|
The
Maplewoods Mirror #15 (June 2007 still)
Welcome to my monthly newsletter on life and writing. If you
want to see my website for back issues and other news, please visit www.chrismeeks.com.
In This Issue:
This intersection, 7th and
Alvarado, will be named Langer's Square next year
LANGER’S
PASSING
In the last issue, #14, I wrote about pastrami, and I’ve never had
such e-mail on anything I’ve written in here before. Pastrami seems
to be people’s hidden passion—and Langer’s Deli is certainly a
favorite. My review ended up being quoted on two websites, L.A.
Observed,
and the Franklin
Avenue Blog.
A week after I wrote about his restaurant, Al Langer died, so I was
pleased to have met him. He and his wife started the deli in 1947
with just twelve seats. It now seats 135 after he expanded his
restaurant in 1952 and 1968. Even at 94, he liked to spend part of
each day at the deli, watching the cycles of his customers’ lives. As
he said in a 1986 Los Angeles Times article, “They come in as
children, they get married, and they bring in their children. And the older
people that used to come in, they disappear. Little by little, they're
gone….”
And so is he. Still, I can’t help but think of all the cured
meat he must have eaten, and look at how long he lived.
For those of you who want more great restaurants to go to in Los
Angeles, read Pulitzer-Prize-winning writer Jonathan Gold on the top 99
essential restaurants in Los Angeles by clicking here.
THE FEAR
OF PUBLIC SPEAKING
Comedian Jerry Seinfeld once said, “According to most studies,
people's number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is
number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you
go to a funeral, you're better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.”
It’s true. I became a fiction writer just so I wouldn’t have
to speak. Little did I know one day I’d be asked to read in front of
people. In grad school at USC, when I had to speak standing in front
of my eight classmates, though I knew them well, my knees would become
weak, my voice would squeak, and I could not talk loudly enough.
“Louder,” they’d say. I was only a few feet away. I could chat
with them easily before class, but if it were an official presentation, I’d
be aquiver as if before the Great Wizard of Oz.
Then in the mid-nineties, right after the huge Los Angeles
earthquake when a section of freeway fell down six blocks from my house, I
volunteered to teach a creative writing class at CalArts—and my proposition
was accepted. It took two years of teaching, but I overcame the fear
of public speaking.
A few weeks ago, I was scheduled to read in front of 200 people with
other UCLA writing instructors at the Skirball Center in Los Angeles.
I was going to be on stage in less than an hour, and Los Angeles rush hour
traffic was murder. What normally took thirty minutes was taking ninety.
I was almost there when my cell phone rang. My wife, Ann, said
straight away, “There’s been an accident but Scruffle seems to be
alright. There’s some blood.”
“What? What happened?” Scruffle was our new dog, a
one-year-old terrier that our nine-year-old daughter Ellen had earned by
saving allowance and doing house chores for a year. She also gave him
his name.
“I’ve been hurt, too,” Ann said. “Here, Jody will explain.”
Jody was our neighbor. “Ann was showing Scruffle to Casey,”
said Jody. Casey was the big friendly Australian Shepherd from down the
street. The shepherd, off its leash, grabbed our terrier and started
shaking it like a rag doll, and Ann pulled our dog to safety, but in doing
so, the big dog nipped her in the arm and our little dog bit Ann in the
face. “Don’t worry,” said Jody, “We’re taking the dog to the vet, and
then Ann should be checked out, too.”
“I-- My god-- Should I--”
“Everyone will be fine.”
“I’m supposed to read, but--”
“I have it under control. Don’t worry about a thing. You
go read.” She made it sound like the dog and Ann were shaken more
than hurt, despite the blood on Scruffle. Jody, too, has a very
reassuring manner. I could see Ann and the dog would get attention quickly.
Jody said they had to go.
Twenty minutes later, I arrived at the Skirball Center as a huge
wave of worry overcame me. Was everyone truly alright? Outside,
I called Ann’s cell phone, which she surely had with her. I only
received her voicemail. I said, “Ann, are you and Scruffle
okay? Are you already at the vet’s or doctor’s office? I’ll
keep my phone on vibrate, so please call.”
