The Boy Who Never Grew Up (36 page)

Lulu caught a whiff of crab puffs and headed straight for the buffet table.

“What do we do now, Meat?” Matthew gulped, a frozen grin on his face.

“Not a thing,” I replied. “Just wait for them to come to you.”

And they did. First to approach was a short, powerfully built guy with a jagged scar across his forehead. His wife was tiny, perky, and frizzy-haired. “Mr. Wax?” he said nervously. “You won’t remember me in a million years, but I used to live next door to you when we were kids. Neal Bricker.”

“I sure do,” said Matthew, awestruck.

He did indeed. This was the bully he’d nailed in the head with the rock. Neal still wore the scar.

“I’d like you to say hello to my wife, Phyllis,” said Neal, surprised and flattered that Matthew Wax remembered him. “She’s a big fan of yours. We run a pet supplies outlet together in Glendora.”

“Pleased to meet you, Phyllis,” Matthew said pleasantly.

I headed off to the bar to fetch us some champagne. By the time I got there he had been engulfed. His classmates clustered around him, paying their respects, shaking his hand, proudly introducing him to their husbands and wives. Some took snapshots of him. Others asked for his autograph. At first, he seemed genuinely stunned by all of it. But then he started enjoying it. His eyes shone brightly. He was laughing. He was lapping it up. And why not? He’d always wanted these people to like him. And now they did. It had taken Matthew Wax twenty years, but he wasn’t a goon anymore. He was one of them. He was home. And loving every minute of it.

It didn’t take me long to find her. She was standing over by the edge of the dance floor exchanging kiddie photos with three other women. She was taller than I expected, much taller than Pennyroyal. And the resemblance had faded some over the years. Her features were more pronounced than Penny’s, nose longer, chin more square. Age lines crinkled at her eyes. She was not a great beauty. But she was a striking, handsome woman. She wore a white silk blouse, suede skirt, and black boots. She looked weary. Single mothers tend to. When the other women drifted away, I moved in.

“Mona, isn’t it?” I asked.

She smiled, flushing slightly. “Wait, don’t tell me, let me guess.” She looked me over carefully. “Don’t tell me. … I’ll get it. …” She finally gave up, squinting at my name tag. “Stewart Hoag. Wow, the memory’s really starting to go.”

“It’s not, Mona. I never went to Monroe. I’m here with a friend who did—Matthew Wax.”

She gasped girlishly. “Matthew Wax
came
? God, my daughter will die when I tell her. She adores
Dennis
. Watches it over and over again.”

“He’d like to say hello to you.”

Mona brought her hand up to her mouth. “To me?”

“Yes.”

She shook her head at me. “No, he must be thinking of somebody else. We hardly knew each other.”

“He specifically mentioned you.”

“Are you sure about this?”

“Quite sure.” I offered her my arm. “Shall we?”

She hesitated, then took my arm. We started across the room toward him. She stopped. “Wait, is this some kind of prank?”

“Prank?”

“They pull all kinds of stuff at these things to embarrass people.”

“It’s no prank,” I assured her.

She bit her lower lip nervously. “Look, let me go comb my hair first, okay? I’ll find you.”

“Mona, there is one other thing—would you dance with him?”

“
Dance
with him?”

“If he asks. Will you say yes?”

“Well, sure.” She was mystified. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“No reason. No reason at all.”

She headed off to the ladies’ room. I went back to Matthew, who was chatting away with a tanned, athletic couple he introduced to me as the Kip Londons.

“Kip played basketball with me, Meat,” he informed me, with a sly wink.

“You bet,” said Kip, pumping my hand. “I’ve been telling Andrea for years now we played on the team together.”

“I’ll bet you guys had your share of laughs,” I suggested.

“More than our share,” Kip affirmed heartily. “You in motion pictures, too, Stewart?”

“I am not. What do you do, Kip?”

“Manage a Wendy’s franchise over on Lankershim for my father-in-law,” he replied. “We had your sixteen-ounce cups, Matt. Your
Yeti
cups. Sold a million of them.”

After he told Matthew how very, very much they enjoyed his pictures they moved along. Matthew and I were alone.

“This is great,” exclaimed Matthew, beaming happily. “Just great. I mean,
they’re
the ones who are nervous. I don’t know why I was dreading it so much.”

“I don’t either,” I said, watching Mona approach him shyly.

“Hello, Matthew,” she said, tapping him on the shoulder. “Remember me?”

