A Graveyard for Lunatics

?Writers can?t afford cars! And I saw five people killed, torn apart, when I was fifteen. A car hit a telephone pole.?

Fritz glanced over at my pale look of remembrance.

?It was like a war, yes? You?re not so dumb. I hear you?ve been given a new project with Roy Holdstrom? Special effects? Brilliant. I hate to admit.?

?We?ve been friends since high school. I used to watch him build his miniature dinosaurs in his garage. We promised to grow old and make monsters together.?

?No,? shouted Fritz Wong against the wind, ?you are working for monsters. Manny Leiber? The Gila monster?s dream of a spider. Watch out! There?s the menagerie!?

He nodded at the autograph collectors on the sidewalk across the street from the studio gates.

I glanced over. Instantly, my soul flashed out of my body and ran back. It was 1934 and I was mulched in among the ravening crowd, waving pads and pens, rushing about at premiere nights under the klieg lights or pursuing Marlene Dietrich into her hairdresser?s or running after Gary Grant at the Friday-night Legion Stadium boxing matches, waiting outside restaurants for Jean Harlow to have one more three-hour lunch or Claudette Colbert to come laughing out at midnight.

My eyes touched over the crazy mob there and I saw once again the bulldog, Pekingese, pale, myopic faces of nameless friends lost in the past, waiting outside the great Spanish Prado Museum facade of Maximus where the thirty-foot-high intricately scrolled iron gates opened and clanged shut on the impossibly famous. I saw myself lost in that nest of gape-mouthed hungry birds waiting to be fed on brief encounters, flash photographs, ink-signed pads. And as the sun vanished and the moon rose in memory, I saw myself roller-skating nine miles home on the empty sidewalks, dreaming I would someday be the world?s greatest author or a hack writer at Fly by Night Pictures.

?The menagerie?? I murmured. ?Is that what you call them??

?And here,? said Fritz Wong, ?is their zoo!?

And we jounced in the studio entrance down alleys full of arriving people, extras and executives. Fritz Wong rammed his car into a NO PARKING zone.

I got out and said, ?What?s the difference between a menagerie and a zoo??

?In here, the zoo, we are kept behind bars by money. Out there, those menagerie goofs are locked in silly dreams.?

?I was one of them once, and dreamed of coming over the studio wall.?

?Stupid. Now you?ll never escape.?

?Yes, I will. I?ve finished another book of stories, and a play. My name will be remembered!?

Fritz?s monocle glinted. ?You shouldn?t tell this to me. I might lose my contempt.?

?If I know Fritz Wong, it?ll be back in about thirty seconds.?

Fritz watched as I lifted my bike from the car.

?You are almost German, I think.?

I climbed on my bike. ?I?m insulted.?

?Do you speak to all people this way??

?No, only to Frederick the Great, whose manners I deplore but whose films I love.?

Fritz Wong unscrewed the monocle from his eye and dropped it in his shirt pocket. It was as if he had let a coin fall to start some inner machine.

?I?ve been watching you for some days,? he intoned. ?In fits of insanity, I read your stories. You are not lacking talent, which I could polish. I am working, God help me, on a hopeless film about Christ, Herod Antipas, and all those knucklehead saints. The film started nine million dollars back with a dipso director who couldn?t handle kindergarten traffic. I have been elected to bury the corpse. What kind of Christian are you??

?Fallen away.?

?Good! Don?t be surprised if I get you fired from your dumb dinosaur epic. If you could help me embalm this Christ horror film, it?s a step up for you. The Lazarus principle! If you work on a dead turkey and pry it out of the film vaults, you earn points. Let me watch and read you a few more days. Appear at the commissary at one sharp today. Eat what I eat, speak when spoken to, yes? you talented little bastard.?

?Yes, Unterseeboot Kapitan, you big bastard, sir.?

As I biked off, he gave me a shove. But it was not a shove to hurt, only the quietist old philosopher?s push, to help me go.

I did not look back.

I feared to see him looking back.

6

?Good God!? I said. ?He made me forget!?

Last night. The cold rain. The high wall. The body.

I parked my bike outside Stage 13.

A studio policeman, passing, said, ?You got a permit to park there? That?s Sam Shoenbroder?s slot. Call the front office.?

?Permit!? I yelled. ?Holy Jumping Jesus! For a bike??