A Fistful of Collars (12 page)

T
hat was quick thinking,” Bernie said. We were back in the movie bar—now deserted except for me, Bernie, and Arn, the writer dude—waiting for Thad Perry to finish napping and emerge from his trailer.

“Not following you,” Arn said, taking out a pack of cigarettes. His hands trembled a bit; you see that in humans, but usually ones much older than Arn. He lit up.

“When you came up with that revised dialogue on the spot,” Bernie said, eyes on the plume of tobacco smoke. Bernie had quit smoking again, not too long ago. Quitting smoking was something Bernie did a lot. He was great at it.

Arn shook his head. He had dark circles under his eyes and needed a shave, a haircut, new clothes, a shoe shine. “It’s out,” he said.

“That line about ‘looking for someone, friend?’” Bernie said.

“Some
thing,”
Arn said. “Not some
one
. Lars saw last night’s rushes, didn’t think it worked. And now the whole goddamn scene’s up in the air.”

“The bar fight scene?” Bernie said. “How’s the story going to work without that?”

Arn gave Bernie a surprised look. “You’ve read the script?”

“Pretty much.”

“You’re, uh . . .”

“Bernie. And this is Chet.”

Arn took a deep drag on his cigarette, peering at me over the glowing tip. “I’m allergic to dogs,” he said.

I’d heard that one before, more than once, still didn’t get it. Maybe Bernie didn’t, either, because he said nothing, just gazed at Arn in a way that could have meant anything. I loved that look! Bernie’s a pretty tough guy—don’t forget that. I’ve seen bad things happen to those who did.

“You’re with Thad in some capacity?” Arn said.

Bernie shook his head. “Mayor’s office, more or less.” He gave Arn a look he has that means go on, press me on this one, but Arn did not. Instead Arn sighed and said, “You’re in select company—I’m not sure even Lars has read the whole thing.” He shot Bernie a sideways look. “What did you think of it?”

“I’m not qualified to judge,” Bernie said.

“Go on,” said Arn. “I won’t bite.”

“I know that,” Bernie said.

The lines in Arn’s forehead deepened, like he didn’t care for that remark, but why? Of course he wouldn’t bite! His teeth were small, and so was his mouth, now that I considered it: no chomping power there at all. We’d run across one or two human biters in our work; they’d come back down to earth when I showed them what real biting was all about.

“But,” Bernie was saying, “I’ve got one or two misgivings about the historical record.”

“Misgivings?” Arn said. He sucked on what remained of his cigarette, just the stub. “Historical record?” I was with him, not following Bernie at all.

“For one thing,” Bernie said, “you’ve got the waterways dry like they are today. Fact is, water ran in all of them back then, at least seasonally.”

“Yeah?” said Arn, not sounding interested in the least.

“And if,” Bernie said, his voice sharpening, “Thad’s really supposed to become a territorial ranger just before the blood brothers scene, then you’ll have to change the date—the territorial rangers weren’t formed until 1860.”

“Hmph,” said Arn. He dropped the cigarette butt on the floor. “Here’s the thing, Bernie. You’re not in the industry so there’s no way you’d know this. Movies—going way back, right to the beginning—create their own truth. Life imitates art, as we now know only too well.”

Bernie gave him a long look, then ground the cigarette butt under his heel. “What do you do with all the money?” he said.

“All what money?” said Arn. Then he did a thing humans sometimes do, blowing out through a mostly closed mouth so their lips flutter and make a
b-b-b-b-b-b
sound. Love when they do that, although the meaning isn’t clear to me. “Goddamn
Hollywood Reporter
,” he said. “See, Bernie, out here in the sti—” Arn stopped himself, started fresh. “In some parts of the country a certain sum of money may sound impressive, but it’s not, trust me. Not in Hollywood terms. Did the
Hollywood Reporter
include the facts that I’m paying a double shot of alimony, carrying three houses—four if you include the ski place at Jackson Hole, and—”

“You ski Jackson Hole?” Bernie said.

“Who said anything about skiing?” Arn said. “We’re discussing real estate.”

Bernie looked like he was going to say something, maybe not totally friendly, but at that moment the swinging doors banged open and Thad entered with . . . with Brando on his shoulder. Brando looked at me immediately, not at me in general, rather at my nose in particular—I had no doubt about that whatsoever.

“Hi, Thad,” Arn said, legs shifting like he was getting ready to rise off his chair. “Everything okay?”

Thad ignored him. “Bernie?” he said. “That your Porsche out there?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s old, huh?”

“Yup.”

“But super cool.”

“Thanks.”

“I’d like a spin.”

“Sure,” said Bernie. “Whenever you get some time.”

“How’s right now?” said Thad.

