Homesick for Another World(52)

“What, you don’t like blondes? You’ve got a thing?”

I waved my finger around helplessly. I suddenly felt I couldn’t breathe.

“I’ll count to ten,” said the director. “One, two, three . . .” I looked into the lens of the camera and saw my upside-down reflection. It was like I was trapped in there in the darkness, suspended from the ceiling, unable to move. I looked at the girls again. Their lips were frosted in pale pink, mealy and shimmering, nothing I’d ever want to kiss. Then one of the girls bent down to my finger and sucked my chewed-up wad of gum into her mouth. I took a step back. I was shocked. I tripped on a cord. The girls tittered. “Ten!” the director shouted.

I did not get the part.

On the way home, I boarded two wrong buses, going east all the way down through Glendale and Chinatown. I walked through downtown Los Angeles, past all the bums and garbage, then finally found a bus on Beverly back to Hancock Park. At home, I walked straight into Mrs. Honigbaum’s office. I could have been irate that she’d sent me there. I could have blamed her for my humiliation. But that didn’t occur to me. I just wanted to be soothed.

“It was bogus,” I told her. “The director was some hippie. There wasn’t even a trash can to throw my gum out in.”

“You win some, you lose some” is all Mrs. Honigbaum said.

“I’m a good kisser, too,” I told her. “Do you think Bob Sears will be mad?”

“Bob Sears doesn’t know his face from his armpit. Let me see your mouth.” She got up from her desk and pointed to a chair. “Sit. I promise I just want to take a look. Now open up.” I did as I was told. I closed my eyes as she peered inside. I could smell her breath, acrid from cigarettes and those harsh mints I’d grown fond of. She hooked a finger into my gums and pulled my bottom lip down, her long nail tapping against my two front teeth. “All right,” she said finally. I opened my eyes. “You have nothing to worry about.” She removed her finger, turned, and went and sat back down at her desk. I took a mint. “I’ll tell you a secret,” she said, sharpening her pencil. “Teeth are what make a star. Teeth and gums. That’s the first thing they look at. That director is a fool. Forget about him. You?” She shook her head. “You’re too good for that guy. Good gums. Good mouth. The lips, everything. My teeth are fake, but I know a thing or two, and you’ve got the proportions.” She turned back to her pad of paper, flicked a page of a magazine, lit a cigarette. I stood. It was a relief to hear I wasn’t doomed for failure, but I was still all torn up inside. If I failed to make it as an actor, where would I go? What else could I do with my life? Mrs. Honigbaum looked up at me as though she’d forgotten I was still sitting there. “Are you going to cry, darling?” she asked. “Are you still upset about the kissing?”

“No,” I answered. I wanted her to embrace me, hold me tight. I wanted her to rock me in her arms as I wept. “I’m not upset.”

“Is that what you wore to the audition?”

I was in my usual getup: leather loafers, tight jeans, and a loose Indian shirt that I thought made me look very open-minded.

“Stuff the crotch next time,” she said. “You’ll feel silly but you won’t regret it. Half of a man’s power to seduce is in the bulge of his loins.”

“Where’s the other half?” I asked. I was completely sincere. By then I’d kissed half a dozen girls in closets at parties back in Gunnison but had never gone all the way. I never had enough enthusiasm to do all the coaxing and convincing it seemed necessary to do. And I was too anxious, too attached to my dreams of stardom to get tangled up in anybody’s private parts. Of course, I thought about sex often. I kept a condom in my wallet, like an ID card. My stepfather had given it to me on my last night in Gunnison. “Don’t go and pierce your ears or anything,” he’d said, and punched me in the arm.

“Power is in the mind,” Mrs. Honigbaum was saying, patting her head, jangling her bracelets. “Read an hour a day and you’ll be smarter than me before you turn twenty. I used to be too smart, and it made me miserable. So now I spend my time on soft stuff, like gossip.” She held up a copy of the coupon circular. “It’s all fluff, but I’m good at what I do. So-and-so is retiring, this one has cancer, that one is going crazy. The Love Boat, can you believe it?”

“Believe what?”

“It’s nothing. Go have a cry, then come back and I’ll tell you a story.”

“But I’m not going to cry,” I insisted. I flashed her a big smile to prove it.

“You go. Have a cry. If you want to talk after, come back. Have another mint.”

I retreated to my room to smoke a joint out the window and listen to the Eagles for a few hours. And I did cry, but I never told Mrs. Honigbaum. In the evening, I went to work and tried to get those blond girls out of my head. Women left lipstick smears on their pizza crusts and the rims of their wine glasses, cigarette butts rattling in their cans of diet soda, phone numbers scribbled on cocktail napkins, smiley faces, Xs and Os. Their winks and tips did nothing for my low spirits, however. At home, I stared at my head shot and tried to pray for solace: God, make me feel good. I cried some more.

? ? ?

In the morning I called Bob Sears. He mentioned nothing of my failure from the previous day. “I received a call from your mother earlier this morning,” he said instead. He told me that she’d threatened to call the Los Angeles police. If I didn’t call her that day, she’d open a missing-persons case. “She seemed very upset and inquired as to my qualifications as a talent agent. I told her, ‘Madam, I’ve been doing this work for forty-seven years and none of my boys has ever gone missing. Not under my watch.’ I’m not going to send you out into the lion’s den, now, am I? How could I profit? How?”