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  For ninety days Oscar encouraged, cajoled, and bluffed AJ into accomplishing the Herculean exercises designed to restore his self-sufficiency. As feeling incrementally returned to his left side, AJ assumed that all the normal functions would click into gear. But Oscar explained his muscles had “gone loco,” and he needed to relearn the simplest of moves. Putting one foot in front of the other required as much effort as a normal person expended climbing three flights of stairs. The ten steps to the bathroom felt like ascending a thirty-story high-rise. He gasped following five repetitions.

  Rousing his paralyzed hand and arm, which seemed to weigh as much as a sack of charcoal, required the same kind of energy. To keep from boring his charge, Oscar gave AJ a mission not mentioned in the manuals—picking his nose with left hand. When he succeeded, the two men celebrated with shots of tequila. Immediately after the stroke, male nurses had supervised and assisted in all AJ’s transitions—from bed to wheelchair to toilet and back. But this morning he rose alone, strapped an L-shaped orthotic brace on his left leg, and with the support of a four-pronged cane struggled to the bathroom. Once upgraded to the “contact-guard assist level,” he needed hands-on help only for potentially dangerous activities.

  Oscar wheeled him to the lobby and announced, “You take it from here.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You need to pick up some forms at the front desk.” When Oscar refused to drive, AJ pushed the chair, but his therapist held it in place. “The free ride’s over. Walk there and get them.”

  Walk—into a sea of people, all in a rush, none aware of his plight? The prospect reduced AJ to a five-year-old crossing his first busy intersection alone.

  Oscar massaged his shoulder. “When I swam the Rio Grande, I knew the INS was out gunning for me. They’d shot a wetback two nights before. You know what made me run?” AJ shook his head. “The place I was running from really sucked.”

  AJ mapped the traffic patterns, then inched forward, almost tripping with his first step. Halfway across, no one had passed within ten feet, and his confidence built. He put less pressure on the cane and even swiveled to smile at Oscar. But he turned back to see a fat family of five racing to the candy machine behind him. AJ pivoted, and the littlest boy brushed his robe like a matador’s cape. The whole drama took five seconds, but in its aftermath his strength flooded back. His body performed. The final thirty feet were a Sousa march. When he gave his name, the clerk at the desk pulled out his file and handed him a sheet of paper headed “Instructions for Leaving the Hospital and Aftercare.” Oscar materialized by his side. “Yyyou ttth . . . you think I’m ready?”

  “The doctors believe you’ve hit the wall. Their books say stroke victims get back ninety percent of all the functions they’ll ever get back in the first three months. No disrespect, but I think they’re full of shit.”

  “You’re ssssaying I cccan be hundred ppercent?”

  “With a percent or two for wear and tear? Yeah. But it’s going to require the cojones of a bull, ‘cause now your progress is going to be torture. Most people quit and settle for being alive. If you want more, I’ll be there for you.”

  Snapping off the light by his bedside that night, AJ imagined the possibilities rather than the limitations in his life.

  A close-up of an ant—otherworldly, implacable, and ugly—filled the opening frames of Don’t Tread on Me. A column marched across a decaying palm frond, their destination a squashed mango. But before feasting the colony mired in a pool of congealed blood. A title appeared on-screen: “Produced by AJ Jastrow.” It faded away as a military boot crushed the ants. The boot belonged to a weary, unshaven Michael Douglas as Lieutenant Farber, leading his men on patrol. Superimposed over Farber’s footprint was “Directed by Russell Matovich.” Gunfire erupted and the VC launched their ambush. The symbolism might be a touch heavy-handed, but AJ couldn’t criticize Matovich’s eye.

  Like producers from the nickelodeon days, he’d let his fantasies flourish in advance of viewing the first cut of his movie. It lived as a classic in his mind, even though AJ knew his fantasies would surely be dashed by the first changeover of reels. After an hour, however, Don’t Tread on Me commanded him. He ceased being the writer-producer and became an ordinary moviegoer. The visual highlight was the shoot-out in the Vietcong tunnels, so intensely disorienting that the only other person in the screening room at Columbia—a prematurely balding marketing executive named Andy Faddiman—lay down on the floor to regain his equilibrium.

