of us, and I cried into the phone. I'd begun to forget what I was so far from as Los Angeles asserted itself, but that open, lonely, windy beach with the seagulls screeching mournfully was too far too fast. I told Fits I had to go back, I'd freak if I didn't get to someplace familiar. He said to quit carrying on like a bad acid trip but agreed to take me back to L.A. the next day.
That time in Mexico was the beginning of the end of me and Fits being physical together. We did become good friends. Fits is basically a loner; he just let me borrow his world at a time when mine was crumbling around me. Once I got back into the swirl, once I let the business take me over, figuring, finally, the thread between me and Joe was truly snapped, and my heart got a nice big scab over it, there were lovers. Some I remember their names but not much else. At least one turned stormy— on his part. One almost got to me. None were ever as kind as Fits.
The morning after I got back from Mexico, I picked up the phone to hear Andre Lucerne's voice on the other end. I was still undressed at eleven, probably hadn't brushed my teeth, sipping tea in the kitchen, my stomach wrenched from too many tacos and tequilas. I thought maybe it was Fits fooling around, but he'd made it pretty clear we should let a few days pass without seeing each other. I told Andre I was sorry for turning down the part and was about to drift into the untouchable topic of my recent divorce, but he wasn't interested. He asked me to dinner.
"Dinner?" I repeated, biting my tongue from adding, why? He'd hardly given me a second glance when I'd been his lead. He'd gotten the performance he wanted and hadn't bothered with the on- set nice- nice- let' s- get- to- know- each- other groove. All the actors were terrified of Andre, though he was never genuinely mean or bullying. He was not so much distant as preoccupied, as if each day was profoundly itself and there was only time and energy enough to make it brilliant; all else was distraction and waste. You felt you had to please him, to try to break through and capture his approval, which usually came in the form of a nod and, if really pleased, a nod and slight raising of his eyebrows. If the eyebrows dipped and he fell silent you knew you were miles off course.
Why was he bothering with me now? Besides the fact that he was married and twelve years older— a very attractive twelve years— and I'd said no to his movie.
"Dinner, yes. You do eat dinner?" he said.
"I do, but . . ."
"Free tonight?"
As a bird, but there was my stomach and . . . and did I want to have dinner with Andre Lucerne? "I was in Mexico for a few days," I said, "I— I'm a little out of sorts."
"Ah, the tourista. Drink some tequila— hair of the dog— and swallow raw garlic cloves; you will live."
We set a date for the following week and met at a little Moroccan place in Los Feliz, a café, very relaxed. I nearly got lost finding the place. Andre had lamb. I hate lamb, so I ate a tabouli dish with hummus, baba ghanoush, and some sort of spicy fish. He did nearly all the talking. He told me his theories on film, which were vast and contradictory. I started thinking, at heart he's an anarchist— if he isn't nuts— all the while picturing Joe making faces behind his back, as in Who is this guy? Possibly he noticed my concentration wandering and got off theory and told a very funny story of the making of his first film and how he hadn't really intended to be a filmmaker. "I think I would have preferred to be a painter," he said, as if the idea had just come to him and I was not seated opposite, listening. "If only because with painting one can erase. One is freer. There are too many details that can barely be controlled in making films."
"Like the actors?" I ventured.
If he heard me he didn't react. The café sold Moroccan items: pointed leather slippers, clay tagines, spices, even clothing and mother- of- pearl combs. As we were sipping our mint tea and coffee after dinner, Andre abruptly walked over to an armoire that had a sumptuous gold- threaded white caftan hanging on the open door. He brought it to the table and told me to stand and hold it up. "This would fit you perfectly," he said. I couldn't help noticing the three- hundred- fifty- dollar price tag. Calling for the check, he told the waiter to add the caftan and wrap it up. He gave me the package out on the sidewalk.
"For me?" I was embarrassed by his extravagance and what it might imply for the rest of the night, but all he did was kiss my hand.
" Thank you for your silence; it's a rare gift these days. I enjoyed our dinner."
(I have a gift for silence?)
That was it. Assured I knew my way back to Hollywood, he said good- night. I didn't see him again for nearly two years. He was right about the caftan; it fit as if it had been custom- made. That café became a favorite of mine, but not sentimentally; I had no idea what to make of the evening or why Andre wanted to have dinner with me. As far as I knew, he went home to wife number two, an actress, that night.
In the morning I got up whisper- quiet, not to waken Andre. I made a pot of tea to drink on the balcony as I idly watched for signs of White Shirt. There were none. The day was bright, clear, and almost cold. I could see snow on the mountains. Without the sun, now well over the San Gabriels, I would have frozen stiff. The caftan is here with me, in L.A., and I look for excuses to wear it. I wonder sometimes if in his mind that Moroccan dinner was the start of Andre's courting me. The next time we met he referred to the evening as if it had taken place the week before. The caftan is meant for a Park Avenue apartment with a cascading marble staircase, for descending à la Loretta Young, swishing to greet guests for cocktails or late- morning confidential chats in the boudoir. I have neither cascading stairs nor a bedroom fit for an heiress, and no Fred Astaire type arrives of an evening, the butler showing him in. The garment is of another era. Joan Crawford comes to mind.
Too bad it wasn't with me when I won best actress at Cannes. Andre was up too, for best director, for Separation and Rain. He didn't win, but his leading lady did. The French adored Andre, and Cannes had already awarded him best director, so he was relaxed either way. I nearly threw up when they announced my name. I didn't even have a new dress but an old filmy thing I'd had around forever that I wore to every event. I jazzed it up with a silk shawl I'd seen in a shop window along the Croisette, which Harry surprised me by buying. Mindy Scott showed up in Cannes, scraped the money together, she said, to fly over for the festival and was hanging on to me like skin on bone. She'd had all of three lines in the movie. She must have told Harry about the shawl, and I figured he must have paid her way over, probably to keep tabs on me, though Mindy was not his client. He'd wanted to buy me a new dress, but I'd refused. I told him to forget it; I was not going to win and not to waste his money. I shocked him by getting my hair cut très short. I walked cold into a salon and said, "Take it off." It looked great, if I do say so myself. Harry of course pooh- poohed the style. "Eurotrash!" he called it.
Cannes was a disappointment; the town, the film festival, even the fabled beach was a letdown. Beneath a glamorous veneer the festival was a flesh factory for selling cans of movies and careers. We had press nearly every day; Andre and the producers, the principal actors, interviews and photo ops to keep the excitement revved up. Andre was very nice, helped me handle the glare and field some of the numbingly inane questions the press threw at me. Mindy was practically my Siamese twin, so she made some press appearances too. I didn't fault her pushiness. I held on to her in the street, where we were trailed by a band of bored- looking paparazzi. Until I won; then it was a wolf pack of international camera snappers in my face, all part of the star machinery.
Joe flew over after I called to say I'd been nominated, making it to Cannes one hour before the ceremonies began. At least he wore a black sports coat over his jeans. He loved the hair. "Very gamine," he said in my ear. Cannes disgusted him as much as it did me. The water off Nice looked polluted from the plane, he said, like a milky stream of sewage pouring in next to the bathers. The road from Nice to Cannes was littered with an obnoxious string of minimalls— not Big Mac and Burger
