5 The Boy Who Never Grew Up

by David Handler

  “This isn’t an interview.”

  “Right,” he acknowledged quickly. “I know that. So … what can I tell you?”

  “How you are.”

  “I’m great.” He smiled at me easily. “Really great.”

  I nodded patiently. I’m used to being lied to. People lie to me all the time in my business. Almost as often as they try to use me. “I’m glad to hear that, Matthew. And who, may I ask, does your hair?”

  Startled, he dropped his hand to his lap. It flopped around there, like a live animal.

  “Let’s try that one again,” I said. “How are you, Matthew?”

  He took his time answering. He shrugged his narrow shoulders, sniffled. Laid his head back on the sofa, gazed up into the overhead lights. He had an unusually short neck for someone so gangly. Actually, the more I looked at him, the more he seemed to have been assembled entirely out of spare parts. “Not so great,” he finally said, softly. “I’m trying to stay up for Ma. I don’t want her to worry about me.”

  “No offense, but I don’t think you’re fooling her.”

  “I don’t think I am either,” he admitted. “I feel, I don’t know, like a tree that’s trying to make it through a hurricane.” He sat up, warming to the idea. “The wind is howling …” He made a whistling noise through his teeth. The wind. Howling. “My trunk is bent over. My limbs are snapping off, one by one by one …” He was turning it all into a scene, the stirring climax of Matty, the Little Maple Tree Who Could. Coming soon to a theater near you. “There I am, the wind is building and I’m—”

  “Are you bitter?” I broke in.

  He frowned. “Bitter? It’s not in my nature to be bitter. Why, were you?”

  “Me?”

  “Wasn’t your love life smeared all over the papers, too?”

  “Still is, when I’m not looking.”

  “It’s not very much fun,” he said, swallowing. His hand went back up to his scalp.

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Do you have any advice for me, Meat?” he wondered. “Anything you’ve learned?”

  “You mean hurricane prevention tips?”

  He waited for me to answer.

  “About all I’ve learned,” I replied, “is that if you want a low-profile personal life, don’t fall for an actress.”

  “You did.”

  “Couldn’t help myself.”

  “Me neither. Actresses are … I don’t know, different from other girls.”

  “That they are.”

  “Why is that?” he asked suddenly. “What makes them so special, Meat?”

  He sounded just like Badger. Innocent. Ingenuous. Endlessly curious. Next he’d be asking me why people have to get old and die. “I’m still working on that one, Matthew,” I said.

  “Will you let me know when you figure it out?”

  “You will be among the first.”

  “Great.” There was a package of Milky Way bars on the coffee table before him. He tore into one and took a bite. “So what do we do now?” he asked, munching.

  “Tomorrow I start asking you questions.”

  “About what?”

  “You. Your life, your work, your attitudes. Lots of questions. A million questions. So many I’ll start getting on your nerves.”

  “And then?”

  “And then I’ll ask you more questions.”

  “What happens if we disagree on something?”

  “We fight.”

  “Gee, I don’t know if that’ll work, Meat,” he said doubtfully. “I’m used to having total say on everything I do.”

  “And you will,” I assured him. “This is your book. I’m only here to help you. But I have to know you’re willing to dig. And keep digging, no matter how much it hurts. Otherwise, you’re just wasting your time. And mine.”

  He thought this over. “I am ready,” he said grimly. “I definitely am.”

  “How come?”

  “How come?” he repeated.

  “Why do you want to do this book?”

  He frowned, confused. “Didn’t Shelley tell you what—?”

  “I want to hear it from you.”

  He jumped to his feet and paced around the set. Lulu opened one eye briefly, stirred and went back to sleep. He loped over to the staircase, then back again.

  “I think it will help to change how the public sees me,” he declared.

  “And how do they see you?”

  “Like I’m some kind of freak.”

  “So you’re doing this because you want to be understood?”

  He flopped back down on the sofa. “Sure.”

  “As what?”

  He shrugged. “A guy who’s trying to entertain people. Make them happy.” He stared at me for a second. “Do you go see my movies?”

