“Thank you,” I said. “We will.”
“Don’t be too late,” the father told Molly, and glanced at me.
“I won’t,” Molly promised.
“It was very nice meeting you,” the mother said.
“Nice meeting you,” I told them both.
Walking to the car I said to Molly, “They seem awfully nice.”
“Uh-huh.”
As I drove us to the Dolton Theater, she told me about her cat Samantha giving birth to three kittens that morning.
I told her the Egyptians used to worship cats.
She said she didn’t know that.
I said it was true.
We passed the Dairy Queen. “There it is,” I said.
She told me an idea she had for a new ice cream flavor, featuring peanut butter and honey.
I told her that sounded awful, and we both laughed.
This was going great.
At the theater, she didn’t want any popcorn so I didn’t either and we sat together waiting for the movie to begin.
I told her this was about UFO’s.
She knew that.
I asked her if she believed in UFO’s.
She said she wasn’t sure.
I told her that was a very good answer.
We sat there.
I asked her if she’d ever heard that song, “My Blue Heaven.”
She didn’t think so.
The movie started. I laid my arm along the back of her seat.
About ten minutes later, I was about to very casually move my arm onto her shoulder, but just then she opened the purse in her lap and I watched from the corner of my eye as she lifted out a dark little bottle, unscrewed the cap and took a sip. I could smell it: Robitussin. I figured she must be working on a cough. My arm was going to sleep and I brought it back.
About ten minutes later, she opened her purse again and took another hit.
I whispered, “Is that … are you …”
“For my cough,” she whispered, putting the bottle back.
Halfway through the movie, she’d had six little hits and was now responding out loud to events on the screen, saying things like, “Whoa,” and “Aw, maaan?” And by the end of the movie, when those anemic-looking little doe-eyed aliens came walking delicately down the ramp of their space ship, Molly said loudly, “Oh, look at them, look at them …”
Afterwards, walking to the car, she was weaving and talking away. “What a movie. God, you know? I wish that would happen to me. I wish somebody from outer space, some cute little people like that … I would go with them, I wouldn’t even hesitate, I’d say ‘Let’s blow this popstand.’”
As soon as we got in the car she opened her purse and took out the bottle of cough medicine.
“How can you drink that stuff, Molly?”
“For my cough.” She took a hit. “Here,” she said, and held out the bottle.
“No, thanks. Listen, don’t take any more tonight, okay? Your parents are gonna be pretty—”
“Start the car. C’mon. Let’s go.”
“All right but … what did you feel like doing? Get something to eat? A pizza or something?”
“Nah. Just drive around. Go ‘head. Start the car.”
I started the car.
“Attaboy.”
I pulled out of the lot.
“Hey, y’know?” she said. “I wish … man, I wish something like that would happen to me.”
“A close encounter?”
“That would be so fucking great.”
We drove around. She talked some more about how much she would like to be abducted by aliens. I tried to change the subject. I asked her what she planned to do with her cat Samantha’s kittens.
“They’re so little,” she said. “You should see, they’re so … little,” and she started crying.
I didn’t know what to do. I put out my arm for her to move under it and she did, laying her head against me. I told her, “They’ll be fine, Molly.”
“They’re so tiny.”
“They’ll be fine. Really. Don’t worry. They’re gonna be just—”
“Hey,” she said, no longer crying. “Want a really close encounter? Of the fourth kind?” She started fumbling with my belt buckle.
“What’re you doing?”
She kept working away. “What’s it look like?”
“Will ya stop? Jesus.”
She sat up and looked at me. “S’matter? You queer?”
“I just don’t think you’re in your right … you know …”
“Miiind, you mean? My right miiind?”
I missed the little Dairy Queen girl.
“That shit you’ve been drinking…”
“I told you, it’s for my cough.”
“You don’t have a cough, you haven’t coughed all—”
“See? It works. C’mon,” she said, and put her hand on my leg. “Don’t be such a homo.”
