L.A. Success (31 page)

I cut through a yard to turn onto Dennis' street and then double parked in front of his house. I ran over to the gate, but it was locked. I gave a few loud knocks and then circled around to the backyard, scaled the fence, and went over to the kitchen door, which I luckily hadn't bothered having repaired. I reached through the broken panel, unlocked it, and opened the door in one swift movement to avoid a drawn-out, cat-in-heat squeak from the hinges. I crept softly across the glass-covered linoleum.

At the entrance to the living room, I peeked out from the kitchen to see my dad sitting on the couch looking filthy but otherwise calm. On the coffee table he had set up a dirty, mismatched chess set that he must have recuperated from a hidden stash in Venice. He had set a few dollars to the side of the vinyl roll-up board to entice whatever potential adversaries might have been roaming the house. Through the living room window I could see Dennis crossing the courtyard toward the front gate where a ghost version of me stood outside waiting for him. He opened the door to no one and then stepped outside to look up and down the street.

I rushed over to my dad, who didn't look surprised to see me.

“Let's get out of here. That guy called the cops, and they're coming to arrest you!”

“I need a bag to put the pieces in,” he said, looking at his board.

“Jesus, I'll buy you better ones. Forget them,” I said, but he kept staring at them and didn't move.

I looked out the window and could see through the open courtyard gate that Dennis was now standing next to a cop in the street. The cop was standing by my car and was saying something into his radio.

I went to the coffee table and began stuffing the chess pieces into the pockets of my shorts. My dad watched, clearly amused by all this.

“Come on! Get up and help me!” I said. He stood up and began putting the pieces in his pockets one at a time. He ended up with four or five pieces at the most. My pockets were jammed full. The sharp edges dug into my skin and made it uncomfortable to move. I rolled up the board and led my dad out the kitchen door.

We went through the backyard and then circled around to the front. Dennis was leading the policeman into the courtyard. I heard Ballsack growl as they passed. When their voices trailed off into the house, we continued on toward my car. I looked across the courtyard and saw a wildly gesticulating Dennis trying to explain that there really had been a homeless man on the couch. Then he began pointing to the kitchen, and they left the living room.

I sprinted to the car. The cop had left a ticket on my windshield, but since it had bought me extra time, I was happy to see it. I grabbed it, opened the car door, and then almost had a panic attack when I saw that my dad had not followed me to the car and was now nowhere to be seen. I couldn't yell for him, so I just stood there dazed not knowing what to do. If he had forgotten something and gone back to get it, we were screwed. Dennis could deny ever having had anything to do with me, and the shattered glass from the kitchen door would back up his claims that we had broken in. As much as I hated the idea, I was going to have to leave my dad there because someone was going to have to be available to spring him out of jail. I got in the car and exploded with pain when I sat down on the chess pieces. I started up the car and threw it into first and then gave another look toward the house. My dad came walking casually out of the courtyard carrying the big poodle. I gestured with my hands for him to hurry up. He opened the door without putting the dog down and got in. I hit the gas and Ballsack stuck his head out of the window.

“You should really give the dog a shave. Poodles don't shed,” said my dad. That was news to me. What had they done when they had lived in the wild? Had they gone around striking terror in the hearts of whatever animals were afraid of giant afros?

On the way back I explained why we couldn't go over to Dennis' anymore. I also told my dad that I'd be moving into a new house soon, so he could have my room all to himself from now on. That made him feel better.

14

I had a few hours to kill until Gertie picked me up, so after moving my dad into my room, I took the electric clippers I used to use on myself and went out on the patio with the big poodle. I only intended to cut him some eye holes, but when I did that and stood back to get a good look at him, his head looked deformed. I trimmed the rest of his head fro down, practically to the skin, but then he looked like he had had a run in with a head-shrinking cannibal. I spent the next hour shaving him down all over, and he didn't like it at all. He had this ashamed look on his face. I left one giant ball of fur on his tail like I occasionally saw on dog-show poodles. I tried to get him to look at it so he could see that he wasn't entirely naked, but he wasn't moved at all. When I let him loose, he ran through the backyard and rolled around like crazy. He looked more like a greyhound-rat mix now, but at least he could see.

