L.A. Success (22 page)

“Come on guys, why the long faces?” I asked.

“Don't say long faces!” said Scarf-Guy Al. “I can't stand long faces anymore!”

“Let's get it together,” said Pee-Smelling, Old-Birkenstock Jerry. “We can't lose hope on this one. If the world wants another movie from old Horse Face, we'll come up with it.”

“Huh?” I asked.

“The studio has already chucked three scripts for a new Jessica Mary Valet movie, so they brought us in. They've already started filming the thing in New York,” said USC-Shirt Jake.

“Without a script?” I asked.

“Half of every movie she makes is filmed without a script. The cameras follow her around while she shops for shoes, and they stick all of Jessica's friends together at a table and film them while they talk about penises and giggle. Hollywood feminism is more or less about proving that women can be just as stupid as men,” said Pocket-Watch Eddy. “And normally I'm fine with that, but now that I'm the one who's got to write it...And the thing that makes everything really hard now is that old Horse Face had her trade-mark mole removed. Before, she could say any line and it would be just as edgy as her face, but now that she's going all mainstream on us, she's harder to write for.”

“Let's ask Arnold-Shirt Lonnie for advice, since he's been writing up a storm lately,” said USC-Shirt Jake, and I just about flipped because that was the first time I had heard my official writing name.

“My ex used to watch her stuff. You gotta make the ladies want to do something wrong when they watch Horse Face's movies,” I said.

“Believe me, everything that can be considered wrong has already been done to her,” said Scarf-Guy Al. “That's why we're dying here! They've almost filmed all the shoe buying and penis giggling they can. They're hounding us for the script every hour!”

“Just take the most popular topic of the day and let her go at it,” I said.

“I can't think of anything that hasn't already been done,” said Scarf-Guy Al.

“You're missing the most obvious thing—religious extremism. Here's what you do: old Horse Face is sitting around talking about a penis mole or something—you know, she'll be anxious to make fun of that kind of thing now that she's had her own mole removed—and then she sees a bunch of people coming out of a mosque. All the chicks are covered from head to toe. You can only see their eyes. Then she sees the most handsome extremist she's ever seen in her life, and he's ordering his woman around like a dog, and this turns her on. So she rushes out of the cafe and follows the guy home. Then she goes off and buys her own veils and crap, and when the wife is off at the store, Horse Face puts on the veils, sneaks into the apartment and does the dude, who pretends not to suspect anything even though she has a pasty white ass. She starts doing this regularly and tells her friends all about her forbidden penis adventures. Then one day while they are getting it on, he rips off her veil and tells her he loves her like he has loved no other contaminated infidel in his life. She doesn't want to ruin his marriage, so after endless, waffling conversations with her friends, she breaks it off. He comes crying at her window several times, but she buckles down and doesn't give in.”

“That's kind of a downer of an ending,” said USC-Shirt Jake.

“It doesn't end there. While out taking a walk, really reflecting about her life and the ideal penis, a super-rich guy in a limousine stops and asks her for directions. After one of those 'one-year-later' breaks in the film, they get married. With all that money, she buys some new shoes.”

“That's kind of random, but then so is everything else she does. Okay, let's do it guys,” said Pocket-Watch Eddy.

34

I left the guys to their writing and headed back to Dennis' house to pick up the big poodle. When I arrived, I saw Tommy pacing in front of the gate. With all the training and writing, I had forgotten to keep an eye on this guy, and here he was again doing who knows what, maybe keeping tabs on me. He had this strange look on his face, and his lips were moving like he was practicing saying something. I parked the Charger and walked up to him.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

He was burning with rage, but he had to keep it in check to get the words to come out of his mouth.

“You are doing ze love to Gairtee!”

“What? Have you lost your mind?” I asked.

“You are togezair all ze time. I call hhher tonight. I hhhear noises and lawfing. She hhhang up. I call second time, no responding.”

“I was with friends all night, writing this,” I said and held up the script. “I promise. There's nothing between Gertie and me. Why would I want to do that?” His facial expressions changed to show his relief.

“I yam vairy touch-ed zat you would not do zat to me,” he said.

