Fools die

Chapter 24

I was in Vegas when Osano finished up on the conferences for that movie script of his book. So I took the short flight to LA to fly home with him, keep him company from LA to New York. Cully wanted me to bring Osano to Vegas just to meet him. I couldn’t talk Osano into it, so I went to LA.

In his suite at the Beverly Hills Hotel Osano was more pissed off than I had ever seen him. He felt the movie industry had treated him like shit. Didn’t they know that he was world-famous, the darling of literary critics from London to New Delli, from Moscow to Sydney, Australia? He was famous in thirty languages, including the different variations of the Slavic. What he left out was that every movie made from one of his books had lost money for some strange reason.

And Osano was pissed off about other things. His ego couldn’t stand the director of the film’s being more important than the writer. When Osano tried to get a girlfriend of his a small part in the film, he couldn’t swing it, and that pissed him off. It pissed him even more when the cameraman and the supporting actor got their girlfriends into the movie. The fucking cameraman and a lousy supporting actor had more clout than the great Osano. I just hoped I could get him on the plane before he went crazy and started tearing the whole studio apart and wound up in the clink. And we had a whole day and night to wait in LA for the plane the next morning. To quiet him down, I brought him around to his West Coast agent, a very hip, tennis-playing guy who had a lot of clients in show business. He also had some of the best-looking girlfriends I had ever seen. His name was Doran Rudd.

Doran did his best, but when disaster waits, nothing helps. “You need a night out,” Doran said, “a little relaxation, a good dinner with a beautiful companion, a little tranquilizer so you can sleep tonight. Maybe a blow job pill.” Doran was absolutely charming with women. But alone with men he insulted the female species.

Well, Osano had to go into a little act before he gave the OK. After all, a world-famous writer, a future Nobel literary prizewinner, doesn’t want to be fixed up like some teenage kid. But the agent had handled guys like Osano before. Doran Rudd had fixed up a secretary of state, a President, the biggest evangelist in America who drew millions of believers to the Holy Tabernacle and was the horniest big-cocked son of a bitch in the world, so Doran said.

It was a pleasure to watch the agent smooth Osano’s ruffled ego. This wasn’t a Vegas operation, where girls were sent to your room like a pizza. This was class.

“I’ve got a really intelligent girl who’s dying to meet you,” Doran told Osano. “She’s read all your books. She thinks you’re the greatest writer in America. No shit. And she’s not one of your starlets. She has a psychology degree from the University of California, and she takes bit parts in movies so that she can make contacts to write a script. Just the girl for you.”

Of course, he didn’t fool Osano. Osano knew the joke was on him, that he was to be conned into what he really wanted. So he couldn’t resist saying as Doran picked up the phone, “That’s all very well, but do I get to fuck her?”

The agent was already dialing with a gold-headed pencil.

“You got a ninety percent chance,” he said.

Osano said quickly, “How do you get that figure?” He always did that whenever somebody pulled a statistic on him. He hated statistics. He even believed the New York Times made up its stock market quotations just because one of his IBM stocks had been listed at 295 and, when he tried to sell it, he could get only 290.

Doran was startled. He stopped dialing. “I sent her out with five guys since I’ve known her. Four of them scored.”

“That’s eighty percent,” Osano said. Doran started dialing again. When a voice answered, he leaned back in his swivel chair and gave us a wink. Then he went into his dance.

I admired it. I really admired it. He was so good. His voice was so warm, his laugh so infectious.

“Katherine,” the agent crooned. “My favorite, favorite client. Listen, I was talking to the director who’s going to make that western with Clint Eastwood. Would you believe he remembered you from that one interview last year? He said you gave the best reading of anybody, but he had to go with a name and after the picture he was sorry he did. Anyway, he wants to see you tomorrow at eleven or three. I’ll call you later to get the exact time. OK? Listen I have a really good feeling about this one. I think this is the big break. I think your time has come. No, no kidding.”

