IT’S LATE AND I’M POOPED, BUT I’M WORKING AGAIN. THE temptation is to blow off the diary, since I’d like nothing better than to climb out of this sticky costume and into a hot bath. On the other hand, I haven’t written in almost two weeks, and there’s all sorts of stuff to tell you. I’m afraid I’ll forget the important details if I don’t get some of them down. Since Renee has just rewarded me with a cup of cocoa, I’ll put the sugar rush to work and do my best to tell you about my meeting with Arnie Green.
I lost almost five pounds in the ten days I gave myself to get in shape. That’s pretty dramatic for me. It didn’t do much for my thighs, of course, but it gave me a lot more energy and made my cheekbones pop out again. Renee hennaed my hair the night before the interview, and I spent two hours on makeup, paying special attention to my eyes. Everyone tells me they’re my strongest feature—emerald green with flecks of warm brown, sultry but reassuring. When I was a teenager in Baker, I used to study them for hours in the mirror, imagining how the rest of such a pretty girl might look.
Arnie Green’s office was in North Hollywood. I made an eight-thirty appointment with him so we’d both be fresh and Renee could take me there before she went to work. As the first client of the day, I’d also avoid the gut-wrenching chitchat of the waiting room, which was easy enough to imagine, even though I’d never been to the office. I’d be stuck there with all the others, twiddling my thumbs in quiet agony while some bleached-out accordion player bragged to me about her recent triumphal come-back at the Amway convention. Who needs that kind of stress?
We found a spot to park right in front, which I took as a bad sign. We were in a sort of ghost town, a mini-mall less than half occupied, where businesses announced themselves by painting over the flaking plywood of their predecessors. Arnie’s glass-fronted office was one of a row of three facing the street. The other two were a Philippine import shop and a place with burnt-orange curtains fading along the folds to pale shrimp. The hand-stenciled sign outside said: VID-MART ENTERPRISES.
“OK,” I said. “Time to lose the hat.”
Renee was crushed. “Why? It looks so nice on you.”
It was a rakish triangular affair, the same black-and-white satin as my dress. I’d spent a whole morning making it, gloating over the finished product, but in this shabby setting it struck me as overeager, even pathetic. I felt like some broken-down baroness flaunting her tiara at a flophouse.
“It’s not right,” I said.
“At least keep it on till he can see it.”
“Renee…”
She sulked a little while I undid the pins and stashed the hat in the glove compartment. I tried to check myself in the rearview mirror. “Is my hair fucked?”
“No.” She adjusted a few wisps over my ears. “You look beautiful.”
I grunted.
“I swear, Cady. Your skin is radiant. You’re glowing.”
Glowing or not, I felt like a total fool. Renee got out of the car, opened my door, and lifted me down to the pavement. I brushed out my dress, groaning at the folly of it all. How could I have listened to that evil queen Leonard? And why in the name of Jehovah had I thought black-and-white satin would be suitable for a morning meeting?
A woman in rollers and Bermudas came out of the import shop and stopped in her tracks, staring. I acknowledged her presence with a tight little smile and a vaguely royal wave. She wasn’t even faintly embarrassed. “You in show business?” she asked.
“Workin’ on it.” I headed for Arnie’s door like a bat out of hell.
“The circus?”
“She was Mr. Woods,” Renee announced grandly.
“Renee, for God’s sake!”
Seeing my exasperation, my housemate flushed violently, then turned back to the woman. “We have to go now. We’re late for an appointment with her agent.”
“He’s not my agent,” I muttered as Renee held the door open for me.
“Well, whatever.”
We beat a retreat into a space no larger than our living room. There was a desk with a receptionist, and half a dozen plastic chairs were lined against one wall. A single row of publicity stills was the only thing in sight that kept this from being the waiting room of a veterinarian. I even spotted animals among the glossies: a cowgirl astride a palomino, a cockatoo in drag, a chorus line of poodles. The humans in Arnie’s stable tended to be magicians and clowns and ice skaters and, yes, little people, all of whom seemed to tower over me. No surprises so far.
The receptionist looked up from her computer. “Cadence Roth?”
