Anne Siddons - Fault Lines

“Does this Pringle care for her? Is he good to her?”

He made an impatient gesture.

“He was while they were shooting last winter. He couldn’t do enough for her. Everybody knew about them. The media was all over it. As for now, I don’t know. He hasn’t been around. He’s off chasing down money for a new film. I heard he was in Europe for a while; he may still be there. If he is, he hasn’t let her know. I don’t think she’s heard from him in a month or so, but she wouldn’t tell me that. Tells me what she has from the beginning: It’s the real thing for her, the rest of her life, and so forth, and so forth. Says he feels the same. But I’ve got a bad feeling about it. She doesn’t look good to me. She’s thin, she acts like she’s somewhere else most of the time. Sleeps too much. Sometimes her eyes are red like she’s been crying. Like I said, she’s not going to tell me. Doesn’t want to worry a sick man. Like she could help it.”

“So what kind of person is he? Would he dump her; does he do that?”

“He’s an asshole jerk, is what I think. He’s a phony. Wears tennis sweaters and a baseball cap, drives an old woody, got freckles and a gap in his teeth and a big, crooked grin. His name isn’t Caleb Pringle; it’s Sherman Goetz, but I don’t care about that. Nobody out here uses their real name. Yeah, he’d dump her. He sure does do that. He does it after every film. It’s his schtick, ditching his last film’s squeeze when shooting’s over, just like copping ideas is his schtick. He calls it derivative filmmaking, says it’s an art unto itself, to take a film that’s already been done and do it better. Some other folks call it stealing. But he’s good at it. He has the touch. He makes big bucks. I just want to make sure that he does right by her in this movie, no matter what he does to her personally. After it comes out she’s not going to need him.”

“I don’t like the sound of this stuff.”

“Neither do I, dollbaby. That’s why this interview is so important. It’s her ticket to ride. You make her promise to dress up pretty and be polite to Poythress. You look after your little sister for me.”

“You’re not going with her?”

“No. I think I’ll stay here and kick back a little. Lie in the sun by her pool, sleep in, have some friends over. We worked it out last night. She’s going to stay at my place above Sunset. You really ought to go. It’s a great location. Right near all the things she’ll want to show Glynn. The Sunset Marquis, where the interview will be, is right down below. And you’d have a terrific view. All of Hollywood at your feet, as it were. And I wouldn’t exactly be an asset to her at this stage.”

“Stuart, I just have to get Glynn home. But I really wish we could stay, just to get to know you better,” I said. “I wish there was some way I could thank you for being so good to my sister.”

“You can go up there with her. You can give her moral support and have a good time yourself, is what you can do, dollbaby. She says you haven’t had much of one lately. You or that pretty child of yours, either. Go. Enjoy. Giggle. Drink things with flowers in them. Eat only things that will make you fat. Ask for autographs. Drive that little red car too fast. Wear things that let your pretty tchotchkes hang out. That’s what you can do. What’s two more days out of your young life?”

“They are long days, believe me. But I think you’re the best thing that’s happened to Laura since she came out here,” I said, getting up and kissing him on the cheek. “I wish you’d stick around to take care of her.”

Then I winced, remembering why he could not. He smiled.

“I wish I could,” he said. “Somebody is always going to have to do it. But now there’s you. God looks after fools and actresses.”

“But I can’t do it indefinitely,” I said.

“Why not?” he said. “Haven’t you almost always, one way or another?”

“Oh, Mom, look! Oh, it’s just so cool !”

Glynn stood on Stuart Feinstein’s tiny balcony, staring out at the valley that cradled Los Angeles. I went out and stood beside her. The valley looked to me like two dirty cupped hands holding a city captive; the gray-yellow smog that lay thickly over it seemed the foul breath of the captor. It was not cool to me or beautiful; the sense of alienation I had felt at the airport the day before was back full force. But she was right in a way. It was a stunning vista. It had the impact of a slap.

We had left Palm Springs at seven, and Laura had kept the car at a steady eighty miles per hour through the desert, until the clutter of small towns and shopping centers began. We had gotten into L.A. well before ten, and wound our way through the stalled traffic on back streets, up into the hills to Sunset and across it. Stuart Feinstein’s building rode the crest of one of the canyon ridges directly above Sunset, and we pulled into his parking lot just at ten. After Amy’s call at six, there did not seem to be any point in going back to bed, so I woke Laura and Glynn. Over bagels and coffee I told them we were going to Los Angeles after all. They were both jubilant; last night’s conflict melted with the cold desert dew. The careening drive was brushed with a magical giddiness.

We were flushed from wind and sun—Laura had kept the top down all the way this time—and from laughter. The minute she had pulled out of her own driveway a great gust of liberation and silliness had swept us all, and we had laughed and shouted and sung songs out of our respective girlhoods all the way to the L.A. suburbs. I had not felt anything like it since college. Once or twice then my sorority sisters and I had driven in someone’s convertible over to the Gulf Coast for spring break, crowded and sunburned and giddy and drunk on wind and speed and possibility, singing endlessly, laughing, laughing. This trip felt like that. In the hurtling Mustang, my blowing hair stinging my face and desert grit peppering my bare arms, I was someone else entirely than the angry, worried woman who had driven this road not twenty-four hours before. I had no sense, for that space of time, that Glynn and Laura were daughter and sister to me. We were, for those few hours, all young and all free and all waiting to see who we would be when the car finally stopped. I don’t think I will ever forget that windborne flight through the California desert.

Back inside, Glynn and I prowled the small apartment while Laura closeted herself in the bathroom with Stuart’s cellular phone. She had turned back into Laura when we opened the door to the apartment, kicking off her shoes and padding restlessly about, humming, picking up bric-a-brac and putting them down, straightening pillows, riffling through the opened mail in a shallow copper bowl on the coffee table. Finally she said she needed to make a call or two and then we’d change clothes and go prowl around Sunset a little.

“I don’t have much to change into,” Glynn said hesitantly.

“I don’t have anything, to speak of,” I said. “Do you have to dress for Sunset Boulevard?”

“Not the way you mean,” Laura said, looking me over lazily. I was wearing the knit pantsuit I had worn yesterday, the one I usually travel in. “But not the way you are, either. Glynn’s fine in her jeans and tee, but you are definitely from Away. Waiters will snub you. Street people will howl with laughter. Let me see what Stuart’s got. He’s about your size now, with all the weight he’s lost. You can bet he’ll have the right stuff.”

“I can’t wear Stuart’s clothes, Laura,” I said. “That’s a terrible presumption. I’ll see if I can find something on Sunset, maybe. You can bear the shame of being seen with me that long.”

“Nonsense,” she said, and went into the bedroom and began pulling open drawers and tossing clothes onto the huge, canopied bed. It was ornate and theatrical, by far the most imposing piece in the apartment. Somehow it made me want to avert my eyes. I hoped Glynn and I would not have to sleep in it, but I saw no other bed.