5 The Boy Who Never Grew Up

by David Handler

  “I am.”

  “How is he?” she asked.

  “I wouldn’t exactly call him great.”

  “Tell him hello, will you?” She swallowed, her pink, perfect lower lip quivering slightly. “Tell him Georgie is fine.”

  “Why don’t you tell him yourself?”

  She glanced at Zorch, who shook his head. “No,” she said hoarsely. “I can’t.” To him she said: “I’m really, really unhappy, Abel. I mean it.”

  “Not to worry, dear,” he said soothingly. “It’s normal to feel that way at this stage. Just leave everything to me.”

  “I have,” she said miserably. “And everything sucks.”

  “Of course it sucks, darlin’,” Trace broke in as he returned to us. “What’d you expect from the Iguana? C’mon … our table’s ready.”

  “In a second, Trace,” she said.

  “You’re wasting your time,” Trace insisted, panting. “You won’t ever get a straight answer out of him—he’s incapable of one. He and Norb both … Isn’t that right, Norb?” Schlom glowered at him in angry silence. Undaunted, Trace turned and eyeballed the man’s wife. “You’re looking mighty foxy tonight, Toy,” he said with easy familiarity. “Mighty foxy, indeed.”

  “Thank you, Trace,” she said quietly.

  Schlom could take no more. He threw down his napkin and galumphed off to the men’s room. Two agents popped up and raced off after him. Whoever said it’s lonely at the top didn’t know the movie business. Studio chiefs don’t even pee alone.

  “When are you going to grow up, Trace?” Toy scolded.

  Trace drained his beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his big, brown hand. “Never, I hope.”

  “It isn’t so, Trace,” Zorch fumed. “What you said. And I resent it. I’m being totally straight with Penny. I’m totally straight with everyone. I happen to be a man of my word.”

  Trace laughed harshly. “Oh, yeah? Then tell me this, man of your word … how come I can’t get in the door at Panorama?”

  “You know why,” Zorch replied, under his breath.

  “So I was a bad boy,” Trace admitted easily. “Big fucking deal. All the bad boys are working. Dennis works. Ryan works … Why can’t I work?”

  “You know why,” Zorch repeated.

  “You could fix it with him,” Trace suggested.

  “Oh, I highly doubt that,” countered Zorch, his cup spilling over with false modesty.

  “He’s right, Abel,” Penny said. “You could.”

  “Hey, you want me to beg, I’m begging,” Trace persisted. “Put in the word for me, man. I’m starving.”

  Zorch smirked. He was enjoying this.

  Frustrated, Trace grabbed him by his ugly green necktie and pulled. Hard. “Damn it, why won’t you let me work, you weasel!?”

  Zorch sputtered, arms flailing helplessly. The actor had cut off his air supply.

  Pennyroyal rushed over and threw herself between them. “Trace, let him go,” she commanded.

  Trace did. He was pretty obedient. And she was pretty gutty.

  “C’mon, let’s go eat,” she said to him softly.

  She led him off to their table. He went willingly. No one in the place paid much attention to the outburst. They were used to emotional scenes at Spago.

  Zorch fingered his throat, shaken. “I hate that man,” he said bitterly.

  “He doesn’t seem particularly fond of you either,” I observed.

  “I’ve hated him for thirty years.”

  “That’s a lot of hate.”

  “I could not be happier that he’s on his ass,” he added, sneering at him. “Fuck him. Fuck him.”

  “Why can’t he work for Panorama?” I asked.

  Zorch and Toy exchanged a look.

  “That’s a long, sad story,” Toy replied. She got no further—somebody was approaching our table. Not her husband. Not Trace.

  It was Johnny Forget.

  He was weeping uncontrollably. His black leather motorcycle jacket was half off one bare shoulder. His nose was bleeding. He was a mess. “Why, Abel?!” he wailed, his hairless chest heaving. “Why are you doing this to me?!”

  “Doing what, John?” Zorch asked him calmly and patiently, as one would a child.

  “You know what!” Johnny’s little boy voice was choked with emotion and rage. He sounded like a five-year-old who’d just learned the truth about Santa Claus. “You’re dicking me! You’re f-fucking that bimbo behind my back!”

  He meant Geoffrey with a G, who took offense. And started to his feet. Zorch stopped him.

