2 By mid-April, the grasses on the hills of California begin to turn from green to yellow and brown (or golden, as the state’s publicity agents call it), the rains stop falling, and in Los Angeles the temperatures become more summerlike than springlike. And while the area’s countless swimming pools, public and private, are never completely abandoned, at this time they become crowded with swimmers and sunbathers. Gina George was one of the people who swam and – weather permitting – sunbathed throughout the year, whether in the courtyard of the West Hollywood condo where she lived or, as she was now, in the backyard of the house of her producer, Barry Bergman. Just after a ten-lap swim on a warm morning, she flung herself down on a lounging chair, removed her bikini top, put on her sunglasses and picked up the drink she had poured herself earlier. In the chair beside hers, Barry was reading Daily Variety. “Hey, look,” said Barry, interrupting his reading only for a glance at Gina’s breasts, “it’s just as well you didn’t audition. The Back Roads deal fell through.” “Huh,” said Gina. “Was it because he didn’t get the Oscar?” “Maybe. It doesn’t say.” “Does it say who they had cast?” “Uhh...” Barry quickly scanned the rest of the article for words with initial capitals. “No.” “Fuckin’ liars.” “It says he gets to keep a six-figure advance, and he’s staying on in Hollywood for quote other projects unquote.” “I want to work with him.” “Fine, sweetheart. Count me out.” “It’s been nice knowing you, Barry,” said Gina, sitting up to reach for a T-shirt that she now put on over her bare, still moist, breasts. “I don’t really need you, you know,” said Barry, trying to look at her eyes through the smoky lenses of her sunglasses. “Sure, Barry,” she said as she wrapped her skirt around herself without standing up. “You’re my star, but I’m the one who is buddies with the distributors and the theater owners. I can make a new star in no time.” “Bye,” she said as she finally stood up, getting her feet into her high-heeled sandals. “What about Fleshpots?” Barry maintained his reclining posture. “We’ll finish that,” said Gina, with a tinge of distaste in her voice. “A contract is a contract.” She began to walk away. “Tomorrow at the studio,” she added. “And, by the way, thanks for breakfast.” She smiled at him, and he returned her smile. As she began to walk toward the house, he looked down and noticed her bikini top lying on the deck. “You forgot your bra,” he said, picking it up. “Keep it as a souvenir,” she said without looking back. “I’ll accept it as my birthday present,” he said. Gina stopped in her tracks, but only for a second. “Happy birthday,” she said, and went on, through the house to the carport and into her car. That afternoon, Albert Bosch, after taking a taxi from the Beverly Hilton Hotel and telling the driver to take him to Hollywood and Vine, took a leisurely stroll on Hollywood Boulevard. The failure of the Back Roads deal had left him with more relief than disappointment. He had more money than ever before, and while it was not enough for another film of his own, it allowed him to live comfortably for a while and take his time to think about other projects. Even the breakup with Margaret was not as painful as he had thought it would be. Not that either of them had actually announced the intention of leaving the other; at some point they had simply stopped calling each other. It may have been due to their disparate working schedules coupled with the time difference; both of them were intense workers who did not allow any extraneous thought, even one of calling the lover, to break their concentration. With both of them in Europe, either one, while not working, could call the other. But in this situation it so happened that each one’s free time coincided with the other’s sleep, and they both valued their sleep. Now that he was no longer working, he could call her in the morning while she would be making her dinner, listening to Mozart. But he knew that he would not call her. He realized that the time conflict would not have mattered if the relationship had not simply run its course. It was just that they had not known it yet, and it took his going away – far away – to make them both acknowledge it. Still, he thought as he was paying the driver, he would keep her picture on his desk. “Oh, by the way,” he asked the driver, “which way is Grauman’s Chinese Theatre?” “That way,” said the driver, pointing backwards, that is, westward. “It’s just past Highland, about a mile from here. Want me to take you there?” “No, thank you, I wish to walk,” said Albert Bosch with a wave of his hand. The driver said nothing and drove away, turning south on Vine. Albert Bosch had been told that Hollywood Boulevard had become quite run-down, though there were plans under way, or at least talked about, to restore it to its former glory. It would take a long time, he was told, because it would have to be done one building at a time – a movie theater here, a hotel there – by whoever owned it. This was not like Europe, someone had said, where a government could organize a massive renovation. But Albert Bosch found the seediness that had taken hold of the famous street – the pawn shops in what had been banks, the once elegant cinemas showing peep shows and X-rated films, even the drunk or drugged-out beggars who lined the sidewalks – rather charming in a cinematic sort of way. A film about Hollywood Boulevard! He would have to think about that... He realized that he felt quite warm in