The Woman Who Married a Cloud: The Collected Short Stories (32 page)

Once in a while the genuine article comes on—a mystic who really does have a profound and intimate vision of life’s mysteries, or a fortune teller who takes one look and says three things about you you didn’t want to hear. But they are rare, and the rest of my guests are dangling high tension wires of energy, plots, messages, secrets from the beyond.

The show is a success because I like interviewing these people, like hearing their stories and whatever else they have to say. Someone once asked Ronald Reagan why he thought he was so popular with the American people. He said it was because people sensed he genuinely liked them. That’s how I feel about the folks who come to
Off the Wall.
I like them and want to hear their stories.

The only thing that kept me even partially afloat after Glenn’s death was the show. Mad or not, the guests are invariably charged with a special kind of energy when they walk through the studio doors, here to sell turtle ranches on Pluto or talk about the Omelette People who inhabit their backyard. But what often pulled me through to another day was realising, through the show, how exhilarating and varied life is. Things may be pretty damned shitty for you right now, but in the next moment or hour they will be interesting or at least changing. All I had to do was look at the list of visitors on the show and I’d know that if there was a man who lived underneath a horse, or a woman who believed her clock was Elvis Presley, then there had to be other places for me, other possibilities, another man who would say “Yes, come here: we have things to talk about.”

So I didn’t buy a gun and I didn’t take pills, but, one night when I realized I’d been looking at my hands for too long a time, I
did
get out my address book and call the man my brother-in-law thought I’d get along with.

Why the hell not?

Michael was hesitant at first, but I heard a curiosity in his voice as well that said he’d be willing to take one tentative step in my direction if I didn’t move too quickly and “flush” him like a bird when it stands in front of you.

“Do you like a good hot fudge sundae?”

“You’re talking my language.”

“Let’s meet at C. C. Brown’s on Hollywood Boulevard.”

I tape
Off the Wall
early in the afternoon two days a week so I can have those evenings free. The night I walked into the ice cream parlour, ironically the last thing I heard on the street before going through the door was the beginning of Cabaret Voltaire’s eerie funk song “Sensoria” coming from someone’s car: the theme song to
Off the Wall.
I didn’t know if that was a good or bad omen.

There were two men sitting alone in booths. One was half-hidden behind a newspaper, the other looked at the door while running a finger inside the collar of his shirt. The man behind the paper looked fat, the other playing with his collar too nervous. Neither looked promising.

“Hey, Ingram York!”

The greeting came from behind. The voice sounded very familiar. As I turned to meet Michael Billa, I saw Willy Snakespeare instead. Willy was a regular on my show and would come on at a moment’s notice when we needed a chatty “character” to liven things up. He was funny, could talk about all kinds of things, and was crazy as they get. He lived with two boa constrictors named Laverne and Surly that he’d bring to the studio whenever he came. I liked Willy, in small doses, but didn’t need him that night. Billa knew what I did for a living, but at our first meeting I didn’t want living scary proof of the kind of people I voluntarily surrounded myself with daily.

“I would’ve brought the snakes with me if I’d known I was going to bump into you!”

“Hiya, Willy. I’ll see ya, Willy.”

“How ’bout an ice cream, Ingram? I just got my pension cheque and want to treat you to an ice cream.”

“Thanks, Willy, but I’m meeting someone here. Can I have a rain-check on it?”

He looked at me the way a duck looks at you—to the side and with full attention. “I-smell-smoke! You got a date waiting, huh?”

“A friend.”

He smiled. “You ever hear the story about Jack Nicholson? He was at a party where this beautiful woman walks up to him and says ‘Hiya, Jack, wanna dance?’ Jack gives her the once-over and says, ‘Wrong verb, honey. You’re using the wrong verb!’ ”

Willy told the story loudly. When he finished, someone behind us laughed loud and appreciatively. I turned and saw the fat man, newspaper down, his face wrinkled in a big smile. Maybe he wasn’t fat—just big, large everything. A weightlifter, or a one-time football player? When he looked at me he waved and gestured to come over. Willy patted my back and walked out.

Michael half-rose from his seat and put out a giant hand to shake.

