Blast from the Past

by Kelner, Toni, L. P.

  Tilda nodded as if she hadn’t heard other directors make that same claim about work they adored. In one noted example, Francis Ford Coppola had so worshiped the source material that he called his movie Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It would have been more impressive if he hadn’t later admitted that he’d never actually finished reading Stoker’s novel. Still, Tilda was willing to believe that Joni had made it through at least a few issues of the Pharos comic book.

  “So couldn’t you leak a later, more faithful version of the script?” she asked.

  Dolores threw up her hands in apparent disgust. “If it could only be that easy! They’re too focused on the changes to appreciate how I’ve maintained the spirit of the comic book. ‘It was set in the 1980s—how can they move it to the present?’ ‘Dylan O’Taine was way younger than John Laryea.’ ‘Melusine was always bare-breasted.’ ‘The Asrai would never have worked with the Blue Men of the Minch.’ ”

  “I thought we decided not to have the Asrai working with the Blue Men,” Edwina interjected.

  “Fine, whatever,” the writer said, rolling her eyes. “The fact is the great unwashed aren’t going to be satisfied no matter what we do.”

  “Yes, they are,” Joni insisted. “All we have to do is get Leviathan to read the script and tell the fans he approves of it. I’m sure he’ll be okay with the small changes we’ve made.”

  Tilda said, “Leviathan? The author of the comic book?”

  Joni nodded. “We’ll even bring him out to the set if he’s interested, whatever it takes to get his seal of approval.”

  “That sounds like a good plan.”

  “It sounds like a waste of time and effort,” Edwina said. “And money, which we don’t have to throw away.”

  Joni ignored her, too. “The problem is, we don’t know where he is. Or who he is. All we’ve got to go on is the pen name.”

  Dom nudged Tilda. “That’s where you come in.”

  “Dom tells us that you’re good at finding people,” Joni said.

  “I’m not a PI,” Tilda said, “but I’ve managed to track down some people in the past.”

  “Some people!” Dom said. “Don’t listen to her, Joni. She’s the best. She found every one of the Cartwright brides from Bonanza! If anybody can find your comic book writer, it’s Tilda Harper.”

  Tilda appreciated the recommendation, though it made her suspicious all over again. Why had Dom been following her career so thoroughly if he wasn’t still trying to fix her up with Nick? “I’d be willing to give it a shot,” she said.

  “Fantastic!” Joni said, though Tilda noticed Edwina didn’t look particularly pleased.

  “But what if I find Leviathan, and he doesn’t approve of your movie?” Tilda said, remembering how Alan Moore had publicly washed his hands of the film version of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

  “Then we’ll change it until he does!” Joni said emphatically.

  Tilda wasn’t completely convinced that Joni would stick to that once money was on the line, but the director honestly sounded as if she wanted to do right by the book. So she said, “All right, I’ll see what I can do.” She was about to bring up the delicate and detested subject of money when Dom jumped in again.

  “Now don’t think she’s doing this for free,” he said. “You know how much it costs to hire a PI? You have to do right by this girl.”

  “Absolutely,” Joni said.

  “I told you this would happen!” Edwina said. “You know there’s no flex in the budget for something like this.”

  Tilda tried not to roll her eyes at such a clumsy attempt at bargaining. Anything she asked for would be trivial compared to what the film crew had already spent at the inn’s restaurant, not to mention the inevitable bar bill. But since she had her own idea of a good deal, she wasn’t concerned.

  “Actually,” she said, “I don’t want money, other than for expenses. What I’d really like is a chance to come back to the Cape and embed myself in your production to produce some in-depth articles.”

  Edwina frowned. “I suppose you’d want us to pay for your hotel room.”

  But Joni said, “We can do that.”

  “An interview with the two of you would be great, too.” There weren’t that many women in producing or directing, even in the modern world, and Tilda knew she could rewrite a profile piece like that for a dozen different markets and collect a dozen checks.

  “Time permitting, you’ve got it.”

