by Andy Duncan
Isbel took a few steps toward him and cupped her hands around her mouth. “Hey, do you know how I find number 807?”
“Those are the 500s.” He pointed to her left. “The 800s are three rows over.”
“Thanks.” She turned and peered at the oversized house numbers, which seemed to go in and out of focus. She blinked, rubbing her eyes, and wished she’d at least gotten another cup of coffee before she got on the bus. Too late now. She found 807-C and stepped onto the astroturfed porch of a trailer with a wrought-iron sign that said GLECKMAN. She rang the bell, and chimes echoed inside, playing a tinny version of “Hooray for Hollywood.”
The door was opened by a homely little man with a salt-and-pepper mustache and a spectacularly unconvincing dark brown toupee. It looked like a cutout from a set of bad paper dolls.
“Mr. Gleckman?”
“I got all the Watchtowers I need,” he said. “And I’m down to one good crap a week, so whatever it is you’re selling, it’s not going to help.” He started to shut the door.
“I’m Isbel Hartsoe. From UCLA? We spoke on the phone about an interview?” He was so short she was eye-to-eye with him, and she was only five-three, even in her clogs.
He took his hand off the doorknob. “Oh, yeah. How about that? You actually showed up. You’re a credit to your generation,” he said, reaching out and damply shaking her hand. “Call me Mort. I’m only Mr. Gleckman to the landlord and the IRS.” He opened the door wider. “I guess I didn’t recognize you. You sounded white on the phone.”
Isbel stopped halfway across the threshold. “Excuse me?”
“Hey, hey. I got nothing against Negroes. Negroes, Jews, we’re in this shit together, right? Someone told me once I sounded Irish on the phone. Me, Irish! Must have been back when I was drinking.”
“I’m Cuban-American, Mr. Gleckman.”
“Mort, please. So, you from Miami?”
“Michigan.” Isbel took a deep breath. “May I come in?”
“Sure, sure. You got the, uh, interview fee?” Isbel ignored the voice in her head that told her none of this was looking promising, and pulled the folded bills from her pocket. Mort riffled them with a tobacco-stained thumb and nodded his head before inserting them into a battered wallet.
“That doesn’t seem very professional,” Isbel said, as he led her into a narrow hallway, “charging for an interview.”
He looked genuinely surprised. “Sweetheart, that’s what professional means,” he said. “If no money changes hands, it’s just amateur night.” He slid a flimsy door open and gestured her inside. “And Cheeta’s been a pro since before you were born.”
Isbel stepped into an oppressively over-cluttered room about twelve feet square. Heavy dark furniture covered a poison-green shag rug that smelled like smoke and wet dog and a faintly acrid odor she didn’t want to think about. The walls were striped with sunlight from the venetian blinds, and encrusted with framed black-and-white photos: Men in cowboy hats. Tuxedoed saxophonists. Women wearing piles of fruit. The thermostat was cranked up high.
“The living room suite was my mother’s,” Mort said, following her glance. “Quality stuff.” He thumped the back of a chintz-covered armchair. “Let me move those.” The chair, the coffee table, the couch—every horizontal surface—was stacked with paint-spattered canvases. He cleared off the armchair, regarded the purple-and-orange stained upholstery, and covered it with a folded newspaper. “There. Sit.”
Isbel noticed a spattered easel. “Do you paint?” she asked, lowering herself gingerly onto the paper.
“Nah. It’s all Cheeta’s.”
“What?”
“Yeah, he’s a regular Picasso. But cheaper. Only a hundred bucks a picture. Two for one-fifty. You know Tony Curtis? He bought five. I could give you a student discount maybe?”
“I don’t think—”
“We’ll talk later.” Mort turned and whistled, three sharp notes.
A series of panting hoots issued from behind another sliding door on the far side of the room, and then Cheeta appeared.
Isbel’s mouth opened in surprise. Chimps looked so small and cute on television, but this thing was grizzled and leathery and almost as big as she was. Cheeta’s face was whiskered and gray, and he was dressed just like Mort—white shirt, suspenders, brown pants pulled up to mid-chest—with the addition of a purple beret worn at a rakish angle. He held a palette in one hand, a brush in the other. He stopped, his large brown eyes regarding her with keen disinterest, like an old roué in a Paris bar, then hooted again.
