Betrayed by F. Scott Fitzgerald (6 page)

Everybody rose and went into the kitchen to get another drink, or to the bathroom. Some people strolled across to Bunny’s. I saw Ribbo go up and assure Johnny Harmon that he had the freak vote. Everyone assumed Ribbo had extensive influence that way, because he had an enormous underground comic collection, which he kept on his pad’s cubic version of a coffee table just like Professor Roachfield keeps
Overview
on his. Whenever Ribbo got into a situation where he felt his power waning, he would begin muttering, “Guns, money, men, guns, money, men, …” Harmon was moving freely through the crowd. Fortunately there were no babies for him to kiss. Then he talked to Edith and Sharon for a while. Smiling at him, they sat Indian-style on the floor, nodding, as he tried to organize their bloc. The three of them made an attractive picture; and he appeared magnetic, larger than life. As I snapped down the last projector facet and readied reel two, Eldon looked over to me, “Is she coming?” I don’t know what’s going to happen. Am I uncommitted? How can I gain a little magnetism? Even a little static electricity? How do people get larger than life?

A “Bullshit!” or two came from the audience as the Alien Visitor suddenly sprouted man-size, and committed the first overt act of rural violence. For a minute the beer-traffic in the room slowed as people received their dollar’s worth from the film.

A thin line of light from the door projected Evelyn’s shadow as she returned from Bunny’s where she’d been checking on sleepy Zeke. Smoke rose through the projector beam in occasional streams, and Evelyn smiled to see the closeup of the Alien Visitor’s profile: like Abe Lincoln with scales.

“He’s asleep.” she whispered to me.

“Good.”

“What a peculiar film.”

“Yeah isn’t it great? Want some more wine?”

“No, I’ll wait.”

“Here, Evelyn, sit here in the booth.” I cleared a little place for her on the edge of the desk. As she sat down, some of my books fell off the other side. One weighs some things against others, I suppose.

Fish-man from outer space had grown to his fully spurned fifty feet and made huge strides toward Rome, as all young upcomers in Italy should. There was a shot of the hustle and bustle of downtown Rome with the many citizens going about their daily business in the real world. It became pretty obvious by now, as members of the audience passed the ninth round of beer among themselves, that the Alien Visitor was not going to make it; this is just not his world. All the moviegoers’ hair reflected the blinking grey light from the screen, as the projector, oversize in the crowded room, whirred and sputtered, in a small continuous fit of heat and light.

It was at that moment when Lenore stepped into the plank of hall light from the doorway and took a hold of my elbow. Firmly. Behind her in the hall was friend Gary, the pharmacist. They were overdressed, Gary wearing a sealskin overcoat for some reason, and I saw, not staying. Lenore, looking more at my hand than at me and still holding my elbow, pressed the ring down into the flesh of my palm as if she were putting out a cigarette and Smokey the Bear was watching. They walked to the stairwell and turned. “Think it over, Larry,” was all she said, leaving. Probably for Rome.

What could I have said? I actually mean this, what could I have said? Ouch? She had looked perfect in a lime-colored dress, light as air, under which as perfection allows there must have been lime underwear. I confess a sublime ignorance of what is supposed to be done. Would I go then years from that night to her front door only to be invited in and expected to ask questions about her babies? How’s little Gary, Jr.?

Turning back into the room I saw that Eldon had witnessed this little exchange, and he turned his back on the film and sat with his feet on the roof. I shut the door and walked carefully over to Bunny’s, fell on the sofa and lit a cigarette from her plexiglass cigarette box. The initials K.B.L. were cut nicely in the top. Superman once compressed a piece of coal in his bare hand into a diamond to impress a witchdoctor after Jimmy and Lois’s plane had crashed. I rolled the perfect gem between my thumb and first finger, feeling the corners. I thee wed. I threw my feet up on the table and blew three malformed smoke rings at the ceiling. Bunny’s terrace doors were open and the breeze erased the rings, bringing in a large dosage of lilacs. Evidently they had the house surrounded. Trying to pause, to gather, I tried to calculate how many hours I had been awake. My mouth tasted tannic and my closed eyes felt slack. “Oh la.” went the sigh.

