frowns. “I don’t mean this as criticism, or being judgmental, or anything,” she says, “but it sounds gay.”
“Sunset Boulevard.”
“What?”
“Sunset Boulevard. Gloria Swanson, William Holden?” Mona’s face is expressionless. “You know it?”
“No.”
“You’ve never seen Sunset Boulevard?”
“No.”
“Famous movie.”
“If you were gay, it’d be okay with me, just a little, well, confusing.”
“And then it was a musical.”
“Okay. Yeah, guess I missed it.”
For some reason Jack thinks: good.
“I’m not that interested in movies.”
“Oh.”
“Or musicals. I’m more a television gal.” She adds, “You do have a kind of metrosexual thing going on, though.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Nothing. Nothing.”
An awkward moment passes. Mona puts the lighter on the bed stand. Takes the cigarette from vertical, taps the ashes into the lime bowl, and takes a deep, last drag. “So why’d you come out here, Jack? You come all the way out here to fuck me and break my heart?”
“No.”
“What do you do? Do I even want to know? Let me guess. Not management, Hughes Aircraft or something, buying parts. No. You’re way, way too sketchy for the real world.” She stares at him. “Something creative. Art? No, art requires commitment. Web design or something.”
“Not even close.” Jack indulges himself with what he believes to be a suitable pause before he says, “I am an actor.”
“No way.” Mona giggles.
Jack shrugs. “Way.”
“No.”
“Way.”
“Get out. What have you been in?”
“Nothing. Well, a lot of nothing. TV. I’m the guy who plays the parts you don’t remember. Wildwood, couple times.”
“What?”
“Wildwood.”
“I loved that show. Who were you?”
“I thought you didn’t like—”
“I love television.”
“It’s not—”
“—I should know who you—”
“—Michael’s shy and sensitive second cousin. Chastity has erotic dreams about me. Then finds out I’m gay. Or what passes for gay in 1799.”
“Oh. A pattern developing.”
“It was a role. It was a part I played.”
“I don’t remember a cousin.”
“Five scenes. Two episodes. Twenty-eight lines.”
“Terry?”
“Tom.”
“I’m not wrong, though—actor? In touch with your feminine side? Emotional, overcompensating on the machismo even, but—”
“Can we talk about something else?”
Mona’s eyes shine. “Do Tom for me.”
“No.”
“Just one line.”
“No.”
“You can’t remember one line?”
“It’s been awhile.”
“You can too. I’ll bet you remember every line.”
It’s weird, but Jack does.
“Or make one up.” He won’t do it. Mona seems genuinely disappointed. Jack wets his finger with his tongue, uses it to kill the cigarette. Carefully, he tries to replace it end-up on the nightstand, but misjudges the distance and it falls onto the floor and neither Jack nor Mona sees it go.
“Your turn,” Jack says. “If you’re so paranoid about it, why did you let me come out here and fuck you?”
“Low self-esteem?”
“Seriously.”
“Seriously?” She makes a thinking face. “Seriously. Well, I’m not all that complicated, Jack. You’re cute, you’re funny, you’ve got a great ass. I like your smile, your phony, cocksure, manly man routine winds my clock, I can’t explain it.” She puts her hand on his face, gently. Her unapologetic vulnerability takes his breath away, but not like the first time he saw her, because now he knows her. And now it troubles him. “I don’t know, could be the best answer. What can I say? I just did. I just wanted to and I did.”
“And your heart?”
“Is the dumb guy. Lousy memory, always the optimist.”
Jack doesn’t know what to say next.
“It doesn’t happen all that often,” Mona adds softly.
“I come out here to get away from the city,” Jack tells her, to break the silence. “All the artificial stuff that goes on back there.”
“As opposed to . . . here?”
“You know.”
“No. Our In-and-Out is more ‘real’ than yours? Our mini-malls have some essential truth you can’t find back in L.A.? Explain this to me.”
“It’s just, it’s like you can get so caught up in it. The spin, the swirl, you start swirling, too,” Jack hears himself saying. “I’m not a movie star, I’m not part of the scene. I do what I do and go home, like anybody else. Except, in L.A., you can’t escape it.”
“Caught up in . . . the artificial stuff.”
“Yes.”
“Like, Astroturf and plastic flowers and—”
Jack is determined to make his point. “No, like, plastic surgery, okay? Fake tits, surgical smiles, the culture of celebrity, martinis at the Skybar. Designer dogs.”
“Oh no, you’re one of those guys who says tits.”
“What?”
Mona is laughing, delighted. “And? Finish your thought.” Jack’s mind double clutches. And?
Coyotes cackle crazily in the distant creosote flats and Jack tries one more time, stubborn, deadpan. “I come out here to look at the desert and, I know, I know, okay, it sounds stupid, but I come out here and get in touch with myself. What’s real, what’s not. What’s important.” He can’t finish because Mona’s laughing. “Okay.”
“I’m sorry.” She can’t stop laughing, though. “I’m sorry. The coyotes.”
“No it’s not.”
“No it’s not, but—”
“You think I’m full of shit?”
“I don’t.” Mona’s tone is sweet and caring and delighted. “No. It’s. Well, maybe a little. Yes. Yes I do. But then no, not totally.”
“I am. I’m full of shit.”
She touches him. “Don’t say that. You’re not,” she says, eyes smiling, “but I bet, sometimes? You tell people what you think they want you to say, or maybe just