Mirror (2 page)

Upstairs, in his single-bedroom apartment, his coffee cup and his breakfast plate and last night’s supper plate were stacked in the kitchen sink, exactly where he had left them. That was one feature of living alone that he still couldn’t quite get used to. Through the open door of the bedroom, he could see the rumpled futon on which he now slept alone, and the large framed poster for Boofuls’ first musical
Whistlin’ Dixie
. He walked through to the bare white-painted sitting room, with its single antique sofa upholstered in carpetbag fabric and its gray steel desk overlooking the window. Jane had taken everything else. She and her new boyfriend had simply marched in and carried it all away, while Martin had carried on typing.

The boyfriend had even the nerve to tap the desk and ask Jane, ‘You want this, too?’

Without looking up from the tenth draft of his
A-Team
episode, Martin had said, in his BA Baracas accent, ‘Touch this desk and you die, suckah!’

Jane’s departure had brought with it immediate relief from their regular shouting contests, and all the tension and discomfort that had characterized their marriage. It had also given Martin the opportunity to work all day and half of the night without being disturbed. That was how he had been able to finish his screenplay for
Boofuls!
in four days flat. But after three weeks he was beginning to realize that work was very much less than everything. Jane might have been demanding and awkward and self-opinionated, but at least she had been somebody intelligent to talk to, somebody to share things with, somebody to hold on to. What was the point of sitting in front of the television on your own, drinking wine on your own, and laughing out loud at
E.R
. with nothing but a lunatic echo to keep you company?

Martin dropped his rejected screenplay onto his desk. The top of the desk was bare except for his Olivetti typewriter, a stack of paper, and a black-and-white publicity still of Boofuls in a brass frame. It was signed, ‘To Moira, with xxx’s from Boofuls’. Martin had found the photograph in The Reel Thing, a movie memorabilia store on Hollywood Boulevard: he had no idea who Moira might have been.

The wall at the side of his desk was covered from floor to ceiling with photographs and cuttings and posters and letters all of Boofuls. Here was Boofuls dancing with Jenny Farr in
Sunshine Serenade
. Boofuls in a sailor suit. Boofuls in a pretend biplane in a scene from
Dancing on the Clouds
. An original letter from President Roosevelt, thanking Boofuls for boosting public morale with his song ‘March, March, March, America!’ Then the yellowed front page from the
Los Angeles Times
, Saturday, August 19, 1939: ‘Boofuls Murdered. Doting Grandma Dismembers Child Star, Hangs Self’.

Martin stood for a long time staring at the headlines. Then, petulantly, he tore the newspaper off the wall and rolled it up into a ball. But his anger quickly faded, and he carefully opened the page out again and smoothed it on the desk with the edge of his hand.

He had always been entranced by 1930s Hollywood musicals, ever since he was a small boy, and the idea for
Boofuls!
had germinated in the back of his mind from the first week he had taken up screenwriting (that wonderful long-gone week when he had sold a
Fall Guy
script to Glen A Larson).
Boofuls!
had glimmered in the distance for four years now, a golden mirage, his one great chance of fame and glory.
Boofuls!
, a musical by Martin Williams. He couldn’t write music, of course, but he didn’t need to. Boofuls had recorded over forty original songs, most of them written by Glazer and Hanson, all of them scintillating, all of them catchy, and most of them deleted, so they wouldn’t be too expensive for any studio to acquire.
Boofuls!
was a ready-made smash, as far as Martin could see, and nobody had ever done it before.

Morris Nathan was full of shit. He was only jealous because
he
hadn’t thought of it and because Martin had shown his first signs of creative independence. Morris preferred his writers tame. That’s why people like Stephen J Cannell and Mort Lachman always came to him for rewrites. Morris’ writers would rewrite a teleplay four hundred times if it was required of them, and never complain. Not out loud, anyway. They were the galley slaves of Hollywood.

Although he never worked well when he was drinking, Martin went across to the windowsill and uncorked the two-liter bottle of chardonnay red which he had been keeping to celebrate Morris Nathan’s enthusiastic acclaim for the
Boofuls!
idea. He poured himself a large glassful and drank half of it straight off. Morris Nathan. What a
mamzer
.

