Too Bright to Hear Too Loud to See (7 page)

“I’m Yolanda,” she says, offering me her hand. I make a good faith effort to raise mine, but it is just too heavy. So she pulls out the chair and sits down.

“I’m Yolanda,” she says again. “I’m a nursing student here and I was hoping we could talk for a few minutes.”

A nursing student? I look around to see if there is any real staff person who can help me get rid of this well-meaning pain in the ass.

“Mr. Todd? Can I get you something?” Yolanda asks, trying to meet my eyes.

“No, I’m just very tired today.”

“Oh, well, this won’t take long.”

“What won’t?”

“Well, as you may or may not know,” Yolanda says, sounding like a telemarketer, “this is a teaching hospital and part of our training as nursing students involves interacting with the patients and learning how to take a proper history.”

I look at Yolanda again and instantly know her history. She’s from one of the boroughs, first in her family to graduate college. City, Brooklyn, maybe Hunter. She’s probably first generation—Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Santo Domingo. Something like that.

She must have done well to get in here. Competitive program. Her parents must be over the moon. Father probably drives a cab. A cab with Yolanda’s picture and the Virgin Mary stuck to the dashboard. Mother probably waits tables or cleans houses or works as a seamstress at a dry cleaners.

“I’ll talk to you,” I say.

“Thank you, Mr. Todd,” Yolanda says, smiling. She sits ready with her pad and pen. “Just tell me your story.”

“My story?”

“How you got here, when you first became ill.”

“But Yolanda,” I say, truly disappointed at having to disappoint her, “I haven’t a fucking clue.”

FOURTH

Florence says things go best when I am relaxed. When I close my eyes and breathe deeply. When I remember something good. Something happy. So I am trying. To remember. What came before. But I have run out of Christmases and fishing trips. That well was shallow and ran dry quickly. Almost as soon as it saw me coming to take a drink. But there are other things. They come in different flavors—some are whole, some are just bits and pieces, some are bright, shining flashes. And some of the most vivid are also the most joyous and exhilarating. And yes, I suppose I could use those. But I am ashamed of them. Because they are not my wedding day or the day Willa was born. They come easily, and when they do, I feel a rush of guilt and shame that my happiest memories were moments of pure narcissism. Before I knew that was a bad thing
.

Los Angeles, 1974
. The awards were over and all bets were off. The sweet smell of anticipation and optimism that filled the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the beginning of the Oscar ceremonies had turned fetid with the stench of disappointment and resentment the moment the few became winners and the many became bitter. And after sitting through three and a half hours of acceptance speeches for Best Achievement in Sound Editing, five full-length musical numbers to remind us of the nominees for Best Original Song, and the annual memorial montage, all three thousand attendees wanted to be first out the door.

But how long it took to exit the overcrowded, poorly designed auditorium was largely dependent on the relative weight you carried in the industry. Nominees in the documentary and animated short subject categories usually got out just after the janitorial staff.

“Jesus Christ, these people are savages,” Ellen said, watching one A-list actress nearly decapitate little Tatum O’Neal as she leapfrogged over three rows of seats. We’d been caught in the bottleneck for twenty minutes when an enormous Inuit dressed impeccably in a Christian Dior tuxedo appeared—deus ex machina—in front of us.

“Mr. and Mrs. Todd?”

“Yes, and you are …”

“Hugo. Angela invites you to come with me.”

Angela Glass was my client—brilliant, neurotic, innovative, visionary, high-maintenance. Actually, that description only narrowed the field of my client list by half. Physically, Angela was a tiny woman, but tonight she’d become a heavyweight. She’d won big. And I was her agent, which meant over the course of this three-hour ceremony, I had become the holder of the keys to the castle. In fact, I now held a lot of keys to a lot of castles. It was my turn to jump to the head of the line. And so the incensed crowd shut up and parted like the Red Sea when they saw the Inuit bodyguard escorting the newly minted A-list agent and his beautiful wife. We were whisked out of the building and into Angela’s waiting double-stretch limousine.

Hugo opened the door for us and a huge white cloud erupted from the car. Inside the limo visibility was near zero. Ellen doubled over coughing. She grabbed my arm with one hand and bunched up her Valentino with the other to keep it from dragging on the asphalt while she hacked up a lung.

