Hollywood Gothic Read Online Free PDF Page A

was wet sand ground into the rug, and her hair was wet. As far as Challis knew, this was the first time, but then, it would be, wouldn’t it? He felt the sickness in his stomach and went back into the kitchen. They hadn’t noticed him. He mechanically got a cup and poured himself coffee, put cream in it, added brown-sugar crystals because in California everybody said brown-sugar crystals wouldn’t give you cancer and if you couldn’t believe everybody, who the hell could you believe? With his bag in one hand, the hot coffee in the other, he went back to the living room.
    Goldie’s eyes were tightly closed and her jaw was clenched and she was shaking. They were just getting there, and the conversation was about par for the particular course they were playing. In times of crisis, Challis habitually fell back on composing dialogue in his mind and then saying it, thereby removing himself slightly from the unpleasant reality of the moment. He put the suitcase down softly, walked across the room, stood looking down at them.
    “When you two are done,” he said, “I’d like just a moment of your time.”
    The effect was all that he could have hoped for. The sexual act, the ardor itself, was dampened with a pathetic suddenness. He looked past the steaming coffee into four terrified glazed eyes and two flushed faces. The scene became one from a very amateurish porno movie or one’s worst private nightmares. Naked bodies were rolling in all directions, limbs flailing, voices crying out. He was surprised that they didn’t handle it with rather more aplomb. In his gut, he probably felt a good deal worse than they did. But, of course, he made his living writing words for people to say in equally unlikely and melodramatic situations. He watched them struggling to their feet. There were no robes or shirts or towels in the room. In a movie the scene might just conceivably have been played for laughs.
    “Look at the bright side,” he said. “I’m not carrying a gun.”
    “Oh, shit!” the man said. His chest was hairless, and sprinkled with red splotches, decorated with the standard terrace of awful gold chains. He looked terribly ordinary: middle-aged, tanned down to his neck, gray hair, splay-footed. Goldie didn’t look so hot either. Her mouth looked sort of raw and smudged.
    Challis walked past them and went out on the deck. He sipped the coffee, scratched his beard, leaned on the railing looking out at the water. What in the world were his next lines? He couldn’t seem to get a grip on the scene, and he loathed the idea of crying, which was what he felt like doing. Goldie had frequently accused him of being buttoned-up, buttoned-down, but never unbuttoned. Inhibitions were his “bag,” as she was fond of saying; he was afraid of his emotions. He blinked back the tears and waited while he heard the sounds of the unidentified chap packing it up. Eventually he heard Goldie’s voice: “Toby …” He turned around. She was standing in the doorway, leaning against the rough wood of the siding. She wore Levi’s and a sweater, and her face, expressionless, was impossible to read.
    “Toby,” she said with surprising softness, “don’t be sorry you came home too soon.” The surf rushed in his ears. “This was bound to happen … it’s a miracle it hasn’t happened before. Oh, Toby, don’t look like such an idiot. You’re so dense, so stupid, so wrapped up in that goddamn typewriter …” She threw her head, the hair clinging wetly. She grabbed a towel from the back of a chair and began angrily drying the darkly streaked hair. “This jerk you saw,” she called, walking away, “just the latest in a long line, Toby.”
    He followed her into the kitchen. She was pouring coffee.
    “Don’t take it personally, okay?” She grinned sourly at him.
    He swiped at the coffee mug, watched the hot liquid spray upward in a wave, staining the camel-hair sweater. He heard her shriek as the coffee burned through to her big