And when I arrived in Los Angeles, Robbie Pantoliano, Adolfo Pantoliano’s brother, was waiting for me at the airport, and as soon as I saw Robbie I could tell he was a gentleman, quite the opposite of his brother Adolfo (may he rest in peace or do his time in purgatory, I wouldn’t wish hell on anyone), and outside there was a limousine waiting for me, the kind you only see in Los Angeles, not even in New York, only in Beverly Hills or Orange County, and we went to the place they’d rented for me, a unit by the beach, it was small but sweet, and Robbie and his secretary Ronnie stayed to help me unpack my bags (though I said really I’d prefer to do it on my own) and explain how everything worked in the unit, as if I didn’t know what a microwave oven was — Americans are like that sometimes, so nice they end up being rude — and then they put on a video so I could see the actors I’d be working with: Shane Bogart, who I knew already from a movie I’d done with Robbie’s brother; Bull Edwards, I didn’t know him; Darth Krecick, the name rang a bell; Jennifer Pullman, another stranger to me, and so on, three or four others, and then Robbie and Ronnie left me on my own, and I double locked the doors as they had insisted I must, and then I took a bath, wrapped myself in a black bathrobe and looked for an old movie on TV, something to relax me completely, and at some point I fell asleep there on the sofa. The next day we started shooting. It was all so different from the way I remembered it. In two weeks we made four movies in all, with more or less the same team, and working for Robbie Pantoliano was like playing and working at the same time; it was like one of those day trips that office workers and bureaucrats organize in Italy, especially in Rome: once a year they all go out to the country for a meal and leave the office and its worries behind, but this was better, the sun was better, and the apartments and the sea, and catching up with the girls I’d known before, and the atmosphere on the set: debauched but fresh, the way it should be, and I think it came up when I was talking with Shane Bogart and one of the girls, the way things had changed, and naturally, for a start, I put it down to the death of Adolfo Pantoliano, who was a thug and a crook of the worst kind, a guy who had no respect, not even for his own long-suffering whores; when a bastard like that disappears, you’re bound to notice the difference, but Shane Bogart said no, it wasn’t that; Pantoliano’s death, which had come as a relief, even to his own brother, was just a detail in the bigger picture, the industry was undergoing major changes, he said, because of a combination of apparently unrelated factors: money, new players coming in from other sectors, the disease, the demand for a product that would be different but not too different; then they started talking about money and the way a lot of porn stars were crossing over to the regular movie industry at the time, but I wasn’t listening, I was thinking back to what they’d said about the disease, and remembering Jack Holmes, who’d been California’s number one porn star just a few years before, and when we finished up that day I said to Robbie and Ronnie that I’d like to find out how Jack Holmes was doing, and asked them if they had his number, if he was still living in Los Angeles. And although Robbie and Ronnie thought it was a crazy idea at first, eventually they gave me Jack’s phone number and told me to call him if that’s what I wanted to do, but not to expect him to be coherent, or to hear the voice I remembered from the old days. That night I had dinner with Robbie and Ronnie and Sharon Grove, who had crossed over to horror and even claimed that she was going to be in the next Carpenter or Clive Barker film, which annoyed Ronnie, hearing those two lumped together, because, for him, only a handful of directors came anywhere near Carpenter, and Danny Lo Bello was there at the dinner too — I had a thing with him when we were working together in Milan — and Patricia Page, his eighteen-year-old wife, who only worked in Danny’s movies, with a contract stipulating that only her husband was allowed to penetrate her, with the other guys she just sucked their cocks, and even that she did reluctantly; the directors weren’t too happy with her, and according to Robbie sooner or later she’d either have to change careers or her and Danny would have to come up with some really sensational numbers. So there I was, having dinner in one of the best restaurants in Venice Beach, looking out at the sea, exhausted after a hard day’s work, not paying much attention to the lively conversation at our table — I was miles away, thinking of Jack Holmes, remembering the way he looked: a very tall, thin guy with a long nose and long, hairy arms like the arms of an ape, but what kind of ape would Jack have been? An ape in captivity, no doubt about that, a melancholy ape or maybe the ape of melancholy, which might seem like the same thing but it’s not, and when dinner was over, it wasn’t too late for me to call Jack at home — people have dinner early in California, sometimes they finish before it gets dark — I couldn’t wait any longer, I don’t know what came over me, I asked Robbie for his cell phone and took myself off to a sort of jetty, all made of wood, a kind of miniature wooden pier exclusively for tourists, with waves breaking under it, long, low, almost foamless waves that took an eternity to dissipate, and I phoned Jack Holmes. I honestly