Where Are You, Echo Blue?, page 11
PRICILLA
I told you I don’t want a milkshake.
MALCOLM
I ordered you a milkshake, so you’re going to drink it.
PRICILLA takes a long swig, staring daggers at Malcolm. She drinks half, then gets up and jumps in the pool. Under the water, life is clearer.
When she comes up for air, the actress is sitting in her lounge chair, talking to Malcolm. He’s smiling, talking animatedly.
Pricilla gets out and stands between the two of them, her body dripping wet all over the script on the lounge chair.
MALCOLM
Jesus, Pricilla, you’re ruining the fucking script.
ACTRESS
I should go back to my friends.
MALCOLM
No, stay, stay.
But Malcolm is slurring, trying to dry off the script with a towel.
Malcolm nudges Pricilla to the side. He’s a little too rough and she trips over herself.
MALCOLM
Are you okay, honey?
(to the actress)
She’s always in the middle of everything.
(to Pricilla)
Why don’t you go back in the pool and play?
ACTRESS
I didn’t realize you had a kid.
MALCOLM
She’s not really my kid; she’s more like my protégé.
Pricilla fumes.
MALCOLM
What’s gotten into you?
PRICILLA
You. Will you ever be a man?
That was odd. In the movie, she threw the milkshake. Broken glass everywhere. And the line she recited, that she won the Oscar for, that brought tears to your eyes in the theater, that made the audience want to strangle Jamie Blue (his character, not him, of course) was “Will you ever be a father?”
So why did the script read, “Will you ever be a man?”
I looked up on the page. Next to Malcolm’s line, where he says, “She’s not really my kid,” there’s an arrow, then handwriting: Does he mean this? I could see her sitting by the pool at the Chateau Marmont, the castle hovering and the lush gardens like a curtain behind her, as she trailed her finger across her lines, carefully reading and concentrating, trying to digest the words, questioning, sinking herself into the character. Then in the bottom corner of that page in tiny letters: Rejection, rejection, rejection.
What was the rejection? She must have been getting in character. No one could’ve played this part like Echo…unless maybe she wasn’t acting.
My stomach growled, taking me out of the moment. I didn’t know the last time I ate. I felt crazed.
I couldn’t let go of this script. I couldn’t put it back into the library for everyone to see how vulnerable this creature (she was just a child!) was.
I slid the script in my bag and sat there for a few minutes humming softly to make sure no one saw me. Only one other person was in the room with me, a tall guy with a beard wearing a green winter cap and hoarding the Tarantino scripts. We exchanged a look of tacit agreement that we would ignore each other. As I walked out of the room, I passed a shelf of Danielle Steels and grabbed two as a distraction.
I dropped them by the librarian’s desk and told her I’d be right back for them. She said it was no problem, smiling warmly.
For a split second, I wondered if the scripts had some security tag on them—the whole script library seemed so loosey-goosey, running under the honor system. Back in New York, you couldn’t get out of any reference room without a guard checking your bag.
I found Shane in the architecture section. He was kneeling on the floor, books spread out all over the puke-green carpet.
“Who knew this place was so great?” he said in a quiet library voice.
I grabbed his arm and pulled him up.
“We have to go.”
“Can I at least check out? Or put the books back?”
“No, you can’t put the books back. Don’t you know that librarians hate that? They hate when people put the books back because they always put them in the wrong place.”
“That can’t be right.”
I took his hand; my palm was so sweaty, but it didn’t matter, because my excitement was boiling over. When I reached my hand inside the bag and touched the script, I could feel a whole-body shiver ride up my belly, not unlike an orgasm, and I couldn’t wait to get back to Dolly’s casita to flip through it for more small notes and stains. I can’t explain what it meant for me to find something I wanted so badly, how immediate it now felt. It had Echo’s essence. She was all over it. Outside, I turned to Shane, my adrenaline pumping, and I kissed him passionately, with tongue, right there on the sidewalk.
