5 The Boy Who Never Grew Up

by David Handler

  Her Glock was still in there. She was clear.

  Unless, of course, she happened to own two.

  “No luck,” I reported. “Must have left it at the hotel.” We resumed walking. “On your way to see Matthew?”

  She nodded. “Got some locations for him to approve. Bachelor pads for Badger. I checked them out yesterday.”

  “That’s where you were at the time of the shooting?”

  “Uh-huh.” She eyed me coldly. “What, they thinking I did it?”

  “I doubt it. But they’ll want to know where you were and how well you can handle a gun.”

  “Why?”

  “You have a motive.”

  “Me? Why’d I want to kill that gee and his little boy?”

  “To protect the fort,” I replied. “Can you?”

  “Can I what, man?” she demanded, flaring her nostrils at me.

  “Handle a gun.”

  “I can handle anything,” she said, matter-of-factly.

  I don’t know about you but I believed her.

  The Fat Boy was gone from outside the stage door. Bunny was busy preparing Matthew some Aunt Jemima frozen toaster waffles in the Hayes’s kitchen. She wore a Dennis the Dinosaur apron over her white designer sweats, and seemed bothered. Matthew was slumped at the table, glumly watching a rerun of Gilligan’s Island on a portable TV. The one where Gilligan starts picking up radio broadcasts with his teeth. Bunny poured him a glass of milk and placed his waffles before him. Carefully, he cut them into tiny bite-sized pieces. He poured a quart of syrup on them, then began to eat. Bunny watched him, crinkling her nose as he chewed. Lulu watched her warily, afraid she might try to feed her again.

  Sarge turned down the TV. “Okay, show ’n’ tell time,” she declared, all business. She arrayed Polaroid snapshots of houses on the table before Matthew. “We got three possibilities for Badger’s home base. One on the left is a beach house in Malibu that—”

  “No beach house,” said Matthew peevishly. “Badger wouldn’t live in one. No.”

  “Okay, that one’s out,” she agreed readily, turning over the beach house shots. “This here one’s at the top of Laurel Canyon. All glass. Very modern, outstanding views in three directions. Valerie Bertinelli once lived there …” She watched him, waiting for his reaction. He had none. She plowed ahead. “Third one’s on Stanley Hills Drive, also Laurel Canyon. Spanish-style. Dig, it has a two-story living room with a vaulted ceiling, and this totally outrageous, like, tower, with a room up there. Funky, the realtor called it, if you can believe that. It’s a bank foreclosure. Belonged to a network executive. We can rent it for two months, cheap. Want to see it?” She waited for some kind of reaction, any kind of reaction. Nothing. Just glum silence. “Well, I’ll go ahead and set something up for this afternoon, in case you do. And don’t forget we got more actors coming in at lunch to read for the part of his agent. Okay, I’m outta here.” She gathered up her pictures, watching him. “You okay, darling?” she asked him.

  “Fine,” he grumbled, munching on his waffle. “Why?”

  “No reason.” She shot a look over at Bunny.

  Bunny hastily removed her apron. “We’ll leave you two boys to your work. Don’t forget to put your plate in the sink, Matty.” She hesitated. “You sure you’re okay, sweetheart?”

  “I’m fine!” he erupted. “Why does everybody keep asking me how I am!”

  “Because you seem a little cranky this morning,” Bunny replied soothingly. “What time did you get to sleep last—?”

  “Stop babying me, will ya?!” cried Matthew. “I hate being babied!”

  Bunny whirled and gave me the evil eye, somehow certain this was all my doing. It was an impressive one. I could practically feel the boils forming all over my body.

  “We girls seem to be in the way, Charmaine,” she said icily. “Come, the boys wish to talk.”

  Out she bustled, Sarge in tow. Lulu curled up under the table, relieved to see her go.

  I tossed Matthew the basketball and poured myself some coffee. “What’s going on, Matthew?”

  “Been thinking about the script.” He began spinning the ball on the tip of his upraised index finger. “You may be right about Debbie Dale. We do need to see that she and Badger once had a good thing. Maybe some flashbacks would help …” He trailed off, looked up at me, clearing his throat uneasily. “I don’t know what it is, Meat. Everybody treats me like a little kid around here. And it bothers me sometimes. Especially since you got here. I don’t know why.”