  It was almost too easy, so Tilda figured she’d take it a little higher. “One other thing. Can you help arrange a press pass for me for Comic-Con?”

  Joni smiled. “Consider it done.”

  “Then it’s a deal.” Tilda could tell that Edwina still wasn’t happy and that Dolores was probably never happy, but Joni was delighted and Dom was beaming like a proud uncle.

  There were a few minutes of arranging details before hands were shaken all around and Dom escorted Tilda downstairs to the bar, where Pete was drinking a ginger ale and watching something sports-related on TV. Then he walked the two of them out to the limo, and gave Tilda a quick hug before telling Pete he’d see him back on the Cape the next day.

  Chapter 7

  Episode 1

  Marty decides that he wants a turn piloting the Blastoffs’ rocket ship and takes the controls while Sid is napping. When they end up way off course, Sid is furious, but thanks to the detour, they run across a malfunctioning ship filled with orphans and rescue them before the ship falls into the nearby sun.

  —SATURDAY MORNING SPREE BY CHARLES M. LUCE

  “YOU want to ride up front with me or in the back?” Pete asked.

  “Up front, if that’s okay.”

  “Sure.” He even opened the door for her, which was a nice touch.

  As they pulled out onto the road, Tilda said, “Long day for you, isn’t it? And you’ve got to drive back tomorrow?”

  “It’s not so bad. I like driving.”

  “Even in Massachusetts traffic and weather?”

  “That does make it interesting sometimes. It’s not bad now.”

  He was right. The sky was clear, the moon was bright, and traffic was light. It was an unusual enough combination to be savored.

  “How was your day?” he asked.

  Tilda thought it over. The interviews with Laryea and Wilder had been snoozers, but she’d likely be able to salvage both of them, and hunting down Leviathan could potentially be a lot of fun. Plus she’d gotten back at Nick for his shabby behavior, and had still been able to renew the friendship. Then there was the question of Pete himself, and this golden opportunity to explore it further. “All in all, not bad. It looks like I’ll be coming back to the Cape, too, but I’ll be driving myself down next time, so you’re off the hook.”

  “I don’t mind the company.” He made the turn onto U.S. 6, the main road that bisected Cape Cod. “Are you going to be interviewing Mr. Laryea again?”

  “Not exactly.” She explained what Joni wanted her to do, and why Dom had recommended her for the job.

  “So that’s what you do? You track down people?”

  “Not all the time, but the ‘where are they now?’ stories are the ones I like most. They’re more of a challenge.”

  “That’s kind of creepy, isn’t it? I mean, isn’t it like stalking?”

  “Not at all,” Tilda said, offended. “Most people want to be found. They like knowing they haven’t been forgotten, and that people still enjoy their work. Look at Hugh Wilder. He loves talking about The Blastoffs. Wouldn’t you want to be remembered if you’d done something like that?”

  He dodged the bait. “Mr. Laryea didn’t want to talk about the show so much.”

  “True, and I’ve run into a few people like that.” She looked pointedly at him. “I think Laryea would rather not be remembered for that when he’s done other work he’s more proud of.”

  “But you’ll put something about the show in your article anyway,” he said, almost accusingly.

&nbs
p; “Just a mention. It’s not like it’s a deep, dark secret. There have been other times I’ve run into people who really did have things they didn’t want the world to know.” Again, she looked at him.

  “Yeah?”

  She nodded. “A former pinup queen who didn’t want people to find out that she’d posed nude, for one, and an actress who was afraid she’d be in danger if I said anything about where she was.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Duh! What do you think? I didn’t print anything about them.”

  “Doesn’t that go against journalistic ethics or the public’s right to know or something?”

  “Oh please! The public does not need to know where some old TV star ended up. Now if I caught a conservative gay-basher swapping spit with a male prostitute, I’d break that story in a heartbeat, but if a former public figure prefers to keep to the shadows, it’s no skin off my nose.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously. There are plenty of formerly famous people out there for me to interview.”