After several long minutes that seemed an interminable exhalation, I heard the general shuffle that told me: end reel two. Ribbo strolled in accompanying one of the nubile cheerleaders. She was fairly drunk, and he was doing his people’s logic voice into her incoherent face, all the while keeping his underground arm around her waist, “1 don’t do football games, because the sanctified violence is absurd. Fans aren’t the people. The people can’t afford to do football games, they’re stuck in the streets …” They went out onto the terrace. Ribbo used the verb “do” for everything. He was going to do some dope. He was going to do some sleep. He was going to do the revolution. That verbal umbrella didn’t bother me as much as going to the salmonella cellar he lived in; I mean, he never did the dishes.

In our kitchen the empties overflowed the garbage sack. Somebody had started a trend by putting his cigarette out in the sink.

“How’s the beer?” I asked Eldon.

“Holding out. How are you?”

“Holding out. On with the show, I guess.” I stepped back over the people and debris, Dotty playfully grabbed my foot and I nearly fell onto Wesson and Virgil Benson.

“Dotty!”

“Yeah, graceful?”

Never mind, Dotty.

Wesson had been feigning an interest in the film for an hour and a half, and he looked wasted, shell-shocked. He’d been trying too hard to figure out what disorder would cause people to watch such a movie.

“Really superb.” Virgil said smiling. I sat down by him a minute. “The animation is amazing. I’ve seen photos of that model; it’s only two feet tall.”

“Two feet!” Wesson was astounded.

“Right. And did you notice how expertly he uses his tail? They really knew what they were doing. I think a guy named Harryhausen did it.” Benson’s collection of
Famous Monsters of Filmland
was much more extensive than my own. “1 can’t wait to see this finale, I’ve heard about it.”

I started reel three. The dramatic countdown: 10 X 9 X 8 XX blank 4 X, then that slick numberless black flickering. My instincts were not communicating how I should feel. My pockets were full of diamonds, remember. The Italian Army, a fully equipped modern-type army, had been called in. The phone rang. Men with walkie-talkies directed traffic.

“Larry here.” I always answer the phone like that; I find it reassuring.

“Who’s up there?” Accusingly said.

“Eldon and I and a friend.”

“What’s that noise?”

“The army versus the monster.”

“What?”

“Nothing. I don’t know what you can hear. We’re just sitting around up here looking at the walls, Mrs. Ellis.” As I said her name, Eldon tossed another beer can out over the roof onto the lawn.

“Well, why are you in the kitchen?”

“Making sandwiches, ma’am.”

“At eleven-thirty?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Well can’t you use someone else’s kitchen?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Well, I don’t like it.”

“I’m bringing the rent over bright and …”

She hung up. Tanks rolled in and troop convoys converged.

“He’s heading for the circus!” the commander, who looked like Gene Barry, said. The now fully misunderstood monster turned left, eyes searching, turned right, looking frantically for the way to go. An elephant looked up from his straw dinner. This unmistakable montage was accompanied by the ringing of the phone. Eldon answered and experienced one of the shortest conversations on record. He waved to me and I shut down the projector.

“That was Mrs. Ellis, our cinephobic landlady. She says she’s called the police. I hate to tell you all this, since this last reel, I’ve been informed, is a prize winner, and we’re continuing regardless of the consequences, which is the manner in which we do most things. Leave at your own risk! It may be only a threat since she calls us nightly and says the same thing.”

Wesson and Johnny Harmon were the first to leave, and then nearly everyone left. Even Dotty. Being zany is good; jail is bad. Bunny and Virgil Benson stayed. Bunny said she was curious which officer would arrive, and Benson simply said he couldn’t miss the ending. Eldon and Evelyn stayed, Evelyn asking if we thought a policeman would really come. I woke one of the Black Heron regulars, a former creative writing teacher in whose irrigated brain nothing more would grow, who was sleeping in the desk well, and he left, muttering about an absolutely frightening dream.

The place was a wreck. It looked like the day after The Little Big Horn. But it was a comfortable wreck, and we all stretched out amid the beer can rubble, spilled wine, and cigarette butts. Art for our sake.

Eldon leaned over toward me and asked, “What did she say?”

“She said think it over.” I handed him the ring.

“Think it over?”

“Yeah.”

“What did you say?”

“I said, ‘Ouch!’”

“Sweet Lord.” He sighed. “What are you going to do?”

“Watch the movie. I hate these intimate interviews.”

“‘Ouch?’ You need help.”

“Not yours. Not now.”

