I was certainly wrong on that score, but it felt good to say it. On my St. Francis of Assisi days, I feel sorry for Florence. The rest of the time, I try not to think about her at all.

•   •   •

Like Irene, Jonathan too pronounced my Malibu place dreadful. He does not like the sand, or the ocean, for that matter. He’s fastidious; so fastidious that he actually liked the military school his father sent him to. Military school, however, didn’t make him a soldier, and as soon as he graduated he went to New York to study Method acting. When he came back to California a few years later he immediately moved out of his father’s Summit Drive house and rented a big place in Laurel Canyon, quickly dubbed Casa Fiesta, where the parties give themselves. Everyone young comes to Casa Fiesta to complain, to gloat, to boast, or carp, to preen, to get their egos stroked, to get laid, or to get drunk. The liquor bills alone probably eat up half of what Jonathan makes on any given picture, especially since his roles are still minor, and mostly in those dreadful sword-and-sandal pictures so popular nowadays.

“You should have come to last night’s party,” he said, brushing the sand from his cuffs and sitting down on one of the deck chairs after he’d dusted it off. “Perfect for you. Literary, even. Charles Bukowski came and recited his poetry while Bongo played, and a girl in a beret danced.”

“A beret and what else?”

“Not much. I bagged her later that night.” Bagged was Jonathan’s personal expression for his trophy collection. I always said the phrase made him sound like some sort of grouse-hunting aristocrat, which he took as a compliment. “Monty Clift came,” he went on, “and Natalie Wood was there, and that actor you dated a couple of weeks ago. What was his name?”

“I can’t bear to remember. His breath would strip the Queen Mary of varnish. Anyway, I’m finished with actors altogether, except for Bill Holden or Burt Lancaster.”

“They’re too old for you!”

“Well, maybe. But I am getting bored with the usuals, the handsome, the uncomplicated, the good dancers, the good tennis players.”

“And good in the sack,” he finished up.

“Yes, fine. But I’m tired of actors. They are all egotistical, vain, and insincere.”

“You describe me perfectly.”

“You don’t count. You are a Duckling and a Quacker.”

Jonathan and I were once the Order of the Ugly Ducklings. The only two members. As a kid he was fat and had a stammer. Long gone is that stammering, insecure, pudgy youth. Jonathan Moore is tall, dark, and dreamy like Tyrone Power, classically handsome, with an arch, often cutting wit. However, I still have my Ugly Duckling birthmark. I handed him a beer, cracked open my own beer, and plopped down in the chair next to him.