Geek Charming

by Palmer, Robin

  “Actually, it was music videos,” I said, tapping my foot on the counter in time to the Muzak version of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” “Hey, seeing that it’s so dead, can I take off my tie?” I was allowed to wear my Geek Gang T-shirt when I was on the road doing house calls, but per Corporate, I had to wear a white oxford and clip-on tie when I worked in the store.

  “No you may not, Agent Rosen,” Raymond replied as he yanked my hand away from my neck. “When you’re on the clock, that stays on your neck.” He pushed my feet off the counter so hard I almost fell off my chair. “Feet on the floor. And it wasn’t music videos—it was documentaries.”

  I sighed as I readjusted the tie. Raymond always thought he was right. “Nope—I’m pretty sure it was music videos, Raymond.”

  He looked around to make sure no one had heard me even though the only people in the department are an elderly couple who, from the way they were yelling at each other, seemed to be wearing hearing aids. “When we’re at work, it’s Agent Strauss, Agent Rosen,” he whispered. After having worked with him for a few months, I was starting to understand why Raymond didn’t have all that many friends. And people called me a geek?

  I went to the Geek Gang computer and Googled Spike Jonze, clicking open one of the articles that came up. I pointed to it. “See?” I said.

  Raymond looked around to make sure no one was looking, since this was a non-company-related Google. Once he was sure the coast was clear, he began to study it like it was some top-secret government document, stroking his pimply chin. “I stand corrected, Agent Rosen. It seems that you are correct,” he said, closing out the Spike Jonze window. “At any rate, I agree that you do in fact have a real chance here to expose the seamy underbelly of the world of popularity. Perhaps when you’re done, you could try to get it into Sundance or one of the other festivals. You could pitch it as ‘Lord of the Flies: Beverly Hills-Style.’”

  “That’s exactly what I was thinking!” I said excitedly. Raymond may have been a nightmare boss, but he was a real visionary when it came to film stuff. In fact, he was a USC film school grad himself. Some people might think that the fact that he’s making fifteen dollars an hour as manager of the Geek Gang and not off making millions of dollars a year directing films might not be a good sign, but that’s just because he’s spent the last four years writing a horror-slash-action film called Send in the Killer Clowns that he likes to pitch as “Die Hard at a circus” and he doesn’t want to try to sell it until he does another rewrite.

  “Tell me more about this girl. What’s her name—Delilah?”

  “Dylan,” I corrected.

  “So what’s she like? Other than popular.”

  I reached for the Coke I had hidden behind the computer. “Let’s see . . . she’s spoiled. And self-centered. And thinks the world revolves around her. And walks down the hall like she owns the school. And won’t talk to anyone who’s not in the ninety-ninth percentile of popularity.”

  “In other words, she’s prom-queen material,” Raymond said.

  I nodded. “Remember the Heathers in Heathers?”

  “Of course,” Raymond scoffed. “That was Michael Lehmann’s masterpiece. Even though he did get to work with the babedacious Uma Thurman in The Truth About Cats and Dogs a few years later.”

  “Well, think of all three Heathers times a hundred,” I said.

  He stroked his chin again. “Hmm . . . sounds like you have your work cut out for you. Is she pretty?”

  I shrugged. “Yeah, if you like blondes with blue eyes.” Which I didn’t. I liked brunettes with violet eyes. Specifically brunettes with violet eyes named Amy Loubalu who were seniors at Castle Heights. As far as I was concerned, Amy was the most beautiful—not to mention the nicest—girl at Castle Heights. Back before my parents’ divorce, when we still lived in Brentwood, I used to see her at Jamba Juice with the kids she babysat on the weekends. She always went out of her way to say hi to me and ask for a list of movies she should rent from Netflix, but most times I just clammed up and could barely speak, afraid that I’d get Tourette’s syndrome and just say “You’re so beautiful” over and over again.

  “So when do you start?” Raymond asked as he straightened his own tie.

  “I’m hoping Monday. I’m going to call Dylan when I get home and try and set up a prepro meeting for sometime this weekend.”