My phone rang constantly. I listened to a little of the first message and then stopped after it became apparent that they were all going to be about the many ways in which Dennis was going to kill me. Had I kept listening instead of turning off the phone like I did, I would have learned something useful: Dennis had convinced the cop to find out the address of the car owner who had been double parked in front of his house. If we hadn't stolen the big poodle right from under the policeman's nose, I'd have probably never had to see Dennis again.

15

Gertie honked from my driveway at half past two. With act three tucked under my arm, I went outside and got in the Eldorado. She was dressed in a new outfit that made her look like a Spanish dancer—black, frilly skirt with a red belt, white-lace blouse, and a black choker with a faux diamond in the middle. She had clearly just come from the hairdresser. Her hair was pulled back in a bun, and her make-up looked professionally done as well. The amount of leg I could see was covered by barely noticeable panty hose, the kind that, when you see professional ice skaters wearing them, you get mistakenly excited at first thinking of how many times you're going to get flashed during the performance. On Gertie, the whole getup made her look no older than, say, 56.

“Wow baby! All dolled up for your ex-boyfriend,” I said and shut the car door.

“I want him to see that I look nothing like what he predicted.”

“Where does he want to meet us?”

“On the Malibu pier,” she said and pulled out.

We headed north up the Pacific Coast Highway. The ocean was spread out below the cliffs on our left; the hills on our right were covered with houses built on stilts. Every available space on those slopes had a house somewhere, and they all looked like a good rain would send them sliding down onto the highway.

What I didn’t realize was that Dennis had been parked on my street, waiting for me to come out of my house, and was now following us.

Gertie began her juggling act with the lighter, cigarette and steering wheel. She clearly had depth-perception issues. She had to focus really hard on the end of her cigarette in order to bring the lighter up to the right place to light it. I had to reach up and grab the steering wheel to steer us back on course, and as a barrage of honking exploded around us, Gertie looked up, saw my hand on the wheel and glared.

“Are you trying to get us killed?” she asked. “Leave the driving to me.”

We weaved up the coast and passed the sign that welcomed us to Malibu and its “27 miles of scenic beauty.” Ten minutes later, Gertie hung a dangerous U-turn at the pier and parked on the side of the highway.

“So, you still have that gun in here?” I asked, pointing at the glove box.

“Yep. Every once in a while if someone does something really stupid on the road, I like to pull it out and wave it around. The traffic opens up around me immediately.”

“Can I see it?”

“Sure,” she said.

I opened up the glove compartment, dug around underneath the condoms and pulled out the Walther PPK. Now that I knew it wasn't real, I didn't feel as tough as I had the first time I had held it, but it was still cool.

Gertie was giving her make-up a final once-over in the rearview mirror. I was twirling the gun on my finger, trying to catch it and aim all in one smooth motion. The first few times, I dropped it on the floorboard and had to bend over and stretch to pick it up. Then I flipped it a little faster, and it went around and came to rest in my palm perfectly.

All of a sudden, two hands grabbed the gun and began smashing my hand down on the car door. I let go of the gun and turned to see Dennis. He put the gun up against the side of my head.

“The worm turns!” he yelled.

“What the hell does that mean?” I said, holding my hand in pain.

“It means that you think the worm is going in one direction, and then—pow!—he goes in the other direction, and his head becomes his ass!”

I was a little confused as to why he would make such a declaration. Apparently Gertie was equally mystified.

“Who is the worm in this situation?” she asked.

“I'm the worm, damn it! I'm the fucking worm!”

“Are you the ass now, or were you the ass before?” she asked.

“Enough talk!” he yelled. “You're going to give me those pictures now, or this is going to get ugly.”

“We don't have them. We came here to get them from the guy who does,” I said.

“How did he get them?”

“I gave them to him on accident, but he realized what they were worth,” I said.

“He's about to learn that they’re worth a headache. Where are you supposed to meet this guy?”

“At the end of the pier,” said Gertie. “He'll be standing near the fishermen. He's an old guy with a beard. You'll recognize him easily. He looks exactly like Steven Spielberg.”

Dennis slowly took the gun off me and moved back from the car.

“Don't even think about following me,” he said and ran toward the entrance to the pier.

