by Jeff Zentner
The man nods, still coughing, and waves Divine and Yuri into a back room. They close the door. And it’s Lawson and me with Coughing Man.
His coughs subside. He pounds his chest and hawks a loogie into a garbage can by his desk. “You working with Divine?” he croaks.
“Possibly?” I say.
“What’s your name?”
“Josie Howard.”
Coughing Man looks at Lawson.
“Lawson Vargas.”
“I didn’t catch your name,” I say.
The man sticks his cigar back between his teeth. “Wald Disme.”
“Wald Dis—like Walt—”
“ANY RESEMBLANCE MY NAME MAY BEAR TO ANY PERSON ALIVE OR DECEASED IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL AND NOT TO BE CONSTRUED IN ANY WAY AS INFRINGEMENT UPON THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY OF HERETOFORE MENTIONED PERSONS ALIVE OR DECEASED WHOSE NAME MINE MIGHT COINCIDENTALLY RESEMBLE,” Disme says with great force and energy. It sounds like something someone made him read off a card verbatim until he had it memorized.
“Okay,” I say, “so it’s a kooky coincidence your name sounds almost exactly like—”
“ANY RESEMBLANCE MY NAME MAY BEAR TO ANY PERSON ALIVE OR DECEASED—”
I give him two thumbs-up. “Yep, yep, got it.”
“So what’d old Jackie-boy tell you? He gonna make you a star?” He says the last part in a pretty passable Divine impression.
“We’re just talking. I don’t know if—”
“You got a nice face. Good cheekbones. Probably do all right in front of a camera.”
“Um. Thanks. That’s…cool of you. Anyway, like I was saying—”
“Did Jackie-boy tell you we worked together in the nineties?”
“No.”
“I was the head of Wald Disme Studios. We were in the straight-to-video market.” He points with his cigar. “We were Netflix before there was Netflix.”
I take a closer look at the cartoon character painting. “Is that the mascot for Wald Disme Studios?”
Disme grins. “Rickey Rat! The rat with ratitude! ‘Ratitude’ like ‘attitude.’ ”
“Yep. Got it.” I squint. “Is he…smoking a cigarette?”
Disme wiggles his ears. He’s really good at it.
I study his face, perplexed. I motion at my ears. “What does—”
Disme wiggles his ears more furiously.
“Yeah, I don’t get it.”
Disme rolls his eyes and throws his hands up in exasperation. “It’s my thing I do instead of winking.”
“Oh. Cool. So, your mascot is a rat smoking a cigarette.”
“Kids like edgy. It’s the Wald Disme brand.”
“Huh.”
“Disney would release one of their goody-two-shoes, yawnfest mermaid movies, and we’d get on the stick and pound one out in a few weeks, get that sucker in video stores. Beat Disney to the punch.”
“Pound one out,” I murmur.
“So people rent ours instead. It’s cheaper. You can watch it at home. And it’s better.”
“Better? How?”
“Well, for starters…” Disme makes a circle with the thumb and forefinger of one hand and pokes his cigar in and out several times, making a slide-whistle noise with his mouth. “Sex. You looked confused.”
“I was, but more about why enticing parents to rent a cartoon mermaid movie with boning in it for their kids to see is a wise idea.”
Disme shrugs. “Sex sells.”
“Obviously,” I mutter, glancing up at a huge urine-colored water spot on the ceiling.
“Plus, kids’ll find out sooner or later. Sex is natural.”
“I guess so? But also highly weird to have in a kids’ cartoon movie.”
“You do you. I’ll do me. Disme.” He points at me and wiggles his ears.
I sigh.
Disme stares off with a faraway nostalgic expression. “We even started to build DismeWorld. Like Disney World, only better. But that was not to be.”
I brace myself. “Please tell me the difference wasn’t sex.”
“Rides were more dangerous.”
“Incredible.”
“Kids like edgy.”
“So I’m told.”
“Anyway, didn’t happen.” Disme takes a long pull on his cigar and blows the smoke skyward. “Hornets,” he says finally, in a tone bespeaking deep reluctance.
