68 – She just won’t stop

 

 

“You shouldn’t have gone there,” Louise told me later when we both arrived home, sharing the long cab ride first in chilly silence, as if she had to work up what she intended to say before she could confront me in the privacy of our home.

“Why not?” I asked.

“You just shouldn’t have, that’s all.”

“Neither should you,” I said. “But now that I’ve gone, I’m going to keep going, until the photographers see us as a team.”

Louise face turned deep red as she glared at me.

“That’s mean,” she said.

“If you want me to stop, then you have to stop as well.”

“I won’t stop,” she said. “I like doing it, and I’m going to tell people we are not a team, and if they hire you, then I won’t work for them.”

With that, she barged through the beaded curtain, slamming them back against the wall with the force of her advance.

A grim satisfaction stirred in me; I had gotten a reaction from her that wasn’t smug and defiant, even though her rage seemed like defiance.

I decided to press my advantage and charged through the beaded curtain after her into the hall, and then into the bedroom.

“Tell me this,” I said, her back to me as she sat down on the bed. “What’s wrong with my being there if you’re not doing anything you’d be ashamed of.”

“Ashamed?” she mumbled, her shoulders shaking, either in rage or on the verge of tears. “Why would I be ashamed?”

“Because you’re supposed to be my girl,” I said. “And here all you want to do is fuck other guys?”

“It’s a job, Al,” she said. “Which is something you don’t have.”

“I do now,” I said. “I’m a model just like you are.”

“You’re only there to spite me,” she said. “Because you’re jealous.”

“Are you saying I don’t have a right to object to you fucking other men.”

“We need the money.”

“There are other ways to get money,” I said.

“I mean besides stealing it from your family,” she snapped, glancing over her shoulder at me, her eyes full of rage. “You wouldn’t get a job, so I did.”

“And we can make double the money if I continue.”

“That’s not what I meant,” she said.

“Then tell me what you mean.”

She only looked at me over her shoulder, a stare so full of ice it made me shiver. I wanted to shake the frost out of her, I wanted her to learn the meaning of right and wrong.

She stayed silent for so long after that I stormed out of the bedroom, down the hall and through the beaded curtain to the living room and the kitchenette where I hoped to get a cup of coffee.

A somewhat worn out Dan stumbled through the front door, his moustache wilting from the heat, and his face red from having to walk back down from Hollywood Boulevard.

“I got you some acid,” he said when I popped out of the kitchen.

Dan removed his floppy hat. His hair glistened with beads of what I first thought was sweat and realized it was actually rain.

A storm had finally arrived to alleviate the miserable heat.

I was still in a foul mood and waved him off, telling him, “later.”

Dan shrugged, then made his way through the beaded current and down the short hallway to his room. I went out onto the balcony to take in some of the rain, desperately missing the storms we used to get back east.

Along the street, tall palm trees swayed, long and lean things, like giants with too-large heads. I half expected them to fall over at any moment.

I felt rather than saw Louise slip through the balcony door behind me, her long fingers touching my shoulder softly.

“What do you want, Louise?” I asked, unable to keep; the rage out of my voice.

“I’m sorry, Al,” she said.

“That’s not good enough.”

“What else can I do?”

“I want you to quit.”

Again, Louise stayed silent for a long moment, and then finally with a sigh said, “I can’t quit.”

“Why not?”

“I just can’t.”

“That’s not an answer,” I said, feeling the chill of the rain as drops touched my face. “Nobody is forcing you to model.”

Louise stepped up beside me, her fingers gripping the wet balcony rail. Rain painted her hair into strands of silver, giving her something of a potential Cinderella look, as if she would turn to a princess at any moment.

She shook her head.

“Nobody is forcing me,” she admitted. “I want to do it, that’s all.”

“It’s degrading.”

“It’s the future,” Louise said. “Jack told me a lot of women start their careers by modeling.”

“Jack is a liar,” I said. “At least, about this.”

I glanced at Louise. She blinked against the wave of rain washing over her face, looking thoughtful, although also resistant.

“How can you call him a liar,” she said. “You met him.”

“Yes, I’ve met him. He’s a conman. He’s telling you that you can become a movie star someday, and you can’t. Not if you start out this way.”

Louise snorted, her apology vanishing from her face as she glared at me.

“There’s just no talking to you,” she said. “I’m not going to quit. That’s final.”

“Then, I’m going to be right there by your side,” I said, “every single second. You got that?”

But when I turned to confront her, Louise had vanished back into the apartment, leaving standing alone in the rain, feeling the changing weather pressing in on me, stirring up something inside, like a longing to go back home where such storms were natural, and I didn’t have to deal with slimy photographers trying to lure my girlfriend into prostitution.

But the rain cooled me down, kept me from charging back into the apartment to continue an unproductive confrontation. So, when I eased back inside, I no longer felt the rage.

Still, I made my way through the beaded curtain into the hall beyond. I heard Dan’s heavy hacking through his closed door.

