Life Goes to the Movies (22 page)

“Now. What do you want to know about me? Never mind: I’ll tell you what you need to know. At fourteen I weighed three hundred and
twenty-seven pounds. At fifteen my mom and pop died in a car accident on the Deegan on the way home from a Yanks-Red Sox game (the Yankees lost seven
to nothing). At sixteen I moved in with Skip D’Angelo, the famous fighter trainer, he trained Patterson, Torres, Sugar Ray, you name it, up in
Catskill. Skip taught me to respect myself and stop being a fuck-off wise-ass, which I was. I lost a hundred pounds, learned to box, got drafted, went
to ’Nam, got my fingers sliced off, served my country, survived. I’m here. I’ve said enough. Short and sweet: I don’t put up
with any bullshit. Now tell me your story. And make it snappy ’cause time is money and I’m a man of costly means. You dig that California
roll?”

“It’s not a hamburger,” I said, “but it’ll do.”

“Kid, I like your brass.”

5

Donny invites me to his home: a six thousand square foot northern Westchester ice-cream headache compounded of a half-dozen architectural styles, as if
as many drunken builders had engaged in a game of exquisite corpse. His “estate,” as Donny refers to it, is arrived at by way of a twisting
driveway of white gravel winding its way through a dappled tunnel of sycamore trees, past banks of tulips and rosebushes, and up a stretch of lawn
impervious to dandelions and so resolutely green it might have been painted on with a roller. As Donny’s convertible Jaguar pulls closer I see
the artificial babbling brook spanned by a red pagoda bridge, and the red clay tennis court. Sharing the lawn with a lavender gazing ball and the
lantern-bearing ceramic coachman is a trampoline-sized satellite dish ringed with purple and pink azaleas.

As for the house itself, along with its hodgepodge of gables and rooflines it features gargoyle downspouts and gutter sprites, a veneer stone facade,
and an attached garage with efficiency apartment inhabited by Donny’s mother, who sits sunning herself in a folding lawn chair in the yard
alongside it. As we roll into the garage Donny blows her a kiss.

The gallon-jug zinfandel aesthetic persists indoors, where my mentor shows off his passive magnetic field burglar alarm system, his brass-plated
touchpad doorknobs, his Côte D’Azur hanging tapestries, his pianoforte, his functionless ceiling beams, and his aquarium coffee table
populated by scarred Siamese fighting fish. Downstairs, in the finished basement, Donny leads me from walk-in humidor to mini-bar to wine cellar to
paneled rumpus room with convertible gaming console. One by one, from a golden oak gun cabinet, he extracts the crown jewels of his arsenal, floating
them on the emerald sea of his billiards table, their polished parts redolent of gun cream and stock oil.

Donny hands me his prize possession, an Israeli-made AK-47 that he invites me to fondle while offering to let me give “her” a try. “I
got a pile of cinderblocks out back we can shoot the shit out of,” he informs me.

Firearms frighten me. It has long been my understanding that they are used to kill people. At my lack of enthusiasm Donny pulls a long face. To make
amends I say, “But it really is a most beautiful gun. Truly.”

“Gun?” Donny snatches the AK-47 from me. “Kid, this ain’t no gun. This is a weapon.” He grabs his crotch. “Thisis a gun.”

With me holding my own crotch he makes me repeat after him, This is my weapon, this is my gun; this is for fighting, this is for fun.

Within a year I’ve made Junior Creative Director.

6

My apartment was a brownstone one-bedroom in the upper seventies, in a neighborhood of shabby low buildings that let in lots of air and sunlight. My
neighbors were mostly Puerto Ricans. On sweltering summer days they would sit on their stoops shirtless or in bathing suits, watching their children
play in the puddle of an opened fire hydrant, the whoosh of passing traffic a poor substitute for the crashing of surf.

Though no larger than my Barnum basement, I liked my new home. It had high molded ceilings and a fireplace (with enameled tiles and a beveled mirror
over the mantle piece). There was a set of bowed mullioned bay windows with built-in box seats and other items that the New York Times
real estate ad referred to collectively as “nice details.” The window faced the three brownstones across the street: brown, pink, and
white—like a freshly-opened carton of Neapolitan ice cream, a view snared by the branches of a ginkgo tree flaunting its demure, fan-shaped
leaves.

The tree was a female. In summer its rotting fruit exuded an odor reminiscent of vomit. But even that I learned to like.

