Straight Life - Art Pepper [195]
Right before we found out she was going to die, Diane bought the most beautiful bed you've ever seen, a mattress and box spring with a twenty-year guarantee. We got to giggling after she found out she was dying: "All my life I've wanted this bed. I buy it with a twenty-year guarantee, and I'm gonna use it a month or two!" One day, after they opened her up and found out how hopeless it was, she's in the hospital, we're sitting there smoking, and the doctor comes in and says, "What are you doing, smoking?" She says, "What's it gonna do to me now?"
She regretted all those wasted years with Art. They could have been productive years. When they were married, all the jobs Art got, he got because of Diane. She really pushed his career, and it was a constant frustration to her. She did everything to help him, his talent. Of course, she could shine in the glow of it, but, other than her own selfishness, she truly wanted him to be a great star because she thought he deserved it.
Art got Diane another poodle after Zsa Zsa. Bijou. Art loved Bijou so much. They paid three hundred dollars for her, I understand, and do you know, he hocked her to a connection! And Bijou never forgave him. After he got her out of hock, the very first time she saw him, she turned her back on him. He didn't even exist. She was never friendly to him again. She was the most sensitive person that there was. You know, they lied and stole from me, broke into my house, but hocking her was just beyond the realm of believability. They gave her to me, and Bijou became my whole life.
Diane's suicides-that was another very funny thing. They lived off Glendale Boulevard on Fargo, the steepest hill in Los Angeles. And I had a friend, Frank Sinatra, Jr., who was Frank Sinatra's cousin, and he was going to take us to the Mocambo for Sinatra's opening show. So, Diane, knowing she had a deadlock cinch that I was going to be there to pick her up, took fifty or sixty phenobarbital. I arrive, all gussied up for this show, and there she is. She took 'em an hour or so before I got there, knowing I was going to be there to save her. Well, called the ambulance, all of that. The hill was so steep the ambulance couldn't get up it! Hahahaha! The only way they could get up to save this dying girl-they had to back up Fargo hill!
She wasn't really trying to kill herself. These attempts were a cry for help. She never really tried to kill herself without a guarantee. I'm a very dependable person, and she would do it when she knew I would get her. And what she wanted was more attention. What does anyone want from a suicide attempt?
Every now and then, Diane would see what she was doing to her life, and that really wasn't the way she wanted to spend the rest of her days. She tried to straighten her hand, but her need for love was stronger than her need for survival. Art meant more to her than her whole, entire life. She loved him to the day she died.
When Diane got out of jail and Art was living with Christine, she was terribly upset. She wouldn't even tell me how horrible things were. But it was obvious. You just had to look at her. As for Christine, Christine was not a likable person under any circumstances. The only thing that comes to mind is-unpleasant. I don't really even remember too well what she looked like. I know we encountered her a couple of times, and she was just unpleasant, just a bitch. And Art's such a weak person that if Diane wasn't available someone had to be.
Diane came to live with me, as usual. I got her a little job, but she decided that wasn't what she wanted to do, so she