Dreams Are Not Enough (12 page)

“Dreams are not enough,” Hap said, refusing to be diverted.

“If Barry took you there every night, Uncle Tim and the others would accept it.

You’d become part of the family. “

“Mexican maid mingles with Hollywood high society?”

Hap’s jawbones showed again.

“Uncle Tim’s a grip.”

“And what about Mr. Zaffarano? And you know who your father is.”

“Uncle Frank freely admits to arriving in California with less than five dollars. And I explained about Dad.”

“Hap,” she said, “let it go.”

“Don’t you see? Barry’s always had a massive inferiority complex.

Because he’s insecure, he’s making it impossible for you to ever fit in with the family. “

Although she had known since the post-elopement scene at Barry’s parents’ house that she never would be accepted by the Cordiners, hearing Hap say it demolished her. She bent over her Coke.

After a moment or two he said gently, “I’m sorry, Alicia. I didn’t mean to make you feel worse. But by now you must have figured that what hurts you hurts me too.”

She looked up. The flame of the hurricane lamp flickered in his gray eyes. He was gazing at her with such transparent supplication that words were unnecessary. He reached out to cover her wrist. Once again his touch made her tremble. He didn’t move his hand and as they stared at one another inexplicable tears formed in her eyes.

“There’s motels on Cahuenga.” His voice was stretched out of shape.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Yes….”

On Thursday, March 16, the same day that Alicia picked up her VW from the dealer, a Schaefer ambulance took Clara Cordiner home. On the small crabgrass front lawn Tim and the twins were waiting to greet her.

Clara smiled weakly up from the gantry.

“This is what makes it all worthwhile,” she murmured.

“Having my family around me.”

Five nights a week Barry drove the traffic-clogged miles to the Westchester tract house. He, Tim and Beth—when she was not on a date or at an AEPhi chapter meeting—shared the salt-free, fat-free, taste-free dinners prepared by the elderly, officious practical nurse, eating at awkward metal TV tables in the sickroom. He seldom returned to the apartment before eleven. Routinely he found the lights on, the Late Show movie rattling away, and Alicia asleep tightly curled into a fetal position. He had no reason, therefore, to speculate on how she passed the numerous evenings that he was absent.

“Hap….”

“What?”

“Hap … that’s not your real name.”

“Harvard,” he supplied.

“Harvard? Like the college?”

“It’s mother’s maiden name. When I was a baby they nicknamed me Hap and it stuck.”

“A good thing. You’re not a Harvard, it’s way too pompous.” She kissed the fair, crisp hairs of his chest.

They had already made love once, and a provocative, musky odor surrounded the thrown-back sheets. He had been caressing her slippery epithelial flesh, she had been running her fingers on his hard, deliciously silken penis. The Cahuenga Inn, their regular meeting place since their precipitous departure from Don the Beachcomber’s a little over six weeks earlier, did a brisk hourly business. They would arrive discreetly in their own cars, Alicia waiting a full two minutes to follow Hap to whichever door she had seen him unlock.

She had stored up nuggets of information about him. Some were intimidating: his mother came from a wealthy and philanthropic ally inclined old family, he knew celebrities by their first names—he called Lauren Bacall Betty and Rain Fairburn Marylin, Henry Fonda Hank and Edward G. Robinson Uncle Eddie. On the other hand, it delighted her to discover that, unlike his brother Maxim who bed-hopped in the best Hollywood tradition, Hap had slept with only three other women.

(His reticence was partially due to a nice, sensitive shyness and partially because he felt that entering a sexual entanglement meant you were serious.

“You’re a man of mystery,” she said.

“All I know about you is that you’re upright” — “Very,” he chuckled, clasping her hand tighter around his penis.

“—and strong and good.”

“The exact opposite of the correct adjectives to describe a guy in bed with his cousin’s wife.” The amusement was gone.

“Don’t let it bug you so much, Hap.”

“How not?”

“I’m his wife, I’m the one who’s cheating.”

“And what about me? Not only his cousin but his socalled friend.”

“It’s different for the woman.”

“That’s the double standard, love, and I don’t believe in it.”

“The rest of the world does.”

“You can’t argue me out of feeling like a shit.” He drew a sigh whose depth she felt and heard beneath her ear.

She raised her head, peering at him.