He listened for a while. “Yeah, yeah, I think you’d be great in that. Absolutely marvelous.” He rolled his eyes at us comically which made me dislike him. “Yeah, I’ll sound them out and get back to you. Hey, listen, guess who I’ve got in my office right now. Nope. Nope. Listen, it’s a writer. Osano. Yeah, no kidding. No, honest. Yes, he really is. And believe it or not he happened to mention you not by name, but we were talking about movies and he mentioned that part you did, that cameo role, in City Death. Isn’t that funny? Yeah, he’s a fan of yours. Yeah, I told him you love his work. Listen, I’ve got a great idea. I’m going out to dinner with him tonight, Chasen’s, why don’t you come beautify our table? Great. I’ll have a limo pick you up at eight. OK, sweetheart. You’re my baby. I know he’ll like you. He doesn’t want to meet any starlets. He doesn’t like the starlet type. He needs conversation and I just realized that you two were made for each other. Right, good-bye, honey.”

The agent hung up and leaned back and gave us his charming smile. “She’s really a nice cunt,” he said.

I could see Osano was a little depressed by the whole scene. He really liked women, and he hated to see them hustled. He often said he’d rather be hustled by a woman than hustle her. In fact, he once gave me his whole philosophy about being in love. How it was better to be the victim.

“Look at it this way,” Osano had said. “When you’re in love with a broad, you’re getting the best of it even though she’s hustling you. You’re the guy who’s feeling great, you’re the guy who’s enjoying every minute. She’s the one who’s having a lousy time. She’s working…you’re playing. So why complain when she finally dumps you and you know you’ve been conned?”

Well, his philosophy was put to the test that night. He got home before midnight and called my room and then came in for a drink to tell me what happened with Katherine. Katherine’s percentage for scores had gone down that night. She had been a charming vibrant little brunette and swarmed all over Osano. She loved him. She adored him. She was thrilled to death that she was having dinner with him. Doran got the message and disappeared after coffee. Osano and Katherine were having a final loosening-up bottle of champagne before going back to the hotel to get down to business. That’s when Osano’s luck turned bad, though he could still have bailed out if it hadn’t been for his ego.

What screwed it up was one of the most unusual actors in Hollywood. His name was Dickie Sanders, and he had won an Oscar and had been in six successful movies. What made him unique was that he was a dwarf. That’s not as bad as it sounds. He just missed being a very short man. And he was a very handsome guy, for a dwarf. You could say he was a miniature James Dean. He had the same sad, sweet smile which he used with devastating and calculated effect on women. They couldn’t resist him. And as Doran said later, all bullshit aside, what balling broad could resist going to bed with a handsome dwarf?

So when Dickie Sanders walked into the restaurant, it was no contest. He was alone and he stopped at their table to say hello to Katherine; it seemed they knew each other, she’d had a bit part in one of his movies. Anyway, Katherine adored him twice as much as she adored Osano. And Osano got so pissed off he left her with the dwarf and went back to the hotel alone.

“What a fucking town,” he said. “A guy like me loses out to a fucking dwarf.” He was really sore. His fame didn’t mean anything. The Nobel Prize coming didn’t mean anything. His Pulitzers and National Book Awards cut no ice. He came second to a dwarf actor, and he couldn’t stand it. I had to carry him to his room finally and pour him into his bed. My final words of consolation to him were: “Listen, he’s not a dwarf, he’s just a very short guy.”

– -

Next morning, when Osano and I got on that 747 to New York, he was still depressed. Not only because he’d brought Katherine’s average down, but because they’d botched the movie version of his book. He knew it was a lousy script, and he was right. So he was really in a bad mood on the plane and bullied a scotch off the stewardess even before takeoff.

We were in the very front seats near the bulkhead, and in the two Seats across the aisle were one of those middle-aged couples, very thin, very elegant. The man had a beaten-down, unhappy look on his face that was sort of appealing. You got the impression that he was living in a private hell, but one that he deserved. Deserved because of his outward arrogance, the richness of his dress, the spitefulness of his eyes. He was suffering, and by Christ he was going to make everybody else around him suffer too, if he thought they would stand for it.

His wife looked like the classic spoiled woman. She was obviously rich, richer than her husband, though possibly they were both rich. The stamp was on them in the way they took the menu from the stewardess. The way they glanced at Osano sipping his technically illegal drink.

