“Oh, gah,” groaned Renee. “I hate it when this happens.”
“You do?”
She giggled, then shooed him some more and told me: “Don’t. We can’t laugh.”
“Why not?”
“He’ll think you’re friendly.”
“Maybe I am,” I said.
“I mean it, Cady. Look mean.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.”
“Back up against the wall, then.”
“He’ll just go for the front.” I reached up with both hands and pushed the dog’s muzzle away. “How ’bout it, Renee? This elegant enough for you?”
“Shut up.”
“He doesn’t have a boner, does he?”
We were both crippled with laughter when a snippy-looking woman in red leather came out of the store and gave us the evil eye. “Is there something I can help you with?”
I don’t know why that was funny, but it was. I lost it so completely that Renee had to explain things for me. “This dog has been…harassing her.”
“Is it your dog?”
“No.” Renee sounded terribly accused. “We’ve never seen it before.”
I was holding my waist now, gasping for breath. The dog had backed off a little, observing my madness, his head tilted in genuine puzzlement.
“Are you all right?” asked the woman.
I nodded.
The woman studied us a moment longer, then went back into the store. I leaned against the building, trying to compose myself, while Renee proffered a sickly, mortified smile to a pair of matrons who’d stopped to gawk. Almost as if he’d realized the fun was over, the dog lost interest and sauntered off down the street.
“Thanks a lot,” Renee said sullenly.
“Who? Me or him?”
“You.”
I wiped my eyes, then waved at the gawkers, who eyed each other nervously, then skulked away. “It was funny,” I said, trying to explain myself.
“You could’ve said something.”
“No way.” I held up my palm to show her how much I meant this. “I could barely breathe.”
“She thought you were having a fit.”
“I know.” I tried to look contrite. “I’m sorry.”
“And you messed up your mascara.” Renee knelt in front of me, pulled a Kleenex from her purse, and began repairing my face. “I always forget about dogs.”
“It’s OK,” I said.
She just kept on dabbing away. “Where do you think he came from?”
I thought for a moment, then said: “Got me licked.”
She laughed really hard at this, so much so that her face began to squinch up and her big, friendly knees squared off in a disquietingly familiar way.
“Renee…?”
She squealed incoherently, like some old-time movie damsel trying to shake off a gag.
“You’re peeing your pants, aren’t you?”
All she could manage was a nod and another squeal. She was doing a full jackknife now, impressively enough, yet somehow remained standing.
“They’re gone,” I said. “Go for it.”
The morning was not a total washout, I am happy to report, because Renee keeps an extra pair of panties in her purse for just such emergencies. She picked up this helpful hint, she explained, during her kiddie pageant days, when unnasty undies were apparently a point of real pride in the dressing rooms. After skulking off to a rest room in a nearby coffee shop, she joined me for pie in one of the booths.
“Why do you suppose they do that?” she asked.
“Who?”
“Dogs.”
I shrugged. “Because they can.”
“It must be so weird for you.”
I told her it was like living in a world with dragons.
She frowned for a moment, then gave me a wan smile and gazed out at the street. “I hate Beverly Hills, anyway. People are so stuck up.”
“Mmm.” I didn’t care where I was, really. I was mostly just glad to be off my feet, to be back in air-conditioning again and buzzing merrily along on caffeine and sugar.
“Let’s go home and change.”
“You just did.”
“Into something casual, I mean.”
“I thought this was our elegant day.”
“Well…” She looked down at her pale-peach blouse and white linen skirt. “I guess we could wear this there.”
“Where?”
Her eyes were avoiding me.
“Where, Renee?”
“Icon?”
“Why would we go there?”
“You know…”
It took me a while to get it, maybe because I’d blocked it out: the brand-new Mr. Woods ride was being launched to great fanfare and heavy press at Icon Studios this week. Renee and I had seen a big story about it on Entertainment Tonight—with Charlton Heston and Nancy Reagan climbing out of the fucking thing. The mythology that required yours truly to remain invisible at all costs has found a lucrative new life in the Valley as a high-class midway attraction. Try to imagine my excitement.
