If You Liked School, You'll Love Work

  — What did you know about his work as a filmmaker?

  — Not a whole bunch, she said, takin another sip of her drink then raisin her eyebrows over the glass in classic lush style. — As you well know Glen was an independent, and I’m strictly a Burt Reynolds girl. Poor darling never had anything, he had to scrape and hustle for every dime to make his damned movies. Thought that I was money, I reckon.

  I gotta say that at this point I found it hard to see Glen Halliday, Mr Integrity himself, cast as a gold digger. I’d seen him lecturing to NYU students at Hunter College, and again at Sundance, sharing a platform with Clint Eastwood. Both times he spoke with such passion and certainty. I couldn’t see him as a gigolo, man-whoring his weary ol ass to get a picture made.

  I guess it must’ve showed in my face as Yolanda felt moved to elaborate. — He got plenty pissed at me when I wouldn’t sell this place.

  This place was nice enough if you liked that kinda thing. But I was thinkin that if I had that ol gal’s money I sure as shit wouldn’t be spending the last of my days dryin out in the desert. I decided to digress and I asked her, — You pretty much settled here then, Yolanda?

  Maybe it was just the liquor kickin in but I swear the wattage on her grin upped a little. — Pretty much. Oh, don’t get me wrong, it ain’t nothing special but it’s got memories. Besides, it was Humphrey’s legacy. He was my first husband and my one true love, she explained with a peachy glow. — When I pass on this’ll go to our son … he lives over in Florida. Humphrey Marston was the one I never managed to replace, and she gave a faraway smile, — the rest never even came close.

  Ol Yolanda’s wrinkled lips pursed round the slice of lemon in the gin. She sorta sucked it up and kinda kissed it, before lettin it fall back into the glass. By now I was startin to get a little restless. I was sure that Humphrey was a fine man, but my business was with the other guy. — So about Glen, he was broke when you married him?

  Yolanda looked a little bored, then she refreshed her glass, the act of doing so seemin to enliven her. — You know the type of films he made, she said impatiently, then softened a little. — I mean, he made them for love, not money. Anything he earned for him went on drink. A terrible lush, and such a bad drunk. My third husband Larry, Larry Briggs, he was the one before Glen, now there was a good drunk, she roared in celebration of the memory. — He wrote checks when he was loaded, bought gifts, pressed flesh, her voice dropped, — in bed he was just about the hottest darned thing … Her hand rose to her jaw. — This big mouth of mine, she cooed in a kind of simulated embarrassment.

  I have to confess that I did find something mighty fetchin about her little performance, and I weren’t shy about lettin her know it. — Don’t worry, ma’am, as we say back in Texas, this ain’t my first rodeo.

  She slapped her thighs and I tried not to stare at the seismic activity that followed, as she burst into uproarious laughter. — I’ll bet it ain’t. You got that look in your eye! You’re gonna ask me about Glen in the sack … right?

  — Ma’am, I would never presume … I protested, then I conceded, — but seein as you mentioned it n all …

  And as those words fell from my mouth, I swear that, there and then, I could feel the extent of my betrayal. What in hell’s name was I doing? This was one of the great masters of American independent cinema. Up there with the likes of Cassavetes or Sayles. I wanted to write a tribute to an important, admired, and inspirational artist who’d help drag me from the sleazepits and here I was indulgin in the kinda smut I thought I’d escaped five years ago. When I was shootin those porn flicks from that San Fernando Valley lockup, just to pay the bills.

  Two long years in the Valley wrecked things between me and Jill. I recall her sayin to me in one of our lush discussions, — You spend so much time shootin pussy, you don’t wanna fuck it no more.

  Poor gal was only half right. Cause I certainly did, but the problem was that that shit was on offer all day long. By the time I got home I guess I’d had my fill of it, but I could always use another drink. That might be oversimplifyin the matter somewhat, but I do believe that there’s something about being around all that meat and sweat that sucks the soul right out of a man. I know that there are some people who can work in that industry a long stretch and just wash its stink off every night, but I certainly wasn’t one of them. On the plus side I sure learned how to light a set and frame a shot.