  “Why, is that a prerequisite for this job?”

  “No, no. I just … I’m not used to being around anyone who doesn’t, that’s all. Why do you think I’m doing this book?”

  “Because the critics have blasted you,” I replied. “And you’re shook. And you think this will somehow help you get your touch back. I think you could care less if anyone understands you.”

  He thought this over. “That’s not true, Meat,” he said solemnly. “There is someone who I really wish understood me.”

  “And who is that, Matthew?”

  His eyes met mine. “Me.”

  I nodded approvingly. “Good answer.”

  We were both silent a moment. The silence made him uncomfortable. Or maybe his candor had. He wadded up his candy wrapper and tossed it on the floor, fidgeted, drummed the coffee table loudly with his fingers. It was annoying, but it still beat watching him tear out his hair.

  “I met Shadow Williams at the gate,” I said. “Sarge was telling me about how you saw him hit his home run.”

  “I knew it was gone the second it hit his bat,” Matthew recalled excitedly. “Man, he got all of it!”

  “That particular story has a happy ending,” I said. “I want the ones that don’t.”

  He frowned. “Like which?”

  “Like Norbert Schlom.”

  His face darkened. “What about him?”

  “Shelley told me he cheated you out of millions.”

  Matthew said nothing. His eyes shone behind his battered glasses. The child’s hurt was still there.

  “What else did he do?”

  “Terrible things,” he replied, his voice quavering.

  “I want to know what they were.”

  “You want to know what they were?” he said hotly. “Okay, let’s put it in the book. Sure. That’ll be super. He wanted me to take on this Three Stooges movie, see? And I wasn’t interested. The script was somebody else’s, and it smelled, and I wanted to make my Badger movie. Only Norbert wouldn’t green light me unless I did the Stooges movie first. So Shelley made a deal for me to do Badger for Orion. We were going to leave Panorama. Norbert, he didn’t like that idea. So he made sure I couldn’t.”

  “How?”

  “He planted a bunch of coke in my bungalow and called the studio cops on me, that’s how! Told them I was a major drug dealer! He gave me ten minutes to say yes to the movie or go to jail. And it was no bluff, either. Not with Norbert.”

  “I take it you agreed to his terms.”

  He nodded unhappily. “And he called them off. But he swore he’d do it again in a second if I ever tried to walk off the picture. It was like he was holding a loaded gun to my head. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t concentrate. Naturally, the movie was no good. Shelley got me out of there right after that. We swore we’d never do business with Norbert again, and we haven’t. That’s the whole ugly story. Shadow has a featured role in that one, too, come to think of it.”

  “Oh?”

  “He was the studio cop who actually planted the coke. Hid it all over the place, bags and bags of it. He felt awful about it. Still does. But, hey, I don’t blame him. He was just doing his job.”

  “Abou
t Pennyroyal …”

  He stiffened. “No, no, no. Forget that. Just forget it.”

  “Forget what, Matthew?”

  “I won’t cream Penny. I won’t do that to her. I won’t!”

  “Relax. That’s not what I’m after.”

  “Good.” He was clearly relieved to hear this. But he didn’t relax. “Then what do you—?”

  “I want to interview her.”

  “You what? No way.”

  “I need to,” I said.

  “Uh-uh. Forget it.”

  “I think it will be helpful to get her side.”

  “This is my book!”

  “And it will be a fuller, more mature one if I can sit down with her. Just think about it, will you?”

  “All right, but it’s still gonna be no.” He heaved a huge sigh. Then heaved another, though this one sounded much more like a sob. “C-Can you believe what she’s told the papers about me?”

  “She’s being used. She was crying to Shelley about it on the phone the other day.”

  “You actually sound like you feel sorry for her.”

  “I feel sorry for both of you. And for Georgie most of all.”

  His brow creased at my mention of his baby.

  “What do you feel for her?” I asked him.

  “I feel nothing. Pennyroyal is from the past. Pennyroyal is history. My life starts now.” He chanted this woodenly, as if it were a mantra.

  “You’re saying you wouldn’t take her back?”

