My cell phone rings. My cell phone rings. My cell phone rings.

“Henry Gary, talk to me.”

Observe if you will, this human being, a 31-year-old balding American male in a typical Southern California environment, a forever-trendy coffee house.

Observe his mannerisms, the way he talks with his hands to describe something even though the person he is talking to is not even in the room.

Take note of the way he holds a coffee cup not by the handle with his pinky extended, but gripping the whole cup, whether it is hot or not, like a soda can.

Observe these eccentricities; take note, as he slams down the Blackberry cell phone/ e-mail, and “everything but the kitchen sink” device, on the table, rubbing his temples in distress, in annoyance, in cowardice, in fear.

Observe if you will, but don’t get any closer than the good distance you stand at now; close enough to witness the man in his actions, far enough to never know him.

And like clock work… with the sickening repetition of a parrot.

My cell phone rings.

“Henry Gary.”

My cell phone rings.

“Henry Gary.”

My cell phone rings.

“Henry Gary.”

This is my life.

 

But what is my life? How many times have I asked myself this question? How many times has every human being on the planet asked themselves this question? How many times have I asked myself – how many times has every human being on the planet asked themselves this question?

It’s like that image of the snake eating itself - what is that called? - or maybe it’s not.

Let me paint a picture for you with my limited skills, for they truly are very limited no matter what anyone else says about me.

The setting is Los Angeles. The 405, the 101, the surface streets, take your pick, they all look the same from inside your car: thousands upon thousands of other cars, an endless stream of cars, heading nowhere, everywhere, destinations forever sought and rarely reached.

OK, enough of the bullcrap, you’ve seen it before, you get the picture. It’s been much better done and more simply in the countless movies that take place in LA with those infamous opening credit shots of beautiful Los Angeles set to Randy Newman music.

This is a fact, one of the only facts in my life that is grounded in absolute truth. There are plenty of facts in my life, sure, but most are based around lies. Or rather stories. Good, clean fiction that’d heat up the best seller lists if anyone read anything anymore. Fiction full of sex, drugs and rock n’ roll, and business, yes business, the deadliest game of them all. And catch me if you haven’t heard that one before.

So through this I hope you’ve come to understand a few things about me. But just in case you haven’t… Class, lets go over our checklist.

Lots of traffic.

Lots of bullcrap.

Not a fan of Randy Newman.

Good clean fiction.

 

So there you have it. You don’t know what I do for a living, and neither do I, because it’s ten thousand things at once, a façade here, a cheap trick there. I’m a magician one day, a bouncer the next, the agent, the actor, the exec. prod. At Uni, at Foxy, at Mounty. Put on the pants and they’ll fit, take a seat in the chair and give me your name, tell me your story. And at the end of the day, like anybody else, I’ll go home and sit in my boxers in front of the TV, scratch myself and nurse a beer, play some Halo on Xbox live, and fall asleep well before my girlfriend gets home.

 

Beth and I have lived together for over a year, 14 months maybe, or getting close. She’s 26, ridiculously fit, even-tempered, wittier than most sitcom writers, and the manager of several bands, which means she’s always at concerts, on the phone, signing papers, on the computer, and at concerts.

There was a time we saw each other all the time. That time was called the first three weeks of our relationship. Recently she’s been spending more and more time out of town, looking to pick up several east coast acts. Baltimore I hear is very hot.

She's been courting a Norwegian or two but to no avail. The place of a band manager is getting increasingly iffy in this day and age of “do it yourself” ideologies. Take note, there is a place for them, but its just not as fun as one might think.

Still, somehow, Beth manages to come home to me, a man who is never quite able to leave the city, a man who has woefully lost the map with all the exit routes.

“Come to New York with me next week,” Beth suggests as she gives me a shoulder rub and we eat Thai take out. 

“I’m afraid of New York,” I say, “ It’s a real city, with real people. I’m afraid they’ll bite.”

“Arrrgh,” she moans, then laughs and kisses my neck.

 

Jack Melanack’s office is cramped. Cramped and cold.

Which is odd because Jack Melanacks’s office is so damn big and hot.

“So Henry, what have you got for us today?”

Jack is a big man, an intimidating man. Greasy and clean all at the same time. His rolling belly is tucked carefully behind his belt, I take note that his cheeks are getting increasingly red. Bright red. He sips a red bull.

“Well, Jack… Well…” I hear a buzz. Not an insect buzz, but an appliance buzz; far worse than an insect buzz. My eyes scan the room, trying to find the source. Nothing. It must be coming through the vents, a thousand miles away at the edge of time and space and this building, amplified by the horrible modern monstrosity known as air conditioning vents.

“Henry?”

I snap back.

“Yeah, Jack?”

“What have you got?”

“Right, sorry. What have I got.”