I furnished the place with a brown leather sofa, an antique Kadmus & Kimble rocker, two kilims, and—my one pure extravagance—a
1930’s English maple bar unit whose inged top opened to a display of bright lights and mirrors etched with floating cocktail shakers and droll
martini glasses. At two hundred and fifty dollars it was by far the most expensive thing I owned, its ostentation compounded by the fact that I rarely
drank hard liquor. Still, its mere presence brightened that already bright apartment up. To open its top was to throw an instant, Prohibition-era
cocktail party.

7

I’m sitting on the built-in window bench, sipping my morning coffee, when a voice climbs up from below. I lean out of the window and see a man
dressed from head to toe in orange—orange wool beanie, pumpkin windbreaker, tangerine gloves, nasturtium sneakers … He wears a
Howdie Doodie mask. On the sidewalk next to him sits a familiar-looking, brass-fixtured aluminum trunk.

He yells up at my window:

“Stellla! Hey, Steeellllllaaaa!”

“Dwaine?” I shout down. “Is that you?”

“No, it’s the ghost of Stanley Kowalski wearing a Howdie Doodie mask.”

“How did you find me?” Except for my parents and some people at work I haven’t given anyone my new address.

“Help me up with this trunk, will you, babe, and then I promise to answer all of your pointless and impertinent questions.”

I help him lug the trunk up to my apartment. The thing weighs a ton. “What the hell’s in it, anyway?” I ask, lugging.

“A dead body. No, the uncut Citizen Kane.”

We lug it up my three flights. While we do I ask about Venus, trying to sound as casual as possible. I’ve gotten over her, of course. Completely.
Still, I don’t want Dwaine to think I’m too interested.

“Better without me, apparently,” he says. We stop and rest on a landing. Dwaine braces himself, hands on knees, coughing. He’s still
wearing the Howdy Doodie mask. “So,” he says when the coughing fit ends, “do I rate a hug from my best pal, or what?”

“Not with that thing on, you don’t.”

He takes the mask off. He’s shaven not just the beard but his entire head, Marine-style. Semper Fi. He looks pale, thin, and more than a
little dangerous. I give him a hug.

We pull the trunk into my apartment. He falls into my Kadmus & Kimble rocking chair. “Walk-ups, man. There ought to be a law.”

“Seriously, Dwaine, what’s in the trunk?”

“Seriously? My whole life. Notebooks, screenplay drafts, all the short films we made in college. And a power of attorney, signed and notarized.
I’m feeding myself to the authorities. It’s why I’m wearing these duds. I figure if I’m going to be a Federal prisoner I might
as well dress the part. By the way, did you know orange is Frank Sinatra’s favorite color?”

“You’re going to prison?”

“Close. I’m signing myself into the V.A. hospital.”

“Are you serious?”

“Oh, yeah. As serious as a judge having a heart attack.”

“Does Venus know about this?”

“It was her idea, practically. She seems to think I need a gaggle of shrinks to keep me from going deep. Calls me a suicidal dipso, imagine that?
Speaking of which: got anything decent to drink in this yuppie palace of yours?” His eyes zero in on my English bar unit, the one with the hinged
top. “What’s this?” he says, going to and opening it. The lights and mirrors dazzle. “Holy shit, there’s a whole Busby
Berkley musical going on in here! Man, look at this shit! He’s got a sterling silver ice bucket, with penguinson it, for Christ’s
sake!”

“It’s stainless steel. Two dollars at the flea market.”

“I’ve got a sudden craving for a martini, extra dry and dirty. Just have the vermouth blow a kiss to the gin.”

“How about a glass of water?”

“’Water is for those who have sinned.’ Remember that waiter in Florida telling us that?”

“It was the sommelier.”

“Huh?”

“It was the sommelier, not the waiter.”

“You really do worry me at times, you know that, now, don’t you, babe?”

I grab a bottle of seltzer from my refrigerator. Except for some olives and a half-finished bottle of Riesling left over from a date two nights before
there’s not much in there. Like most bachelors I rarely cook. The stereotype pleases me. It pleases me to fit into any largely accepted social
pattern, including this one that Dwaine, now, with his surprise visit, threatens to dash like a rock hurled into a reflection on still water. When I
come back with the water Dwaine is holding one of my pipes, the ones I keep in a rack next to the Kadmus rocker. I keep them for decorative purposes,
though occasionally I give one a puff or two.

“You’ll die of jaw cancer,” he says, twirling it. “Like Dr. Freud.”