I threw up my hands and grinned at her. “Guilty, Your Honor.”
She tossed off a look that said to save the cute stuff for the boss. I didn’t hold it against her; the old girl must’ve heard a lot of shtick in her time. I wondered if she might be Mrs. Green. “He’ll be back any minute,” she said. “He’s gone for doughnuts.”
“No problem.”
“Did you bring a résumé?”
I told her I’d already mailed one to Mr. Green.
“Oh.” She fidgeted among the papers on her desk for a moment, then stopped and said: “Have a seat, please.” Then she turned and addressed Renee, who was gawking at the wall of photographs. “You with her?”
For a moment I worried that Renee might claim to be my manager. I allow her such indulgences around shop clerks and people in movie lines, but agents are a different matter, even agents like Arnie Green. They could easily start asking things that Renee couldn’t answer. In my scramble to get ready that morning, I hadn’t thought to warn her about this.
Renee just said yes, though, without embellishing.
“Coffee?” asked the receptionist. “Either of you?”
“No, thanks,” said Renee.
I shook my head, smiling, then hoisted myself onto the sofa, all ass and elbows. I’ve carried out this maneuver most of my life and still can’t find a graceful way to do it.
“Ooh, look,” said Renee, studying a photograph. “He does Big Bubba.”
“Really?” I said this as enthusiastically as I could, since the receptionist was watching and I had no earthly idea who—or what—Big Bubba was.
“We’ve handled him for years,” the lady said.
“How wonderful,” I said, smiling like the whore I am.
“You a fan of his?”
Renee was the one she’d asked, thank God. “Oh, yes!” came the answer.
“Big,” I told the receptionist. “She’s a big Big Bubba fan.”
That’s when Arnie came in, toting his bag of doughnuts. I knew it was him right away, since he always puts an ad in the trades for Halloween and he looked just like his photo, skinny and bald and heavily tanned, with big ugly caterpillars of hair crawling out of his ears. Instead of a plaid suit, though, he was wearing pale-blue Sansabelts with a matching golf shirt.
I scooted off the sofa to give him the full impact of my height. This usually gets the talk going when I meet people for the first time. Plus they’re not as uncomfortable once they see you can walk.
Arnie bent down to shake my hand. “Miss Roth.” He’d obviously done his homework.
“Mr. Green.”
“I’ve been looking forward to this.”
“Well…good.” I couldn’t decide if his courtliness was phony or not, but I was grateful for it.
“Is the lady…?” He gestured toward Renee, who was still standing by the photo wall, looking useless.
“My friend,” I said. “Who drove me.”
“Ah, yes.” He swept his blue-veined hand toward his office door, inviting Renee to join us. I could have sworn I caught a whiff of vintage testosterone. “Please,” he said, “after you.”
Renee pointed at her left tit. “Me?”
“Why not? We’re all friends here.”
I didn’t like this at all. For one thing, I wanted Arnie’s undivided attention. For another, I didn’t want Renee to see me groveling. When she glanced at me for guidance, I made a quick slashing motion at my throat.
“I better not,” she told Arnie.
“Why not?”
“Uh…I gotta keep an eye on the car?”
Arnie looked distressed, as if my driver had just suggested that his neighborhood was less than desirable.
“The top is down,” I explained. “We’ve got stuff in it.”
“Suit yourself.”
I followed him into the office, which was windowless except for a skinny slit at the top of one wall. The chair provided for clients was ominously high and on rollers, so I enlisted Arnie’s help in mounting it. He was really clumsy about this, stumbling a little, and I heard something crack in his back when he set me down. So much for the Cher Diet.
Behind his desk, Arnie pecked at a doughnut while he studied my résumé. “Mr. Woods, eh?”
I nodded, smiling modestly.
“I took my grandkids to that.”
“Mmm.”
“Was that your voice, then?”
I told him no, that the elf’s voice had been electronically created, that I had provided his movement only, that sometimes Mr. Woods was a robot and sometimes he was me. (I really should have a fact sheet or something. God knows I get asked this stuff often enough.)
