The Comedy Writer (40 page)

Gus said I could crash at his place, and he was sort of a doctor, so I didn't argue. I don't remember much about my stay. I was numb, drugged, traumatized. The blood in my veins seemed to have a vague sting to it, maybe from hyperventilating all day. Some of Gus's furniture was small, but not all of it. I recall that he was kind, feeding me a steak and baked potato with ketchup and butter and Worcestershire sauce all puddled on top. We watched a documentary on Louis B. Mayer and his protege, Irving Thalberg, the two most powerful moviemakers of the first half of the century. Thalberg was to die young; Louis B. lived to be old and made many movies and apparently had his way with most of the starlets of the day, and on his deathbed his final words were: “Nothing means anything.” After the show, I felt exhausted and slept on the couch with a hot, sick, drippy feeling in the left hemisphere of my gut.

I fell asleep around nine and got up the next day at noon. I could have gone even later, but Gus came back from work and put on shorts and a Woody Allen hat.

“Get dressed,” he said. “I'm taking you to the beach.”

I tried to beg off, claiming I had too much work to do, but he wouldn't hear it.

“You need a break,” he said. “You're in L.A., for crying out loud, get a tan.”

I was too weak to argue and I figured I could sleep at the beach, so I gave in.

Gus drove to a juice bar on the Santa Monica promenade and bought me a shake made with apples, bananas, mangos, and ground sunflower seeds. We picked up a couple smoked turkey subs at Bay Cities deli and drove down the hill to the beach. We parked next to the pier and walked north. Signs warned of a recent sewage spill in the bay and advised against swimming. To do so could cause nausea and/or vomiting. This hadn't kept the sunbathers away, though most refrained from taking a dip. It was primarily young Mexicans and blacks here. There was a man playing a flute.

I told Gus to keep moving. Crowds I didn't need. Kids screaming, Frisbee throwers, possible gang activity, obnoxious disc jockeys, Spanish music—my nerves couldn't take it. Flutes depressed me. I just wanted to lay out my towel and sleep.

We walked for a half mile, the click-clack of sedatives in my pocket keeping the beat like comforting maracas. The crowd thinned and, finally, perfection: an orange pup tent and two pretty girls—a blonde and a redhead—lying in front of it. We spread our stuff thirty feet from them. The girls smiled. This could be just the thing for me, I thought.

A child appeared from out of the tent, but I was too depressed to get up and move.

As I ate my sandwich, I saw the kid crawl down to the water. He did a little tumble facefirst into the surf, came up snorting. The girls didn't notice.

“Look at this,” I said. “They let that little kid go down to the water alone.”

“He's not in the water,” Gus said. “He's in the sand.”

“Just takes one big wave.”

Gus finished his sandwich and lay down.

“He's only two or three,” I said.

“Relax, Henry.”

I watched the waves licking the boy's legs. The girls stood and approached the child. I was relieved, now I could sleep. Just as I put my head down, I saw them heading away toward the pier without the boy.

“What the hell …” I hit Gus's leg. “Check it out.”

He raised up on his elbows.

“Do you believe those idiots?” I said. “They're leaving the kid all by himself.”

Gus shrugged and lay back down. I got up, looked in the tent. Empty. The kid was all alone. They'd left a two-year-old all by himself on a beach.

“Why don't they just give him a goddamn loaded gun?”

“Mm,” said Gus.

“I can't believe this. They took off. I can't even see them anymore.”

Gus rolled onto his side. “Maybe someone's watching from the tent.

“I checked.”

When I tried to approach the boy, he stopped digging and screamed until I moved away. I returned to my towel but didn't sit down. The kid resumed digging. I could see the suicide building on the bluff behind us.

“Goddamn it, that pisses me off,” I said. “I feel like taking him to the police station, just to teach those two morons a lesson. Get their fucking names in the paper. The press would love it:
'Home Alone
on the Beach.' “

I kicked at the sand. Some of it went in Gus's face.