“Maybe some other time,” I told her.
“What’sa matter, don’tcha like me?”
“I like you a lot, Molly.”
“Do you think I’m nice?”
“I think you’re very nice, yes.”
“Do you love me?”
“Well … I mean …”
“Want me to make you love me? I can make you love me,” she said, and went after my belt buckle again, just as I was making a turn, and she fell onto my lap.
“Molly, get off! I can’t steer!”
She also had her feet in the way of the brake pedal and we went over a curb, then onto a lawn while I kept kicking and stomping and was finally able to stop the car, sending both of us against the steering wheel.
“Whoa, fuck,” she said, and sat up.
We were three feet away from a large picture window, on the other side of which, across a stretch of carpet, a family of four—Mom, Dad, Bud and Sis—were arranged on a couch, staring bug-eyed into my headlights.
We sat there staring back at them.
“They prob’ly think we’re aliens,” Molly whispered.
I snapped out of it, backed off of their lawn, got out on the street again and resumed driving around.
She was quiet now. So was I. I kept picturing them— Mom and Dad and Bud and Sis—returning without comment to their television show, a sitcom, staring at it for ten seconds, then all of them laughing together briefly, stopping together, staring for another ten seconds, then laughing together …
I didn’t want that, I decided. No, thank you. I didn’t want any part of that. I told Molly I could see her point about wanting to be abducted by aliens. I told her I wouldn’t mind it either, not a bit. “I’m with you,” I said. “Life down here is getting just a little bit too—”
“Drive me home please?” she said quietly.
“Yours, you mean?”
“Yes, please.”
She was sitting forward, head lowered, her hand braced against the glove box.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“I don’t feel so good.”
“Well?” I said. “See?”
“Fuck you,” she said.
I drove her home. We didn’t speak. But I was thinking. And as I pulled up in front of her house I said, “Y’know, Molly, there’s a lot of ways we can look at tonight, a lot of different—”
“Thank you, I had a nice time,” she said, and got out.
I watched her walking carefully towards the front porch. Her father opened the door and I pulled away.
JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS
I’m in a Motel 6, somewhere in the middle of Nebraska, on my way to the West Coast where I intend to finally break free and live. It’s one o’clock in the morning. I was almost asleep, but then a woman on the other side of the wall started moaning and groaning while a man began grunting and muttering, the two of them laboring on and on. So now I’m sitting on the edge of the bed in my underwear watching TV. The room still smells like the turkey sub I ate three hours ago.
Jason, brave and cl
ean and handsome, is battling the seven-headed Hydra, his dark-eyed girlfriend, Medea, looking on, concerned. Jason manages to stab the creature in the heart, causing all the heads to go wheeling around on their long necks rather comically, and I laugh, hear myself laughing alone in a motel room in the middle of the night in the middle of Nebraska, and stop laughing.
The Hydra finally falls on all its faces. Jason grabs the Golden Fleece and with Medea goes running towards the sea where the Argo is anchored. But wait—skeleton warriors come sprouting out of the ground, equipped with swords and shields, Jason clearly wondering: How the hell do you kill skeletons?
Answer: lop off their heads.
Back on the Argo, he kisses Medea passionately. Then they look at one another—gaze at one another—and kiss again, music up.
The End.
I turn it off and go walking around the room, smoking, telling myself this is the right thing for me to be doing, this was a good decision, wise and brave. Colorful adventures lie ahead. Just keep heading westward. Jason himself said it best: There’s no turning back on this voyage.
I jab out my cigarette, get back into bed, close my eyes— and there they go again, her with the groaning, him with the grunting, the bedsprings wheezing away. I want to pound on the wall. I want to get up on my knees, pound on the wall and holler, For God sakes, put something into it!
