Fade to Black

by Ron Renauld

  “You know, you talk too much,” Eric told her. He wasn’t in the mood for it today. He picked up his grapefruit, cradling it in the palm, of his hand. It was cut in half in a series of wedges like the lower jaw of a jack-o’-lantern. He grinned as he remembered the scene in Public Enemy when Cagney had rammed a grapefruit into the dumbfounded face of Mae Clark, his mistress in the film.

  He looked at his aunt, raising and lowering the grapefruit slightly in his hand. He gave her his Cagney.

  “One of these days, you’re going to eat those words, Stella!” he snarled, cracking the last word like the end of a whip.

  “Wipe that smirk off your face,” she told him, unimpressed. “Grapefruit’s a tonic. It provides Vitamin C without the acid. Listen to me for a change.”

  Her stare shattered the fantasy. Eric pushed back his chair and stood up.

  “Now where are you going?” she said. “Sit down and eat your breakfast. You can’t go to work on an empty stomach!”

  Eric blew a last cloud of smoke and crushed his cigarette out in the center of the grapefruit. He leaned over and kissed her lightly on the forehead, as if it were a relic he was afraid of picking up germs from.

  “Good day,” he said with strained politeness, “auntie.”

  She followed him out onto the porch, but stopped her chair well short of the steps and checked the row of potted plants strewn across the railing. They needed watering.

  “Why don’t you live in the real world with the rest of us?” Aunt Stella hounded him, pulling a dead leaf off a plant.

  “No thanks,” Eric said on his way down the stairs. He stopped at the mailbox and pulled out his monthly issue of Focus on Film, one of his dozen or more movie mag subscriptions.

  “If you’re so smart,” he called back up to his aunt, “Tell me what James Cagney’s name was in White Heat.” That was the movie on Channel Nine this afternoon. He hadn’t bothered asking Aunt Stella to tape it. He already had a copy of the 16mm print.

  “I don’t know and I don’t care,” Aunt Stella said, fingering her coleus.

  “Cody Jarrett,” Eric informed her.

  “Stop filling your head with all that useless trivia!”

  Eric cracked his Cagney grin.

  “Top o’ the world, Ma!” he called out, reciting the final words of Cody Jarrett in White Heat.

  Aunt Stella leaned forward and screamed hoarsely at Eric as he crossed the street. “I’m not your mother! It’s Aunt Stella, birdbrain!”

  Eric ignored her haranguing and strolled down Market toward the coast. The fog was burning off and the temperature was slowly rising, offering the makings of a fine day. This was one of the times of day when the area looked its best. Like most of Venice, Eric’s neighborhood was torn between the differing aesthetics of lifelong residents, counterculture diehards, and transplanted minorities. It was not uncommon to find, in the space of one short block, quaintly painted small homes with their landscaped lawns rubbing up against a ramshackle home littered with weed-infested auto parts; or a renovated brick building with a stunning seascape mural on its side facing an abandoned warehouse with broken windows and three generations of graffiti spray-painted on the walls.

  Eric followed Main Street as far as Westminster Avenue and then cut across the park to Pacific Avenue. He headed toward Marine Street, several blocks away, and the pickup point for Route Seven of the Santa Monica City busline. He checked the time. He still had the Hopalong Cassidy watch, and it worked when he remembered to wind it. He hadn’t this morning, and it read 6:25, a good two hours off the mark.

  Eric broke into a run when he saw his bus pulling away from its stop two blocks away. He waved his arms frantically, but was not spotted. Angry, Eric turned the next corner and walked up to the next stop, paying the higher fare for a ride on the RTD line headed in the same general direction.

  Hollywood.

  Continental Film Services was one of the plethora of celluloid complexes of various sizes and scopes that dotted the landscape of Hollywood and neighboring cities, usually on side streets and not found on maps passed out to wondering, wandering tourists. It was within the confines of places such as CFS that hopeless jumbles of overshot film footage would be put through the stages of post-production and promotion that would hopefully yield next year’s box-office blockbuster.

