A Graveyard for Lunatics

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 couldn?t 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 Charlotte?s 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 camel?s-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.

?It?s 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, ?why?it?s?the Crazy!?

?The Crazy.? I laughed, quietly.

A light burned in Mom?s eyes. ?Why land?s sake.? She touched my elbow. ?You poor thing. What?re 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 heaven?s sake, Ma.? Charlotte?s 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 Charlotte?s ma. ?Can?t be!?

?Is,? I almost whispered. ?I?m 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??

?I?But all the hands thrust out now, with pens and white cards.

Shamefacedly, I took Charlotte?s and wrote my name. Ma squinted at it, upside down.

?Put the name of the picture you?re 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: ?Where?s Clarence??

Charlotte and Ma gaped. ?You remember him??

?Who could forget Clarence, and his portfolios, and his coat,? I said, scribbling.

?He ain?t called in yet,? snapped Ma.

?Called in?? I glanced up.