Johnny smiled.
“No,” he said. “Up to now I’ve always been a wordsmith. But I think maybe Ed was right. The real thing. It’s a lot more exciting than fucking words.”
He brought the tire iron down on her head, crushing her face with one mighty blow. Under the pig’s blood, human blood began to flow. He hit her a few more times, and felt even more refreshed than he had on the front porch. Power slammed through him like two thousand volts.
Connie fell behind the car.
Johnny looked inside the well-stocked trunk and found a small shovel. It would be a lot of work, but with all the adrenaline coursing through him, he was up to it. Besides, it was great being out here in nature, digging like a real man, under the lunatic moon.
He strode out into the desert like some kind of Karloffian monster, and started to dig.
Then he remembered Stenz.
A week later, Johnny was back in Hollywood and sold Hometown to NBC. He’d learned his lessons well from Boys in Blue. Hometown was full of sentimental types: the good buddy with a drinking problem; the old girlfriend who had been a hooker but had a serious heart of gold; Mr. Mooby, the kindly janitor who was secretly a Nazi. Problems that the hero, Dave, could solve, because Dave, unlike his creator, was smart, and good. It was shot in a sunny, blue-sky way and sold to Hallmark in a flash.
CBS gave him an overall deal at two million a year.
The bodies of Eddie and Connie were never found.
Johnny only went back to the O.C. one more time. To hire his new assistant at a salary of two hundred thousand a year. Stenz was delighted with his new digs in Hollywood, and turned out to be the most loyal employee Johnny ever had.
The following season Johnny had three new series on the air. Leonardo Stenz was Co — Executive Producer on all three.
And whenever interviewed, Johnny still maintains that none of his good fortune would have ever happened if he hadn’t taken his two weeks to renew himself down in the laidback and beautiful O.C.
The Performer
by Gary Phillips
Los Alamitos
A very Randolph finished the stretched-out riff of Billy Joel’s “Just the Way You Are,” hoping his playing covered the flat notes coming out of his mouth. He’d meant to take his voice up in pitch during the last chorus, not down. The throat was the second thing to go. There was polite applause from the Seaside Lounge crowd, and Randolph nodded slowly while noodling the keys.
An aging couple, both in bright attire, their matching sterling-gray hair arranged just so, walked by the piano, hand in hand. The woman, peach-colored lipstick gothically enticing in the bar’s subdued lighting, dropped a five into the large brandy snifter for tips. She smiled. Randolph smiled. The man gave a quick wave to a short-haired woman at a table near the window, and the two headed for the door. The man let his hand glide down to briefly and tenderly flutter against the woman’s backside.
“This is for Emily,” Randolph announced, and began a leisurely intro into “Straighten Up and Fly Right.” He channeled Nat “King” Cole’s artful syncopation, letting it build while several patrons bobbed their heads and tapped their feat to the rhythm.
“Cool down, papa, don’t you blow... your... toppppp,” he finished in the key he meant to, and this time the applause was more heartfelt. He stood and bowed and blew a kiss to Emily, the woman the guy had waved to, sitting at her usual spot next to the window overlooking the medical center down below. For sixty-three, Randolph reflected, she looked good, handsome in her dark blue dress and diamond brooch, an ever-present martini glass near her steady blood-nailed hand. She lifted her drink and toasted him with a sip and a toothy grin.
Randolph finished his set with an instrumental rendition of Fats Waller’s “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” adding, “Don’t forget the sand dab special, folks, Rene swears they are to die for.” That got a few chuckles and he offered a wave en route to the bar. Sitting at one end of it was a National Guard trooper in his camouflage, a combat service badge dully gleaming over his flapped breast pocket. He was drinking a beer from a pint glass and was having an animated conversation on his cell phone. He turned his body away and hunched over some as Randolph approached the opposite end of the bar.
Carlson, the head bartender, came over with his Jack and Coke. “You tinkled them good tonight,” he commented, setting the squat glass on a napkin with the establishment’s name on it.
“Thanks, man.” Randolph watched the logo become distorted by the wet bottom of the glass, then took it to his lips.
“I guess you have to go easy on that stuff, don’t you? Or does it help your playing?”
Randolph looked over at the woman who’d just sat down beside him. She was young — that is, younger than him. In her late twenties, he figured, jeans and some kind of loose fauxsuede top. Not too much makeup, Rite Aid earrings. Pretty, but not overwhelmingly so. He sized her up as the wife or girlfriend of some soldier or marine over in Iraq or Afghanistan. Lonely. Bored. There was a lot of that in Los Alamitos.
“Everything in moderation,” he replied to her. He didn’t offer to buy her a drink, making sure he kept his eyes on her face and not down on that alert swell beneath the shirt’s fabric. The bare arms, though, impressively toned.
“I used to play guitar in high school,” she said. “Even had us an all-girl band for a while. But you know how it goes.” She elevated a shoulder.
“Not the next Bangles, huh?”
She frowned.
“Before your time,” Carlson piped in. A not so subtle reminder that Randolph was probably a decade and a half older than the woman. Randolph resisted a remark. Goddamn Carlson was older than he was but worked out on the weights, and had bragged about getting pectoral implants. So I can pick up pussy more easily, he’d cracked to Randolph and Rene Suarez, the chef.
“Can I have a gin and tonic?” the woman asked, looking from Carlson back to Randolph.
“Yours to command,” the bartender said, and went to prepare her drink.
“What do you do now?” What the hell, no sense making it easy for Carlson. Besides, Randolph was just making chitchat, no more, no less.
“Work at the PX on the base. Original around here, right?”
Carlson returned with her drink. “Me lady.”
“Shit fire,” the soldier down the bar snapped, then threw his cell across the bar top. It landed in another customer’s glass, the drink’s owner glaring at him.
“Aw, hell, here we go. Another old lady done told her hero boy bye-bye.” Carlson, himself a vet, double-timed to cool out the service man.
“Your husband on his second or third tour?” Randolph asked the woman. They both watched Carlson putting an arm around the shouldiers of the soldier, who dropped his head, mumbling words of self-pity.
“He was killed, about half a year ago. Roadside bomb hit their convoy coming into Paktika Province.” She drank some. “Jeff was Army then. After he rotated out, he wanted to do something about what he’d seen over there. Something different.” She shook her head. “Jeff’s a... sweetheart. He worked for CARE International delivering food and relief.” She put the gin down quietly.
“Damn. Sure sorry to hear that.”
“Lori. My name’s Lori.” She offered her hand and he shook it, smiling crookedly at her.
He told her his name and for several minutes they sat side by side in a shared silence. Carlson returned after escorting the soldier outside.
“Sorry, folks, I’m back,” he announced, and moved behind the bar to fulfill his enabling duties.