A disturbed young woman, unable to defend herself against her fate.
“Gail is an unstable woman, Ann. She might have decided, just like that, to.…” To what? I thought. “I can’t understand why she’s asking for me. Not after all these years.”
“She’s going to die, Romain! You talk about her like she was a stranger. You loved her, didn’t you?”
I didn’t answer, I didn’t know what to think. Ann continued, “My God, if ever life drives us apart for one reason or another, the idea that you have so little consideration for me would be hard to bear.”
The Beatles were playing on the radio, a ballad that sounded ridiculous given the circumstances. “What happened to her, cancer?”
“Leukemia.”
“Didn’t you tell me she was so careful with everything she ate? Like a sort of religion, I mean? If a woman like her dies of cancer so young, what chance do the rest of us have?”
We were finally out of Laurel Canyon, and inching east on Sunset Boulevard. I couldn’t help but think of those cards Gail had continued sending me, best wishes, animal images, drawn and watercoloured by hand. Sometimes she would slip in pamphlets for animal protection groups or pictures of herself, more embarrassing than anything else, like the one showing her tied with old grey-haired hippies to some dam somewhere in Quebec, for some endangered fish.
A flash of guilt. That evening, with Dick and the others — Josh, Matt, and Michael Hausman, the ad director at It’s All Comedy!, and their wives. We were having supper and drinks at my place, and we discussed a few problems with In Gad and talked once again about the theme of abortion, certainly the most controversial element of the series. Chastity had had two abortions in the first season. Dick and Josh voiced their misgivings. It was an explosive subject, they said; people were killed in this country to prevent women from getting them. “So we censor ourselves?” I answered, annoyed. “Madmen kill doctors, so we’ll avoid offending their insane beliefs?” Josh had answered, “No, Roman, that’s not what we’re saying. But two abortions in thirteen episodes; it seems a bit unlikely, no, a little forced.…”
“Forced?” I laughed. “You really want to know? For me, each of Chastity’s abortions reaffirms the right of women to do what they please with their bodies.” And the women began applauding, their martini glasses still in their hands.
“And men don’t have anything to say about it?” This was Dick, already drunk, you could see it in his eyes. The discussion had become more heated, glasses being drunk faster and faster, and we eventually moved to the table, Dick walking towards it unsteadily but single-mindedly. And for whatever reason — I can’t remember now — Dick demanded that I share with the assembled guests some of the cards Gail sent me. “You got nice little bunny rabbits this year? Or mean little mice?” Before I could answer, Dick, both his elbows on the table, explained with perverse pleasure that “my first flirt” sent me sweet little cards with Winnie the Pooh on them every year.
“No, you imbecile,” I corrected, half-amused, half-annoyed. “They’re watercolours, like Beatrix Potter.”
“Oh, well, excuse me, good sir!” he laughed, acting offended.
Josh’s wife, a tall blonde with silicone breasts, asked, “You’ve got to be kidding. How old is she?”
“Your age!” Dick shouted.
The entire assembly laughed. Dick turned towards me, his face red. “Come now, Roman! We want to know! Rabbits? Mice?”
Around the table, the guests were becoming impatient. And, like a coward, I’d gotten up and grabbed a card out of my office. I knew for certain that Ann had put herself in Gail’s shoes, projecting herself as the potential future ex-wife everyone would one day make fun of. I sought out her eyes to try to reassure her, but she’d turned away from me. All these important people at my place, having a nice evening. At Gail’s expense.
Why cards? Why did Gail feel the need to keep a link with me, one I no longer wanted? Was there something I was missing? Or was it a way to force me not to forget?
“You have to go, Romain. You have to go to Montreal. You’ll regret it if you don’t.” In the Pathfinder, Ann had spoken with authority.
“Regret what? I can’t save her, she’s damned.”
“It’s not a tantrum. That seems clear.”
“The shoot.”
“Dick will understand, you’ll see.”
5
Two hours late, I dropped Ann at the studio in La Brea, an anonymous white stucco building between a Taco Bell and a small shopping centre. Before the demonstrators began marching in front of it — there were only five that morning — no one knew that inside a TV show was being filmed. There were no signs with the It’s All Comedy! logo, only doors and mirrored windows to discourage curious passersby. The Bunker would have been inviolable if only the idiots hadn’t set their minds to bothering us.
As expected, Dick was raging when we arrived. On the set, a few of the actors — Avril Page, Bill Doran, Kathleen Hart, and Trevor Wheeler — stood at the end of the set, in silence, coffees in hand, while cameramen and technicians busied themselves, pulling cables, adjusting the lighting for the umpteenth time. With an expansive, angry gesture, Dick encompassed them all. “You know how much these delays cost me? I’m not a fucking bank!”
Ann walked towards Dick, trying to calm him. Dick was short, brown, and as impulsive as a southern Italian; he was also practically bald, and his fingers were like sausages. Ann told him about Gail, and he grumbled a few ill-intentioned apologies (for Dick, it was always business first, before family drama and death) and told me, without looking at me, “The scene, you haven’t forgotten about it, right? We’re going to do as we said we would. Whether you’re there or not.” And Matt appeared, a New York Knicks cap on his head, a New Yorker with whom I shared a number of affinities. He was six feet at least, no more than an inch taller than me, with brown hair and a quick wit. From time to time we would be mistaken for brothers, though he was younger than me, and larger. The Knicks cap on his head wasn’t just for show; he wasn’t like those fat sedentary guys who spend their time drinking beer, never far from the ball cap of their favourite team. Matt had actually played basketball, and at a pretty decent level, with the Red Storm of St. John’s University, Queens. Each season he’d played with the team, they’d won four times as many games as they’d lost. He had Irish roots and the same Catholic education I did. And with this education came our shared aversion for what the church had tried to stuff down our throats — hell and all the nonsense on masturbation, the usual bullshit. So we felt the same pleasure in making In Gad, as if we were taking revenge on the era we were born in, thinking of the shy, inhibited boys we’d been, thankful at having lived through it without too much lasting damage. After all, many of our generation had never had an opportunity to break the shackles of their atavism, the chance to free themselves and laugh about the whole thing — laugh about the whole thing on TV.
Matt would take care of Trevor. I regretted not being able to settle the problem myself, even if I had total confidence in Matt. He had tact, he was a team player, like in his days with the Red Storm, and Ann would reinforce the message, “A small modification. No, not censorship, why would you even think that?” And Matt might toss out one of his theories about film direction, one that fitted with his former basketball career — intensity, look, and physical presence often more important than the text itself.
After all, I’d be gone for only a day or so.
I was about to kiss Ann and head for the exit when Dick caught me by the sleeve and said, as if uttering a threat, though his eyes were filled with compassion, “Don’t come back depressed, okay?”
Los Angeles International Airport. On a Monday morning. Filled with businessmen and tourists. A group of young nuns caught my eye, Latinas mostly, and I asked myself whether, in their congregation,