After a while, Arnie said: “I don’t think I’ve seen the other movies.”
I gave him a sardonic smile. “I don’t think you have, either.”
He chuckled, showing the teeth of an old horse, impressed by my bold display of professional candor.
“They let me act,” I said. “That was enough.”
Arnie brushed doughnut sugar off his fingers. “You know I don’t handle movie people.”
I nodded. “I just want to work, Mr. Green.”
“Arnie,” he said.
“Arnie.”
“You sing well,” he said. “You have a fine voice.” I had sent him a homemade demo tape of me singing “Coming Out of the Dark,” Gloria Estefan’s new back-from-the-brink-of-death number, thinking that it struck the right note of spunky survivorhood.
“The tape’s pretty bad,” I pointed out. “I mean, the sound quality.”
“I can tell, though. You sound like…what’s her name? Teresa Brewer.”
That’s not far off, actually.
Arnie grinned. “You’re too young to remember her.”
I told him I knew who she was, though, and took it as a compliment.
He was looking at the résumé again. “And you do your own makeup, make your own costumes.”
“Who else?”
“You didn’t make those shoes.” He squinted down at my black patent slippers.
“K mart,” I told him. “Toddlers department.”
He cracked another smile, which seemed almost grandfatherly, shook his head slowly, then returned his watery gaze to the résumé. After a long silence he said: “Don’t see any wrestling work.”
“No,” I replied. “And you won’t.”
He nodded slowly, as if that sounded reasonable enough.
“And I don’t want to be tossed anywhere.”
The nodding continued.
“Any hope?”
He opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a ragged-looking file. “I think maybe so.”
As it turned out, he had an arrangement with a small company in the Valley called PortaParty, which provides entertainment and “color” for social functions, mostly rich children’s birthday parties. One of the performers, a girl clown of average height, had just left for a job in television, and they were looking for a replacement.
Arnie assured me I didn’t have to be a clown. I’d be free to create my own character, maybe even sing, as long as the boss was happy. Mostly, it involved handing out candy and putting up with the kids. If I liked the sound of this, he said, I could start work the following weekend.
I didn’t hate the sound of it, especially the part about my predecessor leaving for a job in television.
At least it was show business. Sort of.
I thought about it overnight, at Arnie’s suggestion, and called back the next morning to accept.
“This is just a start,” he said.
Then why did it feel so much like the end?
My mood grew bleaker as the day wore on. I found myself brooding over the Corsos, people I hadn’t thought about for years, a retired midget couple who had been in show business but had nothing to show for it when I met them except a few battered scrapbooks and an apartment full of odd mementos. Like me, they had worked in a movie that had enchanted the world, but no one ever knew that unless the Corsos took the trouble to tell them.
Mom latched onto Irene and Luther in the mid seventies at a Little People of America convention. They had presented a slide show on their long-dead career. Mom was so convinced of their wonderfulness that she drove me all the way to Phoenix so I could see them in their natural habitat. I was a moody teenager in those days, struggling more than most with my identity, so I guess she thought the experience would be inspirational.
The Corsos were both in their late fifties and lived on the seventh floor of a suburban high rise. Luther loomed over me at nearly four feet. He had a face like a dried apple and wore plaid trousers with a button-down shirt. A recent stroke had impaired his speech, so Irene, who was aggressively lilac-haired and even taller, did most of the talking. It centered on their kids, as I remember, and their bridge game, and their fleeting moment of glory almost forty years earlier as Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz.
Their living room was awash in Ozabilia: plastic Tin Men, stuffed Lions, Wicked Witches out the wazoo. Even the bricks on their balcony had been painted that unmistakable shade of yellow. I’d always loved the movie (still do) but couldn’t for the life of me connect its legend with these hopelessly prosaic people. These were Munchkins in flip-flops, for God’s sake, without benefit of Deco. Munchkins with a microwave, who ate Pop-Tarts and watched golf tournaments on TV. It just didn’t scan.