The woman had that bold handsomeness preserved by topnotch plastic surgery and glossed over with the even tan of daily sunlamps and Southern sun. And had that discontented mouth that is perhaps the ugliest thing in any woman. At her feet and up against the bulkhead wall was a wire-mesh box which held maybe the prettiest French poodle in the whole world. It had curly silver fur which fell into ringlets over its eyes. It had a pink mouth and pink ribbon bow over its head. It even had a beautiful tail with a pink bow on it that wagged around. It was the happiest little dog you ever saw and the sweetest-looking. The two miserable human beings that owned it obviously took pleasure from owning such a treasure. The man’s face softened a little as he looked at the poodle. The woman didn’t show pleasure, but a proprietary pride, like an older ugly woman in charge of her beautiful virginal daughter that she is preparing for the marketplace. When she reached out her hand for the poodle to lick lasciviously, it was like a Pope extending his ring to be kissed.

The great thing about Osano was that he never missed anything even when he seemed to be looking the other way. He had paid strict attention to his drink, slouched down in his seat. But now he said to me, “I’d rather get a blow job from that dog than that broad.” The jet engines made it impossible for the woman across the aisle to hear, but I felt nervous anyway. She gave us a coldly dirty look, but maybe that’s the way she always looked at people.

Then I felt guilty at having condemned her and her husband. They were, after all, two human beings. Where did I come off putting them down on sheer speculation? So I said to Osano, “Maybe they’re not as bad as they look.”

“Yes, they are,” he said.

That wasn’t worthy of him. He could be chauvinistic, racist and narrow-minded but only off the top of his head. It really didn’t mean anything. So I let it go, and as the pretty stewardess imprisoned us in our seats for dinner, I told him stories about Vegas. He couldn’t believe I had once been a degenerate gambler.

Ignoring the people across the aisle, forgetting about them, I said to him, “You know what gamblers call suicide?”

“No,” Osano said.

I smiled. “They call it the Big Ace.”

Osano shook his head. “Isn’t that marvelous?” he said dryly.

I saw he was a little contemptuous of the melodrama of the phrase, but I kept on. “That’s what Cully said to me that morning when Jordan did it. Cully came down and he said, ‘You know what that fucking Jordy did? He pulled the Big Ace out of his sleeve. The prick used his Big Ace.’” I paused, remembering it more clearly now years later. It was funny. I had never remembered that phrase before or Cully using it that night. “He capitalized it in his voice, you know. The Big Ace.”

“Why do you think he really did it?” Osano asked. He was not too interested, but he saw I was upset.

“Who the hell knows?” I said. “I thought I was so smart. I thought I had him figured. I nearly had him figured, but then he faked me out. That’s what kills me. He made me disbelieve in his humanity, his tragic humanity. Never let anybody make you disbelieve in anybody’s humanity.”

Osano grinned, nodded his head at the people across the aisle. “Like them?” he said. And then I realized that this was what made me tell him the story.

I glanced at the woman and man. “Maybe.”

“OK,” he said. “But sometimes it goes against the grain. Especially rich people. You know what’s wrong with rich people? They think they’re as good as anybody else just because they got lots of dough.”

“They’re not?” I asked.

“No,” Osano said. “They’re like hunchbacks.”

“Hunchbacks are not as good as anybody else?” I asked. I nearly said dwarfs.

“No,” Osano said. “Nor are people with one eye, basket cases, and critics and ugly broads and chickenshit guys. They gotta work at being as good as other people. Those two people didn’t work at it. They never got there.”

He was being a little irrational and illogical, not at his most brilliant. But what the hell, he’d had a bad week. And it’s not everybody who gets his love life ruined by a dwarf. I let it ride.

We finished our dinner, Osano drinking the lousy champagne and eating the lousy food that even in first class you would trade in for a Coney Island hot dog. As they lowered the movie screen, Osano bolted out of his chair and went up the steps to the 747 dome lounge. I finished my coffee and followed him up there.