It was after seven. The event was soon starting. Before
I knew it, I was called to the stage. As I walked up, I thought,
should I have told the organizers I couldn’t read? Should I have gone
home? Which ER? Which vet? I stepped to the podium.
Two hundred people were staring at me. I was frozen.
I looked at my story. I knew it was a funny one, “Dracula
Slinks Into the Night,” loosely based around the time Ann and I’d gone to a
Halloween party, Ann dressed as the Corpse Bride, and I, Dracula. At
that party, I tripped and flew over a wall into the garden, landing on a
sprinkler head. Now, people wanted to hear the story. I began
reading.
As I read, people laughed. Injury can be funny. The
reading went well.
After I got offstage, I looked at my cell phone. It wasn’t
getting reception. As soon as I went outside, I had a signal
again. There was a message. In a pleasant voice, Ann said
everything was alright and call back when I could.
I called, but again I received her voicemail. I didn’t stay
for the after-reading party but drove home. The traffic was
light. When I entered the house, Ann smiled, but she looked a bit
like a pirate. She had five stitches in her nose and three in her
lip. Scruffle looked odd, too, having been shaved on his back to look
for puncture wounds. There were no punctures. The blood washed
from Scruffle had been Ann’s. Less than a week later, Ann’s stitches
came out, and, happily, there are no scars.
Even so, I now have a fear of walking our dog. I’ve always
been a cat person—cats are self-cleaning like ovens—but this little dog has
to go out three times a day. When we walk, vicious hounds black and
big as Buicks bark behind fences, glaring at me like I’m a giant sausage
holding a leash to a meat puppet. The dogs dig madly to escape and
eat us. There are worse fears than that of public speaking.
CHILDREN’S LITERATURE
If you’ve ever thought of writing a children’s book, or if you’re
pursuing elementary education as a major, I’ll be teaching English 18,
Children’s Literature, at Santa Monica College in the Fall. SMC is
only $20 a unit, and this is a three-unit course—such a deal. The
class meets on Thursday nights from 6:45 p.m. to 9:50 p.m. starting August
30, and you earn college credit.
To read my syllabus, click
here .
You can sign up for an SMC class by clicking here.
Santa
Monica College
FICTION AT
OCCIDENTAL
My intermediate UCLA Extension fiction writing class, meeting at
Occidental College in Eagle Rock on Tuesday nights for six weeks starting
July 3, still has space. To read my UCLA syllabus,
clike here.
You can sign up by going to www.uclaextension.edu/writers or
call 310-206.1542.
Occidental
College, where my class is held
MASTERS IN
PROFESSIONAL WRITING
If you’re thinking of earning a masters degree in writing where you
can pursue a full-length work such as a novel, play, screenplay, nonfiction
book, or collection of poetry, the Professional Writing Program at USC is a
great place because most classes meet in the evening, allowing you to work
in the day. Also, you earn a degree with just 30 units.
My colleagues there include such major writers as novelists John
Rechy and Janet Fitch, screenwriter Coleman Hough, screenwriting guru Syd
Field, and humorist Shelley Berman, among other top instructors. I
teach fiction and co-teach the core class, which is about structure in all
the narrative forms. For more information or an online application, click here.
University of Southern
California
SHORT STORY SNEAK PREVIEW
In the last issue, I
included a very short story. Thank you to those who responded. I’m
going to end this issue with a longer story, a comedy, nearly four thousand
words. I’m only showing it here, and it won’t be on my website
because this is a sneak peak before I send the story out for
publication. It’ll eventually end up in my next collection of short
fiction, due out next year with, most likely, a publication party at the
Beverly Hills Library.
MONTHS AND SEASONS
By Christopher Meeks
It’d been nearly three
weeks, and his hand had nearly healed. The bandages were gone and the
fingers worked, but Cody did not want to go to a party. His former
college roommate, Henderson from Hawaii, insisted. They were on the
same film together and, as Henderson said, “It’s what we work for—the
cast-and-crew party.”
Henderson picked him up at his apartment on Beachwood Drive promptly at
seven, and they drove to Monrovia, near where the film had been shot.
