“If you got something to say about me, why don’t you say it to my face?” Slip directed two fingers towards his eyeballs.
Big Sid stood up, all six feet four inches of him.
My instincts told me to run; I sensed what was going to happen. Almost every story about Slip involved physical force and victory. He’d once decked a garbage man who’d tried to rob my grandmother. He’d also beat up a landlord, a cop, and Big Sid. About fifty years earlier, Big Sid had cheated my grandfather out of money, and in return, Slip had socked him. Knocked him backwards down a flight of stairs in the three-flat they both lived in, right in front of Big Sid’s girl and the neighbors.
“I’m not sayin’ nothing that’s not new to anyone.” Big Sid had a gruff voice. He smirked as he spoke. “You are whatcha are, Slip. A bum’s a bum.” In his hand he dangled a cigarette—a Marlboro, same as my mother’s. “Having your kid sit next to you doesn’t make you anything different.”
Slip’s bony elbow poked into the sleeve of his sweater as his arm cocked back. He moved an inch closer to him. “You’re asking for trouble,” he warned. His voice still gave no sign of fear.
Big Sid didn’t budge; his body loomed over Slip, his grin remained. “Is that so?”
With arms and mind unsteady, I put down the Cokes on an empty table and considered the role of the ten-year-old grandson in this scenario. Should I interfere, try to break it up, save the day—perhaps a life? That’s what my father would do. Should I run? After all, I wasn’t even supposed to be in the card room, which seemed to be exponentially filling with smoke as the men put down their cards, picked up their cigars, and watched. Talk about excitement. To the men, this was Rocky brought to life.
My grandfather put a hand on Big Sid’s chest and gave a shove with his fingertips. “You’ve always been slow to learn, haven’t you?”
Big Sid didn’t budge. “Go ahead,” he teased and took a drag of his cigarette. “You so tough? Hit me.” With the fingers that held his cigarette, he pointed between his eyes. “I dare you.”
In the script, there’ll be a beat (movie lingo for a pause, according to the Screenplay Definitions poster beneath the clock) between each of those last three words, to indicate how Big Sid spoke them.
Slip knew boxing. He learned at the Association House, the Boys & Girls Club of the West Side. The Association House introduced him to boxing, dancing, and my grandmother, the three of which got him through life. Compared to me, someone with nothing to show for an Ivy League education but pop stars and perfume, Slip clearly got the better deal—because Bam! Whack! Right in the kisser! Smack in the puss!
I drew these words in bubbles, like comic book superhero exclamations coming from the mouths of the men in the card room, as these were the words they used to describe Slip’s punches to every last resident of Imperial Towers 100. And it was an accurate accounting, especially when accompanied by the arm swings demonstrating the left- and right-handed jabs, then a slip, and finally the left-handed hook that sent Big Sid thudding to the floor.
My grandfather’s hands moved so fast that I didn’t see three distinct punches. I only heard a series of grunts, one per pop, followed by, “Take that, you stupid motherfucker.”
“What’s the best way to film a fight scene?” The question popped out of my mouth as impulsively as Slip’s punches. I didn’t pause to raise my hand or even to locate the teacher in the room.
The Mormon Rodeo, who was sitting at her desk reading papers, looked around the room, unsure of who had asked the question. I put my pen in the air. She looked surprised to see me attached to it.
“What kind of fight do you have in mind?”
“A fistfight between two old men,” I said.
She smiled. “That’s quite the catalyst.”
“It’s not the catalyst,” I told her. “The catalyst caused their fight.”
She nodded and explained that fight scenes usually film best with several slow-motion cameras because they let you capture the punches and reactions from different angles. Although she seemed to know what she was talking about, I decided that in order to capture my recollection, the director should do the opposite: speed up the sequence to a total blur, slowing down only when Big Sid staggers back against his chair, moans in pain, and then collapses face first onto the carpeting not far from where his cigarette landed.