He was seated in a long-backed chair and had lit up one of his long Havana cigars. He offered me one and I took it. I was developing a taste for them, and that delighted Osano. He was always generous but a little careful with his Havanas. If you got one from him, he watched you closely to see if you enjoyed it enough to deserve it. The lounge was beginning to fill up. The stewardess on duty was busy making drinks. When she brought Osano his martini, she sat on the arm of his lounge chair and he put one hand in her lap to hold her hand.

I could see that one of the great things about being as famous as Osano was that you get away with stuff like that. In the first place, you had the confidence. In the second place, the young girl, instead of thinking you a dirty old man, is usually enormously flattered that somebody so important could think her that attractive. If Osano wanted to screw her, she must be something special. They didn’t know that Osano was so horny he would screw anything with skirts. Which is not as bad as it sounds since a lot of guys like him screwed anything in pants and skirts.

The young girl was charmed by Osano. Then a good-looking woman passenger started coming on to him, an older woman with a crazy, interesting face. She told us about how she had just recovered from heart surgery and hadn’t fucked for six months and was now ready to go. That’s the kind of things women always told Osano. They felt they could tell him anything because he was a writer and so would understand anything. Also, because he was famous and that would make them interesting to him.

Osano took out his heart-shaped Tiffany pillbox. It was filled with white tablets. He took one and offered the box to the heart lady and the stewardess. “Come on,” he said. “It’s an upper. We’ll really be flying high.” Then he changed his mind. “No, not you,” he said to the heart lady. “Not in your condition.” That’s when I knew the heart lady was out of it.

Because the pills were really penicillin pills Osano always took before sexual contact so that he would be immunized against VD. And he always used this trick to make a prospective partner take them to double the insurance. He popped one in his mouth and washed it down with scotch. The stewardess laughingly took one, and Osano watched her with a cheerful smile. He offered me the box and I shook my head.

The stewardess was really a pretty young thing, but she couldn’t handle Osano and the heart lady. Trying to get the attention back to her, she said sweetly to Osano, “Are you married?”

Now she knew, as everybody knew, that not only was Osano married, but he had been married at least five times. She didn’t know that a question like that irritated Osano because he always felt a little guilty about cheating-on all his wives, even the ones he’d divorced. Osano grinned at the stewardess and said coolly. “I'm married, I got a mistress and I got a steady girlfriend. I’m just looking for a dame I can have some fun with.”

It was insulting. The young girl flushed and took off to serve the other passengers drinks.

Osano settled down to enjoy the conversation with the heart lady, giving advice on her first fuck. He was putting her on a little.

“Listen.” he said. “You don’t want to straight luck for the first time out. It won’t be a good fuck for the guy because you’ll be a little scared. The thing to do is have the guy go down on you while you’re half asleep. Take a tranquilizer and then, just as you’re dozing off, he eats you up, you know? And get a guy who’s good at it. A real gentleman blow job artist.”

The woman turned a little red. Osano grinned. He knew what he was doing. I got a little embarrassed too. I always fall a little in love with strange women who hit me right. I could see her thinking how she could get Osano to do the job for her. She didn’t know that she was too old for him and he was just playing his cards very coolly to nail the young stewardess.

There we were speeding along at six hundred miles an hour and not feeling a thing. But Osano was getting drunker, and things started going bad. The heart lady was boozy maudlin about dying and how to find the right guy to go down on her the right way. That made Osano nervous. He said to her, “You can always play the Big Ace.” Of course, she didn’t know what he was talking about. But she knew she was being dismissed, and the hurt look on her face irritated Osano even more. He ordered another drink, and the stewardess, jealous and pissed off that he had ignored her, gave him the drink and slipped away in the cool, insulting way the young can always use to put older people down. Osano showed his age that day.

At that moment the couple with the poodle came up the steps into the lounge. Well, she was one woman I would never fall in love with. The discontented mouth, that artificially tinted nut-brown face with all the lines of life excised by a surgeon’s knife, were too repellent, no fantasies could be spun around them unless you were into sadomaso stuff.

The man carried the beautiful little poodle, the dog’s tongue hanging out with happiness. Carrying the poodle gave the sour-faced man a touching air of vulnerability. As usual Osano seemed not to notice them, though they gave him glances that showed they knew who he was. Probably from TV. Osano had been on TV a hundred times and always making himself interesting in a foolish way that lessened his real worth.

