“Right, sure. And the studio had nothing to say about it.”
“… those visions were not preprogrammed, clinically manipulated, and analyzed. They were not paint-by-the-number regurgitations of a bunch of fucking TV executives. Suits who know nothing, not one goddamn thing, about art. They’re in the business of programming Mars bars for a nation of brain-dead.”
Alan hated Burt when he got like this. It had driven his mother crazy. Maybe it was part of what happened. Made as much sense as anything else. Burt always assumed people found this behavior stimulating. But one by one, they backed away, put off by his exhaust in their face.
But Alan was stuck up on a mountain. A lonely citadel in the clouds where old St. Bernards came to die. He couldn’t leave and wondered if his dad had chosen this place deliberately. It was getting chilly and Alan crossed his arms.
The two were suddenly surrounded by singing waiters carrying a burning cake. They sang “Happy Birthday” and Burt blew out the sixty-one candles that were sunk to the waist in frosting. The waiters cut two pieces and left proudly, feeling they’d spread Alpine cheer.
“Musta been Wanda’s idea,” said Burt, delighted by the surprise. “She amazes me. Always puts me first. Even after the life she’s had …” He pressed lips; philosophical sadness.
Alan nodded, properly grave; tried to feel bad. But it was impossible. Every time he ran it through his head, it always struck him as absurd she was so fucked up. How bad could it be? She’d been a top sandal model with perfect feet and as if that weren’t dumb enough, she’d had a vapid-eye-movement marriage to a guy who did lighting for huge New York stage productions. The bulb-hubby was booted after Wanda met Burt, who was directing one of the productions.
According to giggly legend, as told by an always breathless Wanda, she’d been backstage, giving herself a pedicure, waiting for her husband to finish work, and Burt, taking a note break, had been instantly struck by her; the uncoaxed smiles, radiant curiosity. Her inordinate level of health. They fell in love and she’d only told him after the marriage about the epilepsy. She hadn’t wanted to scare him off, knowing he’d been living with an ill woman.
But Wanda had two seizures on the honeymoon, in Acapulco, the worst during waterskiing, when her ski binding had refused to release, as her tongue flushed into her throat, and she’d shorn off three perfect toes. Her modeling agency had been compassionate but the phone instantly died. And the seizures timeshared her world.
Over years, the epilepsy had gotten worse and any little upset seemed to make Wanda stop breathing for seconds, waiting for her throat to form hands and strangle her. She drank teas, visited acupuncturists. Wore sandals with hundreds of rubber nubs, to calm her nervous system. But seven toes just weren’t providing enough surface and every couple of weeks, she’d go wolfman, foaming, snarling.
As father and son licked frosting from forks and Burt tried on the blue sweater, Alan chose his words carefully.
“Dad … I wanted to tell you, I may have sold a series.”
“Oh?”
“Still waiting for network go-ahead. But if I can get it on, it’s going to be a breakthrough show … that’s what they’re all saying.”
Burt was nibbling on a frosting-flower like a big bee.
“Well, can I say congratulations?”
“Yeah. But not yet.”
“Your creation?” Alan nodded and Burt looked at him, proudly. “Well, I hope you win those bastards. Get something good on the air.”
Alan watched his father, chomping on the birthday cake like a six-year-old. He was so damn cute sometimes. With blue frosting on his chin and matching blue sweater, he looked like a child model in a Kodak commercial; fucking adorable.
On the drive home at dusk, Alan thought he could feel his father’s cells moving inside him. The sun was a bloody gunshot wound over L.A. and he swore every gene his father passed him was playing Chutes and Ladders under his skin; roaming, hiding behind nerves and muscles.
Crouching. Murmuring.
Scheming for a way to take over, in tiny blue sweaters.
dissolve
Mirror on closet door, eyes staring back. Lamp shades tilted; lights glare. He squeezes the razor.
The hooker stirs, bruises laking. He glares, goes back to mirror. Begins to cut himself, razor across sternum, down at an angle, to navel; two sides of a blood triangle.
Decides to leave no note. His body will be the message. Raw scrawls; how he wants out. How nothing works worth shit. Everybody promises everything. Lies. Nothing comes true. He should’ve killed his agent. Make the world better.