  “Johnny stay the whole night?”

  “What do you mean?” he asked, startled.

  “I mean, did he stay or did he go?”

  “He left about two-thirty. He was really upset about Zorch. He really loved the guy, I guess.”

  “Is he going to talk to the police?”

  “Today. He won’t go into the police station. He’s too paranoid. But he’s agreed to meet with that detective friend of yours, Lamp, at his agency. Joey Bam Bam is putting it together.” He put the ball down and flicked off the TV. “I’m all ready, Meat. Where do we start today?”

  “With you telling me about Mona Schaffer.”

  A weak whimper came from Matthew’s throat. He turned pale. Green, almost.

  “You’re not going to barf again, are you?”

  “N-No, I don’t think so,” he stammered weakly. His fingers found his forelock and started tugging at it.

  “What happened to your Silly Putty?”

  “It’s right here in my pocket.” He dug it out and began to work it, his rabbit nose twitching furiously. “She’s … Mona’s not anyone, really. Just this girl I had a crush on. She was … I mean, we never dated or anything. I don’t even know why you’re asking me about her. D-Did my sister mention her or something?”

  “Showed me her yearbook picture as well.” I sipped my coffee. “Pennyroyal looks somewhat like her. More than somewhat, in fact.”

  “Same basic type,” he admitted, offhanded. “Blond hair, blue eyes, all-American cheerleader. That’s my type. Guess that makes me an all-American boy.” He forced a chuckle. He sounded like a machine gun running out of zip.

  I sat. “Tell me more about your relationship.”

  “We didn’t have one, Meat. I just told you. I was … infatuated with her. I memorized her phone number. I followed her around campus. If we had a class together, gee, I’d just stare and stare at her. She was so pretty. When she started driving to school, I’d purposely pass through the student parking lot on my way in just so I could touch her car. It was a Skylark, powder blue.” He was starting to perspire. He swiped at his forehead with the back of his hand. “Is it getting warm in here or is it just me?”

  “I’m cool as a cucumber.”

  “I even saved her gum,” he blurted out.

  “You saved her what?”

  “She sat in front of me in Spanish one semester, and she’d stick her bubble gum up under her desk every day before class, and leave it there. I’d take it home. Kept it all in my dresser for months. Until I got ants.”

  “I’m beginning to think less and less of you, Matthew.”

  “I guess it does sound pretty pathetic,” he admitted.

  “Did you ever talk to her about how you felt?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Did you ever talk to her at all?”

  “Not exactly. Well, once. Sort of.”

  “Want to tell me about that?”

  He sat there, sweating. His color was not good.

  “Does this have anything to do with why you quit the basketball team?”

  His mouth tightened. “Why do you keep harping on that?”

  “If you’d rather, Matthew, I’ll ask her about it at the reunion. It’s up to you.”

  His eyes widened. “She’ll be there?”

  “She will. She’s a nurse now, divorced. Has a daughter.”

  “Wow, that would be major strange seeing her again. Mona …”

  “I imagine some
of your former teammates will be there, too. I can ask them about why—”

  “You’re really not going to let this thing go, are you?”

  “I’m really not.”

  He slumped in his chair and sighed. “All right, Meat,” he said with glum resignation. “But this does happen to be the single most traumatic moment of my entire life. We’re talking major, major wound here.” He cleared his throat and took a deep breath. “I was … I was trying really hard to be a part of the team. Coach, he encouraged me. Patted me on the back in practice and stuff. But the guys, they never accepted me in the locker room. They weren’t nasty to me or anything. They just ignored me. I wasn’t one of them. They were all tanned and good-looking and popular. They had girlfriends. Me, I was this pale, clumsy oaf. This goon … Our first game was with Taft. They beat us, 58-50. We didn’t play well. I only got in for a couple of minutes and didn’t do much. Afterward, in the locker room, the guys were pretty down about it. Kip London, who was our best player, and who went steady with Mona, he had a really bad game. Kip was looking to take it out on somebody, I guess. He chose me. Started picking on me when I took off my jersey. Teasing me about how pale I was. He called me Whitey. A bunch of ’em picked up on it. ‘Whitey’s never had any rays,’ they kept saying. ‘Let’s get Whitey some rays.’ And then they descended on me. Began stripping me. Playfully, at first. Only they wouldn’t stop. I fought them but that only seemed to egg them on. They were like wild animals who’d found a weakling to devour. They stripped me of my shorts, my jock, my shoes, socks. They stripped me naked. ‘Let’s get Whitey some rays!’ they chanted. ‘Rays! Rays! Rays!’ They started carrying me around the locker room over their heads, like a lynch mob. They carried me right out the door into the gym, stark naked. There were girls out there, Meat. Their girlfriends were waiting there for them. Mona was waiting for Kip in her little cheerleader costume. They … they dumped me right at her feet. Then they ran back inside, laughing. They left me there at the feet of my dream girl, stark naked. And … And that’s when she spoke to me. The only words she ever said to me in all of the years I loved her.”

