Rake Read online

  Off the top of my head, here are the other cast members I slept with: Alicia Bertoldi, who played Senator Taylor’s third wife; Sally Collins, who intermittently played a biker chick for two or three seasons and, though she was in reality a nice Catholic girl, ended up killing herself for reasons never clear to me; Serena Hopp, who played the dual roles of Senator Taylor’s fourth wife and her twin sister; Annette Dillingsworth, who played the hospital’s chief administrator and who, at fifteen years my senior, could drink and coke me under the table and who once gave me a black eye during a bout of unusually rambunctious sexual experimentation.

  And then there was Ginny De Kalb, a former Miss Missouri who did a couple of years on the show as Trina Vail, the polymorphously perverse owner of a horse farm. Ginny was crushed when her role was recast, but she should have seen it coming—her character’s story line involved a sex change, and though there are any number of actresses who could have played Trina in her post-op incarnation as Buck Vail, Ginny was not one of them. She surprised all of us when she turned to online erotica and made a fortune starring in and promoting a series of downloadable adult entertainments. She even did one video that played on the Trina/Buck sex change in which she, in a manner of speaking, went and fucked herself. Though it’s doubtful that there was much of an intersection between her soap opera fans and the admirers of her pornographic oeuvre, I for one was amused and aroused by the video, so much so that I looked her up and carried on a reasonably torrid affair with her for a year or so.

  •••

  Anyway, those are the ones that come to me off the top of my head. Looking back, it was a hell of a fun show to work on. Two seasons in I nearly lost the role when sweet, Catholic Sally Collins’s husband walked in on us in her dressing room. I was fucking her from behind and she was shouting about what a dirty, dirty girl she was, and he grabbed the tennis racket she kept by the door and came swinging at me. I broke his arm and his collarbone before Sally’s screaming stopped me.

  It could have been argued that he was provoked into violence by the sight of his wife (who was pregnant at the time, though not, as far as I could tell, by me) being fucked by another man, and that indeed was the line the producers of the show took with my poor, long-suffering agent, threatening to fire me.

  I was already a fan favorite, though, and we settled with Sally’s husband out of court; I put up a hundred grand and the production company came up with two hundred and fifty. At the insistence of the Legal Department I took six months of anger management classes, which provided me with some interesting insights into my sometimes violent personal history. When I boasted that it had been more than fifteen years since my last arrest for assault and battery, the rest of my group laughed along with the instructor-counselor, and for a moment I was baffled and hurt, until I understood that they thought I was joking. Hell, I wasn’t angry, hadn’t been for years. All I’d done was defend myself against an attacker—too zealously, perhaps, but justifiably.

  As for the irate husband, he disappeared into the woodwork, leaving Sally to raise their child alone. As a good Catholic girl, she took the divorce hard; after that she tended to avoid me away from the set, but I believe the drama of our off-camera story had an incendiary effect on our subsequent scenes together, lending a distraught quality to her performance that her modest, inborn level of talent couldn’t have provided. Now that I think of her I can’t help wondering what happened to that kid of hers.

  SAMEDI, TRENTE AVRIL

  THE NEXT NIGHT THE NETWORK LIAISON—Jean-Pierre by name—took me to a play at a small theater starring Nicolas Aurel, my vocal doppelganger on Ventura County.

  Accompanying us was a certain Marie-Laure Vasquès, one of Jean-Pierre’s bosses at the network. Well into her forties, with long legs and black hair cut in a Louise Brooks bob, she affected delight at meeting me and chain-smoked in the car on the way to the theater. She had one of those faces that are hard to classify at first—she was either an idiosyncratic beauty or a little funny looking, with a nose that was at once rather long for her face and unusually slim, and eyes set wider apart than she probably would have preferred. Given her position at the network I made sure to casually mention my mission in France of getting a movie made, insinuating that it was practically a done deal and resisting the temptation to suggest overtly that there was still time for the network to invest in it.