Part of the problem was their size. Irene and Luther had been teenagers at MGM, and since then they’d each grown over a foot, fleshing out considerably in the process. A lot of the Munchkins were taller now, Irene told me, a shocking revelation I absorbed without comment, feeling somehow betrayed. Most of the Munchkins had been midgets, I remembered, not dwarfs, and thus proportional, so the right punch to the pituitary would have made growth possible. When you got right down to it, the Corsos weren’t like me at all.
Irene brought us Cokes and Ding Dongs (get it?) and rattled off the well-worn particulars of their days in Oz. She and Luther had met on the all-midget cross-country bus chartered by Papa Singer, the full-sized procurer and “handler” of the Munchkins. When they arrived in California in early 1938, they were booked with the others into the Culver Hotel. The building’s still there, by the way, though it’s full of offices now. When we drive by and I imagine the old days, I can’t help thinking of it as a sort of Ellis Island for my people.
Like a lot of other actors signed for Oz, the Corsos first worked on a turkey called The Terror of Tiny Town, the world’s first and last all-midget musical western. Irene was in chaps and riding a Shetland pony the day Luther proposed to her. She was thrilled to death, she said, but she called her mother in Ithaca before she would tell him yes. Luther hocked his watch so he could buy her a ring, and they were married and sharing a room at the Culver by the time they got to Oz.
When I asked Irene what they were paid as Munchkins, she just smiled and said: “Not as much as Toto.” This was the literal truth, it turned out, but she and Luther had been so enamored of the experience and each other, she said, that the money hadn’t mattered. She’d never counted on being an actress, anyway, so the whole thing had been gravy. She and Luther were really business people at heart, she insisted, which was why they’d done so well with their mail order service. And would I like to see their citizenship award from the Kiwanis Club?
The Corsos knew only a handful of the surviving Munchkins. Three or four lived right there in Phoenix and showed up for LPA gatherings on an irregular basis. One was on their shit list: an old guy in a nursing home who’d boasted for years to anyone who’d listen that he’d been the Mayor of Munchkinland. He’d only been a soldier, Irene said, not the whiskered fellow with the big pocket watch we all remember. This seemed a tame enough fib to me, but Irene said it had caused her great embarrassment, since reporters were always calling to ask about him. The real Mayor had been a friend of hers, she said, and he’d been dead for several years.
The Corsos were even more annoyed at Judy Garland, though they still kept an autographed photo of her on their mantel. Irene said Judy had appeared on the Jack Paar show one night and made cruel remarks about the Munchkins, calling them drunks and lechers and generally getting a lot of cheap laughs at their expense. Their feelings had been hurt by that, she said, because Judy had once been so nice. The stories weren’t even true, but the myth of the degenerate Munchkins became so entrenched that Hollywood eventually made an unfunny movie about it, Under the Rainbow. They had to hire dwarfs to play the Munchkins, though, since, due to the miracles of modern science, there were no longer enough midgets to fill the roles.
We spent about two hours in all at the Corsos’. As we were leaving, Irene gave me a ceremonial kiss and a framed poem about little people called “Small Blessings.” Afterwards Mom and I bought peanut butter milk shakes and took a long drive in the desert. She didn’t ask for my impression of the Corsos, so I stayed off the subject, knowing how easily her feelings were hurt. She was onto me, though, which was why she hadn’t asked, presumably, and she seemed gloomy and withdrawn for the rest of the trip.
Looking back, I guess she’d expected me to bond with Irene and Luther, to exchange some secret tribal handshake and become their fairy godchild for life. At the very least she’d wanted me to feel less alone. Mom was like that. God knows I’d tried to oblige her, but the chemistry just wasn’t there. I felt more real kinship with the stoned Indian hippie who sold us the milk shakes at Dairy Queen than with those sad, oversized has-beens back at the tower.
I bit the bullet and called the guy at PortaParty to make arrangements for my first gig. His name was Neil Riccarton, and he sounded friendly enough, though he had a twerpy little voice that reminded me of Kevin Costner. He told me to join the troupe (I liked the ring of that, so theatrical) in the parking lot of the shopping center at Sunset and Crescent Heights. From there we’d proceed to the party in the official PortaParty van. I couldn’t miss it, he said; there were clowns and balloons painted on the side. The gig was in Bel Air, at the home of an obstetrician.
