As a writer, when frustrated, I write. Screenplays, pilots, emails to old friends that I never send. The handyman I recently hired was once an Olympic marathon runner and he deals with stress by going for a jog. A television exec I know who was once a Big Ten college basketball player shoots hoops after every fight he has with his wife. I don't know how a doctor or accountant avoid their avoidances, but if writers write, runners run, basketball players shoot and dribble, it stands to reason that actors will act.
Robby had only announced the Trudy-Artie affair to the thousand-plus guests at Artie's party because he considered the idea so preposterous it would inevitably come off as nothing but cocaine-induced paranoia. To later find out it was true made him want to punch his agent in the nose, yell at his wife, and ultimately blame himself for wallowing in his career depression for so long that he drove Trudy away.
But more than anything, he wanted the unacceptable news to disappear. So he blocked it out by doing what he did best -- performing. He saw his way of getting back to where he had once been, and he spent the rest of the evening focusing on his plan and nothing else. Some therapists say that's healthy, some say it's not, I say people will deal with their stuff the way that they do, and all the rest is analytical bullshit. That's why he got into my car in the first place, as I learned after he and I became good friends. He didn't actually want to have an affair of his own, he just wanted the community to think that he did.
As I drove the three of us to Gloria's place -- Robby snuggling up with MY date, on MY leather bucket seat in MY car -- I was pretty sure I had already lost her to him. Hell, I never really had her to begin with. I just wasn't ready to give up yet.
"So how come you faked drunk, Robby?" I asked him.
Robby glared at me as if I had betrayed a confidence between lifelong friends.
"I wasn't fakin' not'in," he slurred, way more toasted than he'd been all evening.
"Trust me, he's not faking," Gloria defended him. "I smelled the booze on his breath when I gave him mouth-to-mouth."
"He took a few sips for the smell then poured the rest in the plant," I answered. "Admit it, Robby."
"Okay," he drunkenly agreed, patronizing me brilliantly. "I faked it. I'm sober."
"See what I mean?" Gloria asked me.
I must admit, as mad at him as I was, I was still very impressed with the improv.
We arrived at her condo and she told me to park in her underground garage behind her '92 Dodge pick-up. The truck wasn't so much an expression of who Gloria was, but rather of who she wanted the world to think she was. She had learned the best way to make a mark in Hollywood was to publicly scorn its values, and nothing was more valued than a snazzy car. The old Dodge made her young, cool, hip and exciting.
She led Robby and me through the concrete walkway into a carpeted elevator to the third and top floor, and then inside her sparsely furnished one-bedroom. She dropped her keys into a chintzy ceramic elephant that sat on a thrift-shop lacquer table by the front door. She told us she wanted to change out of her dripping wet clothes, gave me back my wet jacket, and disappeared into her bedroom.
I sat down on the garage sale couch while Robby sat on the torn leather chair.
"I'll take you to lunch or something," Robby whispered to me cold sober. "When I explain this to you, it'll all make sense."
His feeling was that I already knew too much, I later learned. If I told anyone about his faking drunk, it could ruin his entire plan. However, if he trusted me with the whole thing, I would repay that trust by being trustworthy.
Personally, I think that's a pretty naive strategy for this town, but in my case he was right.
"Explain now," I replied because I was pretty sure there would be no such lunch.
"I'm not muscling in on your girl," he began.
"She's not my girl," I answered. I knew where Gloria's interest lay, and I had to save face somehow. "She wants to be my agent, but I'm not interested in that either."
"Good," he said. "Because I don't think it's going to happen for you. She seems to have a thing for me. But I don't want it. I'm a married man, and I don't cheat."
"You could've fooled me," I replied. "And everyone else at the party."
"And that's exactly the point," he said. "And that's what I'll explain at lunch."
"Explain it now," I insisted.
Then Gloria came out, and he quickly reverted back to the obnoxious drunk.
Gloria was wearing cut-off jean shorts revealing most of her thighs and a t-shirt that was at least three sizes too small, exposing most of her midriff and every contour of her perfect breasts. When she bent down to get a bottle of cognac out of a floor-level cupboard, her shorts darted up her thighs to show us her perfectly exercised butt cheeks.
"My step-dad gave me this," she told us with such innocence I almost believed the sexual sway of her hips was a natural accident. "He says it's a really good brand."
She poured us each a glass, then brought me mine first. I took this as a meaningful sign until she gave Robby his and cuddled up next to him on the chair made for one.
