the film is Andre's mistress then. But he's a director; actresses fling themselves in his path. Casual cupcakes of an afternoon, dalliances, the poor starlets: paper peeled off, icing licked, maybe a walk- on part.
As I lay pretending to be asleep, I thought maybe my dad had named me wrong. I should have been called Retreat. Or did I desert— as in abandoned my post? A retreater finds safety to gear up and return to battle. Deserters are shot. How did my dad get out of the Ardennes alive? He was awarded the Silver Star, which is given for gallantry in battle. Gallantry? I don't even know what that word means. They didn't call it gallantry in 1945. It was simply heroism. Why the change? He was twenty and promoted to captain because they were running out of captains by the hour. He told the few men left under his young command that no one had ordered them to die in the frigid winter woods, so they aimed at anything in gray and scrammed out of there. It was a retreat; he got them out alive. If they'd planned to desert, presumably they wouldn't have gone back to whatever base camp there was. Were they gallant men? Am I a deserter?
Andre was out cold next me. He'd throw a pillow over his head and that was that. I wondered how he could handle all the pressures and energy and concentration of directing a movie and just crash like that as soon as his head hit the pillow. He hasn't an ounce of nervous energy. I, on the other side of the California king, was wide awake, a jangle of free- floating brain waves trying to pass themselves off as thoughts.
After I turned down the part he offered me, I learned— back when Fits and I were briefly an item— that Andre had been intrigued by my refusal to work with him a second time. He doesn't direct many movies. Producers despise what they think of as his arrogance, but his films reach a steady audience, an arty following here and in Europe and Japan, and the classier critics love him, so he gets his financing. Word is he'll do anything to get a movie the way he wants it. He's co- written two of his films but is not a writer; Joe wouldn't say so, and I would agree. He's visually brilliant, his characters never less than vivid. He's been called the poet in Godard combined with the bite of Clouzot and the careful structure of Lumet. As a director he is exacting and manipulating and doesn't allow his actors to run loose, even undermining their control over their characters— which scares most actors pantless. Anyhow, I heard through an actress who had a small part in Separation and Rain that Andre was amused. "It just doesn't happen," the other actor, Mindy Scott, told me. We'd met for coffee at a place near the Beverly Center. "Is it because it's not the lead? I have to ask, I mean, are you all right? I personally would do any part of Andre Lucerne to work with him again. I'd do it even as an extra. I mean, Andre Lucerne's the greatest director alive right now."
"You really think so?" I asked. Word on set had been that she'd couch- auditioned her part. I smiled, and suddenly Mindy's eye contact wasn't so steady.
I called Harry the next day. "Did I kill it with Lucerne by de clining?"
"Interestingly, no," Harry said. "But you can't change your mind now."
I was biting my nails. "But I blew up that bridge, huh?" I was getting pretty good at blowing up bridges.
"That's not the way I hear it. Are you ready to go to work?"
"Soon, Harry . . ."
Fits laughed when I told him. "Good for you; these directors
can get to thinking they're gods," he said. "Be careful, though, not to turn saying no into a self- destructive pattern."
He had just wrapped a movie and had time on his hands. He said we should go to Mexico. There was a place, San Quintín, about a third of the way down Baja; he'd go fishing and I could ride horses on the beach. I'd never been to Mexico so I said okay, and we took off that night. Fits drove straight through to Ensenada, where we spent two days in a hotel on the harbor. He taught me how to drink tequila; he'd watch, buying the rounds as I downed one after the other. I discovered real Mexican food and fell for tacos, stopping at every taqueria we passed. Things didn't go so well in San Quintín. The place was beautiful but empty. We had the off- season hotel almost to ourselves. I felt far away and panicky. I felt far away all the time, but this was worse. When the divorce papers came through I felt far away, detached, unmoored and scared. They cited abandonment, meaning I had done the abandoning. I called Joe, my voice weak and drained. He felt lousy too, but I said he at least had the advantage of being at home with the cats. He said the place was full of the ghosts of us, and I cried into the phone. I'd begun to forget what I was so far from as Los Angeles asserted itself, but that open, lonely, windy beach with the seagulls screeching mournfully was too far too fast. I told Fits I had to go back, I'd freak if I didn't get to someplace familiar. He said to quit carrying on like a bad acid trip but agreed to take me back to L.A. the next day.
That time in Mexico was the beginning of the end of me and Fits being physical together. We did become good friends. Fits is basically a loner; he just let me borrow his world at a time when mine was crumbling around me. Once I got back into the swirl, once I let the business take me over, figuring, finally, the thread between me and Joe was truly snapped, and my heart got a nice big scab over it, there were lovers. Some I remember their names but not much else. At least one turned stormy— on his part. One almost got to me. None were ever as kind as Fits.
The morning after I got back from Mexico, I picked up the phone to hear Andre Lucerne's voice on the other end. I was still undressed at eleven, probably hadn't brushed my teeth, sipping tea in the kitchen, my stomach wrenched from too many tacos and tequilas. I thought maybe it was Fits fooling around, but he'd made it pretty clear we should let a few days pass without seeing each other. I told Andre I was sorry for turning down the part and was about to drift into the untouchable topic of my recent divorce, but he wasn't interested. He asked me to dinner.
"Dinner?" I repeated, biting my tongue from adding, why? He'd hardly given me a second glance when I'd been his lead. He'd gotten the performance he wanted and hadn't bothered with the on- set nice- nice- let' s- get- to- know- each- other groove. All the actors were terrified of Andre, though he was never genuinely mean or bullying. He was not so much distant as preoccupied, as if each day was profoundly itself and there was only time and energy enough to make it brilliant; all else was distraction and waste. You felt you had to please him, to try to break through and capture his approval, which usually came in the form of a nod and, if really pleased, a nod and slight raising of his eyebrows. If the eyebrows dipped and he fell silent you knew you were miles off course.
Why was he bothering with me now? Besides the fact that he was married and twelve years older— a very attractive twelve years— and I'd said no to his movie.
"Dinner, yes. You do eat dinner?" he said.
"I do, but . . ."
"Free tonight?"
As a bird, but there was my stomach and . . . and did I want to have dinner with Andre Lucerne? "I was in Mexico for a few days," I said, "I— I'm a little out of sorts."
"Ah, the tourista. Drink some tequila— hair of the dog— and swallow raw garlic cloves; you will live."
We set a date for the following week and met at a little Moroccan place in Los Feliz, a café, very relaxed. I nearly got lost finding the place. Andre had lamb. I hate lamb, so I ate a tabouli dish with hummus, baba ghanoush, and some sort of spicy fish. He did nearly all the talking. He told me his theories on film, which were vast and contradictory. I started thinking, at heart he's an anarchist— if he isn't nuts— all the while picturing Joe making faces behind his back, as in Who is this guy? Possibly he noticed my concentration wandering and got off theory and told a very funny story of the making of his first film and how he hadn't really intended to be a filmmaker. "I think I would have preferred to be a painter," he said, as if the idea had just come to him and I was not seated opposite, listening. "If only because with painting one can erase. One is freer. There are too many details that can barely be controlled in making films."
"Like the actors?" I ventured.
If he heard me he didn't react. The café sold Moroccan items: pointed leather slippers, clay tagines, spices, even clothing and mother- of- pearl combs. As we were sipping our mint tea and coffee after dinner, Andre abruptly walked over to an armoire that had a sumptuous gold- threaded white caftan