American Dream Machine (18 page)

He laughed. But he would soon do exactly that. This was how easy it became for him, all his failures looping back to reward him at last. Even the shoe store, where he sold one of Irv’s wobbly little cop dramas to
TV
.
The
ABC
Tuesday Movie of the Week
! He couldn’t lose. The kids came in, Sev with a sunburn and a peeling nose, zinc daubing his cheeks and chin. He was never a Californian, was more like a tiny lifeguard, a midget Jew from Miami.

“You
OK
, sport?”

“Yeah. Rufus was throwing rocks at us.”

“Rocks?” Beau asked, as Severin wasn’t a tattletale. “What kind of rocks?”

Kate arrived now, drinking fizzy water from a plastic cup. “Just rocks.”

There was something wrong with both DeLongs, Beau thought. The axis of human feeling sat askew, and where in Davis this manifested typically as an actor’s sociopathic charm, his son had the cold mask of a political consultant. Maybe he had that syndrome, whatever you called it, where you couldn’t stomach touch or anything other than numbers. Rufus sulked by himself, while Severin and Kate and Bryce’s son Sergei went out to wash the dirt off their feet and Davis chatted up another starlet. Rufus had his father’s golden-boy looks, but on him they seemed strange, almost simian. He’d just turned nine.

“Whatcha drinking?” Beau sniffed his daughter’s glass when she came back in.

“Quinine.”

“Quinine? Are you afraid you’re gonna catch malaria?”

“I like the taste.” Kate shrugged. And with this shrug articulated his own puzzlement, the wonder he felt confronted with his children. Why does anybody like anything?

“Let’s go, grab your shoes.”

“Is it time?”

“Yeah.” Mostly, he just liked watching her be responsible, scurrying off on little errands. How delicious it was, to watch them grow. “Time.”

“Can we go to Neptune’s Net, Dad?”

“You wanna see the motorcycles, Sev? All right.”

Sunday afternoon, lazy weekend days in which he felt sluggish even if he hadn’t had any wine, no Soave Bolla or strawberry margaritas, whatever the hell these people were drinking while James Taylor sang “Shower the People,” then Lindsay Buckingham did “World Turning.” Twin feelings of permissiveness and oppression seemed to compete. Davis was getting his dick sucked in an upstairs closet, while fifty feet and an unlocked door away his son played with a magnifying glass, focusing the sun’s rays to see if he could burn his own knee. Beau just led his kids out to the car. Not his problem. Rachel was right to trust him. He might get another year with them, if he was lucky. He passed the courtyard gate and strapped them into the backseat of the Jag. Behind him the mother hens clucked, approvingly.

“WHERE’S DAVIS?”

Still one more party. Why would you ever stop? It was the Fourth of July weekend at Bryce’s house. A sense of bicentennial dissolution, of gaudy extremity, hung in the air. Stale cigarette smoke, the stinging sweetness of blender drinks might make you weep. The crowd included many of the old faces. Bob Skoblow, Roland Mardigian, Teddy Sanders.

“Davis has gotta be with that broad,” Bryce said.

“No, no.” Beau was drinking cold Pacifico in his old friend’s kitchen. Pale linoleum felt sticky beneath his tar-darkened soles. “Warren’s here, so there’ll be competition.”

“Fuck. Davis or Warren? They’ll take turns. Two biggest gash hounds in Hollywood.”

Beau snorted. How far they’d fallen from Waxmorton, all those more courtly and better-regulated men in New York, who’d at least had the decency to conceal their indiscretions. Now, though, what was to hide? Beau missed his old boss’s elegance, even if a world like this one was more his speed.

“I saw him before,” Beau said. “He was chasing after Vana with that pop gun of yours.”

“Was he?”

“He said it was loaded, too. He was just fucking around.”

Did
Davis fuck around? Was there a sense of humor in there somewhere? He was so stupid it was impossible to know. Doing deals with him was a trip since you called and laid out the terms
and after a cud-chewing silence he said either
yup
or
nope
. If only Bryce were half as easy to represent, let alone work with.

“I put it back in your shed.”

“Cool.”

Beau’d reclaimed the gun from Davis and taken it outside. He’d snapped the safety back on—it wouldn’t have been loaded, he figured: they hadn’t skeeted any Frisbees for nearly a year—and tucked it back under Bryce’s pillow.

“Stinks in there.”
You paranoid nutball!
“You really oughtta wash those sheets.”

