Stoner & Spaz (7 page)

The Tibetan scrolls undulate again, but there isn’t a breeze. The hair on my arms stands up. I wonder if Marcie is talking about me, too.

Colleen puts her glass down, careful to keep it on the woven coaster. “How long did it take you to make the whole movie, anyway?”

There it is again. When we first sat down it was like Colleen was reading questions off note cards. But now she really sounds kind of curious.

Marcie frowns as she does a little math in her head. “Oh, a couple of months, I guess. But a lot of that was logistical: tracking people down, getting to where they were. I sure shot a ton of film I didn’t use. But that’s part of it. If people are too nervous, it’s no good. If everybody’s real slick, the whole thing looks rigged. They had to trust me, you know? They had to feel that I wasn’t going to exploit them for my own ends.” She reaches over and pats my arm. “You should make one of your own.”

“Yeah, right. The only things I know anything about are my grandma and the movies.”

“You should do high school,” Colleen says. “Call it
Weirdos Galore.
”

Marcie stands up. “That’s a good idea. Let me show you the wonders of iMovie. Maybe you’ll get inspired.”

In the study, Marcie reaches into a drawer and comes up with a small camera. “I can loan you this old Sony. It’s analog, okay? But don’t worry about that. I’ve got an adapter that’ll digitize it so we can feed it right into the iMac and edit it. Then we’ll turn it back into analog so we can play it on a VCR.”

“Say that in English.”

“For right now, shoot a minute or two of film.” She offers me the camera.

“If you need two hands for this, there goes my new career.”

“One’ll do.”

I put my fingers, the ones that work, through the strap on the side. “So what should I shoot — you?”

“Me. The room. Colleen. It doesn’t matter.”

I try peering through the viewfinder. “Like this?”

“That’s all there is to it. Now push that button.”

Easier said than done. “I can’t.”

“If you have to, rest the camera on your bad arm.”

“It won’t go that high.”

“Try putting the camera on the desk. Then push the button.”

So I do what she says. “Is it working?”

“Is the red light on?”

“Uh-huh.”

She waves one hand. “Now pick it up and pan around for a little bit, so I’ve got some film to work with.”

The camera has a little foldout window on the side that shows me what I’m shooting, so I don’t always have to use the viewfinder. I walk over to a coffee table and pan Marcie’s collection of little carvings: lizards, birds, snakes, and a few hearts made out of amber and jade. When I get to Colleen she, of course, gives me the finger.

When Marcie signals, I turn the camera off and follow her back to her desk, where she mutters about firewire ports and iLinks, taps her keyboard a couple of times, and shows my movie.

“Gee, it’s shaky, isn’t it?”

“Uh-huh. It doesn’t have any built-in stabilization. You might have to get a tripod, especially if you want to use the zoom.”

I look down at my left side. “Nobody’s gonna want to talk to me.”

Marcie says she thinks they’ll perk right up in front of a camera. “It’s
The Real World
to them. It’s
Survivor.
They’re the digital generation.”

“And if they don’t,” Colleen adds, “they’ll find themselves driving down to Main Street to get their, uh, school supplies.”

“But what do I ask them?”

“Start with the obvious. Do they like high school.”

“Marcie, who’s going to say they like high school?”

“Do you?”

“No. Well, wait a minute.” I glance at Colleen. “Lately it’s been a little better.”

“See, now I want to know why. And so does the guy watching your movie.”

“But most kids aren’t going to say that. They’re going to say they’re scared.”

“Because . . .”

“Does the word
guns
ring a bell?” Colleen says.

“A trick our teacher shared with us is to just ask questions that you’d like to have answered.”

“Actually, I’d like to know what it’s like to be a tough guy.”

Colleen says she knows who’d answer that one in a hot minute, and that makes me remember Ed, something I don’t like to do.

Marcie starts to fiddle with the camera. “And you can’t be the only one who wants to know things like that. So you talk to enough kids and you hope they’re honest with you. Then a little editing, and you’re home free.” She leans over her blue iMac and taps a key. “Now watch this.”

Up comes a kind of control panel: a grid with eight slide-sized compartments, a bar at the bottom, and an empty screen.

A few more taps and mouse adjustments and on that shelf on the right are some stills — my feet, Marcie’s smiling face, her glass-enclosed knickknacks.

