L.A. Success (15 page)

11

The next morning, I lay in bed a long time, thinking about what I could do next. I wanted to clear up the situation with Helen, but the more I thought about it, the more ridiculous my possible explanations seemed. She'd never believe I was working as a P.I., following Sharkburt's lover around. I couldn't show her a single piece of evidence that I'd ever even talked to Spieldburt. And that brought me to my second problem: how long was I going to have to wait for him to contact me again?

I gave the big poodle a good walk around the neighborhood. After he had done his business, I put on the old hand condoms and scooped it up. As I was mashing it around to make sure there were no partly digested envelope scraps in there, a woman passed me on the sidewalk with her chihuahua. She looked at me sympathetically, as if this poo scooping somehow gave us a common denominator. I shrugged my shoulders, turned the gloves inside out to wrap up the steamy mound, and went on my way.

12

I had to turn the tables on this Sharkburt situation. Unfortunately, that meant I was going to have to see that uppity, wormy assistant out in Glendale. I prepared for a long stakeout and drove with the big poodle out near Spieldburt's studio, where I took up position at the outdoor Starbucks tables. I scribbled around on the blank sheets of paper I had brought, mainly as an excuse to wad them up and shoot them at a nearby trash can. Occasionally I would walk the dog around the area, always keeping an eye out for Grant's rusty, metallic-blue hatchback, but I didn't see it that day.

It dawned on me, as I was creeping home in the long line of exhaust fumes, that Sharkburt probably had many assistants, and that they probably took turns getting the coffee. Who knew how many days it would take for me to run into Grant again?

For the next three days I kept the same routine, hoping to see Grant. The amount of money I was spending on coffee was insane. It was like going to a bar, except I wasn't drunk so I realized how much cash I was blowing.

On the fourth day, Grant pulled up in his hatchback. I hadn't been able to put my finger on why I had got a weird vibe from his car, but now I realized: why was a guy who thought he was better than everybody driving a shitty car? It made him seem even more like a pretentious dickhead, because if he had really been as important as he thought, he wouldn't have been driving such a piece of garbage. In fact, maybe that was why he was so arrogant—he had to compensate for the car.

I stood up and waited for him to come over. I put a big, goofy grin on my face to hide my annoyance at having to talk to him again. I was looking right at him with my toothy smile, but he just walked on by without acknowledging me. I was sure he had seen me and was just making this as difficult as possible. I tied the big poodle to a table and followed him in.

I got right behind him and made several throat-clearing noises. He pretended to glance at something near me, and then, as if I had caught his attention, he looked at me, both eyebrows slightly raised, his eyes half closed and his head cocked to the side. Then, he exhaled loudly.

“Oh, it's you,” he said.

“Grant, hey! I thought I'd buy you a little coffee and tell you my idea for a movie that your boss will love.”

“You are buying the coffee, right?”

“Yep.”

“All right. But I make no promises,” he said, turning around to face forward. I waited for him to pay attention, but he just stood there as if I weren't trying to talk to him.

“I'm waiting,” he said without turning toward me.

“Okay. It's about a guy who is house sitting for a private detective. While he's taking care of the house, he goes snooping around in all the rooms, trying on the detective's clothes and messing with his stuff. Then, a mysterious man in a trench coat comes to the house, wanting to pay big money for a job. The house-sitting guy likes money, so he pretends to be the detective and takes the job. He ends up following this wild old nympho, and stuff gets crazy,” I said with as much enthusiasm as I could manage.

Grant moved up to the cash register and ordered. He didn't seem to have heard what I'd said.

“So what do you think?” I asked.

“People who have ideas like yours should never, ever write them down. You're still going to pay for this, aren't you?” he said, looking at me finally.

I paid for the four coffees and followed him out. I had to try one more time before he got away.

The big poodle was looking right at me all excited and wagging when I came out. In fact, every time I left his sight, even for a second, he would get super happy when I came back. I think his perception of time was all messed up. When I walked passed him toward Grant, he started whimpering and pulling at the table.

“Hey, wait just a minute,” I said to Grant. “Let me untie Ballsack here.”

