Chuckerman Makes a Movie

by Francie Arenson Dickman

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  Don explained that they’d taken bets as to whether I’d be back. “I was the only one who had faith in you, kid.”

  “Are you joking?” I spoke to Don but my eyes were on Laurel, who was almost done constructing a sizable figure eight with the dominoes she’d produced from her satchel. Side conversations died down. I decided ours better as well.

  Laurel gestured toward her dominos. “Everyone familiar with these?”

  Some folks responded with, “Yes,” others with, “They’re dominos,” and Don with, “If you want to know the truth, I also bet a hundred dollars that you’ll end up in bed with the teacher.”

  Before I could respond to either Laurel or Don, Susan tapped me on the back. “I bet you’d end up with my daughter.”

  As Don commented that Susan had made a sucker’s bet, Laurel commented that her figure eight was almost perfect. “Pretty to look at, right?” she said.

  Most of the class nodded.

  “But is the display fun to watch?” Her gaze landed on the front row. “Judd, you have a good view, right here in the front. Would you enjoy sitting here with a bag of popcorn and watching the figure eight or would you get bored?”

  Judd sat up in his desk and tucked a piece of hair behind his ear. “Bored?”

  “Are you asking me or telling me?” The Mormon Rodeo had an edge that I didn’t recall from last week. Something about her also looked different, though I couldn’t say what.

  Judd slumped back down. “Telling, I guess. But I didn’t want to offend you.”

  “No offense taken. Boring is bad. But I have a plan to fix that.”

  Laurel walked toward the back of the room. Her pants were so long, I couldn’t see her feet. She pointed to the stack of fives on Don’s desk. “Put that money in your wallet and come up here. You are going to be my assistant.” She held out a hand, which Don accepted happily as he squeezed himself out of his kiddy desk and was led to the front of the room.

  “On the count of three,” Laurel said, “you are going to make this interesting to watch.”

  Don looked confused. He was a big guy, I saw, as he stood next to Laurel.

  Laurel, who was tall in her own right, looked straight up to talk to him. “Push a domino,” she ordered.

  Don raised his bushy brows and smiled. “Which one would you like me to push, Ms. Sorenson?”

  Laurel ignored his flirtation and shrugged.

  Now Don seemed nervous. “Are they all supposed to fall?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s watch and see.”

  Laurel counted to three. Don looked to his group to see which one to push. Laurel told him to rely on his own instinct. He took a deep breath, exhaled, and poked a tile at the top of one of the loops, sending the dominos reeling, clinking, one after the other, all the way around one circle and most of the way around the other.

  Laurel patted his back. “Good work.”

  Don gave a little bow and a thumbs-up to the couples club.

  “Give me the first tile,” Laurel ordered. “The one you pushed.”

  Don reached down for the domino and handed it to her.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, this is the catalyst,” she said, holding the domino above her head. “The one that caused the rest to topple.” She went on to explain, as Don ambled back to his seat, that every movie has a catalyst event that sets the rest of the story into motion. “When everything is lined up neat like the figure eight, you’ve got no story, nothing to watch. You need something to happen, something to trigger a series of events. A movie is a study in causation. One thing leads to another. As the writer, you need to know what that one thing is. What is your first domino?”

  She told us to take out pen and paper, we were going to spend the next twenty minutes fleshing out our catalyst scenes—which, she told us, we should write next.

  I nodded my head to show that I was with the program. I didn’t have paper, but I did have a next scene. After my bakery reading, I’d planned out the Card Room Scene in my head. It was going to start off, I’d decided, the same way Laurel started off the domino exercise, and the same way I start that part of the story when I tell it to Estie and Ryan: with a count of three. On three, we all scream, “Baby Face Davy!” as this was the greeting I got every time the double doors to the Men’s Card Room pushed open and I appeared inside.

  I found the attention embarrassing, but I liked the name; it sounded cool. Baby Face Davy was a gangster name. It was tough—the only tough part about me. The name was reserved for Florida only, although Slip used it until the day he died. And now it is enjoying a bit of a revival, thanks to Estie and Ryan, who think it’s hilarious.