  Johnny certainly took direction, I’ll say that for him. Matthew had suggested he confront his two-timing lover, and that’s what he was doing. It just so happened that the two-timer was Abel Zorch. Small town. Always has been.

  “I am not dicking you,” Zorch assured Johnny. “I am having dinner with some business associates.”

  “When are you gonna stop lying to me?!” Johnny cried at the top of his lungs.

  That one drew a reaction from Trace across the room. “Give him hell, Badger!” he called out approvingly.

  And brought Joey Bam Bam rushing over.

  “May we discuss this later, John?” said Zorch irritably. Schlom was returning to our table from the men’s room.

  “No! I wanna have it out now!” cried Johnny.

  “Later,” Zorch said sharply.

  “Now!”

  “C’mon, pal, now’s not a good time,” Bam Bam advised, putting an arm around his troubled young client. “Man’s having dinner, talking business with Mr. Schlom. Right, Mr. Schlom?” He started steering Johnny away. “C’mon, John-John. Let’s hit the road.”

  “Get your hands off me,” snapped Johnny.

  Joey pulled back instantly. “Okay, okay, they’re off. See? They’re off.”

  Johnny stood there gazing at Zorch, his eyes red and swollen, tears streaming down his cheeks. Zorch stared back at him. His own hooded eyes betrayed nothing.

  “You’ll be sorry,” Johnny vowed, his voice quavering. “You’ll be sorry you did this to me.” Then he stormed out, Bam Bam on his tail.

  “What the fuck was that all about?” Schlom muttered to his wife.

  Toy shook her head in reply.

  Zorch went back to discussing our main course, unfazed.

  Ten seconds later there was gunfire. It came from outside. Several shots fired in rapid succession by a semiautomatic. It got very quiet in Spago. They were used to emotional scenes. They were not used to gunfire. Lulu moaned from under my chair. She hates guns. Then there was a screech of tires and Johnny’s Fat Boy went roaring off down Sunset.

  Bam Bam returned a moment later, very pale. Bernard, the maître d’, was with him, also pale.

  “It’s your Corniche, Mr. Zorch,” said Bernard, with a pained expression. “Johnny, he shot out all of the windows and headlights.”

  “Ah, me,” sighed Zorch. “Anyone hurt?”

  “No, sir,” the maître d’ replied. “One other car was hit. A red Porsche.”

  “My baby,” moaned Bam Bam, distraught. “One day old and already it’s got bullet holes in it.”

  “Shall we call the police?” Bernard asked Zorch.

  “Don’t bother, Bernard,” Zorch said coolly. “Boys will be boys. Still, I suppose we should go take a look.” He and Geoffrey got up from the table. So did I. “Want to have a look, Norb?”

  “I wanna eat,” growled Schlom. “I don’t know what a guy has to do to get a hot meal around here.”

  “Ultrasorry about all of this, Mr. Schlom,” apologized Joey Bam Bam.

  “Disappear.”

  “Yessir.”

  I followed Zorch and Geoffrey out through the bar. I never made it to the door. Someone stopped me with a tug at my sleeve. It was Pennyroyal.

  “Will you do it?” she asked me urgently.

  “Will I do what?”

  “Will you tell Matthew I said hello?”

  “I’ll tell him.”

&
nbsp; She shot a nervous glance at the door, afraid of Zorch seeing us together. Then she raised her chin defiantly and took a seat at the bar. I joined her. The bartender asked her if she wanted anything. She didn’t. I had a glass of Dom Perignon to kill the taste of Abel Zorch’s wine.

  “How is he really?” she asked me.

  “He’s tearing his hair out.”

  “I’m serious,” she said.

  “So am I.” My champagne came. I took a sip. It tasted even better than usual. “He says he’s over you, if that’s what you want to know.”

  “Good,” she said firmly. “I hope he is.”

  “Do you?”

  Her eyes searched mine. I got lost in them a moment. They were easy to get lost in. So clear and blue. So innocent. So trusting. And she was so very, very good at playing this kind of game. She was an actress, after all, a magic mirror in which you see just exactly what you want to see. Whatever you want to read in an actress’s eyes—it’s in there. That’s one of the things that makes them actresses … “What makes them so special, Meat?”

