A few months passed, and nothing within him seemed to change. Then without at first being aware of it, he one day realized he was taking a measure of comfort in following a rigid schedule. He quickly developed a notion that he might just be able to squeak through if he could keep his days fastidiously identical. He told this to Ivan, who then lured John back to the production offices with the absurd promise that his days would be «utterly unsurprising.» Both Ivan and Nylla were at wits' end as to how they might reintegrate John back into L.A.Mega Force finished while John was away, was scheduled for release, and there was no doubt that it was going to hit big. Test screenings in Glendale and Oxnard evoked memories of the old days of Bel Air PI — yet to John it was nothing, not a flash of interest.
Among industry people John was considered a mutant. Consensus had been reached that he really had been out crossing the country on some sort of doomed search. This made him seem charmed in an interesting but don't-get-too-close way. In a deeply superstitious environment, John was bad and good luck at the same time. If people wanted to do business, they went to Ivan. If they wanted a bit of gossip to pass along at the dinner table, they popped their heads into John's office.
Around Doris, John felt like a burden. She'd come to enjoy her privacy and unaccountability over the years. While she was patient with John, he couldn't help but feel like an anchor roped around her waist — and yet the thought of being alone in a place of his own was inconceivable. Ultimately, beneath Doris's Darling! -rich exterior John also sensed a veiled hostility — and he couldn't quite identify its root.
Until one night, just after John had returned home from the offices of Equator Pictures — six fifty-five, in time for the news on TV — Doris came through the door in a filthy mood. Her car had been broken into during her lunch with a friend at Kate Mantilini, and her favorite dress, just back from the cleaners, was stolen, along with a sentimental cameo brooch she kept in the dashboard's beverage caddie. She cut her fingers removing the pile of shattered glass strewn about the driver's seat, and she'd driven to Bullock's to meet another friend. There she realized, after waiting in a long lineup, that her credit cards and ID had also been swiped. She worried she was getting Alzheimer's because she hadn't noticed sooner. She had a fit, and during an angry drive to the police station, ran a red light, receiving both a ticket and a scolding from a traffic cop. She was mutinous.
«Oh God , do I need a drink,» she blurted as she scrambled for the liquor cabinet. «Want one?» John said no. «You don't have to be such a priss about not having a drink, John.»
«I'm — not — drinking — these — days,» he said in precisely metered tones.
«Aren't you a saint.»
Out the side of his vision, John watched Doris pour a Cinzano, gulp it down, pour another, this time with a lemon zest, gulp it down, and then in a more relaxed state, pour a third. He wondered what was going on with her, but he didn't want to miss the news.
Doris was looking across the room at John, his posture self-consciously erect, sitting on a stool watching reports from some war-torn ex-Soviet province. It was like he was six and sick again, trying to be a good little boy. The emotions she'd been feeling about her crappy day did a 180, and without warning, her heart flew back to the New York of decades ago when John was the child who didn't want to be sick or a burden.
The shutters were drawn, but late afternoon sun treacled in through the chinks. Doris had the sensation that the hot yellow air would feel like warm gelatin against her body were she to venture outside. She sighed, and suddenly she didn't want to drink anymore. She felt chilly and old. She wanted to slap John. She wanted to hold him, and she wanted to chide him for his recklessness and to tell him how much she wished that she'd been out there with him, out in the flats and washes and foothills and gorges, begging God, or Nature or even the sun to erase the burden of memories, and the feeling of having lived a life that felt far too long, even at the beginning. She called to him, «John …»
He looked around. «Yeah, Ma?»
«John …» She tried to find words. John pushed theMUTE button. «John, when you were away — out on your jaunt a few months ago, did you …»
«Did I what, Ma?»
«Did you find …» Again, she stopped there.
«What, Ma? Ask me.»
Doris wouldn't continue.
«What is it, Mom?» John was now alarmed.
And then it just flooded right out of her, in a rush: «Didn't you find even one goddam thing out there during the stint away? Anything?Anything you could tell me and make me feel like there was at least one little reason, however subtle, that would repay me for having been sick with fear all those nights you were gone?»
Doris saw John open his eyes wide, religiously. She immediately felt queasy for having been so vulgar, and apologized, though John said there was no need for it. But John knew his mother was mad at him because he was still seemingly unchanged at thirty-seven, because he was still alone and because she'd pretty much surrendered hope that he would ever acclimate, marry and procreate like the sons of women in her reading group.
«It's my back,» said Doris, thumping the base of her spine as though it were a misbehaving appliance. «It hurts like stink and I have the one Beverly Hills doctor who doesn't like to overprescribe for his patients.»
«It's still that bad?»
«As ever.»
«I thought you were trying a new — »
«It's not working.»
«Can't you go to another doctor? Get more pills?»
«I could. But I won't. Not now. I'd feel so — I don't know,slutty , openly hunting for drugs like that. And Dr. Christensen knows my life story. I'm in no mood to start from scratch with someone new.»
«So you'd rather be in pain?»
«For the time being? Yes.»
Her temper was brushed over. When the CNN news ended, John had an idea. He went into his room and looked through his old address book. All these numbers and names and not a friend in the lot. John wondered why it is people lose the ability to make friends somewhere around the time they buy their first expensive piece of furniture. It wasn't a fixed law, but it seemed to be an accurate-enough gauge.
He flipped through pages of numbers and memories and meetings and sexual encounters and deals and washed cars and flights booked Alitalia and Virgin, and tennis games catered — a small stadium's worth of people who would find John Johnson whatever he needed.
He removed his working clothes and shed them into a pile in the corner. He was sick of being Mr. Corporate Office Guy. He rooted about his cupboard and found some old clothes Doris hadn't thrown out — old mismatched shirts and pants used for painting the kitchen drawers and for yard work. Every day was now going to be casual Friday for John.
He returned to his old address book. In it he located the name of Jerr-Bear, a child actor of the Partridge Family era who as a grown-up had gone terribly skank, dressed in the homeless version of Milan's latest offerings, with matted hair that smelled like a barn. John tried to remember Jerr-Bear's full name and couldn't, yet he fully remembered Jerr-Bear's portrayal of the loyal son on a long-vanished cop show.
Jerr-Bear may have gone skank, but the goods he carried were the finest. John looked in his bedside table and found eighteen hundred dollars remaining from a five-grand float Ivan gave him for the month. It was all in twenties and looked sleazy sitting in a heap the way it did. He dialed Jerr-Bear, and against the odds, Jerr-Bear answered.
«Jerr-Bear, it's John Johnson.»