Thad wanted to go for a spin in the Porsche, and right now? There was good in everybody.

What I hadn’t realized was that Thad wanted to do the driving. Neither had Bernie: his eyebrows went way up when Thad slid into the driver’s seat—Brando still on his shoulder—held out his hand, and said, “Keys?”

There was a pause. Then Bernie said, “It’s a stick.”

Thad laughed. “Hell, Bernie, think my Lamborghini’s an automatic? Or the Ferrari? Come on, man.”

Bernie tossed him the keys and turned to me. “In the back, Chet.”

Me? In that tiny back space? Bernie in the shotgun seat? And
worst of all, Brando on Thad’s shoulder, meaning he was actually in the driver’s seat? Nothing like this had ever happened to me in my life, but what could I do? I got in the back, moving in this really slow way I hardly ever use, butt practically dragging. Bernie buckled his seat belt, something he hardly ever bothered with.

“All set?” said Thad. A tiny breeze swept by, bringing the smell of Thad’s breath my way: toothpaste and mouthwash on the top layer, licorice below that—the red kind—and down at the bottom, uh-oh, what was this? Cocaine? Yes. And not only cocaine, but Oxycontin as well. How did I know? K-9 school, out of which I’d flunked on my last day, with only the leaping test left, and leaping has been my very best thing as long as I could remember. Was a cat involved? Better believe it.

Brando gazed at me in a bored sort of way, then faced front. Thad turned the key. We jolted forward, kind of how we did the one time Bernie tried giving Leda a lesson, but we didn’t quite stall as Leda had done, and, of course, Thad didn’t round on Bernie and scream, “Why can’t you drive a normal car like every other man I know?”

We drove past the trailers—Jiggs watching us from the open doorway of the last one—left the movie set, and bumped up onto the highway, in this case a one-lane blacktop that led in one direction back to the freeway and the Valley and in the other to I didn’t know what, which is where Thad headed. He stomped on the gas—Thad was one of those humans with really big feet, something I’d noticed already and forgotten and now noted again—and then
va-vroom
! We shot off down the road, actually more across it, back and forth, fishtailing wildly—

“Off the gas, for Christ sake!” Bernie yelled, exact same thing he’d yelled at Leda later in that lesson I was mentioning.

“Nope,” said Thad. “In the Lamborghini I just steer right into these suckers and—”

Whatever he did in the Lamborghini got left unsaid because the next moment we were no longer on two-lane blacktop, but were instead spinning around and around in circles across the desert floor. Funny how at a time like that you notice little things, such as Brando’s claws digging deep into the fabric of Thad’s shirt, and Brando’s mouth opening slightly and burping out a tiny yellowish blob of puke, and that blob getting caught by the wind and deposited right smack on Bernie’s shoulder.

Bernie can move real quick when he has to. In a flash he’d seized the wheel with one hand and with the other grabbed Thad’s leg and yanked his foot right off the pedal. We came out of all that spinning, eased back down through a bit more fishtailing, straightened out, and came to a stop. Bernie reached for the keys and shut off the motor.

It got quiet, that strange quiet that comes right after lots of noise; not a relaxing kind of quiet, more the kind that makes you want to do something to bust it up, maybe taking a nip out of Brando, for example. Would I have done that? Almost certainly not, but before I even finished getting tempted, Bernie surprised me by suddenly sniffing the air and then glancing down at his shoulder and spotting that yellowish smear of puke. He’d picked up the scent of puke with that nose of his, a nose that while not as small as many human noses, or even most, had still been pretty much useless the whole time we’d been together? That was Bernie: just when you were sure he was all done amazing you, he amazed you again.

He looked up, met Thad’s gaze. Thad raised his chin, tried to stare Bernie down. Good luck with that, was my thought.

“Uh,” said Thad, “the Lamborghini has a different feel.”

“Yeah?” said Bernie. “And the Ferrari?”

“Also different. And, come to think of it, different from the Lamborghini, too.”

“Must be a challenge,” Bernie said. “What other cars have you got?”

Thad started counting on his fingers, one of those human things which always makes me like them a bit more. He paused. “Just at home in LA, or should I include the ones in storage?”

Bernie said nothing.

Thad cleared his throat. “Here’s some hand sanitizer,” he said. “Clean up that little mess in no time.”

We drove deeper into the desert, Bernie at the wheel, Thad riding shotgun with Brando on his lap, me still in back. After not too long, Bernie turned off the blacktop and followed a dirt track up toward some big red rocks, a track that petered out before we got there. Bernie stopped the car.

“What’s going on?” Thad said.

“Want to see something interesting?” Bernie said.

“Like what?” Thad checked his watch.

“Let’s make it a surprise.”