  I wondered what Merilee was doing right now. I wondered if she was thinking about me. I wondered if she missed me.

  “I still care about him,” she said, her lower lip starting to quiver again. “I tried so hard to make it work. So damned hard.” She tossed her head, sweeping back her golden hair, and looked around at the people. “He refused to eat here. I could never get him to come to this place.” She pulled a cigarette out of her purse. I lit it for her. “What’s he going to say about me? Is it horrible?”

  I didn’t answer her. She wasn’t expecting an answer.

  “Matthew … Matthew never understood me. Never knew me. He just created someone in his own head and tried to make me into her. He refused to let me be me. Can you see that?”

  “I’d like to.”

  She drew on the cigarette, glancing at the door. “It’s like he’s turned his whole life into some old Warner Brothers movie. Shelley, the chubby, good-natured best friend. Bunny, the fiercely protective mom with the heart of gold. Sarge, his tough, loyal gal Friday. Shadow, the weird old baseball player. Trace, the football hero—”

  “And you?”

  “I was Debbie Dale, the mythic golden girl, radiating this bizarre, trembly sort of purity. I’m not her. I couldn’t take being her anymore. I was wigging out. I’m not a bad person. I’m really not. I just had to get away from all of that. Get back some control over my own life. Do you have any idea what it’s like being a figment of someone’s imagination?”

  “I believe so,” I replied. “I’m a figment of my own.”

  She relaxed a bit, showed me her dimples. “Cassandra told me about you.”

  “That must have been good for a laugh.”

  “You’re her idol.”

  “I know. Don’t remind me.”

  “I’m not a bad person,” she repeated, more insistently this time.

  “And I’m not here to judge you,” I said, admiring her bare, lovely throat. There were no lines etched in it. She had no lines anywhere on her face either. No age lines. No laugh lines. No pain. Nothing showed. It was as if she had never lived at all.

  “Are you planning to go all the way?” she asked, gazing at me steadily.

  “I generally try to stick it out.”

  “Good, I’m glad to hear it.”

  “I’m glad you’re glad to hear it.”

  “Aren’t you going to ask me the usual question?” she wondered, a bit demurely.

  “Which usual question is that?”

  “What it’s like to be me.”

  “You get asked that a lot?”

  “A lot.”

  “And how do you usually reply?”

  “Usually I say that it hurts—every day, all day long. Only nobody ever believes me. Do you believe me?” She squeezed my arm with her small, brown hand. That edge of desperation again.

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  She released me. “It’s really not fair,” she complained, stubbing out her cigarette. “I don’t deserve any of this. I’m just trying to get on with my life, make a future for my child. All I want is what I’m entitled to. Not a cent more. Is that so bad? But they’re all calling me names. Making me out to be this grasping, airhead megabitch. I know why, too. Because I’m a pretty little girl. Pretty little girls aren’t supposed to own fifty percent of a movie studio. That’s why everyone’s freaking out. That’s what this whole mess is about. Power. They don’t want me to have any. I’m someone to be patted on the head and fucked and fucked over. Not somebody who’s supposed to have any clout. I’m telling you, this business hasn’t changed since the days of Louis B. Mayer. A woman has to go to extraordinary lengths to get the slightest bit of clout. A woman has to—” She stopped herself. “Sorry,” she said skittishly. “I didn’t mean to unload on you. It’s just that my life happens to be a total fucking mess.”

  I drained my champagne. “Why should your life be different from anyone else’s?”

  She laughed. A sad laugh. Sad lady. “I don’t even know who I can trust anymore. I mean, I trusted Abel and he told the press everything.”

  “There’s always Trace.”

  “Get real,” she scoffed.

  “Tried it. Vastly overrated. Look, if you’re asking me my advice …”

  “I am,” she said flatly, her eyes searching my face.

  “The best rule of thumb in situations like these is to trust nobody.”

  “Can I trust you?”

  “I’m not nobody.”

  “Can I?” she pressed, anxiously.

  Zorch came back inside now. He immediately spotted us there together at the bar. He didn’t like it.

  “I’m at the house,” Pennyroyal whispered to me. “I’m a prisoner there. Call me. Help me—please.”

