Sex and Violence in Hollywood (3 page)

Gwen took the phone and said, “Hello?”

Adam poked at and cut his food, even though he was no longer eating it. His dad ate as if there were a chance the food might flee the plate. His knife and fork clacked and scraped, jaw worked hard beneath that mass of hair. Grizzly Adams eating something he had just killed and waved over the campfire a couple times.

After a long silence, Gwen whispered, “Oh, my God.”

Adam looked across the table at Gwen’s wide eyes and open mouth. Something was wrong.

“My daughter, what about my daughter?” she asked, loudly this time.

Michael put down his utensils and watched his wife, frowning.

“Oh, Jesus,” she said, her voice breaking as her head dropped forward and she covered her eyes with her hand.

“Hey, hey,” Michael said quietly as he got out of his chair and went to her side.

“Have you checked her grandmother’s?” she asked. After a moment, “No, his mother. She thinks that girl can do no wrong, and—” She stopped and listened for a few seconds. “Yes, that’s the address. If she’s run away, she might be there, or at least on her way.”

Adam exchanged a puzzled look with his dad.

“Oh, yes, she’s hitchhiked before,” Gwen said.

Mrs. Yu stood beside Gwen looking aloof, indifferent. Waiting for the phone so she could put it back where it belonged when Gwen was done.

“Yes, I wish you would,” Gwen said. “And please call the second you know anything. Will you, please?” She sat up straight in her chair, took a deep breath and let it ease out of her. “Thank you. Thank you very much.” She pulled the phone away from her ear, handed it back to Mrs. Yu, who immediately left the room.

“What the hell was that?” Michael asked.

Gwen wiped her eyes, although there appeared to be no tears in them. “Police in Miami. There’s been a fire. Larry’s house. It burned down. He was in it. He died.” She sighed and shook her head slowly. “Probably drunk. As usual.”

“What about your daughter?” Michael asked as he hunkered down beside her, put an arm around her shoulders.

“She’s run away again. They don’t know where she is.”

“At least she wasn’t in the house with her dad,” Adam said, uncertain and cautious.

“They’ll find her,” Gwen said hoarsely. “She’s at her grandmother’s, I’m sure. If she’d been home, she might have been able to save Larry. Wake him up, get him out of bed. He sleeps like a corpse when he’s been drinking. Which is probably most of the time now that he doesn’t have me around to bitch about it.”

“Hey, you’re not gonna start blaming yourself, honey,” Michael said firmly. “I’m not gonna let you do that.” He leaned forward and embraced her, kissed her cheek.

“No, no, no,” she said, pushing him away. “I’m not blaming myself. I’m just...angry. At him, at her. When they find her, she’ll have to come live with us, you know. Right away.” She turned slowly to Michael. “She’s not an easy girl to live with.”

He smiled. On him, it looked more like a sour expression. As if he had bitten into an extraordinarily unpleasant cheese. But Adam recognized it as a sincere smile, an oddity on his father’s face.

“Hey, that’s no problem,” Michael said enthusiastically, stroking Gwen’s hair. He jerked his head toward Adam and said, “Hell, you think it’s been a barrel of dancing girls raising this clown? He’s not perfect, either. He’s not even normal. I mean, Jesus, he writes poetry, for God’s sake.” He glanced at Adam. “For all I know, he’s a fag.”

A suppressed laugh snorted through Gwen’s nose, but she managed to make it sound like an emotional catch in her throat. Adam smirked.

“You wanna go upstairs?” Michael asked. He stood, took her elbow and gently tugged her to her feet. “C’mon, let’s go. You can take a couple of my pills. You’ll feel better.”

As he led her away from the table slowly, she glanced back over her shoulder at Adam and kissed the air silently, smiled.

“Oh!” Michael blurted. “You go upstairs, baby, I’m right behind you.” He returned to the table, looked down at Adam. “If you don’t have any plans, we’re taking Money Shot out for the Fourth. The whole week. You wanna bring a friend, fine. We’ll be leaving early on the Fourth, as usual.” He headed out of the dining room again. Over his shoulder, he said, “Try to bring a girl, okay? Carter doesn’t count. You ask me, I think it’s way past time you two got your own place together and started a family.”