“Sorry we started?”

“Jesus, no. How can you even think that’s what I meant? I was trying to explain having a go at other people’s wives isn’t my usual style.”

“That’s not how it sounded.” Because of her sudden fear that he might want to break off, she spoke too forcefully. “/ won’t be the one to end it.”

Her pupils were enormous as she said, “You’re free.” His arms tightened around her.

“No, love, I’m not free.” He strained her body closer. Caressing the curve of her back and buttocks, he kissed her eyes, then her mouth. She returned his kisses with equal fervor, stroking the muscles of his arms, his shoulders. Away from Hap, the memory of his tactile qualities—the strong body hairs, the large bones, the musculature that was well developed without being grotesquely delineated—could make her grow wet and ready. And when she was with Barry, though she despised herself for it, she couldn’t help making comparisons—her husband was smaller and narrower everywhere.

She and Hap were both shaking violently as he entered her, and her gasp filled his open mouth. Their caresses grew more languorous and then ceased entirely as he moved within her or she undulated around him. She thought only of the exquisite sensations of the moment. All at once she gave an involuntary, wavery cry. Every cell in her body was suspended, absolutely still, poised waiting. She was no longer conscious of the room, nor of Hap, nor her own body, just of the anticipatory stillness. Then the frenzied spasms began, and she thrashed without control, clinging to Hap’s waist as she gasped out, “Darling, ahh … ahhh … ahhhhhh Hap … darling….”

It hadn’t happened the first time. Hap had been too quick, she too nervous; but since then she always reached climax—climaxes. The first took a long time: after the initial powerfully relentless waves of pleasure that turned her body inside out, every part of her skin wet, tingling, alive, she would drift, then feel herself rising higher and higher, hovering until she fell in gentler yet equally blissful release, drifting again and again in that orgasmic sea. She considered her perennially fresh joys a physical manifestation of the tender yet violent emotions that bound her to Hap.

As she dressed, she thought. The worst thing we do to Barry is my going back to him afterward.

“Barry,” she said, pausing.

“Have you ever thought about, uhh, moving in with your folks?”

Slumped over his typewriter, he heard her voice but the question didn’t register. Looking up, he grunted, “Huhh?”

“Wouldn’t it be easier if you slept at your parents’?”

“That’s a wondrous strange question. This is where I live, remember?”

“You’re not here all that much and” — “Are you giving me an ultimatum?” he interrupted, his freckles showing darkly.

“It makes more sense, that’s all.”

“Am I receiving an ultimatum?” Barry raised his voice because she’d gone into the bathroom to undress. How long, he asked himself, had she been changing in there? It went back to when she’d bought two sets of baby-doll pajamas—before that she’d slept in the raw. A couple of months ago, give or take a week, he decided.

She returned, the short froth of white nylon ruffles not quite hiding the curves of her body.

“Barry, look, this is the first night you’ve been home all week.”

As Alicia bent to open up the bed she reminded Barry of a Degas bronze ballerina at the County Museum, pliant and feminine yet also magnificently, casually strong. Then the light bulb flickered and she seemed to dwindle and fade, moving farther from him. In this instant he recognized the full extent of his dependence on her earthy strength, her ability to cope, and yes, even her inferiority.

“You can’t hold Mom’s illness against me,” he said hoarsely.

“I’m not accusing you, Barry.” She tucked in the corners of the sheet.

“I’m just saying we already both go our separate ways.”

“Have you been seeing somebody at the studio?”

“This is about us—you and me,” she said.

“Yes, absolutely!”

Concentrating on the other corner of the sheet, she said, “Can’t we talk sensibly?”

“Why don’t you talk sensibly with him?”

If Barry had not been so distracted by his fear and jealousy, he would have noted her increased pallor.

“Talk about what to who?” she parried.

“The guy you’re going your separate way with!” Grabbing up his old windbreaker—he’d never worn that loud checked sport jacket that she’d given him at Christmas—he rushed out.

He drove to the nearest bar, a dim, narrow place with an outsize television screen tuned to a pro basketball game. At every Laker basket, the clientele roared approval and thumped on the counter.

Barry, uninterested in sports, hunched in a booth, ordering Schlitz after Schlitz, attempting to drown the memory of Alicia’s huge, concerned blue eyes as she suggested that he move out.