  Douglas captured Farber’s determination to remain in control. As Sergeant Deeves a young actor named Paul Michael Glaser instilled the standard wise guy with an endearing edge, which promised to make his upcoming decapitation devastating. And Ricky . . . he was so genuine that AJ stowed his ambivalence. The battle at the ghost temple played more violently than in his script—and more effectively. By the end he’d dug his nails into the upholstered seat.

  But then . . . what the hell was this? In a new scene Corporal Oman raped a Vietnamese girl after interrogating her, while two other soldiers watched. Then came a rewritten version of the squad arguing over whether or not to enter the village. In AJ’s scene Farber convinced Covey and Oman to join him. Russ had Farber force them to accompany him by aiming his M-16 at their heads and cursing them as cowards. As for AJ’s ending . . . it played only in his imagination. Farber, Oman, and Covey patrolled the village to verify the absence of Vietcong. A B-52 roared overhead. The three soldiers waved it off, then watched in horror as the plane dropped its napalm bombs, sucking the oxygen out of the air, incinerating the village—and reducing the heroes to ash.

  It amazed AJ how instantaneously tears could form. His script had proclaimed the triumph of courage and reason over fear and fury. Russ had corrupted it—no, he’d obliterated it. The message in Farber’s death and his failure to save the innocent civilians of Tet Vanh was that insanity reigned.

  From Andy Faddiman’s concealed grimace, it was apparent that Matovich’s ending also slashed the commercial prospects of Don’t Tread on Me. The marketing executive searched for a politic phrase. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

  “Be honest,” AJ ordered.

  “The last reel was like watching baby seals being clubbed to death . . . but not as much fun.”

  AJ hobbled down the hall to David Begelman’s office, where he practiced deep-breathing exercises while the studio chief begged Julia Phillips, who was scouting locations in North Dakota, to control the spiraling costs on Close Encounters. When he finally hung up, David regained his aplomb. “You must be very proud of your film. We certainly are.”

  “What happened tto the otthherr ending?”

  “Where the three soldiers stop the massacre? Russ never shot it.” AJ gasped. “As you know, the production was a month behind schedule.”

  “Wwwe have to gooo bback and shoot it.”

  “I understand that your script was different, but as you know, AJ, film is a living organism. We agreed with Russ that his ending was more in keeping with the way the footage evolved. It’s also closer to the attitude of the country toward the war.”

  “Then ttake my nnnn . . . nname off it.”

  “Do me a favor—let me amend that, do both of us a favor. Think about it and let’s talk next week.”

  The temperature in Burbank shot past one hundred degrees. Sweat poured from AJ like a fountain, and he tripped on the broad, flat stone steps outside the executive building. An assistant carrying the cans of film containing Don’t Tread on Me back to the editing room paused by his side. “Pops, are you okay?”

  “Pppops?” He knocked aside the helping hand.

  “Hey, I was just trying to help.”

  Out of the corner of his eye AJ spotted his driver. The man was engrossed in a newspaper. Fifty yards away—the car might as well have been parked in Ventura. Was Begelman smirking at him from his office window? He turned to tell him to fuck off, but he lacked the voice or the control to point his middle finger in the right di
rection. He had to prove to those bastards that they couldn’t run him out of Hollywood. His legs ached, but he marched to the car.

  CHAPTER 36

  “Do you take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?”

  This time around, AJ had a seat and no lines. Perhaps that explained his foreboding as he sat dry-eyed among the guests at his ex-wife’s wedding. François Volk was imperially slim. Didn’t he like his own cooking? Prematurely gray hair and a Gallic nose gave him the appearance of a swaying silver birch. Like most French émigrés, Volk detested the slick impermanence and parochialism of Los Angeles but preferred stardom here to his desultory career as a chef in Lyon. The guy overcooked with an arrogant attitude that promised to make him a son of a bitch as a spouse.

  “Oui.”