  He let out a short laugh. “Would you?”

  “If I loved her.”

  “Well, I don’t. I don’t love her. It’s over. We had some good times together. Fixing up the house, having Georgie. We had fun. She showed me how. I’d never really enjoyed anything besides my work until I met her. That part … that was good. Like when she showed me around Las Vegas on our honeymoon. She used to party there in college. She likes to party. She likes to go out and do things, be around people. I—I don’t. She just never accepted that about me.” He stuck his chin out stubbornly. “Look, I know it would be a lot easier for everybody if we just kissed and made up. But that’s not going to happen, okay? This isn’t …”

  “This isn’t one of your movies?” I suggested.

  He grinned at me crookedly. “Then you have seen them.”

  “They’re kind of hard to avoid.”

  “Is that so bad?”

  “Don’t mind me. I just tend to prefer things that are in short supply.”

  “It’s over, Meat. Penny and me. Don’t think of it as anything but over. All I care about now is my studio and my son.” He let out another of those sobs. “God, I miss him. It’s driving me crazy how much I miss him. I have a mind to drive over there in the night and just snatch him from her.”

  “And get thrown in jail for it? That’s precisely the sort of fool thing Zorch would love you to do.”

  “But he’s mine!”

  “She was in on it, too,” I said coldly.

  That one made him mad, so mad he nearly blew. But he didn’t. He just glared at me in angry, hurt silence.

  “Anything you’d like to ask me?” I said. A peace offering.

  “Yeah, there is. Did I piss you off before?”

  “When?”

  “When I asked you to stop here before you went to your hotel.”

  “You didn’t ask me. You told me.”

  He chuckled, amused. “Gotcha. I’ll remember that.”

  “See that you do. Anything else you want to know?”

  “Yeah. How do you feel about It’s a Wonderful Life?”

  I tugged at my ear. “I understand that’s your favorite movie of all time.”

  “Because it’s so uplifting,” he said enthusiastically. “I must have seen it two hundred times, and every time I do I sob with joy. It’s definitely what I’ve aspired to with my Badger movies. You’ve seen it?”

  “I hate it.”

  The color, what little of it there was, drained from his face. “You’re kidding.”

  “I am not.”

  “B-But how could you?” he sputtered, flabbergasted.

  “Because I come from a small town. A real one, not one that’s on a back lot in Culver City. It was a mean, narrow-minded place, and no one lived happily ever after. I fled as soon as I could. That movie takes me back there. I find it depressing.”

  “But it’s such a happy movie!”

  “It’s a fake movie.”

  “No, no, no,” he argued vehemently. “It’s not fake. It’s an ideal. We need our ideals, Meat. They’re vital. Without them, we’d all be lost. Totally lost!”

  He got good and worked up. I let him. Because it wasn’t Frank Capra he was defending. It was Matthew Wax. He was answering all of those critics who had blasted his last Badger movie. He was also giving me an excellent self-appraisal of his work.

  “I can’t believe you, Meat!” he fumed. “I really can’t. I mean, I’ve never met anyone who said that before!”

  “You never met me before.”

  He shook his head at me, baffled. “I don’t understand you.”

  “I’m something of an acquired taste, like raw oysters.”

  “I hate raw oysters,” he snapped. “They taste like snot.”

  Lulu sat up at all of this talk of seafood. I glanced at Grandfather’s Rolex. It was past her suppertime back home in New York, where her stomach’s clock was still set. Of course, when it comes to Lulu and seafood, it’s always suppertime somewhere in the world.

  I got to my feet and smoothed my trousers. “I’d like to go to my hotel now.”

  “Sure, sure,” he said, agreeably. “Hey, you in a hurry?”

  “Seldom.”

  “Then c’mon,” he exclaimed, jumping to his feet. “I want to show you something first.”

