Hollywood Animal (74 page)

But more and more I find I’m not in control. I’m just
going
with the flow. And it’s getting very strange. We smoked a joint this time, and Joe said something outrageous, I don’t even remember what it was.

I said, “You know, you’re really insane. You should commit yourself.”

He laughed.

Gerri looked at me and said, “If he’s insane, what are you?”

She said it with a smile, but I felt very uncomfortable. I said, “I don’t know, what am I?”

And she said, “You’re … scandalous.”

We all laughed, since I had been tabloid fodder in the past month. But an uneasiness was clearly there.

Then she said, “And what am I?”

I didn’t answer. We all sat for a few seconds.

Then Joe said, “I know. You’re responsible, Gerri. You’ve always been very responsible.”

She smiled. I smiled. We all smiled.

Maybe I should go home.

I love Hawaii and Joe and Gerri are great company, but this trip is becoming more and more strange each day. I feel like I’m in some twisted play that never ends. The kids have brought their friends, so they aren’t around much of the time. Which leaves the three of us.

Gerri and I go down to the pool and Joe says he will be down to join us. If I sit next to Gerri on the end she says, “Oh no! Sit next to Joseph.”

I’ll say, “But I want to sit next to you.”

She says, “Then sit in the middle.”

When we go out for dinner in the van, she says, “Sit up front next to Joseph, I’ll sit in back.” If I argue, she just gets in and smiles and says she wants to sit with the kids.

So there I am, up front with Joe. It makes me self-conscious. I love to talk to Joe, but it’s weird to be riding in front with him. Maybe I’m being paranoid or petty but this is just becoming more disconcerting for me.

At the pool yesterday Joe, Gerri, and I were all lounging in the sun. I don’t remember what we were talking about but I said something to the effect that sometimes nothing seems to
make
sense anymore. Maybe not quite that esoteric but something in that vein.

And Joe was lying there with his sunglasses (he always wears sunglasses, so you never know where he’s looking or what’s going on inside). He said, “Well, I’ve lived forty-eight years and I would say I have learned one thing for sure: Life is strange.”

Yesterday Gerri wanted to go shopping. I don’t much like shopping to begin with, let alone on Maui where I’d rather just lounge by the pool or read a book. But I always go or she’ll have to go alone and I’d feel terrible.

So we’re in a sort of barren department store and I see this little red dress. I don’t think I’ve ever owned a red dress but it was on sale and caught my eye and I bought it. She wanted to buy it for me but I said, “Please, Gerri, let me treat myself.”

Then she came over to me with a black lace bed jacket. She loves lingerie.

She said, “Oh, let me get this for you.”

I said, “Gerri. I’ll never wear it.”

She said, “But Joseph would love it on you. You can wear it for cocktails.”

I should explain that each night after the sun sets, we come up and put our robes on and have a drink before dinner on either my balcony or Joe and Gerri’s. (We are in adjoining rooms.) But these are big, bulky terry cloth hotel robes—not lacy underwear.

I said, “Gerri. I won’t wear it—please.”

She walked away, but again I think I hurt her feelings.

I really looked at her when she said Joe would like it. I thought—Maybe she’s being sarcastic or testing me. But she just seems guileless. I have never been in a stranger situation.

When we were alone, Gerri told me how much fun she was having. “Isn’t this the greatest vacation?” she said. “Naomi and the kids are having a lot of fun, too, aren’t they?”

I saw, though, that she had a stack of books about witchcraft and demonology and was still reading them as I fell asleep each night.

· · ·

The day before Guy McElwaine was supposed to arrive, Gerri decided to go with Suzi and her friend for a long hike.

Joe and I sat in the sun, had lunch, and talked. He always makes me laugh, really laugh. He said, “We think alike, you know,” and I knew what he meant immediately. We always seem to have some level of communication that’s beneath the surface. Here we are having conversations with his entire family around, but it sometimes seems to me we’re the only two people in the room.

The hikers weren’t due back until dinnertime. At around four o’clock Joe said, “Let’s have a beer at the Hyatt. It’s a beautiful bar.” So we did. I have not had so much fun in years.

