Finally, maybe six weeks after Helen came up with the offer, I mentioned casually to Bradley that I was thinking it over again. That was all he needed. He was off, making phone calls and arrangements, shouting a lot and getting excited. To give him his due, he was true to his word: he did all the go-between stuff so I didn’t have to have a single humiliating conversation with Helen, let alone with Prendergast. At times Bradley even managed to create the illusion he was negotiating a deal for me, that it was me who had something to sell. Even so, I was having doubts several times each day. When it happened, it happened suddenly. Bradley called to say Dr. Boris had a last-minute cancellation and I had to get myself to a particular address by three-thirty that same afternoon with all my bags packed. Maybe I had some final jitters at that point, because I remember Bradley yelling down the phone at me to pull myself together, that he was coming to get me himself, and then I was being driven up winding roads to a big house in the Hollywood Hills and put under anesthetic, just like a character in a Raymond Chandler story.
After a couple of days I was brought down here, to this Beverly Hills hotel, by the back entrance under cover of dark, and wheeled down this corridor, so exclusive we’re sealed off entirely from all the regular life of the hotel.
THE FIRST WEEK, my face was painful and the anesthetic in my system made me nauseous. I had to sleep propped up on pillows, which meant I didn’t sleep much at all, and because my nurse insisted on keeping the room dark all the time, I lost sense of what hour of the day it was. Even so, I didn’t feel at all bad. In fact, I felt exhilarated and optimistic. I felt complete confidence in Dr. Boris, who was after all a guy in whose hands movie stars placed their entire careers. What’s more, I knew that with me he’d completed his masterpiece; that on seeing my loser’s face, he’d felt his deepest ambitions stir, remembered why he’d chosen his vocation in the first place, and put everything into it and more. When the bandages came off, I could look forward to a cleanly chiseled face, slightly brutal, yet full of nuance. A guy with his reputation, after all, would have thought through carefully the requirements of a serious jazz musician, and not confused them with, say, those of a TV anchorman. He may even have put in something to give me that vaguely haunted quality, kind of like the young De Niro, or like Chet Baker before the drugs ravaged him. I thought about the albums I’d make, the line-ups I’d hire to back me. I felt triumphant and couldn’t believe I’d ever hesitated about the move.
Then came the second week, when the effect of the drugs wore off, and I felt depressed, lonely and cheap. My nurse, Gracie, now let a little more light into the room-though she kept the blinds at least halfway down-and I was allowed to walk about the room in my dressing gown. So I put one CD after another into the Bang & Olufsen and went round and round the carpet, now and then stopping in front of the dressing-table mirror to inspect the weird bandaged monster gazing back through peephole eyes.
It was during this phase that Gracie first told me Lindy Gardner was next door. Had she brought this news in my earlier, euphoric phase, I’d have greeted it with delight. I might even have taken it as the first indicator of the glamorous life I was now headed for. Coming when it did though, just as I was falling into my trough, the news filled me with such disgust it set off another bout of nausea. If you’re one of Lindy’s many admirers, I apologise for what’s coming up here. But the fact was, at that moment, if there was one figure who epitomised for me everything that was shallow and sickening about the world, it was Lindy Gardner: a person with negligible talent-okay, let’s face it, she’s demonstrated she can’t act, and she doesn’t even pretend to have musical ability-but who’s managed all the same to become famous, fought over by TV networks and glossy magazines who can’t get enough of her smiling features. I went past a bookstore earlier this year and saw a snaking line and wondered if someone like Stephen King was around, and here it turns out to be Lindy signing copies of her latest ghosted autobiography. And how was this all achieved? The usual way, of course. The right love affairs, the right marriages, the right divorces. All leading to the right magazine covers, the right talk shows, then stuff like that recent thing she had on the air, I don’t remember its name, where she gave advice about how to dress for that first big date after your divorce, or what to do if you suspect your husband is gay, all of that. You hear people talk about her “star quality,” but the spell’s easy enough to analyse. It’s the sheer accumulation of TV appearances and glossy covers, of all the photos you’ve seen of her at premieres and parties, her arm linked to legendary people. And now here she was, right next door, recovering just like me from a face job by Dr. Boris. No other news could have symbolised more perfectly the scale of my moral descent. The week before, I’d been a jazz musician. Now I was just another pathetic hustler, getting my face fixed in a bid to crawl after the Lindy Gardners of this world into vacuous celebrity.
The next few days, I tried to pass the time reading, but couldn’t concentrate. Under the bandages, parts of my face throbbed awfully, others itched like hell and I had bouts of feeling hot and claustrophobic. I longed to play my sax, and the thought that it would be weeks yet until I could put my facial muscles under that kind of pressure made me even more despondent. In the end, I worked out the best way to get through the day was to alternate listening to CDs with spells of staring at sheet music-I’d brought the folder of charts and lead sheets I worked with in my cubicle-and humming improvisations to myself.
It was towards the end of the second week, when I was starting to feel a little better both physically and mentally, my nurse handed me an envelope with a knowing smile, saying: “Now that ain’t something you’ll get every day.” Inside was a page of hotel notepaper, and since I’ve got it right here beside me, I’ll quote it just the way it came.
Gracie tells me you’re getting weary of this high life. I’m that way too. How about you come and visit? If five o’clock tonight isn’t too early for cocktails? Dr. B. says no alcohol, I expect same for you. So looks like club sodas and Perrier. Curse him! See you at five or I’ll be heartbroken. Lindy Gardner.
Maybe it was because I’d become so bored by this point; or just that my mood was on the up again; or that the thought of having a fellow prisoner to swap stories with was extremely appealing. Or maybe I wasn’t so immune myself to the glamor thing. In any case, despite everything I felt about Lindy Gardner, when I read this, I felt a tingle of excitement, and I found myself telling Gracie to let Lindy know I’d be over at five.
LINDY GARDNER HAD ON even more bandages than I did. I’d at least been left an opening at the top, from which my hair sprang up like palms in a desert oasis. But Boris had encased the whole of Lindy’s head so it was a contoured coconut shape, with slots only for eyes, nose and mouth. What had happened to all that luxuriant blonde hair, I didn’t know. Her voice, though, wasn’t as constricted as you’d expect, and I recognised it from the times I’d seen her on TV.
“So how are you finding all this?” she asked. When I replied I wasn’t finding it too bad, she said: “Steve. May I call you Steve? I’ve heard all about you from Gracie.”
“Oh? I hope she left out the bad part.”
“Well, I know you’re a musician. And a very promising one too.”
“She told you that?”
“Steve, you’re tense. I want you to relax when you’re with me. Some famous people, I know, they like the public to be tense around them. Makes them feel all the more special. But I hate that. I want you to treat me just like I’m one of your regular friends. What were you telling me? You were saying you don’t mind this so much.”