Flavor of the Month (106 page)

Sam’s back was against the adobe wall of the fireplace. “Always you!” he yelled. “Always you and what
you
want, how
you’re
hurt, how
you
feel, what’s important for
your
career. What about
me?
I thought you loved
me
. But you never even told me who you were. You tricked me into loving you, and it was
my
career on the line here. Think I’d get a shot at a lot more pictures if fifty million bucks went down the toilet on this one? Did you think about how
I
felt?
I
had to save the picture. And I have.”

“But at what cost, Sam?” She stared at him. Surely he’d admit what he had done.

“Look,
Last Tango in Paris
didn’t hurt Brando’s career.”

Oh, God. He was hopeless. “No.” She laughed bitterly. “Men gain status by fucking women on the screen. But how did Maria Schneider do? Didn’t she wind up a suicide?” She turned, picked up her bag, and started to walk away, down the hall to the door.

“I love you, Jahne. I wanted to marry you.”

She stopped, her heart pounding. Then, slowly, she turned around.

“Well, this is a great time to tell me, and a great way for me to find out. Why does your proposal sound like a weapon?”

“Oh, don’t give me any holier-than-thou shit, please. If your face wasn’t like a blank billboard on the screen, I wouldn’t’ve had to do this. Christ, I worked with what you had, limited as it was.”

“So, it
is
all my fault.”

“‘Fault’ is a word for children.”

“I’m hearing ‘fault’ from you. And I’m not hearing an apology, or remorse, or even any guilt. Only that what you did was okay, was necessary. You’re comfortable? You’re glad you did this to me?”

It was the only moment when he paused. He had been looking at her, his eyes angry, opaque, and direct, but now, for the first time, he looked down, turning his head toward the bedroom, but not seeing the bed they had once shared. Then he looked back.

“I didn’t betray you,” he said. “I never told anyone about your scars.”

“Well, congratulations,” she told him, threw his key on the floor, and walked out.

Jahne stood there in the harsh sunlight outside Sam’s stupid fake Santa Fe–adobe house and realized she had no place to go, no one to talk to, no one to tell about this horror.

If only Mai were alive. If only she could go to Mai’s and have a glass of beer and cry and laugh with her. She got into the car and began to drive, accelerating until she was doing seventy on the canyon road. Where could she go? Who could she go to? She knew that the mausoleum she now called home was impossible. She would die if she went home.

There was only one place left. She drove east, toward the Valley. After forty minutes, she pulled up to the gate, and the security guard recognized her. He greeted her, then buzzed the house while Jahne sat in the car and waited. Please, God. Please, let her be home, she prayed. The guard hung up the phone and told Jahne that Sharleen would meet her at the door.

Jahne drove up the driveway. Sharleen called out a greeting as she walked toward Jahne’s car. She leaned onto the car door, smiling. “Well, hi there. Good to see you.”

Jahne burst into tears, tears so violent she had to put her head down on the steering wheel, clutching the wheel tightly with both hands, just to keep from falling completely apart.

Sharleen was at Jahne’s window. “Why, Jahne, honey. What’s happened?” Sharleen opened the car door for Jahne, but Jahne couldn’t move. “Come on, honey,” Sharleen said, gently tugging at Jahne’s hands on the wheel. “Get out of that car and come inside.”

But Jahne, at least for the moment, could only clutch the steering wheel, sit there, and shake and cry.

The bedroom was filled with sunlight when Jahne opened her eyes. It had been two, no, three days now that she had been staying quietly here at Sharleen’s. Bless Sharleen’s heart, and bless her boyfriend’s heart, too, Jahne thought. Dean might not be real bright, but he was sweet as could be. It was relaxing just to sit beside him.

Sharleen had called Marty and the
Three for the Road
production manager for Jahne and reported Jahne sick. Then Sharleen had a doctor come in, “jest to make it look kosher.” She left for work each day without even waking Jahne, who felt she could sleep for a month. It wasn’t until about ten that Dean would knock timidly on the door each morning and bring in a glass of fresh juice and a cup of steaming coffee. After Jahne had drunk both, he’d bring the dogs in—Jahne laughed when she met Cara and the other namesakes, but she liked the golden retriever best.

“I don’t have no favorites,” Dean told her. “It wouldn’t be right. They could tell, you know.” Then he lowered his voice. “If I
did
have a favorite, it would be Oprah, my friend’s Lab. But that’s only right, ’cause I knew her the longest.”

