Third Girl from the Left (11 page)

He didn't call her for a few days after he walked in on them. He knew he was hurting her. She called his service over and over. In the end, when he called his service, he could hear the reproach in the operator's voice: “She's called at least five times, Mr. Madigan, and she says it's very important. Did you get our other messages?”

“Yes. I did.” His voice was level.

“Well, good,” said the voice emphatically. “We'd hate to see you miss out on an important message.”

Why the fuck do you care, lady
, he thought. But he said, “Right,” and hung up. He dialed Angela's number, not really thinking about why. She answered on the third ring. “It's Rafe.”

He could hear her rapid inhalation of breath, almost a gasp, and then she spoke. “I been calling you and calling you. You 'bout to run me out my mind.”

He laughed in spite of himself. “I wasn't the one who came to the door half-naked.” Getting right down to it. She went silent. For a long time. Finally, he spoke. “Look, it's cool. I just had to . . . well, it's a lot to take in . . . but you know, it ain't no thing but a chicken wing. We both grown. And we both free to do what we like. Right?”

“Right.” She paused again. “I'd like to see you tonight. That's what I'd like.”

He stretched his legs out. “Well, why don't you come on over here then, girl. I guess I wouldn't mind seeing you either.”

“See you in twenty, then.” She was there in fifteen. Standing on his doorstep grinning with her fine self. He buried his nose in her neck, inhaled her sweet musky scent whole. Who would have thought it was the beginning of the end?

 

In 1971, Melvin Van Peebles made
Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
for $500,000. It earned $14 million. That's how it started. Both major studios and small, scruffy independents like Samuel Z. Arkoff's American International Pictures started turning out cheaply made, bodacious, and hyperreal action pictures, starring black people, if not made by them, as fast as they could buy film stock. The most compelling of them, like
Sweetback
, with its mix of black power and misogyny, the thrill of watching a black man beat a cop to death with his own handcuffs (even though it took place out of camera range because it was just too expensive to make it look convincing), offered an evening of the score to those for whom the score had been so uneven for so very long. It was 1971, 1972, 1973. Martin Luther King, Jr., had been dead for four years, five years, six years, and peace had been given more than a chance. So to rise up in the theater, to look up in the theater and see yourself, no matter how manipulated and filmed and badly lit, and speaking crappy, unconvincing dialogue, to see yourself, to see your rage there for a minute—that was enough for a lot of folks. But then of course it all started to fall apart, almost the second it began. The flesh turned on the flesh. The NAACP called it out. The white people made all the money. The black actors got only dope and coke and cold fried chicken and pay that was less, far less, than union scale. And whatever the point had been got lost in a sea of Afro'd gun-totin' tough guys declaring war on the pushers and gettin' all the honeys. The honeys, as usual, had little to say. They got raped, they stood by their men, sometimes they stood up for themselves, but not without making their way through at least two to three nude scenes. The good times couldn't last forever. They never do. But Rafe and Angela didn't know that then, lost in each other's sweet embrace.

He pulled her closer to him, sighed. “What am I gonna do with you, girl?” he said. They were standing just inside his doorway, breathing each other's breath, trying not to fall away from each other. “I don't know,” she said softly. “You know, with Sheila, she's always there, she's helped me so much. I really love her. But . . .”

“But you just a natural-born freak.” He said it so softly and gently, smiling, that she couldn't hear the whip in the words.

“I guess,” she replied. “What I was gonna say is that I wanna be with you too. I just wanna do what feels good, all right. That's all. That's what's been working for me so far—what feels good.” Now her hands were working on his belt buckle as she looked at him steadily.

“Right,” he said. She slid down onto her knees, a supplicant, as he leaned against the door and closed his eyes. “Well, you do know about that,” he murmured. After that, there was nothing else to say.

 

In those days, for those films, there were no walks down the red carpet. Usually, there wasn't even anything you could call a cast party. Sometimes somebody brought some beer the last day of shooting and everyone would raise them for a sip after the last shot. For
Coffy
, however, things were a little different. Jack Hill decided to have everybody over the weekend it opened in LA. He'd been doing all right for himself and he had a pretty nice house in the Hills. There was room. And a nice big pool. Why the hell not? Everybody was always up for a party.