  She was very interested in the activities of my fellow cast members since the show had wrapped. Why she gave a shit I don’t know; I was the only one who spoke French, the one who came over and did publicity every year and without their having to hire an interpreter. But I filled her in on the retirements (three), the moves to other soaps (most of them), the sitcom role (Alicia), the three movie roles (including a big one for Becky), and the untimely death (poor Sally).

  She told me she’d worked in L.A. a few years back for our overseas syndicator and claimed some responsibility for the show’s having been picked up in prime time here.

  “I have you to thank, then,” I said and regretted not having paid more attention when Jean-Pierre had introduced us outside the hotel. What was her official title?

  She smiled, a radiant, genuine expression that made her suddenly even more attractive than before, and noting the ring on her left hand, I wondered how hard it would be to get her into bed, and whether or not that would be a good idea, business-wise. “You’re really a very good actor,” she said, cementing my desire. “I saw you in that Garry Marshall movie last year.”

  “Oh,” I said, and Jean-Pierre, who knows me well enough to poke a little fun, smirked at the mention of it.

  “Don’t misunderstand me, the picture was a piece of shit,” she said, “but you were quite good.”

  “You’re too kind.”

  “Not at all. Have you got anything lined up here? Besides your own film, I mean?”

  Feeling foolish, I tried to downplay my entirely conjectural film project. “It’s really in the embryonic stages at the moment. And, no, I don’t have anything else lined up.”

  “Is there a script?”

  “I’m collaborating on one with a young French screenwriter.”

  She crossed her legs and nodded. “Bring him in for a meeting, maybe we can make something happen. In the meantime there’s a role on one of our cop shows that would be perfect for you. It was written for an Englishman but it could easily be an American.”

  “I can play British, of course,” I said, bristling, as we stopped in front of the theater.

  •••

  I’d met Nicolas a few times and had always been impressed by his talents as a voice artist, but this was the first time I’d seen him act. He was a handsome young fellow with terrific stage presence, hulking and with a real sense of physical menace, even though he wasn’t really very large. My real-life tendencies as a brawler besides, I’ve been in my share of fights onstage and pride myself on being able to spot a poorly faked one; there was a moment in a third-act fight scene, though, when I thought he’d really broken his cast mate’s jaw.

  The play was mediocre but the actors were good, and afterward we went out for a bite with Nicolas, his wife, and a couple of the actresses, both of whom paid me a great deal of attention over several platters of oysters. As one of the actresses howled in exaggerated laughter at an anecdote I’d just told, Nicolas nudged me and whispered that if I were to take the young lady in question home with me I wouldn’t be disappointed. I reserved my most solicitous attentions for Marie-Laure, however, and began considering at what point it would be politically wise to invite her up to my suite, tonight or some other evening after dinner.

  As it happened, when Jean-Pierre dropped me off at the hotel she told him she wanted a cocktail with me and would catch a cab home. The almost predatory look on her face as we walked arm in arm to the hotel bar sent a little chill down my spine and excited me even more than before.

  DIMANCHE, PREMIER MAI

  I WAS STUCK. I NEEDED A STORY FOR A MOVIE, and I needed to f
ind a French screenwriter for Marie-Laure’s meeting. And I needed one who wouldn’t be asking for money up front, which precluded my doing it through an agent. It occurred to me that I might be able to adapt a book myself, lifting the dialogue verbatim and transferring the descriptive action from the past to the present tense (this is how John Huston adapted The Maltese Falcon, or rather how his secretary did it; before leaving town for the weekend, he gave her the novel and told her to type it up in screenplay format, and upon his return he found the result perfectly filmable).

  But I needed to find a book, a title obscure enough that its author would accept a minimal option or none at all on the promise of a later payday. And I did have every reason to believe that there would be a payoff at some later date.

