Hollywood North: A Novel in Six Reels

by Michael Libling

  He’d taken a verse from In Flanders Fields and twisted it. “That’s not how it goes,” I said.

  “That is exactly how it goes,” he snapped.

  “It is,” Jack said. “It’s over, Gus.”

  Eleven

  Paint by Numbers

  Mr. Blackhurst’s obituary was the first I’d read without self-interest or burglary in mind. (I’d never seen my dad’s.) I clipped it from the Recordand would transfer it to every wallet I would own for the rest of my sentient life. I did not do the same when Jack’s and Annie’s turns came. Or my mother’s. I feel bad about this, though I would have been reading only what I knew or, perhaps, preferred not to know.

  BLACKHURST, Norman Kingsley—Suddenly, in Trenton, on Friday, July 15, 1966 in his 72nd year. Born in the United Kingdom and a decorated veteran of the Great War, the proprietor of Sure Press Dry Cleaners on Front Street, Trenton, will be sadly missed by his friends and customers. He leaves behind his cherished companion of many years, Miss August. In keeping with Norman’s wishes, cremation has taken place. For those wishing, donations may be made to the March of Dimes or charity of choice.

  “It’s all lies,” I said to Jack.

  “We need to let it go. For real, this time. Like McGrath said, Gus, it’s about respect. Decency.”

  “You kidding me? Two days ago you were ready to punch him out.”

  “Death changes things.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m no grave robber.”

  “Who said you were?”

  “What if it’s just that you and me wanted something so bad, we started seeing and thinking things that weren’t there? Did McGrath ever do anything to us? Did he? Really? Did he ever say anything that was so wrong? Or was it in our heads?”

  “Holy cow. Death scares you that much? You’re like the rest of them now, Jack? That it? You’ve shut your eyes, blocked your ears? You believe what you’re told more than what you know and see? You gone Eloi on me?”

  “You got me wrong, man.”

  “Then tell me.”

  “It’s sort of like Paint by Numbers.”

  “Ah, Jesus. Not again.”

  “You start out all excited, ready to paint this masterpiece, but five, six numbers in, you realize it’s going to be worthless shit, no matter how careful you are to paint within the lines. You stop. You throw it in a drawer. You have the good sense to know that even should you get it done, who’s going to give a crap? You’re not making art, you’re jerking off. That’s us, Gus. We solve the mystery—so what? What do we prove? And who do we prove it to, if no one cares to begin with?”

  “I care.”

  “And what if it turns out the only mystery was us, kidding ourselves into believing there was a mystery?”

  “The cards. McGrath. Blackhurst. Hollywood North. The accidents nobody talks about . . . None of it’s Paint by Numbers.”

  “Don’t be so sure.”

  “You don’t read Sherlock Holmes for the solution, you read it for the steps he takes to get there.”

  “Annie’s right—you need to have more fun, Gus.”

  “She tell you that?”

  “You need to grow up.”

  “Who the hell are you?” I said. “What’s happened to you?”

  “C’mon, Gus, the man is dead. And we’re still playing at make-believe? Not only you. Me, too, man. It’s time we grew up.”

  Grow up. No two words did I detest more. “Fuck you.”

  “Gus, c’mon. Listen to me—”

  “You do what you need to do.”

  “Let’s just go back to the way it was, okay? You and me, working the dock, goofing with the girls, playing our games . . . Beach Boys or Beatles? Ann-Margret or Elke Sommer?”

  “Yeah. Sure,” I said. “Benedict Arnold or Judas Iscariot?”

  Twelve

  Evie III

  The deep freeze carried into August. Jack and I worked together as before. We didn’t argue. We talked and such, laughed at stupid stuff. But nothing amounted to anything. Life went on, with a huge chunk missing. Jack was moving on without me, again. He didn’t vanish this time around. Not completely. More like The Invisible Man on a half-dose of monocaine—here, gone, partly here, gone, here, gone, partly here . . . He was the one who’d let me down, yet he was making me pay. Grow up, my ass!

  We no longer walked together from the Gilbert Hotel.