“This is the movie essentially. If you hit Play now, it’ll roll out just the way you shot it. But if you want my face to go before your feet, here’s all you do. Just drag it down to this time line”— She points to the bar across the bottom of the screen —“and it’s done. Now when you show the film, I’m first. If you want that coffee table first, drag it down. Couldn’t be simpler.”

“So if I interview ten kids, I can put anybody I want in any order?”

“For maximum effect. Exactly.”

At the door Marcie hugs us both good night. Colleen and I start down the walk. I clutch the camera and some extra film.

“That was pretty cool.”

Colleen lights a Marlboro. “It was all right. I got a little tired of being cordial. Let’s go dancing.”

“Are you kidding?”

“No. Let’s go to the Aorta Club. Anybody who hasn’t been to the Aorta is wasting his life. I know that because it’s full of Buddhists. Dancing Buddhists.”

“Colleen, I can’t dance.”

“Bullshit. I’ll teach you.”

“No, I mean one leg is shorter than the other.”

“Everybody dances like that at the Aorta. You’ll fit right in.”

I glance across the street at the still-dark house. And the locked garage. “Grandma doesn’t . . .” I stop.

“Grandma doesn’t what, Bancroft?”

I hang my head. “Doesn’t let me stay out on a school night.”

Colleen points. “If you don’t put that cerebral-palsied ass of yours in my car right now, I am never speaking to you again.”

“I better at least leave her a note.” I lead the way to the front porch, then dig in my pocket. “In case she wakes up.”

“How did I know,” Colleen says, coming up behind me, “that you’d have a little gold pencil and a notepad.”

“Grandma gave ’em to me.” I’m trying to write. “Leave me alone.”

She puts both arms around my waist. “No way. Guys with little gold pencils get me hot.”

I take as long as I can to slip the piece of paper under the door because I know Colleen is just goofing around, but I like the feel of her arms around me, anyway. I’m also thinking that this is the plan Grandma and I made: if I’m ever out late, I have to call or leave a note. We talked about it like I was a regular kid, with regular arms and legs. A kid with buddies or a girlfriend. A kid in the Drama Club. A kid with a car. And we both knew it would never happen. I’d never be late, ever. And if something at the Rialto went past ten o’clock, she waited up for me.

“Hey!” Colleen stops hugging and hits me. “Are we going or not?”

I limp to the car, where I try to open the door for her.

“That doesn’t work anymore.” She vaults into the ripped seat. “But yours does.”

I inspect the ancient VW convertible, one of those where the top just folds down. I can see the rusted frame. Tattered pieces of canvas cling to it like the remains of sails on the
Flying Dutchman.

“What do you do when it rains?”

“Get wet.” She leans across and pushes the door open for me. I turn sideways, fall into the seat, get my left leg in first, grope for the seat belt.

“What are you thinking?” she asks. “That you’re gonna go flying out and hurt yourself?”

“Very funny. Listen, how am I going to get in this place? I’m not exactly twenty-one.”

“Don’t worry. Number one — I know everybody. Number two — they stamp the shit out of your hand so nobody’ll sell you a drink.”

As she pumps on the gas pedal and swears, I look up at the big oaks that flank the street. The Santa Anas are still blowing, the same winds that tear through Raymond Chandler’s novels. In the movie version of
The Big Sleep,
Martha Vickers tells Humphrey Bogart that he’s not tall, and he replies, “I try to be.”

When we finally get going, I will myself to relax. I’m sitting in a car; I look like anybody else.

We tear down Mission toward the freeway, past the local hardware store where the clerks know your name, past the coffee shop where somebody always sits writing in a journal. When we catch a red light at Orange Grove, a Volvo pulls up beside us. In the back sits a kid maybe twelve or thirteen. He’s got his baseball hat on backward. Both ears are covered by headphones, and he’s rocking out to something his parents hate.

Then he looks over and I swear to God I can read his thoughts: Oh, man. I want some chick in a thrashed ride to chauffeur my ass around someday.

I’m not cool,
I say to myself,
but I try to be.

Half an hour later we make our way up a dark street somewhere in Hollywood. Motorcycles leak oil onto a couple of patchy lawns. Every telephone post blooms with posters for bands and clubs.

I’m half-scared, half-stoked. I’m usually in bed by this time. “Do you think your car will be all right?”

“Unless there’s a clever band of thieves who target old, rusted-out convertibles.”