He went across to the portable Sony cassette recorder which was all the hi-fi that Jane had left him, and rewound it to the beginning of ‘Whistlin’ Dixie’. Those gliding strings began again, that familiar introduction, and then the voice of that long-dead child started to sing.

All those times you ran and hid

Never did those things you should have did

All those times you shook in your shoes

Never had the nerve to face your blues

You were
–
Whistlin
’
Dixie!

Martin leaned against the side of the window and looked down into the next-door yard. It was mostly swimming pool, surrounded by bright green synthetic-grass carpeting. Maria was there again, on her sunbed, her eyes closed, her nose and her nipples protected from the morning sun by paper Sno-Cones. Maria worked as a cocktail waitress at the Sunset Hyatt. Her surname was Bocanegra, and she had thighs like Carmen Miranda. Martin had asked her for a date one day, about fifteen seconds before a huge Latin bodybuilder with pockmarked cheeks had appeared around the corner of her apartment building and scooped his arm around her and grinned at Martin and said, ‘
Cómo la va, hombre?
’

Martin had blurted out a quick ‘
Hasta luego
’, and that had been the beginning and end of a beautiful relationship.

He sipped wine and thought about getting back to the
A-Team
rewrite, but it was pretty hard to get into Murdock’s latest outbreak of nuttiness when he was feeling so down about
Boofuls!
He whispered the words along with the tape. ‘
You were – Whistlin’ Dixie!
’

Just then the telephone rang. He let it ring for a while. He guessed it was Morris, more than likely, wanting to know when the rewrite was going to be completed. The way he felt at the moment, January 2010. At last, however, Martin turned away from the window and picked up the receiver.

‘Hello? Martin Williams.’

‘Hey, Martin!’ said an enthusiastic voice. ‘I’m real glad I got in touch with you! This is Ramone!’

‘Oh, Ramone, hi.’ Ramone worked behind the counter at The Reel Thing, selling everything from souvenir programs for the opening night of
Gone With the Wind
to Ida Lupino’s earrings. It was Ramone more than anybody else who had helped him to build up his unique collection of Boofuls souvenirs.

‘Listen, Martin, something real interesting came up. A lady came into the store this morning and said she had a whole lot of furniture for sale.’

Martin cleared his throat. ‘I could use some furniture, sure. But actually I was thinking of taking a trip out to the Z-Mart furnishing warehouse in Burbank. I can’t afford anything antique.’

‘No, no, no, you’re not getting my drift,’ said Ramone. ‘This lady bought some of the furniture from Boofuls’ old house. There was an auction, you get it, after the kid was killed, and everything was sold. Drapes, tables, knives and forks. They even sold the food out of the refrigerator. Can you imagine what kind of a ghoul would want to eat a murdered kid’s ice cream?’

‘But what happened? This woman bought some of the furniture?’

‘Maybe not her personally, but her husband or her father or somebody. Anyway, she has, what, lemme see, I made a list here – she has two armchairs, a liquor cabinet, a sofa, four barstools, and a mirror.’

‘Are you going to sell it for her?’

‘No, not my scene, furniture. And – you know – apart from you, nobody’s too keen on Boofuls stuff. I told her to advertise in the paper. Maybe some sicko will want it.’

‘What are you trying to say? That I’m a sicko, too?’

‘Aw, come on, man, I know you’re legitimate. You should see some of the guys who come in to look through Carole Landis’ underwear, stuff like that.’

Martin said, ‘I’d like to see the furniture, sure, but I really don’t have too much spare cash right now.’

‘Well, that’s up to you,’ Ramone told him. ‘But if you’re interested, the lady’s name is Mrs Harper, and she lives at 1334 Hillrise. There’s no harm in taking a look, is there?’

‘All right, I guess not, thanks for thinking of me.’

‘No sweat, man. Whenever I hear the name Boofuls, I think of you.’

‘I hope that’s a compliment.’

‘
De nada
,’ said Ramone, and hung up.

