or him." Why'd I have to choose at all? Joe hadn't given me an ultimatum, and I hadn't given him one. I was wracked with doubt. Should I have moved out west, put my career ahead of Joe? Was Dottie right: Woman follows man? Was I doomed to die alone?
I hit bottom, started turning down jobs, refusing phone calls. Harry was ready to work me over with a whip. He called to tell me Andre Lucerne was looking to direct another feature; he wouldn't cast me in the lead this time but was offering a strong supporting role that was mine for the taking. I said no, thanks.
"You're turning down Andre Lucerne?" Harry said. "Help me here, Ardennes."
"I'm not turning down Lucerne. I'm turning down the location. Stockholm in winter, Harry? It's too far away. I'm just not ready." Harry snorted his disbelief. "Okay, I don't like the part either."
"You're wrong; that part is a perfect vehicle for you. And Stockholm is glorious in winter. Lucerne himself called." This time I snorted a so- what. " Never mind." Harry said all calm business. "I'm giving you one month to finish suffering and then I'm dropping you."
"Harry . . ."
Dottie said what did I expect; Harry wasn't my uncle. She didn't let on how worried she was about me hanging around the house all day with a bad case of the guilty blues. She'd take me shopping or come over and make us cocktails, sing ditties until I'd smile, which was about all I could manage, and that was mostly polite. "Dear girl, that sea is loaded with fish, you just have to dive in and pull. And for heaven's sake climb out of those tired old pj's and get outside. Go back to work!"
I wasn't sure if Harry was bluffing or if he'd really drop me. I also genuinely did not know if I'd ever stand in front of a camera again. I wanted so badly to call Joe, tell him that I'd made a terrible mistake, that I wanted to come home; I'd go back to stage acting and our life together, forget all about Hollywood. But he didn't call either and I think that was what hurt the most, that he could just do without me. He'd had a lot of practice, Dottie pointed out, all those absences, me out here working among the fleshpots of Southern California. But Joe didn't doubt me in that way; he was the surest guy I ever met. In the end I think he just didn't want to be married to a movie actress.
Dottie said it was not what she had in mind when I started going around with a friend of hers, a steadily employed character actor in big movies. We met at one of Dottie's rare singing dates. For a couple of weeks she was the closing act at a club that specialized in after- hours drinkers, well- off layabouts, a crowd that ate up her songs, was never loaded to the point of clamor, and by closing time would be singing along, adoring Dottie and their carefree lives.
Like me, Fits (that's all anyone ever called him except in movie credits, where "Matthew Fitzgerald" scrolled across the screen) didn't fit the cabaret scene. He didn't know the lyrics to Dottie's numbers and flat- out hated show tunes. We were there for her, and maybe the generous drinks. Fits was not my type. He was heavyset with sandy, graying hair scattered like buckshot over his head, and a good number of years older. His small 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.
