John Irving - Until I Find You

A veteran cowboy actor is in town to promote his new film—what Emma calls a “nouvelle Western.” Lester Billings was born Lester Magruder in Billings, Montana; he’s an actual cowboy, and nouvelle Westerns offend him. It’s a sore point with Lester that Westerns have become so rare that young actors don’t know how to ride and shoot anymore. In the so-called Western that Lester is promoting, there are no good guys, no bad guys; everyone is an anti-hero. “A French Western,” Lester calls it.

Johnny sends Carol to Lester’s hotel room—after Lester confesses to a hankering for a nice, normal woman. But Lester really is a cowboy; he climbs on Carol. (“There was nothing too irregular—at first,” she assures Johnny.) Then, while they’re proceeding in the regular way, Lester puts a gun to his head. It’s a Colt .45—only one chamber of the revolver is loaded. Lester calls this cowboy roulette.

“Either I die in the saddle or I live to ride another day!” he hollers. As Lester pulls the trigger, Carol wonders how many girls in L.A. escort services have heard the click of that hammer striking an empty chamber, while Lester lived to ride another day. Not this time. It’s Lester’s day to die in the saddle.

In the midafternoon, there aren’t many guests in The Peninsula Beverly Hills to hear the gunshot. Besides, the hotel doesn’t cater to an especially youthful crowd; maybe the guests in nearby rooms are napping or hard of hearing. Emma describes The Peninsula as being “sort of like the Four Seasons, but with a few more hookers and businessmen.”

Because the hotel is adjacent to C.A.A., possibly an agent hears Lester Billings blow his brains out, but nobody else. And what would an agent care about a gunshot?

Carol calls Johnny. She knows that no one noticed her crossing the lobby and getting on the elevator, but what if someone sees her leave ? She is understandably distraught; she believes that she looks like a hooker. She doesn’t, really. Carol has always dressed like a studio exec having lunch; in keeping with normal and nice, she doesn’t look like a call girl.

Johnny saves her. He comes to Lester’s hotel room with the requisite changes of clothes, for Carol and himself. The limo driver’s suit for Carol, together with the dress and bra and falsies Carol bought for him; by the time Carol has applied his makeup and brushed out his shoulder-length hair, Johnny looks a lot more like a prostitute than Carol ever has.

He tells her where the limo is parked. It’s not far—nor is it parked within sight of the entrance to The Peninsula. He says he’ll come find her.

When Johnny-as-a-hooker leaves The Peninsula, he makes sure he’s noticed. Johnny has used a little bottle of bourbon from the minibar in Lester’s hotel room as a mouthwash. He struts up to the front desk, where he-as-she seizes a young clerk by his coat lapels and breathes in his face. “There’s something you should know,” Johnny-as-a-hooker says in a husky voice. “Lester Billings has checked out. I’m afraid he’s really left his room a mess. ” Then Johnny-as-a-hooker releases the young man and sways through the lobby, leaving the hotel. He and Carol drive home to Marina del Rey, where they change into their regular clothes.

At the end of the novel, they’ve stopped for the night in a motel room off Interstate 80 somewhere in the Midwest. They’re on their way back to Iowa to find normal jobs and live a nice life. Carol is pregnant. (Maternity Leave, as an escort service, might have been wildly successful, but Carol wants no part of the business—not anymore—and Johnny is through with driving movie stars.)

In the motel room off the interstate, there’s an old Lester Billings movie on the TV—an authentic Western. Lester is a cattle rustler; he dies in the saddle, shot dead on his horse.

Normal and Nice turned out to be a better movie than a novel, and Emma knew it would be. The film was already in production while the novel was still on the New York Times bestseller list. Many book reviewers complained that the novel was written with the future screenplay in mind. Naturally, Emma wrote the screenplay, too; among film critics, there was some speculation that she might have written it before she wrote the novel. Emma wouldn’t say.

Jack didn’t know the details of the deal she made with Bob Bookman at C.A.A., but while Bookman didn’t normally represent actors, he agreed to represent Jack. Whether it was in writing—or something that was said over lunch, or in a phone call—it was understood that Emma and Jack were attached to the movie that would be made from Normal and Nice. Emma would write the script and Jack would be Johnny. Of course Emma had Jack in mind for the part from the beginning—a sympathetic cross-dresser. And this time his shoulder-length hair would be real, not a wig.

Mary Kendall played Carol—as innocent an escort as you’d ever see. Jake “Prairie Dog” Rawlings played Lester Billings—his first role in a long time, and his only screen appearance not in a Western.

When Mary Kendall and Jack are holding hands in that Interstate 80 motel room, just watching TV, they have no dialogue. In the same scene in the novel, watching Lester Billings get shot, Carol says, “I wonder how many times he got killed in his career.”

“Enough so he wasn’t afraid of it,” Johnny says.

But Emma thought it was better if they didn’t say anything in the film. It’s more of a movie moment—to just see them watching the old cowboy die. Their dreams, to be movie stars, have died, too; something of that is visible in Carol’s and Johnny’s resigned expressions. That green or blue-gray light from the television screen flickers on their faces.

But Jack would have liked to say the line. (“Enough so he wasn’t afraid of it.”)

“Maybe you’ll get to use it later,” Emma told him, “but not this time. This time, I’m the writer.”

Emma was more than that. She was the architect of Jack’s future in film, the reason he would make the leap from Wild Bill Vanvleck to more-or-less mainstream. Of course Jack Burns was still best known in drag, but suddenly he was serious.

It was quite a surprise when Jack was nominated for an Academy Award; he hadn’t thought of the cross-dressing limo driver as being that sympathetic a part. It was no surprise that Jack wouldn’t win that year. It was Mary Kendall’s first Oscar nomination, too, and she wouldn’t win, either. But they were both nominated, which was more than they’d ever imagined.

The Silence of the Lambs would win Best Picture, and Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins Best Actress and Best Actor, respectively—it was their year.

Emma wasn’t nominated. Screenwriters were nominated by screenwriters; Emma’s famous script notes still rankled. Emma went to the Oscars as Jack’s date, which made it fun. They generally agreed who the assholes were; identifying the assholes was an important activity at an event like that.

Billy Crystal, again the host, made a joke about the evening being delayed—“because Jack Burns is still changing his bra.”

Emma had a very noticeable hickey on her throat. Jack had given it to her, at her request. She hadn’t gone out with anyone in a long time, she thought she was ugly, and she hated her Oscar dress. “At least make it look like someone’s kissing me, honey pie.”

Mrs. Oastler spotted Emma’s hickey on TV in Toronto. “Couldn’t you have put a little concealer on it?” Leslie asked Emma.

It was March 30, 1992—the first time Mrs. Oastler and Alice stayed up to watch the entire Academy Awards show, although Jack told them not to bother. He knew Anthony Hopkins was going to win Best Actor, but Leslie and Alice stayed up to watch Jack not win, anyway.