“Isbel, meet Cheeta,” Mort said. “Cheeta, meet Isbel.”
The chimp curled his lips back, revealing huge yellow teeth. He pointed at Mort and hooted louder.
“Yes, I know. Cocktail time. Hold your horses. We’ve got company.” Mort turned to Isbel. “Excuse me for just a moment.” He stepped over to a side table and poured a squat glass full of what looked like whiskey.
Isbel stared.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Mort said. “It’s not for me. I’ve been on the wagon for years. But the big fella got a taste for Jim Beam, back in the day, and if he doesn’t get his afternoon nip, well, let’s just say things can get ugly.” He put the glass down next to Cheeta’s easel and produced a cigar from his vest pocket, lighting it with a flourish.
“I hope that’s for you,” Isbel said, although the idea of smoke added to the warm miasma of the room made her stomach knot.
“What can I say? Actors, they’re not exactly known for clean living.” Mort handed the cigar to the chimp, who switched the paintbrush to his bare right foot, took a long sloppy puff, and farted.
“And a good day to you, too,” Mort replied. He and Cheeta both laughed loudly, Mort holding his stomach, the chimp hooting and flailing his hands. A gob of green pigment hit the lampshade and clung there. Mort fanned the air and made a face. “You get used to it. He’s mostly vegetarian. All that roughage. And he’s old, what can I say? Don’t write that part down.”
Isbel looked at her notepad and pen, unaware that she had pulled them out of her knapsack. “All right.” She turned to a blank page and cleared her throat, getting down to business. “So, Mr. Gleckman. How did you—”
The phone rang in the next room. Cheeta hooted twice and flopped into a swivel chair, crossing his over-long arms over his chest.
“Yes, I know. It’s my turn,” Mort said, crossing to the door. He looked back at Isbel. “Hold that thought.”
Half of Mort’s baggy khaki backside was still visible as he picked up the receiver and shouted into the phone, “Hermie! You bastard! You got some nerve, calling me. Fuck me or pay me. What? No. Have I seen a check? Is it the arthritis? You can’t hold a pen anymore? Just a sec.”
His toupeed head peeked around the doorframe. “Sorry, sweetheart, but I got business. It’ll only be a few minutes.”
“Wait. What about my interview?” asked Isbel, both alarmed and insulted.
Mort shrugged. “Cheeta’s the one you came to see, right? So talk to him. Don’t worry. He likes company. Just don’t make any loud noises.” He disappeared behind a sliding accordion door made of wood-grained plastic. “Hermie? Yeah, I’m back. What? How much? I am hanging up this phone. Ah, okay. Now that’s a number grown men can discuss. That shit you said before, I am like a dog. I cannot hear numbers that low. They are below my fucking threshold. So tell me news!” Mort pulled the door shut.
Isbel heard the flimsy plastic latch with a sucking sound, that felt like God had pressed down a Tupperware lid sealing off the cluttered, smelly room from the rest of the world, leaving her alone with Cheeta.
The chimp eyed her over the rim of his glass, as if daring her to make the first move. Isbel thought of all the questions she had prepared, all that work. She slumped into her chair with a sigh that bordered precariously on tears. If Mr. Gleckman wasn’t off the phone in two minutes, she would ask—no, demand—the “fee” back and would leave. This was beyond ridiculous.
She watched Che
eta take another puff on his cigar, then lay it in an ashtray and move the paintbrush from foot to hand again. She wrote Hand? Paw? in her notebook and felt a headache coming on. The chimp slathered blue paint onto the canvas, plucked something off his cheek, gazed at it, and put it in his mouth.
“Oh, great,” she said. “Movie star cooties. What’s next?” She closed her eyes against the throb in her temples and sank into the soft chintz. “Some interview.”
“You haven’t asked any questions yet.”
The gravelly voice sounded far away and muffled, but seemed to be coming from the direction of the easel.
