“What’s with Marigolds ?”
“There was a craze for flower groups, the Clovers, the Posies, stuff like that. Just like everybody had to be bugs a few years later—the Crickets, the Beatles.”
“Ah.”
“Bragg doesn’t get parole until ’59, six years after the Prisonaires’ first hit. And then he only lasts a year before they set him up for another fall. He’s charged with robbery and attempted murder—for stealing two dollars and fifty cents. Pathetic. White women come forward again, claiming he tried to attack them. He’s a magnet for these kinds of accusations. It’s classic race panic, and Bragg’s this symbol that pushes everyone’s buttons. The man must have had some kind of presence, some pride when he walked down the street, that these white authorities couldn’t abide. They just had to put him back inside, it was their way of coping.”
“I don’t know if you’ll like this but I’m totally picturing Denzel Washington.”
“Listen: that year Elvis Presley, fresh out of the army, detours his trip home to visit the state prison to hang out with Bragg. Picture it, the same weird little kid who was hanging around the studio admiring the Prisonaires harmonies is now the biggest entertainer on the planet. And he remembers Bragg, it matters to Elvis. The thirty-year-old black con and the King. The visit gets publicity, but only for Elvis. No one remembers Bragg’s case anymore, and the Prisonaires are a distant memory. Elvis offers to pay for a lawyer, but Bragg says it’s okay, he’s cut a deal. There’s nothing on paper, no proof, but Bragg’s promised the warden not to push the case to the Supreme Court in return for a promise he’d be out in nine months.”
I paused, then, to set it up.
“Yeah?”
“They kept him another seven years.”
“You’re killing me, Dylan.”
“It goes on and on. In the sixties he re-forms the Prisonaires again, this time with a white guy in the group—it’s the era of integration now. But the other prisoners don’t like it, he gets attacked in the yard. Later he gets out again and marries a white woman, and the cops arrest him for walking down the street with her—”
“Stop, okay? Stop. Don’t tell me any more.”
Jared had been growing steadily more agitated for some time, and now he sprang from his seat, bugged his eyes, and paced to the desk.
“Is something the matter?”
“Everything’s great, Dylan. It’s just—who else knows about this?”
“You’re the first.” I assumed this was the answer Jared had to hear. Needless to say, the Prisonaires story had only been sitting around for thirty-odd years, waiting to be plucked up. It didn’t belong to me. For all I knew another writer was turning in a polished third draft of his version in the office next door.
I dared ask, “You like it?”
“Are you kidding? It’s pure dynamite. I’m just thinking, okay? I’ve got to think. This is Friday, right?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Okay, practically speaking, that means I’m not going to find anybody until Monday.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
“Where are you going from here?”
I suspected ForbiddenCon wasn’t a reply Jared would easily make sense of. It wasn’t that easy for me to make sense of myself. “Back to my hotel.”
“Don’t shit me.”
“I’m not.”
“Because a part of me, wow, a part of me doesn’t want to let you out of my office until I know what we’re doing with this, until I get something from you that I can take into a meeting and a promise you’ll give me a couple of days from the weekend. Forty-eight hours at least. Do you want a tissue, mister?”
“Sure.” I’d tear-streaked my face, evoking Johnny Bragg’s dilemma. I wonder how many of Jared’s pitches wept in this office. Maybe all of us, by the end.
Jared plopped his tissue box on my love seat, then leaned over his desk, onto the intercom.
“Mike?”
“Yes?”
“Mike, I just heard something great. This is what I’m always telling you—you never know how it’s going to happen. Some boat-guy’s friend just walks into my office and it’s this writer Dylan and Dylan has something really great, really really great.”
“That’s incredible,” said Mike.
“No, it’s really incredible.”
“Wow.”
“Mike, I need Dylan’s agent right now.”
“Sure.”
Jared turned from the desk. “I know this is moving fast but I just want to say, Dylan, you and I are going to be putting our kids through college on this.”
