"This is a crime against God," he said when he could finally speak.
His extreme reaction surprised me. "Against God, Harry?"
"Why? Tell me how your kind of talent quits, throws itself into the toilet and flushes. How?"
"It's not as if I was single- handedly making you rich," I said, trying for levity. I think I thought he'd get mad, yell, insult me, anything but that pained expression as he slowly shook his oversized head. He spent the next hour telling me what was wrong with my decision. He barked at his secretary to hold everything: "Everything, even if it's the president of the United States on the line!" I just remember being thirsty as he carried on. The longer he went on, the thirstier I got. This is where the Battle of The Ardennes comes in: I can hold out against just about anybody's verbal barrage to get me to change my mind. The more they try, the more I dig in. The truth is, I can black out the whole world, blacker than the blackest cave two miles into the bowels of the earth. I can go to a place so dark it's as if the world was never created. So Harry couldn't squeeze out of me why I quit, try as he did. He couldn't blame Joe either; it was too late for that. And by the way, Harry had nothing to do with Joe and me busting up. He did practically dance a jig on his desktop when he found out, but that was before I called it quits.
It took me a long time to shake Joe, considering the rough ride we'd had almost from day one. I'm not sure I ever did shake him. I've always been attracted to writers and this one was no slouch, though he could barely earn a dime on his work the whole while we were together. He had socialist ideas too, so that if I did bring in a nice check from time to time, a part in a pet- food commercial, say, that went national— with hefty residuals— it was right away suspect, like Chairman Mao or Lenin would get wind of Joe having had dealings with the capitalist devil.
Joe had a lot of anger. Not because the world had been unjust to him but because it's an unjust place. For me, the world's too big to be angry at all in a gulp. Joe scolded old friends too, if they betrayed the code. He would go on for days about the crime of getting a book published for a sum that had to be corrupt. What kind of whore game did he play to get that advance? Christ! But the lapsed friend was only a pawn of the society that had wrought him, a culture of which Joe disapproved and felt punished living in. Joe's basic premise was if people at the top would only wise up and take less, things could even out.
Happily, not even Joe could contemplate the distribution of wealth every day, and if he didn't bother too much about saving the world, he was just the guy I wanted. Basically, he lived simply, wanting most of all to read and write and think. The two of us, side by side reading in bed, Joe charming me with a passage of Yeats or Wordsworth pulled out of the air. Knowing when I was lost in my lines rehearsing for an off- off- Broadway play, a cold- water, firetrap stage. Showing up at late- night rehearsals, walking me home after midnight, streets solitary and slick, maybe one of those cat- sized rats running out from behind a trash can, Joe saying there were worse rats than them living in penthouse apartments. Giving me notes, really, really wanting me to soar; that was where I wanted my world to be.
He kept me guessing too, not a dull bone to him; there was always a new corner to turn with Joe. I never got all the way inside. Then again, Joe didn't think it was possible for an actor to get truly close. Or did he mean that about me only? All those emotions, he'd say, faking it with a part, how would anyone know if the tears at home weren't just more of the same?
Finally exasperated, I said, " Maybe they aren't ever an act."
"That only proves it, even you don't know," he shot back.
Worse than that was the time he said I was empty when no one was looking. It was only years later that the rejoinder came to me: How would you know? How could you possibly know, Joe? Was he knowing or only passing judgment? He'd get me all confused. Partly because I needed him to be right and partly because I needed him so much that I'd get muddled and couldn't think what to say, maybe couldn't think at all.
It was moving to L.A. that finally did the marriage in. Harry was after me to settle out west from the first big job he landed me: four scenes in a star- cast movie, thirty lines. My character— Laurel, early twenties— was not a hooker but available to wealthy men with fetishes like foot sucking or egg rolling. My first scene had me in a slinky summer dress: I walk into a darkened hotel room, balcony shutters closed to the tropical sea beyond, strips of sunlight piercing through the slats. A thug slips out of the shadows.
Thug: "What are you doing here?"
Laurel, frightened but keeping her cool: "I left my hat."
Thug: "Who let you in?"
Laurel: "I'm a friend of Abe's."
Thug, looking Laurel over like she's quick lunch: "Nobody's a friend of Abe's. Whaddaya, servicing his spanking needs?"
CUT!
It would be my one and only megamovie role. After that the studios made some overtures, smelled young blood in the water, but I wasn't interested. It wasn't as if Paramount was breaking down the door, but if Harry had his way I'd have cultivated myself, played along. Harry's line was that you have to wade through a little garbage to get to the high road you're meant to be on; that nothing good comes pure. Joe helped me steer clear of what he saw as Harry's hype. Some said Joe's steering might have ruined me. Anyhow, I got noticed in the medium- budget and indie- film worlds. Joe was okay with that. He'd ranted when I took the mega job, paragraphs' worth, and promised not to touch one penny of the filthy lucre I was paid, going so far as to set up a separate account for himself. He did live by his word.
I began flying back and forth between New York and Los Angeles. With the bigger parts I had to stay out for longer spells, and the parts were getting bigger. I made a few friends and stopped making so much fun of the too- friendly Angelinos. There's too much space is the problem, that's why they're so eager to connect. I once had a woman start a chat from underneath the next toilet stall. That was technically not in L.A. but at a stop for date shakes at Hadley's on the 10 Freeway, the San Bernardino route to Palm Springs, out past the wind farm that took my breath away every time I saw those thousand arms circling crazily over the arid earth. But people talk to strangers in elevators, other customers in a store, standing at a stop light, all friendly and open. I never got used to it.
I did get Los Angeles itself, a tactile place with big light and lots of texture where nature hasn't been conquered. Earthquakes lie in wait, full- blown desert only a hard drought away. Rub the surface of anyone who's been there long enough and you'll find a seeker. It doesn't much matter after what— L.A. is cult nirvana— some sort of god quest over the rainbow, born of that light and an underlying sense that all this gorgeousness can't last. The only thing people in New York City seek, my singer friend Dottie once let me know, is a way out. Dottie did her time in the Big Apple, but she was from Kansas and wide- open space was home to her and that translated into Los Angeles. In her case, her cabaret career faltered. We sort of reversed each other: I was always glad to get back to New York and Joe. I was never going to put down roots in that shallow western soil.
My time in Hollywood— especially my first serious movie— was more like a prolonged in- passing friendship. Mostly I was holding my emotional breath. Joe and me having phone sex, trying hard to keep it real over long distance. Harry giving me no peace, making threats, saying I was hurting my career by not making myself available to the machinery, that I wasn't hungry enough and was being passed over. He said if I wanted things to happen I had to get out there and get dirty.
"You're a Hollywood dame," he harangued. "Look at you, you blossom in the sunlight."
I'll never forget that conversation. It was winter, it was cold and wet. I was wrapping up a part, my ticket home already purchased. "It's been raining in L.A. for three days, Harry."
"Ardennes,