  Eric had been determined to secure a job at Continental, the only place in the industry where he had some semblance of a connection. He had taken the daily bus ride to Hollywood three times a week over a four-month period before the head of personnel had finally resigned herself to the fact that Eric wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

  Going into his second year with the company, Eric was still hanging on by a thread to the bottom rung of the supposed ladder to success. He’d been given a title when he was hired, but he had forgotten what it was. Title aside, he was an errand boy who spent as much of his work time making rounds to hot dog stands and post offices as he did to the various studios, where he hoped to catch a whiff of some elusive, spontaneous opportunity and a door to knock on. Something like giving cardio-pulmonary resuscitation to some stricken producer and receiving as his reward the chance to direct a picture based on his own original screenplay.

  He had a different scenario for every place he went, and he figured the law of averages would one day serve him right. Until then, it wasn’t that bad of a job. It sure as hell beat the years he’d spent working at the Venice library on California Street. It had gotten to the point there that he could have been stocking sardines instead of books for all the chances he got to read on the job.

  The bus let him off near the back lot, and he came in through the side gate. Horace, one of the three security guards sharing shifts at the plant, slapped his hands together mirthfully at the sight of Eric.

  “Ho ho!” Horace boomed. “Boil in oil, that’s what he does to the late ones, eh? Haha! Bound to the walls and given thirty lashes with pornographic out-takes, right?”

  “Knock it off, Horace,” Eric said tiredly. “Tell me something. Are you as stupid as you sound or is it just an act?”

  Horace, who was old and too small for his uniform, slapped his hands together again. “An act indeed, Eric m’boy. Like the fools in Shakespeare. The wisest words are said in jest, eh? Now what’s your excuse, Binny m’boy?”

  “I’m not stupid, Horace,” Eric said angrily. “You just remember me and I’ll get back in touch with you in a few years and we’ll see who’s stupid!”

  “Right, right,” Horace laughed. “Well, you’ll know where to find me.”

  Eric left Horace to his self-amusement and stepped up the ramp to the loading docks and into the building. He took a shortcut through the storage room, a large, aisled chamber divided by countless shelves stocked full with octagonal film cannisters. It was like a hospital in ways; some films were just through with complicated celluloid surgery, while others were waiting to be operated on for the removal of unwanted scenes, the insertion of artificial pacemakers or other vital components that might transform them from a certain casualty to a possible moneymaker. It was also dark, a cavernous room where sounds carried with no need for amplification, although the constant hum of the air-conditioners drowned out many noises in their attempts to keep the films preserved.

  Horace wasn’t the only one accustomed to giving Eric a hard time. Like anyone last in line on the pecking order, Eric found that one of his unwritten job functions was to suffer as foil and scapegoat for the other employees. As he made his way into his area, he tuned out the good-natured and foul insults flung his way by fellow workers positioned in adjacent booths, laboring over their editors, moviolas and sound-synch machinery. The world was filled with Aunt Stellas, he thought.

  “Eric, Berger wants those spots,” someone shouted out at him.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Eric said, coming to his booth. It was a partitioned-off alcove littered with more of his cinematic paraphernalia. Marilyn was there, in a full-face still from The Prince and the
Showgirl. A sign hanging over the area informed the world in glittering foil letters that this was BINFORD’S STUDIO.

  Humble beginnings.

  He grabbed the promotional spots off his desk and headed back out and down the hallway to his boss’s office on the other side of the building.

  Ed Berger was sitting behind his desk, leaning back in a swivel chair. From his look of wide-eyed intensity, one would have thought he was undergoing electroshock therapy by way of the telephone pressed against his ear. He was middle-aged, with his hairline retreating from the threat of two thick eyebrows roving menacingly up and down his forehead like caged bears. He wore executive glasses, the type meant to be taken off and held with authority.

  “Sid, what the hell are you talking about!” he shouted into the receiver as he looked up to acknowledge Eric. “Look, those ads were delivered yesterday afternoon . . . Look, my kid delivered them at two o’clock.”

  At the counter in front of Berger’s desk, Eric grimaced and shook his head. He knew he was in for it. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t his fault. Berger was like the crime kingpin in a B-movie. Whenever something went wrong, he would always fly off the handle with some variation of “I don’t want excuses, I want results!”

