by James Brown
“I enjoyed your script,” she says. “But I wouldn’t exactly call it Disney material. I mean it’s pretty fucking dark.”
She seems relaxed and confident and I wonder if at her age I showed that confidence, or if I’ve ever had it to show. Certainly I don’t now. I look through the window behind her. Outside I can see the tops of the trees swaying in the wind and it occurs to me, though I immediately push the thought out of my mind, that maybe I don’t belong here. On her desk is a bag of peanuts and every now and then, as we continue to talk, she reaches for one, cracks it open with her teeth and drops the shells on the carpet.
“Are you working on anything new?”
“Another script,” I say.
“What about?” she says, popping a peanut into her mouth.
I’m lying. I’m not working on another script, at least not putting words to paper, but then that’s what this is all about. To pitch. To sell what you haven’t written and probably never will unless you’re paid first. I think my idea is commercial.
“It starts out in the desert,” I say. “You see this man all by himself in the middle of nowhere. It’s toward nightfall and at first you can’t tell what he’s doing. But he’s got a long steel pole and he’s jabbing it into the ground. The camera pulls back and we see hundreds of holes all over the desert floor. He’s been doing it all day.”
“And why’s he doing this?”
She asks the question but I’m not so sure that she’s interested in the answer. This does little for my confidence.
“He’s searching for his daughter,” I say. “Checking for soft spots in the ground.”
The producer shifts in her seat.
“That’s a real cheery opening,” she says.
I smile awkwardly. I clear my throat, I push on.
“The next thing we see is a parade of news vans following a sheriff’s car into the desert. The killer’s in the backseat. Pull over, he says. He points out the window with his cuffs on and that’s when we cut away, to the same scene, only now we’re watching it on TV. It’s a videotape, and the killer’s face is frozen on the screen.” I pause, waiting for her response, but she just cracks open another peanut and pops it into her mouth. “The father, the guy we saw in the beginning, we’re in his living room now. He’s slouched in an old lounge chair staring at the TV and all around him are empty beer cans and whiskey bottles and half-eaten plates of food. The poor bastard’s been playing the same scene over and over. Hasn’t moved from that chair in days.”
I pause again for her reaction and she gives me a strange look, as if I might be a little over the edge myself for having thought it up. And in a way, I suppose, she may be right.
“Christ, don’t you write anything light?”
“You want light, I got light.”
But that’s as far as I get.
“To tell you the truth,” she says, “we’re really not taking on new projects now anyway. But I have a script that could use some work. Maybe you’d like to take a look at it.”
Of course I would. What I want is a chance, any sort of chance, and in this case it’s a shot at a rewrite of someone else’s screenplay, an adaptation of a novel called Going Blind, about a college music professor who’s slowly losing his sight and tries to hide the fact from his friends and family and colleagues for as long as he can. He can’t face what’s happening to him, can’t admit to the truth, and I think I can understand that. I think it’s something I can work on, even with the changes she wants, which are to set the story in high school instead of college and make him a football coach instead of a music professor. My first reaction is that it strains credibility, to make him a football coach. But it’s possible, I suppose. Anything is possible when there’s money involved, and before I leave her office I’m already working on it, trying to imagine different scenes, different predicaments, trying to imagine myself as a man going blind.
My next meeting isn’t for a couple of hours, and I’m back in my car with nothing to do. I think about getting something to eat. I think about getting a cup of coffee. But I’m nervous and jittery and what I really want is something to take the edge off. My sister lives nearby in Studio City and ordinarily, whenever I come into L.A., I drop by and have a couple of drinks with her. Do a line. Or two. Or three. Only these aren’t ordinary times. She’s quit drinking and using since the death of baby Katherine and I don’t feel welcome in her home anymore. Still I want her to be clean and sober. Still I am proud of my sister and I’ve told her so. That doesn’t mean, however, that I have to follow her example. Because I can take it or leave it. I can quit whenever I want. I fumble for my car keys, start the engine and drive into Hollywood to kill some time.
