The Happiest Days of Our Lives (11 page)

Wow
, I thought.
It’s all…gone.

I stood in that open doorway for a long time and stared, working hard to replace the reality inside the stage with the memories inside my head.

“…ready?”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Are you ready?” the producer asked.

“Uh, yeah.” I reluctantly let the door close.

“It’s too loud here to shoot, so we’re set up behind the stage,” he said.

I followed him down the street, past where my school room—what was effectively my entire high school experience—used to be. There was a production golf cart for
Everyone Hates Chris
there now. I lingered briefly, fighting the urge to take one more golf-cart joyride.

Moments later, we were set up in the alley behind the stage, just outside a giant open door. I looked inside. Where Sickbay used to be, there was a set that looked like a child’s room. Where the holodeck once stood (and where all the shuttlecraft interiors were shot), there was a large drop cloth and a several cans of paint. Where Picard used to command the battle bridge—one of my all-time favorite sets—there was a tropical backdrop.

I sighed and blinked back some tears.

“Everything okay?” the producer asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m just overwhelmed by a sadness right now that I can’t really explain.”

“I understand,” he said. “This happens whenever we work with someone from
Next Generation
. I don’t know what it was about you guys, but every single one of you loved each other and remembers working on the show very fondly.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said, around a lump in my throat. “But I’m not surprised. I…I really miss those guys.”

For the next few hours, we filmed host wraps. I told stories about my time on
Star Trek
to anyone who would listen, and a few who wouldn’t.

In front of stage 16, I recalled an encounter with Lawrence Tierney (best known as Joe in
Reservoir Dogs
), who played holodeck tough guy Cyrus Redblock.

“Hey,” he said to me one afternoon between scenes. “Do you play football?”

I was 15 and weighed 95 pounds…if I was soaking wet
and
carrying a ten-pound weight.

“Uh, no,” I said.

He leaned into me, menacingly.

“Why the hell not? What are you, some kind of sissy faggot?”

I panicked, certain that he was going to beat the shit out of me because I was more comfortable throwing 3d6 than a pigskin.

“I’m not strong enough to play football!” I said.

“Well, maybe you wouldn’t be so weak if you played football!” he growled.

An assistant director arrived just in time to call us to the set and save me from certain death.

“Everyone has their own story about Planet Hell,” the producer said, pulling me back to 2007, “but yours is the first one that includes a fear of death unrelated to atmospheric smoke.”

“Boy, we sure like to complain about that smoke. Did you know it was mineral oil-based?” I said.

“After all the cast interviews I’ve done over the years, I know everything in the world there is to know about that smoke,” he said dryly.

Now it was my turn to laugh.

When the day was over, we headed back to stage 24, where they were set up to interview Ron Moore.

“How’s it going?” I said to him when he walked into the stage.

“It’s weird,” he said. “This is the first time I’ve been here in years.”

He looked around and his voice softened. “Did you know there aren’t any writers left in the Hart building? Brannon is moving out, and he was the last one. It’s just a bunch of accountants right now.”

“That’s poetic,” I said.

He looked away for a moment and furrowed his brow.

“It’s just…I look around here and—”

“I know.” I said. “I totally grok.”

We talked for a few more minutes, until they were ready for his interview.

“I will kick myself later if I don’t tell you how much I continue to love
Battlestar
,” I said before I left. I didn’t get up the nerve to add, “And I’d really love to work on it if you have anything for me, because it’s just about the best sci-fi on television, ever.” Later on, I kicked myself, and delivered one more to Jenny and the wimp.

“It’s always good to see you,” he said.

“Thanks, man. You too.”

I shook hands with everyone and said goodbye. When I got out of the stage and walked past the Hart building, I stopped and looked at Gene’s old office window one last time. Though I’d said goodbye to Gene at his funeral in 1991, I said goodbye to him again—and to so many other things.