"To good friends," she toasted. "I think the three of us are going places."
"Yes we are," I said as I quickly downed my drink. "I'm going home."
"But why?" she asked, clearly thrilled that I was leaving. "We can all have such a nice chat," she said as she began to walk me to the door.
"Because enough is enough, you bitch," I wanted to answer. Instead, I said, "Because I have that early meeting I told you about."
By the way, my "early" meeting wasn't until noon, and she knew that.
"Don't go," Robby said with so much sincerity that it was more of a plea, and it occurred to me that he was afraid to be alone with her. "We'll have a great time."
"No, he's right," Gloria said as she walked me out. "You have to be at your best tomorrow. If I'm gonna represent you, I don't want you to miss an opportunity. Bye!"
She gave me the two-sided cheek kiss, then I turned to Robby.
"Do you need a ride somewhere?" I asked him, pitying him at this point.
He took several seconds to consider it, then finally sighed, "No, I'll be okay."
So I left.
Then, with the couch standing empty in the middle of the room, Gloria sat down next to Robby on the chair meant for one.
"So are you drunk or aren't you?" she asked as her arm shamelessly wrapped around his neck. "Because sometimes you seem fine, and others you seem wasted."
"I'm fine," he drunkenly mumbled, admonishing himself for his inconsistency.
"You can tell me," she insisted, her mouth moving so close to his that he could almost taste her. "I didn't want to give you away in front of Jeff, but I'd swear you're up to something."
Robby knew he had to change the subject -- she had far too big a mouth to let her know what he was really up to -- but he could only think of one way.
So he grabbed her face and brought it toward him, and he kissed her. A warm, wet kiss that could've lasted forever.
Was he changing the subject, he wondered, or was this a rationalization so he could have this goddess? But as their moist tongues darted around each other's, he knew it didn't matter. She squeezed her arms around him and kissed him back with all the passion that comes from a ten-year-old fantasy. And he threw his arms around her as tight as he could with all the fury that comes from the guilt of cheating on one's wife.
Then she took his hand and brought it up along her taut tummy, under her shirt, and around her perfectly soft breasts.
All Robby could think was this is fantastic, and it's wrong!
And that is, and always has been, the great paradox of Robby Rockman. For as much as he tried to be a louse, he remained, at heart, an enormously decent man.
Trudy may have cheated on him, he thought, but she must've had her reasons. She was the mother of his son, his best friend through thick and thin. The least he could do was give her a chance to explain before giving himself over to another woman.
But if this was so, he asked himself, why couldn't he stop his tongue from making tiny little circles around Gloria's miraculously exquisite pink nipples?
Why was he letting her rub her hand up and down the outside of his Levis?
Every moral fiber in the Iowa man's being told him to stop, but he couldn't. Accepting defeat, he zipped down her shorts and slid his middle finger inside her to prepare her for the inevitable, only to discover that she was wet upon arrival.
She opened his jeans to find him all the man that she had imagined.
And he pulled down her shorts as he kissed and licked the contours of her thighs.
Then the phone rang.
Robby didn't know if he should thank God for the interruption, or pray that Gloria would ignore it. His second prayer was answered, for Gloria didn't even seem to hear it.
"Maybe you ought to get it," Robby forced himself to say.
"Machine," she panted back.
"Y'sure?" he uttered one final attempt at faithfulness. "Might be import--"
And then she took him in her mouth, swallowing him whole, devouring his essence, and he could resist no longer. Let the goddamn phone ring, he thought.
"How stupid are you?!" Artie's voice bellowed from the answering machine. "Answer, Gloria. I know you're there. I don't care if you're in the middle of fucking the client, you dumb bitch! Pick up the fuckin' phone now! Answer! Answer! Answer!"
"Shit," muttered Gloria as she left Robby and picked up the cordless. "I'm here," she said.
Robby could hear Artie screaming through the earpiece, even though he couldn't make out what he was saying. It was a side of Artie he hadn't seen before because Artie was always a sweetheart with clients and executives.
"Tell Artie I say fuck you," Robby said loudly playing the drunk, but actually meaning it.
Gloria only glared at him as she took the phone into her bedroom, mouthing the words "not long" before she shut the door behind her.
"Then fuck you, too!" Robby drunkenly shouted at the closed door.
He wasn't really angry. As the blood left his penis and traveled back to his brain, he returned to his senses. The plan for the evening was to revitalize his future, not to betray his wife -- no matter what she may have done to him. It would have to be enough that the world only thought he got her back.
