Shamus In The Green Room (6 page)

No, even at his advanced age, Buster wasn’t going to fall for

that one. Fresh air. That was what we needed. We’d been

cooped up for too long. I took Alexander by the hand and led

him out the back door, down the brick steps, and into the

backyard.

“Look at the pretty butterfly!” I pointed out a large black

specimen with tiny white polka dots.

“Birdie!” Alexander said, reaching out his arms.

Close enough. “What do you say I put you to work?”

He nodded shyly.

I turned on the hose, sending the usual tremors through

the plumbing system of my 1932 Spanish-style house, which

was hanging on by a thread. That was part of its charm. Would

the toilet flush? Would the doorbell chime? Would the wrought-

iron sconces send crackling volts of electricity through my

veins when I changed the bulbs? It was all so exciting and un-

predictable.

“Come over here and hold the watering can under the wa-

ter,” I said to Alexander.

“Water! I can swim! I grow tall!”

“So tall,” I said, kissing the top of his head. “And you are

going to help the garden grow, too. The plants are thirsty.

Don’t they look sad?”

Buster’s overactive bladder had pretty much destroyed the

grass. I’d tried to train him to use the dog run, but he’d con-

sidered that an infringement upon his rights as the man of the

house.

“Now take your little can over to the cilantro,” I said, pointing

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to a sorry clump of feathery leaves that had all but dried to a

crisp.

“Dead,” Alexander intoned mournfully. He was right. Year

after year I was defeated by cilantro.

“Not too much water now,” I cautioned. “Too much isn’t

good either.”

“I don’t want water. I don’t wanna work. I want juice. I’m

thirsty. I’m hungry, too.” Alexander dropped the watering can

and started to cry.

“There, there, sweetheart,” I said, picking him up. “Don’t

cry.” He cried harder. “Cece’s going to make you a beautiful

lunch right this very minute.” He was wailing inconsolably

now. Poor kid had been through so much lately. I had no idea

how Annie and Vincent were going to explain the fact that his

mother was gone for good. Maybe she’d come back. She hadn’t

absolutely closed the door on that possibility. Still, I wondered

if at this point that would be a good or a bad thing.

As soon as we set foot on the service porch, Mimi the cat

appeared.

“Shall we feed the pussycat first?” I asked.

Alexander wiped his eyes. “How ’bout a peanut butter

samwich? We could share.”

“Good idea. We’ll just give her some turkey and giblets as

an appetizer.” I cracked open a can of Fancy Feast and dumped

it into her ceramic dish. Nothing but the best for Mimi.

We walked into the kitchen and assembled the items we

needed, sidestepping the destruction wrought by last night’s

eggplant parmigiana, which was delicious, by the way. While

the bread was toasting, I went into Annie’s old room, which I

now used as a guest room, though I rarely had guests. Why

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subject innocent people to a toilet that might not flush? I

opened the closet door and flipped the light switch. What a

mess. Even after she and Vincent had bought their house in

Topanga Canyon, which had maybe quadruple the amount

of storage space I have, Annie still hadn’t cleared out all her old

stuff. The girl was a packrat. One good thing was, there were

sure to be some books or toys in one of the boxes. Maybe some-

thing Alexander would like.

“Pop, pop, pop,” Alexander sang out. “Toast time!”

“No! Don’t touch anything!” All I needed was for him to

get electrocuted. That’d be the last time they let me baby-sit.

Jammed into the corner of the closet was a picture book

and a forlorn Barbie with no hair. I snatched up both and ran

back into the kitchen. Alexander was sitting on the floor with

the jar of peanut butter in his lap.

“Good boy,” I said, trading bald Barbie for the peanut but-

ter. “Did anybody tell you never, ever, to put a knife in the

toaster? You can get a bad shock. It can make your hair go

crazy.”

“Like your hair,” he said, pointing.

“Why don’t you sit right here at the kitchen table,” I said,

“and look at this nice book while I finish the sandwich.”

“My mommy puts bananas in,” he said in a small voice,

“because bananas are fruit.”