  We stopped hanging out during free time.

  Without serving notice, I joined my mother’s boycott of the Marquee.

  Annie would have had to be blind not to notice the chill. “I don’t know what’s happened between you two, but it’s got to stop. You’re best friends. Please, Gus. Tell him you’re sorry.”

  “Me?”

  “One of you has to make the first move.”

  “Tell that to your boyfriend.”

  “Pardon me? Is that what this is about? You’re fighting over me?”

  “You wish,” I said, scoffing at the suggestion, amazed she’d uttered it. Annie knew boys liked her. How could she not? But she’d always kept her vanity in check, self-deprecating to a T, advocating the fraud there was nothing special whatsoever about her—which drew boys to her all the more. Yet now she had revealed an unintended truth: He was her boyfriend. I’d blurted it and she had pretty much copped to it. I could stop conning myself, pretending Jack, Annie, and I were a trio. And he wanted to punish me?

  I would’ve launched my counteroffensive, laid into them, given them an earful, all right, had it not been for Clyde Neil, the wayward wharfinger.

  It wasn’t payday, yet here he was. Important, too, because the door of his pickup was full open and he was sitting sideways, heels on the running board to face us. “You boys recollect the old guy croaked, few weeks back? Blackhearse, was it?”

  “Do we recollect?” Jack said, and for a disbelieving instant the two of us were gratefully in sync.

  “Message come in, his lady friend or some-such wants her boat back. You boys know anything ’bout it?”

  “Evie III,” I said. She bobbed patiently at dockside where Mr. Blackhurst had left her, as if her dear master might yet return.

  “Well, once you finish up here tonight . . .” Clyde fumbled with his glove compartment, found what he was looking for behind a window visor. He passed me the sheet of directions. “You’re to take the boat ’cross the bay.”

  “Me?” I said.

  “The twos of yous. The dame requested the twos of yous. Never met the lady myself, mind you. Who has, eh? Reclusive by nature, I hear. And quite the looker, some say. Funny that, eh, some people? Not quite right upstairs, if you catch my drift. Women, you know, them and their times of month—”

  “How do we get back?” Jack said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “If we’re leaving her the boat . . .”

  Clyde sanded his fingertips on the stubble of his neck. “That’s a stumper, can’t deny,” he said, hauled up his legs, shut the door, and drove off.

  Thirteen

  Evie August in August

  Admiral Friggin’ Jack manned the wheel, First Mate Annie all too cozy at his side, and me, lowly Deckhand Gus, on the bench behind. I’d been assigned towline duty, minding our return transportation, Annie’s old dinghy bouncing and bucking in the bitchy wake of Evie III.

  We ignored Clyde’s orders and cut out early, putting a good hour of daylight in our favour. Enough time to make it across the Quinte and home before dark.

  Sunset bled across the waters, an open wound poisoning the bay. Not that Annie saw it my way, of course. She shivered, reached for Jack’s hand. “I ask you, how could anyone tire of anything so magnificent? How can there not be a Higher Power?”

  Jack held her closer. “‘Red sky at night, sailor’s delight . . .’”

  Annie’s cheek touched his. “You look at all this beauty and you know the Devil doesn’t stand a chance.”

  “Oh, Jesus.” I was itching for a showdown. “What a load.”


  The grins Jack and Annie traded were benign, and infuriating. They saw me as a work-in-progress, nothing love and friendship could not heal. I knew better. By then, I was every inch, every ounce, every breath of my being a lost cause.

  “You know who likes you?” Annie said.

  “Nobody,” I replied, and they laughed at my presumed quick wit.

  “Di does. Diana Klieg. Don’t ever tell her I told you, but she’s had a crush on you for the longest time.”

  “We missed the landing,” I said. The notes and drawings Clyde had provided were neat and orderly, and unlikely from his hand. “Back that way.”

  “Jack and I were thinking the four of us could go to a movie one night. How about it, Gus?”

  I pointed. “There. See. By the rocks.”