Because the fall of his massive body was gradual, a giant Redwood going down amid a forest of shrubs, I don’t think we’ll need to use a stunt double for the scene. However, we will need a fight choreographer to block body positions, punches, and the movement of Big Sid’s head in reaction to each blow. We’ll also need a special effects guy to make whatever they use in the biz for blood spurt from Big Sid’s nose after the second slug, and a sound effects guy to match the spurt with the crack of breaking bone and the fall with a dull whump. The sound of the melee that ensues will be produced by men themselves, for as soon as Big Sid fell, the men charged to the front of the room.
A few dropped to the ground to tend to Big Sid. Arnold Camper, a podiatrist, took charge. “You alright, Sidney?” he screamed, leaning over Big Sid’s body and throwing a handkerchief on his nose. “Sidney, can you hear me?”
“Move the hell away from me.”
“He’s alright!” Arnold announced back to the crowd.
No one seemed concerned. The majority of the men congregated around Slip, who had sidestepped Big Sid to squash out the cigarette burning into the carpet and now leaned casually against the wall, examining his hands.
In the movie, the men will pat him on the back and crack out remarks like, “You scrappy son-of-a-bitch” and “What you been putting in your Cream of Wheat, Melman?”
I was the only one in the room that didn’t react. I simply stared, eyes wide, adrenaline gushing. I had no idea what to do.
Arnold the podiatrist did. “Call the paramedics,” he ordered. “He’s got to get to the hospital.”
At the same time, Jack Glassman shoved his way to the center of the rumpus and gave my grandfather’s arm a tug. “Slippy, let’s get you the hell out of here.”
It was as if he was speaking to me. My feet reacted instantaneously, carrying me out of the card room so fast that I forgot my Coke bottle, let alone logic. My first worry after I left was whether I should have stayed to tend to Slip—to stick by him, as my father was always reminding us was our duty to each other. As I dashed to the game room to track down my sisters, I decided that the fight was my fault. If I hadn’t cared so much about losing and hadn’t announced my loss so loudly, Big Sid never would have started up with my grandfather, and my grandfather would have not gotten himself into trouble.
“Sometimes,” Laurel said, still at her desk, “putting your finger on the first domino is easy. A killer shark attacks a young woman on the eve of a holiday beach weekend. A tornado sweeps down in Kansas and carries a young girl to Oz. A guy who makes perfume loses his sense of smell.” She sent an eyeball roll in my direction. “But often, such a determination is less obvious, like pinning down the moment when one’s identity becomes threatened or the exact moment a relationship begins.”
At the mention of a relationship beginning, Don gave a cough and elbowed me.
“External events are easier to spot than the ones that occur internally. External events, many times, are done with special effects. Internal events, which are usually driven by character rather than action, are harder to write. They require a writer who is in touch with his or her character’s emotions. Think drama versus action flick.”
Up until she said this, I’d been confident that my upset over the loss of my quarter was my movie’s catalyst event. But I also felt sure that I was writing an action flick because of the fights and other crazy stuff that made this story fun to tell to my niece and nephew.
I raised my hand. “Do action flicks ever have internal catalyst events?”
“Not usually, but don’t get too bogged down in semantics,” Laurel said.
�
�What if,” I said, looking at my sketch of Big Sid sprawled on the floor, his giant nose cracked in two, “you have an external event that occurs in reaction to an internal event? A chicken or the egg situation. Then which is the catalyst?”
The Mormon Rodeo put down her pen, stood up, and came around to the front of her desk. She leaned back against it, exposing her shoes for the first time: a worn out pair of Keds. “A complicated, thoughtful question,” she said as I looked at my caricature and considered switching its shoes from cowboy boots to sneakers. “And from Mort Chuckerman of all people.” She smiled. Her teeth; it was her teeth that looked different. They were whiter.
“I was wondering the same thing,” Candy announced, as if trying to hijack my show of intelligence.