After some deliberation, I decided on a sort of Pierrette effect—black polyester with white ruffles at the neck and sleeves and big red buttons down the front. This would be eye-grabbing yet durable, good for repeat performances. I scrapped the traditional whiteface, sticking with my own makeup, since I knew it would be much more comfortable, especially when summer came. I also wanted them to see who I was.
When the big day came, Renee drove me.
“Who are the others?” she asked, her hair whipping in the wind like clean laundry. We had just reached the crooked spine of the city and begun our descent into Hollywood. It was a beautiful morning, all things considered.
“Other what?”
“In the…party group.”
I told her I wasn’t sure. Clowns mostly. A few mimes.
“Gah!” she gushed.
I gave her a dangerous look.
“Don’t be so negative,” she said. “You can make anything work for you.”
I had the creepy feeling she’d learned this pop wisdom from her Scientologist, but I didn’t say so, knowing how sensitive she was about it. By unspoken mutual consent, we made conversation about the passing scenery, avoiding both her crappy love life and my crappy career, until we finally reached Sunset and she caught sight of the PortaParty van.
“Gah,” she said, no longer able to contain herself. “It looks really neat.”
She pulled into the parking lot and opened my door so I could see. There were several clowns in a cluster behind the van, sucking on their last preparty cigarettes. One of them, an Emmett Kelly clone in Air Jordans, did an unrehearsed double take when he saw me. Recovering, he hollered to a young black guy crouched on the asphalt in front of a box of party favors.
Neil Riccarton rose and bounded toward us with a blinding smile. He was wearing gray cotton coveralls, the kind that roustabouts wear at the circus, and the zipper was lowered to reveal an awesome expanse of silken breastbone. I caught my breath at the sight of him. It wasn’t until he spoke that I actually attached this lanky dreamboat to the dorky midwestern voice I’d heard on the phone.
“You’re Cadence, right?”
“Right.” I gestured toward Renee, who was standing by the door. “This is my friend Renee.”
“Hi,” said Neil.
Renee echoed him, coloring noticeably.
He turned back to me. “Need a hand there?”
Normally, when Renee’s around, I let her do the lifting, since she’s accustomed to my weight and its distribution, and there are no rude surprises, but I made an exception in Neil’s case. His big hands slid under my arms with gentle authority, conveying me to the ground in a single hydraulic motion. I thanked him briskly, then hid my distraction by fluffing the ruffles on my sleeves. It took all my willpower to keep from gazing across at his crotch.
Get a grip, I told myself. Don’t objectify this guy. The black man as superstud is a dehumanizing myth. There was also the chance he was gay, of course, but I seriously doubted it, and my radar in that area is usually pretty good. Fortunately, my unclean thoughts were kept at bay by his bouncy Kevin Costner voice, which made Neil sound like the victim of a bad dubbing job. By focusing on that, I decided, I could get through the day without making an ass of myself.
Neil turned to Renee. “I’m afraid we’ve only got one place in the van.”
Renee looked confused, so I jumped in. “She’s not going with me. She’s just my ride.”
“Oh, I see.”
Renee gave him the most fetching little smile. That girl’s mind is such an easy read. “I’m going to the Beverly Center,” she said. “It’s my day for that.”
“Right.”
“We need to arrange a pickup time,” I told him. “How long do you think this’ll take?”
Neil’s brow wrinkled. “I’m not sure I can be that exact about it. Five o’clock or so.”
“I can just wait here,” Renee offered, “if you’re not back by then.”
“Or”—Neil shrugged, looking at me—“I could drop you off myself.”
I told him I lived in the Valley.
“I know,” he said. “So do I.”
“Really?” It was Renee who said this, and a little too eagerly, I thought.
“It’s no problem,” said Neil, still looking at me. “I do it for the troupe all the time.”
The next thing I knew, Renee was gone and I was scrunched up in that van with Neil, three clowns, a shitload of party stuff, and a haggard-looking fairy princess named Julie. A seat would have been wasted on me, so I made a nest out of a pile of painted backdrop. As we tooled down Sunset toward Bel Air, Neil broke the ice by announcing to all and sundry that the newest member of the troupe had made her debut in the movies playing you-know-who.
