Why, asked Roy, quietly, are you overreacting? Am I?
And Manny plowed across the stage, his shoes tucked under his arm, smashing miniature houses and scattering toy trucks as he strode.
At the far stage door he stopped, sucked air, glared at me.
Youre not fired. Youll get a new job. But that son of a bitch? Out! The door opened, let in a great Gothic-cathedral spray of light, and
slammed shut, leaving me to survey Roys collapse and defeat.
My God, whatve we done! What the hell? I shouted to Roy, to myself, to the red clay bust of the Monster, the discovered and revealed Beast. What!?
Roy was trembling. Jesus. I work for half a lifetime to do something fine. I train myself, I wait, I see, at last I really see. And the thing comes out of my fingertips, my God, how it came! What is this thing here in the damn clay? How come it gets born, and I get killed?
Roy shuddered. He raised his fists, but there was no one to strike. He glanced at his prehistoric animals and made an all-sweeping gesture, as if to hug and protect them.
Ill be back! he cried hoarsely to them and wandered off Roy!
I followed as he blundered into daylight. Outside, the late-afternoon sun was blazing hot, and we moved in a river of fire. Where you going?
Christ knows! Stay here. No use you getting dumped on! This is your first job. You warned me last night. Now I know it was sick, but why? Ill hide somewhere on the lot so that tonight I can sneak my friends out! He looked longingly at the shut door behind which his dear beasts lived.
Ill help, I said.
No. Dont be seen with me. Theyll think you put me up to this.
Roy! Manny looked as if he could kill you! Im calling my detective pal, Crumley. Maybe he can help! Heres Crumleys phone number. I wrote hastily on some crumpled paper. Hide. Call me tonight.
Roy Holdstrom leaped into his Laurel and Hardy flivver and steamed toward the backlot at ten miles an hour.
Congratulations, someone said, you silly goddamn son of a bitch!
I turned. Fritz Wong stood in the middle of the next alley. I yelled at them and at last you have been assigned to rewrite my lousy film God and Galilee. Manny just ran over me in his Rolls. He screamed your new job at me. So
Is there a monster in the script? My voice trembled. Only Herod Antipas. Leiber wants to see you.
And he hustled me along toward Leibers office. Wait, I said.
For I was looking over Fritzs shoulder at the far end of the studio alley and the street outside the studio where the crowd, the mob, the menagerie gathered every day, forever.
Idiot! said Fritz. Where are you going?
I just saw Roy fired, I said, walking. Now I need to get him rehired! Dummkopf. Fritz strode after me. Manny wants you now!
Now, plus five minutes.
Outside the studio gate, I glanced across the street. Are you there, Clarence? I wondered.
And there indeed they stood.
The loonies. The jerks. The idiots.
That mob of lovers worshiping at studio shrines.
Much like the late-night travelers that had once jostled me along to haunt the Hollywood Legion Stadium boxing matches to see Gary Grant sprint by, or Mae West undulate through the crowd like a boneless feather boa, or Groucho lurk along by Johnny Weissmuller, who dragged Lupe Velez after him like a leopard pelt.
The goons, myself among them, with big photo albums, stained hands, and little scribbled cards. The nuts who stood happily rain-drenched at the premiere of Dames or Flirtation Walk, while the Depression went on and on even though Roosevelt said it couldnt last forever and Happy Days would come again.
The gorgons, the jackals, the demons, the fiends, the sad ones, the lost ones.
Once, I had been one of them. Now, there they were. My family.
There were still a few faces left from the days when I had hid in their shade.
Twenty years later, my God, there stood Charlotte and her ma! They had buried Charlottes dad in 1930 and taken root in front of six studios and ten restaurants. Now a lifetime later, there was Ma, in her eighties, stalwart and practical as a bumbershoot, and Charlotte, fifty, as flower-fragile as she had always seemed to be. Both were frauds. Both hid boilerplates behind their rhino-ivory smiles.
I looked for Clarence in that strange dead funeral bouquet. For Clarence had been the wildest: lugging huge twenty-pound photo portfolios from studio to studio. Red leather for Paramount, black for RKO, green for Warner Brothers.
Clarence, summer and winter, wrapped in his oversize camels-hair coat, in which he filed pens, pads, and miniature cameras. Only on the hottest days did the wraparound coat come off. Then Clarence resembled a tortoise torn from its shell and panicked by life.
I crossed the street to stop before the mob. Hello, Charlotte, I said. Hiya, Ma.
The two women stared at me in mild shock.
Its me, I said. Remember? Twenty years back. I was here. Space. Rockets. Time?