“Do what now?”
“Flying bugs. Stingers. Buzzy. Like bees that make sadness instead of honey.”
“Got that part.”
“At the build site. They worked well as a team.” Disme’s look of blissful nostalgia morphs into the thousand-yard stare of a battle-weary soldier. “They seemed almost…sentient.” He doesn’t sound like he’s joking.
“But…they weren’t,” I say. “Sentient. Obviously.”
Several seconds pass. “No…no…of course not. That would be…ridiculous,” he eventually murmurs, sounding unconvinced. “I’ll never forget the buzzing. A room goes quiet? I hear the buzzing again. Like there’s a giant vibrator at the center of the world.”
“What a thing to imagine constantly.”
“I did battle with the hornets one night. A storm was coming in. There was lightning on the horizon. We met in the field, me versus them. Mano a…whatever hornets have instead of manos. Sting-os. Just as we began combat, it started to pour down rain. I was wearing armor I made out of duct tape and cardboard boxes, and the rain made it fall off me like meat from a rotisserie chicken. They stung me on the lips and eyelids. My face looked worse than the time I got Botox while stopped at a red light. It was a long time before I regained my dignity.”
“But you definitely did regain it,” I say.
He snaps out of his pained reverie. “I had to wear a white porcelain mask every time I left the house for the next three weeks. I drank Benadryl chilled from a crystal wine goblet….Anyway, it’s good to see Jackie-boy developing new projects after his thing”—Disme waggles his fingers in the air—“with the Russians.”
“Pardon? Lemme just pump the brakes for a sec.”
“Oh, he owes the Russian mob a pretty penny for financing one of his flops. Hence Yuri.”
“Yuri isn’t his bodyguard?”
“Oh, Yuri is his bodyguard.” Disme wiggles his ears again.
“Even though I know now that’s your way of winking, may I suggest you just either wink or say very clearly what you mean? Easier for everyone. So, about Yuri?”
“His job is definitely to keep Divine alive from the others so Divine can pay Yuri’s bosses back.”
“The others?”
“Jackie-boy’s always approached showbiz with the motto You can’t make an omelet without making some people want to murder you execution-style, tie your body to an engine block, and drop you off a bridge.”
My guts feel like a moray eel is dragging them into a frigid undersea cavern. If you want something enough, you’ll lie to yourself and lie to yourself and lie to yourself. And that’s what I’ve been doing. I got conned. I feel like I’m waking from a NyQuil slumber to find I’ve been sleeping on my neck funny.
I meet Lawson’s eyes. This is not going to happen.
His eyes agree.
What am I going to tell Delia? What am I going to tell Lawson, for that matter? Delia. I pressured her to go see her dad. If that doesn’t work out and then this is a debacle too? Oh man. I begin planning how I’m going to ask Divine to take us back to our hotel.
The door bursts open, and Divine practically skips out. Yuri follows behind, also with a little more spring in his step.
“Jackie-boy!” Disme says.
Divine is sniffling and radiating this live-wire, electric, jittery energy. He gives the vibe that he’ll melt down if he stops talking. “Well, well, w
ell, that is much better. I was practically nodding off on my feet! We stuffed ourselves like debauched Roman emperors at Linda’s Jim.”
“Good place?” Disme asks.
“Good would be an understatement.”
“Wouldn’t know. Never been to a restaurant,” Disme says. “I keep a little truck bread on hand in case I get peckish.”
Divine claps his hands and rubs them together. “All right, folks! Who’s ready to talk a little business? Who’s ready to make some sawbucks? Some cold, hard cash? Some dead presidents?”
Disme chomps on his cigar and leans back in his chair. “Whattya got for me, Jackie-boy?”
“I happen to have the finest show in development for you…thrills and chills abound…Monster Midnight Mash!”
“It’s Midnite Matinee,” I say. “And I think now, in your current state, might not be the best—”
“Midnight Monster Mash,” Divine crows. “Horror hosting for a new generation. Hashtag hip. Hashtag edgy. Hashtag young. Hashtag sexy. iHorrorhosting. Like iPod.”