  He nodded. “Excellent, Agent Rosen.” He grabbed me by the shoulders. “Just remember one thing.”

  I leaned my head back as far as I could without breaking my neck so I could get away from the garlic fumes left over from the baba ghanoush pita sandwich Raymond had had for lunch. “This is your movie. You’re the director. This is not a collaboration—it’s your singular vision. So don’t give in to her. No matter how used she is to getting her way or how pretty she is. Understand?”

  I nodded. “I understand.”

  “You’re a filmmaker,” he continued, getting more and more riled up. “A truthteller. You can’t worry about hurting people’s feelings. You’re on this planet to serve your muse. Look at me, for example—do you think I enjoy having to deal with idiots who don’t realize that if they keep powering off their computers without logging off first, sooner or later there’s going to be a problem?”

  I shook my head and took a step back.

  “No!” he exclaimed. “I don’t enjoy it—I loathe it! But I do it because it’s mindless and therefore allows me to conserve my creative energy so I can continue to work on Send in the Killer Clowns, which is destined to become a cult classic if anyone’s smart enough to recognize its brilliance.” He grabbed me by the shoulders. “But you, Agent Rosen, have the opportunity of a lifetime—a chance to show all your fellow geeks and the geeks-in-training of the next generation that they’re not missing out on anything by not being in the cool crowd. That, in fact, maybe their lack of cool is saving them from selling their souls and going over to the dark side!” He leaned in closer. “Don’t let them down, Agent Rosen. Leave something behind that you and generations of misunderstood geniuses to come will be proud of.” He let go of me. “Understood?”

  I nodded.

  Talk about a tall order.

  When I got home, Mom was at yet another one of her Learning Annex classes (her postdivorce hobby), so I grabbed a bag of Chips Ahoy I had stashed away on top of my closet and went into the family room. Postdivorce we moved to a house in Beachwood Canyon, which is in Hollywood. It’s small, but it’s right under the Hollywood sign, which is obviously a terrific example of foreshadowing in terms of my future. Ever since Dad left Mom two years before for one of his actress clients (he’s an entertainment attorney, which means along with agents and managers, he negotiates deals for actors) and shafted Mom in the divorce, money has been really tight.

  Our house is cool—built in 1923, with a lot of built-in bookcases for my DVDs. I like it better on this side of town because when you’re a director, it’s very important to keep it real and stay in touch with the regular Joe moviegoing public, and Hollywood, with its mix of ethnic groups and high crime rate, is a lot more real than snooty Brentwood. Plus, there’s a great used-record store down the street on Franklin Avenue where Quentin has been known to pop in from time to time.

  After I settled myself on the wicker couch that Mom had gotten at the Rose Bowl flea market a few weeks earlier (ever since the divorce she’s been on a nothing-should-match-in-order-to-reflect-the-randomness-of-life kick) I called Dylan. Let me rephrase that: I called the number that Dylan had given me. An old woman answered, who, when I asked to speak to Dylan, started screaming in Russian and hung up on me. So I called back, and this time a man answered.

  “Hi, is Dylan there?” I asked.

  “Who?” he demanded.

  “Dylan. Dylan Schoenfield?”

  “You have wrong number,” the man boomed.

  “Um, are you sure?” I asked.

  “Who this?” he demanded.

  “This is Josh Rosen. I’m a classmate of Dylan’s
.”

  “I tell you—no Dylan here! Now you never call here again!” he said, slamming the phone down.

  Forget my promise to Raymond that I was going to make the documentary of my generation. At this point there wasn’t going to be a documentary.

  Amy Loubalu never would’ve done anything as cruel as give me the wrong number after I risked my life for her (which, by the way, I would have gladly done, no questions asked). In fact, I bet Amy would’ve let me take her out for a Jamba Juice in return.

