L.A. Women

One

NOW

Summer 1975

Put yourself in the (finest caviar leather) shoes of Lane Warren. Here, inside the glittering compound in the foothills of Laurel Canyon, she is the person everyone wants to meet-her house is filled with dear friends and shiny young things, and they'd all gut her in an instant if it would make them famous. Because isn't that why they all gather here every Sunday? To prove that they are also people to know? That they too have something to offer the world?

Sometimes, Lane tries to remember when the hunger started in her, but, as always, memories of her early life are hazy, untrustworthy.

Over there, by the towering yucca plant, sits the jaded almost rock star-a local celebrity who never made it past the L.A. city limits. Watch him pretend his hands aren't twitching for the two last quaaludes in his pocket as he recounts the time he almost filled in for David Crosby when the Byrds played the Whisky. And there-just feet away, a French poet regales a crowd with the story of the night he asked Simone de Beauvoir to marry him, a story Lane has heard thirty times in the past decade, a story that has changed ever so slightly with each retelling to the point it is no longer recognizable. And, up the grand staircase, Lane's husband Scotty putting the twins to bed, taking his time so that he can later impress some young ingenue (someone new to L.A. who doesn't know anything yet) with his humble insistence on how equality starts at home. And in the middle of it all-Charlie, holding court as always, seamlessly directing any latecomers to the trays of champagne, the lines of coke, the fascinating people they'll later go home with.

For the past ten years, Laurel Canyon (and the winding roads off it) has been the center of everything. A hidden neighborhood in the Hollywood Hills filled with beautiful young things who just want to create and fuck-some of whom have gone on to become unfathomably famous, others who will remain the same age forever-and through it all, Charlie has been working his magic behind the scenes. As Lane watches him tonight, he raises an eyebrow and she nods, smiling back at him. It's only because of Charlie that Lane doesn't have to be Charlie.

Lane sinks against the bookcase, already thinking about bed, when she catches sight of an acquaintance of Scotty's, Dimitri (a ballet dancer with a lithe body and a mind like the stock exchange), pressing a young blond woman into the corner of the deck. The night is dark, the moon thin as Lane edges outside, her loose cream silk suit lifting in the June breeze. She slips into the shadows, unnoticed by either Dim or the young woman.

"It's not what I expected," the girl, shivering in a gold Lurex jumpsuit, says as she dips her head to do a thick line of coke off the wooden handrail. The sycamore trees rustle above, and, when she looks back up, she seems momentarily bewildered.

"What, did you think it would still be orgies and LSD?" Dim says, his voice unpleasant as ever. "Nothing stays the same. Not even here."

"I don't know," she says, either missing or ignoring the scorn in his voice, the way it invites her to ridicule herself further. "It all feels . . . maybe a little sad. Like when you stay too long at a carnival, and you see everyone packing up. It's a little like that."

Lane feels a dull sting of recognition. Dim takes a drag of his cigarette, about to say something else, when she clears her throat to avoid any further humiliation.

"Lane," he says, his voice suddenly warm and expansive, stretching her name until it gains an extra syllable. "My dear Lane. Please do illuminate yourself-I'd like for you to meet my terribly ill-mannered, unforgivably young friend."

Lane swallows her distaste and steps toward them, accepting the lighter Dim holds up for the cigarette in her mouth. The girl doesn't seem embarrassed yet, which comforts her. There is something about her, some blank openness that makes Lane want to tell her to run far from here.

"Nancy Dennis, all the way from Terlingua, Texas, meet the fabulous Lane Warren," he says, with a flourish, and Nancy smiles sheepishly.

"Fuck off, Dimitri," Lane says, waving her hand at Dim, shooing him inside. After a pause, he obliges, stepping away with a pointed look in the girl's direction that riles Lane up all over again.

"Nancy," Lane says, and Nancy nods, her fingertips wrapped around the wooden railing.

"Nancy," she says again, tapping her cigarette so that the fine ash falls to the ground. "Nancy Dennis."

Nancy widens her heavily lined eyes.