“I know you think it’s dumb,” said Renee.
“It’ll be hideously crowded.”
“Maybe not.”
“What does the ride do, anyway?”
“I dunno,” she said. “I think they fly you over the woods.”
“I hate theme parks, Renee. I really do. I loathe and despise them. Couldn’t you go with Lorrie or somebody?” (That’s her friend from work.)
“Please, Cady. It wouldn’t be any fun without you.”
I knew I was doomed to lose, so I told her I would go, with two provisions: that we go straight to the ride and leave as soon as the ride was over and that she not reveal my identity to a living soul while we were there. The last thing I needed was for her to trot out my tired elfin credentials for some flat-butted Lutheran family on vacation.
Icon Studios, I should tell you, is within spitting distance of my house in Studio City. It’s built on the side of the mountain, on two levels, with a connecting escalator that looks like a giant Lucite rodent run. The lower level is really two operations, a working studio and a theme park, with almost no connection to each other. The hordes of tourists who troop through the park each year to cluck over the family photos in “Fleet Parker’s Dressing Room” have no more chance of meeting the star himself than they do of meeting the real Mickey Mouse at Disneyland. The place is plastic on plastic, an illusion about an illusion.
I hadn’t been to the park in almost seven years. Mom and I took Aunt Edie there, at her request, on her first visit to L.A.—it’s that sort of place. It was much as I’d remembered it, just as soul-deadening, certainly. The plodding, Necco-colored people on the rodent run were what I tend to think of when I hear the term New World Order. Renee ran interference when the crowd got too thick, but it was slow going most of the time. The air was stale and muggy under the blurred white sky, and there were way too many children off leashes for my taste. We headed straight for a soda stand as soon as we reached the lower level. I’d already had quite enough.
Renee stooped to hand me my Diet Coke float. “Are you doin’ OK?”
“I preferred the dog,” I said.
“Cady.”
“I’m kidding.” I licked the foam on the edge of the float.
“I want you to like this,” she said.
“I love this.”
“I mean the Mr. Woods Adventure.”
I grinned into the foam. “How long is the line?”
“Not long.”
“I bet there’s a lot more you can’t see.”
I was right, but I didn’t rub it in. For almost half an hour all I saw was poles and legs, poles and legs, as several hundred of the faithful were led through an elaborate cattle chute for humans. To keep us docile there were a dozen video monitors suspended from the ceiling, offering not only clips from Mr. Woods but a gooey tribute to “the little guy himself” by Philip Blenheim himself. Renee adored this, of course, swooning and giggling at all her
favorite moments. Me, I was grateful for the air-conditioning.
There was a sign, just before we boarded the ride, that said: CHILDREN UNDER 35 INCHES MUST BE ACCOMPANIED BY AN ADULT.
“Uh oh,” I said ominously, teasing Renee. “Look at that.”
“So?”
“They’ll never take me. I’m four inches under.”
“Well, I’m an adult.”
I told her they might want proof.
“I have an ID,” she said, missing the joke.
“Why do you think they say that?” I said, beginning to worry for real.
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” said Renee.
“It won’t be nothing if my ass is flung into Kingdom Come.”
Renee must have suspected a last-minute change of heart, because she frowned and poked out her lower lip. “It’s not that fast, Cady. Nancy Reagan’s hair wasn’t even messed up.”
The woman in front of us, a plump, white-haired lady in pink sweats, turned around and smiled down at me. “It’s really mild,” she said. I wondered how long she’d been waiting to leap into the conversation. “I was the same as you, but it’s a piece o’ cake.”
“Thank God.”
The woman nodded. “I was exactly the same as you.”
“You’ve done this before, then?”
“Brought my sister’s kids last week.”