The door to our bedroom was also closed. I knocked lightly. When Louise did not answer, I tried to turn the handle and found the door locked from the inside.

“Let me in,” I said, keeping my voice just low enough not to disturb Dan, who might well have taken a tab of acid.

Louise did not respond. I rattled the door knob. The same lack of response. Finally, in frustration, I kicked the door and made my way back to the living room where I took refuge on the big pillows. Three kittens joined me as I laid down. We’d not paid them much attention recently, and they gleefully wrestled with my hands when I tried to pet them.

I tried to forget Louise for the moment and her dream of becoming a movie star. All I wanted to do was sleep.

True to her word, she kept up, and I could not because not all the jobs she went on needed my services.

And I either had to tolerate the fact or break up with her, and even the thought of breaking up – after all I’d done to get together with her – appalled me.

Then, after a few weeks, she gave me the real bad news.

“They want me to do movies,” she told me as we strolled down the Boulevard.

“What do you mean, movies?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

Nobody made light porn into movies.

“They said I’m getting burned out,” she said, meaning she had become too familiar a face on the soft core scene, and needed to move up or not get booked.

“So, you’re talking hard core films?” I asked.

“They said that’s where the real money is, and it’s not that difficult to do, just a few hours in front of the camera, a few minutes with a man.”

“Having sex with another man, you mean,” I said, the rage once more boiling up in me like a brewing volcano.

“It’s not for long,” she said. “A few minutes of sex and it’s over.”

“No way,” I said.

She stayed silent for so long, I knew we would have a real blow out when we got home, when we were not in the public eye and I could lay out how I wouldn’t allow it, and she would tell me, I can’t stop her – a fact, I was already well-aware of.

We had not spoken reasonably in weeks; nor had we made love.

We already felt like strangers, pulling apart from each other, yet without the courage to completely let go – although at times I felt as if I was the only one struggling to hold on, clinging to her as if she was more like my mother than a lover.

She resented me for getting in between her and her dream career.

“Fucking is not a career,” I told her, strolling in the general direction of Hamburg Palace, which had become one of our regular eateries, the glitter of the Boulevard rivaled only by the vision she had seeing herself in movies.

“I haven’t done anything like that yet,” she said.

“But you’re coming damned close,” I argued, only to have her come back at me again about my stealing money from my family.

“That’s hardly honest,” she said. “At least, what I’m doing is.”

“Fuck you!” I shouted, drawing attention from the freaks and tourists, who seemed startled by my outburst.

“You’re not going to stop me,” she said. “Other men have tried to own me. I won’t be owed, even by you.”

That ended things for the moment. We did not talk. Even over the meal, and then, when we got home, she got dressed to go out onto her assignment.

“You’re not going,” I told her.

“If you try to stop me, I’ll leave you,” she said.

“How will you survive? You have no place to live?”

“I can get my own place with the better money I’m getting,” she said. “You’re choice. Either let me go and do this, or I’ll go anyway, and not come back.”

“You’re not leaving this apartment,” I said.

“Are you going to try and stop me?”

“I will,” I said.

She stared at me for a long time, her blue eyes filled with fear and suspicion. Then, she sagged.

“All right,” she mumbled, her head sagging.

But I knew she didn’t mean it, and later overheard her pleading with Dan to help her escape.

“I don’t want any part of this thing between the two of you,” Dan told her, perhaps fearing that if he helped her, I would throw him out of his room, and he was right to think so. “I got a good thing here and I’m not going to blow it by getting in the middle of a domestic dispute. In a day or two, the two of you will patch things up, but he’ll remember how I betrayed him. If you want to leave, leave, just don’t expect me to help you.”

Louise told him to fuck himself and moved back into the bedroom, her movements as controlled and careful as a cat’s, her gaze glaring at me where I sat on the bed. She reached for her shoes in the corner.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“For a walk,” she said.

“Why don’t we go for a walk together?” I suggested.

“I don’t want to go anywhere with you,” she said. “You don’t want me. You don’t love me if you treat me this way.”

“But I do love you,” I said. “You don’t seem to understand that. I just can’t stand what you’re doing to yourself.”

“I’m not going to be your prisoner,” she said, putting on one shoe at a time before grabbing for her jacket. She glanced back at me from the door. “I’ll be back.”

Although her tone suggested otherwise, and I wondered who she would take up with.

She vanished, although I heard her rush through the beaded curtain, and then heard the front door slam and finally the sharp report of her heals descending the concrete stairs to the driveway.

Dan appeared in the bedroom door.

“You’ve been treating her like shit,” he told me.

I nodded.

“Do you think she’ll come back?” I asked.

“She has to unless she finds some other Sugar Daddy to take her in,” he said.

I didn’t need to ask who that might be, knowing that the agency would find her a place to stay as long as she agreed to keep making films for them.

This enraged me. I jumped up and passed Dan before he could block me, rushing back into the main room to retrieve my jacket before following Louise’s trail out, although I had no clue as to what I would do if I caught up with her.

 

 

 On the lamb menu 

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