moved like this. The fifties Yankee cars with Russian engines and jerry-rigged suspensions, the cheap Chinese imports, the Mexican Beetles. I thought all cars rattled and roared until I rode in the back of Sheriff Briggs’s Escalade.

“It’s ok,” I told him.

“Yeah, it’ll do,” he agreed.

It was a break to actually be in this car with him. I couldn’t let it go by.

Men loved to talk about their cars. “Is it from this year?” I asked prepping the ground so I could slip in an important question.

“Oh yeah, 2007, I’ll keep it for a couple of years and then I’m thinking of getting a DB9. Course it won’t be a DB9 in a few years, but it’ll still be an Aston Martin. The valets will love that, too.”

“I noticed a little repair on the hood.”

“Oh God, yeah. My dad told me once, never lend a friend money and never let anyone drive your car. Never.”

“What happened?”

“Few months back, I was in L.A., something wrong’s with Paul’s Beemer. Borrowed the Bentley to drive downtown. Couldn’t handle it. The Bentley needs care and attention. You treat it like a lady. Jesus, he’s a fucking idiot. I love him, of course, but he’s still an idiot.”

“He was in an accident?”

“Oh yeah, but he was fine. Dent and a ding. No big deal.”

“He crashed your car?”

“No, no, well, yes, but it wasn’t a biggie. The garage fucked up the repair, if you want to know. You shouldn’t even be able to see it. Nearest dealership is in Texas and I’m not driving it to Texas. So anyway, what about you? What are you doing out here?”

“I wanted to see some of the country.”

“Should have been here a few weeks ago, the leaves were at their peak.”

When we hit the outskirts of Fairview, Jack turned to me. His face had assumed a rigid intensity. He was either about to lie to me or he was going to try some of his acting.

“Listen, uh, M…”

“María.”

“I remembered! Come on. María, of course, listen, I’ve been invited to this dinner party and they said bring a date and I called Paul and he couldn’t come up with anybody this late and I know this is kind of short notice, but, hell, do you wanna come?”

“Paul won’t be there?”

“No.”

“I’ll come.”

“What’s the matter, you don’t like Paul?”

“No.”

“Lot of women don’t like him. He’s a good guy, you know, comes across as a bit of an ass. But basically a good chap, a really good egg.”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell that that was an English accent?”

“I don’t know, I’ve never drunk tea or met an Englishman in my life.”

“Lucky old you. L.A. is plagued by them. They’re all very insecure. I know a couple of writers. They’re the worst. Chain-smoking Marlboro reds, ridiculous.”

“You know English writers? Have you read the poet Philip Larkin?” I asked him.

“The what? The who?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Anyway, where were we? Oh yes. So you’ll come?”

“To a party, yes,” and wordlessly I added It’s been a trying day.

“You’ll come? You’ll be my date?” he asked insecurely.

“I said yes.”

“Ok, well, don’t freak, but I’m kind of on my way over there right now.”

I wasn’t following him. “Why would I freak?”

“It’s a party. Don’t you need, like, three hours to get ready?”

“No, but I’ll bet you do.”

He laughed. “Low blow, yet strangely accurate. We’re all fags now, although I’m not as vain as some, believe me, I could tell you stories,” he says, fluffing his gelled hair in the rearview.

“But I do want some time. Look at me.”

“You look great.”

“Pull in there.”

Gas station. He spent a small fortune filling the Bentley while I washed my face and attempted to make my hair slightly interesting with the hot-air hand dryer.

I pinched some color into my cheeks and applied red lipstick.

I looked ok and if anyone said I didn’t I had a sledgehammer and a Smith & Wesson to change their mind.

“Whose house is it?” I asked when we’re back in the car.

“Oh, no one you would know, unless you read the trades, which you probably don’t. Not someone conventionally famous, but very A-list, a producer, big enchilada in a behind-the-scenes kind of way.”

“What’s his name?”

