Small in Real Life

A moonlit night, warm and loose, and the party in the Hollywood Hills was taking off. Louis grabbed Roberta’s hand and led her past the crowd on Jay’s patio toward the house. He had ideas resting on these folks and what they could do for him. What they would do. He felt crackly in his veins. He wanted to come down a little before he mingled, didn’t trust himself yet.

Roberta’s dress announced an intention. She was a big girl, boned and otherwise, and Louis jived to take her down fast, like a tornado. Tonight, he craved impact.

“The actors look small in real life,” Roberta said. “Like dolls.”

“You’re a doll,” Louis said, “Come over here.”

He pulled her down a hallway in the house. He could’ve taken her to his room upstairs, with the balcony—“Hey,” he had said to Jay, dropping his bag on the oriental rug, “Where’s the view of the Hollywood sign?” and Jay said, “What are you, a fucking tourist?”—but he wanted to stay closer to the action. So he walked Roberta down the hallway and tried the silver levers on the maple wood doors until he found a bed. There was a black plasma TV on the wall. Obsidian. He smacked Roberta on the ass like she told him to and she hollered. The music pulsed through the windows. Hip hop shit. No one could hear them.

His friend Jay had produced the movie. Louis had stayed for the credits: Produced by Jay Stevens. Proof.

Louis had found Roberta on the airplane to Los Angeles, walking the aisle in her navy blue polyester skirt and navy blue pumps. Fly the Friendly Skies. Yes, he would, thank you. He was on his way to fix things, turn up the heat, embrace the magic. If Jay had made it, there was enough to go around and Louis headed west with his eyes wide open. Roberta was from Phoenix and based out of Chicago. It was February, but she was brown down through the cleavage. He ordered five rum and Cokes from her so he didn’t have to speculate. He said the word topless quiet, in his mind, and felt the rise.



He’d left his wife and baby daughter cooped up in a first floor apartment in Freehold, New Jersey. He couldn’t stand the cloistered scent of family in there together day and night.

“What do you want me to do,” his wife had said, “watch porn with you?”

Louis waved her off.

“I wake up to feed the baby and I hear you,” she said.

“Hear what?” he said.

“The groans and the sighs and the screwing on TV.”

He was a musician. He took pleasure in sound.

“When we were doing it,” she said, folding baby shirts into little squares, “I never felt that damn ecstatic.”

The circles under his wife’s eyes were puffy in the morning, inflated pads marooning her eyelashes, and he wanted to buy her an eye cream. Since the baby she’d slowed down with her make up. She wore sweatshirts and pajamas and she smelled like cheese. The baby smelled like warm flowers, but the baby hadn’t rubbed off on her.

She called the baby Bailey and he said it was a fag’s name, or a dog’s name, but she didn’t listen. He said you can’t give a girl that name because people think: fag, boy, dog, and then they see the kid’s a girl and they’re already exhausted by their thoughts. They won’t give her a fair shot from the start, he said.

His wife said that if she thought this marriage had a shot she’d give him a vote on the baby’s name, but his dick was loose and his head was tight and she couldn’t see herself getting along with that crowd anymore.

“Then why’d you marry me?” he said.

“I was young and inexperienced,” she said.

They’d been married eleven months.

His wife had gorgeous breasts. Soft and plump, they could roll from side to side. He kissed Roberta in Jay’s bedroom with the plasma TV and he missed his wife. Or he missed her breasts, but they felt like all of her.



Roberta snored, like she’d had a long day up in the air serving plastic trays. Louis left her naked on the bed and walked out to the party. He had imagined Jay in a glass house on the beach in Malibu, but Jay lived in a Spanish number with a red tiled roof. Sparrows nested in the tiles. They poked their heads over the edge, checked out the drop, and then poked them back in again. There were gold tips on the black iron gates that enclosed the house, and the circular driveway turned around a gurgling fountain. Outside the gates, giant trees with pink and white flowers lined Jay’s street, radiating good fortune in the yellow sunlight. Jay pointed at the trees like he’d grown them from seeds. He said, “Magnolias. You ever seen anything as beautiful?”