“Okay.” I blew my nose.
“If I can’t make this movie I’m going to kill myself.”
“I guess that means you have to make the movie.”
“That’s exactly what it means. Holy shit.” He was amazed at himself, understandably. Large events were occurring, and he was at their center. “I need something on paper.”
“I don’t have much written down,” I bluffed.
“I need to be able to explain. I have to make other people get it. I need something on paper, like what you said. What you said was so amazing. It has to be like that.”
“It wouldn’t take long.”
“You’re saying there’s nothing ?”
“Not yet.”
“This is bad, Dylan. I really, really need this so I can make someone else see.”
The intercom clicked. “Jared?”
“What?”
“I don’t have an agent for Dylan.”
“I thought I told you always to get contact information. You remember me telling you that?”
“It’s my fault,” I stage-whispered, wanting to protect Mike.
Jared released the intercom. “I’m not into games,” he said.
“Neither am I. Just let me call my agent first, okay?” I had no agent, nor the remotest notion where I’d begin looking for one. “He doesn’t actually know a lot about this whole thing.”
“If you think I’m letting you walk out of my office with this movie in your head you’re crazy. I need something from you, Dylan. Don’t screw me, man. This is my movie. I feel this one.”
“It’s great,” I said, holding up my hands, hoping to slow the madness. “We’re both excited. Just tell me what should happen next.”
“Call your agent from here.”
“What?”
He held up both hands. “Sit at my desk. I promise I won’t listen. I’ll go out in the hall.” He paced madly. “Just sit and call him from here.”
“I—”
“I’m giving you my office, man. Go. Sit.”
There was no refusing. I took his chair. He shut himself out in Mike’s antechamber, first pointing at me from behind the half-closed door. “Tell him I’m holding you hostage until I have something I can take into a meeting.”
“Okay.”
When he’d sealed the door I dialed my home number. It rang through to the machine, of course. Abby was at school. I hung up without leaving a message, then retrieved my address book and rang Randolph Treadwell at the Weekly. I got him.
“Help,” I said.
“You had the meeting?”
“I’m in the meeting. He left the room so I could call my agent, only I don’t have an agent. I’m at his desk.”
“Interesting.” Randolph’s voice was neutral.
“Is Jared always so, uh, volatile?”
“I don’t really know him that well. Why?”
“He’s seems to think we’re about to have a baby together. A solid-gold baby.”
“That’s the way these things go,” said Randolph, unimpressed. “It’s sort of like a faucet. If it’s on, it gushes. Now you have to keep it open.”
“Thanks for the advice.”
“You want to come by the office after this? How long are you in town?”
“I have to go see my dad, in Anaheim.”
“What’s he doing in Anaheim?”
Jared bar
reled through the door. “I gotta go.” I hung up the phone.
“What’s the ending?” said Jared.
“Sorry?”
“I was trying to do it for Mike, the whole thing, the black guys, the jail, Elvis. And I forgot if you told me the ending.”
“I . . . think we didn’t get to the ending,” I said carefully.
“And?”
“Well, Johnny Bragg was in and out of prison a couple more times, I think. He made music whenever he could. No big hits, though.”
“The Prisonaires?”
“They died, I think.”
“Could we have, like, a big comeback ?”
I shrugged a why not? I couldn’t bring myself to pronounce the words, though. Was there any aspect of Johnny Bragg’s story I hadn’t dishonored by my pitch? What further harm would a little comeback bring? Or a big one?
“What about Elvis? Elvis is really important to this whole thing. That was a really great part, when Elvis visits and you were crying, remember?”
Maybe Elvis could return and bust the warden in the jaw, then personally break Bragg out of prison. Or the two of them, Bragg and Presley, could be shackled together at the ankles and sent to break up rocks. The singing would be amazing, anyway.
“Well, the story doesn’t really have a big ending,” I said. “It just sort of goes on and on. I’m sure we can figure out a good place to end it, though. Maybe Johnny Bragg walking through the gates, a free man. The last time.”