After her juice, Dean would help Jahne establish herself under a tree in the garden, and he’d spend the rest of the morning working on the grounds, weeding the enormous vegetable garden, playing with the dogs, mowing the lawn on a tiny tractor, pruning back some fruit trees. Jahne just sat back on the lawn chair, at first too tired to read, too tired to think, too tired even to be sad.

The abundance of the garden reminded her of the van Huysums at the Getty. Abundance. But real and natural in season. She shook her head. Her life so far had been the opposite: the meagerness of New York, the waste of her life in the theater, the emptiness of her success out here in L.A. All of it had been a fruitless search for something she could not find: love, and warmth, and abundance.

She’d made a botch of it, there was no doubt. She’d picked a man to love who had no love to return. A shallow, selfish man. She’d abandoned her friends, she’d pursued the dictates of her own ego and vanity, and it had given her so little in return. Her face on magazine covers. Her image on a flickering TV screen. Money. Fame. But she’d never been to Europe, she’d never had a baby, she’d never ridden a horse, she couldn’t speak another language. She’d never skied, or camped out in a wilderness, or taken a cruise, or gone to college. And she’d helped no one, not even herself.

God had given her talent, and Brewster Moore had given her beauty, and hadn’t she been almost as blind and selfish as Sam Shields, wasting her gifts?

Sam. The thought of him was enough to make her cry, or laugh. Sam had never understood her, never truly tried. Both as Mary Jane and as Jahne, she had ignored that. He had taken comfort from her nurturing, he had been titillated by her beauty, but he had never known her. What had he given? A few words of praise. A hug. A caress. Crumbs. And she, always a fool, had accepted crumbs and thought they were a banquet.

Now, under the tree in Dean’s garden, she had a horrible, chilling thought. Hadn’t she, somehow, planned it all—the surgery, the success, the reunion with Sam—all in the hopes that he, alone of everyone—would see through her new flesh to her old heart, recognize her love, recognize and heal her? She thought again of the Bible, where the euphemism for sex was “knowing.” “And Abraham went with the woman and he ‘knew’ her.” Sam had never known her at all. And wasn’t that what she craved?

She understood his temptations now: ambition overcame his morality and judgment. Well, hadn’t it overcome her own? She had wanted Sam, and agreed to make a bad movie to get him. And she had felt triumph at achieving her ambition: in luring Sam into her bed. At possessing him, the way a spider must gloat over its mummified prey. How often had she gloated over his sheet-wrapped form, sleeping in her bed? But had she known Sam? Clearly not.

A goal achieved is only admirable if it’s a worthy goal. Who had said that to her? Mai? Brewster? Neil? Molly? Only the people who had a sense of values, who knew the difference between empty, selfish vanity and real achievement. But did
she
know the difference? It didn’t appear that she did. She couldn’t simply call herself a victim. She had been a willing victim, the wood that threw itself into the fire. She’d given Sam warmth and it had consumed her, leaving nothing but ashes.

Sam had betrayed her, April Irons had manipulated her, Sy Ortis used her, Monica Flanders exploited her, but hadn’t she allowed it? She’d used her beauty, flaunted it for money in the Flanders ads, used it to get work on a questionable show like
3/4
, and agreed to bare it—or let another woman do it for her—in
Birth
. She’d sold herself like a commodity, so could she blame others for doing the same?

Jahne lay under the tree and thought difficult thoughts.

At noon, Dean came to interrupt her. They would have lunch together. Dean would bring in the salad fixings from the perfect rows of baby lettuce, tiny radishes, sugar peas, and miniature carrots. Jahne washed them and he’d chop them up, one day adding tuna and the next day pasta. Then they sat out on the patio and ate, drinking two or three fresh lemonades along with their meal. Yesterday Dean had turned to her and smiled. “It’s nice to have someone to eat lunch with,” he said.

“It is.”

“Guess you eat with Sharleen most days.”

“No. Usually I eat alone in my trailer. I can’t afford to eat much. I used to eat with…” She swallowed. “…an old lady friend of mine, but she died.” Poor, dear Mai. Jahne missed her so.

“So how come you don’t eat with Sharleen now?”

“Oh, we get too busy. Or we don’t eat at the same time, because we’re in different shots. Or she has other work. Or I do.” Or because I’ve been a condescending snob who didn’t know who my friends were, Jahne told herself.