Charlotte gasped and flung her hand to her overbite. She leaned forward as if she might fall off the curb.
Ma, she cried, whyitsthe Crazy! The Crazy. I laughed, quietly.
A light burned in Moms eyes. Why lands sake. She touched my elbow. You poor thing. Whatre you doing here? Still collecting?
No, I said, reluctantly. I work there. Where?
I nodded over my shoulder. There? cried Charlotte in disbelief. In the mailroom? asked Ma.
No. My cheeks burned. You might say in the script department. You mimeograph scripts?
Oh, for heavens sake, Ma. Charlottes face burst with light. He means writing, yes? Screenplays?!
This last was a true revelation. All the faces around Charlotte and Ma took fire.
Ohmigod, cried Charlottes ma. Cant be!
Is, I almost whispered. Im doing a film with Fritz Wong. Caesar and Christ.
There was a long, stunned silence. Feet shifted. Mouths worked. Can said someone, we have
But it was Charlotte who finished it. Your autograph. Please? IBut all the hands thrust out now, with pens and white cards.
Shamefacedly, I took Charlottes and wrote my name. Ma squinted at it, upside down.
Put the name of the picture youre working on, said Ma. Christ and Caesar.
Put The Crazy after your name, Charlotte suggested. I wrote The Crazy.
Feeling the perfect damn fool, I stood in the gutter as all the heads bent, and all the sad lost strange ones squinted to guess my identity.
To cover my embarrassment, I said: Wheres Clarence? Charlotte and Ma gaped. You remember him?
Who could forget Clarence, and his portfolios, and his coat, I said, scribbling.
He aint called in yet, snapped Ma. Called in? I glanced up.
He calls on that phone across the street about this time, to see has so-and-so arrived, come out, stuff like that, said Charlotte. Saves time. He sleeps late, cause hes usually out front restaurants midnights.
I know. I finished the last signature, glowing with an inadmissible elation. I still could not look at my new admirers, who smiled at me as if I
had just leaped Galilee in one stride.
Across the street the glass-booth phone rang. Thats Clarence now! said Ma.
Excuse me Charlotte started off.
Please, I touched her elbow. Its been years. Surprise? I looked from Charlotte to her Ma and back. Yes?
Oh, all right, grumped Ma. Go ahead, said Charlotte.
The phone rang. I ran to lift the receiver. Clarence? I said.
Whos this!? he cried, instantly suspicious.
I tried to explain in some detail, but wound up with the old metaphor, the Crazy.
That buttered no bread for Clarence. Wheres Charlotte or Ma? Im sick. Sick, I wondered, or, like Roy, suddenly afraid.
Clarence, I said, where do you live? Why?!
Give me your phone number, at least
No one has that! My place would be robbed! My photos. My treasures! Clarence, I pleaded, I was at the Brown Derby last night.
Silence.
Clarence? I called. I need your help to identify someone.
I swear I could hear his little rabbity heart race down line. I could hear his tiny albino eyes jerk in their sockets.
Clarence, I said, please! Take my name and phone numbers. I gave them. Call or write the studio. I saw that man almost hit you last night. Why? Who ?
Click. Hum.
Clarence, wherever he was, was gone.
I moved across the street like a sleepwalker. Clarence wont be here.
What dya mean? accused Charlotte. Hes always here!
Whatd you say to him!? Charlottes Ma showed me her left, her evil, eye. Hes sick.
Sick, like Roy, I thought. Sick, like me. Does anyone know where he lives? They all shook their heads.
I suppose you could follow him and see! Charlotte stopped and laughed at herself. I mean
Someone else said, I seen him go down Beachwood, once. One of those bungalow courts
Does he have a last name?
No. Like everyone else in all the years. No last name. Damn, I whispered.
Comes to that Charlottes Ma eyed the card I had signed. Whats your monicker?
I spelled it for her.
Gonna work in films, sniffed Ma, oughta get you a new name. Just call me Crazy. I walked away. Charlotte. Ma.
Crazy, they said. Goodbye.
Fritz was waiting for me upstairs, outside Manny Leibers office. They are in a feeding frenzy inside, he exclaimed. Whats wrong with
you!?
I was talking to the gargoyles.
What, are they down off Notre Dame again? Get in here!
Why? An hour ago Roy and I were on Everest. Now hes gone to hell and Im sunk with you in Galilee. Explain.
You and your winning ways, said Fritz. Who knows? Mannys mother died. Or his mistress took a few wrong balls over the plate. Constipation? High colonies? Choose one. Roys fired. So you and I do