  “Are you in?” Don whispered to me as Helene ripped pages from her spiral notebook and handed them to Don with directions to share some with me.

  “In on what?”

  “The bet of the century. Fifty bucks from me and anyone else who thinks you’ll manage to take her out by the next class.” He waved the paper in my face.

  I reached for it. “On a date?”

  Don lifted the paper above his head. “On whatever you want to call it. None of us here are concerned with semantics, sonny. We just want to live vicariously.”

  While I contemplated the proposal and its improbability, the Mormon Rodeo declared that we should be ready to write. “I assume you were all smart enough to bring paper. This is a writing class, after all.”

  I grabbed the paper from Don. My acceptance of his wager was apparently implied by my actions because as I took the paper, Don gave me an “Atta boy.”

  I began to write in big letters on the top of the page, creating the illusion of productivity as the Mormon Rodeo walked by my desk. In the card room, I will be greeted by my grandfather’s friends—about four tables’ worth of guys.

  “What if our next scene is already written?” Candy asked, interrupting the quiet, as the Mormon Rodeo nodded in approval at my sentence.

  “The catalyst event determines what your story is truly about,” Laurel said. “So even if your next scene exists, you best make sure it has a catalyst in it. Make sure it’s clear to you, your character, and your audience.”

  I had no idea what my story was truly about, but I did have a catalyst. I was the catalyst. I kept my head down and began to doodle. Sketching is a skill of mine. I inherited it from my dad, just like Marcy inherited my mother’s bad ear and Rachel got Slip’s nerves of steel. My fortes are drawings of perfume bottles on whiteboards and sketches of women on cocktail napkins. The perfume bottles, naturally, are an outgrowth of my profession. The women are part of my dating routine, as I’ve discovered that guys who can draw are almost as desirable as guys who can play the guitar. I wasn’t great at drawing card rooms though. So far, I’d sketched a table with four men around it, Slip and friends.

  Slip knew everyone in the card room. Most he’d known from childhood, from the West Side of Chicago. Where the West Side was, I wasn’t sure (certainly not the Upper West Side, I’m always sure to clarify for Estie and Ryan), but Slip often talked about his days hanging around those streets. His scene sounded rowdy and volatile, like the Men’s Card Room itself.

  “Ante up,” he barked when he saw me. He slapped the empty chair next to him. “Need some dough?”

  “No thanks.” I plunked myself into the chair and set my mother’s quarter on my grandfather’s card table. I gave a quiet hello to the other men around the table and waited for their game to end—the same way I now glanced around the classroom waiting for the writing session to end. Everyone was working. Even the couples club members had rotated their desks to face each other and were now talking and laughing as Susan took down ideas. I heard the clock tick and Laurel’s dominos clink as she gathered them back into her bag. Every so often, I caught Judd crumpling paper and dropping it to the side of his desk. His flick, Vile Bodies, was apparently missing a catalyst.

  I suppose I’ll use the down time in the movie as a chance for the audi
ence to take in the card room. The dark maroon and silver wallpaper. The two poker tables and ten or so heavy wooden card tables with maroon leather chairs. The Lucite bowls of peanuts on the tables with shells littering them and the maroon carpeting. The ashtrays. The cards. And, of course, the men. As for the room’s signature stench—humidity mixed with cigars mixed with the stale sweat of people who’ve been sitting for hours on end—I’m not sure. I could bottle it, but capturing the smell on screen is beyond my expertise. Perhaps a fog machine will do the trick.

  I sketched the scene, adding myself to Slip’s table, holding his cigar while he shuffled cards. There’s nothing like the sound of a perfect riffle shuffle, when the cards arch down and then up like a bridge, creating that breeze as they stagger into a pile. If done fast and right, it’s mesmerizing. Hypnotic.

  Less hypnotic was the sound of the old men’s raspy breathing and coughing. I could also hear conversations going on at other tables, which all had slowed when I’d entered but were picking up again now that the men had forgotten about my presence. Above all was the voice of my grandfather, explaining his hand to me and commenting on others’ moves and the strategies of the game—tonight, gin.

