I sat down. “For what?”
Marcelina said, “Want to see what you look like?”
“No.”
She took from inside her robe a small hand mirror, which she held up in front of me. And there was my face without any face on it at all. Just shiny bone, black eye sockets, a black nose socket, and yards of grinning teeth.
I went, “Gaahh!” Seeing your hand bones and your chest bones and all your body bones is bad enough, but seeing your face with no face on it is ten times worse. Your face — you always have the thought that, whatever it looks like, it’s you — and you’re it. With it gone, are you really you? “How can I see with no eyes?”
Groggins said, “Same way you can talk with no tongue, hear with no ears, move with no nerves or muscles, remember things with no brain.”
“That doesn’t tell me anything.”
“That’s ’cause I don’t understand it myself.”
The woman had brought a roll of bandage from under her robe. She started wrapping it around my skull. It seemed to be some kind of self-sticking bandage. She worked fast, seemed to know what she was doing. “Open your jaw. Not too far — that’s far enough. I’ll wrap you so you can open it that far. Then you’ll be able to show those great pearlies.”
“Hey, you’re bandaging right across my eye sockets!”
“Don’t worry. I’ll poke holes when I’m finished.” She went on wrapping.
With nothing to do or look at, and not knowing what was going on, I thought I might catch up on things. “How about Marsha? Did Grout slug her too?”
“No,” said Groggins. “After he shot you he aimed at her, but she told him to behave himself, this wasn’t the Dark Ages, this was Hollywood, the Swinging Seventies, so he should act like a grownup and not do something foolish. So he apologized to her.”
“How’d his trial come out?”
“They let him off on the grounds that he was suffering from acute diminished capacity.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t ask me. After the trial U-G-A hired him as chief consultant on the movie they made of your life — and death. Mostly your death. It was a smash. Everybody wanted to watch you get shot. As long as you’d been shot, they thought they should see it.”
“Who played me?”
“Tack Tustine.”
“That goof?” He was the biggest moron in Hollywood, a total illiterate. He was a fine athlete though — he’d been a basketball All-American at a major university in the Midwest. “He played me?”
“Uh-huh. He was great. He won the Academy Award.”
I was speechless. Tack Tustine playing me in the movie celebrating my death and winning the Oscar for it! It made me wonder if those awards are truly indicative of an actor’s inner essence.
Marcelina said, “Finished. Now I’m going to poke in the eyeholes.”
I braced myself, but it didn’t hurt a bit. Though completely lacking eyes and what they connect to, I could see through the holes she poked with a nail file through the bandage — not as well as through the unbandaged sockets but as well as when I was alive.
Groggins said, “Now for the shades.” I watched him dig into the shopping bag and hand Marcelina a pair of old airplane goggles with an elastic band. She pulled the band over my bandaged skull. The glasses were curved so they fit snugly. “Shake your head... Harder. Now up and down.” She looked pleased. “They seem pretty secure. Can you see all right?”
“Fine.”
“Want to see how you look?”
“No.”
She held up the mirror and all I saw was white bandage and two buglike eyes. It was creepy and awful-looking, but better than the bare bones.
Groggins dug into the bag again and got out a big, dark, gangster-style hat with some darker stains on it. I didn’t ask what they were. He gave it to Marcelina and she plopped it on my head.
“Now for the scarf and gloves.” He tossed her a mangy orange scarf, which she wound around my neck bones, and grey gloves. “Hold up your hands,” she said. I did, and she pulled the gloves over them and buttoned a button against the inside of each wrist.
Groggins came over with a white shirt and put it on me, buttoning it up till it was firm around the scarf. He went back to the bag and took out a pair of baggy grey pants with a green glaze here and there. “Pick up your feet,” he said. I did, and he knelt and pulled the pants onto my leg bones. Marcelina went to the bag and took out faded purple socks and scuffed brown shoes. She handed them to him and he worked them over my foot bones. “Stand up.” I did, and he pulled up the pants. They had frayed red suspenders attached, which he looped over my shoulders. “Now for the overcoat.”
Marcelina gave him a big wadded brown coat from the bag. He shook it and dust and hairs and stuff flew around. He got behind me, hitched the sleeves up my arm bones, got the shoulders in place, walked around in front of me, pulled things here and there, buttoned me up, stepped clear, looked me over, and said, “You look pretty good.”
I looked down. The coat drooped around me, its green glaze matching the glaze of the pants.
“Where’d you get all this crummy stuff?”
“Do you really want to know?”
I decided I didn’t. He reached in his robe, pulled out a wad of money, and counted it. “Here’s eighty-eight bucks.” He shoved it into one of my coat pockets. “Now you’re all set.”
“For what?”
“You’re off to Hollywood.”
“Why?”
“Don’t you want to go?”
“What am I supposed to do there?”
“I dunno. Play it by ear.”
“How long do I have?”
“Who knows? Did you ever know in the old days how much time you had?”
“I guess not.”
“Why should you know now?”
I didn’t know anything. “You bandage me up, give me funky old clothes and flying goggles like nobody wears, and tell me I’m off to Hollywood — one of the toughest towns in the country to make it in even at your best.”
Marcelina said, “Don’t forget, you’ve got a pocketful of money.”
“Eighty-eight bucks.”
“And you’ve got those dynamite teeth.” She showed her own in a bright smile. “You don’t seem to realize that you’re a pretty attractive guy.”
I shook my head, feeling despondent. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
“Whatever you do,” said Groggins, “it’ll be you doing it.”
“What does that mean?”
He shrugged, then waved a hand. “See that wall? Start walking toward it. When you reach it, it’ll kind of fade out — or it should, if things work right. Just keep on walking and you’ll find yourself outside, in the cemetery. Walk to the low wall you’ll see, go over it, turn left, and walk to the bus stop on the corner. The bus’ll take you to Hollywood Boulevard. From there, go anywhere you want.”
I took two steps toward the wall. “You say I can just walk through it?”
“Uh-huh. It seems to be working. You’re getting fuzzy around the edges. So long, Rangoon. Have a nice time.”
“Good luck,” said Marcelina.
I looked back. I didn’t see them. Things were just kind of misty back there. I kept walking. Now things were misty all around.
Then the mist was gone. I was standing on grass. It was moonlight. All around me were pale-white blobs — tombstones. I stopped, turned, and looked at the big one I stood in front of. On top of it was sitting a good-looking male angel, not wearing much, gazing in a kind of spaced-out way over the horizon. Under him was a bronze plaque: RANCE RANGOON — MARTYR TO LOVE. 1942–1974.
I liked that. U-G-A had done pretty well by me, even if it had been mostly to push the movie. “Martyr to love” — that was kind of sad and poetic.