The sun-bleached DeVille was in the drive, and a junk car too. It was less than a beater — no wheels and up on blocks. Urchins ogled the chopper.
Kit sat in a ratty chaise, feet propped on a tire swing, sipping beer while scanning love letters and ghostly Polaroids of Rita Julienne. Burke came from the house bearing gifts: coleslaw, corn, and KFC. “If I knew you were coming, I’d have provided something a little more sumptuous,” he said, delighted his son had shown up.
“That’s cool,” said Kit benevolently, softened by the words and images of his beloved mother.
“See? You’re like your old man after all. You arrive unannounced.”
He let the remark slide. “I see the neighborhood hasn’t changed. Still shitty and depressing.”
“That’s Riverside!” said Burke.
He talked about a methamphetamine lab that had been busted up a few blocks from there. A chemical odor hung in the air for weeks— no one could figure out where it was coming from until someone’s lawn caught fire.
“I’m telling you, it was straight out of David Lynch.” He looked over Kit’s shoulder at a snapshot. “Catalina. You were conceived on that trip. Did we ever take you to Catalina?”
“No.”
“We had a wonderful time there. Years later we went back and had a not so wonderful time.” He sighed. “Such is life.”
“Look,” said Kit, neatening the documents. “I think I’m gonna head back.”
“But you didn’t eat,” said Burke, waxing paternal. “Have a bite before you go.”
“Some other time,” said Kit, lighting a cigarette. He lifted his feet off the tire.
“Don’t you want to see your old room? It’s exactly as you left it.”
“Got to keep it authentic for the tour groups, huh, Burke.”
“I thought we could go by the school and have a look at the future Kitchener Lightfoot Auditorium.”
“They’re not going to do that, are they? Name it after me?”
“I know they want to. I’m told ten thousand will make it happen. It’d be nice press,” said Burke, smiling like Cardinal Mahony. “I’m always looking out for you.”
Kit got the notion to fuck with him.
“Do you need ten thousand, Dad?”
The man chuckled like a bad actor.
“I don’t need it. I could use it but I don’t need it. Not personally. The alma mater needs it: Ulysses S. Grant.”
“I’ll send a check over, OK?”
“That would be a beautiful thing.”
“Now who should I make that out to? You, Dad? Or the school? If I made it out to the school, that’d probably be better. For me. I mean, tax-wise.”
“Either way,” said Burke, staring off with stagy indifference. “Either way’ll do. To the school would be fine.” A pause, then, “It’s just… I’m not one hundred percent sure if Grant School is the right entity. I’m not sure they have their funding entity together yet. They could be calling that project something else. So if you write the check to me, that’s fine too, I’ll hold it in escrow then funnel it to the correct entity. No problems. Make it out to me, son — or leave the pay to line blank — not the amount — and I’ll turn it over. Save your business manager the hassle of a reissue.”
Cela appeared at the front fence and made a dash to Kit’s arms. Pleased at the fortuitous arrival, Burke said, “Kit Lightfoot, this is your life!” He went inside so the high school sweethearts could be alone. Kit was certain his father had alerted her, because she was dolled up more than a Saturday afternoon would call for.
“What a surprise.”
“How you doin, Cela?” She was still gorgeous to him, but drugs had taken their toll. She was old around the edges.
“Slummin today?”
“Just a little,” he said.
Some preteen girls pressed up against the driveway gate and giggled.
“You look great,” said Kit. “You been all right?”
“Not too bad. Burke and I have a pretty good thing going — we do the Sunday Rose Bowl swap, in Pasadena? Find all kinds of stuff then sell it on eBay. I know you’re doin OK.”
“Can’t complain.”
“Oh and hey, thank you for the eight-by-tens. That was a bonanza. People at the swaps go nuts for anything of yours that’s signed. Especially when Burke says he’s your dad — which, to his credit, he doesn’t a lot of the time.”
The Afterworld
IT WAS COLD but fun laying on the slab.
Thanks to Elaine Jordache and her connected friend, Becca had been hired to play a cadaver on Six Feet Under. She was a little embarrassed to tell Annie, even though the casting people said it was the most coveted “extra” gig in town. Evidently, the producers were superfinicky about who they hired. Becca’s mom was thrilled. She immediately ordered HBO.
All the actors were really nice. They felt bad for the extras because they had to spend so much time on their backs, sometimes wearing uncomfortable prosthetics.
“You look so much like Drew Barrymore,” said a regular.
“I think she might be a little bit heavier than I am right now,” said Becca. She didn’t mean to sound catty.
“She’s a big fan of the show. Her agent supposedly even talked to Alan about coming on, but I don’t know if that’s going to happen.”
There were actually two Alans. Everyone was always mentioning one or the other without using last names. (If you were “family,” you knew who they meant.) Becca had met the executive producer-sometime director Alan, but not the executive producer-director-writer-creator Alan.
“The show doesn’t really work that way,” the regular went on. “They don’t usually cycle in movie stars. It’s not like The Sopranos. Thank God.”
The actor went away, and a few minutes later another actor who Becca thought was gay sort of hit on her. He asked if she’d read about the mortician who had been caught posing bodies so a friend could take arty photographs.
“It was so Witkin,” he said. She didn’t know what that meant. “We actually did a story line kind of like that — life imitates art. Did you see L.A. Confidential?”
“Uh huh.”
“Remember the whole thing with Kim Basinger? The call girls who looked like celebrities?”
“Uh huh.”
“Wasn’t she supposed to be, like, Veronica Lake? You could seriously do that — I mean, as Drew Barrymore!”
Becca smiled politely from her cold metal tray. Even though she knew he was just being friendly, she didn’t like the suggestion that she could capitalize on her looks by being some kind of whore. But she was a captive audience and not in any position to take offense. All the cadavers spent their time praying that Alan—any Alan — would bestow upon them lines for, say, an impromptu dream sequence or that in some future episode they’d at least be allowed to cross over to the living for a speaking role. A speaking role was the Valhalla.
The first A.D. called camera rehearsal.
She lay there quietly amid the tumult, pondering her life. The relationship with Sadge was coming to an end; a strange and powerful new man had entered the scene. The strange and powerful new man frightened her, but Annie said that wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. It wasn’t a great thing, but it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. It could even be a good thing.
Becca played a game with herself between takes, seeing how long it took to get wet while thinking of him.
School Days
“SCHOOLS NEVER LOSE that smell, do they?” asked Kit.