the blazer he was wearing. He had bought it in a department store near his hotel because he had needed it for the many lunch meetings he had to attend, in the course of the past six weeks, in restaurants that were air-conditioned to excess. As he left the hotel this time, he had put it on, out of habit, without thinking. He decided to stay on the southern, shadier side of the boulevard. In the distance, about a hundred meters away, he saw two marquees on opposite sides of the street. One read ALBERT BOSCH’S THE SINS OF THE WORLD, the other GINA GEORGE IN YOUNG WIVES’ TALES. The name “Gina George” rang a bell in his mind. Where had he heard of her? Oh, yes – she was the “erotic star” who, according to his senior producer manqué, had been interested in the female lead of Back Roads. The part had certainly called for what he would think of as eroticism, but he doubted that that was what the producer had meant. He glanced at the poster for his film – the BEST FOREIGN PICTURE NOMINEE sticker was still on it – and crossed the street. Young Wives’ Tales had begun half an hour before, but he did not think that it mattered. He bought a ticket and entered the theater. On screen, the character played by Gina George, whose picture dominated the poster outside the theater, was cuddling in bed, under a blue sheet, with a man who was stroking her right breast with his left hand, prominently displaying a wedding ring, while her left hand stroking his head was just as prominently displaying jeweled rings on her middle and little fingers only. Suddenly the bedroom door opened and a brunette in a low-cut dress walked in, stopped, and, in a rising voice, said “John!” elongating the vowel to the utmost. “Honey, I can explain it,” said the man, sitting up in bed so as to screen the woman played by Gina George from the intruder’s gaze. His bare, heavily muscled torso came into view. “Sure you can,” said the woman, walking around the bed to get a look at her rival. “Oh, it’s her! Get out of here, you goddam slut!” she yelled. She reached for the other woman’s long blond hair with her left hand, on which a wedding band could be seen. Gina George’s character raised her two hands – both bejeweled – to protect herself. The wronged wife now grabbed both hands, and the two began to tussle. “Please calm down, honey,” said the man, and, on noticing that his bedmate was becoming agitated as well, added, “both of you – please!” He swung around, making the sheet drop to just above his pubis, and took hold of his wife’s wrists with one of his – his hands were huge – and of his lover’s with the other. He pulled the wife onto the bed, and her body fell on top of the other woman’s. He began kissing the wife’s neck, working his way down to her bosom, while the other woman squirmed out from under and quickly unzipped the wife’s dress and unhooked her brassiere. The camera zoomed in on the man’s growing erection, clearly visible under the sheet. The wife could be heard moaning, and when the camera zoomed out again her dress was down around her calves. The other woman lifted it off her with a flourish, leaving the wife naked except for her high-heeled shoes. The man pulled the sheet off him, revealing a huge phallus, and pulled his wife on top of him. Her moaning intensified, and within less than a minute she acted out a screaming orgasm. After she rolled over to the man’s left – away from the other woman – the man’s ejaculation took over the whole screen. In the next sequence the three were shown lying placidly on their backs side by side, the man in the middle, all fully naked; even the wife’s feet were now bare. Zooming in on the man’s face showed his eyes shut. The two women then sat up partially so as to look at each other, and the wife’s face gradually took on a smiling countenance. After a while Gina George’s character climbed over the sleeping husband and lay on top of the wife’s body, kissing her. The wife embraced her, and both began to moan. Albert Bosch had been growing increasingly uncomfortable since the moment he had sat down. It was only at this point that he realized that he needed to urinate. When he returned from the toilet, Gina George – or her character – was dressed in a tight white high-necked top and talking to the camera. Her voice was husky. “And that’s when I decided,” she was saying, “to make it my mission to bring happiness to other young wives. I think I succeeded with John and Myra. Don’t you think so?” The camera panned to a window, through which George and Myra could be seen walking away hand in hand, smiling at each other, and back to Gina George’s character. “Now,” she went on after a pause, “for the next young wife’s tale...” As the scene dissolved to a bar, Albert Bosch decided that he had seen enough. As he walked out of the theater, the sunlight that struck his eyes was so bright that he quickly reached into the inside pocket of his blazer to get his sunglasses. It was also too warm, on the sunny side of the street, to continue wearing the blazer; he took it off, folded it and draped it over his left arm. He continued walking, thinking about the film he had just seen. Gina George really did have, beyond her obvious endowments, and an extraordinary smile, a subtly erotic quality that he would not have expected in a pornographic actress, a quality that came out particularly in the scene in which she climbed over the sleeping man, gradually letting her naked body come into view from beneath the sheet, her nipples coming ever so close to the man’s chest