  But there I was in the Valley, a stupid, still youngish guy who should have been like a kid in a candy store, but I was miserable as a coyote with hemorrhoids and two bust back legs. Then, durin some downtime, I walked into a fleapit cinema on Hollywood Boulevard where I took in The Liars of Ditchwater Creek, Halliday’s portrait of a West Texas town similar to the one I grew up in. That was it. I was hooked. Walking out from that ol picture house exhilarated, I wanted to do what Halliday was doing. Still do. It was both my salvation and my torment.

  — Glen was fine at first, a real Texan bull as I recall, Yolanda grinned a little then let her expression dissolve into a wry smile. — But like most men it didn’t last.

  I didn’t reckon that she was diggin me out; at that point I’d told her little about my own life, but I guess it was hard not to hear echoes of Jill’s bitter asides of the latter months in her voice. I tried to remain impassive and waited for her to carry on.

  — I didn’t have no luck with men, she told me in a sad lament, her mood evidently mirrorin my own. — Humphrey Marston, he was a lot older than me, but he was about the only one of them who left me with anything other than bills. This is his place, sat right on this big aquifer.

  That word again. I looked a little dumbfounded, and it must have showed as she raised her eyebrows at me. — Ma’am, excuse my ignorance, but I’m gonna have to ask you what an aquifer is. I’m figurin some kinda underground lake?

  — You got it in a nutshell, she explained, topping up her drink. — The developers were always knocking on our door with big checks in their hands, but Humphrey reckoned the water was an asset worth keeping. Twenty-odd years ago, before they brought the stuff down from the mountains, there was enough of it here to keep a few new housing developments and a golf course going for years. But their money didn’t interest Humphrey. So the developers and the state fought dirty; tried all sorts of ways to get their hands on it. Humphrey was a very gentle fella, but he could be as stubborn as a mule; took em all the way and whopped their asses in court every time.

  — Good ol Humphrey, I smiled and raised my glass to toast him. I was likin this ol boy more all the time.

  Yolanda reached over and clinked glasses with me, killed her gin and refueled. With her back to me, I watched the dimpled hams spill out from under that one-piece as she poured. I looked away as she turned around, drink in hand. — He inherited the place from his father who wanted him to work it. But all he was interested in was animals, she explained. — He took his bachelor’s degree in zoology …

  She pointed at the stuffed cat, mounted on a plinth. I noticed it was caught in that classic cat sitting pose, its hind legs tucked under it, the forelegs extended, looking up as if expecting a feed. — This is what he did, this was his work.

  I guess I was pretty impressed by this. Most taxidermists I’d seen, and there was a lot of em in the big hunting states, they tended to go for action poses, even in domestic pets. — I like the way he got that ol boy in an ordinary cat position, rather than leapin on some invisible prey.

  — Yes, Humphrey studied compulsively so that his compositions would be anatomically correct. She pointed over to a wall full of certificates and a cabinet stacked with trophies. — He was the best in the state. I used to assist him. I was so damn squeamish at first … Her expression went coy as her hand waved away a phantom objection or compliment.

  In spite of myself, I was getting plenty curious. — What happened with you and Humphrey, if you don’t mind me asking?

  Yolanda looked sadly at me, then grimaced in a caustic smile. — Nothing with me and him
, just him. I came home from the mall one afternoon and found him dead in his workshop. He was stuffing a raccoon when he had a massive coronary. Darned if I didn’t find him right there, bent over his subject, as lifeless as that poor creature he was working on, she told me, brushin at a tear as if the loss was just yesterday. — I reckoned it was those constant battles with the developers and the state that took it all out of him. Her expression turned bitter as her incisors flashed. — Even if you beat those bastards, you always pay a price.

  I couldn’t disagree there. It struck me that ol Humphrey was like a hero in a Glen Halliday movie; an ordinary Joe standin up to those moneyed assholes and power trippers, just cause he could, and hell, because it was the right thing to do.

  — It just made me all the more determined that I would never sell up. She shook her head emphatically. — They said that I was cutting off my nose to spite my face and that the canal waters would soon be rolling in from the mountains and that I should cash in while I could. And sure enough, it eventually did come flowin down, but not before some of those miserable rat bastards who had tried to take my Humphrey’s water went bust sittin on their useless adjoining land!