“Sorry,” I said.

He sat up, brushed himself off.

“I didn't do that on purpose.”

“I know,” he said.

'There ought to be a law against people like that. They have no sense of responsibility. It's a clinic on tragedy-making. He could drown, he could crawl out on the PCH, someone could steal him, he could be molested …”

“Take it easy, Henry.”

“I'm just sick of it. I'd like to sleep sometime too, you know. But the world's full of morons. Nobody cares. What if we weren't here?”

I put Gus's hat on and kept an eye on the kid. The boy didn't budge. After about forty-five minutes, the girls returned.

“Excuse me!” I called out. “Do either of you belong to this child?”

The Blonde smiled. “I do.”

“You do?” I said, approaching them. “He's yours?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Where have you been?”

“We went to get cigs,” the Redhead said.

She held up a pack of Camels.

“Well, I'd like you to know that while you were off
'getting cigs, f
your little boy here crawled into the water and almost drowned.” It was a lie but she deserved it.

The Blonde turned red. She got a running start, cocked her arm, and slapped her son on the back. The child's lungs made a beeping sound as the air blew out of him. “I told you not to move while I was gone!” she screamed.

The boy's mouth and eyes opened wide searching for air, a white handprint showed off the sunburn on the rest of his body, and he stared up in shock at his mother's finger. The wind was knocked out of me, too.

“What are you doing?” I said.

The Blonde said, “Mind your own business.”

“It's your fault,” I said softly. “Not the kid's.”

“Shut up,” she said.

The boy found air and used it loudly.

“You shouldn't be a mother,” I said. “You shouldn't be a mother!”

“Leave her alone!” said the Redhead.

I was suddenly aware of Gus pulling on my arm.

“You should be locked up!” I yelled.

The Redhead laughed. “Look who's talking!”

“Come on, Henry,” said Gus.

As he led me away, the girls threw us the finger. Gus started gathering up our towels.

“Well, you certainly taught them a lesson,” he said.

“Gus, I could've saved her.”

“What?”

“Bonnie. It was my fault.”

“That's not true. You did everything you could.”

“No, I didn't. You don't know …”

Gus looked at me.

“She was sitting at the edge and everything happened just like I wrote … but then …”

“Yes … ?”

“She asked me to hold her hand … but I didn't.”

“What do you mean?”

“She said, 'Come close to me.' I said, 'No, it's too high. You come over here.' I was about fifteen feet away. She said, 'Please, I'm begging you, just hold my hand for a minute and I'll leave with you.

“So … why … ?”

“We were sixteen floors up, she was at the edge, I didn't know her, she seemed crazy, I thought she might pull us both over. I started toward her, but then I stopped a few feet short and said, Okay, that's halfway. Now you come halfway and we'll talk.' But she didn't come. She said, 'Sorry. Halfway's not good enough anymore' … and then she was gone.”

It seemed as if ten minutes passed before Gus moved a muscle. He picked up the rest of our stuff and started walking.

“I was afraid, Gus. I didn't know what she'd do.”

“She wouldn't have hurt you.”

“I didn't know that, though.”

“Yeah, well … now you do.”

We got the car, picked up a couple decafs, parked on Ocean Avenue, and sat on a park bench high over the Pacific Coast Highway. Clouds spewed in from the Pacific and I couldn't see rain, but I felt wetness on my face.

“Henry, you need to talk to someone. You can't keep going around trying to save the world because you feel guilty about someone you didn't even know.”

“It wasn't the first time. Something like this happened once before, Gus. There was a girl …”

“A suicide?”

“No … nope. But she's dead. We'd broken up.”

He waited for more.

“I don't know what happened. We never fought. We were made fox each other. Everything was great. Too great. I got scared and told her to get lost. Actually, I never told her, I just got lost myself.”

“And she wouldn't let you back?”

