Квентин Тарантино - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - The First Novel By Quentin Tarantino

She hears the old man’s bedroom door open. She grabs the chunky clicker and clicks it twice, lowering the volume on Efrem Zimbalist Jr. narrating The FBI promo.

She hears the Hawaiian guy shake George and call his name, then she hears the confused old man wake up with a start. “Wait a minute! What’s going on? Who are you? What do you want?”

She hears the Hawaiian guy explain, “It’s okay, George. It’s okay. Sorry to disturb you. It’s Cliff Booth. I just stopped by to say hello and see how you’re doin’.”

A confused George asks, “Who’s that?”

The Hawaiian guy further explains, “Well, I used to shoot Bounty Law here. I was Rick Dalton’s stunt double.”

“Who?” George squawks.

“Rick Dalton,” the Hawaiian guy repeats.

George mumbles something Squeaky can’t hear from the other room. Then she hears the Hawaiian guy repeat and emphasize the name “Rick—Dalton.”

“Who’s that?” George asks.

“He was the star of Bounty Law ,” the Hawaiian guy tells him.

Getting confused again, George asks, “Who are you?”

The Hawaiian guy answers, “I was Rick’s stunt double.”

Squeaky laughs when she hears George say, “Rick who?”

“It doesn’t matter, George,” she hears the Hawaiian guy in the other room tell George. “I’m an old colleague from the past, and I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

“Well, I’m not okay,” George informs him.

“Whatsamatter?” the Hawaiian guy asks.

“I can’t fuckin’ see shit!” is George’s reply, and that makes Squeaky laugh again.

The Hawaiian guy says something she can’t hear, then George says something else she can’t hear, then the Hawaiian guy says something she can’t quite make out, but she can make out the words “little redhead.”

Squeaky has no trouble making out George’s reply: “I told you I can’t see shit! How the fuck am I supposed to know what color the hair is of the girl who hangs around me all the time?”

Then she hears the Hawaiian guy mumble something and George tell him, “Look, I don’t remember who you are, but thanks for coming and visiting me …” then whatever else the blind old man tells the Hawaiian guy is unintelligible to Squeaky. The next couple of exchanges are just mumbles in different tones, till she hears the Hawaiian guy’s voice rise up because he’s trying to get through to George. “So you’ve given all these hippies permission to be here?”

At that question, an angry George answers back, “Just who the fuck are you?”

She hears the Hawaiian guy try one more time to explain why he’s here. “I’m Cliff Booth. I’m a stuntman. We used to work together, George. And I just want to make sure you’re okay and all these hippies aren’t taking advantage of you.”

“Squeaky?” George asks. Then answers, “She loves me, sir.”

That makes the little redhead smile. She grabs the chunky clicker, hits it three times, and watches Canned Heat perform Going Up the Country on It’s Happening.

About six minutes later the Hawaiian guy comes out of the bedroom and is standing in the living room, looking down at her in the recliner. Without looking at him she asks, “Satisfied?”

He sticks his hands in his pockets and answers, “That wouldn’t be the word I’d use.”

Her head turns toward him, and she says with a twinkle in her eye and a smile on her face, “I think that’s the word George woulda used this morning.”

Cliff smirks at her saucy comeback and sits on the loveseat opposite her recliner.

“So you have sex with that old man regular, huh?”

“Yep,” she says. “George is great. And I bet he can get hard and stay hard longer than you, Bronco Buster.”

“Look,” the Hawaiian guy says, “George is an old friend—”

She interrupts him, “He doesn’t even know who the fuck you are!”

“Be that as it may,” he follows up, “I just want to make sure he’s happy and aware .”

“He’s aware I have sex with him five times a week and he’s happy about it.” Squeaky points to his room and says, “If you want to embarrass him, you can ask him directly.”

The Hawaiian guy removes his sunglasses, leans forward, and asks, “And the reason you have sex with George five times a week is because you love him?”

Squeaky gives this Hawaiian fucker one of her unblinking stares and tells him, “You bet I do. With all my heart, and everything that I have, and everything that I am, I love George. And whether or not you believe in my capacity for loving George means to me,” she lowers her voice to a whisper, “less than nothing.”

The Hawaiian fucker meets her unblinking glare with a sarcastic question: “So you’re not talking to him about changing wills or anything legal like that, are you?”

That question makes Squeaky blink, once. But the blink doesn’t break her composure or compromise her righteous indignation.

“No, I’m not talking to him about changing wills. I’m talking to him about marriage.”

How do you like them apples, smartass?

Squeaky sums up, “So let me get this straight—the last time you saw George was the fucking fifties, and now all of a sudden you show up and you’re gonna save ’em … from marriage? You’re gonna save him from sex five times a week? Are you sure when you knew George you were his friend? Do you drive around saving everybody from marriage, or is there something special about George ?”

The Hawaiian guy sits on the love seat listening to this, then says, “You know something … you have a point.” So he stands up from the love seat and walks through the house and out the screen door and down the staircase. A satisfied Squeaky crosses her legs at the ankles and turns her attention back to the Dick Clark–produced music show.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Aldo Ray

Almeria, Spain

June 1969

As fifties’ movie star Aldo Ray sat at the foot of the soiled mattress in the stuffy Spanish hotel room, sweat dripping down his hairy shoulders and back, he wasn’t contemplating some of the wrong turns he’d made along the way that were responsible for him occupying this oppressive room. Nor did he torture himself about the days, once upon a time … in Hollywood , when he worked for directors like George Cukor, Michael Curtiz, Raoul Walsh, Jacques Tourneur, and Anthony Mann. He didn’t stress about his long-gone swank apartment at the El Royale, or his little baby Porsche, which, fast as it was, was way too small for the barrel-built beefcake. Nope, sitting in the sweltering un-air-conditioned hotel room in Spain on his first night on location on a new picture, Aldo thought about the thing that Aldo always thought about every night about this time. A bottle of booze.

Whenever Aldo Ray did a movie on location, the crew, the cast, the hotel employees, and frankly anyone else who could be enlisted was put on Aldo watch. When Aldo was put up in a hotel or motel on a film location, he was basically under house arrest. He wasn’t allowed to leave the hotel, for fear of him getting a bottle. He was banned from the hotel bar. He wasn’t allowed to carry any money. And either he or the building entrances and exits were closely monitored. Every member of the production was given strict orders, in no uncertain terms, no matter how much he begged, pleaded, and cajoled, not to supply Aldo with booze. In David Carradine’s autobiography, Endless Highway , he recounted the time he made the low-budget Fernando Lamas–helmed film The Violent Ones with Aldo. Mr. Carradine wrote about how if any young actor who knew and respected Mr. Ray from his early days did a film with him, they were basically given the job, Take care of Aldo .