Martin finished his wine. He knew what he ought to do: and that was to sit down dutifully at his typewriter and zip another sheet of paper into the platen and carry on writing the
A-Team
. However much he disagreed with Morris; however chagrined he felt for Morris’ reaction to
Boofuls!
, Morris was an industrious agent with matchless contacts, and he made his writers money. If Martin didn’t finish this rewrite by tomorrow morning, it was quite conceivable that Morris would never be able to sell him to Stephen J Cannell Productions ever again.

But, damn it, he was so dispirited, and so damn sick of writing slick and silly dialogue. An expedition to Hillrise Avenue to look over some of Boofuls’ original furniture might be just what he needed to lift his spirits. Just to
touch
it would be something – to touch the actual furniture that little Boofuls had sat on himself. It would make him seem more real, and Morris Nathan more imaginary, and just at the moment Martin couldn’t think of a better tonic than that.

Hillrise Avenue was a steeply sloping street up by the Hollywood Reservoir. The houses had been avant-garde in 1952; today they were beginning to show signs of shabbiness and wear. Hillrise was one of those areas that had never quite made it, and was resignedly deteriorating for the eventual benefit of some smart real-estate developer.

Martin parked his Mustang with the rear wheels cramped against the curb and climbed out. From here, there was a wide, distant view of Los Angeles, smoggy today, with the twin tombstones of Century City rising above the haze. He mounted the steep concrete steps to 1334, sending a lizard scurrying into the undergrowth.

The house was square, strawberry pink, with Spanish balconies all the way around. The garden around it was dried up and scraggly. The paths were overgrown with weeds, and most of the yuccas looked sick. The roof over the front porch was heaped with dead, desiccated vines, and there was a strong smell of broken drains.

He rang the doorbell. It was shrill, demanding, and distant, like a woman shrieking in the next street. Martin shuffled his Nike trainers and waited for somebody to answer. ‘
All those times you shook in your shoes
,’ he sang softly. ‘
You were – Whistlin’ Dixie!
’

The front door opened. Out onto the porch came a small sixtyish woman with a huge white bouffant hairstyle and a yellow cotton mini-dress. She wore two sets of false eyelashes, one of them coming wildly adrift at the corner of her eye, and pale tangerine lipstick. She looked as though she hadn’t changed her clothes or her makeup since the day
Sergeant Pepper
had been released.

Martin was so startled that he didn’t quite know what to say. The woman stared at him, her left eye wincing, and eventually said, ‘Ye-e-es? Are you selling something?’

‘I, uh –’

‘I don’t see anything,’ the woman remarked, peering around the porch. ‘No brushes, no encyclopaedias, no Bibles. Do you want to clean my car, is that it?’

‘Actually, I came about the furniture,’ said Martin. ‘You’re Mrs Harper, right? Ramone Perez called me from The Reel Thing. He’s kind of a friend of mine. He knows that I’m interested in Boofuls.’

Mrs Harper stared at Martin and then sniffed, pinching in one nostril. ‘Is tha-a-at right? Well, if you’re interested in Boofuls, you seem to be just about the only person in the whole of Hollywood who
is
. I’ve taken my furniture to every auction house and movie memorabilia store that I can
find
, and the story’s always the same.’

‘Yes?’ said Martin, wanting to know what it was – this story that was always the same.

‘Well,’ pouted Mrs Harper, ‘it’s
macabre
, that’s what they say. I mean, there’s a market in motion picture properties. The very coffin that Bela Lugosi lay in when he first played Count Dracula. The very bolt that went through Boris Karloff’s neck. But nobody will
touch
poor little Boofuls’ furniture.’

Martin waited for a moment, but Mrs Harper obviously wasn’t going to volunteer anything more. ‘I was wondering – maybe I could come in and take a look at it.’

‘With a view to purchase?’ Mrs Harper asked him sharply; then fluttered her left eye; then squeezed it shut and said, ‘Darn these lashes! They’re a new brand. I don’t know what you’re supposed to keep them on with. Krazy Glue, if you ask me. They will …
curl up
. I’ve seen centipedes behave themselves better, and live ones at that.’