  Pete nodded and relaxed visibly, and Tilda figured that was all she was going to get for the time being. Either she was completely wrong about the man, or he just didn’t want to talk about his work on The Blastoffs. Considering the magazines that had printed pictures of Gary Coleman on his deathbed, she supposed she shouldn’t be surprised if people thought the worst of entertainment reporters.

  The rest of the trip back to town went pleasantly enough, and Tilda got a kick out of stopping along the way to get drinks and hit the restroom. There was something wonderfully decadent about going to McDonald’s in a stretch limo.

  She only wished her roomie could have been outside to see Pete drop her at her latest address, a small house just off East Border Road in Malden. He even got out to open the door for her and walked her to the front door. It was enough to make her wish she’d asked Joni for a driver along with her other perks.

  Chapter 8

  Episode 14

  Sid and Marty encounter a space-age version of Noah’s Ark, a stranded starship on its way to a colony world. The crew of cute girls at first refuses their help, but when it turns out that one of the animals is a saboteur in disguise, Sid and Marty are suddenly needed.

  —SATURDAY MORNING SPREE BY CHARLES M. LUCE

  TILDA steeled herself before unlocking the door to the house. Seconds after stepping inside, she heard the clicking of tiny nails on the hardwood floor and the heavier sound of much bigger paws coming toward her. Then the yapping from Calvin the Yorkie began, followed by deeper woofing from Honeypaw, the Newfoundland.

  “It’s just me,” she said, knowing it was useless. Only after three minutes and forty-five seconds of overly personal sniffing did her roommate’s dogs decide that she was authorized to come in.

  Lights were on all through the house, even though Dianne’s car was missing from the driveway, meaning that she wasn’t even home. She usually left them on all day long, no matter how their electric bill suffered, because “the animals needed it.” Tilda’s arguments that creatures in the wild were completely acclimated to darkness made no difference, any more than her suggestion that they only light part of the house. Then again, Dianne might have a point when she said the whole place needed light. As time went on, there wasn’t a room left that didn’t have pets.

  When she and Dianne moved in together, Dianne just had Honeypaw and two guinea pigs named Tama and Hershey. Those three had been enough to give Tilda some qualms. Not so much the piggies, since they lived in a cage in Dianne’s room, but Honeypaw was a different story. Newfoundlands are large, and they drool frequently and copiously. Still, Honeypaw was extremely good-natured, and the idea of a guard dog had a certain appeal, so she agreed as long as Dianne signed an addendum to the lease guaranteeing that she would pay for any pet-related damage.

  It was only while they were both unpacking their worldly goods that Tilda saw the cat toys and found out that Dianne had unexpectedly inherited Fluffy, a cat her mother could no longer keep. In the following weeks, Dianne unexpectedly inherited a wide variety of pets: a noisy cockatiel; two cranky turtles; and a tank filled with pale, nearly motionless frogs. With Calvin, Dianne hadn’t even pretended—she’d seen the dog at the animal shelter and couldn’t resist bringing him home and announcing, “Honeypaw needed company.” The way Tilda saw it, Honeypaw had more company than the Gosselin kids.

  The snake Tilda had complained to Cooper about had been the last straw, and after its arrival, she had extracted Dianne’s heartfelt promise that she would add no more creatures of any kind, not even if the floods came and the future of any given species depended on members of said species moving in.

  When Tilda stopped by the kitchen to get herself a drink, Honeypaw and Calvin were waiting by their empty water dishes looking mournful and accusatory, respectively. Tilda sighed and filled the bowls at the sink. Supposedly, Dianne was solely responsible for animal care, but she couldn’t let the dogs go thirsty. She filled up Fluffy’s bowl, too.

  She then took her own drink and headed to her bedroom. At least that was the plan, but when she got upstairs, she heard guinea pigs vocalizing. That wasn’t particularly unusual—the piggies frequently let their presence be known. The difference was that the sounds were coming from the spare bedroom.

  Fearing the worst, that the pigs had escaped their cage, Tilda should have been relieved to see that the pigs were safely contained. Except that the cage wasn’t supposed to be in the spare room. She was going to have yet another talk with her roommate.