“Shit,” said Julie. “I could die tomorrow if I had a role like that.”
I told her it hadn’t exactly changed my life.
“Still,” she said, “it’s a legend.”
One of the guys, a gawky red-whiskered clown named Tread, looked over his shoulder at me and said, “I really got off on that part where Mr. Woods eats the loaded brownie.”
“And gets the munchies!” said someone else.
“That was way cool,” said another.
“They wouldn’t even make that scene now.”
“Fuck no, man. No fuckin’ way.”
Neil gave Tread a funny sideways glance.
“Hey,” said Tread. “I’m clean.”
“Just not at the house,” said Neil. “That’s all I ask.”
“Jeez,” muttered Tread.
“Hey.” Neil’s expression was pleasant yet pained. “Do I look like Marilyn Quayle?”
“Totally!” Julie emitted a froggy laugh, then reached over the seat and slapped Neil’s shoulder. “Especially when you do that little pursing thing with your mouth.”
“What little pursing thing?”
“You know.” Julie squinched her mouth up, prompting Tread and another clown to follow suit, to the enormous merriment of everyone but Neil.
“Guys,” he said, drawing the word out in a sort of Valley whine. “Not in front of the new person.”
Julie hooted, then lunged into a real get-down Janis Joplin coughing jag. Emmett Kelly regarded her in doleful silence, then thumped her on the back a few times, to no avail. Neil gazed back at me and winked. “It’s not too late to back out.”
“Hey,” I told him. “No problem here.”
The obstetrician’s house was a low-slung fieldstone affair with a pristine gravel drive, crisp lawns, and a blood-red front door that seemed higher than the house itself. The caterers were erecting a tent on the lawn when we arrived. Neil received his orders from the obstetrician’s wife—a nervous anorexic with one of those carefully windswept lopsided hairdos so popular in Bel Air—then parked the van, as instructed, in a space next to the tennis court.
On my feet again, I stretched and took several deep breaths. My left foot had gone to sleep during the trip, so I stamped it a few times in the gravel, like an old vaudeville horse doing arithmetic. Neil caught this action and grinned at me. “You OK?”
“Yeah.”
“Whatcha wanna blow?”
“Pardon me?”
His lip flickered. “Balloons or bubbles?”
“None of the above?”
He chuckled, then dug into the back of the van and handed me a bottle of bubbles. “Give it a try. It works well with the little kids.”
I asked him how little they were.
“Five or so. It’s a fifth-birthday party.”
“Check.”
“We’ll sing ‘Happy Birthday,’ bring out the cake.”
I smiled at him. “Want me to jump out of it?”
He took that as nervous humor, I guess, because he smiled back and said, “Don’t worry. You’ll do great.”
Anyone else who’d reassured me about this mickey-mouse gig would have caught some shit, but Neil was different. As the day wore on, I saw how much he loved his work and how much he wanted me to love it as well. He was terrific with the kids, never condescending, dealing with their minicrises like someone who remembered how it felt. Here’s the image that remains with me: Neil at his keyboard, onyx eyes aglimmer, serenading the birthday girl with an up-tempo rendition of “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby.” When I jumped in unannounced for the second verse, he was surprised I could sing so well, but he winked at me and welcomed me into the song. It was a satisfying moment.
The other guys had their functions too. Tread did magic tricks and made balloon animals, Emmett Kelly and his buddy were tumblers, and Julie shlepped around with her magic wand, telling knock-knock jokes that were incredibly lame, even for a fairy princess talking to preschoolers. I didn’t fare much better with my roving bubble-blower routine, but most of the kids, bless their voyeuristic little hearts, leapt at the chance to study a grownup shorter than themselves.
We were finished by five o’clock, packed up like gypsies heading for the road. I’d already begun to think of the job in those terms, for purposes of sanity, if nothing else. It was easier somehow to tell myself that this wasn’t Bel Air 1991 but Romania a century earlier (minus the pogroms), and we were all actors in a wandering troupe, plying our trade at a village fair. There was grass beneath our feet, after all, and simple music of our own making, and a blue dome of sky above our heads. So what if the villagers were all the same age and the local noblewoman had a ridiculous hairdo? Fantasy is the art of not being picky.