Renee jumped in: “Is it fun?”
“Well…if you love Mr. Woods as much as I do.”
“Oh, I do!”
The woman laughed.
“I mean, I probably do.” Renee tittered, then cast a guilty glance in my direction. I could tell how much she was dying to blab, so I admonished her with a stony look. The pink-sweats lady seemed nice enough, but I was tired and cranky, and too preoccupied with ideas for the new video. I just didn’t have the stamina, or the time, for the draining little ritual of explaining myself.
The ride turned out to be a sort of glorified fun house: a chilly, dark space the size of an airplane hangar, through which we lurched and glided in “bark”-covered trains. The scene of our Adventure, according to Philip in the preride video, was not the suburban forest we knew from the movie but the “faraway, mystical realm of Mr. Woods’ origin.” Translation: I may be cheesy enough to exploit this character, but I’m not going to fuck around with a classic.
What this change of locale afforded, of course, was the perfect setup for cloning Mr. Woods, for creating a whole race of lovable robots in his image. That familiar wizened face, once so charmingly singular, popped up behind every bush and tree stump as we sailed along, as a teenage girl, say, or a romping baby, or a campful of lumberjacks marching home from work. There were Mr. Woods farmers and their wives, Mr. Woods soldiers going off to war. There was even a wedding ceremony in which everyone in church looked like Him. In the pyrotechnical finale, at least a hundred of the little fuckers (evil ones, I presume; the plot was too much for me) were hurled through the forest by a giant catapult.
I was profoundly unmoved. When we lurched out into the day-light again, Renee and the pink-sweats lady swapped notes. Renee was pleased, but thought Mr. Woods looked weird as a bride. I bit my tongue and said something vague about the old-fashioned thrill of being led by the hand through a darkened room. Renee looked at me funny, unconvinced, then resumed gabbing with the lady.
When we were alone again, Renee announced stiffly that she had to pee.
“Then pee.”
“Look,” she said. “I didn’t tell her.”
I told her I knew that.
“Why are you mad, then?”
I told her I wasn’t, that I was just tired, that I thought she was mad.
“You wanna go with me?” She meant to the ladies’ room.
I shook my head, gave her a weak smile, and asked her to help me find a place away from the traffic.
This turned out to be a small but highly groomed patch of grass around the corner from Fleet Parker’s Dressing Room. I was sprawled there amid the birds of paradise, like some live-action garden gnome, when I heard a youthful male voice call my name.
“Cady?”
The guy knelt on the lawn to address me, completely natural about it. He was cute and in his early twenties, snub-nosed and sandy-haired. He wore a blue checked shirt with chinos and bore a marked resemblance to half the cutie-pies in West Hollywood, but I honestly couldn’t place the face.
“Yeah?”
“It’s Callum.”
All I can tell you is that the name just stayed there in the air for a while, everywhere at once, like the hum after a bell has been tolled.
“You’re shitting me,” I said.
Without showing teeth, he gave me the prettiest smile. “No.”
I hit the ground with my hand. “What in the world are you doing here?”
“Same thing you’re doing, I guess.”
My thoughts were galloping way ahead of me, of course, so it was a real chore just to function in the moment. “Have you done the Adventure yet?” I asked Callum.
“A few hours ago.”
“Pretty tacky, huh?”
He just shrugged and smiled, remaining sweetly noncommittal. I wondered how much loyalty he still felt for Philip, whether he still kept up with him, whether he had come here as Philip’s guest, maybe, as an official part of the tenth-anniversary hoo-ha.
“It’s not terrible,” I said, backing down a little, “but it’s not an improvement on Pirates of the Caribbean.”
“Can I join you?” he asked.
“Of course. Sit.”
He eased onto the lawn next to me.
“I’m waiting for a friend,” I explained, taking in this new grown-up version of him. “She’s in the john.”
He nodded.
“What are the fucking chances of this?” I asked.
“Got me.”