On my way back to the valet, I walked past the commissary, where I ate grilled mustard chicken with curly fries a few times a week during much of the series. I remembered a day during the third season, when I didn’t have a lot of cash on hand and no credit card, so my server got severely under-tipped. I planned to make it up to him the next day, but when I walked in, he silenced the entire commissary by running toward me from the back, screaming at me for stiffing him the day before. It was the first and last time in my life I wanted someone to be fired for the way they treated me.

Strangely, I still feel bad that I unintentionally stiffed the guy. Funny how those things stay with you and come back when you least expect them to.

Just past the commissary, where there used to be a company store that sold T-shirts and satin jackets celebrating the wearer’s affinity for
Cheers
, there was now a smaller company store that included a Coffee Bean. I stepped into the same room where I used to pick up really cheesy TNG t-shirts and insanely cool tiny communicator pins for my friends and family, and I bought myself an iced green tea.

I made my way back to the valet, where I traded an orange ticket with numbers on it for my car. While I waited for it to arrive, I struggled to put the nostalgia and associated sadness of the day into perspective. I didn’t mourn the loss of my sets as much as I mourned the time in my life those sets represented: a time when my biggest responsibility was knowing my lines and getting to the set on time, not coming up with college tuition for the next four years. A time when KROQ played music that was relevant to me, and I knew all the DJs. A time when my biggest problem in the world was getting out of costume and makeup early enough to make it to the Forum for a Kings game. A time when my life was simpler and easier, when I had the luxury of taking for granted that I would always have everything I wanted and my opportunities were as numerous as the little mirrored stars on the black velvet starfield that hung behind Ten Forward on stage 9…stars that are, most likely, cut up into hundreds of little bits to be doled out at auction for the next decade.

But, complicated as it is, I really like my life. I have a beautiful wife and two children who, though they don’t carry my DNA, are clearly mine in every way that matters. I’m not going to be buying a boat any time soon, but I have been able to touch lives as a writer in ways that I never could have when I wore a spacesuit, just reading the words that other people thought I should say.

The valet brought my car around, and I gave him a couple bucks from my front pocket.

“Thank you, sir,” he said.

Goddamn, it’s weird to be “sir.”

“No problem.”

I got in my car and headed toward a red light on Van Ness, where a big decision loomed: Turn left and drive back over Los Feliz, the way I always used to drive? Or make a right and head down across Beverly?

Luckily, this was an easy one. I hit my blinker and began my voyage home.

let go—a requiem for felix the bear

O
ne morning a few years ago, Anne walked out into our garage to put some towels or something into the dryer. I heard the door close, and a minute or so later, she called out to me, “Wil? Can you come in here? Quickly?” There was a tiny bit of urgency in her voice, so I jumped up from the couch and ran through the kitchen, across the breezeway, and into the garage. She stood next to the dryer, a pile of wet clothes in her hands.

“Is everything okay?” I asked.

“Shh!” she said, and pointed to the middle of the garage. “Listen!”

I did, and after a few moments, I heard a very soft meowing. Both of my cats were indoor cats, so I called out, “Biko? Sketch?”

I turned to Anne. “How did they get out of the house?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know, but—”

A sleek black cat came walking out from beneath one of several piles of crap we have out there (putting a car into our garage is about as likely as one of us building a rocket in the backyard and colonizing the moon). He had bright yellow/green eyes, a white star on his chest, and little white “socks” on his front paws. He had no tail.

“Hey, Kitty!” Anne said. “What are you doing in my garage?”

She shoved the clothes into the dryer and crouched down on the floor. The cat began purring loudly as he walked over to her. She extended her hand and he rubbed his little face up against it.

“You are such a little Bear!” she said, as she scratched his ears.

I’ve seen this from her before: She was in love. She looked up at me, like a child. “Can we keep him?”

“We already have two cats, Anne,” I said. “And what if someone misses him?”

“We’ll wait a week and look for signs around the neighborhood. If we don’t find signs, and he’s still here, we’ll take him to the vet and make sure he’s healthy.”

I’ve also seen this from her before: Her mind was made up.