Oh, god. “That’s a wonderful idea. I’m going to put ba-

nanas in, too.” I had one black banana sitting on the counter.

Maybe he wouldn’t notice if I sliced it really thin.

“Okay!” I said brightly. “All ready. How about some chips?”

Kids love chips. Everybody loves chips. Instant party.

“No chips.”

“Cece will eat the chips. And Mimi. Mimi loves chips.”

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I sat down next to him and picked up the book.

“Clifford the Big Red Dog,” I read. Why was he so big and

red? His mother and father and brothers and sisters were all

normal. They never explained that. Maybe it was some kind of

post-Chernobyl thing.

“I think we can do better than this,” I said. “I’ll be right

back.”

“Barbie wants a samwich, too.”

“Okay.” I sliced off a tiny corner of Alexander’s sandwich

and arranged it on a saucer, though everyone knows Barbie

doesn’t touch carbs. I shoved some chips in my mouth. At least

I had hair.

I went back into Annie’s closet and waded through the de-

bris. A purple thermos fell on my head. I shoved a Care Bears

helmet and assorted knee and elbow pads out of my way. Then

I saw an old trunk I remembered helping Annie pack full of

papers and books. I dragged it into the middle of the floor and

opened it.

Curious George Goes to the Hospital. A classic, if depressing.

Bread and Jam for Frances. Always made me hungry. Yearbooks.

Autograph books. And here—oh, too funny—was Annie’s

onetime prized possession: her Rafe Simic scrapbook. I’d al-

most forgotten the thing existed. The cover alone was black-

mail material. “R AFE + ANNIE.” She’d cut the letters out of

old magazines and collaged them onto the baby-blue padded

surface. It was still in good shape. Only the “R,” surrounded

by cupids and red hearts, was peeling.

I flipped to the first page. Rafe with shoulder-length hair in

his first big film, Dead Ahead. He played a follower of the

Grateful Dead who inadvertently witnesses a gangland-style

execution. Rafe in wraparound shades and heavy gold jewelry,

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Hollywood’s vision of a sadistic drug lord. Rafe in costume as

a samurai warrior, wielding a sword. A young Rafe with a gold

crown on his head. This wasn’t from any movie I remembered.

Aha. This was real life. I looked down at the caption: “Rafe

Simic, Prom King, and”—Jesus—“Maren Levander, Prom

Queen.” Morbid to a fault, I wondered what Maren had

looked like when she was young and not dead. I peered closely

and had to laugh.

Apparently, it ran in the family.

Annie had decapitated Palos Verdes High’s prom queen

of 1979, and collaged her own face where Maren’s should

have been.

“All done,” Alexander called out.

“Coming,” I answered, grabbing the scrapbook and Frances

and heading into the kitchen.

Just then the key turned in the lock of the front door.

“Annie!” screamed Alexander, careening into her out-

stretched arms.

“Hi, there,” she said. “How’s my sweetheart?”

“I have something to show you,” I said in a singsong voice.

“Mom, what’s that on your jeans?”

I looked down. “I don’t see anything. Have a look at this.”

I handed her the scrapbook.

“No, on the back. Gross.”

I twisted around to see. It was something mushy and black-

ish. I looked at Alexander.

“Icky banana. Mommy never uses icky bananas.”

“I can’t believe you found this thing. Look at how cheesy it

is. Say sorry, Alexander,” Annie instructed.

“Sorry, ’Xander.”

“Not to worry, baby,” I said. “Use a napkin next time.”

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“Okay, Grandma.”

Annie looked at me and I looked at Annie.

“What?” asked Alexander.

He was so serious, just like his father. I bent down to stroke

his hair. It was as soft and slippery as silk.

“Turns out Grandma likes Mondays,” I said, “that’s what.”

CHAPTER

SEVEN

Tuesday morning and Rafe and I were back at it again, but

I’d put my foot down when, by way of greeting, he pulled

the mini-microphone out of the pocket of his baggy cargo

shorts.