The trees had polished green leaves, round as saucers. Their delicate petals arched gently into cups. The petals gathered on the fresh cut grass beneath the trees, soft and pretty like a neighborhood floral arrangement. Jay said the magnolias were from Georgia. They had assimilated like the California eucalyptus—which came from Australia, Jay was a regular arborist—and now everyone thought magnolias were indigenous. Jay liked to say indigenous and assimilated.

A flagstone path led to Jay’s front door. He had a brass knocker that you could kill someone with, if you could rip it off that massive slab of oak. The rooms inside were pure white and the wood floors gleamed, they spun the light like mirrors. In some places, ceilings vaulted high enough for church services. Louis thought of his daughter, when she was old enough, riding a red tricycle across the living room. Whenever he thought about his daughter, she walked and talked and knew he was the best Daddy in the world. Because he was always giving her things, like the red tricycle with a bow tied on the handlebars, or a mansion in the Hollywood hills. He hadn’t abandoned her in the apartment in Freehold; he just didn’t have anything to do with her the way she was now, squawky and pristine, as if God wanted him to see what he, Louis, could make. Something beautiful, relentless, and unknowable. When he held his daughter in his arms, her soft eyes studied his face with such gonzo admiration he couldn’t do it for long. Be in the searchlight of that pure love. His wife complained he never held the baby for more than ten minutes, and he said he worried he was going to hurt her, and he guessed he wasn’t good at the baby stuff.

His wife said maybe you wanted a boy so you could play ball. He said no, boys have too much to bear, they got to have strong shoulders, but girls can stay sweet, enjoy themselves, see the sights. His wife pushed aside the venetian blinds on their bedroom window and looked out at the asphalt parking lot and the rain stained stucco of the apartment building next door. “You’re right,” she said, “it’s gorgeous out there.”

Louis went out to Jay’s backyard. The pool was lit up in a luscious turquoise. Skinny women in sandals and tank tops, all flesh and iridescence, mixed in with the dark haired men. He’d never seen whiter teeth or shinier hair. Live mannequins. He couldn’t grasp where to start with them.



“Come out for the premiere, Lou, I’m having a party,” Jay had said. Jay’s whiny voice the same for ten years, bouncing on Louis’s nerves.

“I don’t know, I’ve got a gig,” he said.

“It’s seventy-five degrees outside, man. Get – on – a – plane,” Jay said, like Louis was a retard. “I’m wearing a robe and smoking a cigar on my patio. The birds are singing to me. I’ve got a waterfall that runs right into the pool.”

Louis’s gig was low end, not even a gig; back-up guitar at a bat mitzvah celebration. The tip was a loaf of challah bread and glossy stares from thirteen year olds dressed up in blue eye shadow while he sang back up on a twangy cover of Green Day’s Time of Your Life. He hadn’t played a bar in years. The old band scattered across New Jersey, and Louis selling AV equipment in a windowless cement box off Route 9. Their band’s CDs—the one album—were stacked in neat rows on a shelf in the back of his closet, but he kept a few in the glove compartment. In case he met someone significant, made a connection.

He’d packed twenty CDs in his suitcase for LA.

His wife had sat on their bed and watched him pack. He couldn’t catch a whiff of her from where he stood, but he knew the stagnant scent was there. It smudged her features into a blurriness he couldn’t see through. She had a set of little scissors and nail files and bottles of polish laid out on a towel beside her.

“Jay’s not your friend,” she said. She worked a nail file back and forth over her thumb, building a tiny pile of nail dust on the towel.

“I’m not looking for friends,” he said.

“Yeah?” She’d say a rude thing like that and not look at him. She examined the cuticle on her pointer finger instead.

“When else am I going to Los Angeles?”

“When Bailey’s older.”