Grant stopped and turned around to face me.

“You named your dog that?”

“Well, he is kind of hairy and roundish.”

“I have a masters in French literature. He's my favorite author,” he said. Then he looked off toward nothing and started spouting some French crap with one hand raised in the air. When he started speaking English again, he said something weird about how he had cried the first time he got through a pair of Oreos. Maybe I had misjudged this guy—he seemed more like a nutcase than a prick.

“Look,” he continued. “I don't meet very many people in this business who appreciate real literature, so forgive me if I thought you were just another fraud. You write out a few scenes and bring them to me to look over. If I like them, I'll show them to Steven.”

I thought about asking him why I couldn't talk to Spieldburt directly, but from the way Grant had said it, I knew I was supposed to act like he was doing me an enormous favor.

“Thank you. Thank you so much,” I said. He gave me his number, walked over to the hatchback and drove off.

13

I drove back to Dennis' house to make sure the guy I had called to fix the window pane had done his job. Everything looked good, and the new chain lock I had also asked for was in place. I told my dad to use it whenever I wasn't home. As long as the talking man didn't knock on the door and politely ask my dad if he could come in and steal something, I felt confident that this would keep him out.

Since Gertie hadn't called me in a while, I was wondering if she had decided to start using Tommy to give me messages. Giving a guy who had massive trouble talking important messages seemed stupid, but when I thought about it, I realized it was exactly the kind of thing Gertie would do. No matter what her idea was, I would be so excited to have successfully beaten it out of Tommy that I'd probably say yes to it.

I headed home and found Tommy in the yard cleaning off Gertie's picture on the real-estate sign with a paper towel and a squirt bottle. His right hand was bandaged up a little.

“Hi Tommy,” I said.

“Hhheh-lo,” he wheezed.

“Wow. Nice pronunciation.”

“Gairtee 'elp me. Hhheh-elp me.”

“Speaking of 'Gairtee'—she leave me any messages?”

 “Leaves,” he said. “I leave, you leave, he she it leaves.”

“I don't know how they talk in England. This is America, pal,” I said, but he just smiled away like he was proud of himself. “Messages? From Gertie? For me?” I asked, pointing to myself.

“No.”

Then something started seeming fishy to me. In fact, I'd been asking myself questions about this guy ever since I had learned of the concealment—the mushroom hiding. But now, I had something strange I could ask about.

“Say, Tommy—what's up with the bandage?” I asked, holding up my right hand and wiggling my fingers to show him what I meant.

“I hhhave tapping computair much. Hhhand has pain.”

I went inside and thought all this over for a while. Was my dad capable of irony? Of calling Tommy by the name of the main thing he couldn't do well? Tommy, the Talking Man? And why would Tommy want to break into Dennis' house? The only thing I could imagine was that Gertie was somehow involved in all this. Maybe she had recognized me during one of the stakeouts. Maybe she had been playing me for some time now. Maybe she had followed me out to Glendale...Why else would she not have called me over the last four days?

I didn't feel safe in my own house anymore. I was going to have to watch what I said from now on. I decided to start feeding him false information just in case I was right. I'd tell him I’d been spending my days at Universal Studios, Disney Land, or Dodger games.

After dinner, the Mushroom Concealer sat down on the couch with me. He had a piece of paper in his hand. It was folded over in half, but with one hand he opened it just enough to sneak peeks at what he had written. He did this when he thought I was looking at the TV.

“Hhhave you...evair bean to anozair coontree?” he asked.

“I accidentally crossed the Mexican border once.” He looked like he was trying to process this information, and when enough time had passed he nodded to himself. Then he waited a while and sneaked another peek at his sheet.

“Did you evair...no, no 'evair.' Did you go to the ceenaymuh...uh...last week?” 

“No, I was...,” I started to say, but stopped myself before I told him I was at the Starbucks all week. This guy was good. “Yes, I
did
go to the cinema. I enjoyed it a lot.” I waited for the eventual nod of comprehension.

“Hhhave you evair meet a famoos pairson?”

That was it. I jumped up from the couch and snatched the paper out of his bandaged hand.

