John Irving - Until I Find You

They always showed a film clip of the nominated actors. Jack knew the shot he wanted them to use for him. It’s his face at the wheel of the limo—Jack-as-Johnny glances once in the rearview mirror at his wife, Carol, who’s all alone in the long backseat of the stretch. Carol is trying to put her hair and lipstick in order; she’s looking a little messy from a hotel-room groping by an overeager tourist at the Beverly Wilshire. Jack’s eyes go briefly to the rearview mirror, then back to the road. It’s a look between stoic and noir; he was proud of that close-up.

But with marketing, there’s no such thing as too obvious. The film clip they showed instead was the call-girl shot: Jack-as-a-hooker is breathing bourbon into the face of the front-desk clerk at The Peninsula Beverly Hills. “There’s something you should know,” Jack-as-a-hooker tells the clerk in that husky voice. “Lester Billings has checked out. I’m afraid he’s really left his room a mess. ”

“The money shot,” Myra Ascheim called it, when Emma and Jack ran into her at the Oscar party at Morton’s. It had taken ages to get in; the limos were backed up on Robertson as far as they could see.

Jack was unfamiliar with the phrase. “The money shot,” he repeated.

“He’s Canadian,” Myra explained. Jack saw that she was sitting with her sister, Mildred.

“Two tough old broads in a power booth,” Emma would say later.

“In a porn film,” Milly Ascheim explained, without looking at Jack, “the money shot is the male-ejaculation moment. You don’t get it, you got nothin’. Either the guy delivers the goods, or he can’t.”

“What’s it called when you don’t deliver, or you can’t?” Emma asked the porn producer.

“Crabs in ice water,” Milly said. “You gotta deliver the money shot.”

“The equivalent of that shot of you as a hooker, Jack,” Myra said condescendingly. Perhaps she was peeved with him because he hadn’t recognized her. (She wasn’t wearing her baseball cap.)

“I get it,” Jack told the Ascheim sisters. He was anxious to leave. Emma was holding his hand; Jack could tell she wanted to leave, too. The two tough old broads were looking her over, and it wasn’t a friendly assessment.

“It doesn’t matter that you didn’t win, Jack,” Myra continued, staring at Emma.

“It only matters when you win,” Milly corrected her.

“Well, we gotta go—there’s another party,” Emma said. “A younger one.”

“Nice hickey,” Mildred Ascheim told Emma.

“Thanks,” Emma said. “Jack gave it to me—it’s a real doozy.”

Mildred shifted her examining gaze to Jack. “He’s cute, isn’t he?” Myra asked her sister. “You can see what all the fuss is about.”

Jack could tell that Milly Ascheim was thinking over the word cute. In her world, Jack knew, cute didn’t cut it. “I think he’s cuter as a girl,” Mildred Ascheim said; she was scrutinizing Emma again, ignoring Jack. He thought that Milly was weighing whether or not to expose him.

That was when Myra said, “You’re just jealous, Milly, because I met Jack first.”

Uh-oh—here it comes, Jack thought. But Mildred Ascheim surprised him. She gave Jack a withering look, just to let him know she remembered how small his schlong was; yet she didn’t give him away. It was not a reassuring look—on the contrary, Milly wanted Jack to know that she hadn’t forgotten a single disappointing detail of his audition in Van Nuys. This just wasn’t the time for her to bear witness.

“For Christ’s sake, Myra, it’s Oscar night,” Milly told her sister. “We oughta let these kids enjoy it.”

“Yeah, we gotta go,” Emma said again.

“Thank you,” Jack told Mildred Ascheim.

Milly was looking at Emma once more; she just waved to Jack with the back of her hand. He anticipated that Milly would say something as he and Emma were walking away, a parting shot. (“So long, small schlong”—or words to that effect.) But Milly held her tongue.

“Mark my words, Mildred—Jack Burns has a world of money shots ahead of him,” Jack heard Myra Ascheim say.

“Maybe,” Milly said. “I still say he’s cuter as a girl.”

“Don’t let those old bitches bother you, baby cakes,” Emma told him when they were back in their limousine.

They were drifting in a sea of limos. Jack didn’t know or care which party they were going to next. He always let Emma be in charge.

After a night like that, Jack would have expected to hear from everyone he ever knew—even though he lost. (Maybe especially because he lost.) But not that many people reached out to him. Caroline Wurtz called Alice, though. “Please tell Jack I think he should have won,” Miss Wurtz said. “Imagine giving an Oscar to someone for eating people!”

When Jack and Emma got back to their place in Santa Monica, Mr. Ramsey’s was the first message on the answering machine. “Jack Burns!” he cried. That was all; it was enough.

Jack’s old wrestling friends contacted him more slowly. Coach Clum, from Redding, wrote: “ You made the right call, Jack. Cauliflower ears wouldn’t have worked on a girl. ”

Coach Hudson and Coach Shapiro sent Jack their congratulations, too. Hudson said he hoped that Jack wasn’t taking any of those female hormones, and that Jack’s boobs hadn’t been implants—just falsies. Shapiro was curious to know what had become of the Slavic-looking beauty, whose name he had forgotten; he’d been hoping to catch a glimpse of her at the Academy Awards.

Coach Shapiro meant Claudia, of course. Jack didn’t hear from her. Not a word from Noah Rosen, either—not that Jack expected to hear from him. And not a sound from Michele Maher, who had vanished without a peep. Herman Castro thought she’d gone to medical school, but after that he’d lost track of her. Naturally, Jack heard from Herman, but it was just a note. “Way to go, amigo—you got to the finals.”

Yes, it felt like that—he had gotten to the finals and lost, no contest. There was no telling if or when he might get there again; maybe the Oscar opportunity had been a one-shot deal.

Both Terminator 2: Judgment Day and The Naked Gun 21⁄2: The Smell of Fear did much bigger box office than Normal and Nice, but that little film and the Academy Award nomination gave Jack Burns a face that was recognized everywhere. As a man or as a woman, maybe; as a man, without a doubt. (Jack hadn’t, as yet, tried going anywhere as a woman—except in the movies.) He was a celebrity now.

Emma seemed determined that he take the utmost advantage of his fame. To that end, she persuaded Jack to say he was writing something—though of course he wasn’t. “Keep it nonspecific, baby cakes. Just say you’re always writing.” This amounted to a conversation-stopper in many of Jack’s interviews. It sounded vaguely sinister, as if the alleged something he was always writing were an exposé. But of what ? “It makes you more mysterious,” Emma told him. “It adds to your noir thing.” Did she mean that being a writer somehow enhanced his sexually ambiguous reputation as an actor?

Some interviewers only wanted to talk about what Jack was writing; it drove them crazy that he wouldn’t say. For this reason alone, it seemed worth repeating. “I’m not interested in settling down, getting married, having kids—not right now,” he would usually begin. “Now’s the time to concentrate on my work.”

“You mean your acting?”

“Well, sure. And my writing.”

“What are you writing?”

“Something. I’m just always writing.”