The party was for The Spook Under the Old Movie House, a parody of The
Phantom of the Opera. Cody wondered if most teenagers these days really
knew the original movie or the expensive play. Who was the new film
for? It focused on a man who owned a pool cleaning service; he’d been
burned by pool acid and was living under an old movie theatre that was now
a Gap store. No matter. It featured many topless young women,
helpless in showers. It’d been satisfying to light, one of the few
pleasures of the last few weeks.
A
few minutes into the drive, as they were circling around Lake Hollywood,
Henderson said, “You got to lighten up, guy.”
“You probably should get
another friend,” said Cody. “I’m just not a good
one.”
“What is this shit?
It’s like you’re trying to fill a role, ‘Wanted, actor between twenty and
twenty-three who can maintain a two-day beard growth, speak like an English
major, and have a thorough knowledge of electrical work on a motion picture
to play the part of a gaffer and friend.’”
“Exactly,” said Cody.
“And be upbeat all the time, do beer bongs with the best, and when it comes
to women, love ‘em and leave ‘em. That’s not me. I can’t be
that person.”
“I don’t get you.
You’re the one who says monogamy doesn’t work biologically. Men need
to spread their seed while women make just a few kids and stop needing sex.
You said this.”
“I had a biology class at
the time.”
“So isn’t it still the
truth?”
“Haven’t you had the need to
connect? I mean, really connect beyond sex?”
“She wasn’t right for you,”
said Henderson. “And since when could you fall for a sorority
girl? Aren’t you a little beyond that
shit?”
“You don’t get it,” said
Cody.
“Right,” said Henderson with
a smirk.
Cody looked at his hand,
flexing some of his fingers. Tasha had been an actress on the last
film they had worked, a low-budget feature, Babe With A Blade, about
a woman who eats the wrong sushi on a first date and transforms to a
vampire trained to kill like a Viking priestess. She’s brought to
Iraq to do ultimate good. Tasha was an extra, and Cody fell for her
while lighting a nighttime desert shower scene. Their last date was
at a microbrewery in Westwood. She’d invited him there only to tell
him they were over. He left so angry at everything, he punched a stop
sign and did major damage to his hand. Nothing was broken, but it was
touch-and-go on whether he could work with such a hand. He
managed.
“You still promise that
after an hour if I don’t like the party, you’ll drive me back?” said
Cody.
“Absolutely,” said
Henderson. “But you have to promise you’ll converse with at least
three women. A conversation is at least four back-and-forth sets of
dialogue.”
“Oh, and you’ll be
documenting?”
“I trust
you.”
“I’m not ready, and I don’t
like the pushing. The fact is, the right woman won’t be at a cast
party. The woman I’ll love won’t be in films.”
“Don’t make me laugh.
The woman you’ll love will catch you off-guard as they always have and—
What was that thing with names last week?”
“Names have
power.”
“So she has to be named
what? Walnut or Juniper?”
“No, not trees. Look
how you mix things up. It’s months or seasons.”
“For crying out loud,” said
Henderson.
“Only my girlfriends May and
Summer have really understood me. I need to match one of
them.”
“That’s stupid. They
were college flings!”
“I was insane to leave
either. You only get so many chances in this life. It’s like
heartbeats—you only get so many.”
“We have two hot women on
the crew, Rose and Brandy. What’s wrong with them?”
“Names for a flower or
liquor? Not right.”
“Then don’t ask anyone her
name. Get to know her for her. As you always say, women are
human beings.”
“Don’t mock me. I’m
talking about destiny.”
“Destiny is spreading your
sperm to more places than a napkin. We’re not leaving until you have
at least three full conversations.”
Cody rolled his eyes.
His old roommate still didn’t see there were powers beyond mere biological
drive. The universe was a mysterious place.
“So you’re agreed?
Three conversations with three different women?”
Cody nodded. He didn’t
tell Henderson he hoped he could scrounge up another job at the
party. That’s all he was really there for. As he thought about
it, though, he was tiring of this seat-of-your-pants lifestyle—good pay for
a short time, then it was a race to find another dumb movie at
less-than-union scale. Lately as he slept, too, he literally dreamed
he was still at work, dragging cables, calculating amperage, plugging
things in. There had to be better things.