Louis kneeled in the closet before the box of CDs. He ran his hand over the plastic edges feeling for the heat of the lucky ones.

“Who knows where we’ll be then,” he said. He picked out CDs from the top, middle, and back of the box. His luck could be anywhere.

His wife had stopped sawing her nails. She held the little scissors and waved them at him.

“You think you’ll be somewhere else? With Jay in Hollywood?”

“What are you saying?” Louis said. He’d thought about that, sure. A leather paneled recording studio with a fat guy in a Hawaiian shirt working the controls, shifting the treble so Louis’s voice came out clear as water.

“Jay calling you doesn’t mean shit,” she said, as if she knew about his guy in the Hawaiian shirt.

“It means I’m getting out of here.”

She picked up a bottle of nail polish, red as blood, and shook it.

“That’s what you think,” his wife said.

“I’m doing things,” he said. “I’m making an effort.”

She opened the polish and dipped the brush and painted a dark red stripe across her first fingernail.

“You try in the wrong directions,” she said.



Louis recognized a police detective from Law & Order. There was a woman famous from somewhere else, but he didn’t know movie names. Louis tapped the actor from Law & Order on the shoulder.

“Hey, officer,” he said to the actor, “there’s a girl passed out in one of Jay’s bedrooms. You wanna have a look?”

The actor looked at him without kindness.

Louis leaned in closer. “She might still be naked,” he said. The actor turned back to his group.

“Hey, Lou, watcha doing that for?” It was Jay. Sneaky as always, pulling on his elbow.

“Doing what?” Louis said.

“Where’s your stewardess with the hips?” Jay said.

“What do you mean?”

“You paying her, what’s it, by the hour?” Jay said, his eyes squinty.

“You’re the guy who pays for it,” Louis said.

Jay laughed.

“I want to introduce you to someone,” he said.

Louis followed Jay to an older man with brown leathery skin and glassy green eyes, dressed up in a jacket and slacks. A lizard in a suit.

“Mel,” Jay said to the man, “this is the lead singer of Cosmos, the first band I ever managed. Lou, this is Mel, he scored the music for the movie. He’s the best there is and ever was.” Jay leaned back on his heels and sniffed, proud like he was standing in front of a barbeque grilling a steak.

Mel looked Louis over, stopping down low at his black monk strap shoes. They were the lucky shoes he wore to gigs, and he’d buffed them with black polish that afternoon. He found them years ago, when the band was still playing, in a store on Broadway in New York; they had every kind of shoe stacked up and down the wall, each one balanced on its own little ledge. The buckles on his shoes shined if you had some stage light on them. Mel might’ve wondered where Louis got his shoes, hell, maybe he had a pair, but when he looked back to Jay while he shook Louis’s hand, Louis thought then again, he might not.

“You were in the business?” Mel said to Jay. “Get out of here.”

“I was,” Jay said. “I recorded an album for Cosmos. Their one and only. We made these CDs, thousands of them. You should have seen us on the Jersey shore, man.”

“You’re from Jersey? I’m from Jersey!” Mel said. He and Jay grabbed arms in a distant, urgent hug. Louis had seen Jay greet other men with the same simulated intimacy. The women he kissed on both cheeks. Roberta liked it. When Louis introduced them, she turned her head after Jay’s first kiss as if she knew he’d want the other cheek.

“And I live in Jersey,” Louis said.

Jay laughed, but Mel still wasn’t looking at Louis.

“Have you seen Fredericks, man?” Mel said to Jay. “I gotta find him, tell him about this new project, see if he’ll play.”

“You looking for guitar, or bass?” Louis said.

Mel looked at him, reptile eyes shifting back and forth.

“Why?” Mel said.

“I play,” Louis said. “Whatever you need, I’m your man. Right, Jay? Hell, I brought one of those CDs out for my friend Jay here, we can listen.”

The silence lasted long enough for Louis to notice the DJ had changed from hip hop to retro shit disco.

“We had some good times,” Jay said. “We did, Louis.”