“Alan Watson. Look him up on IMDB, more movies this year than Judd fucking Apatow. Producing or coproducing credit on half a dozen flicks. Playa with a capital P. Total wacko, of course. All the big ones are. The house is only two doors away from the Cruise estate at the top of the mountain. And with Cruise shooting pickups for that Nazi movie, this week Watson is the big bear on Malibu Mountain.”

The house was indeed only two doors from the Cruise estate at the top of the mountain, but those doors were at least half a kilometer apart. The homes up here were all huge poronga affairs, faux Swiss chalets or supersized mountain ski lodges with ample grounds, guesthouses, outdoor Jacuzzis, pools, stables. Esteban said that Cruise and a few others had their own private ski runs to the valley and even chairlifts that ran back up to the house.

Watson’s house did not have a private ski run that I could see but it did have three floors and was the size of a small Havana apartment building. The style was Spanish hacienda with ultramodern features: radio antennae, quadruple garage, satellite dishes, swimming pool, solar panels, and a wind turbine that probably massacred local birds by the score. Even without Esteban’s and Jack’s prep it would have been obvious to me that Watson was in the upper echelons of the power elite.

Judging from the cars outside, the party appeared to be a small but upscale affair. Two Mercs, a Rolls-Royce, a Ferrari, and Jack’s Bentley.

We rang the bell and I admired the paintwork on the cars. In Havana all vehicles except for the very newest are finished in glossy outdoor house paint, but these were in subtle attractive shades: racing green, midnight blue, morning gray. As you got wealthier, I speculated, your tastes rebelled against the primary colors of the common herd.

Jack had yet to learn that lesson with his white Bentley.

We rang the bell again and someone said, “It’s open!”

We walked through a bare marble foyer into an equally spartan dining room that looked west upon a sunset and eight or nine layers of mountains. We were the last to arrive, and a fortysomething redheaded woman in a beautiful emerald couture dress hastily introduced us to the four other guests. Jack knew only one of them personally-a shaven-headed man wearing a black polo-neck sweater, black sweat pants, and diamond earrings.

“Mr. Cunningham, this is my friend María,” he said.

Cunningham took my hand and kissed it.

“Delighted to meet you, miss,” Cunningham said with such a warm smile and wonderful manners that I knew he was homosexual. Actually, it turned out that all the men were gay except for Watson, who, as Jack had predicted, proved to be a bit of a wacko.

I was seated next to the redheaded woman, who called herself Miss Raven, and a young man in a plaid shirt, jeans, and glasses who said he was “Mickey, just Mickey,” in a throwback New York accent straight from the Yuma movies of the fifties.

Miss Raven opened two bottles of sparkling wine and the chat flowed between the men. They talked fast and I found myself dipping in and out of their conversation.

“Jack, I loved you in that thing you were in. Your acting is an homage to a bygone age.”

“What about those writers?”

“What about them? Jack Warner said they were ‘scum with Underwoods.’ ”

“No shop talk. Did any of you see that Richard Serra show? It was appalling. What a confidence man that character is-all those pseudoscientific names for his pieces. That’s how you spot a bad artist-the pseudoscientific name. ‘Trajectory Number Five.’ ‘Tangent on Circle.’ Of course, the New Yorker review and Charlie Rose were positively supine.”

“I hardly read The New Yorker, not since they got a pop music critic called Sasha Frere-Jones. Frere-Jones indeed. I imagine some twenty-three-year-old Barnard girl whose parents are influential condo board members in the East Seventies. I occasionally glance at the odd movie review. Such poor grammar. Lane’s sentences have more clauses than a fucking Kris Kringle convention.”

“I saw him once in Vail.”

“Vail? Good God, I wouldn’t be seen dead in Vail.”

“Clooney loves it.”

“He’s a bullshit artist like all the others. I mean, do you really believe Clooney when he tells us that Budweiser is the King of Beers?”

Miss Raven didn’t speak but smiled at me from time to time, as if to apologize for my exclusion from the shop talk and gossip. I appreciated her concern but I wasn’t getting annoyed. The wine was delightful and the view excellent and from the kitchen came the smell of good things. I could see that Jack was frustrated, though, itching to jump in, but he lacked pluck. Why they’d invited him was a mystery-perhaps he was a last-minute replacement for someone else.