I grabbed his hand, marched past the eucalyptus trees and back to his cab, which was parked next to Maguire Gardens. The purple flowers from the jacarandas hung down around the taxicab like some trippy psychedelic movie. I scrambled in the back, pulling my jeans off, then Shane climbed in and I dragged him on top of me. Hurry, hurry, I was whispering, sounding possessed, but I didn’t care. I unzipped his jeans and pulled out his penis, it was hard, and Jesus, Shane was physically beautiful. I wondered again how he was not famous yet for that hair and jaw alone. “If you don’t put your cock inside me, I’m going to die,” I said.
I had fucked in a car before, but this was different. Shane was trying too hard. I didn’t want to insult him, but his sincerity and all of his questions (“Does this feel good? Is this nice?”) were turnoffs. Who makes love in a cab? You fuck in a cab. So I faked an orgasm, which was fine. I didn’t need to come; I just needed to feel his heavy body on top of me, crushing me. I needed to feel filled up, and I needed it to be over. My fake orgasm got him to come pretty quickly, and he nestled his blond hair into my neck. One day he’d be a movie star, and I’d tell people proudly, Hey, I fucked that guy!
“I really like you,” he whispered into my ear. Gross. I wriggled away.
“Yeah…I wish I weren’t leaving L.A. soon. What a bummer.”
“What if I could help with your story? Would your boss let you stay longer?”
My ears perked up. “I’m sure she would. But it would have to be something really good.” I waited.
His face turned red. “Okay, so, I didn’t want to tell you this, because it seemed like an invasion-of-privacy kind of thing, but I actually know Jamie Blue.”
I shot up in the seat, wiping my hair from my sweaty face.
“Is this a joke? I mean, we already had sex. Are you trying to get anal out of me or something? This is not funny if that’s the case. I take my job very seriously—”
“No, really. I worked with him on a project about six months ago.”
“Jesus Christ,” I said and touched his cheek. “You know him?”
“Well, we did a dog food commercial. I was supposed to play his brother or something. Me, him. Beach. Golden retriever,” he said. “I’m sorry for keeping it from you. Confidentiality and all. But I know I can trust you now.” His whole face lit up. He was excited to tell me. I could see it.
It made me think of all the times I used Echo as a positive sign. If I was having a hard day, and I flipped on the television to one of her movies randomly playing, I’d know things would turn around. Or the time after a brutal deadline that I passed her billboard for Emma on the West Side Highway. Yes, she was one of the most famous actors of the decade and her face was ubiquitous, but that was beside the point. When I needed her, she was there, staring back at me. Now I, of all people, had gotten into a cab with someone who actually knew her father. I’d found her own script with her handwriting. All of it kismet, leading me toward her. Confirmation that I was the one for this story. A tickle went up my whole spine, like someone had injected me with stardust. I almost shrieked. Jamie was someone I never expected to get even close to in my search. Production assistants, has-been co-stars, yes, but Jamie? He was an icon—even if he was now doing dog food commercials. As Echo’s father, he had to be the key to her story. Granted, he very publicly claimed not to know where she was, but maybe there was a secret pact between them. At the very least, I needed to follow up on Olivia Breakers’s allegation, even if I didn’t buy it.
“So,” I said, slowing down. “What do we do now?”
“What do you mean?” His hands were cupping my ass. He didn’t want to leave.
“I know he’s going through a lot right now, but I’d love to meet him,” I said breathlessly. The demand seemed to explode out of my mouth. I grabbed Shane by the shirt. I was desperate. I didn’t care. “I need to meet him.”
“Let me see what I can do,” he said and shook his hair with his big hands. Little crystals of sand, or maybe it was dandruff, tumbled out of it. Attaboy, I wanted to say, slightly disgusted with myself. Now, take me to meet Jamie Blue.
Echo
1993–1994
• • •
22.
Pollyanna was another huge box office hit, taking in $11 million in the first weekend. During the press tour, people kept asking me if it felt great to have a number one movie, and I kept giving the same answer—“It’s amazing” or “It’s so exciting”—with that sickening drop in my stomach. I had learned to be a very good performer. I played the part of a child star, grateful for her abundance of successes.