  And she talked on and on about ol Humphrey and I was darned if that ol gal didn’t have tongue enough for ten rows of teeth. But there wasn’t much I could do about it. She was upset and I had to let her go on. She told me how she’d met Humphrey at a pageant when she was Miss Arizona, and, how in contrast to the others, he was a real gent who always treated her like a lady. It sure was a strong love, no doubt about that. So I learned a lot about Humphrey and taxidermy, and while I admired this kindly ol guy who just sat on his land, stuffin animals, developers and the state, he wasn’t Glen Halliday. It took me a long while to get back there and when I did I could tell it was mighty disappointin for Yolanda.

  — Glen Halliday lived for his work, she said ruefully. — We got together as friends first, then got married in a whirlwind. After six months he was a lousy lay. I didn’t see enough of him. He was always running off onto the set of one film after another, or hiding out in bars, she grinned at me in conspiracy. — If Glen had a grande passion, then, honey, I certainly wasn’t it.

  Emboldened by this lady’s candor, I asked without thinkin, — Who do you think was?

  — C’mon, darlin, you know the answer to that as well as I do, she chided, but she looked at me like she was genuinely let down. And she was right to be; it was the performance of an honors graduate asshole. In her mind I now either had balls of jello or the savvy of a virgin in a bordello. — Ms Sandra Nugent, she said slowly, her look of judging compassion makin me feel like the teenage daughter of the house who stormed out screamin ‘fuck you’ only to return in tears with a swollen belly six months later.

  I knew full well, as did any undergrad who took an elective in American independent film, that Sandy Nugent was universally regarded as Halliday’s muse. She was the actress who starred in some of his finest movies: Ditchwater Creek, Mace, A Very Cold Heat. Over the years they had what the likes of Entertainment Weekly might call ‘a tempestuous on-off relationship’. She killed herself back in ’86, in a roach motel in a scuzzy part of Florida. They found her with the contents of a strip mall drugstore still bubblin in her gut long after her ass had gone polar.

  I’d researched Sandy extensively, prior to meeting Yolanda. The only public comment he made on her death had lost Halliday plenty of friends (sadly, I was learning that he seemed to specialize in that art). Talkin to a London magazine at the Edinburgh Film Festival back in 1990, he said, ‘Nobody likes to see a good piece of ass wasted.’ Of course, Glen Halliday was a chronic drunk by then. I know that ain’t no excuse for that kinda talk, but I sure as shit also know that it can be a reason.

  Glen Halliday was one of the most talented and underrated filmmakers I had come across. But the more I learned about him the less enamored I was by the guy. It seemed, and not only from Yolanda, that the magic was in the movies, not the man. And while I know more than most what ol John Barleycorn can do to a fella when things ain’t goin his way, my hero was starting to sound like a guy who had his head up his ass.

  He married Yolanda ten years after Sandy’s death, then he himself apparently died of a heart attack, right here in Phoenix six years after that. Obviously the thing with Sandy, though they never tied the knot, really did seem to be Glen Halliday’s big one, but she wasn’t for tellin. Also, most of their mutual associates in the world of independent film had been pretty damn guarded.

  But not all of them; back in New York, I had met Jenny Ralston, one of Sandy’s best friends, who’d been mighty obligin. Jenny had been mentored by Sandy and had a respectable list of indie credits and the odd Hollywood B-movie to her name. She was a dark-eyed beauty, finer than frog hair, and, maybe guided a little too much by her perspective, I’d regarded Yolanda Halliday as just a crazy afterthought, a place for drunken ol Glen to lay his tired head in this period of dark decline. But now somethin was eatin at me. I was darned if some strange loopy voice wasn’t whisperin in my ear that it was this relationship with Yolanda, ol Miss Arizona herself, that was going to be the key to unlocking the Glen Halliday enigma. Perhaps this strange woman was slowly becomin more interestin to me as I was gettin a little disenchanted by her most recently deceased husband.

  As we kept yakin, me tryin to keep her interest by tellin her about my life past, and the one present with Pen, which interested her more, Yolanda seemed to be strugglin. I’d no idea how many gins she’d had before I’d called round and the booze seemed to be gettin to her. I soon got to reckonin that it might be best to wrap it up for the time being. — I really enjoy chatting to you, Raymond, she slurred, — I feel like we’ve really connected.