“No, I meant I wouldn't want to
do
...Yeah, that's exactly what I meant. Look Tommy, have you talked to Gertie about not seeing anyone else? Maybe she doesn't know that's what you want.”

“I yuh...will talking to hhher,” he said.

“Good idea. Hey, come inside a minute. I want you to meet my dad.”

Tommy followed me in. The place was a wreck since I hadn't had time to clean it in a while. My dad was on the couch playing chess.

“Hi Dad. Look who I brought—the Talking Man, right?” I figured that if Tommy was the one who had tried to break in and that if he had actually just been bullshitting me about the Gertie thing as an excuse to come spy on me, I'd find out now.

“No. I don't know that guy,” he said and went back to playing chess.

“Okay, well, good night Dad,” I said, but he was too involved in his game to answer.

I felt relieved to know it wasn't Tommy, but at the same time, I now had no idea who had tried to break into Dennis' house. Maybe it had just been a robber.

Tommy, Ballsack and I strolled back home. When we got there, Tommy tried to call Gertie a few times, but there was no answer. He tried to take his mind off of it by playing his guitar, but since he could only play a few chords really slowly, he soon got tired of that. I put a movie on the tube and invited him to come watch it with me. When the actors would say something vulgar, I explained what it meant to him. That seemed to make him feel better.

35

The next morning when I was looking for something to wear, all of my Dennis clothes were dirty, so I took out a pair of my own pants that I hadn't worn for almost two months. When I put them on, I was amazed at how loose they were. I must have lost forty pounds since the last time I'd put those things on. I was also amazed at how repulsed I was by them. I had gotten spoiled by all of Dennis' nice stuff, and I couldn't see myself going back now. I made a big pile of clothes I knew I'd never wear anymore and threw it all into a trash bag. Then I put on the least smelly Dennis pants I could find, grabbed the trash bag and the big poodle, and walked toward the Third Street Promenade to the nearest clothing donation box. I crammed all that stuff into the metal tray and slid it shut, sending my clothes to the bottom with a dull thud.

I continued over to the Promenade and walked around looking for a store I could shop in that didn't look like a night club. The Levi's store fit the bill, but when I walked in, an employee told me I couldn't bring such a big dog into the store. I stepped back out and was looking for a place to tie Ballsack up when I saw Amanda, the little girl I had met in West Hollywood, walking with a man I assumed was her dad. I went up to them to say hello.

“Hi Amanda,” I said. She looked over at me and saw the big poodle. She got a scared look on her face and hid behind her dad.

“It's okay. That dog won't bite you,” said the man. He looked up at me for a moment. “I'm sorry, I can't place you. Do you work at Amanda's school?”

“No. I was in your neighborhood the other day asking about a lost dog. I talked with your babysitter.” Amanda was still hiding, so I started feeling kind of creepy. “I didn't realize she'd be so afraid of my dog. Sorry about that. I'll let you go.”

“Don't worry about it. We used to have a black poodle, and one day she stepped on it and it bit her. She was so scared of it from then on that we had to give it away.” He leaned over and picked Amanda up so she'd feel safer.

“Bad dog!” said Amanda, pointing at the big poodle.

“You used to have a black poodle like this one?” I asked.

“Well, ours was just a puppy, but he was supposed to get big like that. Yours looks like he could use a good shearing.”

“Yeah, I think he's got something wrong with his hair. It keeps growing out like crazy. Hey, just curious—what did you call your dog?”

“Manolete,” he said. The big poodle snapped his head around and started wagging like crazy. “But I didn't name him. He never looked like a Manolete to me. The friend that gave him to me is Spanish. He told me that it was the name of a famous bullfighter, which to me seemed ridiculous, naming a poodle after a bullfighter.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. Well, enjoy your afternoon. Nice running into you again, Amanda,” I said and waved. She turned her head and pressed her face against her dad's neck so she couldn't see me. Her dad gave me a “what-can-you-do?” look and continued walking.