“You’re so big. You sound mid-size on the phone.”

“Speaking of voices, say ‘Hello. The Aliens Have Landed.’ ”

I was surprised. “You listen to my show?”

“Sometimes. It’s a little rich for my blood, but I like the way you handle it; you treat the people like they’re real and not rare tropical fish.”

I sat down. “Some of them
are
tropical fish. They just grow legs so they can walk to the show.

“When I came in before, I didn’t know which one was you.”

He turned palms up. “I always forget to tell people to look for the big guy. I’m not hard to find if I say that.

“But I’ll tell you something—I forget I’m tall. When I was a kid, we had a golden retriever that must have weighed eighty pounds. Big damned dog. But
she
was convinced she was as delicate and petite as a French woman. She’d wrestle her way onto the smallest chair in the house and lie there uncomfortably, pretending the seat suited her fine when it was obvious she needed to be stretched out on the couch. That’s me. I buy shoes that pinch my feet, can’t believe it when they tell me I’m a fifty-six long suit ... In my heart I’m Edith Piaf.”

The sundaes came and I told him about working on the show and some of its more colourful characters. He was a fidgety man, but despite playing with silverware or pushing his water glass back and forth across the table, there was no doubt he gave you his full attention.

When it came time to talk about himself, the fidgeting stopped and everything about Michael Billa sort of slowed to a chat-by-the-fire pace. He had things to say and knew you were going to like them and want more, but you had to fix your pace to his and not show impatience. At first I thought it a rude mannerism—giving you the feeling he couldn’t wait for you to finish so he could say
his
piece. But after being with him a while, I realized Michael did everything impatiently
but
talk. He had no other hobbies. Talk was his fishing, his stamp collecting, the great long meal at an expensive restaurant with friends. It was the only thing that allowed him to relax.

He ran a successful men’s store downtown, “The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari”, and spent most of his time working. He drove a compact car, lived in a well-furnished but small house in Larchmont, and didn’t seem to do anything in his spare time besides read.

We ended the evening at a golf driving range in West Hollywood. I hadn’t driven golf balls since junior high school, but like bowling or roller skating, it was a gas to go back to something so thoroughly
then
and look at it over your shoulder as if it were a passenger in the back seat of your car.

Michael took off his jacket after smacking the first few balls. He was even bigger than I’d originally thought.

“Did you play football?”

He shook his head. “People always ask me that, but I didn’t. I’ve never been a good athlete, but I enjoy doing things like this. As a kid I was just fat. You know, the kind who has three candy bars in his lunch bag, then goes home after school and eats a big piece of chocolate cake? God, I was a mess.

“As a kid you want so to be loved, but then you do just about everything possible to make yourself unlovable. Eat too much, take too few baths, whine ...” He tee’d off on a ball that sailed up across the distance. “Thank God for Clinton.”

“Who’s Clinton?”

He looked at me as if I’d asked a very personal question. There was a pause while he held the golf club just off the ground, twitching it back and forth.

“A kid who saved my life. More than once.”

The bar at the Westwood Muse Hotel is a favourite hang-out of Los Angeles radio people. I suggested it after the driving range. Michael smiled and said he didn’t drink but liked a good bar.

“How come, if you don’t drink?” I was thinking of his nervousness, his already noticeable inability to sit still for more than a few minutes. A good bar doesn’t come to you for at least an hour: you have to relax into it, let it take your hand and show you its best features—its clientele, the music, where it’s most cosy.

“Because a good bar is where you’re comfortable enough to tell a good story. Even when it takes hours.” Michael was drinking a large glass of ginger ale and grenadine.

We were sitting in the corner by that tank full of blue fish watching a man and wife enter the room. He was very solicitous, but she, a spectacular redhead, looked like the wrath of God. I mentioned that to Michael, who nodded.

“I was just thinking that! She looks as if he’s just told her there’s another woman.

“One of the most important women in my life had red hair. Eddie Devon; the first woman I ever fantasized about. At fifteen, she had a body that would have sent monks howling. Eddie Devon even chewed gum sexily! Ever noticed how teenage girls chew gum like they’ve got a mouth
full
of dirty, pink and erotic? The colour of this drink.” He held up his glass. “Everyone in our school watched her and she knew it. There’s a pride in young women that makes them glow—they know they’re the centre of attention and the world cares. Maybe down deep they also know it won’t last more than a few years, so they revel in it while they can.