“I have no fear of my own body’s excretions.”

“No wonder you don’t work much.”

A garden party. Kids were running around with sparklers; glowworms blossomed on the bricks. There were nearly a hundred people there. Teddy and my mother were, though I was home with a sitter. Usually, Bryce’s parties had folks puking under the house, old and new girlfriends colliding in licentious rage, some reckless, hair-pulling disaster. Today, though, Kate and Sev sat on the sand, eating hot dogs, and Sergei was playing with Wonton, his father’s German shepherd, down by the water. The tide was out, and the day was hot and calm.

Beau stood near the windows of the main house, looking out at Severin and Kate where they sat side by side. Even when they were engaged in separate activities they seemed complicit. Sev was reading a mass-market paperback copy of
Dandelion Wine
. Kate was sunning herself, rubbing her legs down with Coppertone.

“We made it, eh Brycie?” A wind picked up outside, stirred Kate’s hair.

“You did.”

“No, we did.” Words did not describe the happiness Beau felt at this moment. “Together, we did.”

Words.
What is the matter, my lord?
Long ago, Bryce Beller had played the Prince of Denmark badly. Now they could both afford to be nostalgic about failure, about mornings waking up with a skinful of tequila and the breath of old cigarettes.

“I’m going to find Davis,” Beau said. His palm print streaked the glass where he’d just been leaning and then faded slowly away. “I need to tell him something about the Warners’ thing.”

He could mention to one client an offer for another, without inciting jealousy. He could balance all his responsibilities. Even he was envious of himself, the man he had seemingly become.

“Hey, Rosers, you want a drink?”

Nicholson clasped him as he made his way out past the narrow bar, the high wooden ledge that had launched innumerable debauches.

“We just whipped up a batch of Naked Assholes.” He extended the blender’s mug toward Beau. It smelled like ethanol. “Won’t tell you what’s in ’em, but you’ll be out till Tuesday.”

“I’ll pass.”

Once upon a time, Nicholson and Beller were so close, they were occasionally mistaken for one another. They didn’t even look alike. Every once in a while Hollywood did this, like with the two Bills, Paxton and Pullman, a decade and change later. It liked to remind you stars were not only replaceable, they were scarcely unique. One man could easily be another. Beau swam through the crowd, pressing against the bikini-clad people with their spritzers and rum drinks, swaying in stances of sexual aggression or surrender.

“Hey, Rosers!”

Half of them hadn’t even spoken to him for years. He turned to see Bob Skoblow tilting toward him, Roland Mardigian towering by his side.

“Where you been, man?” Bob hugged him. “We were just discussing you.”

“Just now?”

“Last week, or last month—where were we, Rollie, whose house was that?”

“Vana’s? I don’t remember.”

“Yeah, Vana’s. We hear good things. You’re representing Davis now?”

“That’s what he tells me.”

“Listen.” Roland lay a heavy arm on Beau’s shoulder. “We have a proposal.”

These men were Sam’s minions, even if Sam’s power was fading—he had one foot on the banana peel, perched above the grave—and still, they did his bidding. What could they want?

“A proposal, huh? You got a ring?”

“Gotta talk to Will first.” Roland swayed above him. His pitted skin was an eczema red, and his hair was entirely silver. “There’s a little something we’re putting together.”

Beau nodded. It could wait. He tapped Roland’s bicep and moved on.
Soon
. He went outside to check on the kids.

“Hey, Sev, you guys
OK
?”

Severin didn’t look up from his book. Kate was napping, her wrists crossed as she lay on her stomach atop a towel.
All’s well
. He wondered for a second why he hadn’t heard from Rachel. She’d been incommunicado all week. He hustled back into the house, sand scalding his toes.

For an instant, his vision flickered. His tongue curled. There was nothing like calm to set a man off. Watching his kids sleep drove Beau crazy. He needed the chaos of the movie business to match that madness inside him.

“Teddy!”

“Barrett.” This was Beau’s real name, strangely enough: Beau was just the nickname he’d earned when he was too little to pronounce it. “What can I do for you?”

“A little Panamanian improvement? I’m having a rough day.”

“I see that.” Teddy took his elbow. “Let’s grab some air.”

The thing about these episodes was that they also felt great. Just as he had in Sam’s office, he stood within an eye of serenity. His tongue tingled and bent, as if he had just licked a battery.

“I saw you talking to some girl about poetry, Beau? Have you turned over a new leaf?”