  — I really enjoy talkin to you, Yolanda, I told her in all honesty, despite bein a mite concerned at the way those crazy eyes kept holdin me in their gaze.

  I thanked her for her time and made to leave, as I had somewhere I needed to be. I fixed another appointment to see her, then headed back to the car. The pool was still ocean blue and the pool guy, skinny but muscular in his yellowin wife-beater, glanced at me for a second with hard, suspicious eyes, before turnin and rakin more gunk from the pool’s surface.

  I got into the car and drank my second bottle of water. I called Pen on her cellphone but it was switched off, as was her habit. I hooked another bottle into the holder on the dashboard. The road was dead as Yolanda’s pets and I made good time before pullin into Earl’s Roadhouse, the bar where Pen was playing. It was still pretty damn early and I could feel that ol lush pull tuggin at me, insistent as a mall brat beggin his momma for candy. Surprisingly, for a night owl, it was always in the daylight hours when the draw was strongest. But I guess there’s nothin like walking sober into an evening bar full of drunks to convince you that you’re makin the right lifestyle choice.

  I ordered a soda water with lime from Tracey the bartender. I liked her. She had a very cold dykey thing going on with the guys who came in. It just intrigued them and made them hit on her all the more. And hit on her they did, cause that gal always dressed like a million bucks. Not in an obvious way, cause she wasn’t one for puttin much flesh on show, but pretty damn classy all the same. She liked me, approved of the way I treated Pen. She told me as much one time, when she was a little drunk. Not in that hittin on you type of way, just in a mature sense of genuine appreciation. Tracey put Pen up on a pedestal. I reckoned I knew that pedestal well enough and once told Pen that I thought Tracey might be a girl’s girl.

  She just laughed in my face and said, — Baby, she’s as straight as they come. For an older guy, you still ain’t got much of a clue about women.

  She wasn’t too far wrong. Reckon all the women in my life had kinda said the same thing at one time or another. Jill made that point frequently, and much less charitably than Pen. My agent Martha had recently said similar stuff about Julia, the heroine in the first draft of my screenplay Big Noise. Or maybe she was a bit more blunt: ‘She
isn’t a cardboard cutout, honey, she’s a little paper-thin for that.’

  Sure enough, a few days later we spotted Tracey throwin gutterballs at Big Bucky Boy’s Bowling with some strike-hittin real-estate-sales type of guy who was probably married, but definitely fucking her. I felt like even more of a sleazeball than this asshole looked.

  It was more than just women. I guess I outta have known a whole heap more about people than I did for a fella with my ambitions. And my crazy, conceited ass thought that by doing this book and a possible documentary on Halliday, I’d grow to understand the master’s mind, and somehow be able to unblock the writer in me, and become the great auteur that he was. But it was fanciful bullshit, and Yolanda Halliday was proof of that. After a couple of meetings I still didn’t know what that ol gal’s thing was.

  The bar started to fill up, nine-to-five sorts who looked like they’d put in a hard day’s work; forklift drivers, grease monkeys, retail clerks, and office types, all lookin for what everybody has looked for in places like this since folks first sat down and chewed the shit together.

  Pen came in dressed in a leather jacket and tight jeans, her hair tied back in a blue ribbon lookin kick-ass rock chic. She’s seventeen sweet years my junior, and her perfume smells good as she greets me with a melting smile and throws her arms around me. We kissed long, hard, and hungry, then softened it up a little and it tasted real fine and I could measure the goodness in life in the sweetest drips from those big red lips. And I knew I was lucky cause every guy, every sweaty workin stiff in that shithouse of a bar wanted to be me at that point in time and if they didn’t then they goddamn well should have.

  Tracey saw her come in and set her up a beer.

  Sure enough, one of the ol boys caught an eyeful of that divine denim-cased rear and darn near tumped his beer. Then his mean ol eyes took their register of my own weather-beaten face, and seein that it wasn’t much younger than the battered-lookin thing that greeted him in the mirror each mornin, fixed me a bitter scowl. I just gave him back a shit-eatin grin that said: Yeah, I know I’m maybe a little too old and these days definitely a load too straight for her, but it’s me she’s goin home with, so fuck you, buddy.