“Whatever, Eddie drove us all nuts, including fat guy Mike Billa. You know what it’s like being called ‘Lard Ass’ in front of an Eddie Devon? The worst, Ingram. It’s got to be one of the mortal wounds of childhood. But we’re tough then; so long as I could feel her breezes, then I put up with insults from the other kids. Once in a while she’d even say something nice to me, or smile, which cancelled out a good chunk of the pain.

“God, how long has it been since I thought of that girl? Probably because you reminded me of Clinton before.”

Michael took a long pull on his drink and clunked it back down on the table with a smile. “I have to tell you a Clinton and Eddie story.

“His name was Clinton Deix.” (Michael pronounced the surname “Dikes”.) “He lived down the street from me in Saint Deborah’s Home for Orphans. All the kids who lived at St Deb’s were tough, but Clinton was there about five minutes before he’d kicked every bad ass in the place and become boss. Know what he called himself? ‘The Prince of Fingers and Toes’. Don’t ask me why. He came from New York, but I never got the details straight about how he’d ended up in St Deborah’s, except he told me his parents were dead.

“He was very, very crazy. Probably schizophrenic, but we didn’t know big words like that then, so we just thought he had a lot of bad moods. Clinton was the kind of crazy where if he got into a fight, he’d pick up whatever was nearest and bash the guy on the head with it. I saw him do it. A lot of kids in my town were tough, but they knew trouble when they saw it. Clinton was crazy as a fly in a jar.”

“What a strange image. You were friends? I thought you said you were a loser.”

Michael nodded and closed his eyes. “I was, but you know how some kids pick up on each other for no reason other than strange chemistry? Basically from the day we met, Clinton and I were buddies. The orphanage was right down the street from my house; ten minutes away. We walked home from school together his first day because we found ourselves going in the same direction. When we got to my house he patted my shoulder and said he would see me tomorrow. The next morning he was waiting outside my gate, so we walked together and that was that.

“At lunchtime that second day, Anthony Fanelli called him a ‘Nazi’ and Clinton stuffed a sandwich in Anthony’s ear. Egg salad. To this day I can remember that yellow and white glop oozing down the side of Fanelli’s head.” Billa hunched forward and put his hands together excitedly. “You see, Anthony was tough, but when Clinton stabbed him with the sandwich, it was so fast and violent Fanelli got that scared look in his eye, like maybe I don’t want to put my spoon in
this
pot, thank you very much.”

Billa told the story with such relish and remembered glee that I could clearly imagine Fanelli’s expression; the shock at being instantly beaten, the shame of knowing you’re about to back down in front of
everyone.

“What’d Fanelli do?”

“Looked straight ahead and ate the other half of his sandwich. Then Eddie Devon walked by with her crowd and stopped to look at him. She made sure people were listening, and said in a bitchy voice, ‘You’ve got egg on your face, Anthony.’

“Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Clinton hold up his hand and snap his fingers for her attention. We all looked at him because the deal was between them now, although she didn’t know it yet: the Queen of school vs. the Prince of Fingers and Toes.

“She looked at him. Clinton reached over and stuck his finger in the egg salad that was still on Anthony’s face. When he had a big gob of the stuff, he put it in his mouth and said to Eddie, ‘It tastes like you.’ ”

Michael and I began hanging around together. Although he often talked too much, I still enjoyed being with him. His greatest qualities were an unconscious kindness and optimism that both awed and shamed me. Before meeting him, I’d thought of myself as a generally decent, fair person who was willing to give where it was needed and not be too quick to judge others. But Michael saw things so sunnily that it was rare when he “judged” at all; he liked the meals life cooked for him, so he ate them with few complaints and the big appetite of a hungry kid. He was one of the only adults I knew who was genuinely happy with his life, notwithstanding the normal ups and downs we all go through from Monday to Sunday. Being around him was helpful, even inspiring at times. When I told him that, he readily agreed.