  François’s response struck AJ as a petty attempt to maintain his identity, but it drew indulgent smiles from those packed into the trellised garden of his Bistro Gamin by the ocean in Santa Monica. They delighted in associating with the man responsible for the town’s dining renaissance. If a chef could become a celebrity, who was next? The justice of the peace turned his attention to the bride. At their wedding Steph’s beauty had stunned, whereas now it soothed, time having transformed the ingenue to leading lady. Did her bright smile conceal an underlying melancholy upon hearing “. . . in sickness and in health, till death do us part?” No, his imagination suffered a case of male-pattern jealousy.

  AJ had dreaded this last Sunday in September since receiving his invitation, but Steph had wanted him to attend, and her support during his recuperation made declining impossible. He nervously straightened his green-and-blue paisley tie. Two hours ago he’d realized in horror that he couldn’t make the knot. On his tenth attempt he’d poked his eye with his thumb, and blinded by tears of frustration, he phoned Oscar for help. That setback aside, today was his “coming out.” The California summer sun camouflaged his pallor, and a dogged regimen of exercise had enabled him to regain most of his gross muscular functions. And while fine motor skills, such as signing his name and flossing, remained erratic, AJ was no longer a cripple. His world needed to know.

  “I now pronounce you man and wife.”

  The restaurateur’s kiss was so French that AJ averted his eyes to Ricky, who was seated next to him in the third row. The boy maintained a straight-ahead stare. “You okay?”

  “Why shouldn’t I be?”

  “That kiss made me uncomfortable,” AJ whispered.

  “It’s a free country. She can fuck who she wants.”

  An impenetrable wall existed between them, and AJ lacked the energy or desire to knock it down. Seventeen years ago, when he’d first seen his infant son resting on Stephanie’s breasts, he could not have imagined disliking Ricky. “Watch your mouth. Your mom deserves to enjoy today.”

  “Fine.” It took an actor to pack so sullen a snarl into a single word.

  AJ took his daughter’s hand up the aisle. After he’d checked out of Cedars, Jessie had regularly stayed at his beach house to help care for him. To his amazement—and dismay—he’d realized how little he knew about her. The daughter he’d discovered reminded him of her mother in younger days. Jess possessed a spirit that embraced the world, missing even the hint of entitlement born into most Hollywood kids. The physical resemblance extended beyond their blue eyes and freckles, because his daughter dressed like Steph had in the Eisenhower years. Her passion for Sha Na Na and infatuation with the Fonz spoke of a yearning for the imagined innocence of an earlier era.

  Nibbling on foie gras, Jess shook her head in wonder. “François’s cooking is amazing. We have roast duck and crème brûlée in the refrigerator for snacks.”

  So that’s why she was pudgy. Jess had accepted the remarriage more easily than her brother. It was probably her trusting spirit, which could take a hell of a beating if her new stepfather—Christ, even the word pissed AJ off—turned out to be a jerk. “That’s great. Get his recipes and cook them for me.”

  “Dad, do you think you’ll get remarried?”

  “No, I think those days are over.”

  “It would be okay. Most of my friends’ folks are splitting, so I could try and find you someone.”

  “No need to do that.”

  “My math teacher is single . . . and kind of cute if you don’t mind the chalk in her hair.”

  AJ hugged her fiercely. How could he explain why matchmaking wouldn’t work? “I’ll take a look at the next parent-teacher conference.”

  Pot filled the air and the dancing started in earnest, with Van McCoy’s “The Hustle” blasting from the speakers. AJ hated the synthesizer-dominated sound and used his stroke as an excuse for an early exit.

  “Are you okay?” Steph asked.

  “Fine, just tired.” He hugged her gently. “Be happy.”

  “I will, but, AJ, I want you to find the same kind of happiness.” She smiled. “Maybe not quite as much, but you know what I mean.”

  Fat fucking chance. Unless he found a frigid woman who loved him, AJ planned to remain single for the rest of his life. He couldn’t even consider dating, because if he cared about someone and found her sexy, how was he supposed to demonstrate it—a box of chocolates? Sure, the urologist had given him a clean bill of health, but the guy didn’t have to get it up. AJ had had no success, even with the help of Oscar’s porno magazines.