All the actors and producers sat together in the back of a movie theater in South Central, having entered, almost furtively, a few minutes after the show began so that there'd be no fuss and they could gauge the real audience reaction. It smelled of pee and mildew and spilled Coke. Pam Grier sat tensely in her seat, gnawing on the corner of a long manicured nail from the initial chord of the opening theme until the taillights of her car faded away under the closing credits. She winced at every shot fired and mouthed her character's lines along with her image on the screen. Angela was squeezed in between Sheila and Rafe. Rafe's was hand on her leg, Sheila's just an inch away. Sheila spent half the movie sneaking looks at Angela next to her. The crowd went insane. They gasped as Coffy's little sister lost her mind and then her life to heroin, then roared with pleasure as Coffy blasted her way to revenge against the evil pushers. “You want me to crawl, white motherfucker? You wanna spit on me and make me crawl? I'm gonna piss on your grave tomorrow,” she bellowed. The crowd went wild. Hill smiled just a little bit. He had worked hard with Pam on that line, on her delivery and attitude. He could see, at the end of the row, Sam Arkoff, the producer. He wasn't looking at the screen at all. His head was swiveled around and he was looking at the audience with pure cash-money joy on his face. Once he had said to Jack, “You know, that goddamn Van Peebles was onto something. We've got to give these people what they want. People, black or white, will pay good money for that.” Hill knew he was right. He did the best he could and tried for as much integrity as possible with a minuscule budget, a ridiculous script, a cast that by and large had never set foot in front of a camera before and an order from on high that there had to be at least three to five nude scenes for the women. He did what he was told. And the audience loved it.

When the fight scene came up, Angela's toes curled right up inside her shoes. She couldn't believe it, couldn't believe that was her up on the screen, fake hair flying, rage sparkling in her eyes. The camera work was shaky, her mascara was smeared, she was half-naked, the cheapness of the room they were in and the carpet they rolled around on was apparent. But it didn't matter. She looked magnificent. She'd seen herself in the movies before but always in the background. Here she had a line, was visible for at least five or ten minutes. Sheila gave a little squeal of excitement and squeezed Angela's hand. Something joyous expanded inside her. Just the way it had the day that she shot the scene. She felt herself
in
it, fully
in
that cheap, stupid moment. She didn't feel cheap and stupid. She felt like Jackie, her character. Jackie who had been a cheerleader in a little town outside of Fresno and through a series of bad breaks had found herself in this brothel, forced to act this way. She felt all of Jackie's anger, right down to her toes. Couldn't anybody see how Jackie had suffered and worked? “Go 'head, Coffy. Give that heifer what for,” said a rough voice from the audience to general laughter. She was the heifer. But she didn't care. There she was on the screen. Real. Bigger than life.

She loved watching the audience get so excited. There were parts of the movie where people screamed out loud in the theater. When Coffy took down all the dealers, a couple of people stood up and applauded. It was like at Louann's church, all over again. She was sanctified by the frenzy all around her. Rafe leaned over and murmured in her ear, “You looked mighty fly, baby. Congratulations.” She smiled and kept looking at the screen.

Afterward, everyone piled into cars to make the drive to Jack Hill's. Rafe and Angela and Sheila went together, companionably passing around a joint as they drove. Since almost walking in on them that time, Rafe had taken a distant, what-he-didn't-know-wouldn't-hurt-him attitude toward Sheila and Angela's involvement. He treated them like they were just buddies. They cooperated by acting like buddies. Their jobs, or the hope of getting any jobs, demanded that they pretend an interest in the men around them that had nothing to do with their true feelings. So they were used to acting like nothing was going on between them. In a funny way, nothing was. They were lovers because they loved each other but also because they were both willing to do anything they felt like doing. He ran his hand around and around the inside of Angela's thigh in small circles as he drove.

She really cared for him, she thought. Just like Sheila. It's just more love. She leaned her head back against the seat, pleasantly high now. They were pulling into the driveway.

A lot of other people were there already, the music banging, joints out, shoes off. As they walked into the house, Angela looked through the glass doors and saw a couple of people splashing around in the pool, fully clothed. Pam Grier sat on Jack Hill's lap. “Is this the best little actress in the world?” he said loudly to no one in particular. She beamed and kissed him behind his ear in a friendly way, then got up to get a drink. He smacked her butt as she left, and she laughed. “The best, I tell you,” he said again.

As Angela turned away from the bar, holding her drink, another girl from the fight scene came up to her. She was draped around a short white guy with long sideburns and a nervous smile. “That crowd was really something, huh?”