  “What did she say, Matthew?”

  “She said, ‘Would you like to borrow my pompoms, Martin?’ Martin. Can you believe it? She didn’t even know my name!” He trailed off, glaring at me. “What are you doing, Meat?”

  “Doing?”

  “Are you … giggling?”

  “I do not giggle. I chortle. Occasionally, I guffaw. But I never—”

  “You actually think this funny!” he cried, outraged.

  “It is funny, Matthew. It’s excruciating. But, mostly, it’s funny. Did you?”

  “Did I what?”

  “Borrow her pom-poms?”

  “Yes. Only, I couldn’t get back inside. They’d locked the door on me. Somebody had to find a custodian to let me in. I was stuck out there for ten minutes. It was like a nightmare. It still makes me shudder, just thinking about it. I—I could never face any of them again. So I quit the team. And that’s the whole ugly story, Meat. Go ahead and laugh some more.”

  I tugged at my ear. “That would make a great movie scene, in the right hands.”

  “Whose?” he asked scornfully.

  “Yours. I’m surprised you haven’t used it, frankly.”

  He shook his head vehemently. “I could never film that. Never. Much too painful.”

  “All the more reason for doing it. That’s the good stuff generally.”

  He considered this, slumped there in his chair fingering his Silly Putty.

  “Best way to get over it, Matthew, is to come face to face with it,” I advised. “Just like going to your reunion.”

  “I really don’t think I can go, Meat.”

  “She’ll be there, Kip’ll be there. It’s a terrific chance for you, Matthew. You’re an idol to these people. They probably tell complete strangers that they once knew you. Hell, they’ll be in awe of you. I don’t see how you can let a chance like this pass you by. It’s your moment of triumph—Martin Returns: The Sequel.”

  “I wonder what she looks like now,” he said softly, intrigued.

  “How do you want her to look?”

  “Just like she did,” he said with adolescent longing. He finished his milk, slamming down his glass with fierce determination. “We’re going, Meat. We’re going to the reunion.”

  “Good.”

  “You’re pleased?” He seemed anxious for my approval.

  “Absolutely. I’d hate to think I brought my dinner jacket all the way out here for nothing.”

  He picked up the basketball and spun it from his finger again. “Wanna play some Horse out back?”

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  By out back, of course, he meant the set for the Hayes’s driveway. The garage door with the basketball hoop over it. The clothesline. The fence between the Hayeses’ and the Dales’. I half expected Teri Garr to call us inside for brownies.

  “Try this, Meat,” dared Matthew. He dribbled the ball toward the hoop, leaped, and slam-dunked it mightily. Not that this was any rare physical accomplishment. The basket was a full foot lower than regulation so that Johnny Forget wouldn’t look like a midget.

  I tried it. I made it. Then I tried a jumper from fifteen feet out. It clanged off the front of the rim.

  “Ha!” he exclaimed. “Okay, okay, sucker—try this …” He stood ten feet from the basket with his back to it. Blindly, he tossed the ball over his head. Nothing but net. He fired it at me, cackling with glee.

  “This is a whole new side of you, Matthew. And it’s not pretty.”

  “Come on, come on,” he said impatiently. “Try and make it, sucker.”

  I couldn’t. That meant I had an H. The game was on.

  “What did you do with yourself after you quit the team?” I asked.