“It has to be good.”
“It can be good.”
“Do they catch the guys who really did it?”
“Did what?”
“You know, killed all those women.”
“There aren’t any dead women. There wasn’t a big legal showdown or anything. Eventually he was just old and they stopped picking on him, I guess.”
“How old?”
I’d wondered when this might come up. “He might even still be alive,” I said. At the time of Colin Escott’s liner note, nine years ago, Johnny Bragg was still alive and giving interviews. His anecdotes were the source for half my pitch. For years I’d been planning a visit to Memphis to try and interview him myself. That visit waited, with so many other speculative projects, for an entity like Dreamworks to bankroll. Anyway, that was my excuse.
“Alive? ”
“It’s possible.”
“Possible? ”
Yes! Alive! Possible! I wanted to scream. “He’d be in his seventies.”
“You don’t know?”
“I’ll find out.”
“This is a serious problem, Dylan.” Jared raked his hand through his hair and frowned, under stress I couldn’t possibly understand. “Can I have my desk back, please?”
“What do you want me to do?” I asked as we swapped places.
Scowling, he settled back, crossed his legs, and with two fingers kneaded the bridge of his nose and then the periphery of his jaw. He appeared to be recovering from a sort of bender, coming down as after an orgasm or a hit of crack. I wondered how often he indulged.
“You just came in here and pitched me someone’s life story, a living person,” he said, not angrily, but with deep regret. “Well, we’d have to option life rights. That can get really sticky.”
“He’d want it told,” I suggested.
“Yeah, yeah, of course. I don’t know about the ending, though, Dylan. I’m not happy about that ending.”
He spoke as though The Prisonaires was already filmed and edited and he’d just screened it and been disappointed. Now we were left with the sorry task of mopping up, cutting our losses. “It’s so vague, he gets out, he goes back, the band never reunites. And I kept expecting something to happen with that woman, the one in the audience, you know? The crying one.”
Inescapably, absurdly, I fell to the same tone. “I guess we could end it sooner. After the first parole.”
“Oh, I doubt that would work.”
“Okay,” I said, helpless.
“Listen, I don’t want to—I don’t want to tell anyone about this thing until we pull it together. It should be perfect. A slam dunk. You and I should both think really hard about the third-act problems and do nothing until we’ve cracked them. If I bring this upstairs I want it to be airtight, you know?”
“That makes sense.”
“Did you talk to your agent?”
“He, uh, feels the same way, actually.”
“Of course he does. He knows how these things work.”
“So—” I was baffled. “What happens next?”
“The question is what you do next. This is all in your hands.”
“Uh, okay.”
“I’m not easily discouraged, you know. I believe in you, mister.”
“Thanks.”
“There’s nothing wrong with taking some time, by the way. This isn’t going anywhere. It’ll happen when it’s meant to happen.”
“Okay.”
“So, do you have a driver? Because I need to have you out of my office now.”
“I can call—”
“Yes, but use Mike’s phone.”
In the middle chamber I handed Nicholas Brawley’s card to Mike and asked him to call.
“Jared was really knocked out,” Mike whispered, eyes wide at what I’d accomplished inside.
“I think he’ll recover,” I said.
I waited with my overnight bag in the shady lot for a long fifteen minutes before Nicholas Brawley’s cab pulled up again at the gate. The man with the Oscar never came back. Brawley’s radio was still tuned to MEGA 100, and the station was broadcasting my old nemesis of a theme song, Wild Cherry’s “Play That Funky Music.” Of course, the thirty-five-year-old rock critic knew what the thirteen-year-old scrap of prey on the sidewalks outside Intermediate School 293 never did: Wild Cherry was a bunch of white guys. The tune which had been enlisted as an indictment of my teenage existence was in fact a Midwestern rock band’s rueful self-parody. I’d wondered many times since then whether knowing would have helped. Probably not. Anyway, it struck me now in a different light, as being yet another bit of personal meaning which had been taken from me, stripped off like clothes I’d only borrowed or stolen. I had maybe the least persuasive case for self-pity of any human soul on the planet. Or anyway, the most hilarious.
