Thomas Gifford - Hollywood gothic

for Camille

I am not I;

he is not he;

they are not they.

It aint a business. Its a racket.

Harry Cohn

TOBY CHALLIS LIT A CIGARETTE and tried to remember his lines. Hed been trying to remember his lines ever since that night in Malibu, and it was a hell of a job. But now was definitely the moment for a cigarette, eyes squinting against the smoke, jaw firm in a grim, heroic, existential smile. It was a little cheap as actors tricks went, but that was the point. Cheap and easy, and it almost always worked. Not always: he was no actor, and he felt like a hybrid, a cloddish miscalculation, half Humphrey Bogart and half Danny Kaye as Walter Mitty. He tried to think of a tough little joke for the guards, something to dribble philosophically from the corner of the grim little smile, but that was where he ran into trouble. His script needed a damn good polish, maybe even a rewrite. Sure, a rewrite beaucoup bucks, but worth it, a damned good rewrite by the best in the business. But he was the best in the business, Toby Challis was money in the bank, and he couldnt think of anything funny to say to the guard. Shit, the main guy always had a wisecrack for the cop-at-the-end

He looked around at the dark, empty hangar: oil-spotted concrete floor, the smell of small planes, jet fuel, and lubricant and grease, the peculiar nastiness laid across the scene by the pervasive cold, dampness. The lights of the main terminal glowed far across the runways. The rain diffused the luminescence, gave the structure the look of a UFO settling down to swallow them all up and take them to a better place where the music was playing and the lights were bright and gay. a place where Mickey and Judy had come up the pathway past the great oak tree and found the barn of their dreams What a place for a show! We can do it, I know we can.

He shook his head, forced the unreality away. It was happening more frequently in recent days. He would be sitting in his cell, reading a novel or a magazine, and somehow he would find himself fitted neatly into a movie, never one that hed written, but always someone elses. One day he drifted off into Mr. Lucky and hed have sworn it was all solid reality: the gambling boat, the fog on the pier, and Cary Grant spotting Laraine Day. Another time, the mountain village in Out of the Past had taken the place of his cell, and hed walked with young Bob Mitchum from the filling station to the caf with the nosy waitress, and sat down, ordered pie and coffee. While these interludes were wonderfully enjoyable, they worried him. He had enough sense left to know that madness lay that way, good-bye and into the bin, Toby old fruit. Yet, the years ahead, destined to be passed in a cell with a lidless toilet and a bed hinged to the goddamn wall, those years were psychically unacceptable. He wondered when hed start screaming and not be able to stop.

The rain had slackened somewhat from the mornings feverish downpour, hung now like a fragile Japanese screen rippling in the breezes. The sky was a dirty, smudged gray and the big jets whined and howled like a riot at the zoo. The newspapers said the two-year drought was over, in its place a series of Gods little jokes, watery disasters, villages swept away, graveyards excavated, vast meandering homes dumped down canyon walls and disappearing beneath thousands of tons of mud and shale. Malibu was hammered day and night by the storms off the Pacific that made him remember the beach house where he had once worked so well, gotten drunk far too often on fine Laphraoig, and discovered just what sort of woman Goldie was. And he inevitably remembered her lying there, still warm, her blond hair clotted with blood and matter, and his Oscar with its special marble base on the floor not far away. The marble was sticky. There were a few strands of long blond hair glued to the stickiness, and he recognized the scene, when it came sweeping toward him like a runaway meat wagon, recognized it without hesitation because he had been there before, a hundred times. At the movies.

Wont be long now. One of the guards stood at his shoulder, a man of fifty or so who was friendly and matter-of-fact about Challis predicament. His name was Daniels and he had a brother-in-law who lived in Newport Beach and was a cutter at Twentieth, nominated for an Oscar once. He enjoyed chatting about the show business with Challis, ignored the fact that Goldies head had been caved in with an Oscar. Lousy weather, either you got your drought and your Santa Anas, or you got your flood. He lit a cigarette and frowned at the rain. But weve got a clearance to go. He blew smoke into the wind and coughed. I want you to know, if it was up to me you wouldnt have to wear the bracelets. Stupid. Where the hell they think youre gonna go? Wouldnt get far with that famous facetrial made you a star, yknow. Challis smiled, nodded, could think of nothing to say. What was there to say? He was afraid, quite desperately afraid. Prison society: hed seen enough television shows devoted to the inhumanity of life inside, the brutality, the bestiality. And now Toby Challis, a screenwriter with impressive connections and an Oscar, convicted of beating his wifes brains into the rug, was sentenced to life imprisonment, open and shut. Toby Challis, forty-two-year-old white American male, sheltered until recently from lifes harsher side, was going to find out what was true about life on the inside and what was worse than the stuff you heard.

The pilot was chatting with the other guard and the copilot. Unexpectedly he broke into a hearty, rumbling laugh and shook his head. The guard and the copilot nodded appreciatively. For an instant the pilot looked across the width of the hangars sliding door, caught Challis eye, looked away, his face suddenly sober.

Being insideyoull get used to it, Daniels said. Fifteen years, youll be out, a new man. They got lots of books inside, movies, all that stuff. He sucked at the cigarette. Challis wondered how many times hed said the same thing to other poor unfortunates, ax murderers, slashers, stranglers, trash-bag killers the whole cast.

Ill be nearly sixty, Challis said. Not so new a different man, though, Ill buy that.

Daniels nodded philosophically. Well, if you dont mind my saying so, I hope it was worth it to you. Theres always the damned bill to pay at the end. My father, bless his soul, used to tell me about the free lunch hed get at the saloon how he used to lament that free lunch, no free lunch anymore, hed say. Always got the tab waiting for you.

Challis shrugged. What was there to say?

Its not quite the middle age Id seen for myself, he said at last.

Daniels flipped his cigarette butt into a puddle and ground it out beneath a heavy heel. He began whistling tunelessly, looked at his watch, clasped his hands behind his back. Challis leaned against the doorwaythe huge sliding doorsand stared out at the rain.

There was, in fact, a middle age hed seen for himself. Not a middle age exactly, but a sort of time hed thought of as an Indefinite Future, a time when hed gotten through the clutter of problems and difficulties which always seemed to be littering the path, everyones paths. There was always a piece of work to be gotten past: a screenplay which inevitably went wrong and required a fifth version, a sixth, to meet the approval of a banker or an executives wife or girlfriend or even an offer to do a piece of junk for money he couldnt quite refuse, for a trip to Australia or Romania or some other place he knew hed never visit on his own. There was always something. There was Goldie and how she was going to be resolved: how the problems she created would finally have to be sorted out. But up ahead, somewhere, was that Indefinite Future he wanted, intended to have.