  “I can’t believe you’re really going to do this,” said my friend Ari on Monday during lunch as he, Steven, and I sat at our usual table in the far right corner of the cafeteria near the garbage bins. Tall and thin with receding brown hair and black-rimmed glasses, Ari’s a dead ringer for Steven Soderbergh, the guy who directed Ocean’s Eleven, not to mention Ocean’s Twelve and Ocean’s Thirteen. I took a picture of the two of them together when Steven gave a Film Society talk and they look like they could be father and son.

  I stood up and straightened my own glasses. Even though I had stopped at LensCrafters on Saturday, my frames were still crooked from when I risked my life to save Dylan’s bag. If I wasn’t such a good guy, I would’ve built the cost of the repairs into the budget. “What do you mean you can’t believe I’m going to do this? Of course I’m going to do this!” I pointed to the latest issue of Filmmaker magazine that he had been flipping through. “You think anyone in there would let a little thing like a wrong number stop them? Would Spielberg ever have considered ending E.T. any other way than Henry Thomas putting E.T. in the basket of his bike and riding off?”

  “Dude, I think you need a passport to go over there,” said Steven, who was busy texting some girl named Amber who lived in Kansas whom he had met in a MySpace group for The Simpsons. So far he had ignored her requests for a picture (the picture on his page was of Homer), and who knew if she’d still be interested in him once he did send one. His hope was that girls in the Midwest liked tubby guys with blond hair that tended to get greasy within an hour of washing it.

  I stood there looking at my two friends and sighed. I had had a feeling I’d run up against this, and had luckily written a script for it over the weekend. “Okay, listen up: just this summer we were talking about how we wanted our senior year to be memorable, right?”

  Ari pulled at his ear, which is a thing he does when he gets nervous, while Steven texted.

  “Right?” I said again, yanking Steven’s Treo out of his hand.

  They finally nodded.

  “And we also talked about how Revenge of the Nerds was such a great wish-fulfillment movie and Judd Apatow should definitely remake it, right?”

  “Yeah?” said Ari warily.

  “So this is our chance!” I exclaimed. “With this documentary, not only will we have the opportunity to shake it up a bit, but we can do our own Revenge of the Nerds remake. Think about it—we’ll get to go to parties—”

  “And be around girls,” Steven said with a faraway look in his eyes.

  “Exactly! And be around girls! And there’s also the fact that we’ll . . . get to go to parties,” I said. Obviously I hadn’t thought much past the party part.

  “And be around girls,” Steven said again.

  “And be around girls,” I agreed. “Guys, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” I said. “A chance to leave the sidelines and start to experience life so we have a wealth of material to tap into for our art down the line.”

  “But you’re always saying that popularity is overrated and that you’d rather stick needles in your eyes than spend a night at a stupid keg party,” said Ari.

  “Who cares what my personal beliefs are!” I said, grabbing one of the carrot sticks that Steven’s mom packed in his lunch every day. “What’s important here is that if I ever make a movie that has a keg-party scene, I’ll want it to be as authentic as possible and therefore I should make sure I go to at least one.”

  “Dude—you’re right. This is our chance to finally get into the game,” Steven said excitedly.

  “But I hate sports,” said Ari. “I have no eye-hand coordination.”

  I sighed. “Just insert whatever metaphor works for you, okay?” I replied. “So are you with me or what? Because I can’t do this alone. Behind every great director is an even better director of photography and soundman, and for good or for bad, you guys are all I’ve got.”

  “I’m in,” said Steven. “Especially since there’s the possibility of girls being involved.”

  We looked at Ari.

  “Me, too, I guess,” he replied. “As long as this social-life thing doesn’t get in the way of my homework. Yale’s a lot harder to get into than USC.”

  “Not the film school,” I corrected as I took my inhaler out of my pocket for a quick hit before putting it down on the table. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to change the course of our fate.” After taking a few steps, I turned. “But if I’m not back in ten minutes or so, you should probably come look for me.”

  “Don’t you want to take your inhaler?” Ari yelled. “In case you have some sort of allergic reaction to being in such close proximity to all that popularity?”

  As a group of tree huggers looked up from their brown rice and veggies, I could feel myself start to flush. “Give me a break,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I’ve been around popular people before.”