He froze, his eyes bulging out of his head.

“Mona Schaffer,” she said. “Mona Thayer, now.”

He tried to speak but all that came out was a faint whimper. His throat seemed obstructed. “Sure, sure,” he managed to stammer, shaking her hand. “Sure you are. Sure.” He kept on shaking her hand. She looked at him oddly, wondering if he was ever going to stop. He did, finally. “Sure you are. Sure.” He was starting to perspire.

“My daughter just loves your movies.”

“Really? How old is he?”

“She.”

“I meant she,” he said hurriedly, his teeth chattering.

“Eight.”

“I—I have a little boy myself. Six months old.”

She laughed. “No kidding. I only read about him every day in the paper.”

“You do?” He seemed surprised at this.

“Of course, Matthew. We all do.”

He stared at her, glassy-eyed. He’d run out of things to say. That helpless whimper came from his throat again.

“I understand you’re a nurse, Mona,” I said, stepping in.

She nodded. “At the Kaiser Permanente in Woodland Hills. I’m in pulmonary intensive care.”

“I—I direct movies,” Matthew volunteered.

She laughed again. “He’s really funny, isn’t he?” she said to me.

“I think so.”

Up on stage, the band segued into a perfectly repulsive rendition of
Desperado
, the old Eagles’ song. It was, however, slow. A few couples were dancing. I nudged Matthew with my elbow. He looked at me inquiringly. I shot a look over at the dance floor. He nodded grimly.

“W-Would you like to dance, Mona?” he asked her, his voice cracking just like Badger’s did when he asked Debbie to the prom. Debbie said yes but got the mumps, so Badger took his mom, who was voted prom queen.

Mona said, “I’d love to dance, Matthew.”

“Great.” He heaved a sigh of relief. “Will you excuse us, Meat?”

“I have to cut out now, Matthew.”

“But we just got here,” he protested. “Where are you going?”

“It’s business. I’ll see you back at Bedford Falls later.”

“Okay, Meat, if you say so. Hey, wait—how am I gonna get home?”

“Improvise.”

Parked cars lined both sides of Hazen Drive all the way down the hill, well past the gate where I’d found the bodies of Abel Zorch and Geoffrey with a G. Paparazzi were crowded outside the Schloms’ gate. A police cruiser was parked there with two uniformed cops inside it. Then again, maybe it was only Norb’s bogus car. And maybe they were only actors pretending to be cops. No telling. I only knew that it was definitely time to get out of town.

I left the Batmobile with a male model in a red jacket and strolled up the driveway. It was steep and curved around behind another house before it arrived at a 1940s reproduction of a Provencal stone cottage, not small. It sat on top of the hill, the lights of the San Fernando Valley spread out below. There was a tennis court, a pool, and a large floodlit patio. That’s where the activity was. Two hundred or so celebrities had come to pay their last respects to Abel Zorch and their first to Mr. Hiroshi Nakamura of the Murakami Corporation, Wild West style. The old guard was on hand—the Jimmy Stewarts, John Gavins, Charlton Hestons. The new guard was on hand—Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, Demi Moore and Bruce Willis, Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger, Sly Stallone and bimbo. They were all there, costumed in their ten-gallon hats, fringed buckskin jackets and stonewashed jeans, their deerskin vests, elkhide boots and duster coats, their leather chaps, string ties, and calico shirts. They were all there, chewing on their plates of barbecue and cole slaw and spitting the remains into their bandana napkins. A pig was roasting on a spit over an open fire. A country western band was playing—Willie Nelson, in fact. Approved society page photographers and the
Entertainment Tonight
puff crew were on hand to capture all the fun. The earplug brigade was there too, meaning Ronnie and Nancy were about somewhere as well.

Lulu took it all in, awestruck. A relapse, I’m afraid. It was quite some crowd. But a brief relapse, happily. After a moment she shook herself, like she does after a bath, and went scampering off in search of the sushi bar I’d promised her. A small lie on my part. She wouldn’t have left the reunion otherwise.

Toy Schlom, elegant society matron, spotted me quickly, her violet eyes sparkling. She seemed gay and at ease amidst all of this. Also lithe and ageless. Not an ounce of fat on her. She wore a black suede vaquero hat, a faded denim shirt open to the navel, and skintight white jeans tucked into black snakeskin Tony Lamas. I noticed again how unusually smooth and shiny her skin was. Watching her move across the patio toward me I decided she wasn’t coated in polyurethane at all. No, the entire lady was made of durable space-age polymers.