Henderson drove high into
the Monrovia hills. The party, at the home of one of the producers, had a
panoramic view of Monrovia below. They strode into the courtyard,
which featured a Spanish-tiled fountain with spiting frogs and real lily
pads. The area was larger than his whole apartment. Inside the
house, the foyer was made of slate, and the living room was large, in dark
earth tones, with a white baby grand piano and what appeared to be a
full-sized elephant’s head on a wall. Near it, a stone fireplace
snapped with glowing burning logs.
As soon as they entered the
living room, Henderson pointed through the French doors to the back yard
and the pool. Near the doors stood Brandy, one of the hot
women. She wore a black dress with a low-cut neckline and necklace,
carrying herself with wonderful posture.
“Let’s meet up in a half
hour,” said Henderson, taking off.
Feeling awkward, Cody moved
to the wall, examined the elephant’s head and saw it was carved from
wood. The trunk, which nearly stretched to the floor, had every
believable crease.
“It’s amazing, isn’t
it?” Cody turned to see Roger Spillman, a dapper man in his seventies
with shock white hair, the man who owned the
house.
“It’s so real,” Cody
said.
“I found the most amazing
artist in Thailand. He makes very little doing stuff like this.
It cost more to ship it than I paid him for the piece.”
Cody knew that Spillman
first made money in the sixties and seventies on the drive-in and rural
movie markets, films with mutants from the deep or outer space and a film
about buxom airline stewardesses in jail. He kept expenses low and
profits high. He seemed to have adapted to the new DVD
crowd.
“I’ve never understood
artists,” said Cody. “It’s as if they have some special line to
another power. How did this guy know what to chip
away?”
“I happened to be lost in
looking for the Madison Steakhouse in Bangkok,” said Spillman. “And I
went down a street of artisans and came across this.”
“A happy coincidence,” said
Cory, wondering why anyone would want to eat at an American-sounding
steakhouse in Thailand.
“I don’t know,” said
Spillman looking deeply at the elephant’s head, maybe even through
it. “I look at my life and wonder how could it possibly be all
coincidence? It can’t. Someone guided me.”
Someone guided him into soft
porn? Cody didn’t know what to say to that, but he’d never spoken to
Spillman before. This was perhaps his best chance to make an
impression, maybe even get another job. “All I know,” said Cody, “is
you got to do what you believe in.”
“So true,” said Spillman,
raising his glass in a toast, but Cody had no drink to toast with.
Cody mimed one. With that, Spillman saw an older couple entering,
said “Excuse me,” and left. Cody winced. Should he have said
something else? Except he said what was true—Cody believed in
belief. He was like the late Danish philosopher Soren Kirkegaard, but
working in America on a movie set with giant power cables. He and
Soren were awed by faith. Cody couldn’t explain why he believed names
were important, for example, but they were. He just knew. There
were things beyond science.
Cody realized, too, he’d had
a full conversation with Spillman. That had to count for
something. He wouldn’t tell Henderson it wasn’t with a woman.
Now he needed just two more conversations.
A white-jacketed waiter, a
young woman with her dark hair in a bun, came up with champagne
flutes. “Champagne?” she said, smiling.
“Is it Californian?” he
asked, not knowing why. He felt stupid instantly. This was
another reason he hated parties. He didn’t know what to say to women
at first. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I don’t know why I said that because
I don’t drink champagne. It gives me a headache.” She nodded
and walked off.
That didn’t count as a
conversation. He glanced out back for Henderson. He didn’t see
him or Brandy. He headed outside.
Out back, a cobalt-tiled
pool hugged a hillside covered in ice plants and statuary. Around the
pool stood many of the guests, most of them dressed far better than when
they made the movie.
“Hey, hand looks good,” said
a young woman in a red gown coming up to him. Cody didn’t recognize
her at first, then realized it was one of the women from accounting, the
one who delivered checks.
“Hey, Jane,” he said. How
much more plain could you get for a name than hers?
“How’s it feel, dude?” she
said.
“Fine, thanks.” He
moved some of his fingers. “So do you have another movie job lined
up?”
“They’re keeping me on
through post-production to help out in the office,” she said.
