L.A. Success (21 page)

DEFINITELY WEIRD KIND OF FOREIGNER

After years of effort, I created this extraction gun. But
the original version had no jar, so when I removed the Dweller, I had to try to
catch it with my hands. It was more slippery than I had imagined, and it
escaped down the sink. But if you now know where it is, take this gun. Extract
the Dweller and save us all!

LONNIE HERISSON

I will. What do I do with it once it's in the jar?

DEFINITELY WEIRD KIND OF FOREIGNER

How would I know? Stick it in the microwave or something.

LONNIE takes the gun and looks at it.

LONNIE HERISSON

So, you have to shove this up—

DEFINITELY WEIRD KIND OF FOREIGNER

(Interrupting)

No, it must be placed in the belly button. If the Dweller is
really in there, he will be instantly sucked out and into the jar. Now go!
Leave me to my repose.

LONNIE exits.

26

As soon as I had finished writing
the last sentence I whipped out Grant's business card and rang him up. He answered
with the uninterested tone of someone who knows you have no choice but to go
through him to get what you want.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Grant, this is Lonnie. I got the
first act ready like you said. It's a real gem, with tons of intrigue. Can I
come by and show it to you?”

“Why don't you just send it to me
via email and I'll look it over.”

“Because if I wanted to do that I'd
have to type it up,” I said.

“I'm not reading it if it's
handwritten! What is this, kindergarten?”

“All right. I'll send it to you by
the end of the day. But make sure to tell your boss that I'm using a pen
name—tell him he'll know who I really am.”

I gathered up my things and drove
over to Dennis' place. I sat down in front of the computer, opened up my email
account, hit the new-message button and started typing. I had never been much
of a typing guy, so it was taking me a long time to copy all the sentences.
Every time I thought I had a good part of it done, I'd look up and see tons of
squiggly red lines underneath the words. When I clicked on the problem words, a
huge list of other words popped up, and maybe it was because I was tired or
something, but they all started looking the same, so I just randomly replaced
them until all the red lines were gone. Then I reread the few paragraphs I'd
managed to get down, and they didn't make much sense anymore. I figured this
email thing would take a lot longer than if I just stuck the screenplay in the
mail, so I decided to do that, even if prissy Grant wouldn't like reading my
handwriting. Once I hit the cancel-message button, my email account went back
to the inbox, where I saw that I had no new messages. Helen had either not yet
read my email, or had decided I was full of it and hadn't answered.

27

At about midnight I was getting
ready to head over to my place when the phone rang. I picked it up as fast as I
could to avoid waking up my dad.

“Hello,” I whispered.

“Hi Lonnie, it's Dennis.” He sounded
either dejected or tired. “Hope it's not too late for you.”

“No, I was just heading back to my
place. Do you need something?”

“I thought I'd call and see if you'd
gotten your check yet.”

“One second. Let me look.” I had
completely forgotten that I was waiting to receive another big check for doing
absolutely nothing. I stepped out to the courtyard and opened up the mailbox. I
found the envelope marked “attn: Lonnie Herisson” and opened it up. The amount
seemed to leap off the check, so much so that I had to calm down before
speaking again.

“Yeah, here it is. Everything's
good,” I said.

“Okay. Well...how's the dog? Does he
miss me?”

This seemed like a strange question
to me. People were always projecting like that onto their animals. Dennis was
clearly feeling a little homesick, but he refused to just say “I miss the dog.”
Instead, he wanted me to play along like this. I thought about saying “No, what
the dog really wants is for me to continue wearing your clothes and driving
your cars around. He also wants my dad to keep hanging out on your couch,” but
in the end I liked Dennis, so I played along.

“You know, I think he does. He keeps
looking up the stairs toward your room, like he's waiting for someone to come
down.”

“Oh! The poor thing! You can give
him some extra doggy treats.”

“Sure thing. But overall, you've got
nothing to worry about. He's having a good time,” I said and reached down to
pat him on the head. My hand sank a little deeper than I expected into his fur.
I started worrying that my dad had forgotten to feed him while I was gone and
that underneath that afro, he was all skin and bones. I glanced over at his dog
bowl, but it was full.

“
Hey
Dennis, you sound a little blue, if you don't mind me saying. Are you doing all
right?”

“Well, Ignacio has had to push back
his arrival here a week. He says he has some business in L.A. to take care of before
he can get free. I don't know—it just doesn't sound right. I'm probably being
paranoid. Otherwise, I have no reason to complain at all. It's a little slice
of paradise here. I suppose I'm just jealous by nature.”

“Aren't we all? I wouldn't worry about
it. He'll be there in no time.”

“Thanks Lonnie. I appreciate it.
Call me if you need anything.”

We said goodbye and hung up. This
was definitely not what I needed right now. Everything was going well, but if
Dennis found out that Ignacio had been running around on him, he'd get on the
first plane back to L.A., and I'd lose my nice fat checks. And if Dennis had
the suspicion that he was being cheated on, then that was probably the case.

I decided that it would be a good
idea to do a little snooping around to see what was really going on. The
problem was that all I knew about this guy was his first name. Dennis didn't
even have any pictures of him sitting out anywhere. I thought about directly
asking Dennis if he wanted me to go check up on him but then decided against
it. I didn't want Dennis using my name if he did have to accuse Ignacio of
something. Who knows what kind of psycho this guy was or what he'd do to me. I
couldn't come up with a sneaky way to look into it, so I stopped thinking about
it and went back to my place.