  “When?” asked Steven.

  I thought about it. “When I met Stan Lee at Comic-Con two years ago,” I finally said. Stan Lee was the co-creator of Spider-Man and X-Men among other things.

  The two of them looked at each other and shrugged.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. And with that I began the long walk to The Ramp. The Ramp leads to this raised platform in the corner of the cafeteria where there are ten or so tables, and the popular kids sit there, which makes them not only figuratively but literally above us nonpopular kids. (I had already mapped out the shot I would be using in the documentary to show this poetic tidbit.) As you can imagine, there’s been a lot of flak about The Ramp over the years. In fact, rumor has it that this sophomore named Cindy Gold wrote a really intense letter to the editor of the Castle Heights Courier about it a few months ago, but the administration ended up putting the kibosh on it. They wouldn’t let the paper print it because The Ramp was a gift from the Smallwood family—who have three very popular daughters who had sat up there over the years, including Madison, who’s a senior like me—and they had just agreed to pay for a new Olympic-size pool.

  By the time I was halfway across the cafeteria, my heart felt like it was going to leap out of my chest or I was going to throw up or—worst-case scenario—both, so I turned around and went back to the guys.

  “I’m worried that the high altitude of The Ramp might make my asthma kick in,” I said as I picked up my inhaler and put it in my pocket.

  Steven snorted and went back to texting, while Ari patted me on the arm.

  “It’s okay to admit that you’re scared,” he said. “I’m scared for you, and I’m not even going anywhere.”

  “I’m not scared,” I scoffed. “I just can’t afford to have an asthma attack and end up in the hospital.”

  “Dude, you probably don’t even have asthma,” Steven said. “You just use that thing when you’re nervous.”

  “I do, too, have asthma!” I replied. “It’s not that uncommon—I just read that six to eighteen percent of young athletes have it.”

  “But you’re not an athlete,” Ari said.

  “Okay, well, if you want to get type A about it, no, I’m not. But still. Look, I don’t have time to debate this—now if you’ll excuse me, I have a job to do.”

  As I made my way across the cafeteria again, I had to admit to myself that maybe I was just the slightest bit nervous. Even though I had just given the guys that rousing pep talk about how this could be the very thing that changed our lives, the truth is I’m not big on being the center of attention, which is what tends to ha
ppen when kids have the nerve to venture out of their normal cafeteria seating areas. At work or in the Film Society or the Russian Club, I’m fine—in fact, if there were an alternate universe made up entirely of geeks at Castle Heights, there’d be a good chance I’d win Most Popular—but when I’m around normal people I tend to go one of two ways: I either clam up completely or I can’t stop talking. Neither is all that attractive.

  As I stood in front of The Ramp, I craned my neck to watch as Dylan held court over Hannah Mornell, Lola Leighton, and a bunch of other popular girls. From the way she was stabbing her fork in the air, I could see she was up in arms about something. Was that girl ever not in diva mode? Probably had to do with one of her credit cards being mistakenly declined or something like that.

  Knowing it was important to let the talent know who was in charge ASAP (i.e., me), I cleared my throat. “Dylan?” I squeaked. I had been hoping for something a little more booming and authoritative.

  “Take two,” I murmured. “Hi, Dylan?” I said a little louder, netting me some astonished looks from the table of not-Ramp-worthy-but-semipopular girls to my right. I felt like Romeo calling up to Juliet, but instead of a ruffled shirt and tights, I was wearing Converse high-tops and an Apocalypse Now T-shirt.

  Still oblivious, Dylan was now passing her bag—the one that I had saved from drowning—around the table for everyone to examine. “Arturo said that if I had gotten it out of the water two minutes earlier,” she was saying, “he could’ve gotten it so that it looked new again rather than only as good as new, but that guy who got it out for me was just so slow!”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I risk my life by going into unchlorinated water and this was the thanks I get—being given a wrong number and called “slow”?! Who did Dylan Schoenfield think she was? The princess of Castle Heights High or something?