“Unfortunately,” Laurel said, “I can’t give either of you an answer, because there is none. Where a story starts depends on the story the writer wants to tell.” Then she said, sensing my disappointment, “Why don’t you see me after class? I can take a look at what you’ve written and try to help you make sense of it.”
“Thanks,” I said, staring at my paper. “I’ll see. I’m not sure how much you’d be able to help.”
“I’ve been writing for a long time. I’m pretty good at helping my students identify their stories.”
“You don’t need to be a writer to identify this one,” Don assured her. “It’s animated.” He chuckled as he grabbed my paper and held it out to her.
In seemingly slow motion, the Mormon Rodeo glided her invisible Keds over to my desk and took the paper from Don, who put his hand on my wrist and told me to relax and thank him later.
If I could have run out the classroom like I had the card room, I would have. But I couldn’t free myself that easily from the desk, from Don, or from Laurel, who now placed a hand on my shoulder as she studied my scene, including her caricature.
“Yes, Mr. Melman,” she said, her eyes playing over the paper and coming to rest on her portrait. “Why don’t you plan on seeing me after class.”
I shrank down in my desk and started to apologize.
“Marcy didn’t tell me you could draw,” she added as she dropped the paper back on my desk. Then she paused, bent down so her eyes met mine, and with a smile, whispered, “I love what you’ve done with my breasts.”
CHAPTER 5:
3 Woos and 3 Scenes
Call it what you want, but this is a date,” I said to the Mormon Rodeo as she sat next to me at the 3 Woos, the Chinese take-out place across the street from class.
How I ended up there was a chaotic unfolding of events, a falling of dominoes over which I had seemingly little control. Here’s what I recall. The class ended. Judd stuck around to ask about Aristotle and how to force the plot of Vile Bodies into a three-act structure. Laurel said something about focusing on the integrity of a story and not the plot, then shooed him out the door and me down the stairs with a, “Hurry up, I’m starving.” I chased after her, too scared to ask where we were going.
“You like Chinese?” Laurel asked as she hustled me to the corner. I shrugged and said, “Not really. It’s greasy.”
She smiled. “I thought Jews liked Chinese food.”
I considered whether she was being flirtatious or anti-Semitic. “Is this what you learned in your conversion class?”
“How’d you know I was converting?” she asked.
“You told us in class, remember? Your interesting fact.”
“Oh, right.” The light changed, and she charged across Broadway, her bag bouncing against her hip, the bottoms of her white pants dragging on the street, collecting soot.
She didn’t flirt with me, but she didn’t hold back either, and in the few blocks between the stoplight and the 3 Woos, she revealed personal information at a rate that only a woman can. She was feeling scattered, she said, because she’d just decided to move to LA—not for a fiancé, she said when I asked, but to write for a TV show, some new cable program about men in the ad world. “Like me,” I said, and suggested I could be her muse. She said she wasn’t sure she was going, the offer just came up, she had barely told anyone yet, she wasn’t sure why she was even telling me, but if she took the job she’d be gone by October, and that probably wasn’t enough time for me to become her muse. If I wanted to help her at all, I could pray to God that her current movie project, the one about the Mormon father who commits suicide, gets optioned, because if she could sell it, like she’d done with one other script, she’d have enough money to stay in New York, which she’d like to do.
This was the reason she was taking conversion classes, to fortify her script. Obviously a Jew was in her film, although she wouldn’t specify what type. She also wouldn’t specify whether she preferred me to pray to the Mormon God or the Jewish one about her movie project. She said that we were together to talk about my movie, not hers. I told her, as I struggled to keep pace with both her legs and her mouth, that I knew nothing about selling scripts, but I would suggest changing the plot to not involve suicide. And if that didn’t do the trick, I said, I could lend her some cash if it would tide her over, give her more time to stay in New York.
Who knows why I offered that. Probably because I like to play the part of Slip, to be a sport when I can. Laurel looked back at me with a scrunched face, like I’d just offered to sell her crystal meth, and told me she didn’t need handouts, especially from a stranger. I told her to consider the money a loan from her friend Marcy’s brother.