28

During the night, the big poodle was
scratching more than usual. He woke me up several times because his back paw
kept slamming down against the mattress. It sounded like someone was beating a
drum. After a while I turned on the light and looked through his afro. Sure
enough, he had fleas swarming all over, the poor guy. I tried to help him out
by scratching a little around the collar, which made his metal tag jingle.

I was dead tired, but I could see I
wouldn't be able to sleep until I had gotten rid of the fleas. I drove to an
all-night grocery store and picked up some flea shampoo. When I got back,
Ballsack was still scratching away. I took off his collar, led him into my
shower, got him wet, and then lathered him up. Then I figured I might as well
lather myself up just in case. I rinsed and repeated, and then looked through
his afro while he was wet. A lot of the dead fleas had fallen off, but some had
gotten tangled up in all the hair. I hosed him off a little longer and then dried
him.

Then I changed the sheets and put
the old ones in the washing machine. When the big poodle jumped up on the bed,
he lay down like he was ready to go to sleep immediately. I had forgotten to
put his collar back on, so I went and grabbed it from the bathroom. I put it on
backwards at first, because the address side of the tag was facing forward. I
reversed it and then hit the lights.

After I drifted off to sleep, I
dreamed that I was walking the big poodle along Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica.
All the girls were smiling as I passed by. I tried to play it cool and act like
I wasn't interested in any of them. Then I started noticing strange men peeking
out at me from behind the palm trees. I ran over each time I thought I saw
someone, but when I arrived, no one was there. And then I no longer felt any
pulling on the leash. I looked down to see that it had come unattached and that
the big poodle had disappeared. I began to panic, because even if someone found
him, the address on the tag was wrong. How was I going to get the dog back? I
started running down the street, dodging cars and calling his name.

I awoke with my heart racing and
reached over to reassure myself that Ballsack was still there. I decided I was
going to get his tag updated first thing the next day. But even after I had
made that decision, something was eating at me. And then I realized what it
was. If Ignacio had given the big poodle to Dennis, then the address on the tag
must have been one of Ignacio's. If that was the case, then I had potentially
found a way to check up on Ignacio and make sure he wasn't two-timing.

I went back to sleep and didn't wake
up until almost noon. I didn't have to shower since I had already done it in
the middle of the night, but to cover up the smell of the flea dip, I added a
few extra squirts of cologne.

After stopping by the post office to
mail off the screenplay, I took Ballsack to the pet store and had the new tag
made up with the correct address. I put the old tag in my pocket. I also picked
up a few new chewy things and some more dog shampoo.

I decided I should take the big
poodle back to Dennis' before checking out the address. If Ignacio was there,
he would recognize the dog and realize I was spying on him. I dropped him off,
said hello to my dad, and then sped off again.

29

The address was in West Hollywood,
off North Laurel Avenue. I overshot Laurel by several miles to the east, so I
had to double back on Hollywood Boulevard past all the tourist traps and
freaks. Everyone talks about going to Hollywood, but when they visit all they
see are shoe- and handprints in front of a movie theater and stars set in the
sidewalk. Well, that and a lot of cheap crap to buy. And since they find the
visit so anti-climactic, they usually hit the souvenir stores or buy tickets to
a guided tour within the hour, not because they want those things, but just
because they can't get over the fact that they came all that way for
practically nothing.

I turned left on Laurel, a street
that was nice by apartment standards, but not at all where I expected a rich
guy like Ignacio to live. It had the standard rows of tall, skinny palm trees,
which, I had been told, were like the poor cousins of the shorter, fat palm
trees that had to be shaved periodically to keep the rat nests out. Whether
you're a person or a palm tree, being rich attracts the scum. This street was
also like most of the other apartment streets in L.A. in that there were
bunches of smaller trees planted right in front of the buildings. This was
either to cover up the boring, boxy architecture and faded, cracked stucco or
to give people the impression that they had privacy.

The building I was looking for was a
sun-bleached, tan stucco affair that had been divided into condos. It had that
1960's design, which for me mainly meant the windows weren't big enough for
convenient spying. After a few passes around the block, I parked close enough
to see the front door and waited, flipping through the radio stations whenever
a bad song or an advertisement came on.

After about an hour, I couldn't take
the waiting anymore. It had been a while since my last stakeout, and I had
since gotten used to a more active surveillance. Plus, now that I was working
with Gertie, I really needed to relax on my time off. I decided to get it over
with and just knock on the door. Ignacio had never seen my face, so even if he
was there, I wasn't risking anything.

I walked over to the condo and rang
the bell. I couldn't hear anyone moving inside so I started to look in the
windows. Then the door opened slowly, and a little girl's face peeked out.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hello. Who are you?” she asked. She
had that expression kids of around four have when they aren't able to find a
place for you in their universe.

“Oh me? I'm nobody, but I found a
dog, and the tag has this address.”

“Where's the dog?” she asked.

“He's at my place. If you want him,
you have to tell me what he looks like.”

“Is he white?”

“No. What I meant was, if you lost a
dog, tell me what the dog you lost looks like, and if it's the same dog, I'll bring
him over.”

“My dog is white, but he's not here.
He's at my other house,” she said. I heard someone else moving in the
apartment. A teenage girl appeared in the doorway.

“Go put your toys away, Amanda,”
said the teenage girl. Amanda disappeared inside, and a clattering of plastic
followed. “Can I help you with something?” she asked, smacking away at her gum.
Her expression was evidence of an intense disinterest in my presence. Although
annoyed, I envied her for not yet being at the stage when you have to fake
caring about the person in front of you.