THIRTY-THREE
Opening his eyes, Sean found himself in a one-room bungalow so sparsely furnished any guest would have understood that one night was all they could stay, which was fine with him, except last night had aged him a hundred years and he swung his legs out of the bed onto the planked floor with all the power of Lazarus rising from the grave. Thankfully someone had left a bottle of water on the night table and he drank all of it without bothering with a glass.
Sean dressed quickly, though his socks and shoes completely stumped him, so he stepped outside onto the wet grass and tried to get his bearing. A confusion of wild oak obscured the canyon's crest line and the downhill slope was blocked by a hedge gone wild. The cat-pissy smell of eucalyptus floated on the cold mist and owls hooted on the dripping sycamores deeper in the shadows of the savage garden beyond which rambled a long ranch house. Even under these gray skies he could discern that this was about as close to heaven as you could get without dying.
Sean entered a spacious living room, where Vic's wife sat on the sofa, wearing an oversized Irish sweater. With her legs wrapped in a Treaty blanket, Beth resembled an invalid version of a young Georgia O'Keefe, but only until she tsked, "You look like what the cat dragged in."
"More like something the dog left out in the rain,” Sean retorted with a croak. His mouth and throat were parched from the extreme dehydration of his body. "You have anything cold to drink?"
"You mean, like beer?” Beth demanded incredulously.
"No, I'm not doing a remake of THE DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES,” Sean quipped, but Beth either had not seen the Billy Wilder classic or did not think his comment was funny, because her stone-cold face displayed only disdain. Knowing you can't make everyone happy, he said, "Some water and aspirin would be perfect."
"Behind you.” Beth pointed to a table, where OJ, water, aspirin, and glasses rested on a tray. After chasing down three aspirins with a bottle of water, he sat on the other end from Beth with an audible groan.
"Rough night?” she asked without stopping writing on a legal pad.
"Yeah, but fun.” He shuddered in anticipation of the lecture he might need, but could do without this morning.
"I would have thought that you might have outgrown all that.” She faced him disapprovingly, "And the rest of it."
Sean frowned and asked, "What else did Vic tell you?"
"About Las Vegas and the movie."
"Oh." Sean had to learn how to keep his trap shut.
"It won't go any farther than me,” Beth told him with all the sincerity of a priest in the confessional.
"That's already two further than it should have gone."
Sean was too big a target not to attack, so she focused her eyes on him like searchlights. "I don't know whether this story is true or not, but it sounds like you were involved in an attempted murder, actually two, counting the attempt on your life, kidnapping, theft, arson, and probably a lot more and you know what bothers me?"
"What?” Getting a lecture from someone, who does not know what they talking about, but are dead on the money, raised the bristles on his back.
"Why didn't you go to the police and clear this up?"
"The police?” It was a good question and Sean wished he had a better answer than someone like himself was never clean to the police, so he said, "The police, they get too involved. I've never been to prison and I intend on keeping it that way."
"Yes, but these people tried to kill you and have you kill someone else."
"That's true, but remember both of them are the police and the cops believe their own, not someone like me,” Sean explained, though good citizens only saw the inside of his world as a Six O'Clock News soundbite or parodied in the movies and TV.
"So what do you do now? Go on the run?" Beth had no time to waste with his adult version of 'Cops and Robbers' and was ready to throw him out of the house. He could grow up someplace else.
"Yeah."
"What kind of life is that?"
"Not bad as long as no one's after you,” While his options were limited, getting out of town was the best move left in the book and had been for days. "Don't worry about me
"I don't, but Vic does. You're his friend."
"Thanks for the concern."
"And you shouldn't get deeper into that porno world."
"I'm not involved."
"You made a pornographic movie."
"It wasn't pornographic.” Sean protested.
"What wasn't pornographic?” demanded a gruff Dutch-accented voice, which Sean recognized from his previous calls to Vic.
"This is Vic's friend and he was in a porno flick,” Beth informed the squat woman with a Marine buzzcut entering the room.
"It was erotic."
"Did you have sex with the two actresses on film?" Beth's cross-examination would have suited her better in a court of Law.