  Jack got the message and doubled back with few seconds lost. “Slowly,” Annie said, her hand at his back, noting how the waters here ran faster and shallower than was typical of the bay, how the rocky outcrop discouraged boaters from straying too close.

  Trees and bushes competed for dominance along the shoreline, presenting an impassive front for whatever secrets awaited us inland. The domain of the late Norman Kingsley Blackhurst was the last place on the Quinte anyone would have thought inhabited.

  “I can’t believe I never noticed any of this before,” Annie said. “I go by here almost every day.”

  Jack eased up on the throttle, piloted the boat between the rocks and shore, and we drifted up against the floating dock.

  “Cheer up, Gus,” Jack said, initiating a momentary thaw in our cold war. “I have a feeling we’re going to get some answers.”

  “Like that matters to you,” I said.

  “C’mon, man.”

  “You guys are out of your minds,” Annie said.

  Thirty feet up the trail the forest receded, then conceded to a one-horse bridle path canopied by inconsolable willows. It wasn’t much farther when a cast-iron fence stopped us cold. We looked to either side and up. Fleur-de-lis finials capped the pickets, sharpened spears with sharper barbs that’d gut you through the ass should you be fool enough to climb over.

  “Welcome to Transylvania,” Jack said, his Lugosi impression not half-bad, though not that I’d tell him.

  “Shut up,” Annie said. “It’s spooky enough.”

  “Less spooky than Creighton Farms,” I said.

  “There are houses on those graves now,” Annie said solemnly.

  Jack gripped the bars, peered into the thickening gloom. “Hello? Anybody out there? Miss August?”

  My mouth went dry. The Angel of Death was bearing down upon us. “It’s her,” I said.

  “I got eyes,” Jack said.

  “You know her?” Annie asked. “How do you know her?”

  Evangeline August was a lot more slinky than I recalled (from either memory or messy dreams), in mourning black of flowing lace and silk, a charcoal etching of ethereal grace upon a canvas of dusk. The solitary colour, her lips, a succulent slash of red. (What can I tell you? When it comes to me and Evie August, I will always be the horny teen with a downmarket thesaurus. She was fifty-three then, looked thirty-three, and would die in January 1988 at the age of seventy-four. And while older women were never my thing, until I was old myself and out of options, Evie in this moment became the standard by which I judged all other women, the enduring stimulus for my every arousal, desire, and kink.)

  Evie held the gate ajar as we filed through. God, she was tiny. Then again, she’d been in heels last time we’d met, while I’d been four years and a good foot younger.

  Annie promptly cued us to the appropriate etiquette. “I am sorry for your loss, Mrs. Blackhurst.”

  Jack chimed in, “He was a nice guy.”

  “He sure liked hot dogs,” I said.

  Evie replied with dispassion. “It was his time. Later than I expected, if you must know. The difference in our ages, you understand—a Lita Grey in thrall of Chaplin sort of escapade. May-December, should the allusion fail you.”

  We followed her in silence. Well, Jack and I, anyhow. Annie wasn’t pleased, hushed annoyance at Jack’s ear: “You promised we were only dropping the boat off. It’s almost dark. My parents are going to kill me. You promised . . .” I loved the sound of that, you bet.

  Knowing Mr. Blackhurst, I figured for sure we’d be arriving at the House on Haunted Hill. What we got was Moby Dick—an old Cape Cod with a wraparound porch, shuttered windows, and a widow’s walk among the treetops. Evie saw our faces and elaborated, clarifying only slightly: “Norman salvaged the façade from The Women of Butternut Bay and built from there.”

  The seafaring theme carried on to the feebly lit interior as she hurried us from one room to the next. A blur of patterned sofas, barrel chairs, and driftwood lamps. Brass instruments with fancy dials and scale models of tall ships, some in bottles. Oils of craggy mariners in peacoats and mackintoshes.

  Down through a passageway we went, a slalom of umbrella stands, canes, shoes, and boots. She halted by a wall of coats and scarves, took a hooded black fur from a hook, advised us to do the same, and resumed her pace. The request was nutty. Humidity hung heavy within the old house and our trek had left us sweaty. Still, we didn’t question.