GOING NATIVE
Interior: Nearly empty fern bar in L.A., late afternoon, Jack drinking a beer, writing in his notebook, only other patron a woman around forty in a yellow dress—sun dress?—three stools down, sipping a pina colada from a straw. Bartender tall and skinny, little green stud in his earlobe—gay?—leaning near cash register reading People magazine.
I close the notebook and pocket my pen for now. I’m on my third beer, feeling very tan, sunglasses atop my head. “Excuse me,” I say to the woman in the yellow dress.
She looks at me. “Hm?”
“I couldn’t help noticing you’re almost through with your drink there, and I was wondering…”
“Sure, go ahead. Buy me a drink.”
Remaining smooth, I tell the bartender to bring this lady here another pina colada.
She thanks me.
“The name’s John, by the way,” I tell her.
She tells me hers: Angela.
“That’s a very pretty name.” I consider adding, For a very pretty woman, but that seems a little worn, and anyway she isn’t very pretty.
We talk.
She works part-time in an insurance office: Allstate.
“The good hands people,” I say, smiling, cupping my hands.
“Mm,” she says, nodding, looking rather bored with me already.
I tell her I’m out here from the Chicago area gathering raw material for a screenplay titled Going Native, tapping the large red notebook next to my beer.
She laughs, then apologizes and explains that everyone in L.A. is writing a screenplay, don’t I know that?
Tapping the notebook harder, I tell her there’s a part in here for Bob DeNiro that fits him like a glove.
“Bob DeNiro,” she says, looking amused. “Well.”
“Like a fucking glove,” I repeat.
She lowers her head and sips her drink from the little straw.
I lean towards her along the bar: “Tell you a secret. This is part of the movie right here, the two of us talking. In fact, me telling you this secret is part of—”
“I have to go now,” she says, standing up.
“Well … hey. Finish your drink anyway.”
“I have to feed my dog.”
“Your dog?” I say, showing interest, wanting her to stay and tell me about her dog. “You have a dog, Angela?”
“It’s not unusual.”
I ask her its name.
“It’s … Fido,” she says.
“That’s a very appropriate name for a dog. What kind are we talking about?”
“Big dog,” she says. “With huge teeth. Thanks for the drink.”
“Finish it why don’t ya.”
Purse across her shoulder, she wishes me good luck with my screenplay.
I ask her, “Ever done any acting? Because I’ll tell ya, there’s a part in here would fit you like a—”
“Bye, now.” She heads for the door.
“Hey, Angela?”
She turns.
“If your dog ever came after me, know what I would do to him? Do you want to know?”
She sighs and walks out of the bar.
I return to my beer. “I’d gut him like a fucking catfish.”
I light a cigarette and set it in the ash tray, open my notebook, pluck the pen from my shirt pocket, and get it all down, about Angela and her sad yellow dress, her pina coladas in the middle of the afternoon, her dreams of movie stardom, and her only real friend in the world, her dog Fido.
I close the notebook. “Yo,” I call out, lifting my empty bottle.
Angela’s attitude threw me off a little, but now that I’ve got her in my notebook I’m feeling okay again, feeling pretty good in fact—about my growing screenplay, about the thirty dollars in my wallet, the eight hundred dollars in my room, about my suntan, about the night ahead.
The bartender manages to drag himself away from his People magazine long enough to bring me another Heinekin.
I compliment him on the beautiful weather out here.
“Thanks,” he says.
“Know what it’s prob’ly doing in Chicago right now? As we speak?”
“No idea.”
“Snowing. Wind-chill factor, twenty below.” I give a laugh. “Worst weather in the world.” I raise my hand to God. “Literally. In the world.”
“You might be right.” He takes the empty bottle and drags his bored, weary ass back to the register.
“I might be right? I’m from there, okay? Suburb, anyway.”
“How ’bout that,” he says.
“Yeah, how ’bout that. Born and raised, pal.”
He opens his People magazine again.
