— Check, she smiled, raising a glass of gin to her lips.
— Would you say you were close? I asked, then realizing how I sounded, quickly apologized. — Sorry, ma’am, I’m soundin like a local DA here. I guess I’m just tryin to understand your relationship.
She smiled at me, and settled back into the chair like a big cat, content with her drink and her audience of one. — Honey, as you said, he was number four. I’ve married for love, sex, and money but by the time you’re on your fourth your expectations are pretty low.
— Companionship?
She flinched a little, then screwed up her face. — God, I hate that word. But it’s probably as good as any, she conceded and in her voice and expression I could, for the first time, sense bitterness toward Glen Halliday.
— What did you know about his work as a filmmaker?
— Not a whole bunch, she said, takin another sip of her drink then raisin her eyebrows over the glass in classic lush style. — As you well know Glen was an independent, and I’m strictly a Burt Reynolds girl. Poor darling never had anything, he had to scrape and hustle for every dime to make his damned movies. Thought that I was money, I reckon.
I gotta say that at this point I found it hard to see Glen Halliday, Mr Integrity himself, cast as a gold digger. I’d seen him lecturing to NYU students at Hunter College, and again at Sundance, sharing a platform with Clint Eastwood. Both times he spoke with such passion and certainty. I couldn’t see him as a gigolo, man-whoring his weary ol ass to get a picture made.
I guess it must’ve showed in my face as Yolanda felt moved to elaborate. — He got plenty pissed at me when I wouldn’t sell this place.
This place was nice enough if you liked that kinda thing. But I was thinkin that if I had that ol gal’s money I sure as shit wouldn’t be spending the last of my days dryin out in the desert. I decided to digress and I asked her, — You pretty much settled here then, Yolanda?
Maybe it was just the liquor kickin in but I swear the wattage on her grin upped a little. — Pretty much. Oh, don’t get me wrong, it ain’t nothing special but it’s got memories. Besides, it was Humphrey’s legacy. He was my first husband and my one true love, she explained with a peachy glow. — When I pass on this’ll go to our son… he lives over in Florida. Humphrey Marston was the one I never managed to replace, and she gave a faraway smile, — the rest never even came close.
Ol Yolanda’s wrinkled lips pursed round the slice of lemon in the gin. She sorta sucked it up and kinda kissed it, before lettin it fall back into the glass. By now I was startin to get a little restless. I was sure that Humphrey was a fine man, but my business was with the other guy. — So about Glen, he was broke when you married him?
Yolanda looked a little bored, then she refreshed her glass, the act of doing so seemin to enliven her. — You know the type of films he made, she said impatiently, then softened a little. — I mean, he made them for love, not money. Anything he earned for him went on drink. A terrible lush, and such a bad drunk. My third husband Larry, Larry Briggs, he was the one before Glen, now there was a good drunk, she roared in celebration of the memory. — He wrote checks when he was loaded, bought gifts, pressed flesh, her voice dropped, — in bed he was just about the hottest darned thing… Her hand rose to her jaw. — This big mouth of mine, she cooed in a kind of simulated embarrassment.
I have to confess that I did find something mighty fetchin about her little performance, and I weren’t shy about lettin her know it. — Don’t worry, ma’am, as we say back in Texas, this ain’t my first rodeo.
She slapped her thighs and I tried not to stare at the seismic activity that followed, as she burst into uproarious laughter. — I’ll bet it ain’t. You got that look in your eye! You’re gonna ask me about Glen in the sack… right?
— Ma’am, I would never presume… I protested, then I conceded, — but seein as you mentioned it n all…
And as those words fell from my mouth, I swear that, there and then, I could feel the extent of my betrayal. What in hell’s name was I doing? This was one of the great masters of American independent cinema. Up there with the likes of Cassavetes or Sayles. I wanted to write a tribute to an important, admired, and inspirational artist who’d help drag me from the sleazepits and here I was indulgin in the kinda smut I thought I’d escaped five years ago. When I was shootin those porn flicks from that San Fernando Valley lockup, just to pay the bills.
Two long years in the Valley wrecked things between me and Jill. I recall her sayin to me in one of our lush discussions, — You spend so much time shootin pussy, you don’t wanna fuck it no more.
Poor gal was only half right. Cause I certainly did, but the problem was that that shit was on offer all day long. By the time I got home I guess I’d had my fill of it, but I could always use another drink. That might be oversimplifyin the matter somewhat, but I do believe that there’s something about being around all that meat and sweat that sucks the soul right out of a man. I know that there are some people who can work in that industry a long stretch and just wash its stink off every night, but I certainly wasn’t one of them. On the plus side I sure learned how to light a set and frame a shot.
But there I was in the Valley, a stupid, still youngish guy who should have been like a kid in a candy store, but I was miserable as a coyote with hemorrhoids and two bust back legs. Then, durin some downtime, I walked into a fleapit cinema on Hollywood Boulevard where I took in The Liars of Ditchwater Creek, Halliday’s portrait of a West Texas town similar to the one I grew up in. That was it. I was hooked. Walking out from that ol picture house exhilarated, I wanted to do what Halliday was doing. Still do. It was both my salvation and my torment.
— Glen was fine at first, a real Texan bull as I recall, Yolanda grinned a little then let her expression dissolve into a wry smile. — But like most men it didn’t last.
I didn’t reckon that she was diggin me out; at that point I’d told her little about my own life, but I guess it was hard not to hear echoes of Jill’s bitter asides of the latter months in her voice. I tried to remain impassive and waited for her to carry on.
— I didn’t have no luck with men, she told me in a sad lament, her mood evidently mirrorin my own. — Humphrey Marston, he was a lot older than me, but he was about the only one of them who left me with anything other than bills. This is his place, sat right on this big aquifer.
That word again. I looked a little dumbfounded, and it must have showed as she raised her eyebrows at me. — Ma’am, excuse my ignorance, but I’m gonna have to ask you what an aquifer is. I’m figurin some kinda underground lake?
— You got it in a nutshell, she explained, topping up her drink. — The developers were always knocking on our door with big checks in their hands, but Humphrey reckoned the water was an asset worth keeping. Twenty-odd years ago, before they brought the stuff down from the mountains, there was enough of it here to keep a few new housing developments and a golf course going for years. But their money didn’t interest Humphrey. So the developers and the state fought dirty; tried all sorts of ways to get their hands on it. Humphrey was a very gentle fella, but he could be as stubborn as a mule; took em all the way and whopped their asses in court every time.
— Good ol Humphrey, I smiled and raised my glass to toast him. I was likin this ol boy more all the time.
Yolanda reached over and clinked glasses with me, killed her gin and refueled. With her back to me, I watched the dimpled hams spill out from under that one-piece as she poured. I looked away as she turned around, drink in hand. — He inherited the place from his father who wanted him to work it. But all he was interested in was animals, she explained. — He took his bachelor’s degree in zoology…