We went to the casino on Kartnerstrasse and he won a thousand schillings. When we were walking down the street later, a really good South American band was playing. We stood and listened a while. Then Leland went over and put all of the money he’d won into the guitar case the players had open for donations. When the guys saw that, they started playing so fast that they sounded as if they’d overdosed on Dexedrine.

Wherever we went, he took pictures. Many of them were of Vienna, bat most were of me. I didn’t mind. This time he was my friend and I looked forward to seeing them when they were developed. When he was walking around, he carried two little cameras in his front pockets—one loaded with black-and-white film, the other with color.

After the casino we went to the Café Hawelka to watch the late night scene there. After we’d settled in with our coffee and cigarettes, he asked me why I had really stopped making movies and left L.A. He said he’d read the stories and interviews, but not many people just stop in the middle of their lives like that, especially when they’re successful, and run away.

I said I’d quit for two reasons. The first was that I woke up one morning with a bad taste in my mouth and a bad guy in the bed next to me. If the acting had been going better, that would have been basically bearable: I’d have thought, Oh, this is just a rotten time and things’ll get better. But the other reason for quitting blended in with that in the worst possible way. I’ve tried to describe this to you, Rose, but never had a good way of putting it till now. It came to me when I was talking with Leland.

I’ve finally realized I’m one of those people who peak early in life and then go down just as fast. Or part of us does.

You know how awful and confused and strung-out I was before I left? I believe it’s because I unconsciously realized I no longer had the ability to be a good actress. I’d done all of my best work, and from there on out, if I had continued, it would have been impossible to do anything well.

Leland said he read a review of a famous dramatist’s newest play. The critic said the play was terrible and what the writer should have done was stopped writing twenty years before—after having had a couple of flops—because by then he must have known somewhere in his soul that he no longer had the magic to do great work. If he’d stopped, then we’d know him for his masterpieces, and not the embarrassing shit that came afterward. He should have just stopped.

I said exactly! That’s exactly what happened to me but I wouldn’t admit it to myself. Down deep I knew I’d reached my peak and it was over. Maybe I had enough to… maybe I’d end up in some cheesy TV series making lots of Joan Collins faces and saying godawful lines. But I didn’t want to end like that. The last film made me reach down too deep into myself to find a good performance… It was brutal, Rose, harder than anything I’ve done. Weber helped a lot with his direction, but every day after work I was totally exhausted, because I was squeezing out whatever last drops were still there. Talent drops. When the movie was finished, there wasn’t one left in my tank. Like it or not, I was done as an actress. End of a career, crummy men, a house I never wanted to go home to because there was nothing there… That’s why I came here. Because Vienna was one of the few things I really did love.

Right in the middle of that conversation, a hundred-megaton brunette swept up to our table as only an egregiously gorgeous woman can—head thrown back, tits pushed forward, a smile that says of course everyone in the room is watching me, but don’t they always? I saw her before he did and watched as she tacked through the tightly bunched tables over to ours.

Her face got happier and happier the closer she came. And it was real happiness—nothing fake or put-on about it.

“Leland!” she shouted. He looked at her, but instead of being thrilled and leaping to his feet because Miss Lalapalooza was trilling his name, he only smiled and stayed where he was. He didn’t even attempt to get out of his seat when she was standing on the other side of the table, obviously dying to get her mitts on him.

“Hi, Emmy. Emmy Marhoun, this is Arlen Ford.” That stopped her. She looked at me for really the first time and there was a glumph of recognition in her eyes. Also, the courteous coolness of Leland’s voice said a lot. Her reaction was very strange—she shrank down into herself. But she was valiant and tried again. “Oh, Leland, it’s been so long! What have you been doing?”

She wanted to talk but he didn’t. He was very pleasant and polite, but gave her nothing to grab on to. It was as if he were a sheer mountain face of glass she desperately wanted to climb but couldn’t get a handhold on. When I realized what was happening, I sat back to enjoy the show. Her eyes jumped between Leland and me. After a few embarrassing minutes of getting no further with him, she began speaking directly to me, as if I would understand and be able to translate her better to him. Fat chance, Emmy.

She was in Vienna on business. How long would he be staying? Could they meet for a drink… it’d been such a long time. It was so wonderful to see him again… but nothing doing. The pleasanter he was, the more desperate she became.

At last she understood this meeting was all she was going to get, and even Miss Self-Adoring realized there was no way she was going to get what she wanted from him. So she tried to back away gracefully and wave beautifully and be gone in another romantic ssssswirl. But there was a pathetic falseness in her gestures and the kind of hurt in her voice and around her eyes that said she’d been snapped in half.

I asked who she was, and he said a woman he was crazy for a few years ago. He thought she loved him too but she didn’t. Seems she had her own heartbeat to attend to. He said the ironic part was that a week after they broke up, he saved her life and she never forgave him for it, but he wouldn’t explain that.

I shook my head and said, “You know, Leland, after hanging around with you these days, I’m beginning to feel that, in comparison to your life, I’ve lived mine on a microscope slide. What haven’t you done?”

His answer came very quickly. “I’ve never had a child. Never written a book. Never really got lost in sex. I’ve never learned how to sit still. I’m scared I’ll end up being one of those old men who’ll need a garden or a dog to boss around because there’ll be nothing else left at the end of my life.

“That’s why I’m envious of you, Arlen, and the way you’ve chosen to live now. Your life used to be the way mine is now. All crazy running around, no real substance. But you stopped and got out. You’ve got so many things, qualities, I wish I had.”

I couldn’t believe he was saying that after I told him what a screwed-up mess I was. I don’t know what I’m doing with my life these days. It’s like an instrument I used to play pretty well but don’t know how to even hold anymore, much less play.

He said, “Many have life left over when luck runs out. They waste their happy moments and farther down the road would like to turn around and return to them. There are more days than luck.” That’s a line from the writer Gracian, and right after saying it, he quoted another: “Two kinds of people are good at foreseeing danger: those who have learned at their own expense and the clever people who learn a great deal at the expense of others.”

All the bustle and noise of the café fell away. We looked at each other so sadly. He was lost in his chaos; I was afraid mine would return the moment he left town. So I took a deep breath and just said it. “You know what I’d like to do more than anything else in the world right now? Go home and make love with you.”

He looked away and my heart fell. Then he looked back and said, “I can’t do that. I’m HIV positive.”