So he zipped up his pants and went back to work. He poured what was left of his cognac on his shirt, then grabbed Gloria's keys out of the ceramic elephant and left. He took the elevator to the garage, got into her Dodge pickup and drove off into the night.
Robby's first professional role had been as Ophelia in an all-male rendition of Hamlet. So, confident in portraying a convincing woman with no sense of parody, he picked up Gloria's car phone and dialed 911.
"Police," he said in a very realistic female voice. "Someone just stole my car. He was heading up the canyon, and he was drunk and on cocaine!"
He gave them the make, model and year of the pickup, realistically not knowing the license plate number, all while heading to the spot where he hoped to be arrested.
The next call was to an old acquaintance, the news director of a local TV station.
"I can't take it anymore!" Robby screamed. "I can't take it!"
"Who is this?" asked the newsman, dragging himself out of bed. "Robby?"
"I'm going to do it this time," Robby continued. "I swear I'm going to do it!"
The newsman tried his best to figure out what was going on, but all he could get out of Robby was that he was somewhere on Mulholland and he couldn't take it anymore. When the lousy canyon reception cut them off, the newsman could only sigh, sad to see yet another actor friend go over the deep end. Then he phoned the station to send over a crew. Whatever was going to happen up there could be newsworthy.
L.A.'s Mulholland Drive is a long, winding stretch of road with few lights, deadly curves, and a spectacular view of both the Valley and the West Side. Numerous teen-agers borrowing their dads' cars come here to make out. Many stars on alcohol or drugs whip through the life-threatening street to crash or die. Robby knew the road well. His old home that he had been forced to sell four years earlier, the one that had once been the subject of "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous," was only a couple of miles to the West.
So Robby knew exactly where he should send Gloria's truck over the cliff.
Heading downhill, he stopped the Dodge thirty feet in front of a dirt clearing overlooking the Valley. He put the Dodge in park and gazed down the road. The lookout was straight ahead of him -- it was the road itself that curved off. It was perfect.
He got out of the truck as a car whizzed passed him, almost knocking him over. An eighteen-year-old boy showing off for his seventeen-year-old girl in his Daddy's Volvo.
Robby picked up a rock and used it to scratch up his arm. Then he whacked the rock against his head and drew blood as he shrieked in pain. He took a deep breath, then threw himself onto the hard paved road. It hurt like hell, and he decided he was sufficiently banged up to convince the law that he had drunkenly fallen out of a moving vehicle.
Then he shoved the Dodge into drive, got out of the way and down it went. Slowly at first, it seemed to simply ease down the road right towards the lookout where it would inevitably careen over the cliff to crash hundreds of feet below in an abandoned section of the valley floor. No one would be hurt, and it would be a media frenzy.
Minor celebrities who had attended Artie's party would jump on the bandwagon and denounce Robby for his drinking problem. Others would tell of the mean-spirited way he had left his wife for Gloria. He'd refuse a blood test, as was his right, even though it was a huge, implied admission of guilt. That didn't matter because he would plead guilty anyway. He'd get a DUI, his license would be suspended, his insurance would buy Gloria a new car, his premiums would soar, and he'd have to do community service for years. It was a mess, and Robby could only smile at his own brilliance.
He could faintly hear police sirens approaching. The timing couldn't have been better. He lay down and watched as the Dodge rolled off the road and onto the lookout.
Then he saw the Volvo, perched on the very edge of the cliff. The teen-agers were inside it and making out, and the pickup was heading right at them.
"Get out of there!" he screamed at them.
But they didn't hear him. He chased after the Dodge, shouting as loud as he could. But the kids were too immersed in each other to notice.
"Move!" Robby shouted, helplessly. "Go!"
But they still didn't hear him, and he kept running no matter how futile it seemed.
The runaway truck was inches away from ramming the Volvo over the cliff, and Robby had to accept that the teen-agers were going to die, and that he had killed them.
*** Up Next: "The Kids In The Volvo Who Are About To Die" ***
The main characters in this e-novel are fictional and are not intended to portray or resemble any actual individuals, whether living or dead (except for Jeff Abugov who is a real screenwriter, director and producer.) Although certain real people and companies are mentioned in this e-novel, all of the events are fictional and are not intended to portray or resemble any actual events.
Copyright © 2015 Tinseltrash, Inc.