. . It took Chili a moment to realize the room was quiet. Nicki and her guys were looking this way, but not at him. He looked over . . .
And saw Michael Weir.
It was, it was Michael Weir crossing the room from the stairs, giving Nicki a wave, the other hand in his pants pocket, baggy gray pants too long for him. Chili saw that as part of the whole picture, his first look at Michael Weir in person, white Reeboks too. But what caught and held his attention was Michael Weir’s jacket. It was like the one left at Vesuvio’s twelve years ago, that worn-out World War Two flight jacket nobody wanted. It was exactly like it. On a guy that made seven million bucks a movie.
Now Michael Weir had his hand raised to the band. Chili heard him say, “Hey, guys,” and it was his voice, Chili recognized it from movies. Michael Weir was good at accents, but you could still tell his voice, kind of nasal. The cockrockers gave him a nod, not too impressed, these young dropouts with their hair and their guitars. Now it looked like Michael was joking around with them, doing the moonwalk and pretending he was strumming a guitar. He was good, but the guys still didn’t seem impressed. Michael turned to Nicki and right away she grabbed his arm and Chili saw them coming this way, Nicki doing the talking, Michael Weir looking up and then Nicki looking up as she said, “Chil? I’d like you to meet Michael.”
Chili got to his feet, ready to shake hands with a superstar. What surprised him now was how short the guy was in real life.
18 
It took Chili a couple of minutes to figure Michael Weir out. He wanted people to think he was a regular guy, but was too used to being who he was to pull it off.
The two of them sitting at the table now, Chili asked him if he wanted a drink. Michael, watching Nicki and her band through the archway, said yeah, that sounded like a good idea. Chili asked him what he wanted. Michael said oh, anything. Did he want Scotch, bourbon, a beer? Michael said oh, and stopped and said no, he’d like a Perrier. Still watching Nicki and the band. They hadn’t started to play. Chili looked over at the bar, not open yet, thinking he’d have to go all the way upstairs to get the movie star his soda water. Right then Michael said, “They’re a tough audience.”
Chili noticed the movie star’s expression, eyebrows raised, like he’d just heard some bad news but was more surprised than hurt.
“My Michael Jackson went right by them.”
Oh—meaning his moonwalk routine. Chili said, “It looked good to me.” It did.
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“To do it right you put on a touch of eye makeup, white socks, the glove . . . I was a little off on the voice too, the baby-doll whisper?”
Chili said, “I couldn’t hear that part.”
“But I can understand it, guys like that, their attitude. It has to do with territorial imperative.”
Chili said, “That must be it,” feeling more at ease with the movie star, knowing a bullshitter when he met one. It didn’t mean the guy wasn’t good.
“I’m not certain why,” Michael said, “but it reminds me of the one, the third-rate actor doing Hamlet?” Michael smiling with his eyes now. “He’s so bad that before long the audience becomes vocally abusive, yelling at him to get off the stage. They keep it up until the actor, finally, unable to take any more, stops the soliloquy and says to the audience, ‘Hey, what’re you blaming me for? I didn’t write this shit.’ ”
Now they were both smiling, Michael still doing his with his eyes, saying, “I could tell those kids I didn’t invent Michael Jackson . . . someone else did.” Chili wondering, if it doesn’t bother him, why didn’t he just drop it? Chili looking for the right moment to bring up
He was ready to get into it, said, “Oh, by the way . . .” and Nicki’s band kicked off, filling the room with their sound, and Michael turned his chair to face the bandstand through the archway. They were loud at first, but then settled down and it wasn’t too bad, more like rhythm and blues than rock and roll. The beat got the tips of Chili’s fingers brushing the table. Michael sat with his hands folded in his lap, his legs in the baggy pants stretched out in front of him, ankles crossed, the laces of one of his Reeboks loose, coming untied. He looked more like in his thirties than forty-seven. Not a bad-looking guy, even with the nose, Chili studying his profile. There was no way to tell if Michael liked the beat or not. Chili thought of asking him, but had the feeling people waited for the movie star to speak first, give his opinion and then everybody would say yeah, that’s right, always agreeing. Like with Momo, the few times Chili saw him in the social club years ago, noticing the way the guys hung on to whatever Momo said. It was like you had to put kneepads on to talk to this man who never worked in his life.
Chili leaned into the table saying, “You might not remember, but we met one time before.”
He gave the movie star time to look over.
“In Brooklyn, when you were making
Michael said, “You know, I had a feeling we’d met. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, the occasion. Chil, is it?”
“Chili Palmer. We met, it was at a club on 86th Street, Bensonhurst. You dropped by, you wanted to talk to some of the guys.”
“Sure, I remember it very well,” Michael said, turning his chair around to the table.
“You were, I guess you were seeing what it was like to be one of us,” Chili said, locking his eyes on the movie star’s the way he looked at a slow pay, a guy a week or two behind.
“Yeah, to listen more than anything else.”
“Is that right?”
“Pick up your rhythms of speech.”
“We talk different?”
“Well, different in that the way you speak is based on an attitude,” the movie star said, leaning in
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with an elbow on the table and running his hand through his hair. Chili could see him doing it on the screen, acting natural. “It’s like ya tone a voice,” the movie star said, putting on an accent, “says weah ya comin’ from.” Then back to his normal voice, that had a touch of New York in it anyway, saying, “I don’t mean where you’re from geographically, I’m referring to attitude. Your tone, your speech patterns demonstrate a certain confidence in yourselves, in your opinions, your indifference to conventional views.”
“Like we don’t give a shit.”
“More than that. It’s a laid-back attitude, but with an intimidating edge. Cut-and-dried, no bullshit. Your way is the only way it’s going to be.”
“Well, you had it down cold,” Chili said. “Watching you in the movie, if I didn’t know better I’d have to believe you were a made guy and not acting. I mean you be
The movie star liked that, starting to nod, saying, “It was a beautiful part. All I had to do was find the character’s center, the stem I’d use to wind him up and he’d play, man, he’d play.” The movie star nodding with Nicki’s beat now, eyes half closed, like he was showing how to change into somebody else, saying, “Once I have the authentic sounds of speech, the rhythms, man, the patois, I can actually begin to think the way those guys do, get inside their heads.”
Like telling how he studied this tribe of natives in the jungles of Brooklyn. That’s how it sounded to Chili.
He said, “Okay, I’m one of those guys you mention. What am I thinking?”
The movie star put on an innocent look first, surprised. What? Did I say something? The look gradually becoming a nice-guy smile. He ran both hands through his hair this time.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying an actual metamorphosis takes place, I become one of you. That wouldn’t be acting. I had the opportunity one time, years ago, to ask Dame Edith Evans how she approached her parts and she said, ‘I pretend, dear boy, I pretend.’Well, I’ll get involved in a certain life, observe all I can, because I want that feeling of realism, verisimilitude. But ultimately what I do is practice my craft, I act, I pretend to be someone else.”
“So you don’t know what I’m thinking,” Chili said, staying with it.