When we were halfway through the second bottle of sparkling wine, Watson appeared with hors d’oeuvres on a silver tray. He was wearing a leather bondage suit, a leather mask, handcuffs, and leg irons. When he served us he kneeled on the floor next to Miss Raven until she clicked her fingers and he removed the empty tray.

I had been in Havana’s many brothels dozens of times and had seen a lot worse. Jack, too, appeared unruffled, always acting, this time giving us the fixed smile of someone dancing with a little girl at a wedding.

More bottles. More food.

And gradually he and I were brought into the talk. I was passed off as an old friend who worked in the hotel business. I went along with the lie and let Jack build the cathedral-I was looking at land here in Fairview for the Mandalay Bay group. Vail was over and Aspen hopelessly passé-Fairview, with its easy access to Denver and a back road to Boulder, was the place to invest. I was pushed on the veracity of these claims and my unwillingness to confirm any of the details impressed everyone with my discretion. Miss Raven seemed pleased that I was there. Watson’s antics had long since ceased to amuse her and when the conversation became drearily shoppy she talked to me about the weather and clothes.

Jack found his niche and as he relaxed he allowed himself to speak more freely. He drank and began to enjoy himself. I suppose this was the kind of slightly risqué high-powered party he’d been expecting to find in L.A. and hadn’t ever gotten invited to. It wasn’t exactly the dinner feast of the Satyricon but it wasn’t bad. Oysters and shrimp were followed by duck, all three flown in from some picturesque spot in Alaska that very morning, and the excellent wine was from Watson’s own vineyard in Sonoma.

Time and food and conversation flowed, and when Watson went into the kitchen to load the dishwasher, Miss Raven produced a 150-year-old vintage Madeira and preembargo Monte Cristo cubanos.

With a bottle under his belt Jack was waxing on his favorite topic: the up-and-down career of Jack Tyrone. “Yeah, the Independent Spirit nomination was a real boost, I’m getting leads now. I’m doing this movie called Gunmetal, medium budget, I play a British Victoria Cross winner in the Crimean War. You wouldn’t believe the script changes. It’s based on the video game but it’s gone in a totally different direction. We’re throwing this Brit guy into the future, steam punk, all that.”

“You’re playing a Brit?” Mickey asked skeptically.

“But of course, my dear sir,” Jack said in his faux English diphthongs.

“Don’t like the title. Don’t see the connection,” another of the other producers said. He was a svelte, tanned man in a tailored polo shirt and an expensive toupee.

“But that’s the whole thing, you see,” Jack said. “All the Victoria Cross medals are made from gunmetal from cannons that the Brits captured in the Crimea. So the title sneakily refers to the medals but it’s also about the first-person shooter.”

The dishwasher loaded and the kitchen cleaned, Watson came back and kneeled next to Miss Raven. She drummed her fingernails on his leather-encased head while Jack went on and on. Some of the men were looking bored and I wished Jack would give it a rest, but unfortunately he wasn’t capable of that. Cunningham finally interrupted the flow.

“Who’s this with?”

“Focus, for Universal.”

“I’ll speak to them. Gunmetal won’t fly. Sounds too John Woo. Doesn’t work for a historical.”

Jack wanted to defend his picture, which hadn’t even begun rolling yet, but he had the sense not to offend the producer. “Do you have any suggestions?”

Cunningham puffed cigar smoke and considered it. “Keep it short, go with Crimea.”

“Well, it’s not really up to me,” Jack said.

The producer with the toupee looked at him, strangely, as if regarding a particularly rare specimen in a butterfly net: My God, who is this person that eats with us yet doesn’t have the power to change the title of a movie?

I sipped some of the Madeira. It was sweet, rich, very good.

Miss Raven stared at me, hoping that I had something to say.

Titles, I thought to myself, what do I know about titles?

Time Can Be Either Particle or Wave.

