She pointed at the stuffed cat, mounted on a plinth. I noticed it was caught in that classic cat sitting pose, its hind legs tucked under it, the forelegs extended, looking up as if expecting a feed. — This is what he did, this was his work.
I guess I was pretty impressed by this. Most taxidermists I’d seen, and there was a lot of em in the big hunting states, they tended to go for action poses, even in domestic pets. — I like the way he got that ol boy in an ordinary cat position, rather than leapin on some invisible prey.
— Yes, Humphrey studied compulsively so that his compositions would be anatomically correct. She pointed over to a wall full of certificates and a cabinet stacked with trophies. — He was the best in the state. I used to assist him. I was so damn squeamish at first… Her expression went coy as her hand waved away a phantom objection or compliment.
In spite of myself, I was getting plenty curious. — What happened with you and Humphrey, if you don’t mind me asking?
Yolanda looked sadly at me, then grimaced in a caustic smile. — Nothing with me and him, just him. I came home from the mall one afternoon and found him dead in his workshop. He was stuffing a raccoon when he had a massive coronary. Darned if I didn’t find him right there, bent over his subject, as lifeless as that poor creature he was working on, she told me, brushin at a tear as if the loss was just yesterday. — I reckoned it was those constant battles with the developers and the state that took it all out of him. Her expression turned bitter as her incisors flashed. — Even if you beat those bastards, you always pay a price.
I couldn’t disagree there. It struck me that ol Humphrey was like a hero in a Glen Halliday movie; an ordinary Joe standin up to those moneyed assholes and power trippers, just cause he could, and hell, because it was the right thing to do.
— It just made me all the more determined that I would never sell up. She shook her head emphatically. — They said that I was cutting off my nose to spite my face and that the canal waters would soon be rolling in from the mountains and that I should cash in while I could. And sure enough, it eventually did come flowin down, but not before some of those miserable rat bastards who had tried to take my Humphrey’s water went bust sittin on their useless adjoining land!
And she talked on and on about ol Humphrey and I was darned if that ol gal didn’t have tongue enough for ten rows of teeth. But there wasn’t much I could do about it. She was upset and I had to let her go on. She told me how she’d met Humphrey at a pageant when she was Miss Arizona, and, how in contrast to the others, he was a real gent who always treated her like a lady. It sure was a strong love, no doubt about that. So I learned a lot about Humphrey and taxidermy, and while I admired this kindly ol guy who just sat on his land, stuffin animals, developers and the state, he wasn’t Glen Halliday. It took me a long while to get back there and when I did I could tell it was mighty disappointin for Yolanda.
— Glen Halliday lived for his work, she said ruefully. — We got together as friends first, then got married in a whirlwind. After six months he was a lousy lay. I didn’t see enough of him. He was always running off onto the set of one film after another, or hiding out in bars, she grinned at me in conspiracy. — If Glen had a grande passion, then, honey, I certainly wasn’t it.
Emboldened by this lady’s candor, I asked without thinkin, — Who do you think was?
— C’mon, darlin, you know the answer to that as well as I do, she chided, but she looked at me like she was genuinely let down. And she was right to be; it was the performance of an honors graduate asshole. In her mind I now either had balls of jello or the savvy of a virgin in a bordello. — Ms Sandra Nugent, she said slowly, her look of judging compassion makin me feel like the teenage daughter of the house who stormed out screamin ‘fuck you’ only to return in tears with a swollen belly six months later.
I knew full well, as did any undergrad who took an elective in American independent film, that Sandy Nugent was universally regarded as Halliday’s muse. She was the actress who starred in some of his finest movies: Ditchwater Creek, Mace, A Very Cold Heat. Over the years they had what the likes of Entertainment Weekly might call ‘a tempestuous on-off relationship’. She killed herself back in ’86, in a roach motel in a scuzzy part of Florida. They found her with the contents of a strip mall drugstore still bubblin in her gut long after her ass had gone polar.
I’d researched Sandy extensively, prior to meeting Yolanda. The only public comment he made on her death had lost Halliday plenty of friends (sadly, I was learning that he seemed to specialize in that art). Talkin to a London magazine at the Edinburgh Film Festival back in 1990, he said, ‘Nobody likes to see a good piece of ass wasted.’ Of course, Glen Halliday was a chronic drunk by then. I know that ain’t no excuse for that kinda talk, but I sure as shit also know that it can be a reason.
Glen Halliday was one of the most talented and underrated filmmakers I had come across. But the more I learned about him the less enamored I was by the guy. It seemed, and not only from Yolanda, that the magic was in the movies, not the man. And while I know more than most what ol John Barleycorn can do to a fella when things ain’t goin his way, my hero was starting to sound like a guy who had his head up his ass.
He married Yolanda ten years after Sandy’s death, then he himself apparently died of a heart attack, right here in Phoenix six years after that. Obviously the thing with Sandy, though they never tied the knot, really did seem to be Glen Halliday’s big one, but she wasn’t for tellin. Also, most of their mutual associates in the world of independent film had been pretty damn guarded.
But not all of them; back in New York, I had met Jenny Ralston, one of Sandy’s best friends, who’d been mighty obligin. Jenny had been mentored by Sandy and had a respectable list of indie credits and the odd Hollywood B-movie to her name. She was a dark-eyed beauty, finer than frog hair, and, maybe guided a little too much by her perspective, I’d regarded Yolanda Halliday as just a crazy afterthought, a place for drunken ol Glen to lay his tired head in this period of dark decline. But now somethin was eatin at me. I was darned if some strange loopy voice wasn’t whisperin in my ear that it was this relationship with Yolanda, ol Miss Arizona herself, that was going to be the key to unlocking the Glen Halliday enigma. Perhaps this strange woman was slowly becomin more interestin to me as I was gettin a little disenchanted by her most recently deceased husband.
As we kept yakin, me tryin to keep her interest by tellin her about my life past, and the one present with Pen, which interested her more, Yolanda seemed to be strugglin. I’d no idea how many gins she’d had before I’d called round and the booze seemed to be gettin to her. I soon got to reckonin that it might be best to wrap it up for the time being. — I really enjoy chatting to you, Raymond, she slurred, — I feel like we’ve really connected.
— I really enjoy talkin to you, Yolanda, I told her in all honesty, despite bein a mite concerned at the way those crazy eyes kept holdin me in their gaze.
I thanked her for her time and made to leave, as I had somewhere I needed to be. I fixed another appointment to see her, then headed back to the car. The pool was still ocean blue and the pool guy, skinny but muscular in his yellowin wife-beater, glanced at me for a second with hard, suspicious eyes, before turnin and rakin more gunk from the pool’s surface.