“Thanks but no thanks,” she said as we approached the 3 Woos, marked by a neon sign with most of the W burnt out so that it appeared to be the 3 oos. “I’ll be fine.”
“At least let me buy you an egg roll,” I said as I pulled open the door and held it for her.
She stared at me and scrunched her face again as she walked through, as if questioning my sanity. “You’re holding the door?”
“Did conversion class teach you that Jews don’t hold doors?” I asked, following her inside.
“My experience in life has taught me that men in general don’t hold doors. I’m not used to chivalry.”
“I call it common courtesy,” I said.
She told me that I was very into semantics.
I told her I preferred to call it marketing.
As I spoke, the Mormon Rodeo said hello to an Asian woman behind the counter, who smiled. “New student?” she said.
By virtue of simply being inside, we were at the front of the line.
“New session, new student,” Laurel said, and then she ordered the egg roll. “This is Janet,” she said as she rifled through her bag, past a nail file, the dominos, and God only knows what else, presumably looking for cash.
I pulled a ten out of my wallet and tossed it on the counter. “Hi,” I said to Janet.
“Name on the order?” she asked.
While I wondered why she needed a name when we were the only people ordering, the Mormon Rodeo answered. “Put it under Mort Chuckerman,” she said, still scrounging through her bag. She pulled out a five and slapped it on the counter. “You aren’t paying. They are my egg rolls.”
“I’m afraid that technically they are Mort Chuckerman’s egg rolls.” I pushed the bill back at her and winked. “Consider this your first official date with Mort.”
“This isn’t a date, it’s a meeting,” she said.
Which is when I said, “Call it what you want, this is a date.” Then I added, “Mort Chuckerman just bought you egg rolls. I can’t wait to see where the relationship goes from here. Too bad you’re leaving in October.”
“Suddenly Los Angeles doesn’t seem too bad,” she said, walking over to the 3 Woos’ three stools. She plunked herself on one and her messenger bag on another. “Listen, if you’re trying to impress your cronies in the back of the classroom, call it a date. Knock yourself out.”
“You heard that conversation?” I asked. I tried to hide my embarrassment by pretending to not be embarrassed.
“Heard? Your friends don’t talk, they scream.”
“They’re old. That’s just what happens when you get old,” I told her. “Read my movie. It’ll teach you a thing or two about old people. Especially old Jews. Actually, you might be better off reading my script than taking that conversion class if you want to learn about Jews.”
“Shouldn’t you write the script before you start recommending it for reading?” She motioned toward my folder. “Speaking of your script, give me your sketch.”
As I pulled out my drawing, Janet announced that Chuckerman’s order was ready. I grabbed the plate from her without leaving my stool. Three egg rolls—hot as the dickens, as my grandma would have said, and as thick as trees—served up on a flimsy plastic plate, which I set on the counter. The Mormon Rodeo put an egg roll on napkins in front of each of us and ripped the third in half, presumably for us to share. She filled the plate with an ocean of sweet sauce, and ordered me to “dig in.”
I declined and watched instead as she tore into her egg roll like the boys from Lord of the Flies. I was mesmerized. Most of the women—or girls, I should probably call them—I’ve dated over the past ten years have only ordered dinner. They haven’t eaten it. They’d never touch an egg roll. And they’d never talk with their mouths full. But the Mormon Rodeo did.
“Let’s get to work,” she said. She fished a pen from her bag. With it, she wrote on the top of the sketch I drew in class.
SCENE 2: EVENING. INTERIOR CARD ROOM OF DAVID’S GRANDPARENTS’ APARTMENT BUILDING. She narrated as she wrote. As a result, Janet, who hadn’t left her post, could hear.
“Is that his movie?” Janet asked. She shook her head. “Usually the students come in with full scripts for Miss Laurel. You’re the first with just one piece of paper.”
I looked at the Mormon Rodeo. “Full scripts? Really?”
Chuckerman Makes a Movie Page 6