For the next week, he stayed on our patio while we looked for signs in our neighborhood. We called local shelters, pet stores, and vets, asking if anyone had reported a missing kitty. Nobody had. As far as we could tell, this kitty had just shown up out of thin air; if anyone missed him, they weren’t being very vocal about it.

The first few days of that week, I tried not to get too attached to him, but whenever I walked out onto the patio, he’d talk to me a bunch. If I got close to him, he’d start to purr and rub up against my legs. He was so affectionate, it took about three days for him to win me over. I started counting down to the seventh day, when we would take him to the vet and know for sure if he could officially become a member of our family.

At the end of the week, we took him to the vet and had him checked for diseases and stuff.

“What’s his name?” the receptionist asked us.

Anne and I looked at each other. Over the week, we had both loved this little guy a lot, but we’d never thought to name him.

“Oscar?” I said.

She smiled and shook her head. “No.” She turned to the receptionist and said, “His name is Felix.”

“Yeah!” I said. “Felix the cat!”

While we were there, we saw a picture on the wall of a cat that looked just like him, and we found out that he was a special breed called a Japanese Bobtail. Over the next few years, this would lead to our calling him “Stumpy” and referring to his activity as “just stumpin’ around in the yard.” His blood work came back the following day: He was free from all diseases, but his kidney levels were a little high—probably the result of him being just a little dehydrated. We know now that it was much worse, but at the time we were blissfully ignorant, and the Wheaton household grew by one.

We brought him home and introduced him to our cats. Biko was indifferent, but Sketch cranked at him right away. Ever since he was a kitten, Sketch was a daddy’s—then a momma’s—boy. He didn’t like that there was a new kitty in our house who would be siphoning away some of his attention and affection. For the next week or so, there was a lot of peeing on the furniture, but Biko and Sketch finally accepted that this new kitty wasn’t going to leave and that his arrival didn’t diminish our love for them.

Felix loved us, but always on his terms. There’s a saying, “Dogs have masters. Cats have staff,” and so it was with Felix. He was always affectionate, but he made it clear that he wasn’t our cat: We were his people. We didn’t mind at all.

A few years passed, and Felix brought all kinds of joy into our lives. He had his “rotation,” where he’d sleep on Ryan’s bed for a week or so, then Nolan’s, then with me and Anne. Even though he was just a cat, when he put you on his rotation, you couldn’t help but feel special. Chosen.

We learned quickly that Felix didn’t take any shit from anyone, especially other cats. In the first year that we were his people, he went to the vet several times for shots and stitches after fights with other neighborhood cats. When he went outside, Anne and I started telling him, “Watch for cars, and don’t get into any fights!” He rarely listened, but he was an incredibly tough little guy who earned his nickname “The Bear.” As far as we know, he never lost a single fight.

About two years ago, we noticed that he spent a couple of days acting a little strange. He didn’t want to be cuddled, and he wouldn’t eat very much; he just looked like he didn’t feel well. We figured it was the result of his latest fight, so Anne took him to the vet for more antibiotics. When she came home, her eyes were red and her cheeks were shiny with tears.

“What’s wrong?” I said.

“The vet said that Felix doesn’t feel well because he’s having kidney failure. He could die within a month.” She collapsed onto our bed and sobbed. I did my best to comfort her while I processed the shock of the news.

“Is there anything we can do?” I asked.

“We may be able to give him special food and fluids, but—”

“Then that’s what we’ll do,” I said. And we did. We gave him some fluids every morning, put him onto special food, and gave him a little extra love. Within a couple of days, The Bear was stumpin’ around the yard, chasing birds across the grass, and curling up in our laps whenever we sat on the couch. His sleeping rotation put him into our room, and I fell asleep for many nights listening to him purr softly on my chest.

The rest of that year, he had ups and downs. One terrifying weekend Felix was rushed to the emergency vet because the gardener sprayed weed killer in our front yard—which I’d specifically told him not to do—and Felix had walked through it. During that stay at the kitty hospital, I visited him often. WwdN readers were really supportive of Anne and me, and I blogged a “note” from The Bear: