‘So is that it? Do you feel better now?’
Mom looks at me. Her head tilts just a little to the left the way it always does when she’s mulling something over.
‘Well… If you say everything is okay… It’s only because I care so much. You know that.’
‘Sure I know, Mom. And this business about Westlands? We can forget about that, right?’
‘It seems a shame. But if you’re happy where you are… It’s always an option though, will you remember that?’
‘Sure Mom. But can I go now? I want to make some calls.’
She picks up on that as quick as a flash. Like I said, she isn’t stupid.
‘To your friends?’
‘Yeah, of course to my friends. Who did you think? The Secretary General of the UN?’
‘Yes, that’s funny Tom. Sarcasm is something they’re teaching now?’
‘Evidently they were teaching it back in your day too, Mom. Can I go now?’
‘May I go, Tom, not can I go. A pity they don’t spend less time on sarcasm and more time on grammar.’
We’re both smiling, not sniping at each other. One thing I love about Mom is that we can play these verbal games together and it never gets nasty or anything. We’re quite close really, and I don’t mind admitting it; I’m really fond of Mom. And I’m only saying this because so many guys at school seem to hate their parents. You listen to most kids and you’d think that it was like a war zone at home for them. I think that in a lot of cases, they just say things because they think it will make them sound cool.
That sure is true of Eddie. You listen to old Eddie at school and you’d think that him and his mom and dad were only one step removed from murder. You’d think that the atmosphere in their house would be spiky as a bed of nails, honest to God. But old Eddie, well he’s nice and sweet and polite when he’s at home. And Eddie’s mom is lovely. She really is. And she can’t do enough for Eddie and Helen. So it’s only outside and at school that you see the hoodie-wearing Eddie. It’s only outside and at school that you hear him trying to emulate the patois and speech patterns of South-Central LA. Like anyone would ever look at Eddie and believe for a moment that he was from there. But what the hell; I get the feeling that Eddie is going to make a super-fine lawyer or something very respectable one day. I really do.
I’m not saying that we don’t have any rough kids from tough places at school; we sure as hell do. But I’d guess that for the most part the kids at school are like Eddie and me, however they want to play it. Perhaps they are not all as close with their parents as Mom and me are though. Who knows?
Anyway, I’m off the stool and I pick up my bag. It was nothing to worry about after all. I can tell myself all day long that I wasn’t really worried in the first place, but I’d be lying. All kinds of stupid thoughts had been going through my goddam head. You know it; I told you.
‘I hope she’s a sweet girl. You tell her I’m looking forward to meeting her someday.’
Well that stops me.
‘Oh come on, Tom. I was only guessing. Now I know. Who is she? What’s her name? Does she go to your school?’
It’s a bewildering barrage of questions. And I’m sucked into it. Does she know about Sylvia? How can she know? If she does, then she knows that I haven’t been at school all day. And she knows I’ve been lying. What to say, what to say… And then it dawns on me. Mom doesn’t know a goddam thing. She’s just fishing. And she’s teasing me. Goddam! Did I mention that moms can be bastards? Well mine can. She really can.
CHAPTER 6
Hanging on the telephone
I’m lying on my bed now. Looking around, I like the fact that I’m able to maintain the minimalist effect that I’m comfortable with. In fact, the room is like a good hotel room – at the Mondrian on Sunset Strip, say; it’s light and the walls are smooth plaster painted white and there’s fabulous wall-to-wall carpet. The furniture is all built-in and it’s bleached mahogany. I have a walk-in, of course, but no en-suite. Only Mom and Dad’s room has an en-suite, but the bathroom that I share with Madeleine is huge with fantastic chrome and glass and polished slate and mirrors and stuff. The shower is a glasss-hrouded walk-in with jets that spray from the wall as well as overhead. It’s a very impressive room. It really is.
But my room is cool too. It’s totally devoid of visible clutter. Not even photographs. In fact, nothing that would personalise it in any way at all. I hate that, when people clutter up their houses like that, with crappy tasteless family snapshots in cheap frames on ill-matched furniture. And then they add to that the junk that they’ve collected or been given over an uneventful life. These things are supposed to be reminders of happy times – holidays or celebrations or God knows what. They say that these things remind them of this time or that, as if saying such rubbish can in any way validate having that tasteless crap surrounding them all the time. I mean, what kind of goddam parent needs to be reminded what its kids look like? Hello. Wake up in there. This is your son, Johnny, remember? Here, let me just take this picture you have on the mantelpiece and hold it against my face. There. Is that better? You remember me now? Yeah, right. There are elderly people who are suffering from dementia or something where that might be reality for them, but I’m not talking about them. Just walk into most houses and somewhere I’ll just bet you that you’ll find photographs and other tasteless rubbish, just like I’m talking about. You know it.
But anyway, my room is not like that. I told you, it’s like a hotel room if you really want to know. And I’m here lying on the bed and I’m a bit damp because I’ve taken a shower. I’m in a robe of course – I don’t want to soak the bedding now do I? And the robe I’m wearing – well I’ll tell you the label because I know you’re just dying to know. It’s actually a vintage Christian Dior robe that Madeleine got for me for my birthday last year. It’s royal blue cotton velour with paisley trim on the cuffs and collar. Apparently, it was bought from some Hollywood stylist and was worn in a couple of movies. I don’t know which ones, so there’s no point asking. It’s actually very comfortable, though I have to say that what I like best about it is the label. I mean, how many of you have vintage Dior in your wardrobes to use as day wear?
So I’m lying on my bed and I’m turning my phone over in my hands. I want to push the numbers, but I’m hesitating. Obviously I want to speak to Sylvia. And I had tried earlier.
‘Hello. Could I speak to Sylvia please?’
A pause and then an aggressive man’s voice.
‘No. You can’t speak to goddam Sylvia.’
Not a stimulating dialogue, I think you’ll agree. Not exactly up there with Socratic dialectic, for example. You can just imagine old Socrates there, sitting under a tree in ancient Athens, and his favourite pupil, Alkibiades wanders over to him.
‘Socrates, noble teacher; today, may we discuss the nature of justice?’
‘No, we goddam can’t.’
Doesn’t exactly have a ring to it, does it?
So I’m wondering if I dare call again. And that’s a strange thing in itself, I think. Why shouldn’t I just call? It’s not like anyone can reach down the phone and grab me, like they can in cartoons. I like old cartoons – the Chuck Jones and Tex Avery Warner Brothers cartoons, the Hannah-Barbera Tom and Jerry cartoons. Those old slapstick cartoons slay me. They really do. Yet later on, Chuck Jones went on to do some Tom and Jerry cartoons and you can tell them straight away when you watch them because they are just not funny. Not the least little bit. I can never figure that out myself; Chuck Jones was fantastic with Bugs Bunny and Road Runner and stuff. But he screwed up Tom and Jerry good and proper.
So what the hell, I punch in the numbers anyway and lie back listening to the ringing tone.
‘Who is it?’
‘Can I speak to Sylvia please?’
‘SYLVIA! PHONE!’
I hate that, when someone bellows out like that. I’m getting a mental picture of some unshaven slob of a guy wearing a dirty vest, stuffing food into
his greasy face while he can’t take his eyes off the TV. I’m figuring that this must be Sylvia’s dad, and this is the unflattering picture I have of him. We all do that though; make pictures of people we’re speaking to on the phone, I mean, if we’ve never seen them in real life. I always imagine women to be super cool and funky and sexy, for example. Unless they have those really miserably obviously middle-aged voices that some women have. I mean, sometimes you just know that the person you’re talking to is dowdy and frumpy and miserable enough to strip the blossom from the trees with just a glance. It makes me puke to think of that. Not really old people, I’m not talking about them. Really old people have these croaky voices and you can tell right away when you listen to them that they’re really old. Actually, I like old people. They tend to be far less judgemental than middle-aged people. I guess it’s because old people have come to know exactly who they are, while middle-aged people are still bitter about the fact that they don’t measure up to the person they saw themselves becoming in their youth. An old person once told me that, and you have to admit that it is the truth. It really is.