didn’t expect him to answer. At first I didn’t recognize his voice, it was like Robbie said, and he didn’t recognize mine either. It’s me, I said, Joanna Silvestri, I’m in Los Angeles. Jack was quiet for a long time and all of a sudden I realized I was shaking, the telephone was shaking, the wooden jetty was shaking, the wind had turned cold, the wind that was blowing between the jetty’s pilings and ruffling the surface of those interminable, darkening waves, and then Jack said, It’s been such a long time, Joanna, great to hear your voice, and I said, It’s great to hear yours, Jack, and then I stopped shaking and stopped looking down and looked at the horizon, the lights of the restaurants along the beach — red, blue, yellow — which seemed sad at first but comforting too, and then Jack said, When can I see you, Joannie, and I didn’t realize straightaway that he had called me Joannie, for a couple of seconds I was floating on air like I was high or weaving a chrysalis around myself, but then I realized and laughed and Jack knew why I was laughing without needing to ask or needing me to tell him anything. Whenever you like, Jack, I replied. Well, he said, I don’t know if you’ve heard that I’m not as well as I used to be. Are you on your own, Jack? Yes, he said, I’m always on my own. Then I hung up and asked Robbie and Ronnie how to get to Jack’s place, and they said I was bound to get lost, and shouldn’t even think of spending the night because we were shooting early the next day, and I probably wouldn’t be able to get a taxi to take me there, Jack lived near Monrovia, in a shabby old bungalow that was practically falling down, and I told them I wanted to go see Jack however hard it might be, and Robbie said, Take my Porsche, you can have it as long as you turn up on time tomorrow, and I kissed Ronnie and Robbie and got into the Porsche and started driving through the streets of Los Angeles, which had just begun to succumb to the night, the cloak of night falling, like in a song by Nicola Di Bari, or the wheels of the night rolling on, and I didn’t want to put on any music, though I have to admit I was tempted by Robbie’s sound system — CD or laser-disc or ultrasound or something — but I didn’t need music, it was enough to step on the accelerator and feel the hum of the engine; I must have got lost at least a dozen times, and the hours went by and every time I asked someone the best way to get to Monrovia I felt freer, like I didn’t care if I spent the whole night driving around in the Porsche, and twice I even caught myself singing, and finally I got to Pasadena, and from there I took Highway 210 to Monrovia, where I spent another hour looking for Jack’s place, and when I found his bungalow, after midnight, I sat in the car for a while, unable and unwilling to get out, looking at myself in the mirror, with my hair in a mess and my face as well, my eyeliner had run and my lipstick was smudged and there was dust from the road on my cheeks, as if I’d run all the way and not come in Robbie Pantoliano’s Porsche, or as if I’d been crying, but in fact my eyes were dry (a little bit red, maybe, but dry), and my hands were steady and I felt like laughing, as if my food at the beachside restaurant had been spiked with some kind of drug, and I’d only just realized and accepted that I was high or extremely happy. And then I got out of the car, put on the alarm — it didn’t feel like a very safe neighborhood — and headed for the bungalow, which matched Robbie’s description: a little house crying out for a coat of paint, with a rickety porch; a pile of boards that was practically falling down, but next to it there was a swimming pool, and although it was very small, the water was clean, I could see that straightaway because the pool light was on; I remember thinking that Jack had given up waiting for me or had fallen asleep, because there were no lights on in the house; the boards on the porch creaked under my feet; there was no bell, so I knocked twice on the door, first with my knuckles and then with the palm of my hand, and a light came on, I could hear someone saying something inside, and then the door opened and Jack appeared on the threshold, taller than ever, thinner than ever, and said, Joannie? as if he didn’t recognize me or still hadn’t completely woken up, and I said, Yes, Jack, it’s me, it was hard to find you but I found you in the end, and we hugged. That night we talked until three in the morning and Jack fell asleep at least twice during the conversation. Although he looked drained and weak, he was making an effort to keep his eyes open. But in the end he was just too tired and he said he was going to bed. I don’t have a spare room, Joannie, he said, so you choose: my bed or the sofa. Your bed, I said, with you. Good, he said, let’s go. He took a bottle of tequila and we went to his bedroom. I hadn’t seen such a messy room for years. Do you have an alarm clock? I asked him. No, Joannie, there are no clocks in this house, he said. Then he switched off the light, took off his clothes and got into bed. I stood there watching him, not moving. Then I went to the window and opened the curtains, hoping that the light of dawn would wake me up. When I got into bed, Jack seemed to be asleep, but he wasn’t, he drank another shot of tequila and then he said something I couldn’t understand. I put my hand on his stomach and stroked it until he fell asleep. Then I moved my hand down a bit and touched his cock, which was big and cold like a