“Yeah,” Angela agreed.

The man spoke. “I think you ladies are in a massive hit. People were really groovin' on it.”

“I know,” said Angela. Who was this guy anyway?

“Well, I'm Cindy here's manager, and I think she's going all the way with this.” He paused. “Who's your representation, anyway?”

“My what?”

“Your representation?”

“Oh . . . nobody. I mean, myself I guess. I just go on a lot of auditions.”

“Well, if you ever feel you need someone to represent your interests.” He took his business card and jammed it right into her bra so that just the corner stuck up. It scratched a little. “Jack Rosenstein is the name. I love you girls. Work with a lot of you. Gonna make Cindy here a star.” His hand moved rhythmically around and around on Cindy's butt as he spoke. She just kept smiling blankly. “Thanks. I'll think about it,” said Angela, slugging the last of her drink and moving off to get another.

“Never Can Say Goodbye” eased out of the speakers, and people huddled next to one another in the conversation pit, doing coke and laughing excitedly. Angela sat down next to Sheila. Rafe was at the bar. “How you feeling, sweet?” said Sheila. Their legs were almost touching. “I'm all right. I think the movie's really gonna hit. I can't believe it,” replied Angela.

“Girl, you got that right. Did you hear that guy behind us when Pam got up there with that gun? Wham, bam, thank you, ma'am! He was losin' it. I couldn't believe it. People are ready for this shit.” She took a swig of her wine and then squealed as the music changed to Sly Stone's “Everybody Is a Star.”

“Oooh, I love this song. Let's dance.” She grabbed Angela's hand and ran over to a corner of the room. No one else was dancing, but she didn't care. Watching her, neither did Angela. They were laughing, eyes closed, hip to hip, until they were both suddenly aware that someone else was with them. Rafe had sidled up to them, grinning. Sheila threw her arm around him first, then around Angela without a word, and they kept on dancing, loving one another. “Thank you, ladies,” Rafe said when the song ended. He kissed them each on the neck gently. Sheila and Angela smiled, their arms around each other. “Oh, yeah,” murmured Sheila. “That's a real fine brother you got there, Angie. I hope you know that.”

“I do.” In that moment, she loved them both. She loved everything. Her heart beat in time with the world. The sun would never stop shining. Sly Stone would never stop playing. No one was ever going to die again. Nothing would ever be lost again.

By this time, a lot of people were in the pool in various states of undress. Their voices were high and tinny. In one corner, a well-known white producer and a young black actress kissed hungrily, their mouths wide open. Angela and Sheila and Rafe came out the door together, undressed, and dived in. The blueness pressed against Angela like a live thing. She swam around and between arms and legs, some naked, some not, until she had to come up, gasping and laughing, for air. When she came up, Rafe and Sheila were leaning against the side of the pool, kissing, Rafe's hand resting on Sheila's breast. Her heart tightened so much that she had to put her hand against her chest and press down. She breathed deeply. Once. Twice. Another time. She walked through the water to them. There were no words in her head. But this is what came out of her mouth: “What the fuck are you two doing?” They both looked at her, stoned and befuddled with arousal, genuinely surprised. They didn't say anything. Tears mixed with the chlorinated water on Angela's face—tears she was surprised to be crying. She loved them both. She'd been so happy just a few minutes before. Water dripped from her misshapen hair down her back. She sloshed up to Rafe and stood before him for a minute. Then she slapped him. He hit her back, wordlessly. Sheila screamed once. Then they all just stood there, looking at one another, the shrieks of the party going on all around them. Somebody fell into the pool. Stevie Wonder was playing on the stereo. Something broke inside Angela and she started sobbing, running awkwardly toward the pool's edge, Rafe behind her. Angela snatched her clothes off the chaise longue where she'd left them and ran into the house, yanking open doors in search of a bathroom or an unoccupied bedroom. She finally found a bedroom with nobody in it. Rafe had disappeared behind her. Maybe he had lost interest. She sat alone, yanking on her clothes, thinking of Rafe's hand on Sheila's breast. While they were kissing, neither of them had been giving her the slightest thought. It scared her terribly that she could be forgotten by the only people she loved in Los Angeles. She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. She thought she might throw up. They were free to do what they wanted, all of them. There was a knock on the door. She straightened her clothes and yelled, “Yeah.”