"Why exactly are you here?" Lane asks, not unkindly.

Nancy frowns, her mouth moving silently for a few moments while she works out whether the older woman is laying a trap for her. I'm asking if you're an explorer or an observer, Lane thinks as she takes another drag of her cigarette. I'm asking because one lasts a lot longer here than the other.

"I'm here because everyone I admire has been to one of your parties," Nancy says finally. "And I've been hearing about them for as long as I can remember. I guess I didn't want to . . . miss my chance."

Lane pauses, unsure now of what she can say to this person, who can't be a day over seventeen-twenty-one years Lane's junior. Perhaps Lane should explain that the reason Nancy is disappointed by this evening, perhaps by Los Angeles in general, is that everyone's already done anything worth doing here, and back then they did it out of a frenzied wonder, so consuming it felt like their soul was on fire, or because they were so fucking high they didn't know what they were doing, but never just because someone had done it before them.

Lane glances inside the house, the golden glow of the church candles lining the bookshelves, the cigarette smoke spiraling away from a crowd that gets both ever younger and ever more knowing as the years pass, at her valiant husband who is slowly coming down the stairs now, scanning the room for god knows what, and she thinks that, actually, this is the only reason any of them are here. They are here because their world was once so vivid, so beautiful, that they are all somehow willing to settle for a ghost version of it. And that's the problem with living in a place that shines so brightly-it has to fade sometime.

Nancy is still rigid, unblinking, bracing herself for what Lane is going to say next. Instead, Lane reaches out and touches her lightly on the bare arm. Nancy's skin is cool and covered in a layer of fine goose bumps.

"Don't think you owe Dimitri anything," Lane says. "Come find me if he suggests otherwise."


Scotty puts his hand on Lane’s waist and brushes his lips against her cheek. Lane can feel every pair of eyes in the room on them, the golden couple nobody understands, and she smiles at him in a secret way they both know is only for show.

"Lane! Scotty!" someone calls from the kitchen. Scotty takes Lane's hand and guides her into the room where a naked Jim Morrison once swung from the exposed ceiling beams like a sloth, but that is now filled with photos of their children and dead friends.

The guests in the kitchen are young and dressed wrong, far too much glitter, as if they're on their way to a club in Manhattan instead of a Craftsman at the foot of Laurel Canyon. Their conversation grinds to a halt as Lane and Scotty approach, and Lane understands that something has happened, and they will expect her to fix it. Because somewhere down the line, without even noticing, she and Scotty have become the adults in the room, and that means they will throw parties with the expensive tequila, yes, but also that they have a duty of care to destroy anything that threatens the illusion of this party, this house, this perfect, cloudless life.

For a moment, Lane imagines walking past them all and straight out into the cool night until she reaches a place where nobody cares what she has to say. She knows she wouldn't have to go far, just south of Wilshire would do, but instead she allows herself to be pulled into the fold once more, bracing herself for the news of a friend OD'ing in her bathroom, the paramedics already racing up Hollywood Boulevard to get here, or perhaps a drunk straggler who saw fit to set fire to the piles of research papers in her office. It wouldn't be the first time for anything.

"It's Gala," someone says then. A man with black eyes and a square jaw-Oliver something. A fashion designer dressed head to toe in brown leather. Lane feels a pit form in her stomach at his words and the way his gaze lingers on her for too long. Scotty reaches for her hand, but it isn't his reassurance she needs, and then-there he is, across the room, watching her closely. Charlie. Lane meets his eye, searching for something, and he nods. She feels a flicker of calm at his solidness.

"What happened?" Scotty asks, still squeezing Lane's hand.

"Well, you know she hasn't exactly been around recently," Oliver says, his words rolling luxuriously off his tongue as he savors his moment in the spotlight. "And we all thought she was just having one of her 'dips,' but apparently nobody's heard from her in months. Not even her parents. So someone must have raised the alarm or something, and her landlord went into her apartment to check on her and those cats. Did you know that she has cats now? Maybe five of them. Purebred, of course. Vile creatures, but she babies them like you wouldn't believe. Anyway, her landlord went in there, and she wasn't there. Her cats had nearly eaten through the front door."