  Zorch made his way over to us. “It seems the little laddie boy took out every single bit of glass in the damned car,” he reported, trying to sound merry, and failing. “I don’t know how you survived three movies with him, Penny. He wears thin so terribly fast.”

  “You’re not exactly being nice to him, Abel,” Pennyroyal said disapprovingly.

  Zorch showed her a thin smile. “I made him no promises. It’s his own fault if he got carried away.”

  “It’s not his fault that he cares about you,” she argued.

  “I can see I’m not going to win with you tonight,” he said lightly.

  “That’s right, Abel, you’re not.” She went back to her table.

  Zorch turned his hooded eyes on me. He looked like he had plenty he wanted to say, none of it nice. But all he said was, “Come, let’s eat.”

  “By all means,” I said. “Let’s eat.”

  I got back to the Four Seasons shortly before midnight. I took the Vette straight down to the garage and the elevator straight up to twelve like I had before, only this time a half-dozen media people were waiting there for me in the twelfth-floor hallway when the elevator doors opened—mikes thrust in my face, lights flashing, videotape rolling.

  “IF YOU COULD JUST TELL US HOW MATTHEW IS DOING.”

  “A STATEMENT—”

  “HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE HIS MOOD?”

  Happily, Lulu was too tired to be up for any pub right now. She barked ferociously at them. She has a mighty big bark for somebody with no legs. It froze them momentarily, and gave us a chance to make a dash down the hall for our room. They followed us. I hurriedly unlocked the door and we slipped inside and I slammed it shut on them. Safe and snug for the night.

  Almost.

  Cassandra Dee was taking a bubble bath in my tub. “I don’t think Zorch is having ya followed, honey,” she informed me, nasally, as she turned the page of the script she was reading. “Nobody tailed ya when you left for din-din. I watched. Cute car, by the way.” She took a gulp of the diet Coke that was sitting on the edge of the tub, her belch reverberating in the tiled bathroom. Then she tapped the script. “Matthew’s new one—it was waiting for ya down at the
concierge’s desk.”

  I opened the bathroom door wide. It was uncomfortably steamy in there. “Little warm for a hot bath, isn’t it?”

  “Not for me. I adore tubs.” She set the script aside and stretched out her legs, feet propped up on the faucet. They were long, narrow feet, and she painted the nails red. “So where’d ya eat, huh? Who with? Whatcha pick up?”

  The phone rang. I answered it on my bathroom phone. It was a reporter. I hung up on him, called the switchboard, and asked them to hold my calls for the night. They said they’d be happy to. I hung up and said, “I don’t mean to be inhospitable, Cassandra, but what are you—?”

  “I figured it was my toin,” she explained.

  “For what?”

  She stood up. It’s not easy to stand up in a tub without thrashing around like a hippo. Cassandra Dee was no hippo. She was all goil, long and graceful, breasts firm, nipples pink and perky. She looked fine standing there with my complimentary bath foam sliding slowly down her slick, wet flesh. She looked plenty fine. “To get caught with my pants off,” she replied coyly.

  “I’m not Trace Washburn.”

  “That’s just as well, honey—I don’t think my poor little tootsie roll could take it if you was.”

  I grabbed a bath towel and held it out to her. “You have sixty seconds.”

  “For what?” she asked.

  “To get out. Or I sic Lulu on you.”

  She shrieked—her brand of laugh. “You’re twisted. I like that about ya.”

  “She’ll tear you to pieces,” I threatened. “All they’ll find of you is teeth and hair. Go on, show her, Lulu.”

  Lulu bared her fangs, growling menacingly.

  “Wait, wait, hold it,” cried Cassandra, fully goggle-eyed now. “You’re serious.”

  “Every once in a while.”

  She frowned, perplexed. “Yeah, yeah, shewa. Okay. Call her off.” She snatched the towel from me. “I don’t stick around where I’m not wanted. A doormat I ain’t. Geez.”

  I left her in there to get dressed. My phone rang again. Another reporter. I hung up on him, called the switchboard and asked them, again, to hold my calls for the night. They said they’d be happy to.

  Cassandra came out a moment later, fully clothed, flushed from her bath, clutching Matthew’s script. “I wanna know what’s wrong with me,” she said, stung by my rejection. “What, I’m not good enough for ya?”