I take the pipe from him, put it away.

“Speaking of geniuses: how’s Professor Whip ‘n’ Chill?”

“My father? He’s fine.” In fact my father isn’t. He’s had two more mini-strokes. With each he becomes more forgetful.
“He forgets things,” I say.

“Man, I’d like to forget a few things myself, like the last fifteen years. My dogs are killing me. Got any Epson salts, by any
chance?”

I fill a big pot with steaming water and salt. With his feet immersed Dwaine sits back sighing and moaning, making soft, low, faintly orgasmic sounds.
The aluminum trunk sits on my kilim. I tap it with my toe.

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Up to you, babe. Have it auctioned at Sotheby’s. Bury it. Send it over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Better yet send it to Charles
Scribner’s Sons and have them publish it before I perish. Write a killer cover letter.”

“I’m serious, Dwaine.”

“I’m serious, too, dead serious. Oh, speaking of which: now that you’re the executor in charge of my estate, you have to promise me
one thing: that you won’t kill yourself, at least not any time soon, not while my life is in your hands. Promise?”

“I promise.”

“Honest Injun?”

“Yes.” (My head is spinning.)

“Good, ’cause when you kill yourself you’re killing the wrong person. You’ve heard that one before, I bet.” He eyes the
glass of seltzer I’ve given him with tremendous distaste. “This stuff stinks.” He puts the soda down, stands up, hugs me.
“Gotta run. See you at the funny farm.

“Oh, one last thing,” he says on his way out. “Look out for Venus for me, huh, will you? The brightest natural object in the night
sky. I’m counting on you to look out for her. You’re the only one I trust to look out for her. Okay?”

He runs down the stairs, shouting “Stella!” as he goes.

8

Five thirty a.m. My phone rings.

“Scared.” Dwaine breathes heavily, obscenely. “I got scared.”

“Where are you?”

With little or no traffic it takes me only twenty minutes to get downtown. I find him sitting in a pay phone booth at the corner of 14th and Avenue C,
in the shadow of a Con Ed smokestack belching gloom into the dawn sky. A drizzle falls. He clutches a dead Smirnoff pint. His teeth chatter. Yards away
the East River rolls, dark and greasy.

“I chickened out,” he says. “I’m a coward.”

“No you’re not.”

“I am, babe. I’m as yellow as a New York City taxi.”

Cars and trucks buzz down the avenue, taillights bleeding into puddles. In the proper gloom and from a certain distance all vehicles look poetic.
I’m carrying a briefcase full of ad concept boards and my umbrella. I hold the umbrella over our heads. Between Avenues B and A the rain
drenches. We duck into Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception. Dwaine kneels at the altar, holding the railing with one hand, the arm of my Burberry
raincoat with the other. He sniffs. His nose runs. I let him wipe his snot on my raincoat sleeve. He drops to all fours, crawls up to the Virgin Mary
statue, kisses her marble toes. I pull his arm over my shoulder. His fingernails are wedged with dirt. He stinks. He smells like the men’s room
at Grand Central Station, like a bum. Two old Hispanic ladies who’ve come to count their rosary beads gape from the pews. One crosses herself.

“I want a military funeral, and I’m entitled to one, free of charge!”

“It’s not a movie, Dwaine.”

“Sure it is, Dog Day Afternoon.”

The old ladies shuffle nervously out of the church. On our way out, as we pass the votive stands, Dwaine digs into his pea coat pockets, dredges up
some coins and hurls them. They clatter down through the banked rows of candles.

“Have you got the papers?”

“Papers?”

“The hospital admission papers?”

“Papers … papers …”

I frisk him. From the depths of his coat lining I withdraw a tattered document.

Name: Fitzgibbon, Sean Dwaine

Department Component and Branch / Class: Army RA UN

Occupation: filmmaker

Date of Birth: 10-31-52

Race (check one): White: Black: Hispanic: Other: Irish

Social Security Number: 074-63-2254

DD214: yes

Occupational Specialties: 91 Alpha 10 (medical corpsman)

Grade, Rate or Rank: PFC

Awards/Citations: Vietnam Campaign Ribbon, National Defense Service Ribbon, Combat Infantry Badge, Expert (rifle), Sharp-shooter Medal

DEROS: May 5, 1973

Reason and Authority: Conscientious Objection

Character of Discharge: Honorable

Name of Spouse: Veronica (nee Wiggins)

In case of emergency contact: Nigel DePoli.