“Why did you tell him where Spielberg was?” I asked, but Gertie just held up a finger to tell me to be quiet and dialed a number on her phone.

“Steven? We're here, but we've got a problem. There's a nutbag coming your way right now. It's a long story, but basically he has a non-working replica of James Bond's gun that he thinks is real, and he's coming to steal the pictures,” she said and then listened. “That'd be great.” She hung up and then turned to me. “Everything will work out fine.”

“Really?”

“Actually, it couldn't have worked out better. Let's go watch,” she said and got out of the car.

We walked down the highway to a spot from where the end of the pier came into view. I could see Dennis looking around the crowd, trying to find Spielberg. Then he walked straight over to a man who was fishing and grabbed him by the shirt.

“He's got the wrong guy there,” said Gertie.

Dennis seemed to be yelling at the guy and shaking him a little. After the fisherman yelled something back, Dennis let go of him and moved away, continuing his search. Then he noticed Spielberg. He walked over to him with his hand in his pocket, and when he got right next to him, he pulled out the gun and stuck it against his side.

“He's going to regret that. Steven has a lot of built up rage. People have been stalking him ever since he became famous,” said Gertie.

Spielberg put his hands up slowly, and then with one vicious backhand chop, he hit Dennis in the throat. Dennis went sprawling down onto the pier. Spielberg made a gesture to a couple of the fisherman, his disguised bodyguards, who rushed over and grabbed Dennis.

Gertie and I walked to the end of the pier. We couldn’t get near Spielberg because the crowd around him had become enormous. After the police made their way over, they took down several eye-witness accounts, handcuffed Dennis and then led him off to their cruiser.

As Spielberg was being escorted down the pier by the police, he took out his phone and dialed. Gertie's cell rang.

“Did you have to hit the guy in the throat?” Gertie asked and then listened. “Well, I guess that was fair. He didn't realize it was a fake. So where do we meet up now? Okay. We’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

16

We drove south on the PCH to a fish restaurant named Gladstone's, which overlooked the ocean. Gertie pulled into the parking lot and got in line for the valet parking. Like most of the valet parking in L.A., the lines you had to wait in usually took you longer than it would have taken just to pull in and find your own spot. In fact, the spots that the valets were driving to were only about a hundred feet beyond the front of the line of cars. Gertie handed the keys over to a really shady-looking guy. We stood there watching him from the sidewalk to see how long he lingered inside the car after pulling into the space. He got out within an acceptable amount of time, so we headed into the restaurant.

Gertie told the hostess who we were there to see. We were directed to a part of the restaurant that had been blocked off by partitions. We walked behind them and saw a table for four with a great view of the ocean, but instead of Spielberg waiting for us, there was only Grant, texting away on his phone. When he saw us he gave a nod and continued to text, but now he grimaced and held the phone up higher to let us know that he was making every human effort possible to finish quickly. He firmly pressed the send button, sighed and then looked at us.

“Glad you could make it,” he said.

“Where's Steven?” asked Gertie, checking her hair in the reflection of the window.

“He couldn't make it. He's got a fleet of paparazzi behind him now. But don't worry—I have what you want. Sit down. The studio is picking up our lunch.”

Gertie and I sat down. She slid the photo album over to Grant. I took out the third act and slid it his way as well.

“Great. And here are your photos,” he said and handed me the envelope.

“Thanks. I'm kind of curious to know why you wanted this thing. I only wrote it when I thought...well, when I thought Spielberg wanted to know what Gertie here was up to.”

“I probably shouldn't tell you this,” Grant said, “but it's too late for you to do anything about it anyway. When we thought you were trying to blackmail us with this script, we decided to take action. We saw that you didn't have it copyrighted, so I typed it up and added some more scenes explaining how the Dweller came to Earth, and then we gave it to a USC student. We told him if he managed to make a good film with a non-existent budget and handheld cameras, we'd give him a job on Steven's next project. He's almost finished filming act two now. Steven will be able to parry any future accusations involving the name 'Gertie Elliot' by saying you saw the independent film he produced and are trying to capitalize on a coincidence. We thought it would be a giant piece of garbage, but the kid managed to get Nicolas Cage to star in it. Nick is apparently trying to jump start his career by doing quirky, independent stuff for free.”