  “I started riding my bike a lot,” he recalled. “Especially that summer. Rode for miles and miles. I was too restless to sit around the house watching TV. I guess my hormones were raging. I used to ride all the way to Panorama. It was still a genuine working lot then. They had whole villages, jungles, lakes, tank battalions. It was this fantastic sort of playground. Except there were no other kids around. Just me. I’d ditch my bike in the bushes and wander around all day, watching them film stuff. Sometimes the guards would catch me and throw me out. But I’d just come right back the next day.” He dribbled the ball. “Okay, make this one, buttwipe …”

  “ ‘Buttwipe’?”

  He tried a high, arching hook shot from twenty feet out. All net. “Hah!” he cried triumphantly.

  My attempt soared over the backboard, the garage, the whole set. The ball ended up in Badger’s bedroom.

  “You’d better get it together, Meat,” Matthew cackled, retrieving it. “We’re talking major blowout here.”

  Lulu could stand no more. She was too embarrassed for me. She wandered off to the living room.

  “There was a TV series they were filming there for ABC,” Matthew recalled. “A youth-oriented Western called The Groovy Seven. Remember it?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  “The director was this one-eyed B-movie maker from the fifties named Ernst Vinkel. He was Austrian. Had an accent. An eyepatch. Wore his jacket loose over his shoulders, like a cape. I loved watching him work. Especially the action sequences. The precise planning that went into them. The horses, the stunts, the dozens of technicians who had to perform their specialty perfectly in order for the scene to come off. The whole process fascinated me. I’d never realized before just how unimportant the actors were. I mean, when I was watching on TV at home, they were the whole show. But during filming, the real action was all happening behind the scenes. Ernst, he was like a general, and they were his army. He was masterly, the way he ran his set. I hung around watching him in awe. I was there at his elbow so much he assumed I was a summer intern—a gofer. One day he sent me out for sandwiches. He liked chicken salad on white with extra mayonnaise. Since he thought I
was an intern, everyone else did, too. Before I knew it, I was. Got a pass onto the lot, a hundred dollars a week, and a front row seat. You know who went out of his way to be nice to me? Trace Washburn. He’d just washed out of the NFL and was working as a stuntman, falling off of horses. One of the producers was a big SC alumnus, and got him the job. Trace treated me like a real teammate. I never forgot that. I remembered him years later when I was casting To the Moon. Ernst was real nice, too. Gave me his number at the end of the summer and said if there was ever anything he could do to just call him. From then on, I knew what I wanted to do with my life, Meat. I wanted to make movies … Okay, okay, Wilt Chamberlain at the free-throw line …” Matthew spread his feet wide at the line, heaved a huge sigh and shot the ball underhanded, two hands. It went in.

  So did mine.

  “You got lucky,” he sneered, unimpressed. “You’re still history.”

  I was planning to be gentlemanly, Matthew, but you’ve asked for it, and I’m afraid you’re going to get it.”

  “Get what?” he wondered, amused.

  I moved a good thirty feet from the basket, set myself, and aired out the old javelin shoulder. A low line drive that hit nothing but net. A true Howitzer shot.

  Matthew stared at the basket in disbelief. “What the heck was that?”

  I tossed him the ball. “Let’s see you do it.”

  “Let’s see you do it again.”

  “If you wish.” I did it again. And again. And again.

  Lulu reappeared, tail wagging, man’s best fair-weather friend.

  “How many in a row can you make?” he wondered, incredulous.

  “My record in college was thirty-six.”

  Matthew swiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. “Gee, I’m kinda thirsty. Let’s go make some Bosco, huh?”

  “Does this mean you’re conceding?”

  “I’m conceding, okay?” he said sharply.

  “Fine. I just wanted to hear you say it.”

  We returned to the kitchen. Matthew busied himself with the chocolate milk fixings.

  “Had you made a movie yet?” I asked, sitting.

  “Nope,” he replied. “But that fall I dug my dad’s old Super-Eight camera out of the garage. He hadn’t used it for years, and didn’t much care if I did. He was in and out of the hospital by then, dying. Ma was working at the accounting firm, running to the hospital to see him, running home to take care of Shelley and me. It wasn’t easy for her. Plus we were broke. Sis had an academic scholarship to SC, otherwise she’d never have been able to go. She lived at home and worked at Shelley’s dad’s shoe store in Van Nuys for her pocket money. It was a pretty rough time.”