Get Shorty: A Novel

Belmonts, all that doo-wop shit.”

“ ‘I’m just a lonely teenager,’ ” Chili said.

“Right, and ‘I Wonder Why.’ Who do you listen to now?”

“Guns N’ Roses, different ones.” He had to think fast. “Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin . . .”

“You’re lying. Aerosmith, that’s who I was listening to in Miami, way back when. I’ll bet you’re a Deadhead, you dig that California acid Muzak.”

“Let’s have a cigarette,” Chili said, sitting at the table with her now. “I wasn’t sure you’d recognize me.”

“You kidding? You’re the only guy at Momo’s didn’t try to jump me.”

“It crossed my mind a few times.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t make a big deal about it, like Tommy. I had to beat him off with a stick.” She reached across the table to put her hand on his. “What’re you doing here anyway?”

“I’m making a movie.”

“Come on—”

“And you live with a movie star.”

“Michael, yeah.” She didn’t sound too happy about it. She didn’t sound unhappy either. Glancing

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at her watch, Nicki said, “He’s gonna stop by. You

want to meet him?”

Just like that.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t mind.”

“Michael won’t stay for the performance, too many people. Crowds scare the shit out of him, like he’s afraid he’ll get mobbed.”

“Sure, the guy’s a star. Not only that, he can act.”

“I know,” Nicki said, “he’s incredible. His new one, Elba? It isn’t out yet—I caught some of the dailies when they were shooting. You see Michael, he is Napoleon. He doesn’t play him, I mean he is this fucking military genius, man, this little guy . . .” She drew on her cigarette looking toward the bandstand. “I have to get back.”

“How’d you meet him?”

“At a performance. I was with a metal group, Roadkill? They’re still around. They try to sound like Metallica, straight-ahead rock with a lot of head banging. I had to fucking sing and throw my hair at the same time, only it was shorter then so I had to wear extensions. I remember thinking— this was about a year and a half ago—if only I was a light-skinned black chick I could make it on my voice, not have to do this shit.”

“Michael saw you perform . . .”

“I guess he was in a particular mode at the time.” Nicki tapped her cigarette over the ashtray, maybe giving it some thought. “Sees me up there thrashing, this chick in geekwear, shitkickers, hair under my arms . . . He still won’t let me shave. I guess I fill some need. He works, I work and in between we kick back. We do drugs, but not all the time. I wouldn’t call either of us toxic. We play tennis, we have a screening room, a satellite dish, twelve TV sets, seventeen phones, a houseman, maids, a laundress, gardeners, a guy who comes twice a week to check out the cars . . . But where am I really? Down in a basement with a sticky floor and three guys barely out of Hollywood High. I feel like I’m their mother.”

“Why don’t you get married?”

“You mean to Michael? I don’t think I would even if he asked me.”

“Why not?”

“What’s the point? It’s not like, wow, I’d be making it, something I’ve always wanted. You get married, then what? All it does is fuck up your life, especially marrying an actor. Look at Madonna . . . No, don’t. I don’t have all that underwear going for me. I’m a rock-androll singer and that’s it, man, nothing else.” She looked off toward the bandstand. “Listen, I have to go. But when Michael comes, I’ll introduce you.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t mind talking to him, he has time.”

“You want him to do a movie?”

“We’re thinking about it.”

“Good luck.” Nicki stubbed out her cigarette before looking up at him again. “We’re gonna open tonight, play around with the Stones’ ‘Street Fighting Man.’ What do you think?”

With that innocent straight face, putting him on.

It took Chili four seconds to find the album cover and the title in his mind from twenty years ago, the concert recorded live at the Garden and Tommy playing the record over and over, Tommy at the time stoned on the Stones.

Chili said, straight-faced back to her, “From Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out, huh? That one?”

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It got Nicki smiling at him, looking good, those nice blue eyes shining. She said, “You’re a cool guy, Chil, without even trying.”

They’d start a number, race into it and stop and Nicki would play part of it over on her bull’s-eye guitar, slower, smoother, and then one of the guitar players would pick it up, imitating, give a nod and the drummer would kick them off again. They might be good—Chili couldn’t tell. Hearing a line of music by itself, when Nicki showed them how, it sounded okay, but all of them playing together came out as noise and was irritating.

Thinking of that album cover again, he seemed to recall a guy in an Uncle Sam hat jumping up in the air with a guitar in each hand. He liked the Rolling Stones then, back in the hippie days, all the flakes running around making peace signs. It made him think of the time they grabbed this hippie, dragged him into Tommy Carlo’s cousin’s barbershop and zipped all his fuckin hair off with the clippers. He thought of that and started thinking of Ray Bones again and Leo the drycleaner, his calling Leo dumb for leaving three hundred grand in a hotel-room closet, and where was it now? Under his bed at the Sunset Marquis. He’d check, make sure Leo and Annette had taken off, just to be on the safe side. Later tonight he’d call Fay, tell her to look for three hundred big ones coming by Express Mail. Put it in one of those containers they gave you at the post office. He’d hang on to the extra ten grand. Maybe pay off Ray Bones, get that out of the way, or maybe not. But the three hundred, basically, was Fay’s. Let her do whatever she wanted with it. Two to one she’d tell a friend of hers about it and pretty soon the suits would come by, knock on the door, flash their I.D.’s . . .

He wondered what would’ve happened if he’d brought Fay with him to Vegas . . .

And realized he was thinking of it as a movie again, the way he had told it to Harry and Karen, but seeing new possibilities, getting the woman, Fay, into the story more, looking at it the same way he had looked at Lovejoy and saw what was needed. Fay comes to L.A. with him . . .

Except it wouldn’t be him, it would be an actor, Jesus, like Robert De Niro playing the shylock. And for Fay . . .

Karen. Why not? Karen even had kind of a you-all accent, though it wasn’t as downhome as the way Fay talked. Okay, now, by the time they get to L.A. they realize they’re hot for each other and aren’t even sure they want to find her husband, Leo, except he’s got all that fuckin dough. Do they want it? They know somebody who does, Ray Bones, he’s coming after them and he’ll kill for that money.

It didn’t sound too bad.

You have Leo pulling the scam on the airline in the opening . . .

Or, no, you start with the shylock and Fay waiting for Leo to come home from the track, while actually he’s out at the airport getting smashed and the jet takes off without him and goes down in the swamp, blows up.

So you have the shylock, basically a good guy, a former shylock, played by Bobby De Niro. You have Karen Flores making her successful comeback as Fay . . . She wouldn’t have a sweaty job, she could be something else, an entertainer, a singer. You have Leo . . . You wouldn’t have Harry in it or the limo guys—it wasn’t a movie about making a movie—but

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you’d have Ray Bones in it. Leo would be a tough one to cast. Get an actor who could play a good sleazeball .