She starts to cry. He tells her to shut the fuck up. She won’t stop. It feels like everything. Nothing he says matters. He’s furious. Watches blood run, skin drain white. Years of training; expectation. Now just anger. Feels himself go nowhere.
She opens the door. Runs.
He lets her.
The motel room is crap. It’s enough. He doesn’t miss the apartment. Tampa. His wife. Workshops; résumés. Dead nights of Neil Simon, equity-waiver tombs. Special abilities: horseback riding, akido, hypnosis. He sits on the bed, stares at bureau mirror, watching blood roam.
The phone rings. Her. Wanting to know how it goes. How interviews are coming. Callbacks. He lets it ring. Hates her. She’s infection. Her love is greed.
The cuts give off heat. The A.C. rattles. Hollywood Boulevard pisses desperate sewage past his window. He turns on TV, watches a soap. Pouty mannerisms; a doll show.
Eyes close. Cold.
Angry black voices next door. Tempers shove accusations. A.C. rattle. Tourists laughing; diving in the tiny pool, lunging up into poison air; mindless fucks. Blood slips past ribs, onto sheets. Staring at roof shadows; drape leaks. Tired. Car horns fade. Heat thins. Poolside voices; gone.
Sleep.
Sleep …
A knock.
Again. Twice. Footsteps; gone. Eyes opening. Listening to blood; sheet’s soft suction. Crawling to door. Listen. Reach up, open a crack. A manila envelope. Delivered. A studio. Tear it open.
The pilot script. A note clipped.
“Jake: I was serious. Read this and call me.” A. White
messages
Alan’s Porsche howled-up Pacific Coast Highway; a Kraut missile. The CD player blistered Stevie Ray’s heat-seek blues. It was nine-fifteen. He’d just left seeing Eddy at Cedars and felt awful; sad, lost.
The 928S skimmed alongside burnt-orange surf, roaring for Malibu, and he tried hard not to think about the hospital visit. The mangled emotions that had fallen from a thousand-story building, sitting with Eddy, trying to let him know he was loved.
Alan tried instead to think of Bart’s hairy Tyrannosaurus rex smile. His happy, black wiggle when Alan came in the front door. Bart’s dreamy look when the two would hammock on the balcony, together, overlooking the warm sea, swinging slowly.
He shot past where Sunset Boulevard punched its fist into Pacific Coast Highway and couldn’t get the evening out of his head. Every thought drew him back to the Lysol gloom of the huge hospital. The lima-green surgical slippers everywhere. Knife-leprechauns walking around, exhausted, speaking to haunted families in quiet reassurances, green slippers like blood snowshoes.
Alan hated the visits. Hated seeing Eddy that way. Hated the echoey scent of broken bodies moving up in the checkout line. His agent, Jordan, had told him he didn’t mind hospitals, even liked them. Thought of them as “hi-tech greenhouses, tilling the flesh and watering bulbs of good health. Like human rhododendron.”
Alan told him he was certifiable. But then Jordan had problems; his own, plus 10 percent of everybody else’s.
The visits were always difficult. Unsettling, Dr. Strange-love realities with Eddy telling Alan about the world, while his own was shrinking to a pinprick.
But tonight it had been especially troubling. Alan had walked nervously down the carpeted hall in the cancer ward, toward Eddy’s room, on the third floor. He felt the wetness of the carnations co
ming through the waxy tissue, onto his hand. He’d been glared at by hairy orderlies who were wheeling some miserable wretch along the hall, on a gurney. The blanched face was sunken and rivered with fat, silky veins that looked as if they tied the meatless head to the pillow; ropes steadying an old ship.
The guy looked like he had about a minute left and had pivoted his head to look at Alan as they’d coasted him by. He’d winked, as if sharing a lewd gag with a fellow perv, then struggled a bit against the canvas belts that pinned him at the chest, waist, and legs. Indicated for the orderlies to stop. He’d coughed and Alan stopped to spend a moment with him.
“I’m not here for my health, y’know. I’m here because they need me.” Then he’d glared angrily. “Okay?!”
Alan nodded. Trying to be calm, not upset him.