“Alright, I gotta find Fredericks, I’ll see ya,” Mel said and patted Jay on the back and Jay patted Mel, and Mel walked off toward the bartenders.

Jay slapped Louis in the chest.

“What are you, an idiot?” Jay said.

“Why’d you introduce me, then?” Louis said.

Jay shook his head like Louis was his kid. Like Louis was his kid, when Louis was the one who had let the patsy Jay Stevens book their Cosmos gigs and drive the van. They met at Ocean County College, before Louis dropped out. Jay was pale and fleshy with flat brown hair. His sneakers dragged the ground when he walked, as if his limbs lacked muscle, and his throat only had enough to make that reedy voice come out. Louis was spindly and agile. Back then Louis could stomp and shake on a stage for two sets without a break. The band was so hot it didn’t matter who was their manager. Jay harassed Louis with a business proposal, twenty pages typed. “Did you read the proposal, Louis? Did you? Do you have any questions? I’ve got another copy right here.” The guy begged Louis, wore him down like that, until he said yes. He never read Jay’s manifesto, but Jay kept the van tuned; he had it repainted charcoal and the windows tinted. He drove up to a club like they were movie stars and he was a real manager. Maybe he was. He was into production from the start. But he’d never be the act.

Louis had the girls then, he had all the girls he wanted. Smart, pretty, dumb, fat ankles, thin ankles, he’d done them right. He would’ve killed at this party.

“I’m good,” Louis told Jay. “You know I’m good.”

“I know,” he said. Now Jay spiked his hair with gel, looked like he’d put a finger in a socket, and rode a chrome bicycle in his home gym.

“I can play anything,” Louis said.

“You can play anything,” Jay said. He was looking past Louis, at the mannequins. Louis looked, too. They were pressed together in clumps of glossiness on Jay’s manicured lawn.

Roberta appeared from the crowd and paused by the side of the pool to sip her drink. She’d lost her shoes and her dress was bunched up and strange, like she’d pulled it on backwards.

Louis was going to tell Jay about him and Roberta in the bedroom and the reflection he’d seen of their bodies twisted up together on that plasma TV, but when he turned to his friend, Jay was gone. The sly bastard. Jay invited Louis out to LA to make him feel bad, to show him. And Louis had come along when he called, like a hungry old dog.

“Isn’t the pool pretty?” Roberta said when Louis reached her. “I want to go swimming.” She tugged at her dress.

“Don’t ruin your dress, sweetheart,” Louis said.

“Who cares about my dress?” Roberta said. “It’s a dress.”

Mel stood near them talking to a young guy wearing a yarn hat striped red, yellow, and green like the Jamaican flag. Fredericks.

“Wait here. I’m going to get my swimsuit,” Louis said, and headed to the house.

Louis climbed the stairs to his room and rummaged around in his bag. Then he went out to the balcony and looked down on a magnolia tree. In the moonlight the budding flowers looked like glowing clams closed around their pearls. Louis held a CD instead of his swimsuit. On the back of every CD case, he had put a gold sticker printed with his name and phone number. Mel would listen, and then Mel would find him.

Louis thought about what could happen. He felt damp under his arms from the possibilities. He would be driving on Sunset Boulevard, his black convertible speeding around the turns and through green lights, coming back from a meeting with Fredericks. They would partner up for Mel’s project, write a new song. Like nothing Louis had done before, but he would come up with the bridge on his own and Fredericks would say it was mint. Louis would pull his convertible into the driveway of his house and park under a magnolia. They’d have their own in the front yard. He would walk in the house and hear his music playing, the old band. Out in the yard, his wife and daughter would be eating sandwiches by the pool. His daughter looked like she was five years old, and his wife smiled when she saw him. She said that she was thinking about back home, when it all started, and she wanted to hear his voice, she wanted their daughter to hear her daddy when he was young and crazy. Crazy for you, he would say. Their daughter climbed into his lap and he could feel the sunlight on her perfect skin.