python. A few hours later I woke up, took a shower, made breakfast, and I even had time to tidy up the living room and the kitchen a bit. We had breakfast in bed. Jack seemed happy that I was there, but all he had was coffee. I said I’d come back that evening, I told him to expect me, I wouldn’t be late this time, and he said, I’ve got nothing to do Joannie, you can come whenever you like. It was almost like saying, It’s OK if you never come back, I knew that, but I decided that Jack needed me and that I needed him too. Who are you working with? he asked. Shane Bogart, I said. He’s a good kid, said Jack. We worked together once, I think it was when he was just starting out in the business; he’s enthusiastic, and he doesn’t like to make trouble. Yeah, he’s a good kid, I said. And where are you working? In Venice? Yeah, I said, in the same old house. But you know old Adolfo got killed? Of course I know, Jack, that was years ago. I haven’t been working much lately, he said. Then I gave him a kiss, a schoolgirl’s kiss on his narrow, chapped lips, and I left. The trip back was much quicker; the sun was running with me, the California morning sun, which has a metallic edge to it. And from then on, after each day of shooting, I’d go to Jack’s house or we’d go out together; Jack had an old station wagon and I rented a two-seater Alfa Romeo, and we’d drive off into the mountains, to Redlands, and then on Highway 10 to Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Indio, until we got to the Salton Sea, which is a lake, not a sea (and not a very pretty one either), where we ate macrobiotic food, that’s what Jack was eating then, for his health, he said, and one day we stepped on the gas in my Alfa and drove to Calipatria, to the southeast of the Salton Sea, and went to see a friend of Jack’s who lived in a bungalow that was even more run-down than the one Jack lived in, Graham Monroe was the guy’s name, but his wife and Jack called him Mezcalito, I don’t know why, maybe because he was partial to mescal, though all they drank while we were there was beer (I didn’t have any — beer is fattening), and the three of them went and sunbathed behind the bungalow and hosed each other down, and I put on my bikini and watched them, I prefer not to get too much sun, my skin’s very fair and I like to take care of it, but even though I stayed in the shade and didn’t let them wet me with the hose, I was glad to be there, watching Jack, his legs were much thinner than I remembered, and his chest seemed to have sunken in, only his cock was the same, and his eyes too, but no, the only thing that hadn’t changed was the great jackhammer, as the ads for his movies used to say, the ram that battered Marilyn Chambers’ ass; the rest of him, including his eyes, was fading as fast as my Alfa Romeo flying down the Aguanga Valley or across the Desert State Park lit by the glow of a moribund Sunday. I think we made love a couple of times. Jack had lost interest. He said after so many movies he was worn out. No one’s ever told me that before, I said. I like watching TV, Joannie, and reading mysteries. You mean horror stories? No, just mysteries, he said, with detectives, especially the ones where the hero dies at the end. But that never happens, I said. Of course it does, little sister, in old pulp novels you can buy by the pound. Actually, I didn’t see any books in his house, except for a medical reference book and three of those pulp novels he’d mentioned, which he must have read over and over again. One night, maybe the second night I spent at his house, or the third — Jack was as slow as a snail when it came to opening up and telling secrets — while we were drinking wine by the pool, he said he probably didn’t have long to live: You know how it is, Joannie, when your time’s up, your time’s up. I wanted to shout, Make love to me, let’s get married, let’s have a kid or adopt an orphan or buy a pet and a trailer and go traveling through California and Mexico — I guess I was tired and a bit drunk, it must have been a hard day on the set — but I didn’t say anything, I just shifted uneasily in my deck chair, looked at the lawn that I’d mowed myself, drank some more wine, and waited for Jack to go on and say the words that had to come next, but that was all he said. We made love that night for the first time in so long. It was very hard to get Jack going, his body wasn’t working anymore, only his will was still working, but he insisted on wearing a condom, a condom for that cock of his, as if any condom could hold it, at least it gave us a bit of a laugh, and in the end, we both lay on our sides, and he put his long, thick, flaccid cock between my legs, kissed me sweetly and fell asleep, but I stayed awake for ages, with the strangest ideas passing through my mind; there were moments when I felt sad and cried without making a sound so as not to wake him up or break our embrace, and there were moments when I felt happy, and I cried then too and hiccupped, not even trying to restrain myself, squeezing Jack’s cock between my thighs and listening to his breathing, saying: Jack, I know you’re pretending to be asleep, Jack, open your eyes and kiss me, but Jack went on sleeping or pretending to sleep, and I went on watching the thoughts race through my mind as if across a movie screen, flashing past, like a plow or a red tractor going a hundred miles an hour, leaving me almost no time to think, not that thinking was high on my list of priorities, and then there were moment