The Hollywood Trilogy by Don Carpenter
Did he see a whale? No. But he saw them often enough. Whales. No.
Sky. No.
Hey, Bob oh Rebop. No, no, Jesus.
Jesus loves me yes I, no.
See a big spot. Let the spot fill your mind. Here, Spot, come on, Spot, fill my mind, Spot, get bigger and bigger and . . .
It did not work, as usual. He knew what he wanted. He wanted to silence all the voices in his mind, all the inner dialogue, monologue, whatever it was. He was afraid of the silence in there, but he knew from his reading that this was the purpose of meditation, to get the silence, to lengthen it, to be able to relax in it. That’s why Zen pupils sat, why dervishes whirled, why chanters chanted, why prayers prayed. It is why people paid good money to fakers from India who gave them a word to chew on—if the word they chewed on shut up the voices it didn’t matter if the guy was a fake or not, the silence had been achieved.
Meanwhile, thinking about this, Rick knew he was no closer to meditation than the first time he had tried it, years before. It was his secret failure. Oh, he had told Elektra about it.
“I can’t meditate,” he said to her, deep in the night.
“I can,” she said cheerfully.
He had been confessing a weakness, a failure, a battle lost, and she had taken it the same as if he had said, “I can’t pitch a baseball.”
She was down the beach somewhere, out of sight. Probably with a bunch of little kids. Elektra attracted children, especially the little ones, under five, and many of her days on the beach were spent amateur baby-sitting. There hadn’t seemed to be that many little children around when Rick moved out here, but all Elektra had to do was show up and they would come up over the sand dunes, followed by their dogs, their mothers, their governesses and sometimes even their fathers, but after a while the parents and other adults would relax and leave Elektra in charge, and she and the little ones would walk up and down the beach, Elektra talking constantly. She knew them all by name and would address them: “Now, Susan, you’re falling behind; Charles, take Susan by the hand; Billy, will you please pick up that big shell and give it to Gretchen? Thank you very much. Susan, you may look at the shell after Gretchen has looked at it . . .”
And on and on. Rick saw her often, looking down at the beach from his sun deck, her small figure trailed by four or five tiny figures. He wondered about her natural gift with children, and had asked her if she wanted any herself. She laughed and said no.
But this was not getting any meditating done. Maybe he was afraid of more than just the silence. Maybe he was scared of what would happen next. In his life. He enjoyed his life. He knew he was a rat and a slime, he knew he was a criminal and a degenerate, and he also knew he had rare gifts which made the world, the world of samsara, easy pickings.
A twinge of pain in his right knee. If he could meditate instead of think, the knot would dissolve.
What knot?
The one you can’t untie with your mind, the one that keeps you here . . .
So much for the old knot metaphor.
Maybe the Zen people were right. Concentrate on some kind of nonsense until it becomes . . .
Now his mind was racing, and he bitterly felt the defeat. He stood up, his knees creaking. That was what bothered him. Defeat. Rick was the kind of man who could pick up a golf club, a Ping-Pong paddle, an oar, a chess piece, anything, and be good with it after only a few minutes of instruction. He could add columns of figures in his head, he could run the hundred in 9.5, he could make forty million dollars with a single movie.
But he couldn’t meditate.
He couldn’t even cheat and tell himself that he was meditating, because he would only be lying to himself, and when he did that, one of the voices in his head would laugh at him, all the voices in his head would laugh at him.
Maybe there was no such thing as meditating, and that was why he failed. But no, he could envision what it must be like, and he knew that the masters of philosophy and religion were not lying. This was no set of ideas, no philosophy, this was a real thing, like throwing a baseball, and it required training and practice, like throwing a baseball, and Rick only wished he had the time, and would not be embarrassed, by entering into a training program in some discipline. It didn’t really matter to him which one. Zen would do. Or . . .
Rick had an image of Elektra dancing, the look she got in her eyes when she danced. Not gone, not hypnotized, but totally attentive, looking not through you but into you, and dancing . . .
The Disco Route to Samadhi.
He walked down and let the foamy water hiss around his feet. His feet sank a bit into the delicious cold sand. God, there were probably people all over the earth who could pass into and out of a state of Samadhi (empty brain but aware of surroundings) without even knowing it, just phase in and phase out. Elektra, he was sure, was one of them. That’s what she liked about little kids. Clean little slates.
“Oh, fuck a duck,” he said to himself.
He looked up, shading his eyes, at the sun. Feeling only a bit self-conscious, he made namasti to the sun, pressing his palms together, bowing his head and touching his fingertips to his nose. Namasti was his last thought, and then there was a tiny moment of emptiness just as his fingertips touched his nose. He opened his eyes and straightened up and returned to the world. He felt better. That always worked. He wondered if there was anything physiological about it, the pressing the palms together concentrating forces that were then directed into the center of the mind by the act of namasti . . . or whether it was just some Hindu nonsense . . .
Well. Wet feet, empty mind.
And here came Elektra, trailed by three tiny children in beach clothes, sunsuits, bonnets, etc.