  “All right, Sid, okay,” Berger said after nodding his head at the vitriol coming in from the other end of the line. “Just pay your bill and we’ll deliver you another batch . . . Hey, look . . . mistakes happen . . . Okay, Sid, that’s fine with me.” Once Sid had hung up on the other line, Berger added vehemently, “You schmuck!”

  Berger slammed down the phone and looked up at Eric, seething. “Binford, you’re a fuck-up! You didn’t deliver the Sid file yesterday afternoon—”

  “Mr. Berger, I told you that the one-sheets weren’t ready. The printer—”

  “Bullshit!” Berger said, his temper rising. “You’re late again.” He got up from his desk, hands clutched around more supplies, mostly tape spots. “Now you deliver this . . . and your late time’s coming out of your paycheck. That’s if you last the week! Now get out of here!”

  Eric demurely juggled the handful of materials and edged away from the counter. Berger had been telling him he’d be lucky to last the week since his first day on the job. Management by incentive.

  “Mr. Berger,” Eric remembered. “Could I have a couple of dollars, please?”

  “A couple of bucks,” he said. “What for?”

  Here we go again, Eric thought.

  “I have to put some gas in the Vespa,” he explained timidly.

  “What the hell are you talking about? The Vespa’s already gassed up!”

  “No, it . . . no, it’s not and I lost the petty cash.” Eric forced the words out, as if he were confessing to grand larceny. On Saturday, he’d stopped by Larry Edmunds’ bookshop while making runs on Hollywood Boulevard. They’d just gotten in an original one-sheet for Let’s Make Love, one of the few he was missing from his collection of Marilyn’s movies. He’d given them the Vespa’s gas money as a down payment, figuring to borrow the rest of the money from Aunt Stella as an advance on his next paycheck. Unfortunately, he’d never caught her in the right mood to ask for money.

  “You lost the petty cash,” Berger told himself softly before exploding. “I am trying to run a business here.” He rolled his eyes upwards, as if to let them fill up with a piece of his mind. He looked back at Eric as he slapped a few crumpled dollar bills on the counter. “That’s also coming out of your paycheck. Now, please, get out of my life, will you?”

  Eric backed out of the office, chagrined. He took a couple of steps down the hallway, then stopped.

  In the office, he could hear Mr. Berger gasping out loud, breathing in short chokes. Eric went back and peered around the corner into the office.

  Berger was slumped back in his chair, one hand pressed against his chest while the other raced desperately through his pockets for a vial of amber plastic. Wracked with convulsions, Berger tried to control his trembling hands as he poured pills into his palm and then slapped them back into his mouth. Within seconds, the spasms began to subside, although Berger sagged visibly in his chair, drained from the attack.

  Eric shook his head to himself and walked off before Mr. Berger could see him.

  Better luck next time, he thought.

  CHAPTER • 7

  Venice beach hugged the Pacific along the wide strip of sand between the Marina crowd and the tourist snarl surrounding the Santa Monica Pier. Bicyclists and roller skaters vied for the right of way on the sidewalk running parallel to the dwarfed homes, storefronts, and crumbling apartments facing off newly built condominiums with access to ocean views. Out in the water, a few swimmers stood waist deep dodging kelp beds as they waited for a wave they could body surf back into shore. A few dogs chased Frisbees thrown by teenage boys trying to impress girls tanning on nearby towels. The girls stretched out on their stomachs with their tops untied, pretended they weren’t enjoying the prick-teasing as much as the sun.

  Marilyn O’Connor and Stacey Diamond jogged along the edge of the wet sand marking the tideline. Both in their early twenties, the girls were breathing lightly, not overextending themselves. Stacey’s brown perm was rebelling, billowing full in the breeze. She had large, dark eyes and full lips cocked in a ready smirk.

  Marilyn played up her resemblance to her more famous namesake, in looks as well as manner. In a town obsessed with the search for the next Marilyn Monroe, she was the blonde bombshell incarnate.

  “Marilyn,” Stacey said as she ran, “first there was the Scarsdale diet, and now it’s jogging. You get into every fad.”