“You might ask, for example,” the voice continued, “about my experiences in show business. Because Mort knows nothing. He wasn’t there, wasn’t part of the magic. And I was, although you’d never know it from the posters. The jungle man, his woman, his child. Where’s his best friend? I got no respect from those Hollywood types. Day after day, I watched those overpriced actors play-acting as heroes, but who was it that always saved the day, driving out the invaders, seeing through their schemes, thwarting their greed? Cheeta! But they never wrote a single line for me. When I was paid at all, it was as if I was one of the extras, some local yokel hired to be a native for a day. And I was from Africa! But here’s how good an actor I was. I warned my friends without words, playacting on my own, hooting and miming as if I really was a creature of the dark jungles and the swamps. And I saved them. Saved Tarzan, Jane, Boy, the whole lot of them. But more importantly, kid—I saved the picture. I was the one who got the laughs. I was the one the audience came to see. And what happens? Weissmuller gets two grand a week and I get bananas and a scritch on the head as if I’m nothing but a dumb beast. But off-camera? You’ve read the tabloids. The humans were the ones who acted like animals. Sure, times were different then. But has anything changed? That’s up to you. I’ll never get the back pay I’m due, but at least you can help me set the record straight. I want my legacy. I want everyone in Hollywood—in the whole world—to remember this: I stood upright among the best of them. Cheeta was a star.”
Mort slid the accordion door open. “Sorry, sweetheart. That took longer than I thought.”
Isbel opened her eyes and looked around. Had she fallen asleep? It should be later than it was. But the yellow stripes of dust-filled afternoon light reached no higher up the flimsy, fussy walls than they had when she arrived.
“Well, will you look at that!” Mort said. “He did a painting of you. Ain’t that something?”
On the canvas was a set of orange loops against a dark blue background, like a Hot Wheels track in the sky.
Cheeta looked at Isbel, raised a hairy eyebrow, and hooted softly.
“Sometimes, it almost seems like he can talk, doesn’t it?” Mort smiled and sat on the couch. “Okay, now. Whad’ya wanna know?”
Isbel looked down at the open page of her notebook, which was completely filled with scribbles. She stared at the words I stood upright among the best of them.
“Sweetheart, you okay? You look, excuse me for saying it, the same color as a lime at the bottom of a Mai Tai.” He peered at her. “You’re not on something, are you?”
“No.” Isbel shook her head, which throbbed with the motion. “But I’m really not feeling well. I think it would be better if I, um—rescheduled.”
“Sure, sure. Anytime. Me and Cheeta, we’re always here. Except Thursdays. I play pinochle on Thursdays.”
“Another time, then.” Isbel stood, using the arm of the chair for balance, and took a step toward the door before she remembered her money. “The—fee—Mr. Gleckman?” She held out her hand.
“Consider it an advance.”
“I don’t think so.”
Man and chimp both stared at her for a minute. Then Mort sighed and reached for his wallet. “You sure? It might be more, next time.”
“I’ll take my chances.” Isbel returned the bills to the pocket of her jeans.
Outside, walking through the array of aluminum housing, Isbel felt on the verge of what she was afraid might be hysteria. Not only had she hallucinated a soliloquy by a chimpanzee, she had taken notes. With a shudder, she shoved the notebook deep inside her knapsack. She’d read whatever was in it tomorrow, after she’d had some sleep. A lot of sleep. Then she’d probably burn it.
She mustered a smile and a nod for a not-so-young woman in capri pants who walked past, giving her an odd look. Was she talking out loud, too? Isbel bit her lip and walked with careful attention, footstep by footstep, her shoulders pageant-perfect, as if she could will herself to remain upright long enough to get to the bus. But when she reached the pool and spotted a deck chair, a comfortable-looking arrangement of blue-and-white plastic mesh, a few minutes’ rest seemed like an excellent idea. The bus stop was still a block away.
The pool guy’s hoses had been rolled into neat coils, and he was in the water, doing laps with long, easy strokes. He looked like he was half fish, a dark streak gliding just under the surface, only coming up for air once in two lengths. Isbel flopped down onto the deck chair as if her bones had turned to Jell-O.
A few minutes later, she felt a coolness as something blocked the sun.
“Are you okay?” the pool guy asked. He had a bit of a southern-sounding drawl.
“A little tired,” she replied sleepily. “Other than that, I’m just peachy. How about you?”
“Right as rain.” She heard the sound of feet shuffling, the clink of an aluminum pole on concrete. The man cleared his throat. “Ma’am? You sure you’re okay?”