“I like Gunmetal,” Watson said, surprisingly, from behind his mask. “But it is too John Woo. Gunmetal Sky, Gunmetal Gray-those work better and they’re short. Titles should be two or three syllables at most.”

Watson’s words hung in the air like a failed bon mot. It was easy to ignore him as long as he wasn’t saying anything, but now that he’d broken the spell we couldn’t help but see this bondage-encased man kneeling on the floor next to us.

Watson knew he’d screwed up and with a haughty look from Miss Raven he scurried off to the kitchen.

The party ended in anticlimax. Miss Raven asked us if we would mind forgoing coffee as she had urgent business to attend to in the dungeon. The men said it was no problem. She thanked everyone for coming, asked them to see themselves out, and with a bored sigh followed Watson into the kitchen.

Jack and the others walked outside and Jack gave Cunningham his phone number. It was cold now. Jack took off his jacket and placed it around my shoulders.

We said good night and got in the Bentley.

Jack wasn’t happy. Something had upset him. “What’s the matter?” I asked. “You’re upset about the movie-title thing?”

“No, titles are like gossamer. Change all the time. Did you hear what Mickey said earlier? He said that my acting was an homage to the icons of yesteryear.”

“Isn’t that a compliment?”

“Like fuck it is. He was saying I was a lousy actor. Fucking queer, what does he know?”

“Mickey likes you. Miss Raven told me so.”

Jack’s mood did a one-eighty. A grin like a Party kid meeting Jefe at Pioneer Camp. “Really? Really? She said that?”

“Yes,” I assured him.

“Oh, shit, really? Maybe I got the wrong end of the stick there. Yeah, he’s a good guy. And you know, it’s not true about my acting. I’ve gotten good notices. Paul says I just missed out on a SAG award, and A. O. Scott said that in We’ll Always Have Parricide I was ‘the sole bearer of a lifebelt in this shipwreck of a movie.’ Clever, right? Did you ever see that one? We’ll Always Have Parricide? It was a black comedy, you know? Bandwagon stuff, Luke Wilson vehicle, I was third banana.”

“I didn’t see it.”

“Well, you didn’t miss much. I’ve got the DVD at home if you want to take a look.”

“Sure.”

We accelerated out of the driveway and the gates opened for us as if by magic. Jack paused to see if there was anything happening at the Cruise estate but the lights were off and the Cruises abed.

“Can I give you a ride to Wetback-to the, uhm, I mean, the motel?”

“Don’t worry, I know what everybody calls it.”

“It’s just a joke. It’s not mean.”

“I’m not offended.”

A look of obvious conspiracy flashed in his eyes followed by that boyish salesman smile. “Or, or, would you, uh, like to come back to my place for coffee?”

“Your place. Coffee,” I said quickly.

The ride to Jack’s took fifteen minutes. It was a five-minute drive but Jack had had that bottle.

The irony did not impress me at the time because I was tipsy too, but I saw it eventually.

This car. This road. An intoxicated driver. Me. Dad. Enabler. Avenger.

We arrived at the house. I stumbled as I got out. Jack caught me before I fell.

I had never had such heady stuff in my life.

Tipsy, but not drunk.

I knew what I was doing. I knew what was going to happen. There were a million opportunities to back out. No one put a gun to my head.

A gun to my head. Yeah, that’s right, more irony.

“Shall we go inside?”

“Please.”

“Let me get your bag.”

“Leave it.”

“Christ, that’s heavy, whatcha got in there?”

A telephone call to the motel would have put a stop to it. Paco, come. But I made no calls. Didn’t want to. Jack was the antithesis of all those cadaver boys in Havana.

Jack was alive, funny, insecure, overconfident.

Jack was all those Yuma movies and TV shows.

Jack was America.

We went in and he took off his jacket and surreptitiously wrote something on a pad next to the phone table.

“Martini?” he asked. “Even when I’m sort of on the wagon I allow myself one at the end of the day.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Tip from Paul. A stiff drink and one-but only one-Ambien and all the cares of the world disappear… How do you like yours? Your martini?”