Shit. Water. “Hugo, could you—”

Suddenly, there was a miniature bottle of Perrier in my hand. Ellen downed it in one go, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and fixed her smudged mascara. She looked at me with a wide grin.

“I just got so totally high.”

She slid her arm through mine. “Shall we?”

Someone—couldn’t see who—slid over and made room for us. Then a pair of tanned, sinewy arms came shooting through the white cloud.

“Grey! Ellie!”

The rest of Angela dove across the lap of our movie’s nonwinning Best Supporting Actor nominee. He was bent over, snorting lines when we got in, and didn’t look up even when he slid over to make room for us. Ellen braced herself just as Angela threw an arm around each of our necks, squeezing us into her sweaty armpits.

“Thank God you’re here! I couldn’t do this without you two. Can you believe this
fucking night?
We fucking did it, Greyson.”

“You did, Angela. You made a great picture. Against all odds.”

“Bullshit. I’d be nowhere if it weren’t for you and you know it. Right, Ellen? You know I’m right, Barry. He’s not an agent, he’s a fuckin’ alchemist. You know I never wanted you for this picture, right?” she said to Diego Lazarus, who’d just won for Best Director.

“He convinced me. It was all Greyson. He said you were the only guy out there with balls big enough to do this script justice.”

Diego put his hands together in prayer and bowed his head in humble Hollywood thanks. Angela turned back to Barry.

“Grey’s a genius, Barry. You better fuckin’ make him a partner before someone else does,” Angela yelled into my boss’s face.

“I’m not arguing, Ange,” Barry said through tightly closed lips. A couple of seconds went by and we all watched Barry’s chest expand and his eyes bug out. Then he let go and a blast of white smoke exploded out of his mouth.

“You did good, Greyson, real fuckin’ good. We’ll talk business tomorrow.”

The Inuit bent down and stuck his head inside the car.

“Angela?”

She looked at him blankly. “Oh shit, of course. Grey, give Hugo your car keys.”

“What? Give who …”

“Hugo. Give him your keys. He’s going to drive your car home.”

“Ange, that’s not nec—”

“Oh cut the shit Grey. Come on, we’re gonna be late to our own goddamn party.”

Our goddamn party was being hosted by Sydney Freeman, president of production for New Vision Pictures and the guy who’d gotten us greenlit. I liked him, which of course made me instantly suspicious of him. I handed the keys to my brand new Jaguar to an Eskimo I’d known for twenty minutes, and before I could close the door, “Band on the Run” was blasting from the tape deck and the limo driver was screeching out of the parking lot.

The inside of the limo had the square footage of a small apartment. There were at least a dozen of us seated elbow to elbow.

Angela intercepted one of the lacquered trays that were being passed around.

“Line?” she offered as if she were holding a plate of pigs in a blanket.

The long, evenly spaced white stripes were elegant, almost graceful against the black background.

“Maybe later,” I said.

“Ellen?”

“Thanks, not just yet, Ange.”

“Something else? Pot? Ludes? A little Valium?”

No doubt she’d ingested them all before breakfast. Twice. And I was tempted. But I knew better. From experience. A couple of lines would lead to a half dozen more and a dozen more after that. After that, I wouldn’t need the coke to get high. Once my switch had been flipped, I’d stay up for days, overflow with creative brilliance, share with my colleagues in the middle of the night, spend forty or fifty grand like it was nothing. Eventually, the inevitable would come. And how bad was a matter of how high I’d been and for how long. The higher the high, the bigger the crash. So, I passed on the coke. Ellen jumped in.

“How ’bout a drink?”

Thank God for my wife.

“Booze it is!” Angela clapped her hands, relieved we’d finally agreed to consume something at least vaguely mood-altering.

“Somebody get the Todds a couple of vodka tonics!” she screamed over the din.

Ellen smiled and squeezed my hand. I fell back against the leather seat and let my head loll from side to side. She leaned in, still grinning, and kissed me, and then laughed into my open mouth.

“Jesus,” I said. “I guess I’m a little—”

“Shit, Grey, who wouldn’t be?” She twisted around to face me. “They thanked you. They said your name. On national television.”

“I know … I … know.”

“God, I just—shit.” Ellen leaned back next to me grinning.