My mouth is dry. Very dry. Sour almost. Maybe I have acid reflux. I did eat a burrito for breakfast. Enough of this, get your head in the game… the business game. Time to put on a show!

“OK Jack, here we go!”

He nods, index fingers crossed at his lips.

“Picture Earth, our planet, two millennia from now, picture it from space. The surface of the earth is very different, isn’t it? Do you see it? No more green, no more blue, like Mars everything is rust red. It is horrible. Now we zoom down, no, we begin to fall down, picking up speed, getting closer and closer to the surface – we begin to see little outcroppings, indications of life, and BAM! We’re there, standing in the dusty red deserts of Earth a two thousands years from now. And do you see the little outcroppings, the burrows coming up from underground? There are antennas poking up from the tops, like rabbit ears. There is an eerie silence, and then” I begin to drum the desk for greater effect, “ a great rumbling from somewhere beneath the surface and… a massive worm, twenty stories tall, erupts from the surface of the earth! The screen is filled with red sand, a dust storm and…”

“OK let me stop you right there for a sec.”

“Okay…”

“So what you’re telling me is it's Frank Herbert’s Dune but on Earth?”

“No, not exactly.”

How does he know Frank Herbert’s Dune?

“Well what’s the story?”

“Uhhh…”

“Look, Henry, you’ve given me a great opening sequence, but what’s the story, the characters. Do humans live underground, it sounds like they live underground.”

“Yes they live underground.”

“Underground civilization stories haven’t flown too well in the past.”

“I know but…”

“And I’m not sure we want two Sci-Fi projects on the table right now. James Cameron has been cooking up something for a few years now. Something we’re very committed to.”

“Uh-huh yes I know that, but…”

“So Henry, I think I’m gonna have to stop you right there…”

“…Okay…”

“…And say we’ll pass.”

“But you haven’t even heard the title!”

“Do you have one?”

“Several!”

“We’ll pass.”

Jack takes finishes off his red bull, his belt about to buckle. Jack is seemingly the last media mogul in town that has an XXL waistband.

“But Henry, don’t take this as a defeat. You still have time. You’re still riding on the coattails of The Welder script, give yourself some slack, no one’s expecting the second coming or anything. And hey you know what, I hear Cameron is looking for someone to do a rewrite on his Sci-Fi script. I could put in a good word for you…”

I slump in my chair. “Yeah, all right.”

Jack smiles, and at this moment he reminds me of Santa Clause in a Jack Welch suit.

“That’s what I want to hear!” He slams a hand down on his desk.

“I’ll have Cynthia give you a call. And in the meantime, keep at it, buckey, you’re still our golden boy. And that ain’t gonna change anytime soon.”

I get up, extend my hand and we shake. “Thanks,” I say meekly.

He laughs again, “You writers… all the same. So glum. And when you’ve got the world at your fingertips.”

 

At this point I could say I head uptown, but LA doesn’t have an uptown, let alone much of a downtown. Instead I drive somewhere, past a dry cleaner, a dry cleaner, a dry cleaner, a Starbucks, and end up at my office.

My office is a little bungalow west of La Brea, off of Santa Monica, I rent with a couple of other writers. We divvy up the space between us about equally, a bedroom office for each of us, a shared kitchen and bathroom, a patio outback for that barbeque we’ll never get around to having.

I spend the most time there. I could say it’s like a second home, but then again my home is probably more like a second home.

When I get there, Sandy is typing away on his old typewriter his dad gave him for his twelfth birthday. As I pass by his open door, I rapt along the wall repeatedly, our little way of saying hello someone else is here, please don’t disturb me. The keys stop.

Sandy was never any good at not disturbing.

“Greetings. Greetings and salutations.” He’s at my door, just as I sit down at my desk.

“Hey Sandy.”

Sandy is a man caught amongst the vast and ever deepening mystery known as middle age.

He’s tan, very tan, probably too tan, and sports a little goatee. His real name isn’t Sandy; we just call him that because of his hair color. He always wears Hawaiian shirts, and this is I think, where some of my hatred for Randy Newman stems from.

Sandy leans in the doorway.

“What’s up?”

“Oh I just got back from talking to Jack Melanack.”

“About your Earth as Mars script?”

“Yeah…”

“Except it really isn’t a script.”

“Right”

“Always seemed a little John Carter of Mars to me.”

“Not Frank Herbert’s Dune?”

“Mmmmm… no.”

“Well at any rate they passed on it.”

“  Sorry buddy.”

“Ah it’s no big deal. It was a half assed idea anyway.”

“What was it called again? Usurper?”

“Usurper, Age of Blood, The Exiled… whatever.”

“Huh, sounds like fantasy.”

“It was fantasy. I don’t know why everyone was calling it Sci-Fi.”

