by Nick Cole
Note to self: develop the bass fishing epic as a future defense against actual work. Make sure to use the tagline, “It’s fishing in lakes meets the poetry of Emerson.”
Ha!
But even tactics like that are useless against THEM. Without missing a beat, THEY probably would have looked at me and said, “Who’s attached?” And by the time dinner was over, my half-baked lie about a fishing movie focusing on the simple pleasures of a quiet sport would have been turned into the story of a Veteran Rebel Secret Service Agent sent to guard the President of the United States of America on a bass fishing trip. Except we’d have to switch it to river trout because lakes are boring and rivers are built for action. Oh, did I mention the President is now a very attractive young woman? By the end of the movie the President and the Veteran Rebel Secret Service Agent will jump out of the boat as it plunges over a waterfall, or explodes, or plunges over a waterfall and explodes, and the hero will undoubtedly at some point say, “You’re out of line,” as he runs the villain through with a fishing pole.
The Great Director chuckled to himself at the insanity of such a premise until he was suddenly struck by a vision of himself standing in waist-deep river water, surrounded by a film crew, talking to the actors, and saying something like, “Now in this scene, we’re going to show the inner depth of our hero as he shows the President how to bait her hook. We’ll close in and show her accidentally stabbing herself in the finger. The Veteran Rebel Secret Service Agent will have to take off his shirt to stop the bleeding, but unbeknownst to our heroes, there are terrorist frogmen planting a bomb underneath the boat as our Veteran Rebel Secret Service Agent kisses the President in this intimate moment before all hell breaks loose. Don’t worry, CGI is going to make the explosions much bigger.”
The Great Director again shuddered in bed and promised himself a muttered, “Not me!”
And with that he was moving. Right now he was only thirty seconds ahead of the phone, but in those thirty seconds he dressed, grabbed his wallet, and put on shoes without socks. Halfway down the main staircase of his standard-issue Beverly Hills palatial cottage mansion, he heard the phone ring. He stopped at the first landing and listened. First mistake, he thought. In a chase movie always keep moving. It’s harder to hit a moving target. Run now!
He jumped and made the next landing, startling the Hispanic maid who’d just begun her ascent of the curving staircase with an armload of fresh towels for his Perfect Robot Wife. He issued a series of Spanglish guilt-motivated apologies ranging from a feeble, but ever useful, “Lo siento,” to apologies for not delineating the difference between all South and Latin American cultures.
At the bottom of the stairs, he weaved wildly through the marbled maze of a house that did not feel like a home. With the back door in sight, he heard his Perfect Robot Wife call down the monumental staircase and across the pastel caverns and frescoed halls that were their various family rooms. She was calling his name. Telling him that someone was calling for him.
The Great Director, during this particular break with reality, was convinced she somehow worked for THEM. Convinced that long ago, she had been assigned to be some kind of handler. He never should have made SpyWife. Now he was absolutely paranoid that it was her job to keep him fed, cleaned, dressed, loved, admired, and most of all, working for THEM. His stress-fractured mind quickly boarded a rattling claptrap train of logic, often unsure of the station or destination due to various prescriptions, and once again suspected her of the worst kind of infidelity. Secret Government Project Adultery. And if she was part of the Coalition of the Evil sworn to enslave him for all time, then by running now, he would only alert the unholy alliance of his intention to desert their invisible clutches.
But this was his only chance. If the chest pains didn’t get him, THEY would.
“Ha!” he said too loudly, his discovery of an alibi startling him. “I’m going to get some paper!” he shrieked. But then he hesitated and almost ended the statement with a question. Or at least, that’s how his pill-rattled mind replayed his line read. Quickly he added a definitive and well-pitched “Honey!” worthy of the most discount of Shakespeare-in-the-park tragedians.
He could see her in his mind’s eye standing at the top of the staircase, processing, scanning her inventory data file to determine if there was any paper in the house that would fit his specific needs.
“There’s some above the phone in the kitchen.” Silence for a brief moment before she added, “You have a call up here.”
For a moment he paused to consider how simply amazing she was. In a house, a mansion as it were, with as many furnishings, objets d’art, tools, books, clothing, utensils, Christmas ornaments, various and associated supplies, innumerable latest must-have showpiece furniture arrangements, and everything else a well-to-do filmmaker could afford… he was amazed at how she could possibly know that there was a pad of paper, specifically the kind he needed according to his lie, and where it was located exactly. But—she’d been the slightest bit slow in processing and analyzing his need that was really a lie. THEY would have to get him a new model, he thought with a petty sense of grim satisfaction.
“That’s the kind with the bind on top. I need the other kind,” he whined as though this were actually legitimate. “I’ll be gone for just a few. I’ll even take your car and fill it up. Tell whomever I’ll call them right back.”
He pushed the garage door opener, located on a smart display along one wall of the kitchen. The sound of the massive door rising to the up position could be heard throughout the house. It was the perfect sound effect for his misdirection. Then he opened the door to the back yard and dashed across the patio in the opposite direction and onto the lawn. Away from the driveway that led from the garage and to the store he would never get paper from. If there even was such a store.