“What are you after, Talking Man? I know you're hiding something!” I looked at the list of questions, written under the cryptic rubric “preterit versus pp”, whatever that meant. He wanted to know everything: “Have you ever lived abroad, gone scuba diving, had a car accident, or ridden a horse? Did you go on vacation, buy a car, see a concert, or eat Italian food—last week, last month, last year?” What was he going to do with this information?

He looked at me curiously. I realized that to him, the scene had looked more like this: Lonnie jumps up, takes the paper quickly, and then says “What blah blah blah, blah blah! I blah blah blah something!” This was a good thing because it gave me time to calm down.

“You got a pen?” I asked and made a gesture with my hand like I was writing something. He gave me an understanding look, fished a pen out of his pocket, and then looked happily at the sheet of paper to see what I was going to write.

“We don't say 'fay-MOOS.' It's like this,” I said and wrote “FAY-mus” on his sheet. He repeated it a couple of times. I gave the sheet back to him and sat down. He continued with the questions, and I lied every time. But I made like I didn't suspect anything because if he noticed I was on to him, I'd never be able find out what was going on.

Gertie didn't call me the next day either. I left her several messages saying I wanted to talk to her soon, but I got nothing. Once again it felt like I was waiting on everyone else to come up to the surface and pull me under—Sharkburt or Sharkgert. I had to take action. So far, the only person I was sure wasn't out to screw me was Grant, although I didn't exactly know why. That was the angle I was going to have to play, like it or not.

14

The next day I put on comfortable clothes to compliment my Arnold and headed over to the Barnes & Noble at the Pavilion Mall. I roamed around the three floors until I found the writing section. I rifled through the shelves, knocking a few books off in the process, until I found that movie-writing book I'd seen the other day by that Syd guy. I took it over to the coffee section, bought a big brew, and found an empty table surrounded by lots of hot chicks. I figured if the book started making me tired, I could look over and imagine the doing to wake me up.

I had thought this book was going to be about a bunch of fruity literature crap, but it didn't have any of that. This Syd guy had been in some sort of gang before he started writing the movies. I spent the entire day pouring over his book, and since I planned to come back and read more the next day, I stained the page I was on with a little coffee so I'd know where to start up again.

It didn't take me much longer to finish the book. I arrived early the next morning and hit it hard until the afternoon. I skipped over most of the examples because I'd already seen the movies, but what I paid attention to was the part where he said that one of the hardest things to do was not to describe too much stuff, because you didn't want to step on the director's toes. Finally, someone in life telling me to do less. The only part that seemed annoying was the format, but I figured Spieldburt wouldn't care as long as it was close.

15

I wasn't too far from Culver City, so I decided to visit my writer buddies and see if Gertie was going to drop by her office.

All the guys were typing away. I wanted to tell them that I understood what they were doing now, but that would've exposed my earlier fraud. I sat down at a table. I hadn't brought my writing stuff, so I just sat there looking over toward Gertie's office.

USC-Shirt Jake leaned back in his chair, took his fingers off the keyboard and wiggled them, then exhaled loudly. He tilted his head around in a circle like he was trying to stretch. He looked over and saw me doing nothing.

“You blocked?” he asked.

“Yeah. Out of ideas,” I said.

“Well, why don't you run what you have so far by me and I'll see what I can do.”

I didn't have any new ideas, so I started telling him everything that had happened to me and the situation I was currently in, without using my name of course. All the other guys had stopped typing and were listening as well.

“This could be an underworld drama, in which the hero infiltrates a hostile milieu and joins the enemy in order to learn what he needs to know to take them all down,” said Pee-Splattered, Old-Birkenstock Jerry.

“So, he has to become a sex-addicted danger to society and sleep with the old woman?” asked Pocket-Watch Eddy.

“Worse,” answered USC-Shirt Jake. “He has to become a real-estate agent. That way he can be around her as much as possible and find out more about the way she operates. Plus, while he's stringing on the director for more money, he can make sure they're really lovers. The director
said
that was why he wanted her followed, but the real motive could be very different. You may decide you want your character involved in something more complicated. It's something to think about, anyway.”