“Can I say that around you now?”
He laughed. “You always did.”
I laid a hand on my chest to convey my horror.
“I survived,” he said, grinning.
“Are you here on vacation or something?”
“Sort of. Not exactly. Well, it’s a combination.”
I chuckled at this familiar indecision, a mature variation on the little gavotte he used to do around the candy bar rack at the roach coach.
“I may be working,” he said brightly. “In a movie.”
I felt the little stab in the gut I always feel when I hear of anyone else’s movie. It’s awful, I know, really petty of me, but I just can’t help it. “Hey,” I said as gamely as possible. “Good for you.”
To receive congratulations, Callum ducked his head like a bashful prince: a quirk—or perhaps a device—I remembered from a decade earlier.
“Who with?” I asked.
“It’s not definite yet.”
“Ah.” It’s with Philip, I was thinking. Some big-bucks project they’ve sworn him to secrecy about. Then I realized how silly it was to get paranoid about a kid who’d been cooling his heels in a fishing village for half his life; he was probably just too nervous to talk about it. “I thought you’d retired,” I said blithely.
He picked at the grass while he decided what to say. “How well did you know yourself when you were eleven?”
Pretty damn well, actually, but I thought it unfair to say so. Our circumstances were different, after all. Mine, looking back on it, had compelled me to get my shit together fast. “So it got in your blood, huh?”
He nodded.
“Well,” I said, “welcome back, then.”
“Thanks.”
“Who’s your agent?”
He shrugged. “Still Leonard.”
“Oh,” I said colorlessly, “that’s good.” So that little weasel had known that Callum was back in town and had willfully lied to me about it. But why? To keep me out of his hair? To insure that I didn’t pressure Callum about a role in this new movie, whatever it was? Probably. What was brutally clear, if nothing else, was that Leonard wanted
me out of his hair for good.
“He’s as tough a cookie as ever,” said Callum amiably. “You know Leonard.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“It’s what’s required, I guess.”
“Absolutely.”
“Are you still in the business?”
I tried to be as pleasant and offhanded as I knew how. “Oh, yeah.”
Right away Callum looked so mortified that I felt a little sorry for him. “That came out wrong,” he said.
“Hey. You’ve got no reason to know.”
“What are you up to?”
I told him I was making a video and left it at that. I didn’t tell him about PortaParty, since he would only make an effort to be positive and encouraging about it, and that would depress me more than anything.
“Singing, huh?”
“Some.”
“I remember how well you sang.”
“Thanks.”
“I saw you in that horror movie,” he said.
“Which one?”
He widened his eyes and mugged, unable to remember the name.
“Did I have gray shit hanging off me?”
“That’s it,” he said.
“Bugaboo.”
“Right. Bugaboo.” He laughed.
“That came to Maine?”
He shook his head. “Cable.”
“Oh, yeah.”
He picked at the grass some more. “I got your Christmas cards. Thanks.”
“Sure.”
“I’m sorry I never sent you one back.”
“Hey,” I told him, shrugging it off. “You had pubic hair to grow.”
He laughed. “Just the same.”
“My Christmas card list is enormous,” I said, letting him know it was much less a give-and-take ritual with me than a sort of therapeutic hobby. “Lots of people don’t write back. I send cards to Phil Donahue and Tracey Ullman. Sometimes I send cards to people who aren’t even alive.”
This got a laugh, because it sounded like a joke, which I guess it was, but it was also the truth. I lose track of friends sometimes, and they get sick and die, and I don’t find out until months later, often in the most casual way, at a party, say, or standing in line for Truth or Dare. And I say “How awful” and pass the word on to whoever else might’ve known the guy and cross him out of my address book. I’ve done it so often now, it’s become shockingly routine, just another domestic ritual. I didn’t spell this out for Callum, but I wondered if he knew what I meant. I wanted him to know that I knew what the world was like now, that he could talk to me about anything.