  I wandered off from the hotel with the idea of a walk. I circled the courtyard of the Louvre and the Tuileries and headed across the rue de Rivoli to the arcade and walked along, acknowledging in my amiable but unapproachable manner the cries of recognition from my fellow flaneurs. I passed two English-language booksellers I knew well, but I’d need the book to be in French to start with, as an adaptation and translation together would take me twice the time.

  And then I stumbled upon a small bookstore, one that had obviously been around for decades but which had somehow escaped my notice in the past. Noting with satisfaction that the only person inside was the clerk, which would give me the chance to peruse the shelves unmolested by fans, I stepped inside. With a nod to the clerk I began browsing through the fiction section and then the crime section, with the idea that genre books were likely simpler and therefore easier to adapt. My problem was that I didn’t know which ones had already been made into films, which ones had been optioned, which ones were unsuitable for adaptation. Judging by the covers alone, they all looked the same.

  “Are you interested in books in English?” the bookseller asked me in my native language.

  Mildly insulted, I responded in French. “Actually I’m looking for a film property. Do you know offhand whether any of these have been filmed?”

  He shook his head. He was a little jug-eared guy with a tendency to move and speak very quickly, and he speed-walked to the back of the store. “No idea. They usually change the titles for the cinema, and they don’t always put out a movie edition.” He pulled a book from a table. “Here, I’m going to make you a gift of this one.”

  He opened the book up and, whipping a fountain pen out of his shirt pocket, signed the title page and handed it to me.

  “Thanks very much,” I said, puzzled and a bit nonplussed at his willingness to hand over store property to a stranger.

  “I’m the author,” he said, and upon examination of the back flap I found a photographic portrait of the small, bespectacled man before me. Frédéric LaForge, according to the title page.

  “What sort of book is it?” I asked, thinking I might have found my source material.

  “It’s the story of a sexual tourist who travels to Thailand, deliberately gets infected with AIDS, and comes back to France and with equal deliberation infects everyone he can talk into bed, including—especially—his own twin sister.”

  “His twin sister.”

  “Right. It’s the guilt from their incestuous affair that leads him to seek out prostitutes.”

  “I imagine it would.” I turned to a page in the middle of the book and read a paragraph at random:

  She came to her usual quick, effortless orgasm, that chipmunk-like yelp I had loved hearing since adolescence, and I gave some thought to delivering her death sentence just at that moment. But something in her eyes as she looked into mine—call it love, call it nostalgia, call it an unconscious plea for a reprieve—made me withdraw and shoot my viscous poison harmlessly onto her belly instead.

  Sadly, this seemed exactly like the kind of art-house movie I had no interest in making. But that didn’t mean that my new friend didn’t have it in him to write a decent popcorn movie. “Is this your first novel?” I asked.

  “It is. I have another I’m two-thirds of the way through, about a brother and sister who murder their parents and have to struggle to be reunited after the juvenile justice system separates them.”

  Someday I’ll have to meet this guy’s sister, I thought, she must be a real firecracker. “Have you ever written for the cinema?” I asked.

  “No. I’m a prose artist, strictly.”

  “That’s too bad, because thumbing through here I can see that you have a way with dialogue, and I’m looking for a collaborator on a film project.”

  He shrugged and frowned, eyes on the hardwood floor of the bookshop. “I suppose screenwriting is a craft like any other sort of writing . . .”

  I handed him the hotel’s card and wrote on the back the name I was staying under. “Give me a call in a day or two and we’ll knock some ideas around,” I said.

  •••

  That night I dined alone in a restaurant near the Palais Royal, an old favorite of mine on a narrow side street connecting the rue de Richelieu and the rue Montpensier. The food was excellent, the service attentive without being obsequious—which is sometimes a problem for the famous—and over a sumptuous cassoulet I was taken back to my college days and the two summers I spent here, during which this restaurant was a weekly indulgence, an escape from dormitory food. The place was under different management now, and I wondered what had become of the couple who once ran it—the wife was one of those women one sees only in France, plain to the point of being nearly homely, and yet possessed of an erotic energy that attracted me back Wednesday after Wednesday as much as the food itself.