‘Hello?’
I’ve been daydreaming with the phone pressed against my ear, so the voice on the line comes as a surprise.
‘Sylvia?’
What a stupid thing for me to say. Of course it’s Sylvia; her voice is soft and sweet and immediately reminds me of the gentle sound of that brook we were sitting next to just a few hours earlier.
‘Holden?’
I’m not going to rise to that. I’m not going to make an issue of it because if I do I just know that she’ll rag me about it forever. So I don’t say anything, but there isn’t an awkward pause or anything.
‘I didn’t really think you’d call.’
‘Really? Why not?’
Yeah, really, why not? Why wouldn’t she think I’d call? I took her number. I said I’d call. And here I am, calling.
‘Well, sometimes people say they’ll call just to be polite.’
She’s right of course. I’ve done that myself. Said I’d call someone just as a convenient way of getting rid of them when I’d no intention of calling them. I remember this one time, a few years ago. I went to this football camp in the summer – as if I was ever going to have any kind of athletic prowess – but anyway, there was another kid there who was just as crap as me, and we became kinda friends for the duration. When it was time to go home, we swapped numbers and said we’d stay in touch and everything. But I didn’t really mean it. I mean, we had nothing in common other than being rubbish at football. But this kid meant it; he called night after night, and I kept getting Mom to make excuse after excuse. It began to wear Mom out and she said she wasn’t going to lie for me anymore. This bugged me for a while, but the next time this kid rang, Madeleine answered and she just told him straight out that I didn’t want to talk to him. Straight out, just like that. I guess she was being honest, but I can imagine that kid being crestfallen. Still, I expect he’s got over it now. It has been a few years.
‘Well it’s not in my nature to be polite, so here I am, calling.’
She laughs. It’s a sweet laugh and I immediately picture her head tilting back slightly, her black hair tumbling from her neck, those straight, white teeth. And for a moment my breathing is very shallow.
‘God, Holden, you’re the most polite person I’ve ever met. You’re such a gentleman.’
Now if most people were to say that to you, you’d shudder, because you’d know that what they were actually saying, whether meaning it or not, was that you were not the least bit cool. Why that should matter I don’t really know, but it does. It really does. And you know it as well as I do. But Sylvia saying it, it just comes out like a compliment. And you know that that’s just how she meant it too.
‘Well, that’s as maybe. But I don’t want to talk about that; I’m calling about what you said earlier today. About going to see a movie sometime.’
I can be like that on the phone. More often than not, I am. Actually, I don’t much like talking on the phone to tell you the truth. There’s something really phoney about talking on the phone if you ask me, and no, that isn’t a pun. You can’t see the other person and they could be stringing you along, bored, or even just downright lying, and if they’re cunning at it you’d never really know.
‘You really want to go?’
You know, I’ve said this often but I can’t help repeating myself; girls are exasperating!
‘Yes, I really want to go. What, did you think that I was calling just to tell you I’d changed my mind? When did you last get a call like that?’
The laugh again. God, it’s cute as hell when she’s being coy like this.
‘I’m more used to not getting calls at all.’
Is she fishing for a compliment here? Am I supposed to tell her that she’s so gorgeous that I can’t believe that guys aren’t calling her all the time? Or some crap like that at any rate? Or is she just stating a fact? See what I mean about girls? This is the sort of thought process every guy has to go through when he’s talking to a girl. How can you ever possibly understand what they want?
‘Sure. Poor little you. So what night were you thinking of going?’
I’m taking a risk being so off-hand with her, but I feel confident that she’ll know that I don’t mean anything by it.
‘Oh. I hadn’t thought… I don’t suppose…’
I’m waiting.
‘I don’t suppose you’re free on Friday?’
Obviously she had thought. She’s coming across all insecure again, like she did down in the woods when she first suggested that we might go see a movie together. She’s putting this on, surely.