The elephant had a good grip on the Alien Visitor’s right arm as they wrestled outside the huge circus tent, and he nearly flipped the monster onto his head. Ribbo came bursting back in.

“The pigs here yet?”

“No. Sit down and watch the movie.”

“They can’t invade your private abode without a search warrant.”

“Shhh, Ribbo.” I pointed at the screen.

The Alien Visitor circled the elephant in a crouch like the one Krusher Kowalski does, head down, arms out. He slapped a double hammer-lock on the screaming pachyderm, and quickly flopped the beast over on its side. Cleverly for this part I turned the volume up full blast: Raahhrrr! Eeeeaaahhh! Rreeaarrk! Rak!

Knock Knock. Our neighbors in the next apartment, a young engineering student from Thailand and his wife, came over to see if our pets were okay. We didn’t have any, so they were fine.

“Sure, please come in.” They chose to share a beer and sat on the floor, happy to be at the movies. Fire and advance became the army’s tactic. Volley after irritating volley drove the Alien Visitor, no kidding, up the Colosseum. The ending of the film is a parallel with
King Kong
, except beauty doesn’t kill the beast, just an inability to understand his environment. And vice versa.

At this point, obviously gone crazy in his booth, the projectionist turned the projector out so the beam shot under the open window, across the yard and the film image fell blinking against the leafy texture of the tree. It then looked more like the impressionistic film that it was. Everyone’s heads followed the film, and we all climbed out onto the roof for the ending.

“This is funny,” Evelyn said. “I’ve never seen a movie this way before.”

The Alien Visitor appealed heavenward a moment, leaning on his tail, arms flailing, face looking for an answer. Is there help anywhere? Finally a particularly salient volley knocked the amphibian Alien Visitor back where he missed a step, and he fell like the last gladiator onto his scaly head on the pavement.

“Oh no!” Eldon spoke for all of us, and lofted his beer can through the beam, as we all did, the cans landing with a soft tink on the front yard. Of course then we heard the sirens, and the police car pulled up in front under the tree as the last closeup tableau of the jeeps and the monster and the commander sighing his grim relief showed on the tree.

“What are you doing up there?”

“Watching the tree.”

That brought him right up the stairs just as our Thailand neighbors ducked next door. I forced Virgil Benson to go with them. The policeman took one look around and decided to take us downtown.

“Why Ward Sawyer, how nice to see you again.” Bunny smiled.

“Miss Lancaster! Why are you here?” The policeman took his hat off. “You’re not disturbing the peace with these punks. Why don’t you just slip home.”

“Watch your language, Pig!” Ribbo had to say. The cop came forward, toward Ribbo, putting his hat back on, but Bunny interceded.

“I know it’s not my usual, Officer Sawyer,” she said, “But, yes I guess I was disturbing as much of the peace as these boys.”

“Disturbing the peace!” Ribbo said, “There is no peace!”

“Look, you. Your mouth is in for trouble.”

“Yeah?”

“Look,” I said, “Officer Sawyer, could we just set the customary wheels of justice in motion and proceed?” Then to Ribbo, “Cease this petty harassment of our law enforcement officials.” He glared at me. “Or I’ll do your nose. Save the revolution for something a little more meaty than this cinematic infraction.”

“Sell-out.”

We all went downtown. Bunny insisted on coming. After leveling a twenty-five-dollar fine against the projectionist, and delivering a warning lecture that reminded me of the way Wesson talks to me, Officer Sawyer released us to our own recognizance, our own custody, which I thought was a fairly amazing thing to do. “Gee, I hope I don’t do anything wrong, I’m in my own custody.”

Thinking Eldon was a smartass freak, Sawyer had made him remove the helmet, and on the way back down the stairs Eldon put it back on and grabbed himself sternly by the bicep, saying, “This way Robinson-Duff. Don’t get any ideas!” I had myself by the back of the collar and walked along in pain, in custody. Evelyn followed, laughing.

“That wasn’t too bad, was it, Ribbo?” Bunny asked him.

“We still should’ve got to do a lawyer.”

“I’ve never been in jail before.” Evelyn said.

“Say do you folks want to do breakfast at my house?”

“I don’t think so Ribbo. It’s a bit early. How are the dishes?”

“I threw them out. I’m doing recycled paper plates now.”

“Thanks just the same.”