“Spillman gave me another few months. Then I think I’ll go back to
UCLA.”
He nodded, then realized
they needed one more set of exchanges to qualify for Henderson’s
minimum. “You didn’t grow up in L.A., right?”
“No,” she said. “Las
Vegas.”
Yikes, he thought to
himself. A Las Vegas upbringing must have warped her. “Nice
seeing you. I’ve got to find Henderson,” he said. She looked
surprised, but the conversation took more out of him than he expected.
He sensed she was searching for that one person, and Cody didn’t want to be
it. He didn’t want to waste Jane’s
time.
He spotted Henderson with
Brandy and the other hot woman, Rose. Henderson had put on his
black-framed glasses, which had plain glass. The guy didn’t need them
to see. He wore them often because it made him look like the late
actor Peter Sellers, who, Cody thought, wasn’t particularly handsome.
Besides, who knew bygone stars anyway? You’re a celebrity one day,
then you’re black-and-white on Turner Classics the next. Soon the
film stock on which you were shot disintegrated unless the American Film
Institute revived you.
Brandy laughed, and Rose
joined in to Henderson’s delight. What had he said? Henderson
wasn’t particularly witty. Sure, they’d been in the same frat house
at the University of Rochester and traveled to Italy together, had some
laughing Mediterranean times. Henderson might know Heidegger’s
philosophy as it related to The Simpsons—Lisa as dasein, Homer
as the deliverer of ordinary truths that eluded us—but the guy wasn’t
witty. Yet there was Henderson with his fake glasses and strong confidence
attracting the women. He wasn’t out to be a couple as Cody had always
wanted for himself. However, where did a relationship get
anyone? Cody’s hand still hurt in memory of the last
dumping.
He started walking toward
Henderson when he heard a scream, and right to his side, a woman was
falling, perhaps tripping on a crack in the terracing. He
instinctively reached out to help, and he grabbed her by her outstretched
arms before she hit. As he clutched her, the red wine in her plastic
cup found his white pants at his crotch. The area was now
wet.
“Thank you,” she said,
and she saw his pants. “Oh, I’m so sorry.” She reached with her
party napkin to wipe the splotch when she pulled back awkwardly. “I’m
sorry. You better do it.” She handed him the
napkin.
“Thanks,” he
said.
“No, thank you. I
could have been hurt or scrapped up. I’m not used to heels.”
Her low-heeled silver shoes went well with her black silk pants and
turquoise top.
“No problem. At least
you’re okay.” Cody wiped more. “Wine’ll come out with carpet
cleaner spray,” he said. “Resolve. I have some at home.”
“It’s cranberry juice,
actually,” she said in a lilting accent. “Sorry, but if you give it
to me, I can have it dry cleaned.”
What was he supposed to
do? Take off his pants here? He shook his head and said,
“Thanks anyway.” He now noticed now that the blue cocktail napkin he’d used
for swabbing the wet wine had added a cobalt color to his pants. He
looked like a clown. She, on the other hand, striking, lithe, sure of
herself, could not be more different.
She stood before him with
concern and held out her hand. “My name’s August.”
“August?” he said astounded,
glancing at her from head to toe. “Really? That’s your
name? Unusual.”
“August Strindberg, no?” she
said. “A Swedish playwright.”
“Right,” he said.
“Sweden. Is that where you’re from?”
“Buffalo, New York,
actually.”
“Hey, I’m from
Rochester—incredible. Close enough, right? Cody,” he said, now
taking her hand and happily shaking it. How lucky was his night?
“Anyway, I’m sorry about the
spill,” she said.
“People trip all the time.
May I get you something more to drink?”
“No thanks. Actually,
I’m going outside for a quick—” She pantomimed smoking a joint.
“Want to join me?”
Normally he wouldn’t.
He smoked nothing, yet he hadn’t expected to meet August. This was
fate. He’d go with August anywhere.
Away from the pool, high in
the Monrovia hills overlooking the 210 Freeway and under a private gazebo
by the stairs, they sat. He took a hit and coughed so hard, he
thought he’d throw up.
“You
okay?”
“Yeah, sure,” though he
wasn’t. “So what did you do on this film?”
