William Boyd: On the Yankee Station: Stories

There’s a café in Venice where I eat breakfast. A girl works there most mornings, thin, bottle-blond, kind of tired-looking. I’m pretty sure she’s on something heavy. So that doesn’t make her anything special but she can’t be more than eighteen. She knows my name — I don’t know how. I never told her. Anyway, each morning when she brings me my coffee and doughnut she says, “Hi there, Charlie. Lucked out yet?

I just smile and say, “Not yet, Jayette.” Jayette’s the name she’s got sewn across her left tit. I’m not sure I like the way she speaks to me — I don’t exactly know what she’s referring to. But seeing how she knows my name I think it must be my career she’s talking about. Because I used to be a star — well, a TV star anyway. Between the ages of nine and eleven I earned $12,000 a week. Perhaps you remember the show, a TV soap opera called The Scrantons . I was the little brother, Chuck. For two years I was a star. I got the whole treatment: my own trailer, chauffeured limousines, private tutors. Trouble was my puberty came too early. Suddenly I was like a teenage gatecrasher at a kids’ party. My voice went, I got zits all over my chin, fluff on my lip. It spoiled everything. Within a month the scenario for my contractual death was drawn up. I think it was pneumonia, or maybe an accident with the thresher. I can’t really remember; I don’t like to look back on those final days.

Though I must confess it was fun meeting all the stars. The big ones: Jeanne Lamont, Eddy Cornelle, Mary and Marvin Keen — you remember them. One of the most bizarre features of my life since I left the studio is that nowadays I never see stars anymore. Isn’t that ridiculous? Someone like me who worked with them, who practically lives in Hollywood? Somehow I never get to see the stars anymore. I just miss them. “Oh, he left five minutes ago, bub,” or, “Oh, no, I think she’s on location in Europe. She hasn’t been here for weeks.” The same old story.

I think that’s what Jayette’s referring to when she asks if I’ve lucked out. She knows I’m still hanging in there, waiting. I mean, I’ve kept on my agent. The way I see it is that once you’ve been in front of the cameras, something’s going to keep driving you on until you get back. I know it’ll happen to me again one day. I just have this feeling inside.

After breakfast I jog back up the beach to where I left the car. One morning I got to thinking about Jayette. What does she think when she sees me now and remembers me from the days of The Scrantons ? It seems to me that everybody in their life is at least two people. Once when you’re a child and once when you’re an adult. It’s the saddest thing. I don’t just mean that you see things differently when you’re a child — that’s something else again. What’s sad is that you can’t seem to keep the personality. I know I’m not the same person anymore as young Chuck Scranton was, and I find that depressing. I could meet little Charlie on the beach today and say, “Look, there goes a sharp kid.” And never recognize him, if you see what I mean. It’s a shame.

I don’t like the jog back so much, as all the people are coming out. Lying around, surfing, cruising, scoring, shooting up, tricking. Hell, the things I’ve seen on that sand, I could tell you a few stories. Sometimes I like to go down to El Segundo or Redondo Beach just to feel normal.

I usually park the car on Santa Monica Palisades. I tidy up, change into my clothes and shave. I have a small battery-powered electric razor that I use. Then I have a beer, wander around, buy a newspaper. Mostly I then drive north to Malibu. There’s a place I know where you can get a fair view of a longish stretch of the beach. It’s almost impossible to get down there in summer; they don’t like strangers. So I pull off the highway and climb this small dune hill. I have a pair of opera glasses of my aunt’s that I use to see better — my eyesight’s not too hot. I spotted Rod Steiger one day, and Jane Fonda I think but I can’t be sure; the glasses tend to fuzz everything a bit over four hundred yards. Anyway, I like the quiet on that dune. It’s restful.

I have been down onto Malibu Beach, but only in the winter season. The houses are all shut up but you can still get the feel of it. Some people were having a barbecue one day. It looked good. They had a fire going on a big porch that jutted out high over the sand. They waved and shouted when I went past.

Lunch is bad. The worst part of the day for me because I have to go home. I live with my aunt. I call her my aunt though I’m not related to her at all. She was my mother’s companion — I believe that’s the right word — until my mother stuffed her face with a gross of Seconal one afternoon in a motel at Corona del Mar. I was fifteen then and Vanessa — my “aunt”—became some kind of legal guardian to me and had control of all the money I’d made from The Scrantons . Well, she bought an apartment in Beverly Glen because she liked the address. Man, was she swallowed by the realtor. They build these tiny apartment blocks on cliff-faces up the asshole of the big-name canyons just so you can say you live off Mulholland Drive or in Bel-Air. It’s a load. I’d rather live in Watts or on Imperial Highway. I practically have to rope up and wear crampons to get to my front door. And it is mine. I paid for it.

Maybe that’s why Vanessa never leaves her bed. It’s just too much effort getting in and out of the house. She just stays in bed all day and eats, watches TV and feeds her two dogs. I only go in there for lunch; it’s my only “family” ritual. I take a glass of milk and a salad sandwich but she phones out for pizza and enchiladas and burgers — any kind of crap she can smear over her face and down her front. She’s really grown fat in the ten years since my mother bombed out. But she still sits up in bed with those hairy yipping dogs under her armpits, and she’s got her top and bottom false eyelashes, her hairpiece and purple lipstick on. I say nothing usually. For someone who never gets out she sure can talk a lot. She wears these tacky satin and lace peignoirs, shows half her chest. Her breasts look like a couple of Indian clubs rolling around under the shimmer. It’s unfair, I suppose, but when I drive back into the foothills I like to think I’m going to have a luncheon date with … with someone like Grace Kelly — as was — or maybe Alexis Smith. I don’t know. I wouldn’t mind a meal and a civilized conversation with some nice people like that. But lunch with Vanessa? Thanks for nothing, pal. God, you can keep it. She’s a real klutz. I’m sure Grace and Alexis would never let themselves get that way — you know, like Vanessa’s always dropping tacos down her cleavage or smearing mustard on her chins.

I always get depressed after lunch. It figures, I hear you say. I go to my room and sometimes I have a drink (I don’t smoke, so dope’s out). Other days I play my guitar or else work on my screenplay. It’s called Walk. Don’t Walk . I get a lot of good ideas after lunch for some reason. That’s when I got the idea for my screenplay. It just came to me. I remembered how I’d been stuck one day at the corner of Arteria Boulevard and Normandie Avenue, There was a pile of traffic and the pedestrian signs were going berserk. “Walk” would come on, so I’d start across. Two seconds later, “Don’t Walk,” so I go back. Then on comes “Walk” again. This went on for ten minutes: “Walk. Don’t Walk. Walk. Don’t Walk.” I was practically out of my box. But what really stunned me was the way I just stayed there and obeyed the goddam machine for so long — I never even thought about going it alone. Then one afternoon after lunch it came to me that it was a neat image for life; just the right kind of metaphor for the whole can of worms. The final scene of this movie is going to be a slow crane shot away from this malfunctioning traffic sign going “Walk. Don’t Walk.” Then the camera pulls farther up and away in a helicopter and you see that in fact the whole city is fouled up because of this one sign flashing. They don’t know what to do; the programming’s gone wrong. It’s a great final scene. Only problem is I’m having some difficulty writing my way toward it. Still, it’ll come, I guess.