Hollywood Boulevard. Janyce Stefan-Cole
eyes had an ironic twinkle belying the rough kindness of his nature. He was unexpectedly light on his feet and sexy and, at that particular moment, the best shoulder in the world for me to cry on. Like Joe, he had radar for injustice and a healthy sense of outrage. And, like most actors I know, he was on the lookout for injury, his ego on his sleeve, finding slights where none was intended. His main complaint, besides rarely getting the lead, was not enough camera time. I've never met an actor who didn't have that particular complaint. But it wasn't something he got ugly about, or only fleetingly, and not a true disappointment. When I met him he was cleaning up. He said he'd wake up not knowing if it was the booze or the coke from the night before that made him feel like slow death each morning; he'd decided he did not want to live that way anymore. He was divorced— twice— who isn't in Hollywood— and the father of a kid living problematically with her mother, which added worry and increased the booze- or- cocaine or cocaine- or- booze routine— whichever it was. He wanted to be able to account for his nights and learn to let things be: his acquired wisdom; very L.A.
He teased me that night for being so young and pathetic, and for being Dottie's friend. I pointed out that he was her friend too, but he said that was different and went on calling me a child and so on until I finally asked him to dance with me just to get him to shut up. His elegant dancing took me very much by surprise. I mean, Fits could waltz. I'm a closet dancer. I respond to music; even dumb, sentimental twaddle wafts its way into my skin and my hips begin to sway. Joe mocked dancing unless it was exotic, by which he meant Indian or Indonesian, not lap. Dancing was a bourgeois pastime meant to allow repressed people to touch, he said. He did learn to watch me improvise at home, to jazz mostly, saying it was probably necessary for an actor to be connected to the body in that way. Once in a while we played at striptease. Ah, Joe.
Anyhow, Dottie was singing a Gershwin tune that night I'd forgotten requesting. She didn't know all the lyrics and said so, sticking the blame of her attempt on me. The song was "Someone to Watch over Me," and I hummed along in Fits's ear as we danced, fighting down tears. He chuckled, his loose frame wobbling in my arms. "Don't laugh at me," I murmured.
He pulled back to look into my face. "I would never laugh at you," he said. "At the song maybe, but not you."
I looked back to see if he was fooling with me. He wasn't. I moved to the music, not even needing a partner. "Who's leading?" I asked.
"I always lead," Fits replied.
It was a Hollywood moment.
He took me home that night. Dottie had insisted I take a car service to the club, though it was not far, down on Fountain, I think. I didn't drink that much anyway and could have driven even if it was three a.m. and I was weary. So Fits took me home in his beat- up Beemer and came in and made himself a pot of coffee, and we sat up in the bungalow for what was left of the night and talked. He was contrary and proud and not easy, but he was the right guy that night. Underneath a fair amount of armor, my soul was safe with Fits.
He was full of stories, having arrived on the scene just ahead of AIDS slowing down the Hollywood sex- press. He'd been skinny— believe it, he insisted— fresh, raw meat. "This one time I was invited to this A- list actress's house [he wouldn't name names, but I guessed] about a part in a movie. She'd lead and produce, so it was kind of an audition. I wanted the work bad— not a great part but solidly supporting: a dumped lover she keeps around for play. Got the idea?"
I did.
"So I arrive at her Brentwood manor house and I mean castle and the butler or assistant, whatever they were called then, asked me to wait and this monster dog runs up and pins me to the foyer wall. I mean paws up on my shoulders, standing taller than me and he could make lunch out of my arms, steamy dog breath all over my face. The servant comes back and leads me (and the dog) to the 'spa,' meaning the bathroom— big enough for a New York studio apartment. And she's in the tub under a blanket of bubbles and I sit on a little fluffy chair thing and the dog sits too and soon she wants me to hand her her towel. I begin to wrap it around her and the dog goes into protection- mode pacing and I'm scared to shitting and she says, Good dog. And I'm thinking I don't want to die for this part or be maimed either. Next thing she opens a door off the spa and we're outside in a garden overlooking L.A., spread like jewelry before us, and she sits on a chaise naked as Christmas and her legs are open. She pulls me down, I trip, the chair topples, and the dog goes into a crouch, ready to spring. She calls me a klutz and shoves me off and I figure that's it, I blew it, I can go now, only she goes into another door which is to the bedroom. I stand there until she asks what I'm waiting for. The dog is looking at me like with the same question and in we go. She's on the bed and there can't be much doubt why. Some audition, she says, and I'm, Okay I get it now, and I'm in that fast. Just as I get the rhythm going the dog jumps on the bed and begins to lick my ass. And he's heading underneath. I don't do animals, so I'm done, my rod wilts and I'm outta there. She calls me a queer as I pull on my pants fast as I can. I slam the bedroom door on the dog and find my own way to the exit." He took a breath.
"Did you get the part?" I asked.
Fits sipped his coffee and grinned. "It was a wild town back then." The sky was beginning to give up the night; wan morning light filtered into the comfy living room. Fits lay back in his deep- cushioned armchair. "So you want to be an actor," he said just as I sat up straight on the couch.
"What's the big idea? I am an actor! I just wrecked my marriage for acting. Jeez."
"Okay, take it easy. So you have some creds, that's nice, but you're only at the beginning of the journey."
I didn't think that was true but saw no point in going into it, digging up the past. I won Cannes; didn't he know that? Did he expect an argument, a defense? But Fits was a tester of waters. He said things to jolt, to get a person to reveal herself, pokes here and there until an opening appeared into which he'd shove little mind swords to see the stuff a person had inside. "So what if I was only starting out?" I said, chin forward. " Which I am not."
"So nothing,"
"Okay. All right, Mr. Seasoned Movie Man, what is acting?"
He grimaced, leaned forward, his overly full top lip briefly curling upward. "What is fucking?"
I thought a minute. "Fucking is listening."
"So is acting."
It didn't start that night, but before long I was listening closely to Fits. I don't know how much he listened to me. We were not in love. Well, Fits was in love with the idea of love, his head turning at every pretty girl. I was briefly jealous, only because I was so bruised and Fits was the life jacket I'd been thrown. He would not let me cling, though. He would not let me betray myself that way in him; he was too honest for that. The world really doesn't forgive a broken heart, or at least not the mourning of it. In a way Fits was just the tonic. There was something about a guy with more experience under his belt that allowed me some perspective, even to laugh at myself. If I was moving in the direction of success, all that seemed to be required was my heart. Fits may have been my life jacket, but I didn't have to take us too seriously. That was an education. I don't think I would have pulled out of that funk without him; I'm not suggesting I ever could have done it alone, but he showed me how to let things be what they were. Good old Fits.
Quickies have checked into the room below— one- or twonighters— joyriders, boisterous and looking to party. Heavy- metal rock vibrates through the floor with a pounding refrain: Let it rock, let it rock, over and over. Is someone being pounded on the bed in time to the pulsing beat? I'm guessing a dusting of cocaine residue on the nightstand. It might be a good time to hit the hotel laundry downstairs, make a dent in the pile of dirty clothes mushrooming in the closet, but, nah, the mess can wait till morning. My grandmother used to say never do wash at night; you can't see the dirt.
The lovers must have gone out around midnight because I was kept awake until then and was asleep when Andre came in from his night location. I heard him climb into bed and held very still, careful to keep my breathing even. I don't know if we are going to make it, he and I. I'm a grass widow anyway. Andre is entwined in the undergrowth of a movie set, the miniature universe, the womb and birth and life of filmmaking. I know it firsthand. He's faithless anyway.