When he was gone, Adam sat alone at the table. The smell of the food stirred his appetite again and he began to eat. Dinner was delicious, and the company had improved.

THREE

The next day
, Adam drove over to Carter’s house, only a few blocks away. He parked behind the house and walked in through the back door without knocking. He had known Carter since third grade, and often felt more comfortable in Carter’s house than in his own.

Adam walked through the large kitchen, said hello to Mrs. Sanchez, the maid, passed through the dining room—there were four cardboard boxes on the table—and nearly ran into Devin in the hallway.

“Oh, my God!” Devin said, leaning against the wall to take a deep breath. “You scared the shit out of me!”

“Sorry about that.”

“I’m just preoccupied.” Devin held a cardboard box in his arms. It looked heavy, although it wasn’t very big. He was a thin man who stood a few inches short of Adam’s six feet. On that hot summer day, he wore a light blue sundress of thin, cool cotton, no stockings, which was rare for Devin, and a pair of deck shoes with no socks. His glasses rested on his chest, suspended from his neck on a thin silver chain.

“What’re you doing?” Adam asked.

“Cleaning out the library. C’mon.” He jerked his head for Adam to follow him back into the dining room. Devin put the box on the table with all the others. Sweeping the back of his hand over his shiny forehead, he turned to Adam and smiled. “We keep buying new books, but we have no place to put them. So I’m getting rid of the ones we don’t need anymore.”

“I didn’t think Mr. Brandis ever got rid of books,” Adam said with a chuckle. “He’s got the biggest library I’ve ever seen.”

“He’s got more books than he’s got library. But I’ve been working on him. I finally got him to agree that there are at least a couple hundred we can lose. I’m taking advantage of his fit of reason before he changes his mind. I figure as long as I don’t touch his collection of first-edition signed Harold Robbins novels, I’m safe.”

“Is Carter around?” Adam said.

“I haven’t seen him. Either he’s gone, or he’s in his bedroom or studio.” He glanced at his watch and gasped, pressing his other hand to his chest. “Oh, God. Jeremy will be home for lunch in a few minutes.” He squeezed Adam’s shoulder affectionately. “You make yourself at home, sweetie. I’ve got to talk to Mrs. Sanchez.”

Adam went into the hall and headed for the stairs to look for Carter.

Devin had been Jeremy Brandis’s partner in life for over three years. Mr. Brandis’s relationship with Devin had been his longest to date, not counting Mrs. Brandis. He had spent years going through one boyfriend after another before meeting Devin, who insisted on a serious, long-term relationship or nothing at all. While not a cross-dresser himself, Mr. Brandis had no problem with it. “He doesn’t mind my dresses,” Devin had said once, “and I turn a blind nostril to his cigars.”

The summer before Adam and Carter entered the fifth grade, Mr. Brandis had announced to his family that he was gay. He regretted hurting them, but said he could no longer live a lie and needed to pursue his true nature.

This came as a big shock to Adam, who had always thought Mrs. Brandis was the homosexual. Greta Brandis was a stocky woman—not fat, but thick and solid—who never, ever wore dresses or skirts. Adam had never seen her in anything that could not be worn by a man without anyone knowing the difference. She kept her hair cut very short, and, depending on her mood, she sometimes had it buzzed. She was a photographer and her subjects ranged from celebrities to wild exotic animals in remote jungles. She had a loud, deep voice and a laugh that sounded like someone torturing a goat.

Mr. Brandis, on the other hand, was tall and slender, and while not overtly macho, there was definitely a manliness about him. He loved sports, did a lot of off-road driving and mountain climbing, and bore a strong resemblance to a somewhat younger Burt Reynolds, but with real hair. He was a very popular production designer who had worked on some of the biggest movies of the last two decades, and had been nominated for two Academy Awards, neither of which he had won.