“I owe it all to my dad,” I would sometimes say, hoping he would get a glimpse of me on ET and swell with pride, or that it would make him happy, how grateful I was for him. If he saw, he didn’t say a thing. I had seen my father drunk more often than I saw him sober over the past year. Matthew, Matthew, the movie he had been working on for a year, the movie that he told everyone was going to be his “masterpiece,” the movie he bet his career on, the movie he put his life on hold for, was a flop.
One reviewer wrote:
The film is shot beautifully, but Jamie Blue is a wreck and looks distracted and annoyed toward the end of the film; you can sense he’s not thinking about his war-hero character, Matthew Cosgrove, and is instead wondering how he got suckered into this long, masturbatory project.
Do I need to go on? My dad was devastated. Now we were both between movies, and I felt uneasy around him. The air in our house felt heavy, tense. Belinda tried to get me out to do “normal” kid stuff with her, but it was such a stupid concept. Everything we did, whether it was going to the mall, a movie, or a football game at her school, was the furthest thing from normal because paparazzi followed me wherever I went. I had to hide my new cigarette habit, which was up to about a pack and a half a day, because you can’t smoke when you’re Echo Blue, Disney’s little princess.
My real escape was at night, when a few of the crew I stayed in touch with from the Pollyanna art department took me to Sin-a-matic on Santa Monica. I would wear a sleeveless silk pink slip, a black bobbed wig, and multicolored paste-on eyelashes. Kids were lined up outside, waiting to get their IDs checked, while I slid by them, unnoticed. Inside, after downing several glasses of Dom, I danced like an animal, sweat saturating the silk.
I smoked so many cigarettes those nights that I’d wake up in the morning with my throat scratchy and coughing up phlegm. Behind me flashed images of naked men sucking on each other’s toes. A tall guy with blond hair and big shoulders who told me he was a model said it was an installation by Tom of Finland. I didn’t know what he was talking about, but it didn’t matter. Except for Desire, a very sweet drag queen who recognized me, escape was attainable.
At least I thought so until my picture showed up with me, no bra, my drenched silk dress, see-through in the photographer’s light, the wig halfway off my head, right there in the L.A. Times dancing side by side with Desire.
“Did you not notice people taking pictures of you?” Hazel demanded.
“Um, no. I thought it was part of the laser light show.”
Hazel threatened everyone I had been with, giving each of their agents a legendary “They’ll never work in this town again” speech.
Around that time, an old picture of Debbie Harry from the ’70s inspired me to get a messy platinum bob with two-toned black chunky strands showing underneath. I wanted it to look reckless, like I was just a regular kid and had come home one day and done it myself. But another thing about my life was that I couldn’t just go to the hairdresser. I had to get permission from Hazel, who had to get permission from the director of Holly and the Hound, who had to get permission from Marty Lyons, the studio exec.
Two weeks later, Tracey Fields, the head of hair and makeup for Holly, got the go-ahead to cut my hair in a shag, slightly below my ears. She dyed it a few shades lighter than my natural blonde, with dark brown hair peeking out underneath. Hazel kept reminding me that she was the one who made this happen. Hazel knew how to get me what I wanted, but it was her way of controlling me. Now I had to give her what she wanted, so I agreed to let E! News take pictures of me in the salon getting my new look. When the segment aired, the very forgettable host squawked into the camera, “Not so little anymore, Echo Blue chops off her blonde locks!” Hazel sat behind me in the mirror, a big grin on her face as Tracey carefully lobbed off my hair. In a moment I was expecting to feel empowered, I was consumed with resentment. It felt like nothing was ever just mine and that it never would be again.
23.
One night when Belinda was at her winter school dance (only enrolled students of her school were allowed to attend), I found my dad on the couch alone watching One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest. He wasn’t usually by himself on a Friday night. An open bottle of vodka sat on the coffee table. “Now this is the kind of role I should be getting,” he said, slurring. “All the good parts disappeared after the seventies.”