We dropped off the others at the parking lot, and Neil drove me home according to plan. As we climbed into the canyon, he apologized for the obstetrician’s wife, who, among other things, had called me “cute as pie” to my face in the same simpering tone she used with her five-year-old.
I told him I was used to it.
“Yeah, but still…”
“Did she commend you on your natural rhythm?”
He smirked and looked over at me. “She told me how much she liked Do the Right Thing.”
I laughed.
“They’re not all that bad.”
“Praise the Lord.”
“The kids were fun, though.”
It wasn’t a question, but I made a little murmur to be a good sport. I doubt if he was fooled. I don’t hate children or anything; some of them are very nice individually. I just prefer to avoid them en masse. When they hold big conventions, for instance, and get shitfaced on sugar.
Neil asked me where I’d learned to sing like that.
“At home. In Baker.”
“Baker?”
“It’s in the desert. No one’s ever heard of it. They call it ‘The Gateway to Death Valley.’” I rolled my eyes. “How’s that for another way of saying Purgatory?”
He chuckled. “They don’t call it that seriously?”
“Oh, very seriously. Big sign and everything. Right over the road.”
“I can’t picture it somehow.”
“Lucky you.”
“So you sang in school?”
“Sometimes. One or two assemblies. Mostly I stayed home and sang along with my Bee Gees albums.”
He took this in thoughtfully. “I can see the influence, now that you mention it. Your voice has a quality that’s really sort of…”
“Gibbsian?”
“Yeah.”
I told him Arnie thought I sounded like Teresa Brewer.
“No,” he said, “more like the Bee Gees.”
“Well, fuck you very much.”
“No, really. It’s a great sound. You could have something there. You should cut a record.”
What’s that they say about Hollywood? A town where you can die of encouragement? I didn’t want to look overeager, so I reacted with a skeptical expression.
“What’s the matter with the Bee Gees?” he asked.
I rolled my eyes at him. “Do I really have to explain this to a black person?”
He smiled dimly and shrugged his enormous shoulders, as if to say his tastes were catholic and he could like who he wanted. “It wasn’t a bad sound. It’ll be back too, you watch. They’re already wearing platform shoes in the clubs.”
“I can hardly wait.”
“So when did you move here?”
“Nineteen eighty.”
“Did you run away?”
“Well, yeah…sort of. With my mom.”
“From your dad, you mean?”
“Oh, no. He split way before that. When I was three.” I smiled at him. “When he realized his little dumpling was gonna stay a dumpling.”
“Oh.”
“Mom and me were just running away from Baker. Plus I wanted to be a star.” I embarrassed myself with this admission, so I widened my eyes ironically to show him I knew how silly I’d been. I didn’t want him to think I take myself that seriously. Even though I do.
“You got work right away,” he remarked. “Mr. Woods was about…what year?”
“Eighty-one.”
“Not bad for a new girl in town.”
“I suppose.”
“Did you audition or something?”
“No. Philip just saw me with Mom one day.”
“Philip Blenheim?”
I nodded soberly, enjoying his amazement. Most people are impressed when they find out I was once on a first-name basis with a household name. “Once” being the operative word.
A smile sprawled across Neil’s face. “He discovered you?”
“He stepped on me.”
“C’mon. Where?”
“At the Farmers Market. Mom and I went there for brunch, and it was crowded, and he didn’t see me. He was nice about it, though. Bought us smoothies and just kept on apologizing. I realized later he was sizing me up for the rubber suit. He took our phone number and called Mom that night, and the next afternoon I had the script.”
Neil shook his head in wonder.
“I didn’t catch on to what a big deal it was until he closed the set.”
“I remember that. The press went into a feeding frenzy.”
I told him it was the weirdest time of my life. And the biggest high.
Neil didn’t talk for a while, just kept his eyes on the road in the deepening gloom of the canyon. Finally, he asked: “Have you been in a video store this week?”