I have never desired more to be spontaneously vaporized. For my body to return instantly to the stardust whence it came. I had no idea cocaine made people this much more embarrassing than normal.
“And we will bring you in for a mere ten thousand cash on the barrelhead for an executive producer credit and the usual cut of back end. What say you, sir? Many people are interested.”
Disme sighs. “Jackie-boy, I don’t—I’m not sold. Lost my shirt on the last venture. Got something I could look at?”
“Everyone, hang on a sec—He doesn’t own—” I say.
Divine gives Disme the same chiding glare he gave the host at the restaurant. “What? You don’t trust my judgment now? A run of hard luck and all of a sudden you need to put your peepers on something I bring you before you’ll invest? I have producers lined up, begging me to take their money. But okay, seventy-five hundred cash. Because I like you. Final offer.”
“Jackie-boy.”
“Gentlemen,” I say, “we are not going to s—”
“Shhhhh,” Divine says to me, putting his index finger to his lips and then making a slow down motion with his palms. Then, back to Disme: “Five grand. Final offer.” He has a pleading, wheedling tone, all of his salesman bluster gone. “Come on, Wald. You know in your heart it’s the right thing to do. You know I’m due for the winds to start blowing warm again.”
“GENTLEMEN, BEFORE YOU GO ANY FURTHER—” I yell. But Disme cuts me off.
“Uh-oh,” he says, squinting at one of the security monitors. “Oh, Jackie-boy, we got trouble. We got company.”
Fantastic. Now whoever’s after Divine is going to murder all of us. Which would honestly be like the third worst thing that’s happened tonight.
Divine goes volleyball-colored. “What? Who?”
Disme turns the security monitor toward us. A woman who looks to be in her fifties—with a mane of blond hair that puts Dolly Parton’s to shame, wearing a glove-tight snakeskin-print dress and thigh-high boots—is shrieking, crimson-faced, into the security camera. The camera doesn’t have sound, but no need—you can faintly hear her from inside. Veins are bulging on her neck and forehead. She has chiseled, thickly muscled arms and shoulders.
“Good gravy, it’s Ulrike!” Frantic sweat boils up on Divine’s forehead. “How did she find me?”
“Must’ve heard you were in town and figured you’d end up here,” Disme says.
“Who the hell is Ulrike?” I ask. She’s holding a lit cigarette lighter up to the camera and pointing at it furiously. Her nails resemble titanium claws.
“Ex-wife number four, seven, and nine, and Austrian Olympic women’s shot-put bronze medalist.” Divine moans. “Oh, she’s got the lighter. She’ll burn us out. Don’t think she won’t. Trust me, I speak from experience.”
“Can Yuri—” I say.
Yuri holds up his hands in front of him as if pushing me away. “No. Not this one. Strong like hippo.”
Lawson moves in protectively, our skin barely touching. I’m really glad he’s here.
“Okay, okay, okay,” Disme mutters quickly. “Here’s the plan: you four make a break for the back door. When you do, I’ll buzz her in the front. Once she’s in, you run around the side, get in your car, and burn rubber, okay? I’ll try to buy you some time.”
“Owe you one, Waldy,” Divine says.
“More than one,” Disme says.
I kick off my shoes and pick them up, and Lawson and I rush for the door, Divine and Yuri at our heels. On our way out, we pass a bewildered man who appears to be a clone of Disme. We make it out the rear just as we hear a livid roar in German from the front. We rush for the side of the strip mall, sweating and panting, coming back around the front. A yellow Hummer H2 is parked haphazardly next to the Escalade.
“Ulrike’s car,” Divine says, panting. “Alimony well spent. The alimony I paid, anyway. That may be why she’s here.”
We pile, helter-skelter, into the Escalade and peel out of the parking lot, the g-forces pressing us into our seats like we’re being sat on by a giant.
We stare silently at the empty plates in front of us. It’s not that we’ve run out of things to talk about. It’s that we have too many things that are too big to say out loud.
