Carrie Fisher - Postcards from the Edge

On the wall next to the guest bathroom was a painting that always looked very familiar to Suzanne. She assumed it was a famous painting, a Picasso or a Matisse. She thought it was awful. Maybe if she took an art class, she thought, she could appreciate some of the art that everyone around her seemed to appreciate. She wondered why she had ever quit smoking. Maybe she should just smoke at parties.

She walked down the two steps into the living room, with its unobtrusive furniture, its obtrusive art, and its view of the backyard that was set up to look like another painting: a painting of a backyard with a Henry Moore sculpture of a nude fat woman in it. She heard a squeal and spotted Wallis coming toward her, a smiling vision in red and blond. “If it isn’t the brain trust herself!” cried Wallis, embracing Suzanne. “You look adorable!” Suzanne knew then, with absolute certainty, that she must look even worse than she thought.

“You mean my huge rubber head?” she mumbled into Wallis’s perfect long hair that almost didn’t smell of hair spray.

“Your rubber what?” Wallis said, holding her at arm’s length. “What are you talking about? Come over here and say hello to Toni and Harlon.”

Suzanne knew Toni and Harlon from other parties. Toni Barnes had just won an Academy Award for playing the murderous florist in A Bunch of Violets , and Harlon DeVore was her boyfriend and business manager. Suzanne thought she should probably smoke. She would never win an Academy Award, and even if she did, she would probably always be as tormented as she was now, so what could a cigarette matter? She congratulated Toni on her Oscar and asked Harlon if he’d missed her, just to see how good a job he’d do of pretending to remember who she was. Then she moved over to a bowl of nuts to breathe privately and plan her strategy. She was in a full-tilt panic, but she tried to look like she couldn’t imagine doing anything more relaxing than standing alone at a table next to something that looked like pink whipped cream but was probably salmon mousse and picking cashews out of a bowl of nuts in a room full of celebrities in Bel Air.

Standing with her back to Suzanne was Rachel Sarnoff, an attractive studio executive who, Suzanne had heard from Wallis, had just broken off a three-month affair with Todd Zane, an English rock star and a legendary cocaine addict. Rachel had gotten Todd to promise he’d quit cocaine—Todd promised everyone he went out with that he’d quit cocaine for them—and then she’d caught him doing cocaine again, so she’d broken up with him. Suzanne wondered how Rachel was handling the breakup. She looked fine, but then, except for her, everyone in Hollywood looked fine all the time. That had nothing to do with anything.

Rachel was talking to a guy Suzanne vaguely knew from New York, a playwright named Tom Sarafian. From the conversation that Suzanne was desperately trying to overhear, she thought this was probably their first meeting.

“What does that mean, A Night Full of Shoes?” Rachel demanded. “It sounds so pretentious.”

“Of course it’s pretentious,” Tom said, trying to soothe her. “In New York, pretentious is commercial.”

“How can you stand it?” Rachel snapped. “How can you live there, with everyone so pale and intellectual and sweating from drugs?” Suzanne guessed the breakup with Todd Zane had been painful.

Just then, Wallis walked up to them with a “new girl.” Milton collected art and Wallis collected artists, and this was her latest find, a dark-haired dark-eyed beauty whom she was presenting to Rachel and Tom. “This is April Lanning, an artist from Manhattan. Milton bought a piece from her last week.” April smiled politely and said hello.

“Don’t you remember me?” asked Tom.

“No,” said April blankly. “Should I?”

“We dated in the Hamptons a few summers ago,” Tom said, then waited expectantly for her flash of recognition.

April looked quite embarrassed. “I’m afraid I don’t,” she said.

“Did you have sex?” Rachel asked Tom.

“I believe we tried, but I was…” He searched for the right word, then snapped his fingers as he found it. “Impotent!” he said brightly, as if it was a good word, like “tan.” April looked very flustered.

“Really?” said Rachel. “From alcohol and drugs, or do you have some kind of psychological disorder?”

“Well,” said Tom, “probably the latter. Let’s put it this way, it wasn’t the first time.”

“I don’t really… ,” April stammered. “The Hamptons?”

“Maybe it’ll come back to you over dinner,” offered Wallis. “Come say hello to Suzanne.” She steered April away from Rachel and Tom, who noticed Suzanne and waved at her. She smiled back, trying not to look at his sad crotch.

“Have you two met?” Wallis asked Suzanne as she practically carried April toward her. “Suzanne Vale, April Lanning.”

“No,” said Suzanne. Then, shaking April’s hand, she said to her, “But you once almost had sex with an impotent acquaintance of mine.” April looked ashen. “I’m kidding,” Suzanne said. “Nice to meet you.”

“You should see her pieces,” Wallis enthused, squeezing April’s arm. “I never knew I liked photorealism before.”

“Have you been in L.A. long?” Suzanne asked.

“Huh?” said April.

“I think April could use a drink,” said Wallis. “Come, dear.” She led April past the painting made of broken teacup pieces, toward the bar in the corner.

Suzanne saw her skin doctor, Walter Marks, enter the room and felt reassured. She made her way over to his beaming bearded face. “You’re disappointed in my hair, aren’t you?” she greeted him. “I have too much makeup on, don’t I? Be honest with me. Do I look orange?”

“You’re not drinking, are you?” said Walter. “No, of course not, you don’t drink.”

“You don’t drink either, do you?” asked Suzanne, kissing his cheek.

“Hardly ever,” he said. “I like to feel like I could perform surgery at any given moment.”

“That’s interesting,” said Suzanne. “My goal was to feel I could go into surgery at any given moment.”

“Who are you here with?” Walter asked.

“No one. You think I’m desperate, don’t you?”

“Impaired, yes,” Walter said. “Desperate, no. Why do you keep coming to these things when they cause you such torment?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “but I’m working on it in therapy.”

“How is Norma?” Walter asked. “What a terrific lady.”

“She’s great,” Suzanne said. “She said a great thing last week. I told her I thought people confused fame with success, and she said they confused fame with acceptance and—Who cares, right? You don’t care. Who’s that?” she asked with a nod of her head toward the door, where a fortyish blonde was standing in a dress that looked like it had something long and stringy sticking out from the bottom.

“Portia Lamm,” said Walter. “The agent. What do you suppose that thing is hanging out of her dress?”

“Probably the tie of the last guy who was up there,” said Suzanne, wondering what Portia Lamm had been on when she bought the dress. “Who’s the guy with her? He looks familiar.”

“That’s that European actor, Vittorio something.”

“Vittorio Amati,” breathed Suzanne. “Wasn’t he in Death Wore a Dress?”

“No,” said Walter, “you’re thinking of The Head of the Pin .”

“Was he in that?” asked Suzanne, watching the handsome actor talk to Wallis and Milton while Portia Lamm got their little envelopes. Walter reminded Suzanne of who Vittorio Amati played in The Head of the Pin , then started telling her about his visit to the psoriasis center at the Dead Sea.