Now he was running and looking back over his shoulder, trying to see who would be looking out the large back windows of the house to note his escape. Was she at the window, phone to ear, watching and reporting? He weaved and dodged fountains of white spray rhythmically working in undulating patterns across the expansive fairway of his sprawling back yard. Later—next time—he would find out that you just run and don’t look back.
Never ever look back.
As he climbed up through the azalea that covered the back fence of his property, he realized he was in his own movie now. He was the fugitive. The Hunted One. He hoisted himself over the top of the fence and landed in the alley with a grunt. It was graceless but accomplished nonetheless. He looked both ways much like he would direct any of the mega stars he often directed. There were no men in the shadows, no suspiciously parked, nondescript sedans near the trash cans. Only a clean, white cement alley brightened by the blue sky and the burning early morning of the Southern California sun.
He headed off in a direction, which one he was not sure, but he’d developed a geographic philosophy of LA from the backs of many cars he was often driven to and from sets in. If you lived in the nice part of town, it was really only a pocket, an enclave, an island. If you began to head off in any one direction long enough, you would eventually find the disparity, the poverty, the meaner side of town.
If this was his movie, then he needed to follow some of the rules by which he often directed films. The first being, in the fugitive picture, after the grim realization of being hunted by faceless government lackeys has set in, the hero must cross the tracks to the poor side of town in order to find a Garbage Dump Saint. So the goal was now to seek out the less savory elements of society. To go out among the working people who walked the fine line between poverty and survival, crime and punishment, good and evil, right and wrong, in the daily grind for survival inside the dark canyons of a city without pity or love. A place where danger and survival was a way of life.
He went to a 7-Eleven.
At the mini-mart he kept his head down while purchasing a carton of chocolate milk,
avoiding a clear shot by the security camera. He walked outside and waited, thinking. What should he do next? He had thrown THEM off his trail for a moment, at best. Within the hour his Perfect Robot Wife would finish her morning workout, sense he had not returned, and after a short conversation with the maid, who always saw everything, his Perfect Robot Wife would process he was up to something. THEY would be alerted. Then THEY would come after him. THEY had unlimited, unfathomable resources with which to bring him back under their oppressive thumb. He had a slew of credit cards, all traceable, all useless. If he wanted to avoid detection, he had eighty-two dollars in cash to do it with.
He couldn’t rent a car, and calling friends to pick him up or loan him cash would draw suspicion. Who knew how many of them were in on it? There were times when he wondered if the whole thing, life and Hollywood, wasn’t what it appeared to be. What if it was instead some giant, alien simulation—if somehow Earth had died a long time ago and alien archeologists had reconstructed it all, then regenerated his DNA from long lost skin cells they’d found in the wreckage of a dead civilization? What if he was merely some clone living out a patchwork life constructed from the buried trash of a nuked planet? Maybe he, his cells, had once been someone different. He suspected he his dead-skin-cell-self had been happier. The alien simulation theory would explain why he felt so restless all his life, like a lion trapped in a cage, pacing and being watched. Pills helped. Or so the doctors had told him. But he hated them so he tried never to take them.
If this was true, he thought, then maybe the aliens could read his mind. And if that was possible, then maybe they would shut down the simulation now that he was on to them. Shut it down and reveal all. Finally.
He closed his eyes.
He knew that when he opened them next, he would no longer see the parking lot of the simulated 7-Eleven at the edge of simulated Beverly Hills. He would see reality as it really was. An alien lab or a blasted landscape of dead cities silhouetted against a burnt sky. He opened his eyes slowly, letting the bombastic musical score in his head accompany his true awakening. The music of a new dawn, total realization.
DUM DA DUUM DUUUUUMM DA
There was only a taxi, idling in the early morning chill of the parking lot. On the door, a happy-faced sun logo announced the Sonshine Taxi Co. The cab was empty and the motor was running, sending plumes of warm exhaust into the morning air. The cabbie had probably gone into the store, and for a brief moment, grand theft auto flickered across the desperate mind of the Great Director. Instead he climbed into the back seat and waited.
When the cabbie, an older black man, came out of the convenience store, he saw his back seat was now occupied. Most cabbies would have been angry at themselves for not locking the car, and fully willing to vent on the fare. But this cabbie was an easygoing man. He seldom got angry, because he was seldom disappointed with his own life, which is the reason most people get angry. Instead he was thankful, which most people are not. He climbed behind the wheel asking the Great Director, “How do you do?”
Most people never replied to this question, and the cabbie never expected them to, though secretly he waited for someone to tell him how they were doing so he could pray for them, which was the main reason he drove a cab. So he could drive around praying for people all day.
Like the others, the Great Director passed on the opportunity to be prayed for and instead blurted out, “I’m not sure where I want to go, yet.”
“Been that way myself on occasion,” replied the cabbie. His voice was like a veteran reclining chair in a sun-drenched living room. It was slow and easy.
“I was hoping we could drive around?” asked the Great Director.
“We can do that. Just come from USC, droppin’ off a kid. Normally work outta Long Beach, but with morning traffic it’ll take me a couple hours to get back down there. How’s that for ya?”