  When she finally got to her room, she booted up her computer and went straight to the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) to see if she could find any pictures from The Blastoffs. There wasn’t a lot of information about the show, which didn’t surprise her, but there was one clear publicity still of the Blastoff brothers with Posit. She zoomed in on it and took a good long look at Sid Blastoff. The eye color was right, and the general shape of the face, but of course the hair was different. It sure looked like Pete Ellis. She couldn’t be positive, but she was 80 percent sure.

  Then she checked the entry for Marshall, but there wasn’t much there: a birth date that fit well enough for Pete and a few credits starting a few years after The Blastoffs. A brief Web surf didn’t give her anything more. The guy had either given up acting, or it had given up on him.

  Other than the sad irony of Pete working as a driver and bodyguard for his former costar, given the obscurity of The Blastoffs it wasn’t much of a story. Tilda doubted she could sell it anywhere, and it was moot anyway, since obviously Pete didn’t want to talk about it. Besides, wouldn’t Laryea have recognized him?

  Tilda heard the front door open and close, and since Honeypaw didn’t bark, she figured it was Dianne. That meant it was confrontation time.

  “Hi, Tilda!” Dianne said brightly. Tanned and fit from all the dog-walking, her roommate kept her brown hair in a long, thick braid down her back to keep the guinea pigs from chewing on it.

  “Dianne, why are Hershey and Tama in the guest room?”

  “I took Ka out of the dining room like you asked, but he made the piggies nervous, so I had to move them.”

  “Didn’t we agree to keep that room for company?” It had been a strain for Tilda, too, who would love to have had the extra space, especially since Dianne had won the larger of the other two bedrooms in the traditional coin toss.

  “Who would mind sharing a room with them? They’re so cute.”

  “That’s not the point. We agreed to keep that room clear, and they strew litter and droppings like crazy.”

  “I’ll clean it up whenever we need to use the room.”

  “They can also be pretty noisy.”

  “I thought you liked them. They like you.” As if to confirm Tilda’s irresistible charms to four-legged creatures, Honeypaw padded over to rub against her leg, leaving a loving trail of slobber behind.

  “I do like them. I like the dogs. I like the cat. The bird’s not bad, and the rest
of them are at least innocuous. Any one of them would be a joy unto me. But I feel as if I’m living in a zoo.”

  “I already promised, no more.”

  “You promised that before the snake.”

  “I really mean it this time. No more.”

  “Okay, fine. But if you keep the guinea pigs in there, I get the closet.”

  “I was going to use it for the piggies’ supplies.”

  Tilda glared at her.

  “Okay, you can have the closet.”

  “Fine.” Tilda extracted herself from Honeypaw and started to go back upstairs.

  “By the way, I’m thinking about going out of town this weekend. Do you think you could take care of the animals?”

  It gave Tilda enormous pleasure to say, “Sorry, but I’m leaving the day after tomorrow for a job on the Cape. I’ll be gone a week at least.”

  Chapter 9

  Pharos was among the best of the independent black-and-white comics produced in the eighties. Leviathan, its pseudonymous creator, had a strong graphic sense and deftly portrayed the emotions of protagonist Dylan O’Taine—a kind of mash-up of Doctor Fate and Namor the Sub-Mariner. It’s no surprise that the ten-issue run continues to attract a cult following.

  —TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA ARTISTS:

  THE BEST OF INDIE COMICS BY JERRY FRAZEE

  THE next morning, Tilda was ready to play Ahab and seek out the Leviathan, but there was old business to attend to. First off, she gritted her teeth and finished up the article about voice actors who’d worked on the 1980s cartoon Power Pets, incorporating the notes Nicole had e-mailed her. She did not incorporate the snide comments that had accompanied the notes. Knowing that Nicole would sift for faults like a mother gorilla grooming her young, she forced herself to do as good a job as she could. The only bone she allowed herself was neglecting to include a plug for Joy Baird’s latest project—it was petty, but satisfying.