Jay’s hacienda had a balcony every ten feet and on his way down, Louis stopped to look out at the party. He worried Roberta might’ve jumped in the water, but the pool glimmered its pristine blue. She wasn’t lingering by the bartenders either. Of all the places he could’ve found her, she was standing with Mel and Fredericks, and Jay. Jay had his arm around Roberta’s not so slender waist. The place Louis had held onto and appreciated for its docile curve. She was laughing like Jay had said something funny. Then Mel and Fredericks bent their heads together as if they were making plans Louis would want to know about. Roberta turned to Jay and cupped her hand around his ear, whispering a secret.

His wife planned to leave him. He could see that now. She was waiting it out in Freehold until she had a place and some cash and then she’d be gone. Louis didn’t know when she’d started looking back at him as part of the past she’d escape. A check in the mail, a youthful blunder, or nothing. And Jay had asked him to Los Angeles believing he’d never come. Or not thinking about him, just talking, talking, talking Hollywood into the phone. But Louis had shown up with his CDs as though he’d been summoned. Like a fool. Like a desperate bastard. There were no songs with Fredericks. No blooming magnolias. Louis played backup guitar in dingy hotel banquet rooms with foam paneled ceilings and beige carpet that muffled sound into a dying pulse. He hadn’t written a lyric in years. Every morning, he pinned a nametag to his shirt for a low down hourly wage. His faith was a delusion. No one wanted to hear his voice. It didn’t matter what his baby daughter found in his face. She was only a hundred days old.

At first, no one noticed when Louis changed the music. The DJ had slipped away, maybe to the plasma TV guest room. Cosmos wasn’t a party band, or a dance band, it was razorbacked and jangly. Louis yelled the lyrics down from the balcony at Jay’s collection of actors and actresses and musicians and Roberta, wherever the fuck she was. He didn’t see her down there, or Jay or Mel or Fredericks. He wasn’t looking anymore. He was singing the tone out of a song he’d scribbled ten years ago on a scrap of paper from the backseat of his junk Honda. His live voice echoed on top of the CD track but wouldn’t merge. Jay appeared below the balcony and glared at him, then tried to wave him away, and then laughed like they were in it together. But the glistening beautiful people glommed together on the lawn like worried fish. They looked at each other and then up at Louis.

The crowds loved him once. They chanted his name. His wife before she was his wife called herself a Louis groupie. She collected the guitar picks he threw from the stage at the end of a show. The very end, after he’d left the stage and they’d stomped and clapped and hooted for him and he’d come back for that absolute last song. He looked out at his fans, their sweaty drunk ecstatic faces, the girls in the front pressing those bodies he wanted close enough to touch, their thin arms reaching up for him, and he felt humanity, its lust and rapture. That’s what his music could do, what it did. He gave people their purity, he shined the crap off their skin, from the jobs and relationships that smeared them up with duty and failure. Louis blew life across at them, and they felt it, they took it in. They flicked their lighters and he could see his fans out there glowing in the dark.

Louis stood on Jay’s balcony like this was his finale. He shook his head against the downbeats and closed his eyes as he sang at the moon. His last performance, for the stars in Hollywood.

He curled his body like a discus thrower launching a steel round, and they cowered, some went running. Louis snapped his arm out and flung a CD from the balcony. There were screams as the famous and less so scurried for cover. The CD landed in the pool and drifted. Jay yelled at him, but the old and young Louis ripped through the next Cosmos song, and Jay’s thin lips swung open and closed wordlessly beneath the vocals. Louis worked on his throw. He didn’t want a soft splash. He aimed over the green lawn and the shimmering pool, over Jay’s bobbing red face, for the waterfall. He tightened every sinewy strand in his arms and legs and then unfurled into the night. Louis splintered the CD and the next and the next, eighteen in all, against the waterfall’s sandstone boulders where the plastic shattered and lay there under the patio lights like shrapnel.