“Script supervisor,” she
said. He nodded. Now she looked familiar. “And you?”
“Best Boy,” he
replied.
She started laughing
hard. “Are you joking?”
“No, why?”
“What’s a Best
Boy?”
“An electrician, assistant
to the gaffer—kind of like a manager. The person who makes sure no
one’s electrocuted.”
“That’s
important.”
“Damn straight. If a
light’s ungrounded, and you touch it, zap. People can get
electrocuted, too, when you mix lights and water, like in those shower
scenes—gotta be careful. If you calculate wrong, circuits burn.
Lights can explode if there’s not a proper neutral.”
“Yikes.”
“Absolutely. It’s a
death trap out there. Watts, you know, equals volts times amps, and
if you have, say, three one-K lights—one thousand watt lights—” He stopped
when he realized she was laughing, and it all suddenly seemed funny to him,
too.
“Electricity does sound
bizarre—but it’s all about math,” he said. “Rules of
physics.”
“Good stuff,” she
said. He wasn’t sure if she was referring to the weed or to
physics.
“I guess so,” he
replied. He glanced down to notice the cut of her turquoise top
revealed a hint of a black lacy bra, one that pushed her two breasts
together so they touched. He’d love to be her bra.
“Funny we’ve never met until
now.” She offered the joint to him again and he took
it.
“You believe in
coincidence?” he asked.
“Sometimes. Not like
there’s an entity looking at six billion people on this planet guiding us
into anything, making us do shit. But maybe we have a dab of Harry
Potter, you know? A little magic beyond electrons becoming amps or
volts, whatever?”
He nodded. “Did you
see that elephant’s head in there?”
“I think it’s
horrible. To kill a perfectly good elephant to—”
“No, it’s all wood.
It’s carved,” he said, laughing again.
“No shit? Well then,
that’s different.” Her grin could carry tanks over the
Euphrates.
They chatted and smoked,
then smoked a little more until Cody heard a large gurgle. August
looked him straight in the eyes, smiling. She didn’t have to say a
thing because Cody knew. “That’s your gurgle,” he said. “You’re
hungry.”
“Yep, my biology,” she
said. “I hear there’re crab legs and lobster bisque. You like
that?”
“Of course.” He didn’t
like seafood in particular, but he stood. Right now he’d eat week-old
sushi and sand crabs. He took her hand. She squeezed his hand
gently back, which he took as a sign. Like two one-thousand-amp
fireflies if little bugs could have that much power, he and August were
meant to double their glow.
As they walked into the
courtyard, they approached the fountain with its spitting frogs, and it
simply seemed a perfect moment. He approached her face surely.
They kissed. She laughed to the sky like the goddess Demeter causing
water to flow, and August kissed him back even harder. He could be
the son of Zeus.
“You want to come to my
place later, and I can wash your pants?” she asked.
“Sure,” he said, “except
Henderson drove me here.”
“I’ll drive you back home
whenever,” she said.
He smiled so hard, he tilted
his head back and noticed the North Star. There indeed was something
magical about this place.
When they walked in
hand-in-hand, Henderson was near the door with some guy talking about
hockey and the feel of the puck under the control of your stick. When
Henderson saw them, he smiled, perhaps in amazement. “Hey, guy,” he
said to Cody. “Did you see that you’re peeing a rainbow?”
Cody looked down at his
pants again, grinned and nodded.
“You ready to go?” Henderson
asked.
“She’s taking me back,” said
Cody pointing to August.
“Good to hear,” said
Henderson. “Have we met?”
August frowned slightly as
if surprised, then said, “My name’s August. We met at lunch one day
on the set. I usually wear plainer clothes.”
“Ah, August,” he said now
noticing the depth of her neckline, too. “That’s right. Nice to
meet you again, August.” He winked at Cody, clearly happy for
him. Or was Henderson toying with him like some goofy frat
brother?
As they approached the
buffet choices on the center island and the black granite-topped kitchen
counters, August jumped ahead of him and grabbed two plates, handing him
one. A mountain of shrimp as white as Utah snow stood next to the red
boneyard of succulent crablegs on a platter. Cocktail sauce in a bowl
promised zing. Steamtrays of potatoes, greenbeans with garlic, and
lobster bisque all augured flavor. August smiled at each item as if
calculating each pleasure.