  On his way to the car he spotted a phone booth, then extracted from his wallet a piece of paper whose folds suggested it had long been hidden there. He lifted and put down the receiver a half dozen times before dialing. A woman answered, and he gave his name, then listened.

  “Home, Mr. Jastrow?” his driver inquired.

  “Yeah . . . no. Take me to 12075 Wonderland Avenue . . . the long way.”

  His destination was a funky Spanish bungalow on a side street off Outpost in the heart of the Hollywood Hills. Thick stucco walls and narrow recessed windows assured privacy. Linda Moreno greeted AJ by swinging open a door heavy enough for a dungeon. He fought the urge to run away by remembering that he couldn’t run anywhere. Linda was exotically beautiful. Her shiny brown hair cascaded over the back of a white terry-cloth bathrobe. Though she was in her early forties, her olive skin remained unblemished. She extended a hand with graceful fingers that reminded him of a classical guitarist. “Oscar told me all about you. I’m pleased that you took his suggestion and called.”

  Her business card said “Sexual Healer,” but her price for the night suggested top-of-the-line call girl. Linda’s every move was sensual and unhurried. Unbuttoning his shirt, she ran her hands over his upper body, complimenting him on his physique. He felt less like a freak. As she massaged Tiger Balm gently into his shoulders, AJ fumbled with the belt of her robe. She wore nothing underneath. He gasped and his hands began to shake. “I don’t think I can please you,” he whispered.

  Linda gently put a finger to his lips. “That’s not what’s bothering you, is it?”

  AJ shook his head, a child caught in a fib.

  “You’re afraid you’ll have another stroke if you get excited, even though the doctors have controlled your blood pressure. I want you to trust me.”

  Did he have a choice? Standing naked, a desirable woman touching him, arousing him . . . sex meant too much, he would wither without it. They fell back on her king-sized bed and made love as hard as he dared. After fifteen minutes she churned her hips and pelvis, trapped him inside her, then clutched tightly with her inner thighs. AJ worried that his orgasm would drown her. His body vibrated, and for a moment he waited for . . . nothing.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “You know those cults that predict the end of the world at a specific time? I always wondered if their members were disappointed when the sun came up the next day.” He jumped up with a smile from an earlier time. “Now I know.”

  As the last of the crowd filed into the premiere of Don’t Tread on Me at the Coronet in Manhattan, AJ started across Third Avenue and Fifty-ninth Street in the opposite
direction. “Get your ass back here,” Ray shouted.

  “I’m going to kill an hour at Bloomingdale’s.”

  “That’s nuts, AJ.” Stark came over and yanked him back onto the curb. “You’ve been around long enough to know that no one can guarantee how these things turn out. But it’s still a movie!”

  “It’s just not my movie.”

  Stark shook his head. “You’re the only producer I know who doesn’t grab all the credit for success he can.”

  “We’re not looking at success.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Come on. You heard what Levy said.” On the flight east aboard Columbia’s private jet, Norman Levy, the head of marketing for Columbia, had complained that exhibitors in the South and Midwest had refused to book Don’t Tread on Me, arguing that moviegoers needed a break from years of coverage of Vietnam on television.

  “Is this what I should expect working with you?” Ray asked facetiously.

  Stark’s offer of head of production under him at Rastar was AJ’s best job option. “I promise, I’ll be a barrel of laughs.” When the light changed, he again headed off to Bloomie’s.

  After the movie the line of limousines idling in front of the theater reminded him of a funeral procession, so AJ hailed a cab to Tavern on the Green for the party. His driver spoke only Pashtu and could barely find Central Park. Where were the wonderful Checker cabs from his youth? Crammed behind a bulletproof partition in the backseat of a Chrysler without a suspension, AJ rubbed his left leg to maintain circulation.

  Gauging an honest reaction to a film from an industry audience required a fluency in Hollywoodese. The operative word tonight was intense. Julia Phillips had modified it with “unbearably,” Peter Bart had added “unbelievably,” and Stan Kamen had used “unflinchingly.” Combined with one too many slaps on the back, this meant that his friends found the film as grim and empty as he did. Hang in, he told himself, until eleven o’clock, then escape with dignity.