The plan is to hit a bookstore or maybe cruise by one of my old neighborhoods and see how it’s changed, or maybe how it hasn’t. Our mother moved around a lot when we were growing up and it’s hard to go anywhere in this city without bumping into someplace we used to live. An old apartment complex. Some shabby house. I went to fourteen different schools before I reached the ninth grade, and one year, the first year we moved to Los Angeles, my brother, sister and I didn’t attend school at all. The area was too rough, our mother said, and she was right. Barry and Marilyn were beat up the first couple of weeks of classes, and I had my share of trouble, too. Until we could afford a better neighborhood, a better school district, our mother thought it best that we ride the year out at home.
But today I don’t stick to my plan. I don’t go to a bookstore. I don’t drive by the old neighborhoods. Instead I make myself a promise: I’ll only have one. Just one. I mean it, too. At the time I couldn’t mean it more. And of course after the first drink I see no harm in having a second. Or a third. I sit at the far end of the bar, under the Olympia waterfall, and further justify my being here by reading the script to Going Blind. At least, I tell myself, I am being constructive while I drink.
It’s good, the way the writer has it, from the point of view of a music professor, and the more I read, the less I’m able to imagine it differently. A teacher who is going blind could make himself intimately familiar with the physical layout of his classroom and soon learn to move about it with something close to ease. I can buy that. And certainly he could play his instrument, which in this case happens to be the piano. But a blind football coach? What happens when he steps out onto the field? When he has to call a play, or simply throw the ball? The drinks have begun to take effect and I’m able to see things clearly now, for what they really are: The whole idea is fucking ridiculous, and I feel like a fool for ever having gotten my hopes up. That I hoped at all just goes to show how desperate I am, and I hate to think that the producer saw it in me, that desperateness, although I’m sure that she did. Then I start to think about how she kept cracking peanuts while we talked and dropping the shells on the carpet and how someone would have to clean them up. I bet it won’t be her. In fact, I bet she’s used to making messes for others to clean up, messes much bigger than peanut shells, and I resent her for it. I resent myself, too, for trying to sell someone a story that I don’t believe in and would never write unless I was paid.
So I light another cigarette.
So I order another drink and pretty soon I find myself condemning not only the producer who gave me the script but also the one that I’m scheduled to meet, and never will, because by now I’m too drunk. And by now it’s too late. Exactly how long I’ve been here, I don’t know, but when I drink I often lose complete sense of time and this is one of those occasions.
Once I drove halfway across the state to visit my in-laws for Christmas, a good five hundred miles, and I barely remember getting into the car. Suddenly it’s eight, nine hours later and I’m there, parked in my in-laws’ driveway, listening to the engine tick itself cool. How I made it without getting into a wreck, maybe killing myself or someone else, is something akin to a miracle.
I pick up some change from the bar and head to the pay phone on the wall outside the bathrooms and call my sister. She
answers on the second ring.
“Hey, Marilyn,” I say.
“Where the hell are you?”
“I’m at a gas station. My fan belt broke.”
“Bullshit.”
“No bullshit.”
“You should be calling your wife,” she says, “not me.”
There’s a long pause. I twist the phone cord around my hand.
“Just tell her I’m on my way, okay?”
“I’m sick of lying for you.”
“It’s no lie,” I say.
“Jimmy,” she says. “I can hear the fucking music in the background. You better sober up and get your ass home.”
My wife’s name is Heidi, and I know I should call her, that I owe her that much, but I don’t want to hear it. Her cursing. Her screaming. I know I’ve done wrong. I know there’s no excuse for getting drunk when you’re supposed to be home with your family and I wish knowing this would stop me from doing it. I wish that’s all it took. That I could will it to happen. But it doesn’t work that way, it never has, and in my state of mind, at this particular moment, I can’t imagine living without it. The alcohol. The dope. I’ve been drinking and using since I was nine years old and sometimes I think it’s the only thing that gives me any real pleasure. I love the feeling, the rush. That numbing of the brain. That deadening of the senses or the heightening of them on speed. I need that drink. That pill, that fix, to feel better. I need it, sometimes, just to make it through another day.