August said, “I’d better go
to the bathroom if I’m going to have room for this
stuff.”
“I’ll wait here for you,”
said Cody. She kissed him fully on the mouth again, then ran off down
the hallway. She passed Jane, who was coming from the bathroom and
said something like, “Hey, Beca,” and Jane approached the buffet
area. She looked at Cody again warily.
“Better than Vegas?” he
asked, pointing to all the food.
“Vegas can be as good as
this,” she said. “Even better.”
“That girl you passed just
now,” he said, “you deliver her paycheck each week, right? What did
you just call her?”
Jane turned to look down the
hallway, but August was gone. Even so, Jane nodded. “Rebecca,
you mean?”
“Rebecca? She told me
her name was August.”
“I don’t know. Her
middle initial is A, but I thought it was for Ann. Rebecca
Ann.”
At that moment, Cody saw
Henderson across the room talking with Roger Spillman at the piano.
Spillman was playing some light jazz while chatting with Henderson.
Goddamn it, Cody realized: Henderson knew. Cody didn’t care about
etiquette. He marched right over as Spillman was saying, “…which
appeal to me most—stories of betrayal and the like—things people really go
through. I’m proud of distributing those foreign
films.”
“Excuse me, sir, but I need
to talk to Henderson,” said Cody.
“Go ahead,” Spillman
said.
Cody and Henderson stepped
just a few feet out of the way when Cody said, “You told her, didn’t you,
about my need for names?”
“What?”
“Rebecca, isn’t that her
name?”
“August?” said Henderson
with some amusement.
“Did you tell her about my
notion of months and seasons?”
“Could be,” he said.
“She wanted to meet you. Is there a crime in that?”
“Are you talking about
Rebecca?” said Spillman from the piano.
“Yes,” said
Cody.
“A very dependable girl,”
said Spillman. “I’ve used her on my last five
films.”
“Is she from Buffalo, New
York?” asked Cody.
“Mankato, Minnesota, I
believe,” said Spillman. “A farm girl. Stern Swedish parents
right out of a Bergman film.”
Cody looked up to see
August/Rebecca standing some distance away, looking sheepish and
ashamed. Spillman waved her over. She looked at the front door
as if planning her escape, but she stepped up to them.
“So, you heard,” she
said.
“I don’t get it,” said
Cody. “People know you here as Rebecca.”
“I didn’t know how to meet
you. One day Henderson told me how.”
As he looked at Henderson
and Spillman, their smiles seemed to find such amusement that his stomach
knotted. Cody couldn’t stand it—maybe he shouldn’t have smoked—and he
ran for the door that Rebecca had considered. He didn’t look
back.
When he was by fountain, he
heard Rebecca say steps behind him, “Come on. Is it wrong to want to
meet you?”
“You were playing with my
belief system,” he said and faced her. He wondered if he’d know her
tomorrow let alone months or seasons from now.
“You have a sense of humor,
don’t you?” she said. “Or is everything serious?”
As he looked down at the
frogs spitting, he noticed his pants again, red and blue at his
crotch. She had a point.
“Sometimes you can’t wait
for fate,” she added. She held out her hand.
Henderson entered the
courtyard, and Cody pointed at him accusingly. “I’m pissed at you for
doing this!”
“You should be thanking
me.”
“My whole body is angry,”
said Cody. “I can’t just turn that off.”
Henderson nodded as if he
knew and turned back into the house.
Rebecca—that was her name,
names were important—again held out her hand.
“I don’t know,” said
Cody.
The next summer, as he lay
in a hospital bed, resuscitated after one of his electrical workers had
misplugged a neutral and Cody had suffered a severe shock, Rebecca ran into
the room, her eyes betraying her deepest fear. He was sorry for that.
He wasn’t sorry, though, that he’d used his hand whose fingers now didn’t
wiggle to take her hand under the stars, the moon, and the spirited sounds
of the fountain.
See
you next time,
--Chris
For
reviews or more information on either of my two books below, click on the
cover.
|