"Only one of them." Sean was beginning to develop a real hatred for all men who told their wives everything in order to prove how honest they were. "We faked the other."
"Scum.” The Dutch woman wore overalls and a tee-shirt, plus dusty work boots, and glowered at Sean, as if he were Public Enemy Number One, however she could save the stares for someone who cared, since the two weeks with the film crew had inured Sean to her deep-rooted animosity. "All men who watch porno should have their balls cut off."
"Isn't that being a little severe?” Pornography had existed from time immemorial, regardless of laws, mores, and tenets against it and Sean thought a man should only be allowed to purchase pornographic material as long as he could achieve an erection. Anyone else would be refused, since they would only become criminally frustrated.
"Pornography debases women."
"I'm more concerned about the way Hollywood chops up women in film than how women are portrayed in porno." Sean raised this violence issue to deflect the angle of the attack away from him.
"It is the same thing," the Dutch woman pronounced menacingly.
"I only made love to Sherri. She forced me to. Lena was another story."
"Yeah, right.” Beth might believe what Vic told her, but not Sean.
"Sherri Conti?"
"Yeah,” Sean answered the Dutch woman
"And you were also with Lena de Gama?" she demanded hesitantly.
"I did this straight film with them about the last man on Earth.” Sean was puzzled by the woman's beatified expression, until remembering Lena's videos were aimed at women.
"What are they like?” The squat woman sat on the soda in rapt awe.
"Olga.” Her collaborator's reversal had caught Beth off-guard.
"Lena de Gama is the best adult actress in the world, but I don't think she's acting. Is that true?” The big woman was clearly enthralled with meeting someone who had been in the presence of her idol.
"I can't answer you there, but she was bigger than life in the film we shot." It was no longer a two-against one.
"Lena would be perfect for Justine,” Olga told Beth.
"We're not having a porno actress in our film.” Beth rebuked her co-writer.
"And why not? Because those women don't crossover. Some of them do and more will."
"Maybe so, but not on my film."
"Really?" Olga was not so easily deterred and said, "You remember the video I showed you with the three women in the mountain cabin?"
"Yes.” Judging from the spreading redness on her face, Beth was embarrassed to admit having seen the XXX video.
"Lena de Gama was the one you liked."
"The girl with the black hair? She was in your film?"
"Yeah, that's her.” Having witnessed to Lena's effect on people, Sean smiled at these women's turnabout.
"I didn't think she did any films with men," Beth emphasized the last word, as if it had dirty meanings.
"Not 'fuck' films.” Sean answered rudely, though without getting a rise from either woman. "This is a straight film and I'm the lead."
"I would love to speak with Sherri about films,” Olga said. "You think you could introduce us?"
"I'll give them your number once I get back to their house. I'm sure they'll call."
"You're staying with them?” Olga was clearly envious of his proximity to the two women.
"Yep, in the same apartment. Where's Vic?"
"He's in the sauna,” Beth pointed to an enclosed breezeway. "You won't forget about giving them our number, will you?"
Sean could have retorted with a curt dismissive, but instead said, "They'll get your number."
Reaching the small, but separate cedar building, Sean stripped off his clothes and picked a towel from the rack before entering the sauna, inside which the movie star was lying on his back with a towel draped across his groin. "Been wondering, when you'd get up."
"Took a little time.” Already the heat was sucking out last night's alcohol.
"What's happening in the house?"
"Beth was giving me the third degree about my recent life in film.” Sean sat down on a wooden bench, wiping the sweat from his face.
"Sorry, but I tell her everything. She'll keep it to herself. Always does,” Vic reassured him.
"I'm not mad. Hell, last night, I was telling the story to anyone who would buy me a drink. Only you and Beth thought it might be true."
"Everyone out here only believes what they see on TV."
"Yeah, Life is pretend and TV is real." Even Sean felt the same way sometimes.
The two men settled into a recuperative silence and allowed the super-heated air to work its magic. They remained in the sauna longer than they should have, since each of them was trying to outlast the other. Finally Sean conceded and asked, "You had enough?"
"If you have?"
"Uncle.” Sean led the way out, his head spinning.
There was only one shower, but it was raining outside, so Vic and Sean bared their bodies to the elements, till the chill bit into their flesh.