The old man had bared decayed teeth, spit at him. Alan pulled back and the old man hissed. “… you’re in much deeper than you think, asshole. You went too far this time.”
The orderlies had quickly rolled him away. But he looked back at Alan, forcing his neck at an angle that looked broken. He grinned a dead-man smile.
“I wouldn’t want to be you, asshole. You’re a”—then he said the word that had chilled Alan—“fuckin monster. How did you get out?” He grinned ugly again, then went white as milk. Looked horrified. And he was gone, around a corner, like a sick rumor.
It had disturbed Alan a lot. He’d realized to a dying old man, everybody probably looked like monsters. That they could live, and he couldn’t, made them the hideous. The deformed. But still, the way he’d said “monster” … it had reminded Alan of how Mimi had said it. Even the way she’d looked. The deadness in her eyes when she said it. The same deadness in the man’s eyes.
At least Alan had felt that.
But the day had been too long, too stressful. And visits to Cedars were always hard; painful.
One night, on the way home from visiting Eddy, Alan thought somebody was in the back seat of the Porsche, waiting to kill him. Another time, he thought he’d heard his dead mother, Dee, beckon to him from one of the hospital rooms to the side of Eddy’s. He thought he’d heard her say she was cold and afraid where she was and would Alan please come and get her, take her where she could be safe; warm.
But he figured it was bound to happen when a mind like his was under pressure. Run a hundred-million-dollar submarine too deep and the weight of all that water compressed it into a doorknob. What the fuck did he expect? There was a lot going on. No wonder he was upset; seeing meaning in things. Susceptible to empty detail.
He raced past Topanga Beach, rolled down windows, giving his hair a ride. He still couldn’t get it out of his head that that old guy was some kid’s dad. Some mother’s son. The larger progression hit him. Just like it usually did every time he’d said goodbye to Eddy. Quietly took a last look at his dying friend after tucking him in and kissing him gently on the forehead.
The facts of pain. The unnegotiable truth of hurt. He lost track of it sometimes. Then, some inconsequential asterisk on the reality paragraph would remind him. Maybe it was passing a motorcycle accident and seeing a red form pried off chain-link by cops in bloody uniforms.
Or some horrible item in the news that forced you to read it twice, despite its cruelty, its impossibility. The human race could get very real, very fast. Sometimes Alan thought working in television could make you forget where the lines of reality started and ended. Where you came from.
Where you didn’t want to go.
He’d been home an hour when he and Bart wandered in from the deck, hungry. It was a bit after ten and the two sat on the kitchen floor, sharing a bowl of pesto tortellini Alan warmed in the microwave. Bart dug a gourmand muzzle into his personalized bowl, tongue a single, pink chopstick.
He stared up at Alan with moody brown eyes and Alan nodded. “Okay. I hear you.” He stood, grabbed a Kirin from the fridge, and poured half in Bart’s bowl, the rest in his own glass.
“Gotta check my messages, bud. I’ll ask if anybody called you. Okay?”
It was okay with Bart.
Alan hit the Panasonic autodialer and the little Disney-flea-beeps sang a three-second overture. He stuck it on speakerphone and settled in on the floor with Bart, cross-legged.
“Hello, Mr. White’s residence? May I help you?” It was a new voice. A little bored, a little interested. Intelligent. Like just maybe it knew what the hell was coming down.
“Yeah, hello … this is Mr. White. Uh … anybody, you know …” The Kirin was scraping paint off his skull.
“Call?”
“Call. Right.” He was exhausted. Even Bart sensed it, wagging a counselor’s tail.
“I’ll check.” He heard paper shifting, as if she was making an origami crow. “By the way, Mr. White. I just wanted to say hi. My name is Kimmy.”
Kimmy. It’s what people named their mice.
“Yeah, hi. How’re you doin’?”
“Well, it’s my first night. But pretty good considering. Mind if I ask you kind of a personal question?”
He sipped more beer, felt things scaling his stomach walls. “Depends …”
“Well, if I’m not mistaken, you did that sitcom ‘Stacked Plates’ couple of seasons ago, didn’t you?” She cleared her throat. “Those waitresses with the big tits?”