“She would've let me back anytime. She didn't know why I was acting that way, but she was ready to forgive everything if I'd just come back. She loved me.”

“But you didn't love her?”

“Yeah, I loved her. Fuck yeah, I loved her. That's the thing. I … I was young and I guess I couldn't believe that true love could come to me so soon. I met her in high school. It was serious. By college it was getting scary. I wasn't ready for it all right then. I just … couldn't go all the way with it.”

I felt another surge in my chest and started feeling around for a Klonopin.

“She called and I wouldn't answer. She sent letters and I couldn't even read them. I shut her out. We were both young and I figured we'd pick it up later. I'd have a run, she'd do her thing, and then we'd get back together after college and everything would be okay. But then she died—a car accident, down South—and it was over. I didn't even know about it for two weeks because she lived out of state and I was the shithead who'd broken her heart. And even though I was ripped to shreds, I wouldn't cry. I didn't deserve to. And that's why it's twelve years later and I'm thirty-three and I can't walk down the street without a pocketful of downers.”

The fog had dipped down to the tops of the palm trees and there was a sudden coolness.

“I miss her,” I said. “I miss her so much, Gus.”

Gus and I walked north along the bluff, beside the railing. We passed several groups of homeless people, some sitting on picnic benches, others settling into sleeping bags. When we stopped, we were in front of the suicide building, but Gus never looked at it, he just stared out to sea.

“We went out,” he said.

“Huh?”

“Bonnie and I. We went out.”

“What do you mean?”

“She was my girlfriend.”

“Jesus, Gus … I didn't know you were …”

“I … I purposely didn't, you know, want you to feel … We were moving in … you know, just to see.”

He tapped his front teeth together.

“How soon? When … when were you … ?”

“That day.”

I put my hand to my mouth.

“We were going to try it out, so I went out and borrowed a van and packed her up. She brought up some boxes, then said she was running out for a couple sandwiches. I said I'd go with her, but she said no, she wanted to go alone. She asked me to meet her at Baskin-Robbins. She was tall—Bonnie—taller than average even, and I wanted her to be comfortable, so all that week I'd bought big stuff: chairs, a couch, a bed. California king-size the bed was, that's the biggest they make. I admit it, I was proud of having a tall girlfriend
and then I got the bed home and, shit, I practically needed a pole vault to get up there.”

He made a pole vault motion and laughed unexpectedly. Gus looked surprised and a little embarrassed, as if he had forgotten that sound, and a sadness quickly enveloped him.

“The Santa Monica police called me that night and when I went to the building, I found the note in her car.”

Gus approached the fence at the edge of the bluff. He stood eye level with the top post, so he had to crouch to see the beach below.

“Jesus … that's fucking awful.”

He straightened up and turned to me.

“Want to hear something funny? In the letter she said she loved me as much as she loved herself.”

“Well … that's nice.”

“Henry, she committed suicide.”

A strained smile fell over Gus's face, causing dimples to appear above his cheeks, and I felt like hugging the poor bastard. I feared it was condescending, this impulse, like offering to buy him the ice cream cone, but I did it anyway, and it was probably the best moment I ever had in Southern California.

were a Hollywood movie, the Mexican driver would've turned out to be the longtime gardener of Michael Eisner, and Eisner would have heard the story and admired my strength of conviction. He would have then offered me the next
Honey, I Maimed the Kids
installment, and it would've made a hundred and fifty million bucks, leading to many other jobs, and I probably
would have been writing this story from an ocean view in the Malibu Colony.

But it was real life, and worse, it was Hollywood, so instead I packed up the dented Arrow and drove east on Route 10, past the monster windmills and the dinosaurs, past the Mafia town of Palm Springs, all the way to the other side of the continent, and then north, up the Eastern seaboard, to my home. It's a funny thing: When you drive east to west, New York seems a long way from Boston, but when you go the other way, the Manhattan skyline feels like home. I didn't give up on screenwriting, just Hollywood, and I never regretted that decision.