“I hate surprises.”

Bernie smiled, one of those smiles of his that’s just for himself—and me, of course, goes without saying—and we all piled out of the car, me hitting the ground first. We walked up toward the red rocks, me in the lead, then Bernie, Thad, and Brando, actually moving under his own power. Once—this was back on our trip to San Diego—Bernie said that the fog came in on little cat feet, a remark that I’d never been able to forget no matter how hard I’d tried, and that was how Brando moved along, like he
was made of cloud, weighing nothing, although in fact he looked pudgy to me.

We reached the big red rocks, stepped between two of them and entered a narrow shaded space with rocky walls on both sides. At the end stood a flat rock as high as Bernie’s chest. He pulled himself up with a little grunt and Thad followed with a bigger one, leaving me and Brando standing down below. Brando looked at me. I looked at Brando. Then, without any apparent effort, he glided—that was what it looked like—glided up on top of the rock.

“Chet?” Bernie called down. “You coming?”

Oh, what an awful moment: me, dead last. I sprang, one of my very best leaps, clearing the lip of the rock by plenty, and sticking my landing without the slightest bobble, but no one saw. They were all at the other end of the rock, standing before a drawing in the cliff face. We’d done some prowling around in the desert looking for drawings like this, me and Bernie, always lots of fun although the point of it I’ll leave to you. Had I seen this one before? I didn’t think so.

“That round thing with the rays is the sun?” Thad said. “And the guy’s dancing under it?”

“It’s the sun, all right,” said Bernie. “But when the figures are upside-down, D-shaped like that, they’re dead.”

“So it’s a dead guy under the sun?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Wonder why anyone . . .” Thad began. He gazed at the drawing for a long time, then slowly reached out and touched the rock, but off to the side, not on the drawing.

“It’s warm,” he said.

“Uh-huh,” said Bernie.

There was a silence. Then Thad, eyes bigger and bluer than ever—kind of like he’d taken the sky inside him, what a thought!—and still on the drawing, said, “Thanks, man.” Bernie nodded. Thad took a deep breath. “Everything’s so fucked up,” he said.

“Like what?” said Bernie.

“You name it,” Thad said.

“Jiggs?” said Bernie.

Thad whipped around toward Bernie, real quick. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just throwing out a name,” Bernie said. “Your suggestion.”

“Why that one?”

“No real reason,” Bernie said. “He doesn’t seem like the typical bodyguard type, that’s all.”

“What are you talking about?” Thad said. “Seen the size of him?”

“A big boy,” Bernie said. “On the outside. Kind of complicated on the inside.”

“Complicated? Complicated how?”

“Just an impression. How long have you known him?”

Thad backed away a bit. Brando, who’d been curled up on the rocks, rose and climbed up on Thad, settling on his shoulder. “Long enough,” Thad said. “What are you getting at?”

“Nothing,” Bernie said. “He’s from LA?”

“So?”

“I hear you’re from out this way originally.”

Thad backed up another step. “Where’d you hear that?”

“Someone mentioned it.”

“Who?”

“Don’t remember offhand,” Bernie said. “Is it true?”

“It’s a total goddamn lie,” Thad said, his voice rising suddenly
in that huge, ringing way it had. The sound echoed in the rocks, boomed back over us, maybe taking Thad by surprise because he jerked slightly, like he’d stuck his tongue in a wall socket; no time to go into that now. Surprised or even—yes, I smelled it—scared. He spoke more quietly. “Not a lie, exactly. I just meant it’s not true. I’m from LA.”

“Cool,” Bernie said.

B
ernie stood in front of the whiteboard, the zigzag groove that sometimes appeared on his forehead now easy to see, meaning he was doing some serious thinking. We were in the office, down the hall from Charlie’s old bedroom. A basket of kid’s blocks lay by the window—the room was meant for a little sister or brother that never came along. Sometimes I played with the blocks myself, but at the moment I was watching old man Heydrich out on his deck with the leaf blower. We hated the leaf blower, me and Bernie. Old man Heydrich didn’t use it just for leaves, of which there were hardly ever any on the ground in our neighborhood, but also for blowing the dust off his deck, probably what he was up to now, except he couldn’t get the thing to start. He jerked and yanked on the cord, his bony face reddening, and finally gave the thing a real nasty kick—surprisingly powerful for such a scrawny old dude—and stalked off into his house. Nothing much new: I’d seen humans kick their machines before, also punch and slap them, throw them out windows and into swimming pools, and stomp on them till the insides came springing out—and then they sometimes stomped on the insides, too! Machines could really get
humans angry, that was clear, but . . . but could humans get machines angry? Hey! What a crazy thought! I hoped nothing like it ever entered my head again.