The mention of USC gave the Great Director an idea.
“Actually, I think if you could drop me off near USC, that would actually be just fine.”
“Okay then,” said the cabbie easily, shifting the sedan into reverse and looking over his shoulder. He relished the opportunity to get to USC and start praying for those children. They needed it badly. He hit the meter and they left the parking lot.
A childhood friend, who had done well in the garment business, had a son who attended film school at USC. The Great Director’s mind raced for the kid’s name. Jason, he thought it might be. Every year he got together with his friend: one day, once a year. They spent time together, talked about the old days, and made plans to spend more time together. They never did. Last year Jason had enrolled in USC’s film department, and his father and the Great Director had spent the afternoon with him.
The Great Director sat in the back of the cab, the early morning sun reflecting too brightly for his eyes, so he closed them and tried to remember more about his best friend’s son. He recalled a moment from that day. Before meeting with the son, the Great Director and his friend went shopping for supplies the kid might need living away from home for the first time. They bought instant noodles, cleaning supplies, and other essentials. And there was a moment, 1/24 of a second, a single grainy frame of celluloid recollection: him and his friend standing in a large bulk-shopping warehouse, dwarfed by a monolithic aisle of canned goods. His friend next to the stacked cases of corned beef and hash. In the hours before, they had chatted on and on, talking about the past and all the people they had once known, as though they were still present and part of their lives. But at that moment, standing with a case of corned beef and hash in his arms, his friend had aged beyond belief. He was a middle-aged man who realized he would never again be able to make his son’s favorite before-school breakfast, corned beef and hash with scrambled eggs.
His friend sobbed slightly, snorting as he hefted the case into the cart. Trying to hide his emotions from his oldest of friends. When he’d wiped his eyes, blown his nose, and generally recomposed himself, he offered an “I’m sorry.”
The Great Director, still shocked at his friend’s transformation to weepy old man, numbly told him it was okay.
But secretly, it was not okay.
They were no longer twelve-year-old boys walking down an alley, kicking cans and making up games as they went. An entire summer of pirate forts and comic books forever in front of them. The films they’d made in their garages with the old Super 8. Those things had seemed promises of some sort. Promises that time would never change them. Assurances that death was not real. Instead his friend had chosen to grow old, and it was not okay.
Not at all.
The cab wove across the patterned streets of Los Angeles, demonstrating the cab driver’s knowledge of the city as he deftly avoided heavy traffic spots. When they came upon the east-west traffic of the morning, the cabbie eased onto the north-south streets the insiders used to move and shake. Once they neared the campus of USC, the Great Director looked for Fraternity Row, and when they passed the house the Great Director was looking for, he had the cabbie drive by. He got out just down the block, paid $34.50, and thanked the cabbie as he turned to search the house for any signs of familiarity.
As the cab pulled away, the cabbie prayed in singsong words for his former passenger: a conversation with God for this man, for this moment. Garbage Dump Saints did not need to worry if God would forget this man.
God does not.
The cab turned at the end of the street and was gone.
The Great Director walked toward the house, trying to remember if this was the right house and where the boy’s room might specifically be. He recalled walking up a set of dark, polished, wooden stairs. They had reminded him of the same ones used in the Kathy Bates movie Misery. Or maybe the memory was blending together with the movie because he had been watching the movie during the same week. He didn’t know. His friend had purchased a large bag of kitty litter for the boy’s cat. He was sure of tha
t useless tidbit of information and cursed his brain for holding on to it.
His watch showed just after seven thirty in the morning. Classes would be starting soon, and the streets would be crowded with students and faculty hurrying to get to their first classes. He surveyed the house, its steep multi-colored gables, tattered fraternity flag, and marginally maintained front yard which quickly turned to creeping jungle near the back of the property. All screamed Unpopular Frat House. As he circled and observed the house, searching for any enlightening feature that might help him to contact the boy, he failed to notice a blue plastic child’s pool at the side of the property. Now his shoe and pant leg were dripping wet from the murky green water at the bottom of the pool, in which a few uncapped beer bottles floated lethargically.
He began to curse, looking to see if anyone had observed his clumsiness, and there, sitting like a statue, was a small gray cat, near the side door. At the cat’s paws was a dead mouse.
Moments earlier, the cat had been scratching at the door, waiting for it to open so the cat could show the occupants it had paid rent. When no one answered, it had turned inward to clean its paws, raising them to its mouth and licking them in clean, efficient strokes.
The cat had seen the pool fiasco.
Now it regarded the Great Director without judgment. It walked slowly toward him, moving its tail back and forth.
The Great Director remained perfectly still. This had to be the kid’s cat.
The cat made a close pass across the side of his trousers and, seeming to enjoy it, turned again for another pass. It stopped after the second pass and stared up at him for a long moment. Then it turned and darted over to a trellis and climbed, effortlessly, to the overhanging roof of the second floor. Turning back to look at the Great Director once more, it moved to an open window and delicately, one paw at a time, stepped across the windowsill. It paced back and forth and then sat, staring down at him again.