  He bounded off of the set into the darkness beyond. I tagged along, Lulu bringing up the rear. The late day sun was almost blinding after being inside the soundstage. Lulu froze there in the doorway, blinking, until I slipped her shades on for her. Matthew pulled a Western Flyer out of the bike rack and climbed on. I did the same. Then we set off, riding slowly. It was a comfortable ride, what with the padded seat and whitewall balloon tires. Also a familiar one. I’d had one just like it when I was a kid, and deep down inside I’d always preferred it to the jazzy, grown-up ten-speeder I gave it up for. Matthew’s was somewhat small for him. He rode with his knees stuck out, like a kid using his little sister’s bike. But he seemed used to it. Lulu ran up ahead and escorted us, arfing ebulliantly. More hamming.

  “Definitely a great dog,” observed Matthew. “She ever do any acting?”

  “Every day of her life.”

  “I’ve always loved dog pictures. Rin Tin Tin, Lassie. Ever since I was a kid. Lulu would make a perfect star, y’know. She’s got looks, personality. Have you ever considered …?” He trailed off when he noticed the look on my face. “Why are you glaring at me like that, Meat?”

  “No reason.” A conspiracy, that’s what this was.

  “I’d love to direct one of my own someday,” he went on. And on. “I’ve just never found the right story. Hey, if you come up with an idea, let me know. We could develop it together.”

  “I don’t do screenplays,” I said. Because I don’t, and because there’s no greater way to keep a movie person eating out of your hand than to reject them. I’ve never understood why that’s so, but it is.

  “Suit yourself.” He seemed disappointed.

  But not as disappointed as you-know-who. She slowed up alongside my bike and showed me her teeth. I showed her mine.

  The studio was quiet now. It was past five, and many workers had gone home. The few we saw gazed at Matthew with reverence as he rode by. But they didn’t wave or call out to him. And he seemed not to notice them at all. We turned off into Homewood and rode our bikes leisurely along Elm. An odd sensation. I felt like I should be tossing the evening paper onto everyone’s front porch. My first paying job, a few short decades
back.

  “Tell me about your new movie,” I said, shaking off the memory. “I understand it’s to be another Badger.”

  “That’s right,” he said. “I’m picking his story up a few years after he’s graduated from Homewood State. He’s moved out here to L.A. and become a really successful film director—although the critics hated his last picture. Debbie Dale is an actress. The two of them are married, but she’s just left him and taken their baby with her.”

  “Sounds somewhat autobiographical,” I observed.

  “Yeah, it kind of is,” he said sincerely. “I’m calling it either Badger Goes to Hollywood or Badger All Alone. Which do you like?”

  “Neither.”

  “God, you’re so negative!” he cried out, chuckling. Then he turned serious. “See, Badger, he’s always had things turn out his way. And now they’re not, and he’s all alone and—”

  “Hence the title.”

  “Maybe that is a little heavy-handed,” he admitted, glancing over at me. “Johnny’s coming back in it. This is an important picture for him.”

  “And what about Pennyroyal?”

  “Oh, she’ll still be a presence. Debbie’s constantly in Badger’s thoughts. His dreams, memories. I’ve got footage of her from the first three movies that I never used. Plenty of stuff. She’ll be in it. She has to be.”

  “And Trace Washburn?”

  “Badger doesn’t need a dad anymore,” he said gruffly. “Badger’s on his own now.”

  And Trace was out on his ear. His affair with Pennyroyal was costing Matthew’s one-time leading man plenty.

  “And how does it end?” I asked.

  “Not happily, Meat,” he revealed. “At least it doesn’t in my current draft. I’m still not a hundred percent sure though. I guess I’m still trying to find it.”

  “ ‘The thing that’s important to know,’ ” I quoted, “ ‘is that you never know. You’re always sort of feeling your way.’ ”

  “Very true,” he agreed. “Who said that?”

  “Diane Arbus, shortly before her suicide.”

  The town square was shady, and a bit cooler. Matthew pulled up in front of the courthouse and got off his bike and sat down on the courthouse steps, his long legs stretched out before him. I joined him, the steps feeling warm through my trousers. Lulu stretched out languorously on the sidewalk directly before Matthew, preening like a bikini-clad starlet at a big shot’s pool party. It was a truly shameless display. A stern talking-to was definitely called for.