"All that's missing is the vodka," Vic remarked in reference to the Tenth Street Baths.
"I think I had my fill last night." Sean rushed inside the breezeway, grabbing a towel. He hesitated before asking, "What's Beth got against me?"
"Your life is crazy, so much so that no one last night believed your story. They wake up, brush their teeth, go to work, come home, watch TV, and go to sleep. Same for me. I just pretend on the screen or stage, but you really live life. A great pretender, but you're the real thing. So that's why everyone hates you a little."
"I could use a little more pretend in my life.” After all Sean earned little or nothing for being so real and Vic had been paid $3,000,000 for playing a failed writer in his last film, then again sometimes the only reason the grass is greener in the other yard is because the shit is deeper too.
"You going back to the Valley?” Vic asked, as they entered the ranch house.
"I have to pick up that money, say my good-byes, then head south.” The steam had brought him back to 50% capacity.
"From what you told me last night, that sounds like a wise move."
"I don't know about wise, but sticking around this city anymore could end up being very stupid." Sean had not forgotten deRocco or Driscoll. They had to be looking for him.
"I'll see you back in New York." The two men hugged for an instant, then broke away with Sean saying, "I hope you get an Oscar someday, maybe that will make it less fake."
"I'm sure it will, if only for a night. Any idea where you're headed. North, south, east or west?"
"South," Sean answered without saying where, since it was better no one knew. "I'll send you a postcard."
Sean returned to the guest room and got fully dressed. When the taxi showed up, Sean jumped into the cab's back seat. Thankfully the Russian driver only spoke to the radio on the treacherous drive over Mullholland. Looking out the window at the rain-delayed traffic, Sean decided he had been extraordinarily lucky, considering he had faked a murder, escaped getting killed, been in a movie, spent a week of nights with Sherri, earned $3000, had $400 in good money and $3500 in counterfeits left.
Somebody up there loved him and not just his grandmothers, although there were still too many black holes such as; where was the old man and who had signed the contract on him, where was Driscoll, who was the old man, why had Sherri had had sex with him, and why did Lena want him. Fortunately he was leaving this cosmos of whos, whats, wheres, and whens behind in Los Angeles to be solved by a greater intellect than his own or no one at all.
As they crossed a bridge spanning the surging LA River, Sean wiped away the condensation from the taxi's window. One more day of rain and it would be overflowing into the streets, but any flooding was someone else's concern and not his.
When the taxi stopped before the apartment complex, the rain seemed to worsen, so he dashed out of the taxi to the entrance, still ending up completely soaked by the time he had forced the front door open.
Shaking off the wet like an old dog, Sean stepped inside the deserted lobby and thought about the Caribbean sun in the San Blas Archipelago. The days would begin and end the same without anything really happening and slowly he would not miss Los Angeles or New York or anywhere for a long time, but as he approached the elevators, the smell of the cigarettes, whiskey, and acrid body odor told him someone was behind him and who.
"I was startin' to think that you'd been smart and blown town, but I played my hunch. Damn lucky, huh?" deRocco was not looking for any answers and stuck the barrel of a revolver against Sean forehead. "You remember this gun?"
He guessed it was the one from Las Vegas, but chose to not say anything.
"You better not be playin' that 'quiet man' shit on me. I didn't care for it the first time either." deRocco was unshaven, his eyes were bloodshot from drinking, and his suit had that lived-in look, yet he was still more than Sean could handle, for anything he said could be held against him by a madman like deRocco.
"You're friggin' lucky your brains aren't already splattered on the wall and that's only because I got some questions for you. I bet you have questions too. Like how I found you, but that's a secret and I ain't tellin', cause I hate it in the movies, where the bad guy tells the hero everythin' he don't know. I ain't gonna tellin' you nothin', but you are and you know why?"
"No.” It was all Sean could say, but also the truth.
"Cause you'll want to." deRocco words splattered as spittle on Sean's face, then a solid object cracked into his skull.
Sean's body slumped to the floor and he was transported to the interior of a pulsating emerald orb rapidly fading to black. Before he could decide what was so wrong about all this, the lights were turned off.
Completely.
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