chapter 3
Abraham and Francesca stood together in the lobby of the Anaheim Marriott, still as sculpture. All around them the lobby boiled with arrivals, misshapen travelers clad in black and purple, peering nervously side to side as though concerned with the impression they made as they wheeled suitcases in agitated confusion to the check-in desk. Others lurched or darted through the vast open space of the lobby, gathering briefly in groups of four or five to hug and talk, to crinkle brochures with circled program items, or present one another with buttons or ribbons to affix to suspenders or knapsack straps. Some wolfed sandwiches, licking gummy fingers unselfconsciously. Many wore plastic-frame eyeglasses or floppy hats or molded jewelry, others T-shirts with proud enigmas emblazoned: MORE THAN HUMAN , DONATE YOUR BODY TO SCIENCE FICTION , I USED TO BE A MILLIONAIRE THEN MY MOTHER THREW OUT MY COMIC BOOK COLLECTION . Photocopied signs, taped inelegantly to corridors and glass doors, offered suite numbers for hotel parties, advertised special events, and directed attendees to the registration table or the art show or the first aid station. Certain laminated name badges were labeled PRO or VOLUNTEER . Voices rose and were lost in a babble of others—monotonous harangues, kooky laughter, anxious questions, hysterical reunions. ForbiddenCon 7 was under way in all its glory. I only had to figure out what it was, or else not bother. I didn’t sense it needed me to know.
Francesca saw me first. “There you are!” she cried out. Abraham nodded and they surged toward me as I came through the revolving door. I hurried forward, trying to save them the trouble. “You’re late!” said Francesca. “We’re practically going to miss Abe’s panel.”
I’d promised to meet them in the lobby at three—it was almo
st four. Nicholas Brawley had laughed and shaken his head when I gave him the destination. “You should have rented a car,” he said, and by the time we’d crossed the ocean of suburb between Hollywood and Anaheim I saw his point. The fare was $114.00. Now, however, stepping into the lobby of the convention hotel, I considered the even greater conceptual distance I’d covered, moving from Jared Orthman’s office to ForbiddenCon. Brawley’s fare was a bargain.
“Dylan,” said my father. We embraced, and I felt him sigh against my body. Then I turned and dipped to Francesca, just in time to be enveloped in her swarming attack, not soon enough to plan where on my exposed surface the lipstick would be delivered. It landed north-northwest of my mouth, a misaligned mustache in beet purple. I swabbed it with my thumb and said, “Sorry I’m late.”
Francesca’s badge was unadorned, while Abraham’s bore a special purple ribbon, reading GUEST OF HONOR .
“They need Abraham in the greenroom,” she said gravely.
“Lead the way,” I said.
“That’s all you have?” said Abraham, looking at my bag. He seemed disappointed. “You’re staying the night?”
“Of course.”
“You’re registered already,” said Francesca. “Zelmo took care of everything.” She scrabbled in her purse as we moved through the lobby. “Here’s for your room. It works like a credit card—you swipe. The key’s for the minibar.”
“I’ll be hitting it hard,” I joked, taking the keys.
“Oh, you won’t have time,” said Francesca. “Zelmo Swift, the committee chair, is taking us to dinner.” She goggled her eyes at the honor.
“He knows you’re coming,” added Abraham. “I asked and was told it’s fine.”
“You’re being foolish, darling,” said Francesca. “You’re the guest of honor, why wouldn’t your family be invited?”
“It’s an extra body at dinner. I asked.” He turned to me. “We’ll talk there if Zelmo lets us get in a word. Now I have to do this thing. I hope you won’t mind sitting.”
The Fortress of Solitude Page 37