Квентин Тарантино - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - The First Novel By Quentin Tarantino

“Keep looking,” is Squeaky’s order. “If he comes this way, let me know.”

Then, about ten minutes after Tex and Lulu ride away, Snake spies a change in dynamic between the Family girls and the strange older male in the Hawaiian shirt. Now the laughing and giggling seem to have stopped. As does the loosey-goosey hippie-dippy body language of the Family girls. They start becoming still, stiff, and defensive. Then Snake sees the Hawaiian guy look up toward the house and even gesture toward it with his finger.

“Something’s up,” Snake relays. “The girls are acting weird, and the Hawaiian guy is pointing toward the house.”

“Motherfucker, I knew it,” Squeaky says.

Clem, the chipped-tooth Family boy, asks Squeaky, “Want me to take care of him?”

Squeaky gives Clem a motherly smile and says, “Not yet, honey. I can handle it.”

“Oh shit,” Snake says.

Although she already knows the answer, Squeaky asks, “What?”

“The old Hawaiian guy’s coming this way,” Snake says with alarm.

Squeaky straightens out the reclining chair, rises from her throne, and walks into the kitchen to see what Snake sees through the screen door. And she sees the guy in the Hawaiian shirt walking alone toward the stairs that lead up to the door they’re looking through.

Squeaky bites her lip and wonders, Who the fuck is this dude?

Then, to the other kids, “Okay, you guys, get the hell outta here. I’ll handle this fucker.”

As Squeaky stands by the screen door, the other kids file out of the house and walk single file down the staircase, passing the approaching stranger in the Hawaiian shirt.

They all give him dirty looks. Once the last Family kid has left the house, Squeaky replaces the hook on the screen door into its metal hole.

The Hawaiian guy climbs the stairs till he’s standing on the other side of the filthy screen door, directly in front of Squeaky.

“So you’re the mama bear?” he says in a good-natured fashion.

Squeaky considers giving him a sarcastic “aloha” but decides that would be too encouraging. So instead she says, as crisp and brittle as a snapping twig, “Can I help you?”

The Hawaiian guy sticks his hands in his back pockets and says, in a trying-to-be-personable way, “I hope so. I’m an old friend of George’s. I thought I’d stop by and say hello.”

With the two headlamps she has for eyeballs, she turns the full effect of her big, bulging, unblinking stare on this Hawaiian interloper.

“Well, that’s very nice of you. Unfortunately, you picked the wrong time. George is taking a nap right now.”

The Hawaiian guy removes his sunglasses and says, “Well, that is unfortunate .”

“What’s your name?”

“Cliff Booth.”

“How do you know George?”

“I’m a stuntman. I used to shoot Bounty Law here.”

“What’s that?”

That makes the Hawaiian guy chuckle a bit.

“It’s a western TV show we used to shoot out here,” he says.

“You don’t say?” Squeaky says.

“I do say.” Jerking his thumb behind his back at the western town, he tells her, “I think I’ve been shot off of horses on every inch of that main drag. I think I’ve fallen into bales of hay from the roof of every building. And gone headfirst through the window of the Rock City Café probably one time too many.”

“Really? That’s fascinating.” Her unblinking eyes challenge this interloper in a manner that would make the stare Ralph Meeker used to employ during acting scenes envious.

“Not bragging, mind you,” the Hawaiian guy assures, “just letting you know I know the place.”

With the unemotional authoritative demeanor of a highway patrolman, Squeaky asks the Hawaiian guy, “When was the last time you saw George?”

That stumps the intruder, and he has to think a moment. “Oh, let’s see, ahh … I’d say … oh, ’bout eight years ago.”

Finally, a smile creeps into the corners of her mouth. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you two were so close.”

As a fan of face-to-face sarcasm, the Hawaiian guy chuckles.

“Well, when he wakes up,” she informs him, “I’ll tell him you came by.”

The Hawaiian guy looks down to the floor, puts his sunglasses back on for effect, then raises his head and looks through the screen door at her freckled face. “Well, I’d really like to say a quick hello—now—while I’m here. I came a long ways, and I don’t really know when I’m gonna get back this way again.”

Feigning sympathy, Squeaky says, “Oh, I understand. But I’m afraid that’s impossible.”

“ Impossible ,” Cliff repeats incredulously. “Why is it impossible ?”

Squeaky bursts out in one breath, “Because me and George like to watch TV on Saturday night— The Jackie Gleason Show , The Lawrence Welk Show , and Johnny Cash. But George finds it hard to keep awake that late. So I make him take a nap around now, so I don’t get gypped outta my George TV time.”

The Hawaiian guy smiles and takes off his glasses again and says through the screen door, “Look, Freckles, I’m coming in there. And with my own two eyes, I’m gonna take a good look at George. And this”—he taps the screen door right in front of Squeaky’s face—“ain’t stopping me.”

Through the dirty kitchen screen door, Squeaky and the Hawaiian guy share a stare-off, until Squeaky suddenly gives one decisive blink of her eyelids. “Suit yourself.”

Then she noisily flips the little hook lock off the screen door, turns her back on the Hawaiian guy, walks into the living room, and plops down in the chair again, leans back into the reclining mode, and picks up the remote and clicks the TV volume louder.

She turns her attention to George’s little black-and-white television set that sits on top of his broken cabinet-style Zenith. On the little screen at the moment, Paul Revere and the Raiders are hopping up and down, performing their song Mr. Sun/Mr. Moon .

When it comes to persuading George to do things, Squeaky is usually pretty good. But when it comes to persuading a skinflint blind old man to shell out money for a color television, it would appear Squeaky’s powers of persuasion have their limits .

She hears the rusty hinge on the screen door squeak, as the Hawaiian guy pulls it open and steps inside. She doesn’t turn her head his way, but she hears him enter the living room.

“Where’s his bedroom?” he asks.

Using her bare foot, she points to the hallway. “Door at the end of the hallway,” she barks. “You might hafta shake him awake. I fucked his brains out this morning.” Then she turns toward the Hawaiian intruder and says with a smirk, “He may be tired.”

The Hawaiian guy doesn’t give the shocked look she was hoping for, or, for that matter, any reaction at all. He just moves past her, enters the hallway. Just before he disappears from her sight, she tells him, “Oh, Mr. Eight Years Ago? George is blind. You’ll probably hafta tell him who you are.”

That stops the Hawaiian guy for a beat, then he continues down the hallway, disappearing from sight.

On the little TV set, the Raiders finish their song and Mark Lindsay tells the people out there in TV land to stay tuned for “these Happening messages,” followed by a promo for the ABC television show The FBI . Squeaky hears the Hawaiian stuntman lightly knock on George’s bedroom door and ask, “George, are you awake?”

Squeaky yells loudly from the recliner, “Of course he’s not awake, I fuckin’ tole’ you that! And he won’t hear those little-girl knocks either. If your heart is set on waking him up, then open the door, step inside, and shake his fuckin’ ass awake!”