“Cause it took place in space.”

“No it didn’t.”

“Cause it took place in the future.”

“Yeah, you’re probably right. At any rate it’s over with, I won’t be thinking about that one again.”

I begin to stare at my desk, as any eye contact with another human being right now would mean using up an unfathomable amount of energy I don’t have.

“Look,” Sandy starts to talk with his hands, misinterpreting my lack of eye contact as being in a bad mood. “ I think it’s probably for the best, all this. You’re still riding the wave there, buddy. I mean The Welder got you into this town and it’ll take a big fuck up to get you kicked out, and believe me a half assed pitch for Jack Melaknack is not going to do it.”

“He did offer me a rewrite job on Cameron’s piece.”

“James Cameron’s piece? His forever in development Sci-Fi epic that all the geeks online keep gabbing about?”

“Yeap.”

“Great!”

“I didn’t say I was going to take it.”

“Well you should consider it at least.”

“I know.”

Sandy nods and taps the doorframe. “ Well if you’ll excuse me I’ve got to get back to work.”

“Still re-working the dialogue for that Hudson/McConaghy attached script?”

“Yeah. You have no idea how much fun it is making McConaghy say ‘Lizard Lips’ as many times as possible.”

“I bet.”

Sandy leaves me to sulk in my little stucco tomb.

Sandy and Richard, the third writer/renter, have covered their office walls with one sheet posters of their favorite movies - big splashy graphics with Cary Grant and Toshiro Mifune; directed by Hitchcock, Kurosawa, Fellini. They have cluttered their desks and bookshelves with DVDs (from all regions), action figures, toys, odd knick knacks like copper baby boots, monster masks, and well… books; screenplays, classic novels, pulp novels, encyclopedia volumes, film industry guides and how-to books. And somewhere in the corner is a never been touched electric guitar or bass.

My office on the other hand is an intricately laid out wasteland. A cheap Ikea desk faces the door, bumping up the right wall. I have no bookshelves, no monster masks or bass guitars with amps that go up to eleven. My walls are bare. My desk is bare except when my laptop occupies it, and a few scattered colored pens lay about. Sometimes 4x6 note cards lay scattered across the floor, but they never make it to the wall. Sandy and Richard have cork bulletin boards for this.

I sit at my desk and spin a penny I have found in my pocket. Oh the penny, the great monetary mystery of the digital age, the loner, the outcast coin that no one likes, no one uses. My friend, the penny.

I spin again.

 

Beth isn’t the only girl in my life. There are plenty of them. Too many in fact.

I’m practically introduced to a new one everyday and instantly want to sleep with them, knowing full well they’d never want to sleep with me.

Eli Swan, my agent/manager is a good enough chap, and he is a chap on account of him being British, very British.

Eli pulls girls out from the woodwork like nobody’s business. Where does he get them? No one knows. How does he keep them? Don’t ask me. But that is to say he does not sleep with them, far from it, he just keeps them in the loop, keeps a tab on them, and sometimes even decides to represent them.

But today I stumble across a girl that Eli does not know, will not know, would never choose to know.

She’s out on the corner of Hollywood and Vine, hands thrust deep in the pockets of the baggy khakis she’s wearing. Her blonde hair, cut boyishly short is a rat’s nest mess; her face is smeared with sun and grease and salt, yet her eyes, her beautiful green eyes cry out, leaping forth from beneath all that filth, yearning, pleading for something more. She’s probably a meth head or a coke fiend. Maybe even a heroin junky. Probably all three.

She’s a doe amongst a pack of wolves in camo and leather; Kids from all four corners of the nation, uniting on nothing but defeat and dope. Reveling in sun and surf and sweat, calling the concrete their bed. Vagabonds, loafers that spindle their fingers all the way from Santa Monica pier to Los Feliz. Some even try their hand downtown by the central library.

I’ve seen their kind before, I mean who hasn’t? They’re a staple of SoCal street life along with the local Psych. hosp. throwaways and junkies.

But as skid row disappears, so do they. I see less and less of these kids each summer, so I take note now when I see a site such as this.

But she’s different. She shouldn’t be here. I can tell. This was a wrong choice, not her decision. She shouldn’t be here. But who am I to take it upon myself to rescue her? What kind of idea is that? Nonsense. Pure, unfiltered from the tap, nonsense.

And then I look at her again.

I’m standing in a parking lot on the other side of the street. I’m supposed to meet Beth here in fact, well not here exactly, but down the block at the Henry Fonda Music Box, whatever the hell it’s theatre. It’s 6:30. She said 7:00. I’m the only person who’s early in all of LA.

 

Don’t go to the Jack in the Box, don’t go to the Jack in the Box. I go to the Jack in the Box.

The place smells like feet and French fries. I scan the menu board for something good. Good being an operative cover up for something not really bad, but just bad.