“‘City of the big shoulders,’” I quote. “Ever hear that? It’s from a poem by Carl Sandburg, called ‘Chicago.’” I try to remember some more of it, but I can’t, and take a drink. I ask him if he’s aware that Chicago has the tallest building in the world. I raise my hand to God: “Literally. In the world.”
He nods, continues reading.
This fucking guy.
“Tell you something else we got,” I say to him. “The best damn people in the world.”
He turns a page, without comment.
“Nice people. Friendly. Know what I mean? Always a smile and a big hello: ‘Hey there, how ya doin’? How ‘bout those Cubbies?’”
He goes on reading.
“Those Cubbies,” I say quietly, looking off, my eyes filling up. And I can’t help it, I start singing, not very loud at all: “‘Myyy kind of town, Chicago is, my kind of town, Chicago is, my kind of people too, people who—’”
“Hey.”
I stop.
He stares at me for a long, hard-assed moment, then returns to his magazine.
I sit there nodding at him: Fine. Have it your way, pal. I pluck the pen from my pocket, open the notebook and get it all down:
JACK (singing quietly, with deep feeling): My kind of town, Chicago is my kind of town …
BARTENDER: Hey, you. Shut the fuck up.
JACK (singing louder): Chicago is my kind of people too …
BARTENDER (crosses to him): Hear what I said, buddy?
JACK: People who smile at you and eeeeach time I roam …
BARTENDER (pointing finger in Jack’s face): I’m warning you, pal.
JACK: Chicago is calling me home, Chicago is …
BARTENDER (pulling out a pistol from under the bar): Does this make things any clearer?
JACK: The Wrigley Building, Chicago is …
BARTENDER (cocks gun): You gonna stop?
JACK: The Union Station, Chicago is …
BARTEND
ER: Three … two …
JACK: One town that won’t let you down …
BARTENDER (lowering gun, nodding in admiration): You got guts, mister. I’ll give ya that.
BOTH (singing together): It’s myyy kiiind of town!
(They laugh and embrace, not sexually. Fast fade.)
I close the notebook. He’s still reading his magazine. “Yo,” I call out amiably, waving my empty bottle, giving him another chance.
MIRACLE IN THE RAIN
Hi Cheryl,
How you doing? Hey, it’s really something out here—palm trees, incredible weather, everyone on roller skates. I was wondering, could you send me some money so I can get home? I don’t want to ask Dad.
The truth is, I didn’t do very good out here. Mostly, all I did was sit around in bars trying to write a screenplay about a guy who mostly sits around in bars trying to write a screenplay. I didn’t even see any movie stars. The closest I came was some old woman getting out of a cab yesterday who looked like she might be Jane Wyman. I had just watched Miracle in the Rain that morning in my room—I’ve got this room with a bed and television, bathroom down the hall—and I yelled out to her, “Jane, you were great!” I wasn’t even drunk. Ever see that movie, Cheryl? Her soldier boyfriend, Van Johnson, gets killed in action and it’s all pretty sappy, but there’s this one scene where she’s standing on a little bridge in the park, looking around at the trees and the people, a beautiful day, but she just keeps shaking her head, amazed at how empty the world is, how utterly fucking desolate. “I can’t stand it,” she says in that soft little voice. “I just can’t stand it,” she says.
Anyway, turned out it wasn’t her getting out of the cab, just some old woman. Which is what I hate about L.A., thinking someone getting out of a cab who looks like Jane Wyman is either really Jane Wyman or just some old woman.
Could you send me, say, fifty? A hundred? I don’t know, you decide. Feel free. Thanks, Cheryl. For everything.
Love, John
RAGING BULL
I took my dad to see it, a middle-of-the-week, late-afternoon matinee at the River Oaks Mall. I was back living at home—just for a while, I promised, just until I could save a little—and he was recently retired after cutting meat at Novak’s Butcher Shop for forty-five years. It was odd and a little disturbing to see him home during a weekday, finding little jobs for himself.
Crying at Movies Page 8