“To be perfectly honest,” I said as we sped off in his freshly

washed car, “I feel uncomfortable with that thing hanging

around my neck.”

“Not to be rude,” he started—“and by the way, which way

are we headed?” He took a bite of out an Egg McMuffin. “You

want a bite? I don’t usually eat this shit, but whatever.”

“No, thank you.” I’d had my own nourishing breakfast of

stale graham crackers and coffee. My half-and-half had gone

sour, so I’d created a mixture of whipping cream and nonfat

milk, which should have amounted to the same thing but

didn’t. “We’re heading east.”

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He took a left on Melrose, then stuffed the rest of his

breakfast back into the cheery McDonald’s bag and shoved it

onto the backseat. “Like I was saying, I don’t want to be rude,

but this is a job and the mike is one of the job requirements.”

“C’mon, Rafe. You know perfectly well you’re never going

to listen to these tapes.”

“Oh, yes, I am. We have a whole closet devoted to audiovi-

sual equipment. In Will’s office.”

“You think you’re going to listen to them, I believe you.

That way you can tune me out when you feel like it.”

“Whoa. I didn’t know this was about you.”

“It isn’t,” I said, reddening.

“And for the record,” he said, just missing the green light at

Fairfax, “I’m listening to every word you’re saying. I’m listen-

ing to the words in between the words. I’m listening to you

breathing.”

“That isn’t necessary.”

The light changed and he shifted back into gear. “It’s not

like I can help it. How far are we going?”

“Down to Paramount Studios.”

“Cool. Look, Cece,” he said, fiddling with the stereo, “I’m

an actor. We take cues. To take a cue you’ve got to be listening

and you’ve got to be watching. You’ve got to feel the other per-

son’s rhythms. It isn’t personal, really. So just do your job,

okay?” He settled on a rap station and cranked the volume so

high the car started to shake.

I have always been a bad employee. I believe in punctuality

and hard work, but deferring to one’s superior, well, that part

has always stuck in my craw. Which is why writing has been

my salvation. Just me and my Bondi-blue iMac in my con-

verted garage office with the Lucite desk and apple-green walls

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and floors. I should never have accepted this gig. But I did ac-

cept it, and now I had to suck it up.

“I’ve reconsidered. I would be delighted to wear the mike.”

I had to shout over the music. “If you would be so kind as to

hand it over.”

“Cool.” He tried not to look too satisfied, but he could’ve

tried harder.

Traffic was slow between Fairfax and La Brea. This was

prime shopping turf for suburban Goths and punks who

wouldn’t dream of parking their cars far from the stud, spike,

and shroud shops. After three, when school let out, it was even

worse.

We stopped to let a kid wearing enormous black shorts

with silver chains hanging down to his ankles cross the street.

His clothes were no big deal. The impressive part was his

head, which was shaved except for two clumps he’d dyed red

and sculpted into devil’s horns. Rafe took one look at him and

said, “Cool”—again—which was really starting to irk me.

Why did he keep saying that? The way I saw it, things were

the opposite of cool. Why were we chatting about nothing?

Why had he not said a word about our visit to the coroner’s? It

was strange. Not a single word about his dead former girl-

friend. Of course, it wasn’t my place to bring her up. If he

wanted to forget about her, that was fine with me.

“You haven’t said a word about Maren.” It slipped out.

Rafe turned off the music. “Oh. I’m glad you brought that

up. I’m going to need to take tomorrow off, too. Maren’s body

was released to Will this morning, and her ashes are going to

be scattered off the cliffs in Palos Verdes at around eleven. Will

said that’s what she would’ve wanted. They ruled her death a

suicide, by the way.”

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“I’m sorry,” I said, chastened.

He reached over to turn on my mike. “Paramount Studios,

Cece.”

We parked the car at a meter opposite the ornate, historic

archway at the north end of Bronson Avenue. According to Hol-

lywood lore, the wrought-iron filigree at the top was added af-

ter crazed female fans of Rudolph Valentino overwhelmed