Humor
Gwyneth Paltrow Visits Philip Marlowe’s Office Before the Trial
Innocent Fall or Femme Fatale?
She was slim and blonde with posture like an Oscar statuette. From the second I saw her standing in the doorway I could tell she was the kind of gal who took pretty good care of her skin and wasn’t afraid to tell you about it.
“Something to drink?” I asked as she took as seat on the davenport.
“Bone broth,” she said quietly, crossing her legs. “Or a vitamin cocktail. Anything regenerating.”
I poured her a finger of cheap bourbon and slid it across the desk.
It was the kind of spiel I’d heard a thousand times before. Classic ski-and-run: Park City, mean little crash. The only witness? A sorry mound of white powder that’d probably already been put on ice.
When she was done, I said: “Nice story. What’s it got to do with a bum like me?”
“Don’t you see?” she said. “I didn’t do it.”
I smirked and snubbed out a cigarette. “Yeah, you and everyone else in this lousy town.”
“But I really didn’t do it. They’re just trying to pin it on me.”
There was something pure in her voice, angelic, that gave me pause. Either she really didn’t do it, or she was just a hell of an —
“I’m an actress,” she said. “Hollywood. Big time.” Then she shot me a smile that hit me like a bare-knuckled brawler after a colonics regime. Oh, she was big time all right.
I decided to humor her. “And the wise guy on the slopes?” I asked. “A local thug?”
“Optometrist,” she said. “Private practice.”
“A private eye guy, huh? I know the type. And what about the hot shots on ski patrol? Anyone see anything?”
She shook her head. “My word against his.”
“Good,” I spat. “The whole force is rotten.”
“I want to fight it,” she said.
“That’s a damn dangerous thing to do,” I warned. “The legal fees. The media. Why risk it?”
She didn’t answer my question. She just took a few slinky steps to my desk so that I got a whiff of her sun-warmed apricot perfume. It was the good stuff: clean, fancy, and dangerously nontoxic.
“So you’ll help?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
I felt like I was being played. Big-time Hollywood actors in this town are like silver dollars: two-faced and made of money.
But I needed the money — and goddamn do I love sun-warmed apricots.
I was at the trial every day. For protection, she’d said. But the most I ever did was rough up some tough-guy paparazzi on the courthouse steps. Otherwise, I sat transfixed like everyone else — even laid off the hooch for the important stuff.
Sure, the facts of the crash were a little goopy; but you all saw what happened. From the first day she arrived in that exquisite turtle neck and Jeffrey Dahmer eyeglasses, you knew it was over. She simply wasn’t one of us. Calmer, classier, gentler, more chic. Ms. Paltrow belonged in that crummy courtroom the way an overpriced face cream belongs on the bottom of an old leather police boot. She knew it. I knew it. And the jury sure as hell knew it too.
When the trial was done, she glided over to me. She didn’t say anything, just stopped for a beat, flashed a Mona Lisa smile, and then threw on an impeccably cut Italian cashmere overcoat in olive and walked out into the rain.
What did it mean, that smile?
I still ask myself that question. Did we all get played? Who’s to say? I watched the whole damn thing, and it’s still tough for me to nail down where the persona ends and the person begins. One thing’s for sure, if we did get played, well, someone oughta hand that woman an Oscar.
Another one.