The relief comes now as Lane parses the data, noting the lack of meat on Oliver's story. All bubbles, no body, as Charlie would say, usually in reference to cheap Californian "champagne."

"It's Gala," Lane says calmly. "She's probably gone to Mexico or something."

"Or rehab," Scotty says.

"Or maybe she finally joined the Synanon Foundation," a woman, older than most, calls from across the kitchen. "Can't you just picture Gala holed up by the beach, humiliating other addicts for sport?"

The others laugh a little, but Lane can tell they're still suspended-waiting for her lead on how they're all meant to feel. Whether they can still laugh about her.

"The big deal is how much she loved those damned cats," Oliver says, irritated. "There wasn't so much as a bowl of food left out. She just . . . left them to die."

There is a silence as this information is absorbed.

"You know, we actually have the same drug dealer, Rod-on Formosa?" Scotty's friend Aimee, a British socialite partial to downers, says slowly. "And he said he hasn't heard from her in over six months. Gala's pickups used to be as regular as the moon cycle."

"Has anyone tried the Chateau? Maybe she was so out of it she forgot she had the cats."

"Gala hasn't been able to afford the Chateau in years."

"Gala's never been able to afford the Chateau. And that's saying something."

"Didn't she always say she was going to die before she turned thirty-six?"

"Is that her 'stage thirty-six' or the real one?"

The voices, the gibes, start to echo in Lane's ears, and she drops Scotty's hand, stumbling backward, just as Charlie glides toward them. He puts his arm around Lane's waist, steadying her as he assesses the scene.

"Whatever you're talking about, stop it," he says in the old-fashioned way he has that makes people feel instantly chastised. "I'm all for idle gossip, but you're either boring or depressing Lane, and that is a capital offense in my eyes."

Lane rests her head on his shoulder and breathes in his familiar scent of Moroccan spiced cedarwood. He kisses the top of her head.

"Don't worry, darling," he says softly. "Gala is the queen of the underworld. She always emerges from the darkness."

It's not the first time Charlie has likened Gala Margolis to Persephone, and it's always struck Lane as a careless comparison. Because if Gala is Persephone, beautiful goddess turned queen of the underworld, then Lane wonders who it was exactly that ruined her.

Two

NOW

Summer 1975

Lane wakes up late not with a hangover exactly, but with an irritating tightness in her chest that reminds her something is wrong. Scotty snores beside her as she climbs out of bed gingerly so as not to wake him, a habit left over from when they used to fuck every morning, his tanned arm reaching out and pulling her back under the covers without his even needing to open an eye. Now she creeps out of bed like a jaguar so as not to remind him of what they've lost. She slips on a kimono and heads downstairs.

On any other morning, Lane would make herself a cup of coffee before setting herself up for the day in her writing room with the view of the hills, but today it doesn't feel entirely appropriate. Something is wrong, and, as usual, that something is Gala.


Lane had never exactly intended to write a book about Gala, but what had begun as a series of observations, sketches really, had somehow joined up to create something altogether more significant, like a flower unfurling so slowly it was imperceptible to the human eye. It wasn’t a biography, but it wasn’t exactly a novel either-it landed somewhere in the formless space between the two, and it meant Lane could amplify certain aspects of Gala and contract other parts, like she was composing not a book so much as a symphony about her old friend.

At the start, she figured Gala wouldn't mind, not really. She'd never exactly shied away from attention before, and she should be grateful that anyone wanted to immortalize her, let alone a writer as thoughtful and incisive as Lane. And then the work had taken on a life of its own, and who was Lane to fight against the gods of creativity? Lane is one of the most respected chroniclers of her generation, and it isn't as if the book is some trashy exposé-she herself features heavily as the authorial voice, so she isn't hiding from anything. Rather, she finds it comforting to think that, while their friendship may not have lasted, the novel would exist long after either of them were no longer here.