“No.” Beau inhaled. “I prefer the old leaf.”

Teddy wore a linen suit, a Panama hat. He looked like a plantation owner, ruddy and bewhiskered, with straw-colored hair and a subtle, conspirative expression. He chewed his mustache.

“Good shit, huh?”

Beau nodded. “The best.”

Marijuana always cooled him out. It made the world feel spacious enough to accommodate even him. They stood on the terraced garden’s second level. Long shadows fell across the grass, beneath the acacias and bonsais and lemon trees. Torches smoked in the breeze.

“Has Will been in touch with you?”

“Skobs and Rollie just asked me the same thing.” Beau studied him. “What’s going on, Teddy?”

It was late, of a sudden. The red sun doused in the Pacific. Where did the time go, where was it ever? Seven o’clock or seven thirty. Soon they’d be starting up the fireworks, shooting them from a barge out on the water.

“You’ll need to talk to Will,” Teddy hissed. The tiny flame of his lighter repeated itself in the lens of his round, rimless glasses.

He held the joint out to a girl as she passed, an actress Beau almost recognized. From where he stood he could see Kate and Sev, at last standing and shaking themselves off, brushing sand from their legs in the final golden crescent of day.

“Will’s not here,” Beau said. True, Will never went to parties. But what could Will be up to, that he wouldn’t tell his friend? Then again, even he had to be careful, now that Beau was twice Sam’s enemy for stealing the golden goose. “You people are planning something.”

“Maybe.” Teddy’s face was illegible, perfect for an agent. “Code of silence, my friend.”

The two men stood without saying anything. Down on the sand, Kate streaked back to pick up what looked like a hairband and then followed Rufus DeLong into the house. Sunlight flamed over the water.

“Better?” Teddy said, after a moment.

“Yes.” Beau sighed. “Theodore, you are a lifesaver.”

“We all feel that way, Beau.” Teddy searched him. “Whatever it is that ails you.”

Neither of these men was an introvert. Teddy had been to Stanford on a full scholarship, was easily the most educated man—even beyond Williams—Beau had ever known. He was also just a poor boy from the deepest reaches of Burbank, beyond where the studio lots had ever existed to prop up the economy, where the city tapered off into shabby ranch houses, yards filled with arguing Hispanics.

“Thanks, Teddy.” Beau chortled. “You scan the very reaches of my soul.”

“An agent’s job.” Teddy’s eyes gleamed, as ever, with irony. “We’re the Jewish confessors.”

He tucked what was left of the joint in Beau’s pocket, before the latter turned and moved through the crowd. The air smelled of briquettes, lighter fluid, the hopeful scent of barbecue. The dope
should have relaxed Beau finally, but it didn’t. The patio thronged with his friends, people who’d known him for years. Yet who did they know? The friendly fat man, bonhomous Beau. Not the fearful fetishist, panic-stricken dreamer. His forehead felt cold, the tops of his ears. He hadn’t had an episode like this since before
The Dog’s Tail
was in production. He found a bench on one of the lower levels of the garden. He wanted to be alone. He dropped his face into his hands and waited. The moon was full, the sky purple. Beau sat in the posture of a man grieving. Around him the torches flickered, offering up their obscure signals of smoke and fire.

“You wanna see it?”

“What?” Kate spoke. “See what?”

“I don’t want to see it, Rufus.” Severin, as ever, was the voice of reason.

“No.” Bullying Rufus’s voice had already dropped an octave it seemed, and he was easily three inches taller than the other kids. They were out on the sand again. “That’s not what I’m talking about.”

Kate stood next to him. Bryce’s son, weak little Sergei, was in Rufus’s shadow, literally and figuratively. A sickly blond, with sunken cheeks and dolorous gray eyes.

“I don’t want to see it either,” Kate said, echoing her brother. “I know what one looks like.”

Four children were on the sand. Alone, unnoticed.

“Have you ever held one?”

“No!” Kate’s tone said,
gross
. “That’s a boy thing.”

If Beau had overheard this, would he have put a stop to it? Of course.
The fuck are you doing, Rufus?
He’d have swatted his client’s kid as surely as his own father had once swatted him, because Davis DeLong’s little pig of a boy deserved it. They were down on the damp sand where the surf lapped in, close to the shadow of the house. The waves were thunderous enough to drown their voices. From where he sat, Beau might have heard only wind-ripped pieces.