The couple ordered drinks. The woman said something to the man and he obediently dropped the poodle to the floor. The poodle stayed close to them, then wandered around a bit, sniffing at all the people and at all the chairs. I knew Osano hated animals, but he didn’t seem to notice the poodle sniffing at his feet. He kept talking to the heart lady. The heart lady leaned over to fix the pink ribbon over the poodle’s head and get her hand licked by the poodle’s little pink tongue. I never could understand the animal thing, but this poodle was, in a funny kind of way, sexy. I wondered what went on with that sour-faced couple. The poodle pattered around the lounge, wandered back to its owners and sat on the feet of the woman. She put on dark glasses, which for some reason seemed ominous, and when the stewardess brought her drink, she said something to the young girl. The stewardess looked at her in astonishment.

I guess it was at this moment that I got a little nervous. I knew Osano was all jazzed up. He hated being trapped in a plane, he hated being trapped in a conversation with a woman he didn’t really want to screw. What he was thinking about was how to get the young stewardess into a toilet and give her a quick, savage fuck. The young stewardess came to me with my drink and leaned over to whisper in my ear. I could see Osano getting jealous. He thought the girl was coming on to me, and that was an insult to his fame more than anything else. He could understand the girl wanting a younger, better-looking guy, but not turning down his fame.

But the stewardess was whispering a different kind of trouble. She said, “That woman wants me to tell Mr. Osano to put out his cigar. She says it’s bothering her dog.”

Jesus Christ. The dog wasn’t even supposed to be up in the lounge running around. It was supposed to be in its box. Everybody knew that. The girl whispered worriedly, “What should I do?”

I guess what happened next was partly my fault. I knew Osano could go crazy at any time and that this was a prime time. But I was always curious about how people react. I wanted to see if the stewardess would really have the nerve to tell a guy like Osano to put out one of his beloved Havana cigars because of a fucking dog. Especially when Osano had paid for a first class ticket just to smoke it in the lounge. I also wanted to see Osano put the hard-faced snotty woman in her place. I would have ditched my cigar and let it ride. But I knew Osano. He would send the plane down into hell first.

The stewardess was waiting for an answer. I shrugged. “Whatever your job makes you do,” I said. And it was a malicious answer.

I guess the stewardess felt the same way. Or maybe she just wanted to humiliate Osano because he was no longer paying any attention to her. Or maybe, because she was just a kid, she took what she thought was the easy way out.

Osano, if you didn’t know him, looked easier to handle than the bitch lady.

Well, we all made a bad mistake. The stewardess stood next to Osano and said, “Sir, would you mind putting out your cigar? That lady says the smoke is bothering her dog.”

Osano’s startling green eyes went cold as ice. He gave the stewardess a long, hard look.

“Let me hear that again,” he said.

Right then I was ready to jump out of the plane. I saw the look of maniacal rage form over Osano’s face. It was no longer a joke. The woman was staring at Osano with distaste. She was dying for an argument, a real uproar. You could see she’d love a fight. The husband glanced out the window, studying the limitless horizon. Obviously this was a familiar scene and he had every confidence that his wife would prevail. He even had a slight, satisfied smile. Only the sweet-looking poodle was distressed. It was gasping for air and giving delicate little hiccups. The lounge was smoky but not from just Osano’s cigar. Nearly everybody had cigarettes going, and you got the feeling that the poodle owners would make everybody stop smoking.

The stewardess, frightened by Osano’s face, was paralyzed-she couldn’t speak. But the woman was not intimidated. You could see that she just loved seeing that look of maniacal rage on Osano’s face. You could also see that she never in her life had been punched in the mouth, that she had never gotten a few teeth knocked out. The thought had never occurred to her. So she even leaned toward Osano to speak to him, putting her face in range. I almost closed my eyes. In fact, I did close my eyes for a fraction of a second and I could hear the woman in her cultured, cold voice saying very flatly to Osano, “Your cigar is distressing my dog. Could you please just stop?”

