Anne Siddons - Fault Lines

“Anything on Sunset will cost you an arm and a leg,” Laura went on. “I wear his clothes all the time. He probably wears mine, too, when he’s at my place. He’ll be flattered.”

She brought me out a couple of pairs of blue jeans, faded almost to white and beautifully pressed, and an armful of T-shirts, and went to make her phone calls. Glynn and I explored, the clothes slung over my arm. The apartment was small and low-ceilinged, and almost bare of furniture. Indentations on the thick, gray carpet spoke of furniture recently removed, and lighter places on the walls of vanished paintings, as they had in Laura’s place. This place was much less opulent, much more utilitarian, than her condo, but it had the same air of transience, of waiting. The air was stale and close, and the few pieces of furniture left were lightly skinned with dust. Plants and a large ficus in a corner drooped, and in the tiny kitchen dishes sat in a rubber drainer on the counter, washed but not put away. They were yellow melamine, patterned with ivy. I could not imagine a Hollywood agent eating off them. I could not imagine a Hollywood agent living so meanly as this, especially in an aerie above Xanadu. Automatically I picked up the dishes and put them away in the cupboard over the sink, and filled a plastic pitcher with water for the plants.

“You’re at it again,” Glynn said, grinning at me from the doorway.

“At what?”

“Taking care of people. Of things.”

“Well, the plants are in dire straits, and Stuart was dear to let us stay here. I thought I might as well—”

“It’s a nice thing to do. You’re a nice lady. I wasn’t criticizing you.”

Laura came into the kitchen, a tiny white frown furrowing her forehead.

“Nobody in this asshole place answers their phone anymore,” she said. “Billy Poythress’s oh-so- excruciatingly British secretary said he was tied up with the East Coast but would see me this afternoon at two at the Sunset Marquis for lunch as planned, unless, of course, his plans changed, and then she’d let me know. That is, if I could be reached at this numbah . I said I would be out all morning and would just have to take a chance. She said she quite understood. Bitch. I’d say he was screwing her, but I don’t think he does women. Maybe she gives good—”

“ Laura .”

“Sorry. Go on and get dressed. I could use a cup of coffee and all Stu has got is instant.”

“Did you get the production office?” Glynn said as I went into the bedroom. Something in her voice told me she enjoyed saying the words.

“Nobody’s answering there, either,” Laura said. “Which doesn’t surprise me. If the receptionist isn’t around, and she almost never is, nobody else will answer. Too demeaning for filmmakers.”

In Stuart Feinstein’s bedroom, cell-like except for the towering Egyptian barge of a bed, I took off my pantsuit and panty hose and pulled on a pair of the blue jeans. They were so tight that I could scarcely zip them, but the other pair was tighter still, so I put them back on and riffled through the T-shirts. They, too, fit so snugly that I could see every rib on my torso. I chose the largest, a white one that had faded Day-Glo fried eggs and bacon strips on it and said “Eat your breakfast.” I looked at myself in the large mirror on the bathroom door and laughed. I looked like a punk adolescent boy in the alien clothes, angular and slouching and high-rumped. It was not, somehow, a bad look. I would never have worn the clothes in Atlanta, but seeing that I had no other choice, I was not going to worry about it here. Nobody knew me. Impulsively I took off the barrette that held my hair back and shook it out, bending at the waist. When I straightened up it flew about my head in a mass of tangles and ringlets and snarls that looked, in this place, not so wrong either. I went out and stood still for inspection by Laura and Glynn.

“Jesus, that’s perfect, except for the shoes,” Laura said, and Glynn said in surprise, “You don’t look in the least like you. Not in the least. It’s terrific. I think . You sure don’t look like anybody’s mom. Dad would die.”

Then she dropped her eyes. I knew how she felt. I had forgotten Pom for the moment, too. I felt the familiar flush of guilt start, and pushed it back. I would call home that evening, I thought. No matter how angry I was at him, he could not be having an easy time.

Laura went back into the bedroom and returned with a pair of beautiful boots, pointed of toe and with a slight, undercut heel. They were worn but carefully tended, and looked expensive.

“Put them on,” she said. “They may be a little big but you can stuff the toes. You can’t go out in those Hush Puppies.”

“They’re not Hush Puppies, they’re Ferragamos,” I said indignantly, but I took them off and put on the boots. They were only a little loose. I went to the mirror and looked. Laura was right. The boots were perfect. I could not help swaggering just a little when we left the apartment. It was a feeling that seemed to start in my hip joints.

“These boots were made for walkin’,” Glynn sang, and I hugged her and we all laughed and went down into the fever dream that is Sunset Boulevard.

An hour later we were sitting at an outdoor cafe, drinking iced lattes against the sultry heat and watching the passing parade. Sunset Boulevard never fails you. Anywhere else it might seem freakish, almost grotesque, a Fellini street, but here the streams of strolling denizens looked charming, stylish, festive, funny, each in his own costume like people in a Mardi Gras parade. Everyone seemed either very old or young; I saw no one who appeared to be my age, and certainly no one who appeared to be my age as I was at home in Atlanta. Women were thin and striking and either wore chic black or chic jeans or so little of anything that they should have been on beaches. Men wore virtually the same thing, except the ones in outright costumes. There was enough spiky hair and pierced body parts and leather to break the monotony, and a careful scattering of Gap Prep, as Laura called it, but these last were, she said, almost surely visitors from the Valley. The rest belonged. We sat with our jeaned legs stretched out, sipping the lattes and watching, eyes shielded by sunglasses. I stared through mine at my daughter and watched heads turn as people passed her. She eclipsed all the passing young women, with a beauty built of chiseled bones and taut, polished bare skin and the wheat sheaf of hair. Why did she look so different than she did at home? I wondered. She wore almost exactly what she would wear there on any given day. But a flame, a new kind of blood, seemed to shimmer under her skin. Here, in this thick, metallic sunlight, Glynn shone like a tall candle.

A skeletal man on Rollerblades wearing a house dress and ankle socks and carrying a Vuitton tote whirred by and gave us a smile and a nod.

“Pretty ladies,” he singsonged.

“Thanks,” we all yelled after him, and laughed again.

“Don’t mention it,” floated back on the little hot wind he left in his wake. In a moment he was lost in the slowly roiling crowd.

“I love this place,” Glynn said dreamily. “Everybody is so happy.”

“Everybody is stoned on something,” Laura said, smiling at her, “but I know what you mean. Sunset always makes me feel like something funny and fine is about to happen.”

For no reason at all I thought of Stuart Feinstein, back in Palm Springs, huddled like an old, ossified baby in his nest of dark mink. Some of the silly shine went off the morning. I doubted whether, despite his proximity to Sunset Boulevard, anything funny and fine was left for him.

“I wish we could do something especially nice for Stuart,” I said. “I can’t get him out of my mind. He seems so vulnerable. Is there anything that you know of that he needs, Laura?”