As the sun set, I thought, I would love to just climb in his lap and stay there forever. He feels like home. I don’t know if my feelings are because he has rescued me at a time when I have felt so alone, or because I’m falling in love with him. All I know is that no matter who’s in the room anymore, I only see him.

Just then he looked at me and said, “I think I’m falling in love with you.”

I was stunned. Joe never says or does anything carelessly.

He said, “I’d love to spend my life with you, just like this. I’d love to have children with you.”

It was the first time I’d ever seen him nervous. He looked like an awkward boy. I wanted to hug him.

I said, “I think I might be falling in love with you, too.”

And then he smiled. So beautifully. He took my hand and squeezed it. I felt like an electric current ran up my arm. I thought—I don’t know what this is but I’ve never felt it before.

We said nothing more, but when we walked back to our hotel he held my hand. It was so wonderful. Bill would never hold my hand. I realized the last person who had held my hand like that was my mother.

· · ·

We had dinner that night but as I listened to Gerri’s and Suzi’s account of their hike, the words felt like they were coming through a haze. I felt guilty and I felt overjoyed. But I felt warm, and so different than I ever had felt in my life.

After dinner, Gerri, Naomi, and I smoked some dope on the patio of our suite. Gerri nodded off after a while and fell asleep in her chair.

Naomi and I went inside to pour some more wine and I kissed her, more and more passionately. Naomi said, “We can’t do this.”

I picked her up and carried her into her own bedroom and locked the connecting door to the suite.

I kept kissing her and we were on the bed now, our clothes off, making love; the intensity of the feeling that had built up between us suddenly exploding.

I was smoking a cigarette and we were lying there quietly in each other’s arms when we heard a loud pounding on the door to the suite. It was Gerri. Her voice was stoned and slurred.

“Joseph!” she yelled. “I know you’re in there, Joseph.”

She started throwing fruit from the complimentary fruit basket at the door. Apples, oranges, and pineapples smashed on the door.

“You’ve got to get out of here,” Naomi whispered to me.

I kissed her quickly, put my shirt and shorts on, and ducked out a door which led to the stairway, then ran seven floors down to the lobby.

An hour later, I reappeared in the suite. Gerri was sitting quietly on the patio, staring off. Pulped fruit was everywhere on the rug around the door leading to Naomi’s door.

“Jesus,” I said to Gerri, “what did you do?”

She said, “I thought you were in there with Naomi.”

I said, “What? You thought
what
?”

She said, “Where were you?”

“I got stoned out on the patio and went down to the beach to straighten out.”

She said, “Where’s Naomi?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “she’s probably asleep in her room.”

I looked at the pulped fruit on the rug again and said, “Gerri, you’ve gotta stop this. You’re flipping out.”

Gerri looked at me, tears in her eyes, and said, “I know. I’m sorry.”

I held her and said. “It’s okay. It must’ve been the dope. This Maui stuff is so strong it can make you paranoid.”

· · ·

Guy came over from the Big Island, from his beloved Mauna Kea Hotel, to spend a few days with us. He had never met Naomi Macdonald, he didn’t even know we were good friends.

I told him that Naomi was here with us and that I thought I was falling in love with her.

He seemed shattered. He knew me well. He knew I had a
reverence
for my family. He knew, too, that I was lonely … he knew about the other girls and the “research” trips in different cities. He also knew and liked Gerri.

And, of course, he was still Sharon’s agent, unofficially representing Bill Macdonald now, too, who was talking about forming a production company with Sharon and was trying to find scripts for her to star in (including
Atlas Shrugged
).

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Does Naomi love you?”

“I don’t know. I think she does. I feel that she does.”

“She’s a train wreck,” Guy said. “Her husband leaves her for Sharon Stone after five months of marriage and two months later you, her husband’s best friend, fall in love with her. She’s gotta be reeling.”

Joe said to me, “I’m going to meet Guy for a drink before you and Gerri come down. I’m going to tell him that I think I’m in love with you.”