“Hi I’ll have a… vanilla milkshake and a Double Bacon Cheeseburger with fries.”

“We don’t have Double Bacon Cheeseburgers, sir, that’s Wendy’s.”

“Oh, well then give me whatever is the equivalent.”

“ OK then, one vanilla milkshake and a Bacon King Burger with fries to… go, sir?”

“To go.”

 

When I come back to the corner, the girl is alone (thank god!), her mangy associates scrabbling off to the far reaches of some dumpster or southeast armpit of an apartment.

I hold the greasy bag in my hand, fiddling with the edge between thumb and forefinger. She knows I’m eyeing her, it’s getting awkward, so I make my move and walk up to her. I lean forward and say, “I thought you could use a good meal.” She makes a face at me, as if I just let one rip, a really bad one rip. “Jee thanks mister,” she says sarcastically, but takes the bag and milkshake anyway. She opens the bag, unwraps the sandwich and lifts the bun, inspecting the grilled contents of the inside. “Pork and beef. Yum.”

Needless to say, I’m still standing there. “Oh. Are you a vegetarian or a… vegan?”

“Nooooo.”

“Oh Okay, then.”

She picks at the fries. “ You can go now.”

“Oh well, I didn’t really have anywhere to go.”

“Oh great,” she changes the pitch of her voice to indicate severe annoyance.

“Uh I mean, that is to say, I’m waiting for someone and so, I just figured I’d wait here.”

“Well it’s a free country.” She dives into the burger.

“Really?”

“Yeah sure, since when have we become a fascist dictatorship?”

“Since Reagan was in the White House, since Wall Street became king, since W.”

“That’s not a dictatorship, that's corporatism.” She wipes her lips clean of mayo and takes a sip of the milkshake.

“ Well isn’t it a form of fascism?”

“No,” she says plainly and scarfs down a couple of fries.

I sigh and put my hands in my jacket pockets. “Okay then, I don’t want to argue.”

“Most people don’t nowadays, do they?”

“No I guess you’re right.”

She takes a long slurp of that milkshake and looks up at me, really looks at me, I mean a penetrating stare. She’s studying me, sizing me up, seeing through my weak shell that is American Apparel and Ralph Lauren designer glasses. Those eyes, those piercing green eyes.

Finally she says, “ What do you do?”

I tap the toes of my feet together endlessly.

“Most days I don’t even know.”

“Well then what do you do today?”

“I’m a writer.”

“Write anything today?”

“No.”

“ Well then that's not a writer.”

“I know.”

“Then what did you do today?” She’s finished with the burger, scours the bottom of the bag for more fries, comes up with three crinkly ends.

“I drove. I drove to a large office. I drove to another, smaller office. I drove here. I got nothing done.”

She nods, slurping the last of the milkshake, straw scrapping the bottom for creamy artificial milk product residue.

“I see. And what did you do yesterday?”

“I sat," I say. "And I drove.”

“Well we’ve got one thing in common.”

“What?” I scratch behind my ear. I scratch behind my ear when I get nervous. I get nervous when people are looking at me.

“The sitting part,” she says, carefully folding the empty wrappers up. She places them in the bag, then folds the bag and places it back, somewhere beneath/behind her. Her hands are delicate, not the hands of someone who has been out on the road for a long time.

“Sitting’s just about all I do,” she explains. “Along with the hitchhiking.”

“Do people really pick up hitchhikers much anymore?” I ask.

“No,” she says. “Not really.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I say, taking my hands out of my pockets, holding them together for no apparent reason.

“Why?”

“ Because it must be a pain in the ass. Literally. I mean if you’re doing all that walking.”

She laughs, and for a moment her face completely changes, all the distress and fear and hatred wash away, leaving a warm, soft shade of hope and youth and life. She lowers her head and shadows are cast.

I glance at my watch and notice it is past 7:00.

“Oh shit, I’m sorry, but I have to go!”

I begin to turn, about to lop away in one quick stride like an antelope, but turn back.

I push up my glasses on account of them sliding down because of my increasingly greasy nose. 

The shadows have passed again, she’s about to laugh.

“Thanks for the meal,” she says, beaming. “ Really. I appreciate it.”

I nod and smile. “ I know.”

And then there is this pause and I wish I could stop time. Just enough to come up with something really profound or clever to say, but it’s just a pause, an awkward pause with her staring up at me, confusion frozen on my face, the marginal Hollywood foot traffic gliding ethereally around us in the blue light of dusk.

“Hey,” I manage. “ Good luck.” I put out my hand.

Surprisingly she takes it. “Thanks.”

I turn and make my way down the block, waving back at her as I cross the street. I think I can just about make out Beth in the distance, quizzical look growing on her face.

 

 

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