“I’m just off Beverly Glen.”
“Is that near Beverly Hills?” said Chuck. “I have to be in Beverly Hills tomorrow.”
“As a matter of fact, it is.”
“Well, they both have ‘Beverly’ in the name,” said Chuck.
“What are you doing out here?” said Maria.
“Do you remember Donny Billings?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Oh, well, he left in eleventh grade, was it? He had big ears and freckles.”
“I just don’t know.”
“Brillo pad hair?”
Maria made a noise like she didn’t remember.
“Dark red, but like a Brillo pad. They called him Brillo Head. Do you remember the guy, Brillo Head, they said he tried to choke himself with his mother’s bra?”
“You’d think I’d remember something like that,” said Maria.
“That’s Donny, anyway. He’s real sick now.”
“I’m sorry to hear it,” said Maria.
“Yeah, he’s, uh, they don’t think he’s going to make it. I was going to send him a ‘get well’ thing, and I remember he always liked Bob Hope. So I was going to send him this, like, Bob Hope thing.”
“That’s cool,” said Maria.
“Yeah, so they’re doing this auction of Bob Hope’s personal effects.”
“I want to go!” said Maria.
“Do you really?”
“It sounds cool.”
“It’s tomorrow afternoon.”
“I can’t do tomorrow afternoon.”
“That’s too bad,” said Chuck. “Well, it’s on Saturday, too.”
“Saturday might happen,” said Maria. “Let me check into it. I’m having some people for dinner Friday night, tomorrow night. You should definitely come. What time is your auction over?”
“I don’t know, I’ve never been to one.”
“Well, here, let me give you my address.”
She gave him her address.
“Just come over when it’s done, or call me or whatever. I’m making red beans and rice. It’s kind of loose.”
“So what are you doing out here?” said Chuck.
“This is embarrassing, but I’m a writer on a TV show,” said Maria.
“Why is that embarrassing?” said Chuck.
“It’s not,” said Maria.
“What show?” said Chuck.
“Elevated Feelings,” said Maria.
“I don’t know that one.”
“It has a cult following. It’s quite popular, actually. The New York Times called it one of the top twelve programs of the year three years ago.”
“Is it on one of those pay stations?”
“Oh, no, it’s just basic cable.”
“I liked it better when there were just three channels.”
“That was a long time ago,” said Maria.
“Yes,” said Chuck. He was falling asleep.
“I’m glad there are more channels, or I’d be out of a job.”
5
It must have been 1979 or ’80, because Donny hadn’t moved yet. There were three channels on TV. Chuck always liked to talk about how much better things had been when there were just three channels on TV. A kid was forced to grapple with cultural objects no kid today would ever discover. Kids today had too many choices, and as a result their worldview was paradoxically and oppressively narrow. They could watch Finding Nemo over and over. There were channels with nothing but cartoons. A kid in the 1970s would find himself watching Harold Lloyd on a Sunday afternoon — a silent, black-and-white movie! Unthinkable now.
All through the seventies Chuck had watched something called “The Big Show,” an afternoon movie franchise on the local CBS affiliate. They were mostly black-and-white. The weatherman introduced them. There was one about a giant tarantula. A Tarzan movie came on most Fridays. Chuck remembered one with these two supple trees growing side by side. The natives would bend the trees toward one another and bind them. They tied some safari dude’s legs to the trees, one to each tree. Then they cut the rope and the trees whanged away from one another. You just saw the tops of the trees flying in opposite directions but you heard the guy go Eeeeeeyaaaawwwww and knew he had been ripped in half, down the middle, wishbone style. It was intense.
By the time Donny and Chuck were juniors, “The Big Show” had some competition on Channel Ten. It was this thing called “Movies 10,” and it was too cool to have a host. There was just an animated opening graphic, some psychedelia on a cherry-red background of a guy with a movie camera disintegrating into cubist components. Then the movie would come on. Hipper stuff than “The Big Show” could get: Harry and Walter Go to New York, The Hot Rock, Popi, Where’s Poppa? The Pink Panther, The Choirboys, Cotton Comes to Harlem, California Split, Super Fuzz, Freebie and the Bean, Uptown Saturday Night, Little Murders. Heavily edited, most of them, but they made you feel you were getting away with something.
Donny was absent for a few weeks and everybody said he had tried to strangle himself with his mother’s bra. Donny had no father and a strange mother from Germany. Once Chuck had gone over there for lunch and she made tuna salad with pineapple rings on it. They kept the house dark.
Homeroom signed a card for Donny. Chuck volunteered to take it over.
Donny opened the door and seemed glad to see him. The house smelled funny.
Donny invited Chuck in. He said Cancel My Reservation was just coming on “Movies 10.”
Donny’s mother and sister were gone, so Donny had the house to himself. Chuck thought that was odd. He was kind of nervous. Donny was apparently a maniac of some sort, though he appeared calm and peaceful. Chuck saw a full glass of Coke sitting on the carpet near the TV. The cola itself had a bluish slime growing on its flat, calm surface.
They watched Cancel My Reservation and Donny made a lot of insightful comments about Bob Hope’s career. Chuck looked back on it as the first time he had ever heard anyone make insightful comments.
Chuck had never thought about Bob Hope one way or another. In those days, Bob Hope was just vaguely around, like the human appendix or lichens.
But Donny said things like, “Bob Hope and Eva Marie Saint are really good together. Can you believe she was with Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront and Cary Grant in North by Northwest and now here she is in this? You could argue that it places Bob Hope in the lineage of those titans, each representing a perfected but very different acting style. Or you might study Eva Marie Saint’s talent for reacting. It’s honest and true and puts her leading men in stark relief.”
Later: “This is the most recent Bob Hope movie and it came out almost ten years ago. He’s washed up in the movies. Can you believe this came out the same year Al Pacino revolutionized cinema acting forever in the Oscar-winning production of The Godfather?”
When the cameos by Flip Wilson and Johnny Carson came up, Donny laughed with wise appreciation and said, “This is commentary on Bob Hope’s earlier movie career. A fitting elegy.”
Chuck still remembered him saying that: “A fitting elegy.” That’s when he knew Donny was special, smarter than anybody else. Put it together with the attempted suicide via his mother’s bra and you really had something in this Donny.
Plus, the things he said were true. Bob Hope and Eva Marie Saint were good together. They had a natural rhythm just like an old married couple. Chuck watched close after Donny said it, and he learned what marriage was that day, he really did.
Man oh man! That Donny.
Before one football game, Shelly Riviera had gone in the band room closet and let all the willing male band members feel her up, one at a time. The percussionists were first in line, followed by some of the cockier trumpeters who could hit the high notes. Girly instruments like woodwinds hung around on the fringe, not really knowing what was up. Chuck was third clarinet. He squeaked constantly. The first two clarinets were girls, which made Chuck a figure of some fun. This guy Damon who sat behind him used to take his lyre — a clamp for holding music during marching season — and attach it painfully to Chuck’s earlobe, drawing blood. Damon once paid his own sister Tracy to sit on Chuck’s lap and squirm lasciviously when the band bus broke down. She kept half-rising, pretending to look for something in the overhead compartment, and then she’d sit down and squirm some more. Damon and those guys were sitting in the back of the bus laughing. Chuck didn’t get the joke. He thought it was the best night of his life until the band director broke it up. Damon was later electrocuted when trying to cut the wires on the band room clock.