‘Well actually…’
‘It doesn’t matter. Another day…’
‘Hey, let me finish. I was going to say that actually, Friday would be just fine. What do you want to see?’
Well this is where my heart is sinking. I’m waiting to hear just what it is I’m going to have to sit through. At the moment the big things are blockbuster film part three, summer-smash part two and you-loved-it-the-first-time-now-let’s-milk-it-for-all-it’s-worth part six. I can’t actually remember all the names of these movies but I’m sure you get the idea. I read about filmmakers whinging from time to time about how Hollywood is run by accountants these days and no one ever takes a risk on original talent. I guess the current line-up now showing backs that up. I hate sequels. I really do.
‘Well, there’s a film on at the Bijou-Roxy…’
Now I’m interested. The Bijou-Roxy is a restored cinema at the edge of town. The interior is very plush, and the staff are all in uniform, and there are heavy velvet drapes everywhere and the seats are deep and plush. Did I say how plush it is? I could go on, but suffice to say it’s an incredible place. Even more incredible is that it shows art house films, experimental stuff that the big chains just won’t run.
Accountants eh? Who the hell needs them? I like experimental stuff. I’m bored to death with the standard Hollywood three-act pot-boiler. Not that Hollywood is all like that, despite what the whinging filmmakers say. Some fantastic and original and creative stuff comes out of Hollywood.
The Bijou-Roxy also has a habit of showing films from history that you’d never otherwise get to see on a big screen. I saw Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake in a classic black and white film there once. This Gun for Hire it was called, and it was fantastic. Watching them play their parts up there, on that big screen, it was like going back in time, I swear to God. I don’t know what’s showing at the Bijou-Roxy right now, but it won’t be mindless blockbuster stuff, that’s for sure.
‘What’s showing?’
I ask in anticipation now. Yes of course I’m genuinely interested. I really am.
‘Lawrence of Arabia.’
‘Okay. So what time shall I come round for you?’
I’m pretty casual as I say that. But actually, you know what? I’m quite excited. Really, I am.
‘It starts at eight.
So is seven okay?’
She’s using that little girl voice again, the one she uses when she’s not confident of the response she’s going to get. She used it back down in the woods when she asked if I wanted her number, like I said. To be honest, I don’t know whether it is a lack of confidence. She probably knows that it sounds just as cute as hell. She can probably sense how shallow my breathing is down the goddam phone. Girls are perceptive like that. I’m not even saying that they do it on purpose either. I just think it’s a genetic thing. Girls have everything that it could possibly take to manipulate guys. They’re born that way, just the same as they’re born with arms and legs. And every girl knows how to use what she’s got. Even the girls that don’t know what they’ve got, they can wrap guys around their little fingers. They do it naturally. They can’t help it. It’s in their natures. And you know what? Guys love them for that. We really do, honest to God. Any wonder that most of the time when girls get together they spend half their time laughing at guys? Madeleine told me that, and I’ve never doubted it.
‘Yeah, seven is fine.’
‘Great. See you around, then.’
‘Yeah, see you around.’
The phone goes dead and I’m left holding the receiver. Sylvia really doesn’t like telephones. I mean, I can’t stand the thought of jabbering on all day myself, but that was a bit abrupt, even for me. Still, what do I care? I know that Sylvia means nothing by it. And besides, Lawrence of Arabia…
Now I’m betting a lot of people nowadays have no idea what Lawrence of Arabia is. Well let’s just start by saying that it is the greatest film ever made. And in case you’re about to sneer and wonder just what a sixteen year-old kid would know about great film, let me tell you that it’s not just me saying it. Steven Spielberg says it. And I’m thinking that even you would agree that old Steven might know a thing or two about films, right? I read somewhere that Steven Spielberg makes a point of watching Lawrence of Arabia before he starts work on any new film. The photography is breathtaking – I’m reduced to clichés describing it, so you can imagine how special it must be, right? Those incredible views of the desert. The shimmering heat. And the director lets us linger on those views, gives us time to let it all sink in.
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