  Kids are stupid. We were stupid. How many movies had I sat through with this plot? Good-looking women did evil things, particularly lipsticked beauties slight in stature. More than that, Evie up close was a black-haired blonde as contradictory as this sounds, venal or vulnerable, as she manipulated light and circumstance and us. I’d go only so far with her, I told myself. Should she offer us a drink, I’d know the jig was up.

  9:00 5 HERCULES UNCHAINED—Adventure

  A thirsty Hercules (Steve Reeves) guzzles from seductive Queen Omphale’s enchanted spring, loses his memory, and becomes her captive slave and lover.

  At the bottom of a short flight of stairs we came to a heavy steel door. She retrieved a key from her coat pocket, inserted it into the lock, and turned the handle. I looked to Jack, Jack to me, and Annie to Jack. A door this thick and big did not augur well for our futures. “I really have to be getting back,” Annie said. “My parents will—”

  “Button up, children,” Evie said, and a blast of frigid air blew us back. “Welcome to Norman’s Icebox.”

  Fourteen

  Norman’s Icebox

  Little lambs, shoulders hunched, hands in pockets, anxiety rife, hearts beating a dirge.

  “Wow,” Jack said. “Wow. Wow. Wow.” And I added several wows of my own.

  The screening room was the size of a two-bay garage, with high ceilings and sloped floor. Like Brainiac had shrunken the Odeon for shipment to the bottled city of Kandor. (Action Comics 242.)

  “It’s beautiful,” Annie said. “Who built it for you?”

  Two terraced rows, four seats abreast. Plush velvet cushions and armrests. A wall-to-wall screen. Burgundy curtains, trimmed and cinched with gold braid. Conch-shell sconces, the light fanning upward along the walls. An ornate plaster ceiling, naked cherubs frolicking amid pastel garlands and bows. Sculpted cornices, masks of Tragedy and Comedy. And behind the top row of seats, propped on four legs of its own, the projector—a boxy contraption of black and grey metal, a reel above, a reel below.

  “The chill is to preserve the film,” Evie said, “what little remains.”

  “The movies you made? Hollywood North?” Jack said, a concessionary shrug aimed my way.

  She ushered us to the front row.

  We sat. Me. Jack. Annie.

  Evie deposited a space heater at our feet. “If needed,” she said. Heartless, she was not.

  Jack gave it another shot. “Mr. Blackhurst told us you were a movie star.”

  “She is?” The news excited Annie. “Honest? You are? Have I seen you in anything?”

  “You are here to honour Norman’s last wishes. Let us leave it at that.” In fact, Annie had not been invited. Only Jack and me. We’d thought Evie might question it, but this was the closest s
he would come.

  “All set, then?” she said, and disappeared behind us.

  The theatre darkened. The projector whirred to life, revved to a metallic snore. And the film wended its way down and through the sprockets, clippity-clop, clippity-clop, like a Jack of Hearts pegged to the spokes of a bike.

  Silent movies, we learned, were only as silent as the projector allowed, delivering an unauthorized soundtrack to the images on screen.

  Five movies would unspool, though only I kept track.

  Anticipation ran high at the outset. Jack and I on the precipice of discovery. Yeah, he was back in the hunt, all right. We were on the lookout for clues—or whatever it might be Mr. Blackhurst had wanted us to be on the lookout for. And right off the bat, a card we remembered from our collection.

  But aside from a half-decent bridge collapse toward the middle and a train piling into the canyon below, the movie stunk. Stiff-necked men and women yakking in parlours. No Keystone Cops chasing bank robbers. No Laurel & Hardy pitching pies. Music would have helped, I suppose. In a weird way, the din of the projector had shifted from grating to sedating. Maintaining focus was a challenge, even without my other problem in the two seats adjacent.

  Jack and Annie were necking full-out before the first picture was ten minutes in. Two tongues sloshing together is nothing anybody wants to hear, unless one of the tongues is their own. I was yet unaware to the extent hormones trumped friendship. Or how jealousy trumped both. As unexplained mysteries go, hormones were up there with Area 51.