“No. Why?”
“Well, there’s a big promotion.”
“For what?”
“Mr. Woods. Big cutouts with motors in ’em. Jeremy with the elf.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“It’s the tenth anniversary, isn’t it?”
I told him it was. I’d known this was going to happen, of course, but I’d momentarily forgotten about it. I’d tried to forget about it.
“Maybe you’ll be invited to a reunion.”
“No way.”
“Why not?”
“Philip likes to preserve the magic.” I spoke those last three words in quotes, as I always do.
“What do you mean?”
I shrugged. “Mr. Woods is just what you see on the screen and nothing else. The movie is it. That’s why the elf never makes public appearances, not even at the Oscars. Philip doesn’t like to talk about how it was done and doesn’t want anyone else to, either. It just reminds people that Mr. Woods isn’t real. He hates that.”
“But it’s fascinating, I think. Especially now.”
“Philip thinks it would ruin the movie, destroy the wonder, blah, blah, blah. At least he used to. I doubt if he’s changed his mind since then.”
“Were you credited, then?” Neil looked gratifyingly concerned on my behalf.
I told him there were a dozen “operators” for the elf listed on the crawl and that I had simply been one of them. For all the audience knew, I’d been a technician or a robotic engineer, not an actress turning in a performance. I was interviewed once about the role, I explained, by a reporter from Drama-Logue, and as soon as the piece appeared, Philip blew up and accused me of destroying the magic of the film. I almost lost my job over it, I told Neil, and Philip was chilly to me right up to the day we wrapped.
Neil frowned. “He’s OK about it now, though?”
“Who knows? I haven’t seen him for years.”
He shook his head for a while, taking it all in. “What a story.”
I just shrugged.
“Thanks for telling it. I’ll think of you in there next time I see the movie.” He turned and gave me the nicest smile. “It won’t spoil the magic for me.”
When we pulled up in front of the house, Renee came bounding out the door, barefoot and in jeans and wearing the embroidered yellow sweater she saves for special occasions. How long she’d been waiting there like that was anyone’s guess.
“How did it go?” she asked, leaning against the van.
I told her fine.
“Did the kids have a good time?”
I told her yes, they had a fabulous time.
“Need a hand?” Neil asked this, turning to me. His face was outlined against Renee’s, granite against fog. Did I need a hand? I needed two of them, thank you, big as rump roasts, one under each arm. And maybe some warm breath against my cheek, a nice gust of Juicy Fruit.
“I can do it,” chirped Renee.
I shot the woman a few dozen daggers, but she missed all of them, as usual, as she galloped to my assistance, goofy with goodwill. As soon as she opened the door to the van, I slid off the seat and began the descent on my own.
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.” I mugged at Neil over the edge of the seat before dropping out of sight onto the pavement.
When I straightened up, Renee was offering Neil a cup of coffee for the road.
“Thanks,” he said, declining. “I’ve got…you know, miles to go before I sleep.”
Renee took the Frost reference literally. “I thought you lived nearby.”
Neil smiled pleasantly. “Not that far, I guess. There’s just some stuff I have to do.”
Renee nodded.
“It’s been fun,” he said, addressing me.
“Sure has.”
We locked eyes for a moment or two, and then he pulled away from the curb. A few seconds later he hollered back at me: “I’ll call you tomorrow about the next job. I’ve got some ideas for new songs.”
“Great,” I yelled.
When the van had turned out of sight, Renee walked to the door with me. “He’s nice, isn’t he?”
“Yeah.”
“Cute, too.”
“He’s OK,” I said.
It’s almost midnight now, and I’ve finally had my bath. I worked on this entry for three hours, much longer than I had expected. Renee popped in several times with refills on the cocoa. I could tell she was dying to ask me about my new boss, but she resisted the urge, apparently out of respect for this strange burst of journalkeeping. It’s just as well, since I can’t put a name to my feelings. I would have called them carnal and left it at that, if you’d asked me earlier in the day, before the rest began. Before he sang with me and drove me home and said that sweet thing about the magic.