It’s dark out when I finally leave the bar, and the Santa Anas have kicked up again. I’m on Hollywood Boulevard, and even for a weeknight the streets seem abnormally quiet. Few cars are on the road, and the sidewalks, usually crowded with tourists, are strangely empty. The wind is strong and I lower my head and lean into it as I walk, in the opposite direction from where I parked. At the corner there’s an old man waiting for the light to change and I ask him for the time. He doesn’t seem to hear me. I repeat the question, only louder. That gets him to glance my way but again he doesn’t say anything. Maybe he’s scared to be out on these streets at night. Maybe he smells the liquor on me and it offends him. I don’t know. When the light changes he steps off the curb, holding his jacket closed against his chest and hurries across the street.
I walk on.
My legs are heavy and the lights in the windows of the different shops and stores are blurred. For the first time that night I realize I’m drunk. Too drunk to drive. I need more than coffee to sober up. But I’m in luck. This is Hollywood and whatever you want, whatever you need is always just around the corner or a little farther down the block. Tonight I find it outside a run-down apartment complex on a side street between Vine and Cahuenga. Two Puerto Rican kids are standing on the front steps, and I catch eyes with the smaller one as I walk by. There’s a boom box at his feet and the bigger kid is sipping on a can of Olde English “800.”
“Anything happening?” I say.
“What you looking for?”
“Rock. Crank. Whatever you got.”
“You a cop?”
“I look like a cop?”
“Yeah,” the smaller one says, “you look like a fucking cop.”
“You look like a fucking cop, too,” I say.
But I say it in a good way, because I’m in a good mood. Because I know I’m about to score. Besides it’s only protocol: If you’re a cop and don’t say so when you’re asked, that’s grounds for entrapment. They know it, I know it, and for fifty dollars they point me to a chink in the apartment wall, just a few feet away, where they’ve stashed a tiny plastic bag of what proves, surprisingly, to be some very potent dope. For another ten I get a chipped glass pipe that sells new for a couple of bucks but I’m not interested in bargaining. Like Pavlov’s dogs, my mouth is suddenly dry, my heart is beating faster and I can almost feel it, the rush, without even firing up.
I plan to get high in my car where there’s less chance of being seen, and where I’m out of the wind, but it’s parked a few blocks away and I can’t wait that long. All the stores on Hollywood Boulevard are closed for the night, and I duck into the alcove of a souvenir shop, drop a rock into the pipe and light up. My back is to the street and at first, when I feel a wave of heat pass over me, I think it’s on account of the dope, the rush. That it’s just powerful stuff. But then it happens again, an even stronger wave along the back of my neck, and that’s when I realize that it’s coming from behind me. Turning, I see it: The building directly across the street is immersed in fire. And it’s a beautiful sight. Flames seep through the edges of the roof and the big storefront windows glow and pulsate like they’re breathing. Burning embers dance across the sky. In the powerful Santa Anas the flames grow fast, and in a matter of seconds they’ve doubled in size. I look around to see if anyone else is watching but the streets are empty. This makes me nervous. I’m the sole witness to what is most likely the work of an arsonist, and I don’t want to be anywhere near here when the police and firefighters arrive, especially in my condition. Ashes rain from the sky, and I begin to walk.
Everything, I tell myself, is under control.
I don’t remember the ride home that night any better than I do the time I drove halfway across the state to visit my in-laws for Christmas. That’s the nature of a blackout. But I must’ve stopped off at a liquor store along the way because there’s a pint of Canadian Club in my lap. And most of it is empty. It’s light out now, and somehow I’ve managed to navigate my way home. Sixty miles of freeway. Another twenty of winding mountain roads. I’m parked in the driveway outside my house, and the windshield is silver with frost. Exactly how long I’ve been there, I can’t say for sure, but when I wake up I’m shivering from the cold and everything is quiet. The branches on the big pines that surround my house are motionless and there’s a certain stillness about the air, a certain calm. The Santa Anas have passed finally and now, lightly at first, it begins to snow.