Two hours later, reeking of beer, he managed to steer the De Soto home. In the darkness he stumbled, sprawling on the rug. The light went on and Alicia bent over him. He pressed his cheek against her bare foot, beginning to sob.

“Hon, don’t leave me.”

She stroked his heaving shoulders.

“Barry, get up.”

“Sorry I’ve been spending so much time with Mom.”

“Here, let me help you.”

He did not take her hands. Instead he pressed his lips to her polished, lotion-scented toes. Even drunk, he understood the ridiculousness of his abject pose, but he could not prevent himself from begging.

“Promise you won’t go?”

“Come to bed, Barry.”

“We’re married … on an eternal basis….” His sobs were loud, hoarse, agonized.

Finally she sighed, “It’s was just an idea, Barry, that’s all.”

In bed, he kissed her breasts, sucking noisily on her nipples, an overgrown, bristle-faced baby nursing as his limp penis pressed against her thigh.

The incident saddened her and reminded her of her vows, which she had certainly never taken lightly. Yet each time she entered a room at the Cahuenga Inn the idea of divorce filled her mind.

On a damp, smoggy afternoon in early May, groups of costumed extras waited on the folding chairs strewn at the south end of Magnum’s Western street. Alicia, swathed from neck to ankles in calico, sat a bit apart, engrossed in The Idiot. A passionate reader, ignorant of which author was designated as a genius, she approached every novel on Barry’s eclectic shelf—Melville, Agatha Christie, Thomas Wolfe, Balzac, Flaubert, O’Hara, Hersey, the Russians—with a near carnal abandon: teach me, compel me, carry me away. She was oblivious to the extras as well as the crew.

“Alicia Lopez?”

Blinking and startled, Alicia left nineteenth century, mystical Russia to look up at a young messenger who was extending an unstamped envelope. Inside she found a small memo sheet: Report to Mr. Cordiner’s office at six thirty.

Shivering, she stared at the note until the assistant director bawled through his megaphone, “Extras! We’re ready for you!”

At the end of shooting, she returned her costume, which would be cleaned for the following day, hastily creamed off her makeup, then jogged the quarter mile to Magnum’s red brick and stucco Executive Building, an exalted place where she had never set foot. In the decades before television had put the stamp of decline on the industry, the Executive Building had been overcrowded. Now, the curving staircase to the unoccupied second and third floor was blocked by a long table.

Desmond Cordiner’s outer office, however, retained its aura of prosperity. Behind the curves of two elegant old mahogany hunt tables sat a pair of equally decorative secretaries, neither of whom appeared cognizant that the workday had ended. The young, voluptuous blonde continued her rapid typing while the trim, fortyish brunette looked up, questioning Alicia with a demi-smile.

“Mr. Cordiner sent for me. I’m Alicia Lopez.”

“Oh, yes,” said the brunette, her smile fading.

“Will you take a seat.”

There was no clock in the office, Alicia didn’t own a watch, so there was no way to properly gauge the passage of time. The blonde typed, the brunette put through a minimum of five calls to her boss, while beyond the un drawn maroon plush draperies the dark blue dusk turned black.

A peculiar thought occurred to Alicia: 7 won’t be kept waiting when I’m a somebody.

Not if, but when.

Although she thought of herself as being a mere worm amid the lordly Cordiners, undeniably her association with them had elevated her ambition level. As a child she had fantasized about being any one of the beautifully dressed girls on the screen, but now she understood that the clothes of extras and bit players belonged to the costume department, while their stately homes were shells. What she yearned after was respect. If she were a star and respected, she would not be waiting in this outer office, perspiring lightly, a sharp knot of anxiety in her empty stomach.

Finally a buzzer sounded on the desk.

“You can go in now,” said the brunette secretary.

When Desmond Cordiner had taken over as head of Magnum, he had not altered Art Garrison’s office. Garrison, a near dwarf, had placed his desk up four steps, forcing all visitors to walk the near fifty feet like supplicants to his altar. Here, Desmond Cordiner hunched over papers without acknowledging her entry. Alicia, gazing up at her husband’s uncle—her employer—was struck by awe and fear. Throwing her head back, she traversed the distance in her Movie Person strut, worrying her quivery legs might give out.