I panicked. “But I’ve never met him. What is he going to think of me?”

Joe said, “Trust me.”

When I was ready to go downstairs, I knocked on Gerri’s door. She said to come in, but she had just come out of the shower and wasn’t ready.

“You go on down,” she said, “I’ll meet you.”

“That’s okay,” I said, “I’ll wait.”

She insisted. “Go on, I’ll be down soon.”

And so I went. I’ll never forget how they both looked as I walked in. Guy was smiling, but his eyes were sweeping all over me curiously. Joe was beaming. They both stood up when I walked up to the table. I was wearing my little red dress, the one Gerri wanted to buy for me.

· · ·

Joe, as he always did, told me how pretty I looked. As we began to talk, I felt at ease. We were laughing and talking about nothing at all and I was so happy.

Guy said, “You know even Stevie Wonder would see what’s going on here.”

Then Gerri arrived. She seemed almost giddy. And as the evening wore on, and she had more to drink, her eyes were bright and she was increasingly bubbly.

And I thought—
She knows
.

We went to eat at Avalon in Lahaina, with Guy, Steve and Suzi and their friends. We had a lot to drink and when we came out of the restaurant we walked up the stairs to Lahaina’s only live-music rock club, Moose McGillycuddy’s.

It was a meat market, it was packed. Gerri went outside to talk to the kids, to see what their plan for the evening was. Joe walked up to the dance floor, where many people stand and watch the band. I was left with Guy, who was slowly sipping a drink.

I glanced back at the table and saw Naomi sitting with Guy as, one after another, the guys in the place went up and asked her to dance. I saw her shaking her head. Gerri wasn’t there.

I thought—I know what Joe’s doing. The tension is thick. He’s catching his breath for a minute.

I wanted to dance with her. That’s all I felt. I wanted to hold her in my arms.

As I looked at him, I thought—I want to be near him. I don’t want to sit here with Guy. I said, “Guy, I’m going to talk to Joe. Will you watch my purse?”

He looked at me long and hard. Then he just reached out his hand and took my purse.

I watched her come toward me from the table. As she came up, I saw Gerri back at the table, standing there, her eyes on me.

The band was called the Missionaries. They were playing rock and roll. When Joe saw me, he was silent for a minute. Then he said, “You want to dance?” He said it so calmly.

I said, “Yes.”

So he put his drink down and took my hand.

I felt Gerri’s eyes burning at us, laserlike, across the room.

Just as we walked to the floor, the song ended. We stood there a few seconds. Then the band began to play a slow, throbbing love song. The floor cleared. For a moment I thought he would say, “Let’s wait for the next one.” But he didn’t.

I danced with her. We melted into each other out there alone on that dance floor, holding on to each other as though each of us was a lifeline. We were both trembling.

He took me in his arms and in that moment the club disappeared for me. I only felt him, smelled him, saw him. I wanted never to let go.

Guy was there suddenly.

He said, “You don’t want to do this.”

I said, “Leave me alone.”

He said, “You don’t want to do this like this—come on, go back to the table, let me dance with Naomi.”

I said, “If you touch Naomi, I’m gonna break your fuckin’ neck.”

Joe gave him one of those looks that can stop a wild boar in its tracks. My heart was pounding. Guy went back to the table.

Gerri was out on the dance floor.

“Do you want me to go, Joseph?” she said.

She wasn’t crying. She almost whispered the words, her eyes almost blank now.

I said, “It’s up to you.”

She stood there a moment as I held Naomi, watching us, and then she went back to sit down with Guy.

We finished the dance. We quickly left the club. Gerri had given the kids the van, so we took a cab back to the Four Seasons. I rode up front with the driver, the girl in the
little
red dress. Joe sat with Guy and Gerri in the back. It was forty minutes of utter dead silence.

I remembered on that taxi back to Lahaina what I had said to Bill Macdonald to stop him from letting Naomi come to the
Sliver
wrap party: “
Do you want to humiliate your wife?
” I knew that I had just humiliated mine.