  “When in Rome . . .” Marilyn replied, breathless. “Besides, I have to get in shape. I’ll never be a model with these things.” A faint accent lingered on her voice. Australian.

  “Oh, not that again.”

  “I want to be somebody,” Marilyn said, winking at a male admirer watching them run. “I want to get treated with a little respect for once.”

  “You got a lot of guys,” Stacey told her.

  “Oh, yeah,” Marilyn sniffed. “When their girlfriends are out of town.”

  “Well, at least you have an interesting job,” Stacey said, breaking out in laughter.

  “Really. Handing out roller skates,” Marilyn pouted, slowing her pace. “A fate only worse than death. Everybody back home would think I was a big flop or something.”

  “Oh, look, would you stop worrying about it,” Stacey said. She stopped running. “Hey, I’ve had enough.”

  They walked a few steps, breathing in deep gulps of the salty offshore breeze.

  “Let’s pig out,” Stacey suggested.

  Marilyn giggled and scrunched up her nose, oinking.

  They walked up from the shore to Ocean Front Walk, buying a cherry slurp from one of the concession stands and sharing it as they walked past the sidewalk merchants setting up shop for another day. Most of the mobile vendors handled stock better peddled at an Azusa swap meet: factory reject pottery, over-ripe produce, assembly-line gewgaws, hash pipes fashioned out of splintered driftwood.

  A self-ordained gypsy sat knitting blue booties on a footstool next to a sign listing rates for fortune tellings and horoscope chartings. She was bloated with child beneath a Mexican tent dress.

  “Predicting a boy, are you?” Stacey said to her as they passed.

  The gypsy nodded.

  “What if you’re wrong?” Marilyn asked.

  The gypsy smiled at the booties. “I guess she’d be a feminist,” she said simply. “Would you like a reading?”

  “No thanks,” Stacey said. “My boyfriend has crystal balls.”

  “Oh, come on,” Marilyn argued, ignoring Stacey’s joke. “It might be fun.”

  “Marilyn. We still have to go home and change before we go eat. We can’t be late for work again today.”

  “Oh, all right,” Marilyn said, following her friend as they turned up Rose Avenue and headed for their house, several blocks away.

&
nbsp; “Stacey, you have no sense of adventure,” Marilyn chided. “No sense of romance.”

  “And you have no sense at all,” Stacey said with a smile.

  “That wasn’t nice,” Marilyn said as they turned a final corner and stepped through the gate into their front yard. “You’re always running me down for trying to make my dreams come true.”

  “Oh, Marilyn, quit being so oversensitive,” Stacey said, “I was just kidding with you. I think it’s great to dream. I do it all the time myself.”

  “And what do you dream about?” Marilyn asked her.

  “Negative calorie ice cream.”

  They both laughed again as they bounded up the steps and into the house. It was small, but clean and decorated, however sparsely. They had a hard time coming up with the monthly rent and utility payments between them, so the rooms had a stark quality to them that was more obligatory than planned.

  Marilyn went into her room. She had an old standing closet in addition to the one built into the wall, the first one being used strictly for storing her collection of T-shirts. The standing closet contained nothing but shelves, and they all were filled with rows of folded tops, like a section in a store. This was her fetish. There were days when she changed outfits as many as five times. If asked about this curious habit, she could come up with a dozen explanations for it; training for costume changes in the movies was her favorite.

  She spent several minutes fingering through her collection before pulling out something in diagonal blue and red stripes. She took off the top she had been wearing, tossing it into the pile of dirty clothes in the far corner. She finished changing, putting on a red skirt and matching pumps. When she was finished, she looked like a flag.

  CHAPTER • 8

  Eric left through the back entrance of the building, the same way he had come in. When he saw Richie and Bart working on the loading dock, he groaned. They were the last people he wanted to see right now. If the adage were true that people tend to keep the roles they’ve chosen for themselves by the time they graduate from high school, then Richie must have been the class bully, with Bart as his tag-along sidekick. They were both Eric’s age, but had a few years of seniority on him with the company, and never set aside an opportunity to make sure Eric remembered it.