My guess was that Ignacio had given the dog to his renters as a moving-in “present.” Gertie had mentioned something about doing that. When you know you want to renovate in about a year, you give your current renters a dog and then make them cough up a pet deposit. When they move out, you keep the pet deposit and the security deposit, since the dog will definitely have peed all over the carpets, which you were going to replace anyway. Ignacio probably hadn't counted on having to take the dog back, so he recycled the present to Dennis to get rid of it.

I tied the big poodle to a tree near a street musician. I always saw this guy on the Promenade. He was much fatter than me, especially now that I had lost so much weight. He had stringy, greasy hair, and he always wore the same super-sized, faded blue T-shirt and the same pair of enormous, patched jeans. Sometimes he played electric guitar and sang with a partner. Other times he had a beat-up acoustic and would go at it alone. He played a kind of mixture of southern rock and hair metal, occasionally sliding his fingers around fast and shaking his dirty long hair everywhere. Nobody ever stopped to watch this guy because less than a block on down there was usually an urban dance squad or a lovely, cowboy-boot-clad girl who sang love songs. The only thing this guy could believably sing about loving was chicken wings. I threw a few dollars into his guitar case and pointed to the dog. He nodded as he strummed away.

I picked out a couple of pairs of jeans and some western-style shirts, which looked great unbuttoned over my Arnold. As I was paying at the register, the shit phone rang. It was my buddy Grant.

“Wow,” I said. “You got act two fast!”

“Yes, that
is
what happens when you send something by overnight express. You send it one day, and it arrives on the following day. Amazing, isn't it? If you had actually typed it, you could have sent it even faster.”

“Ah, you're just grouchy because you don't get to treat me like garbage now that your boss likes my work.”

The cashier handed me the credit-card slip to sign, so I whipped out the Montblanc and let him feast his eyes on success.

“That's why I called you. Steven would like to meet with you,” said Grant.

The cashier handed me the clear-plastic sack with my clothes inside. I mouthed “thank you,” and started walking out of the store.

“I bet he does,” I said. “I'm sure he can't wait to find out what happens next. You want me to pop over to the studio?”

“No. Steven said he wanted to keep this a secret for now. He wants to meet you tomorrow at the La Brea tar pits, in front of the skeleton of the giant ground sloth.”

“The what?”

“The sloth. Those animals that hang in trees and move so slowly that plants grow in their fur. But thousands of years ago, they walked around on the ground and were bigger than bears.”

“Wow, that's really exciting.”

“Fuck you.”

“No, really. Tell me more.”

“Be there at three,” he said. I don't know who hung up on who first.

36

I took off early Sunday afternoon in the Mercedes and drove east on Wilshire Boulevard. The tar pits were past Beverly Hills, on the stretch known as the Miracle Mile. It's called that because back in the day, someone got the great idea of trying to compete with downtown L.A. there. I find this hilarious because when you arrive at the tar pits, you see all this bubbling tar all over the place that seeps up from who the hell knows where, and the very last thing any sane person would say is, “hey, wouldn't a shopping center go wonderfully with these boiling pools of death?”

I drove behind the museum and, as always in L.A., paid a suspicious amount for parking to an unsympathetic attendant who looked like he was waiting for me to say a code word that would identify me as the buyer of whatever drug he was peddling. I got out of the car and walked over to a paved path leading around the grounds. There were little black pools of bubbling tar everywhere, sometimes covered with a thin layer of water from the sprinklers. I really had the impression that the tar I could see was like the tip of the iceberg and that the whole place was on the verge of sliding down into the inky muck.

I was staring down at the tar so much that I didn't notice the life-sized replica of the giant ground sloth, in attack position, until I was right up next to it. I'd have been freaked out by it, but since it was a sloth, I could have taken a little nap once he started to attack and then gotten up and wandered slowly away. Rats! Foiled again! No wonder these things had hung around the tar pits. You'd have to be stuck in the tar for hours before the thing made it over to you.

I followed the trail around to the front of the museum to look at the biggest pool of tar. It was bigger than an Olympic swimming pool, and there were life-sized models of mammoths to make you feel like you were some sort of cave dude back in the day. Two mammoths, an adult and a baby, were on the edge of the pool watching another adult mammoth sink into the sticky tar.