Yeah, that was me, he thought.
“Don’t remember.” His head felt crooked.
“Oh, you’d remember something like that. My sister says it was probably just displaced anger toward women. She’s sort of a gender analyst. But not a dog or a lesbian or anything. But I thought the show was funny. You were producer or something?”
Yeah.
“No … listen, my messages?”
“Right. Well, let’s see … Jordan called at eight-fifteen. Said the network was showing signs of budging but not to count on anything. He’ll call you in the morning. Wow. Sounds provocative.”
Alan was starting to find her mildly irritating.
“That it?”
“Hold on … I’m getting there. Your business manager Ed called at seven-forty. A bunch of foreign-run residuals came in. Said to call him in the morning. Gonna be a busy morning, I guess, huh?”
“Yeah. Anything else?”
“Your mechanic called, said to bring the Porsche in on Monday. He’s booked through the week. Summer. Whole world is overheating.”
Thank you, Carl Sagan.
“And a last one from Erica at ten-ten. Said just to say she was thinking about you. Call her back no matter how late. Sounds like a sweet person.”
Alan said nothing, staring at his foot, half-asleep.
“Is she?”
“Sorry?” He was getting drunk.
“A sweet person. Is Erica a sweet person?”
Ask her three ex-husbands, thought Alan. One tried to shoot her, one tried to destroy her life, one burrowed into Scientology and became obsessed with John Travolta and hidden meanings in the meaningless. She was a nice girl who seemed to trigger exaggerated reactions in guys, other than himself. Alan asked her about it once and she told him she was baffled; she gave men all the room in the world. She swore she did nothing to drive her husbands to lunatic behavior. But it just kept happening.
It was somehow suspect.
“Yeah … she’s great. I mean, it’s not like we’re married or something. Sure … she’s great.” God, he was telling his life story to a girl who folded paper birds.
Bart wanted more beer.
“Well, that’s good. Is she pretty?”
“Pretty?”
“Yeah, you know … sexy? Don’t men like that?” She was lowering her voice like a neckline.
Alan looked off, smiling. Christ, she was coming on to him. It was weird. And after the Hard Day’s Night he’d been sucked through, it felt good.
“What’s your name again?”
She told him. He said it a few times to her, using his nicest voice. After a minute, she told him he sounded sad and if he wante
d, she could come over after she got off and keep him company.
“I work out a lot and I give great back massages. Do you like blondes or brunettes?”
Alan couldn’t recall the difference but managed some answer that made her laugh and told her where he lived. She said she’d definitely be there. Asked if he were serious with Erica. He said it was more the other way around and Kimmy made a happy, cat-toy noise.
“I really admire your talent,” she said. “And that isn’t coming from some naive place. I’m taking the David Berg comedy writing class at the Fade-In Scriptwriters’ Academy. Have you heard of him? He’s really an exceptional instructor.”
Berg was the biggest hack in the business, thought Alan, now lying sideways on the floor with Bart, cradling the ambitious voice that was charming him; saying the perfect words it hoped would open Ali Baba’s cave.
He stared closely at a hole in the wood floor that looked like it had been made by a nail. A blemish of darker grain under his feeling fingertip seemed like a sleeping bloodstain; death rust. He could faintly hear an electric knife humming, screaming voices.
“So anyway, what do you look like, Alan? I’m medium height and everyone says I have a great figure. I grew up back East? You know, one of those ‘so what do you wanna do?’ towns?”
When she got to the part about a spec feature script she’d like him to read and produce, Alan told her maybe they should make it some other time, managed to get off pleasantly, and stumbled out onto the deck to get some fresh air. He sagged in his hammock with Bart, staring out at the slow, sweeping tide as it rolled and foamed, making its way toward land. He began to unbutton his shirt, after tossing off shoes and hearing one slide off the deck into water. But he never finished and his sleeping form lolled in salt mist under moonlight.
His dreams were violent and bloody.
The Mercenary was knifing someone’s chest open, and just as the blade seamed upward, about to carve out the throat, Alan jerked awake. He scared Bart, asleep between his legs, head in Alan’s lap; a whiskered anvil.
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