“Whatever way you’re having it.”

When he went into the kitchen I looked at the note he’d made on the scribble pad. It said: “1) Chk Richard Serra MOMA/Met? 2) New Yorker-tell Paul subscribe.”

Very sinister.

“You want me to find that Luke Wilson DVD?” Jack shouted.

“If you want to.”

Jack came back with the martinis and began showing me the various objets d’art and interesting pieces of furniture he had in his living room. He had somehow forgotten that I had been in this house twice already and dusted all this shit.

I listened. He told jokes. I laughed.

Upstairs he showed me his awards, his film books, his signed scripts, and that hideous framed poster of the twins in spaceship uniforms.

“What do you think?” he said, pointing at the poster.

“Who are they?”

Jack’s jaw dropped and hung there.

“It’s Kirk! From Star Trek. The two captains. Look, down there, signed by Shatner himself.”

I had heard of Star Trek but that particular Yuma series had never made it to Cuba.

“I thought the captain was bald,” I said.

“Jesus Christ, that’s Picard! Forget him, this is the main dude. Bill’s the man. Did you ever see Fight Club? Remember what Pitt said when they asked him who he’d want to fight in the whole world?”

“I did not see Fight Club.”

“Shit, man. No Star Trek, no Fight Club… I mean, you had electricity, right, where you’re from, right?”

“Electricity? No, we only just got fire a few years ago, but that was useful because it helped scare away all the dinosaurs that kept marauding the village.”

Jack laughed and kissed me on the cheek. “Oh, María, you crack me up. You’re funny. No, no, let me tell you, I’m proud of this. It’s from ‘The Enemy Within,’ episode five, you know, the two Kirks? I wanted ‘Mirror Mirror,’ but then I figured that if I ever got an opportunity to meet Nimoy, I’d get him to sign a ‘Mirror Mirror’ poster, the two Spocks. Good idea, huh?”

“Very.”

“I’d thought about getting a goatee myself like the evil Spock for Gunmetal, but everybody’s nixed it. The Brits back then wore mustaches, not goatees. Besides, after all the ‘Mirror Mirror’ parodies you’d feel like an idiot.”

“Yes.”

“Probably should move the poster to my place in L.A. More traffic through there, tell the story, impress them with my Trek lore. Youkilis says I should move full-time to L.A., but I’m a Colorado boy and Fairview is white hot for celebs right now and it’s still got that small-town feel.”

“It does.”

“Yeah, you really get to know people and the big rooster himself is up the hill. Shit, if we could get Spielberg to move out here we’d really have something…”

I stopped listening after a while. I liked Jack better when he wasn’t saying anything. He was several years older than me but he seemed younger, younger than Paco, even. I finished my drink.

“Get you a refill?” he asked.

The martini. Words. Another martini. More words.

“I’ll have to introduce you to my friends and I’ll have to meet yours… You should see my place in L.A. Seriously, why not?”

Jack’s shirt. His breath on my neck. A joke. A question.

Yes, Jack, I do. I want to feel your body on top of me, I want you to give yourself to me utterly, completely, all of you, Jack, even if only for a night.

Another refill and I caught him looking at his own reflection in the window. He grinned sheepishly. It’s ok, Jack, this is you at your peak, lead rolls in the pictures, money, women, fame. This is you on top, before the injections and the rejections. You shouldn’t be ashamed to look. You’re fabulous.

“New haircut, not sure I like it,” he said and pulled a strand or two.

Oh, don’t speak, Jack, just come over.

Why is it always the woman who has to show the man? I thought, drained the third martini and got up from the couch. I stepped out of my skirt and panties, I let the blouse fall to the floor, I unhooked my hair.

“Two hundred dollars in a new place on Pearl and they didn’t even trim my sideburns,” he said, still looking at the haircut, but then he saw me and his common sense kicked in. His mouth closed. He put down his glass.

“Fuck,” he said.

“My sentiments exactly,” I replied.