Just then two people get out of a VW van. He sports a Mohawk, unlaced boots, army fatigues; she settles for chains from her nose to both ears and a mini-shroud. As the couple angles across the street, I feel myself tense. I pin Marcie’s camera to my side with my bad arm; that way the thief will be too disgusted to steal it.

Then the guy waves. “Hey, Colleen!”

“Hey, Ricky.”

We stop and let them intercept us.

“Where’s Ed?”

“Who knows.”

Ricky looks me up and down. “Who’s this?”

“Filmmaker.”

“No shit! What are you doin’ down here, man?”

“I, uh, you know. Scouting for locations.”

“All right.” He holds out his clenched fist and, thanks to MTV, I know enough to tap it with mine. “What happened to your leg?”

Before I can answer Colleen says, “He laid his Harley down on the freeway.”

Ricky grimaces. “Ouch. At least you were wearin’ a helmet.” Then he motions to Colleen and they drift away.

I smile at his girlfriend, who has her gravedigger’s makeup on. Nothing. Out of the corner of my eye I see Colleen shake her head and shrug. I hear her say, “Sorry.”

Ricky trudges toward me. “Put me in your film, man. Make me feel like I didn’t get all dressed up for nothing.”

I lift the camera. “Say something.”

“Uh.” He appeals to Miss Mortal Coil, but she’s no help. Finally he waves and says, “Hi, Mom.”

When they’re far enough ahead so they can’t hear I repeat, “‘He laid his Harley down on the freeway?’”

“Why be a spaz when you can be a wounded warrior?”

“Well, there’s always the truth, that quaint concept.”

“You are what you say you are.”

“What does Ricky say he is?”

“Ricky? He likes to be the first on his block.”

“First on his block to what?”

“You name it. Some new drug: he’ll take it. Some new club: he’s been there. He’ll, like, drive to San Diego to hear a band that might turn out to be the new Hole or some guy who might be the next Gavin Rossdale. He likes to be able to say, ‘Oh, yeah. I saw him at Jugular when he was just starting.’”

“What about her?”

“Cindy? She’s with Ricky.”

We turn down an alley that’s a gauntlet of people smoking cigarettes. I feel their eyes on me. On my bad leg. And on my camera. Colleen nods to some black guys, and I slow down to watch a couple of riot girls giggling and wrapping their wallet chains around each other’s wrists.

“Hey,” one says, “what’s up?”

Colleen waves them away. “Not tonight.”

I read the names on the posters: Skanic, Wet, Polar Goldie Cats, Cea Jacuzzi. I like the bright colors and the way new posters have been half stripped away so the old ones underneath show. I raise the camera and run off a few yards of film.

Colleen comes back for me and hustles us past a little line and right up to the guy at the door, who stands underneath a tiny neon sign:
AORTA
.

“Hey, Viper,” Colleen says. “What’s shakin’?”

Viper peers at me through his dreadlocks. “Who’s he?”

“He’s making a movie.”

“What happened to you, man?”

Colleen answers for me. “Fell when he was rock climbing up at Joshua Tree.”

Viper grimaces as he steps aside to let us in.

As I hobble down the stairs, I say, “As reckless as I am, it’s a wonder I can walk at all.”

Colleen spreads her arms like a ringmaster. “Don’t tell your grandma, but you are as of right now a certified clubgoer.”

Aorta has three rooms — three chambers, I guess, like an imperfect heart. Behind door number one is a small room with a makeshift bar and old drywall stacked in one corner. There are a couple of amps in the corner of room number two, but the crowd is in the back listening to a band named Clinical Trials.

All the guys on the rickety stage either have their shirts off or they wear thrashed tank tops. Their skin glows white. The lead singer mutters the lyrics ominously, like a postal worker with an Uzi in his gym bag.

“If this was an old cowboy movie,” I say, “I’d lurch over to the bar, order a sarsaparilla, and the whole place would get real quiet.”

“You’d better pee instead.”

“What kind of cowboy movies have you been watching?”

“Before it gets totally crowded, smart-ass.” She points. “You’re this way, I’m that way. Meet you in a minute.”

I get into a short line leading into the men’s room. The three other guys leaning against the wall look like Indolence, Idleness, and Sloth. Guitar players trickle in through some invisible back door, clutching their instruments like enormous rare artifacts. On the wall across from me someone has scrawled:
Its not How high are you? Its Hi how are you?