A Graveyard for Lunatics

?Sopwith?? she said.

39

Driving, Constance cut the wind with her voice:

?Life is like underwear, should be changed twice a day. Tonight is over, I choose to forget it.?

She shook tears from her eyes and glanced aside to see them rain away.

?I forget, just like that. There goes my memory. See how easy??

?No.?

?You saw the mamacitas in the top floor of that tenement you lived in a couple years back? How after the big Saturday night blowout they?d toss their new dresses down off the roof to prove how rich they were, and didn?t care, and could buy another tomorrow? What a great lie; off and down with the dresses and them standing fat- or skinny-assed on the three-o?clock-in-the-morning roof watching the garden of dresses, like silk petals going downwind to the empty lots and alleys. Yes??

?Yes!?

?That?s me. Tonight, the Brown Derby, that poor son of a bitch, along with my tears, I throw it all away.?

?Tonight isn?t over. You can?t forget that face. Did you or did you not recognize the Beast??

?Jesus. We?re on the verge of our first really big heavyweight fight. Back off.?

?Did you recognize him??

?He was unrecognizable.?

?He had eyes. Eyes don?t change.?

?Back off!? she yelled.

?Okay,? I groused. ?I?m off.?

?There.? More tears fled away in small comets. ?I love you again.? She smiled a windblown smile, her hair raveling and unraveling in the flood of air that sluiced us in a cold flow over the windshield.

All the bones in my body collapsed at that smile. God, I thought, has she always won, every day, all her life, with that mouth and those teeth and those great pretend-innocent eyes?

?Yep!? laughed Constance, reading my mind.

?And look,? she said.

She stopped dead in front of the studio gates. She stared up for a long moment.

?Ah, God,? she said at last. ?That?s no hospital. It?s where great elephant ideas go to die. A graveyard for lunatics.?

?That?s over the wall, Constance.?

?No. You die here first, you die over there last. In between?? She held to the sides of her skull as if it might fly apart. ?Madness. Don?t go in there, kid.?

?Why??

Constance rose slowly to stand over the steering wheel and cry havoc at the gate that was not yet open and the night windows that were blind shut and the blank walls that didn?t care.

?First, they drive you crazy. Then when they have driven you nuts they persecute you for being the babbler at noon, the hysteric at sunset. The toothless werewolf at the rising of the moon.

?When you?ve reached the precise moment of lunacy, they fire you and spread the word that you are unreasonable, uncooperative, and unimaginative. Toilet paper, imprinted with your name is dispatched to every studio, so the great ones can chant your initials as they ascend the papal throne.

?When you are dead they shake you awake to kill you again. Then they hang your carcass at Bad Rock, OK Corral, or Versailles on backlot 10, pickle you in a jar like a fake embryo in a bad carny film, buy you a cheap crypt next door, chisel your name, misspelled, on the tomb, cry like crocodiles. Then the final inglory: Nobody remembers your name on all the pictures you made in the good years. Who recalls the screenwriters for Rebecca? Who remembers who wrote Gone With the Wind? Who helped Welles become Kane? Ask anyone on the street. Hell, they don?t even know who was president during Hoover?s administration.

?So there you have it. Forgotten the day after the preview. Afraid to leave home between pictures. Who ever heard of a film writer who ever visited Paris, Rome, or London? All piss-fearful if they travel, the big moguls will forget them. Forget them, hell, they never knew them. Hire whatchamacalit. Getmewhats-isname. The name above the title? The producer? Sure. The director? Maybe. Remember it?s deMille?s Ten Commandments, not Moses?. But F. Scott Fitzgerald?s The Great Gatsby? Smoke it in the Men?s. Snuff it up your ulcerated nose. Want your name in big type? Kill your wife?s lover, fall downstairs with his body. Like I say, that?s the flickers, silver screen. Remember, you?re the blank spaces between each slot-click of the projector. Notice all those pole-vault poles by the back wall of the studio? That?s to help the high jumpers up across into the stone quarry. Mad fools hire and fire ?em, dime a dozen. They can be had, because they love films, we don?t. That gives us the power. Drive them to drink, then grab the bottle, hire the hearse, borrow a spade. Maximus Films, like I said. A graveyard. And, oh yeah, for lunatics.?

Her speech over, Constance remained standing as if the studio walls were a tidal wave about to fall.

?Don?t go in there,? she finished.

There was quiet applause.

The night policeman, behind the ornate Spanish ironwork was smiling and clapping his hands.