“You’re going to get a great role, Daddy. They’re still out there—I know it,” I said, trying to comfort him.
He sat straight up and glared at me. “Like you know everything now, Echo? Because people ate up that saccharine crap Pollyanna? Get real.”
He reached for the bottle of vodka, and it spilled over the table. “Goddammit,” he groaned. He took a big swig and didn’t even bother to wipe it up. I crept to my room to stay out of his way.
As I walked in my bedroom, I heard the sound of breaking glass. I hid in my closet, listening to him bang walls and slam kitchen cabinets, ranting about his failed career. As much as I wanted to call someone to ask for help, I also didn’t want to get him in trouble. So I took a full Klonopin that I had stashed away and fell asleep on my closet floor.
The next morning, he knocked on the door solemnly. “Sorry if I scared you,” he said. “Going through a rough time, honey.” He had huge bags under his eyes.
“You just need some rest, Daddy. You need a facial. You need a celery juice. Should I go ride my bike down to the store to get it?” This wasn’t something I was eager to do because that winter in L.A. was cold and rainy. But I wanted him to be happy.
He touched my face gently.
“Kiddo, I need a good movie. That’s what I need.”
I thought maybe things would change, because every time this happened, he was so apologetic, his eyes always bursting with love the morning after an episode. But it went on like this for weeks with him getting drunk and screaming on the phone to Hazel, calling her horrible names. The one adult who had helped me manage this was Alma, and she recently had to go back to Argentina to take care of her sick mother. I couldn’t risk my mother asking for sole custody if I told her. Our once-a-week visits were fine but I couldn’t live with her. I couldn’t abandon my dad. Not now.
The final straw came when the smear article in Hollywood Hills Magazine facetiously titled “The Prince of Venice Beach” came out. It was supposed to be a glossy home tour, some harmless good publicity that would show my dad at his best. But there was a damning section that went like this:
There’s a portrait of Jamie Blue hanging in the dining room that looks like a Warhol painting.
“Is this a real Warhol?” I ask him.
“I had always wanted a Warhol painting, you know, of myself, the way a lot of iconic actors and celebrities had in the 1970s and 1980s. Jagger, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Muhammad Ali,” Blue says.
Warhol also painted Mao, I think. And Lenin.
“Does this mean it’s a Warhol?” I ask.
“Yeah, it’s a Warhol,” Blue says, and ushers me out of the dining room to the bedroom, where he points to a king-size bed draped in black linen sheets. “I’m supposed to say this is where all the magic happens, right?” Blue laughs.
Except I wonder how funny this is since his teenage daughter’s bedroom is the one right next to his.
And as if that weren’t bad enough, a week later the editor-in-chief called Hazel to tell her they were going to issue a correction in their next publication. The reporter, doing some simple fact-checking, got in touch with the Andy Warhol Foundation, who told him they had no record of Warhol painting Jamie Blue.
My dad went on a tirade. He drank three shots of tequila, then almost an entire bottle of wine, stumbling around the house with the magazine, ranting.
“How was I supposed to know it wasn’t a Warhol? I gave some guy a picture of myself, and they told me Warhol would paint it. It was a friend of your mother’s. She had all these connections back then. How the hell was I supposed to know?”
“Daddy,” I said, and I hugged him. His body was practically limp, and he didn’t hug me back. “I don’t care what they say about you. You’re the greatest actor in my eyes.”
He pushed me away and I tumbled into the couch. I was scared and shielded my body with a pillow, a weird reflex. My dad had never hit me before.
He mumbled about how I’d have to pay the bills now, and then he picked up a black leather Milo Baughman chair (I knew this because he screamed, “A real fucking Milo Baughman. Signed! How do you like that, motherfuckers?”), commanding me to open the sliding glass doors, so I did, panicking. He stomped out to the deck and to the edge of the canal and hurled it in. It made a huge splash, and he stood there watching it sink.