  “Show me my next move,” Slip whispered, his arm around me.

  I pointed and whispered back to him.

  He winked and bopped me on the head, indicating that I’d gotten it right. Gin didn’t take long to play, and so before I knew it, I was in a game.

  A tap on the blackboard interrupted my artwork. The Mormon Rodeo stood in front of the board with a book open in her arms. “Food for thought while you write,” she said. Since I wasn’t writing, I watched as she explained that the book was Screenplay, by Syd Field, some screenwriting bigwig. As she went on about using catalysts to draw your character into the storyline and throw his life out of balance, I began to sketch her next to my card room. I decked her out in cowboy boots and a cowboy hat, hair radiating from beneath the hat like electrical current. I stuck a tiny Jewish star between two enormous breasts on long, stick-figure legs, and then, for her face, gave her an oversized smile, with sparkling teeth and freckles.

  As I compared my drawing to the real thing, she said, “According to Syd, this scene should be one of the most exciting scenes in the movie.” She told us to keep Syd in mind as we wrote.

  I had another Sid in mind as I sketched, and thanks to him, excitement in the card room was about to reach an all-time high.

  “Hey Slippy, you teaching your kid the rules of the game?”

  I knew the voice. It belonged to Big Sid. Everyone knew Big Sid. He was just like his sister, Gladys Greenberg, but without the ponchos. Large in stature, hence the creative nickname, but otherwise diminutive—your classic bully. Big Sid was one of the few men in the building without a wife or an apartment stocked with kids on vacation. One would have thought this personal freedom would have made him less agitated than most. I remember the adults used to say this and laugh.

  My grandfather barely reacted to Big Sid’s remark. A courtesy chuckle would be the directive in the movie script. Then he puffed his cigar and offered me one. I declined, my father’s disgust for cigarettes already ingrained in my head. Plus, I had to concentrate on my hand, which was terrible, a mumble-jumble of cards.

  “So you’ve got the whole family gambling now?” I could see Big Sid’s bald head sticking up above the crowd a couple of tables over.

  “Why don’t you keep to your own cards, Sidney,” my grandfather replied. He didn’t look up from his own when he spoke.

  “Is he as good as you, Slippy?” Big Sid laughed. “Hey Davy boy, does the apple fall far from the tree?”

  Laughter filled the card room. Before this, I hadn’t realized that everyone was listening. I supposed the back and forth had drawn in everyone.

  I looked at my grandfather and whispered, “Do I need to answer?”

  He shook his head and answered for me. “Nope, Sid. He ain’t as good as me. But he’s better than you.” The men liked my grandfather’s response. The laughter for Slip beat out the laughter for Big Sid.

  “Doesn’t take much to be better than Sidney,” said the man sitting next to Big Sid.

  Sidney shot him an elbow while another guy wearing a green cap added, “Well isn’t that the God darn truth. Only a fool could blow three hundred bucks against Morry Pine.”

  Morry Pine (Gloria from 14’s husband) was my grandfather’s closest friend and a hustler on the shuffleboard courts. He was also sitting at my grandfather’s table. He now explained to the room that earlier in the day, he had duped Big Sid by claiming that his hand-eye coordination was shot due to a recent stroke.

  A riotous moment followed as the men got a load of Sidney’s loss. I prayed that the distraction would put an end to the conversation with my grandfather.

  “No wonder you’re in such a fine mood,” someone said.

  “Shut the hell up, will you?” Big Sid growled.

  People did, and for a while all was quiet.

  Perhaps the evening would have remained so. The fight never would have happened. Our strongest memory would be of some other silly episode. My grandfather’s Cadillac never would have come to be sitting in my garage and my movie still would be about nothing more than Mort Chuckerman, the Perfume Guy—if only I hadn’t lost my hand and announced defeat so loudly as to catch the ear of Big Sid.

  My loss was the catalyst, the ground zero moment. My reaction started the chain, which was, as Laurel explained it, the definition of a catalyst. How does one convey the significance of such a subtle action to an audience? Maybe ominous music will sound. Maybe a subtitle reading “catalyst event” will appear at the bottom of the screen as the actor who plays me tosses his cards on the table and says, with sour grapes, “I’m out.”