“Say hello to Rick,” Elektra said to the little ones.
Rick smiled at the children. They were nice, goddamn it. He said hello to each of them, as gravely as they said hello to him. Children did not find him as charming as adults.
Maybe they knew something.
PART TWO: “ERROL FLYNN SLEPT HERE”
CHAPTER EIGHT
GRADUALLY THROUGHOUT the summer Jerry began to settle into the places he spent his life. He did so without recognition at first, maintaining his isolation like a fortress. Yet gradually the people around him became his friends. There was nothing he could do about it. At the office, on Hollywood Boulevard and in the U-court on Fountain, Jerry was accepted, and spent his days and nights among people who liked him.
He had been successfully able to avoid invitations to the homes of his fellow workers on the ground that he had to write, but this did not excuse him from the company Fourth of July picnic, which was held in a glade in Griffith Park. Everyone came with family or friends except Jerry, who could not think of anyone to ask. But this was highly satisfactory to Richard, his fellow editor, because Richard had brought his sister in the hope that she and Jerry would hit it off.
Her name was Barbara Tobin and she was twenty-eight, squarely built, with a high forehead, light blonde hair and dark blue eyes. She wore black-rimmed glasses and was dressed for picnic, in a nice plaid shirt and jeans. She did not seem to have a very good figure, with that squareness at the hips and shoulders and her blunt nose and chin, but she had a nice smile and a good low voice and Jerry wondered why she wasn’t married and raising a lot of kids out in the Valley.
Richard, in his white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and dark green pants, looked like an off-duty bus driver, but he was obviously very fond of his sister, and started things off between Jerry and Barbara by embarrassing them both:
“You two singles sit here!” he said too loud, making people turn and stare at them. “What’ll it be, beer, wine, Coke? There’s Tab,” he said to his sister too directly.
“I’ll have beer,” she said.
“Me too,” said Jerry. He was a little mad because he felt he had to rescue the situation. Richard went off happily to fill their order and he said to Barbara without looking at her, “It’s sure a great day for a picnic.”
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“Gotta say hello to the boss,” Jerry said, and grunted to his feet. He wondered how Harris was going to get through this day, with his clean-freak attitude. Would he wipe his hands off every time he touched somebody? Would he spend all afternoon brushing invisible specks of dirt from his clothing? This would probably be the most interesting thing to happen all day. Jerry waited politely while Harris talked to Sanchez the accountant and then shook hands.
“Glad to have you aboard,” Harris said. He made no attempt to wipe his hand off. So he was going to rough it on the nation’s birthday.
Sanchez was a nice man, thickset, grey-haired and short. He shook hands with Jerry and winked.
“The way to get you out of your hole is food, huh?”
“It sure smells great,” Jerry said. He realized that the Fourth of July was one of his favorite holidays. He could smell hot dogs and firecrackers.
“The eating holidays are the ones I like,” he said. The three men stood and watched as hot dogs, ribs and hamburgers sizzled on the Park Service grills. The old picnic table was covered with dishes of food, and there was more food in the shade of the table. Jerry’s contribution, a case of Schlitz, was in a big tub of ice at the end of the table, with the jugs of white wine.
“Get your fingers out of that potato salad!” a woman screamed at a child, and Jerry grinned. In spite of himself, he was going to have a good time.
Up the slope aways, Barbara still sat, now holding two beers in her hands. Jerry went back up to her and sat down again.
“Is that for me?” he asked. She handed him the beer with a slight smile, but said nothing. Such a quiet person, he thought, and then his heart sank as he realized all the things Richard must have been saying to her, his unmarried sister, about the bachelor in the office who would be at the picnic and might be interested in her if she would only make herself interesting enough. He could imagine Richard, not the subtlest guy, saying, “Just don’t sit there like a bump on a log, okay?” So what was there left for her to do but feel resentment toward this bachelor hunk of meat who was so obviously patronizing her?
“Your brother’s quite a guy,” he said lamely.
“Yes, he’s the bright one in the family,” she said.
God forbid, thought Jerry.
“Quite a guy,” he said.
There was not a whole hell of a lot of eye contact going on between them. They sat and sipped their beers and watched the commonplace scene in front of them, the running children, the groups of men and women in relaxed conversation, the gentle breeze making the leaves dapple everything with shifting patterns. Smoke drifted on the wind, and the pleasant sound of firecrackers was everywhere. Not a bad moment. The alternative would have been to sit in his little apartment in his underwear and watch television until he drank himself to sleep. Not a bad moment at all, compared to that.
“What would you be doing today if you weren’t here?” he asked Barbara. He peered into her eyes. She blinked.
“Oh, I’d be scrubbing the walls or something, I can’t stand holidays,” she said.
“What kind of work do you do?” he asked. Might as well get the interrogation over with, he thought heavily.
“I’m credit manager for Gelbhardt’s Jewelry, downtown,” she said.
“Oh, that sounds like interesting work.”
“Oh, but it isn’t, she said with a smile,” she said with a smile, and Jerry had to laugh.
“Not that interesting, huh?”