Ms. Kindler-Brandis—the name sounded to Adam like a pricey daycare center—had accepted her husband’s announcement with surprising grace. They divorced, but remained close friends and occasional roommates. Ms. Kindler-Brandis maintained their Beverly Hills home as her “base camp,” as she called it, and showed up for a couple weeks two or three times a year. The arrangement suited Devin, who was a fan of Greta’s work. He once had told Adam he thought she was “a divine adventurer, like Indiana Jones with a uterus.”

Carter was not in his bedroom, so Adam went up to the attic, which everyone in the Brandis household referred to as Carter’s “studio.” Adam could hear Marilyn Manson playing loudly overhead.

The attic had served as a darkroom for Carter’s mother. Since the divorce, she had used it less and less, until she finally rented a studio in Westwood. The attic had been empty ever since, until two summers ago.

Since Adam had entered high school, his father had been trying to interest him in one aspect or another of the movie business as a profession. The one constant was screenwriting, which he had pushed relentlessly since Adam was old enough to understand what he was saying. But every few months, he would come up with something else. One evening, he had a nervous, fidgety cinematographer over for dinner in an unveiled attempt to get Adam excited about cinematography. He had taken Adam to a foley session to watch as sound effects were added to his latest movie. To Pixar, where he was led through all the steps of making a movie with computers instead of cameras.

Adam had explained to his father that no matter what kind of work he did later in life, it would have absolutely nothing to do with show business in general and the movie business in particular. It held no appeal for him.

His father had sniffed dismissively and said, “Don’t be ridiculous. Everybody wants to work in the movies. Most people would kill for the opportunities I’m giving you.”

I’d kill for you to stop, Adam had thought.

A couple years ago, he had arranged for Adam to tour a “creature factory.” Annoyed, Adam had asked Carter to come along so he would not have to endure it alone. Carter was far more excited about the tour than Adam could feign. For Adam, it had been a marginally amusing diversion. For Carter, it had been a revelation. Carter had been awed by the masks, makeup, shockingly realistic wounds and severed limbs. Had become as excited as a child and asked endless questions, wanting to know exactly how everything worked, how it had been made, how it was operated. Adam had been a little embarrassed by his friend’s behavior, and after a while, even the two long-haired guys taking them through the shop seemed to tire of the rapid-fire questions.

After they left, Carter had talked about nothing else, and went back a few times, without Adam, to ask more questions. Within the month, he had taken over his mother’s old darkroom, filled it with everything he needed, all purchased on his dad’s credit card, and made his first mask. A reptilian face with a curved, sharp beak and bulging yellow eyes. Masks and body parts soon filled the shelves, and he was always trying to make Adam up as a zombie or burn victim.

While Adam was impressed with Carter’s abilities—he had started out pretty good and improved rapidly—he simply could not get excited about the field. About six months after starting. Carter had asked him about his lack of enthusiasm.

“You just don’t like movies, admit it,” Carter had said.

“I love movies. Carter. I just don’t like the business of making them or the people in it. Well...your dad’s a nice guy, but he’s an exception. My dad’s a prick. If I got into the movie business, any part of it, I’m afraid it wouldn’t be long before I couldn’t enjoy movies anymore. Before I...became like my dad. I’d rather die than be like him. You know that.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“But you’re so good at this, Carter! Just because I’m not interested doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go into it. You’d probably end up being one of the best in the business.”

“Oh, no, I don’t wanna do this for a living,” Carter had said.

“You don’t?”

“And work with pricks like your dad? Are you on crack? It’s just something I like to do.”

“Well, you’re going to have to do something, eventually. We both will.”

Carter shook his head. “It’s just a hobby.”

“It’s sure an expensive hobby.”

Carter had grinned. “That’s the one good thing about the movie business. It pays my dad enough to afford all this shit.”

The attic stairs were at the end of the second floor hall and were narrower and steeper than the others in the house. The door at the top bore two vintage ‘70s movie posters: The Incredible Melting Man and The Devil’s Rain. Oddly enough, Carter had purchased all of his horror movie posters prior to his interest in the mechanics of horror movies. He had started a movie poster collection when he was a little kid, about the same time Adam had started his.