Ma’am? With enormous effort, Isbel opened her eyes. Jesus, he was gorgeous, copper-cocoa skin and a smoothly muscled body as sleek and lithe as an animal’s, poured into a pair of blue Speedos. She looked down at the ground so she wouldn’t stare and swung her feet to the concrete. “Sorry. I’m fine. I pulled a couple of all-nighters, that’s all.”
“Ah.” He put on a pair of sweat pants, then picked up a skimmer pole and dismantled it into three sections, laying it down by a jug of chlorine. “You’re in school?”
“UCLA.”
“Encino’s a long drive. What brings you to Shady Glen?”
“I had an interview with a movie star.” She thought of her notebook, filled with the sage musings of Tarzan’s simian sidekick.
He looked around. “Somebody famous lives here?”
“I thought so, but it didn’t work out quite like I expected.” She shook her head—which had stopped throbbing quite so much once she got out into fresh air—and changed the subject. “You’re a hell of a swimmer.”
“Thanks.” He busied himself with the screw-top for the gallon jug.
“Do you compete?”
“Not really. After high school I was hoping to go pro—stunt work for the movies. That’s why I moved out here.” He tugged on his T-shirt.
“What happened?”
“Turns out there aren’t many swimming movies these days, and even if there were, not a lot of brothers in them, know what I mean? So I got a job lifeguarding at the Y, started learning about the pool equipment and filters and such. It was all new to me. Back home in Florida, I just swam in the river, or the springs, or the sink.”
Isbel laughed. “You must have been pretty little, to swim in a sink.”
“Not that kind. A sinkhole. Natural limestone formation. Lots a’those where I’m from. You might have heard of it. Wakulla Springs? They filmed a couple of movies there.”
“Really? Which ones?” Isbel sat up straighter. “Creature from the Black Lagoon?” He looked at her as if hoping for some reaction, then shrugged. “And a couple of the Tarzans, back before I was born.”
“Weissmuller Tarzans?”
“Yep. You should hear my Aunt Vergie go on about the mischief that man got up to. Lots of stories.”
“Do you remember any of them?”
“Bits and pieces.”
“Could I interview you?” Suddenly Isbel wasn’t as tired.
He smiled. “I don’t know
if I’ve got much worth telling, but sure.” He looked down at the equipment by his feet. “Let me get all this back into the truck, and I’ll give you a ride home.” He picked up a bucket stenciled WAKULLA JOE’S POOLS. “The office is in Santa Monica, so it’s almost on the way.”
She looked at him and shook her head. “Thanks, but—”
“But I’m a total stranger?” He smiled. “Don’t worry, I didn’t kill Sharon Tate or anything. And I’m not just the pool guy. I’m the owner. Stand-up citizen. I got five crews working all over LA. I’m usually in the office, but Carl had Guard duty this week.” He shook his head. “Lord knows where Governor Reagan might send him. Here.” He dug through his toolbox and handed her a wicked-looking long-handled trowel with a narrow blade.
“What’s that for?” “Well, I use it to dig moss out of cracks in pools, but you have my permission to run me through like a gigged frog if you feel threatened anywhere between here and Westwood. Okay?”
“I guess.” Isbel still wasn’t sure, but the lure of truly original material—unpublished, never-before-heard Tarzan stories!—was too much to resist.
“Great.” He smiled. “Then allow me to introduce myself proper. I’m Levi Williams.”
“Isbel Hartsoe.” She hefted the tool and smiled back. “You’re taking a big risk. Suppose I’m a killer on the loose?”
“Well,” Levi said, “then I reckon I’m just shit out of luck. But my mama’s got a custom for just about every kind of luck there is, and she gave me one of her Indian head pennies to watch over my van, so I reckon I’ll be safe.” He picked up a coil of hose.
“Do you believe everything your Mama tells you?”
He chuckled. “Not by half. But she did raise me to have respect for the traditions other folks hold store in.”
“Your mama sounds a lot like my abuela. My grandmother. She’s from Cuba. Lots of superstitions.” Isbel picked up her knapsack. “I think most of them are tall tales, but then there are days…” Her voice trailed off as she thought again about the scribbles in her notebook.