“We’re pretty near the ocean, huh?” I say finally.
“Yeah,” Dad says, clearing his throat. “About seven minutes away.”
“I’ve never seen the ocean.”
“Never?”
“You know how when you were around, we never took fancy vacations?”
“Yeah.”
“That situation did not improve upon your leaving.”
Dad grimaces and averts his eyes. “I guess it wouldn’t. So, never seen the ocean.”
“Not even once.”
“Want to?”
“Who wouldn’t?”
“Let’s go, then.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Marisol is sleeping. When do you have to be back to where you’re staying?”
“Dunno. Whenever.”
Dad pays, and we leave. Your dad just took you out to dinner. Like the day he took you to Cicis for your birthday. You never thought that would happen again.
In the car, Dad says, “I keep wanting to ask you to tell me everything that’s happened in the last ten years.”
“I keep wanting to tell you, but I wonder if I should.”
“I can handle it.”
“I was talking about whether you deserve it.”
He doesn’t answer, only nods. We drive on until we arrive at a parking lot. It’s dark. Up ahead, the sky fades to an inkier black, with no city lights to illuminate it. When I open the car door, I hear the rush of waves. It stirs something buried deep in me, something wondrous and briefly hopeful. It’s windier and cooler here, and the air smells like salt and seaweed. I pause at the grassy area on the edge of the beach to take in the scope of what I’m seeing. The waves crashing white on the shore feel like some organic machinery. Like lungs inhaling and exhaling.
“I’ve never gotten used to it,” Dad says, reading my mind. “How it keeps going and going whether we’re here to see it or not.”
That’s right, Dad. Things keep going whether you’re there to see them or not.
“I want to get closer,” I murmur. “So I can feel the water.”
“Sure.” Dad slips off his shoes and socks and rolls up the bottoms of his khakis.
I take off my black Delilah Darkwood ankle boots and hold them, with my socks stuffed inside. I can’t roll up the bottoms of my black vinyl pants very well, but I don’t care if they get wet. I walk tottering in the cool sand toward the water, approaching cautiously, like it’s a wild animal that could devour me. I get right to the edge of where the waves are washing up. Cool water ni
bbles the tips of my toes. Dad is to my side, a couple of feet behind me. I inch forward. The water floods over the tops of my feet. The vastness and emptiness of the expanse in front of me makes me light-headed.
“I literally tracked you down to the end of the earth,” I say over the crash of the surf.
Dad smiles sadly.
“Why here?” I ask.
He takes a few steps to stand beside me, the waves rushing over his feet and ankles. He puts his hands in his pockets.
“Did you hear—” I start to say.
“Yeah, I’m thinking.” After a moment, he says, “Because it seemed like a good place to start over. A place where no one would care who I was or what I’d done in my life. That wouldn’t judge me. I guess that’s my best explanation.”
“You know what the worst part is about your dad leaving you?”
He murmurs something, but I can’t hear over the waves.
It was a rhetorical question anyway. “It makes you scared to trust anyone or anything, because if your dad can leave you, who won’t? What won’t?”
“I know,” he says softly.
“Where did you get the name Derek Armstrong?”
“Well, the Armstrong part comes partly from Neil Armstrong. I was always fascinated with the idea of people standing on the moon. I’d look up into the night sky, and I couldn’t get my head around it. It seemed like such a brave thing to do, and I wanted to start over, but braver. And part of it was that if I had another shot at the name thing, I wasn’t doing the end of the alphabet again. It was a good, solid last name that made me feel like I could be strong in my new life and better than I was before. And Derek was the name of one of my best friends growing up. I always liked his name better than mine. And I had a choice.”
“I thought maybe you’d become a secret agent, or you’d joined the Mafia or something.”
“Nope. Just became a database administrator.”
“You really wanted to make sure I’d never find you again.” I bend over and let my fingers trail in the water. I touch a fingertip to my tongue. The ocean tastes like thin blood.
When I glance back at Dad, he’s hanging his head, his face pinched. In the darkness, it’s hard to tell, but it looks like tears are streaming down his face.