  My grandfather will muss my hair.

  The guys at the table will wink and tell me, “Nice play, Davy Baby.” The game will go on, as it did that night while I pouted, watched, and wondered to whom my precious quarter would go.

  “What’s this I hear?” Big Sid’s voice rang out. “Did Slippy’s boy lose?”

  I turned my head in his direction. He was looking back at me, smirking and chomping on peanuts.

  “Don’t worry, sonny. Your grandpa will give you more money to lose. Your grandpa’s a real pro at losing money.”

  I turned to Slip. “I don’t want any more money to play again,” I whispered. I knew he would give it to me. Not because Big Sid told him to but because, as I’ve mentioned, Slip was generous with his money. “Need some dough?” was his second favorite phrase after, “You goddamn motherfucker.”

  My grandfather pushed a quarter from his pile toward me. “Play again.”

  I pushed it back and shook my head. “No.”

  “Don’t let no punk like that bother you,” he said to me, nodding in Big Sid’s direction. “Nothing but a bag of wind, talking to hear himself talk.” He gathered up everyone’s money and doled it out to the winner.

  I watched as Jack Glassman, a man who also lived on the eighteenth floor, set his bills and my quarter in his pile next to him. Even though I’d played dozens of times and mostly lost, the pang of seeing my money in someone else’s hands made me sick to my stomach. My grandfather knew this and to make me feel better, he always left a fresh quarter on the table beside my bed after I went to sleep. He never told me what to do with it, but Slip was a gambler. He’d never tell me to save it like my dad did.

  “You know, kid”—it was Big Sid again—“your grandfather loves to help other people lose their money. Don’t you, Slippy?”

  Finally, my grandfather looked in Big Sid’s direction. “What are you trying to do here, Sidney? If you’re still picking at bones, pick ’em with me. You hear? Leave my grandson out of it.” Slip’s voice was cool, but I could detect (and the camera will show) the powerful wrinkles around his eyes and forehead tightening—a quiet preparation for battle.

  I was less subtle with my emotions, and the audience will
understand this as they watch the color drain from my face and my body shrink into my seat.

  My grandfather, too, noticed my reaction. “Go get yourself a Coke,” he said, nodding toward the door. “Bring me one, too.”

  As the cards began to shuffle again, I headed to the pop machine, which was just outside the card room next to the cigarette machine from which I’d acquired the Marlboros. A Coke cost twenty cents, but if you stuck your arm up high enough into the bottom of the machine, you could yank down bottles for free. The audience will watch as I do this, so they, like me, will miss the remarks that flew back and forth between Big Sid and Slip during that time. Whatever they were, they ignited my grandfather enough that he put down his cards and his cigar and walked over to Big Sid’s table.

  According to Jack Glassman, Big Sid had spouted off about the amount of money my grandfather had lost on bad bets at the track, but my grandfather hadn’t retorted. Only when Big Sid suggested that my grandfather was behind Morry Pine’s fix on the shuffleboard court did my grandfather make a move.

  “He sat like a gent, unflappable until the last straw,” Jack Glassman would report later that evening to my father. (However, Jack’s credibility would be called into question due to his friendship with my grandfather and his hearing aids. “He’s biased and deaf,” would be the word at the pool the next day. “What kind of witness is that?”)

  Fortunately for the sake of my career as a film writer, I witnessed the next part of the night, and I myself will direct it in the movie. Why waste time putting the incident on paper? It is so emblazoned in my head that not a word, nuance of expression, or piece of choreography is one bit diminished today.

  My grandfather’s back will be facing me as I return with our Cokes. His head will not turn toward the double doors as it usually did when I entered. His salmon-colored sweater will press against the corner of the table where Big Sid sits. A couple of guys will call out for my grandfather to come back to his seat. Slip will wave them off and instead take a step closer to Big Sid so that his profile becomes visible to me. I will watch him pull off his glasses and put them down on the card table. (I remember that night being awed at how foreign he looked without the glasses. He never took them off. He was blind without them. Hell, he was blind with them.)