“Why, you’ve not worn a costume, Mr. Hoag,” she observed in her Locust Valley lockjaw. “I should be very cross with you.”

“Not to fear, Toy. On the inside I’m still a rootin’, tootin’, six-shootin’ buckaroo.”

She laughed and took my arm, guiding me toward the house. “You are an interesting man. I may have to adopt you for the evening. There are
so
few interesting people here.” She was skilled at this, all poise and flattery. “You must eat, of course. But first you must say hello to Norbert and our guest of honor.”

She took me inside through the French doors. Very Provencal in here as well. Stone floors. Whitewashed walls. Rough, country antiques. There was an upstairs, and wings going off in both directions.

“Not a terrible house,” I said.

“I’ve just finished decorating it,” she said. “It
is
nice, is it not? Especially for a tear-down.”

“You’re tearing it down?”

“On Monday,” she confirmed. “We need more space. A ballroom, a dining room that can seat more than two dozen. We love the location, so we have decided to build on it. An exact duplicate of the villa in Tuscany Norbert and I stayed in on our honeymoon. It will be very authentic, very bold. And it will have
space
. My new closets, I assure you, will make Candy Spelling’s closets look like—”

“Closets?”

“We’re renting down the block while the construction takes place. Abel’s house, actually. We’ve made arrangements with his estate.”

“I’ve been wanting to talk to you about Abel,” I said.

“Why, certainly,” she said brightly. “After I’ve greeted my guests, and you’ve eaten. Shall I look for you in the study?”

“That’ll be fine.”

They were in the living room, posed stiffly before the stone fireplace like heads of state at a summit conference. On the left was Schlom, the thug with the yellow rat’s eyes. On the right was Nakamura, who was a pretty tough-looking customer himself. The man from Murakami was in his sixties and built of solid oak, with slicked-down black hair and steel-framed glasses. The Reagans were with them right now, both of them looking like they’d paid a recent visit to a good, professional taxidermist. So were the national TV news crews and a crew from Tokyo, lights blazing, cameras rolling. Flanking Nakamura was the Japanese ambassador to the United States, who’d flown in from Washington for die occasion. Flanking Schlom was Kinsley Usher, the tall, silver-haired ex-senator from the state of California who was every inch Hollywood’s vision of a statesman. The man was so distinguished he made Lloyd Bentsen look like Buddy Hackett. None of these people were in Western wear, though I suspected Ronnie wanted to be.

After the cameras had stopped rolling and the former President and Nancy had been carted away, Toy led me up to her husband.

“Darling, here is Mr. Hoag,” she sang out.

“Glad to see ya, Hoag,” he growled, shaking my hand. “Say hello to Mr. Nakamura. This is Stu Hoag, Hiroshi. He’s helping us bring this Bedford Falls thing to a conclusion.”

“I suppose that’s one way of describing what I’m doing,” I said.

Nakamura’s eyes flickered at the mention of Bedford Falls. A brief flicker. Nothing more. He bowed, then shook my hand. His grip made my fingers tingle. He said he was pleased to meet me, and happy that the heat wave had broken. He spoke fluent English, or seemed to. He was cordial. Still, I wouldn’t have wanted to get in a fight with him. Next to him, Schlom was Cuddles Sakall.

I moved over and let Usher dazzle me with his smile.

“I’ve just been in contact with Sheldon Selden, Mr. Hoag,” he informed me in his rich, resonant voice. He talked as if the cameras were still rolling. “I was attempting to impress upon him how crucial it is for both sides to pour oil on these troubled waters. I suggested we all sit down together tomorrow morning like responsible adults.”

“A novel concept, Senator,” I said. “I like it.”

“I hope you’ll join us.”

“I don’t believe I qualify.”

“That isn’t so, sir,” he insisted. “I understand you’ve become a trusted family adviser.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

He frowned. “What did you mean?”

“I meant I’m not a responsible adult.”

I left him to ponder this and moved on outside. A cowpoke waiter handed me a frosted mug of beer. I found Pennyroyal and Cassandra standing by the pool polishing off their vittles. Pennyroyal wore a starched calico prairie dress unbuttoned up to midthigh, white boots, and a suede cowboy hat held on with a chin strap. She was unquestionably the cutest little cowgirl there. Possibly the cutest in the history of the West. Or maybe it was just the way she was looking at me.