“No. He wanted to be back making movies when he got out of the slammer. Which is what he did. Went straight back into the business. Made six more huge movies. And he still snorts coke from between the tits of loose women. Bob Graydon’s his name.”
“Isn’t he the one who had an artificial septum put in his nose because he’d had the real thing eaten away by cocaine?”
“That’s Bob. Where’d you hear that?”
“Oh, the National Enquirer probably. I buy them all in case there’s something about you. Not that I believe everything I read — ” she added hurriedly.
“Just the juicy bits.”
“Well after a time you get a feeling about what’s true and what’s not true.”
“Care to give me an example?”
“No.”
“Go on.”
“That’s not fair. I’m screwed whatever I say. No! Wait! Here’s one! About two years ago they said you were going into a private hospital in Montreal to have your ding-a-ling enlarged.”
“My ding-a-ling!”
“You know what I mean.”
“Do you say ding-a-ling to Arnie? It is Arnie, isn’t it?”
“Yes it’s Arnie and no I don’t say ding-a-ling.”
“Tell me about him.”
“There isn’t much to tell.”
“Why’d you marry him? Tell me that.”
“Well it wasn’t because of the size of his dick.”
“Dick! That’s what you call it: dick.”
“I guess I do,” Tammy said, amused, a little embarrassed to have let this slip. “Anyway, back to the story in The Enquirer. They said you were in Montreal getting your thingie — your dick — made bigger. Except I knew that wasn’t true.”
“How come?”
“It just didn’t make any sense. Not after the articles I’d read about you.”
“Go on,” Todd said, fascinated.
“Well … you know I read everything that’s ever been written about you? Everything in English. And then if there’s a really important interview in, say, Paris Match or Stern, I get it translated.”
“Jesus. Really? What for?”
“So I can keep up with your opinions. And … sometimes in the foreign magazines they write the kind of things you wouldn’t read in an American magazine. One of them did a piece about your love-life. About all the ladies you’d dated, and the things they’d said about you — ”
“My acting?”
“No. Your … other performances.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No. I thought you knew about these things. I thought you probably signed off on them.”
“If I read every article in every magazine — ”
“You’d never make another movie.”
“Exactly. So, go back to the article. The ladies, talking about me. What does that have to do with the story in The Enquirer!”
“Oh just that here were all these women talking about you in bed — and a few of them were not exactly happy with the way you treated them — but none of them said, even vaguely intimated that … ”
“I had a small dick.”
“Right.”
“So I thought, there’s no way he’s gone to Montreal to have his ding-a-ling enlarged because it’s just fine as it is. Now. Can we move on, or shall I throw myself out of the window from sheer embarrassment?”
Todd laughed. “You are an education, do you know that?”
“I am?”
“You are.”
“In a good way?”
“Oh yeah, it’s all good. It’s all fine.”
“You realize, of course, that there’s stuff being written about you right now, a lot of people upset and worried.”
“Why?”
“Because nobody knows what happened to you. There are plenty of people, fans of yours, like me, who think of you practically as a member of the family. Todd did this. Todd did that. And now, suddenly, Todd’s missing. And nobody knows where he’s gone. They start to fret. They start to make up all kinds of ridiculous reasons. I know I did. It’s not that they’re crazy — ”
“No, look. I don’t think you, or any of them, are crazy. Or if you are, it’s a good crazy. I mean, what you did last night … none of my family would have done.”
“You’d be surprised how many people love you.”
“They love something but I don’t think it’s me, Tammy.”
“Why not?”
“Well for one thing, if you could get inside here, in my head with Todd Pickett, you wouldn’t find much worth idolizing. You really wouldn’t. I am painfully, excruciatingly, ordinary. My brother, Donnie, on the other hand: he’s worth admiring. He’s smart. He’s honest. I was just the one with this.” He turned on his smile as he drove and gave her the benefit of its luminosity. Then, just as easily, he turned it off. “See, you learn to do that,” he went on. “It’s like a faucet. You turn the smile on, and people bathe in it for a while, then you turn it off and you go home and wonder what all the fuckin’ fuss was about. It’s not like I deserve the adulation of millions. I can’t act. And I’ve got the reviews to prove it.” He chuckled at his self-deprecation. “That’s not mine,” he said, “it was Victor Mature.”