without touching it, her pubis doing the same with his, all the while keeping her smiling gaze on the woman whom she would now possess. Given the film’s production values, Albert Bosch was convinced that these subtleties were Gina George’s own doing and not the director’s. He doubted that the director, whoever he was, was even aware of them. He tried to remember the names he had seen on the poster. Besides Gina George’s, he recalled only Barry Bergman – in BARRY BERGMAN PRESENTS, at the top of the poster – obviously the producer. The director’s name must have been buried somewhere at the poster’s bottom. He reached Highland Avenue. He looked past the traffic and saw, about fifty meters away, the famous façade of Grauman’s Chinese. Across the street he saw the Egyptian Theatre and the Roosevelt Hotel, both now-faded landmarks that he had heard of. Hollywood is not so bad, he thought. After all, even the President of the United States comes from here. Gina George took a final sip of coffee and walked out of her apartment into the courtyard, on her way to the garage. It was morning, but the pool was already crowded. Some of the male sunbathers gave her a glance that was more than cursory. She flashed a vague smile in their direction. It’s time to buy a house, she thought. A nice big house in the hills with a nice big pool. She could afford it now. Easily. She was a star. The hell with Barry. He didn’t respect her. He was always so condescending, or patronizing, or whatever the right word was... Not that he hadn’t been good to her. He had guided her career. He had seen that she got her fair share of her movies’ receipts, including the ones from video sales that, he had said, might become huge in the future. He had given her good advice on investing her money, and then set her up with a money manager of her own, independent of him; she could call Russ any time and find out how much she had and how much was coming in. And he was a good lover too, was Barry, despite his macho airs: he was warm and gentle, and a good kisser. After having to deal with the narcissistic pricks at the studio, especially that new guy Frank Bond that she was working with in Fleshpots of the West, it was nice to go to bed with Barry. The other girls – except Lili Long – thought so too, but it was understood that Gina George, the star, had first dibs. But he was a porn maven, even if he was the best in the business; that’s all he knew how to do, and she was not going to stay in that business forever. She was still young, but she wouldn’t be young forever, and nothing was more ridiculous than an aging porn actress; she had known too many of those. Guys could get away with it, as long as they could get it up, but women – forget it. She was an actress, she said to herself as she got into her Mercedes. She, unlike most of the other girls in the industry – even Melissa Milton, who had been a stage actress – gave more to her roles than her tits and pussy: she gave them thought. Like the European actresses, for example, like the ones in Pale Horizon and The Sins of the World. They were not like those prisses here in Hollywood who refuse to show their tits and need body doubles for simulated sex scenes. Good old Lili Long, she thought as she drove out of the garage and started to head for the studio. She liked her private sex even kinkier than what she did on screen, and she was the kinky-sex specialist! Barry just wasn’t kinky enough for her – “too straight,” she had told Gina. And did poor Barry ever have the hots for Lili! What will Albert Bosch be doing here in Hollywood? she suddenly wondered. Maybe she too ought to start reading Variety. She would need an agent, she thought. Or maybe not – not if she worked with someone like Albert Bosch. That wouldn’t be about money, anyway. And, thanks to good old Barry, she wouldn’t have to worry about money for a while. The jacaranda trees in bright blue blossom lined her route. She turned right on Sunset Boulevard and, barely a minute later, left on Laurel Canyon. As she entered the canyon, she looked around her at the semi-secluded houses scattered about the hills. Maybe one of these would soon be hers. Just as long as it had a pool... Crossing Mulholland was slow that morning. As she inched her way toward the traffic light, she saw, out of the corner of her left eye, the southbound drivers staring at her, in passing, through her open window. She herself kept her gaze straight ahead. But once she got the green light, she smiled to herself. Yes, she liked being stared at. Her Greek mother, herself a beauty, had told her when she was twelve: “You’re the kind that’s going to be stared at, so you might as well enjoy it.” As she started downhill, it suddenly struck her how blasé she had become about this place. Only five years earlier, seeing the white-on-blue MULHOLLAND DR. sign would have brought her a twinge of excitement on remembering how, as a precocious thirteen- or fourteen-year-old, she would be driven up here, according to the timeless LA tradition, by the boy she was dating, three or four years older, in order to be kissed and to have her boobs and thighs felt, and eventually to do it in the backseat. Now she only wondered if kids still did that sort of thing. In another ten minutes she found herself in front of a tall, heavy metal gate, painted white, next to a sprawling, nondescript low building, also white. A small sign on the gate read BB PRODUCTIONS and, below it, KEEP OUT. She clicked her remote control, the gate opened and she drove in.