“You like your work?”

“No.”

“That’s bad. It’s really bad if you don’t like your work. I worry ’cause I don’t think Sharleen likes her job, neither. And I think it’s too hard.”

“Well, they pay us a lot of money, so it should be hard, I guess.”

Dean shrugged. “I don’t think you should do it if it’s too hard and you don’t like it. I think that’s probably why you’re sad.”

“You’re probably right,” Jahne told him.

The first night she was there, Jahne found herself waking from a horrible dream, Sharleen beside her, gently shaking her arm. “Git up, honey, it’s just a nightmare, it ain’t real.”

Jahne gasped for air. What had it been? The knives again? Or was it the one where she was on the set, naked, with the crew and the cast laughing and laughing and laughing? She pulled air into her lungs and felt her heart pushing against her chest. It felt as if it might tear out of her.

“It’s okay, honey. It’s okay,” Sharleen crooned. Grateful, Jahne reached for her hand.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “You need your sleep. I’m sorry I woke you.”

“Want a glass of water? Or maybe I should get you some warm milk? When Dean has bad dreams, I make him some milk.”

“No, just stay with me.” Jahne felt as if she were five years old. She clung to Sharleen’s hand, to Sharleen’s warmth, as if she might drown or freeze without it. She shivered under the bedclothes. She couldn’t bear to feel this lonely anymore. It was too big a burden to bear, having nobody know you at all. “Sharleen,” she said, “can I tell you something?”

Sharleen sat on the side of the bed and patted Jahne’s hand. “You surely can,” she said. And then Jahne poured out the whole sorry story about Sam and New York and
Jack and Jill
and Brewster and Pete and Mai and Michael and
Birth
and all of it. Sometimes she cried, and other times she could hardly bear to whisper it, but at last she finished.

Sharleen held her hand all through. She still did, and now she patted it. “Why, you poor child. I think you must be even more lonely than I am.” And Sharleen bent toward Jahne, gathering her up in her arms. “You poor, poor child,” she crooned, and rocked her friend until Jahne, at last, fell asleep.

Jahne felt better after that. She spent the morning with Dean and the afternoon alone in her room, avoiding the strong sun. But, though she felt better, she couldn’t avoid her thoughts. She couldn’t help replaying over and over again the images she had seen of herself flashing on the screen. And she replayed her relationship with Sam. All of it, from that first spring in New York when he cast her in
Jack and Jill
to the grimy winter he left her, to their time together on location. All of it.

And, while she was at it, she looked at the rest of her life. It didn’t make sense, and now she was determined to figure out why. She’d accomplished what she had wanted to: she’d gone from a woman no one remembered to a girl impossible to forget, and she had all the money she needed, plus a lot more fame than she wanted.

But in the last three years, with few exceptions, she hadn’t met anyone that she wanted to know. Now Mai was dead, Raoul was back home in South America, and Dr. Moore had his life in New York. She was totally alone, and, except for Sharleen and Dean, there was no one here she trusted, no one to be kind to her. And, in days or weeks, she’d become notorious. Maybe Sharleen and Dean would want nothing to do with her when this monstrous pornographic picture came out. Surely even unflappable Brewster would be shocked and disgusted, as she was.

She was relieved when Dean knocked on her door at the end of his day. In the evenings, the two of them made dinner and waited for Sharleen. Then they watched a video, or the two women talked while Dean watched a tape of
The Andy Griffith Show
. It was simple, and routine, and warm. Jahne began to rest, really to relax for the first time in longer than she could remember. It was like going home, home to a home she had never known.

And slowly, slowly, Jahne began to feel a little more human, as if maybe she could go back and face her life. Maybe.

But on Thursday evening, when Sharleen turned to her as they sat side by side on the sofa and said, “I think you better come back soon,” tears unexpectedly filled Jahne’s eyes. Suddenly she felt as if this place, this time, was the only bit of peace there was.

“Oh, honey. Don’t cry. It’s jest that Marty is shootin’ so much around you, and he was already kinda mad about your takin’ so long on the film…Well, and you know Lila. She don’t miss a moment to blame you
or
me when
anything
goes wrong. When I blew a line today you know what she asked?” Jahne shook her head. “She asked how come blondes can’t make frozen orange juice. Because the can says ‘concentrate.’” They both laughed. Then Sharleen sighed, “And Sy’s callin’ me three or four times a day.”