  I got into a fight in that neighborhood once, during one of those university summers. One of my countrymen had had a few too many beers and was making a spectacle of himself and, in my youthful opinion, was casting a bad light on Americans in general. Having downed a few myself, I told him to shut the fuck up. He and his friends approached me, sneering, and I brought him to his knees with a quick left-right combination, upon which I shoved his two comrades together head-first, then brought them to the ground with a pair of uppercuts.

  Was I proud as I strode off that night? I wasn’t. I felt I’d just proven that I’d learned nothing from my unfortunate experience in the military, that my supposed commitment to pacifism was just a veneer that might be lifted at any moment when I saw an opportunity for violence.

  Now, years later, dining tranquilly in that same neighborhood, I felt a calm and a sense of well-being. It had taken time, but I had learned those lessons. The days of my striking first were behind me.

  •••

  Seated at a table across the dining room was a pair of women who looked like they might be sisters, whispering to one another and occasionally sneaking a glance in my direction and giggling. They were attractive, in their late twenties and stylishly dressed, and they finished eating at the same time as I did, so I invited them back to my hotel for a nightcap. They accepted.

  LUNDI, DEUX MAI

  SISTERS THEY INDEED TURNED OUT TO BE, and they didn’t leave my suite until after eleven in the morning, after a rather sumptuous room service breakfast, American style with scrambled eggs and bacon. I had always fantasized about doing a pair of sisters (preferably twins; you can’t have everything), and like so many fantasies, the real thing was a bit of a letdown. I won’t deny that it was fun, but no more so than going to bed with any other pair of women.

  When they were gone I checked my e-mails and found only one I cared to open, from some misguided soul who wanted to write a biographical piece on me for an encyclopedia of American television actors. Though I suspected it to be a prank, I sat down and wrote a wholly fictional autobiographical sketch that suited the image I wished to project:

  Born July 19—, Newport, R.I. Graduated magna cum laude from Exeter. Graduated from Harvard University with a Bachelor of Arts in literary criticism, followed by a PhD from MIT in particle physics. Widowed at the age of twenty-seven in a car wreck on honeymoon, never recovered emot
ionally, turned to acting as a form of therapy.

  I sent it off and wondered what my fans’ reaction would be if they knew the truth. Would they be able to reconcile the suave, seductive, intellectual man of medicine with the low-born hell-raiser of my youth? Hell, they’d probably eat it up; people love a hint of scandal, particularly when it involves obstacles overcome. But they weren’t going to find out about it.

  •••

  Late in the afternoon I took a stroll through the Tuileries to clear my head and perhaps come up with a workable idea. Approaching the Grand Bassin I crossed paths with a pretty, dark-haired girl in her early twenties, dressed in clothes too bulky to say what her body looked like but whose saucy expression made me stop. She pulled a small camera from her purse and dangled it from its strap.

  “Do you mind?” she asked in English. “No one’s going to believe I saw you.”

  “I don’t mind at all,” I answered in French, and I gave her the sexiest, most insouciant smirk I could manage (and the sexy, insouciant smirk is my trademark). When she was done taking the pictures I pointed out that it was the cocktail hour, and I wondered where she was off to in such a hurry.

  “Going to meet my boyfriend for a movie.”

  “Could I interest you in postponing that movie and joining me for a drink?”

  She pretended to consider it, then pulled out her cell phone to call the boyfriend and lie about an exam she had to study for. Three minutes later we grabbed a taxi on the rue de Rivoli and headed for my hotel’s bar.

  •••

  Her name was Annick, she was a graduate student in American literature, and she was working on a visa application for a year’s study in the USA. I offered any help I could provide and spoke of my own youthful experiences in Paris, without mentioning how many years ago that had been (suffice it to say that the lovely Annick hadn’t been born yet).