The words were snotty enough, but the tone was insulting beyond any mere words. I could see she was waiting for an argument about her dog’s not being allowed in the lounge, how the lounge was for smoking. How she realized that if she had said the smoke was distressing her personally, Osano would get rid of the cigar. But she wanted him to put out the cigar for her dog. She wanted a scene.

Osano grasped all this in a second. He understood everything. And I think that was what drove him crazy. I saw that smile come over his face, a smile that could be infinitely charming but for the cold green eyes that were pure maniac.

He didn’t yell at her. He didn’t punch her in the face. He gave her husband one look to see what he would do. The husband smiled faintly. He liked what his wife was doing, or so it seemed. Then with a deliberate motion Osano put out his cigar in the welled tray of his seat. The woman watched him with contempt. Then Osano reached out his arm across the table and you could see the woman thought he was going to pet the poodle. I knew better. Osano’s hand went down over the poodle’s head and around its neck.

What happened next was too quick for me to stop. He lifted the poor dog up, rising up out of his seat, and strangled it with both hands. The poodle gasped and choked, its pink beribboned tail wagging in distress. Its eyes started bulging out of its mattress of silky ringed fur. The woman screamed and sprang up and clawed at Osano’s face. The husband didn’t move out of his seat. At that moment the plane hit a small air pocket and we all lurched. But Osano, drunk, all his balance concentrated on strangling the poodle, lost his footing and went sprawling down the aisle, his hands still tight around the dog’s throat. To get up he had to turn the dog loose. The woman was screaming something about killing him. The stewardess was screaming out of shock. Osano, standing straight up, smiled around the lounge and then advanced toward the woman, still screaming at him. She thought that now he would be ashamed of what he had done, that she could abuse him. She didn’t know that he had already made up his mind to strangle her as he had the dog. Then she caught on…She shut up.

And Osano said with maniacal quiet, “You cunt, now you get it.” And he lunged for her. He was really crazy. He hit her in the face. I ducked in front and grabbed him. But he had his hands around her throat and she screamed. And then it became a madhouse. The plane must have had security guards in plain clothes because two men took Osano very professionally by the arms and peeled his coat back to form a straitjacket. But he was wild and he was throwing them around anyway. Everybody watched, horrified. I tried to quiet Osano down, but he couldn’t hear anything. He was berserk. He was screaming curses at the woman and her husband. The two security men were trying to gentle him down, addressing him by name, and one, a good-looking strong boy, was asking him if they let him go would he behave. Osano still fought. Then the strong boy lost his temper.

Now Osano was in an uncontrollable rage because partly it was his nature and partly because he was famous and knew he would be insulated against any retaliations for his rage. The young strong boy understood this by instinct, but now he was affronted that Osano didn’t respect his superior youthful strength. And he got mad. He took a handful of Osano’s hair and yanked his head back so hard he nearly snapped his neck. Then he put his arm around Osano’s neck and said, “You son of a bitch, I’ll break it.” Osano went still.

Jesus, it was a mess after that. The captain of the plane wanted to put Osano in a straitjacket, but I talked him out of it. The security cleared out the lounge, and Osano and I sat there with them for the rest of the trip. They didn’t let us off in New York until the plane was empty, so we never saw the woman again. But that last glimpse of her was enough. They had washed the blood off her face, but she had one eye almost shut and her mouth was mashed to pulp. The husband carried the poodle, still alive, wagging its tail desperately for affection and protection. Later there were some legal complaints that the lawyers handled. Of course, it got in all the papers. The great American novelist and prime candidate for the Nobel Prize had almost murdered a little French poodle. Poor dog. Poor Osano. The cunt had turned out to be a large stockholder in the airline plus having millions of other dollars, and of course, she couldn’t even threaten never to fly that airline again. As for Osano he was perfectly happy. He had no feeling about animals. He said, “As long as I can eat them, I can kill them.” When I pointed out that he had never eaten dog meat, he just shrugged and said, “Cook it right and I’ll eat it.”

One thing Osano missed. That crazy woman had her humanity too. OK, she was crazy. OK, she deserved a bloody mouth, it might even have done her good. But she really didn’t deserve what Osano did to her. She really couldn’t help the kind of person she was, I thought then. The earlier Osano would have seen all that. For some reason he couldn’t now.