“Yeah. Fuck. It’s a little …”

“Of course it is.”

An actual conversation would have been redundant. I was twenty-nine years old and had brought the agency the property, writer, director, cast, and producers that had just resulted in this year’s Oscar for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Actor, and Best Supporting Actress. All the major players were our clients. I had handled the conflicting demands, pacified the volatile tempers, and anticipated and circumvented the irrational tantrums. The fundamental tools of agenting—lying, manipulation, and negotiation—usually acquired over decades—were skills that came naturally to me. It was what I’d done to survive growing up in my father’s house.

But for once it hadn’t hurt. For once it actually felt fucking brilliant.

The limo driver took the turn onto Laurel Canyon doing at least sixty and the huge car veered violently to the right, crushing Ellen and me under the combined weight of our seatmates. As we headed toward the opposite slide, I reached out and grabbed Ellen, hoping to keep her from falling into the nonwinning Best Supporting Actor whose only verbal contribution during the forty-five-minute ride had been to yell “Fucking cunt!” out the window as we passed a billboard advertising his ex-wife’s new movie.

Unfortunately, I grabbed mostly Valentino and not very much Ellen, and with nothing to hold on to, she fell face-first into loser actor’s crotch. The cocaine tray should have been there to keep her from coming into direct contact with his leather-clad balls, but during the badly executed turn, the tray had also gone flying, dumping the coke onto the limo floor.

Ellen wiggled around trying to push herself off him while the limo continued to speed along the windy road, coming precariously close to the canyon edge. A smile spread across the actor’s face. He then put a gentle hand on the back of Ellen’s neck and pushed her back down. That was it. I stood up as best I could and pulled Ellen off him.

“Eric, what the fuck do you think you’re doing? That’s my wife!”

He looked down at Ellen, then up at me. He shrugged.

“Way to go. She’s fuckin’ hot, man. Mind if I fuck her?”

I wanted to beat the living shit out of him. But I knew I should laugh it off and treat the guy like the poor, pathetic loser he was. Like the guy whose wife threatened to divorce him unless he went into rehab and then left him while he was in rehab.

So I decided to let Ellen make the call.

“What do you think?”

“About what?”

“Eric. Should I hit him? To defend your honor?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Greyson. It would be like kicking a three-legged dog.”

“Cool, so can I fuck her?”

“Fuck who?” Angela asked, her head emerging from a thick cloud of smoke.

“Me,” Ellen said. “Eric wants to fuck me.”

“Oh I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Angela said as if Ellen were seriously considering the possibility. “His dick is actually registered with the CDC.”

“Fuck you, Angela,” Eric spat at her. “You’ve had the clap so many times your pussy gets a standing ovation every time you spread your legs.”

Angela burst out laughing and the Perrier she had in her mouth shot out onto Eric’s leather pants.

“That was very funny, Eric, very good. But nice Jewish girls do not get the clap. And I am a nice Jewish girl. My pussy is completely disease-free.”

Ellen looked at me and whined, “Are we there yet?”

I leaned over and looked out the window but all I could see was asphalt. The driver downshifted to gain some traction as the double-stretch resisted the climb up the ridiculously steep hill of Sydney’s private driveway.

The limousine stopped at the top and, like couture-wearing, coke-snorting clowns, our impossibly large group tumbled out of the car. Dresses and breasts were adjusted, lipstick freshened, flies zipped. Angela stayed behind. She was going to make an entrance.

“Holy shit! Grey, Ellen, you’ve got to see this.”

Angela was standing with her toes hanging over the edge of the canyon. Or part of it, anyway. The view was jaw-dropping. Three hundred and sixty degrees. All of L.A. Lights blinking, swimming pools glowing turquoise, headlights, taillights, skyscrapers, the ocean, the studios, the mountains. And behind us, Sydney Freeman’s three-story glass house with wraparound balconies on every floor, where the most powerful and famous names in Hollywood stood smoking, drinking, and kissing each other’s asses.

“Sydney’s got balls, you gotta give him that,” Angela said, looking the house over.

The place was Sydney’s “fuck you” to God. Five years ago, the neighborhood had been decimated by an earthquake that registered over 6.5 on the Richter scale. Lots of people had run
from
the hills after that, buying in Beverly Hills, Brentwood, or the Palisades.