“About as interesting as calling people up and trying to get them to pay for their wedding rings,” she said, “long after they wished they hadn’t gotten married at all, and certainly well after they thought they had to buy an expensive diamond for their sweetie.”
“True, the way you put it, it does sort of sound like a drag,” he said. “Is it as interesting as writing Tips for Retailers?”
“No, I don’t imagine it’s quite that interesting,” she grinned, and they both drained their beers. Jerry’s spirits continued to lift. This silly little banter would have gone right over Richard’s head. He would have pinched his nose above his glasses and pointed out that writing Tips for Retailers had its interesting moments, and probably talking to people about their ring purchases must, also.
“I wish Richard was here,” Barbara said.
“Really? Why?”
“So he could get us another couple of beers.”
“Allow me!”
Sinking his hand up to the wrist in the icy water in the tub, Jerry stopped for a moment, an idea springing into his mind. He was going to fuck this girl. She was willing for him to fuck her, he could tell. She was shy, but so was he, and yet they had managed in only a few minutes to establish an intimacy, enough for him to delicately and gently lead her, step by step so as not to spook her, into his bed. Was his apartment neat enough for company? No. Then they would do it at her place.
He groped around and got out two cold cans of beer and carried them up to her. She smiled up into his eyes as he handed her the wet can of beer. With the idea of fucking her in his mind, she looked entirely different. Better. More womanly. Less Richard’s sister.
“Skoal!” he said, raising his glass on high.
“Well, you two seem to be hitting it off,” said Richard, hunkering down beside them. “How about having dinner at the house tonight? Just the four of us. We’ll feed the kids and put ‘em to bed and watch some television, huh?”
“Let’s not and say we did,” said Barbara, her eyes on Jerry’s.
“Oh-oh, other plans, huh?” Richard said stupidly.
“I don’t have a thing to do,” Jerry said to her.
“Neither do I,” she said to him.
“So why not come to the house?” Richard asked.
“Because we’ll be helplessly drunk,” Jerry said, taking a long pull at his beer. Barbara did the same.
“Helplessly drunk, and abusive,” Barbara said.
“Not fit to be around decent people,” Jerry said.
“Bobby! Bobby! Get down from there!” Richard yelled, and left them alone. Jerry took her hand and squeezed it, and she squeezed back. Impulsively, he leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the lips. It made him dizzy, the way she smelled and felt, and the way her eyes half-closed for the kiss and then opened warm and lazy like the eyes of a female cat, even through her glasses. goddamn, Jerry thought. It had been a while.
“Do you want another beer?” he said shakily.
“We should have something to eat,” she said in her low but quite beautiful voice.
“Yes, we should eat,” he said distantly. “Or we really will get abusively drunk.”
“And we don’t want that. Not at the company picnic.”
“The good old company picnic. Do you come here often?”
“Only to meet men,” she said.
“Really? Why should a beautiful girl like you have to come to our little company picnic to meet men?”
“The ones I come into contact with at the office are, how shall I put it, not only married but deep in debt. Not attractive to me. Not at all attractive.”
“I could eat about a dozen of them hot dogs,” he said.
“May I fix yours for you? Don’t get up, let me do it. A dozen? How do you want them? Gooey and dripping with mustard, pickles, tomato, onion and glop?”
“Make it two, and yes, dripping with glop.”
He watched her walking down toward the food, her lovely fine square ass swinging to and fro. Pretty soon he was going to have his hands on that ass. He was entertaining fantasies about this whe
“Having a good time?” he asked Jerry.
It took a minute to come back to reality. “Well, sure,” he said. “Who wouldn’t? It’s a perfect day, we’re all here, everybody’s having a good time, the food smells great . . . Jesus, I’m having a ball!”
Harris’s face changed, and Jerry remembered that he did not like the word Jesus to be used as a swear word. But Jerry felt too good to apologize. He drained his beer. To Harris he said, “What are you drinking?” and got to his feet.
“Oh, I’m still on the wagon,” Harris said shyly.
“On the wagon?”
“Yes, I’m afraid I’m just a reformed drunk. But you go ahead.”
For the first time, Harris seemed interesting. Jerry went down and stood beside Barbara while she prepared their hot dogs. He put his arm around her waist, and she moved closer to him, continuing her work.
Jerry looked around happily. These were swell people. They all knew that something had happened between himself and Barbara. Buzz buzz buzz and secret glances.
That was all right!
AND THEY did get royally drunk, and Jerry made a patriotic speech standing on the picnic table and almost put his foot into a big Tupperware bowl of cucumber salad, but Barbara, her eyes twinkling, steadied him, and he continued his speech until some boys came running through their area trailing strings of lit firecrackers, and Jerry climbed down to scattered applause and a fusillade of explosions. He kissed Barbara affectionately in full view of anybody who cared to watch and she wrapped her arms around him and hung on. Over they both went, in the dirt, and more applause.
“Did you bring a car?” he asked her.
“I came with Richard,” she said.
“How about letting me drive you home?” He would have to be careful not to say anything stupid, just because he was full of beer. “Drive you home” was plenty.