She will threaten to leave me.
She will tell me over and over that I am a horrible man and I will promise repeatedly, as I always do, repeatedly, never to hurt her and our beautiful children again. I will vow never to drink. I will vow never to use. I will vow, from here on out, to be a responsible man. And I will mean all these things. I will mean each and every one.
Faintly I hear the sound of laughter, and on the hillside in the distance I spot my three little boys. They are bundled up in heavy jackets. They’re wearing knit caps and bright-colored scarves and mittens too big for their hands. The snow falls harder. The snow falls faster, and as I start toward the house I watch them spinning round and round, laughing, their mouths open to the sky.
Fall 1961
SNAPSHOT
I’m waiting in the car for my mother while she sets fire to an apartment building down the street. I’m five years old. The car is a new Thunderbird with big wide seats that still smell of fresh vinyl, and the street where we are parked is lined with sycamores that have begun to shed their leaves. It is early in the evening. We are in a quiet working-class neighborhood in San Jose, California, fifty miles south of San Francisco along Highway 101, and when my mother returns to the car, slightly out of breath, we drive to Fisherman’s Wharf and have shrimp cocktails for dinner.
Afterward we catch a cable car. The rumble of the steel wheels and the jerkiness of the ride scares me but I feel safe with my mother’s arm around me. My brother and sister are back in San Jose with our father, and I like it this way, being alone with her. Barry is eleven years old, Marilyn is just nine, and for once I don’t have to compete with them for our mother’s attention. In the distance, as the cable car reaches the top of Nob Hill, you can see the skyline lit up with the lights from all the different office buildings. You can see the fog rolling in off the bay, unfurling across the city.
My mother shivers and holds me tighter.
“I want to buy you a present,” she says.
“What for?”
“Just because,” she says.
We get of
f at the end of the line and walk down Market Street, pausing every now and then to look through the windows of the different shops and stores. I like the cutlery shop with all its knives laid out in perfect rows. Bowies and stilettos. Fat butcher knives. Hunting knives, daggers and swords. The chromed and steel blades shine under the glare of the bright lights. I stare and stare until my mother takes my hand.
“C’mon,” she says, pulling me along. “You’re too young for a knife.”
We head down the block, her high heels clicking against the pavement. When we come to an army surplus she stops and asks me if I want to go in. I tell her that I do. It smells good inside, musty and damp, and for a while my mother lets me wander the aisles by myself. They have old army helmets. They have old G.I. canteens. They have field jackets, German parkas, empty ammunition cans, scalpels and tweezers, duffel bags and rucksacks. The list goes on.
I’m looking at a portable foxhole shovel with a folding blade when my mother finds me. It unfolds easily enough but now I’m having trouble breaking it back down, like I found it.
“The store is closing,” my mother says. “Hurry and pick something out.”
It’s between the foxhole shovel and one of the old army helmets, and I choose the foxhole shovel in part because I’m curious as to how it breaks down, which I feel I’m just on the verge of figuring out, and in part because I can imagine myself digging a deep hole with it in our backyard. Maybe, if I dug wide enough, I could turn it into an underground clubhouse. Maybe, if I covered the top with leaves and branches, I could make a trap for my brother and sister. With a good shovel, there are all kinds of possibilities. With a helmet, all you can do is wear it, and of course none of them fit. I give the shovel to my mother and she pays the cashier.
On our way back to the cable cars we encounter a man sprawled out on the sidewalk, one hand hanging limply over the curb, the other clutching a thin green bottle to his chest. I think he could be dead, or badly injured, and I want to stop. I want to see if there’s anything we should do to help. But my mother knows different. She grew up poor in Chicago and has witnessed these kinds of things all her life.