Devilcountry (31 page)

 
         
 
A stoner in front of me stood between
me, the porn lady and freedom
.  He had long, wavy,
curly hair, he was bone-thin, wore a green, long-sleeve flannel, and tan cargo
pants.  His eyes were bloodshot and he reeked of medical grade marijuana.
 He bobbed his head complacently to
Ain’t No one Gonna Breaka my Stride
by Matthew Wilde that blared through the house speakers.  It was all
tweeder.  Which is all high
end
.  You can’t
hear the bass or anything.  Which was weird because the song, in all its
glory sounds like castrated reggae to begin with.  If there
is
such a thing as “Super-castration” then this musical
moment would certainly qualify.  He had a soft gaze on his face, and true
to
fashion,
clearly, nothing was going to break his
stride.

We all stood there, patiently, waiting for the
night crew guy to arrive to the cashier.  I suppose it is a difficult
transition to go from picking your nose near the flat of Lucky Charms while
listening to Nickelback to cashiering.  So, patience was necessary.
 Finally he arrived.  Tall, shit-brown hair, glasses, twenty pounds
overweight, white, unshaven, his earbuds still in.  “You guys need to
checkout?”

I wanted to give him a prize for asking the stupidest
question of all time.  His nametag read “Mike”. I wanted to donate the
contents of my ass into his brain and call it a protein shake.  It could
only help.  Mike turned on the cash register from its standby mode.
 It was amazing to watch Mike operate machinery.  It granted me hope
for the American worker.  I found myself with Mike, inside a Nickelback
concert, somewhere outside of Downey screaming at the top of my lungs, “Fuck
yeah!”

 
         
 
The porn star had begun unloading her
cart.  She had filled it all the way to the top with flavored carbonated
mineral water, budget gourmet dinners, (a dollar a piece)
,
 diet
crème soda, off-brand hard candy, cheap bread, (cheaper than
mine), some juiceboxes, Gogurts,  sandwich meats, tampons, what looked to
be some type of enema kit, EPT pregnancy tests, a quart of cheap vodka, A quart
of cranberry juice, Oreo cookies, no fruits or vegetables except for one lonely
melon.  Not even fresh water.  Everything disposable, pre-digested,
flavored, preserved, mutated, coagulated.  As she unloaded she turned back
and noticed the stoner.  He was blank-faced.  Benign.  He was
holding a one-liter bottle of Mountain Dew and a five-pak of mini-powdered
donuts.  She
eye-balled
him for a second.

 
         
 
“Go ahead.” she said.   She
continued to unload as he wordlessly walked passed her and Mike rang him up.
 There wasn’t politeness to
it,
it was more
matter of fact.  Stoic
,  like
the way a porn
star can hump their brains out twenty different ways and still not convey one
ounce of passion to the viewer.

 
         
 
“I guess it’s your lucky day, boss.” Mike
said to the stoner as Mike swept the donuts and dew.  The stoner was
silent and unblinking.  She finally finished loading all of her “food”
onto the conveyor, and was now standing right in front of me.  Her son had
a finger poking through the empty cart and was smiling at me.
 
I tried to smile back.  I wanted to
convey love and appreciation in my smile but in this circumstance it would have
come across as creepy.

 
         
 
Mike handed the stoner his change and a
receipt.  The stoner looked back at the lady.  “Thanks,” he said
blankly, like she was a sucker.  She offered no reaction back.  Mike
started beeping all of her purchases through.  The repeating sounds of the
high-pitched beep seemed to hypnotize.  We stood next to each other.
 Her body turned to the side somewhat.  I could view the profile of
her face.  She stood there.  She was somewhere else now.  
Somewhere far away.
 A blank expression entered her
gaze.  She was on a beach somewhere, looked like Maui.  This was
different from Carin’s.  I had been to Maui the year before.  It was
slightly touristy but fun.   She was sipping a Margarita.
  I could feel it.  
This life behind her.
It was warm, tropical; it had just rained but now was clear.  Clouds
danced by.  
The sky a shiny blue.
  She
had slow-danced on the beach with a local she had met the night before and
could still smell his scent on her sarong.  He was a student, younger than
her, and she loved teaching him all that she knew.  After they had danced
and screwed on the beach, he handed her a demo he had recorded of slack-key
music he had re-mixed with Jay-Z.   She felt the sappy afterglow of
new-found
love as the wind blew a bit of sand into her eyes
and gulls cawed above.  The sand was warm beneath her bare feet and her
skin felt soft.  The tan she was getting was finally a natural tan and not
that spray shit she had to put on when she was on set, or at the club.  
That horrible club.
 The club where she danced three
nights a week when there was no porn
work
.  All
of that gone now, recessed like the low tide.  She smiled and dug her toes
into the sand.  Every muscle relaxed.

 
         
 
It felt like a steel rod was trying to
exit my ass.  I should just dump in my pants.  Drop everything.
 Make a run for it.  Maybe I could use the bathroom at the
supermarket.  NO! I would not accept defeat!  I hate those bathrooms.
 The fluorescent lights, the labor law posters, the time clock, the store
refrigerator with the sign on it that says, “All food left here on Fridays will
be thrown out!”  NO!  I can hold it.  I want my bathroom.
 Five minutes away.  I require the home court advantage.

 
         
 
“$98.46” screamed Mike at the porn mom,
breaking her trance.  She seemed to twitch a bit as her reality eclipsed
her fantasy.  She snapped out of her head and threw the fantasy to me.
 I was on a beach in Maui, wearing a sarong, sipping a Margarita.
 Happy.  I kept thinking about a grad student named Ralph who had
handed me his demo.  I let these thoughts pass through me like warm wind
and they were gone.  I looked down at the boy again.  He smiled at me
and I smiled back.  The gentle Maui wind had passed through him as well.
 Which made him smile even more.  He put a hand on the Melon and kept
it from rolling off of the counter.  He was a good son performing a heroic
act which
in true heroic fashion would go
unrecognized.

 
         
 
Her stomach was ripply with muscle and
her breasts still wouldn’t budge as she reached into her purse and paid with
food stamps.  After being handed her receipt the checker then rang up the
quart of Popov vodka.  It seemed orchestrated.  Not a word was
spoken.  Both of them had performed this transaction many times before.
 
The ringing up of the regular food stamp stuff.
 Pause.  
The ringing up of the unacceptable
contraband.
 
A cash payment.
 
A discarding of receipt.
 And repeat.

She paid for the booze with crinkled up singles
that she picked out of a tiny, bejewelled purse with two gold handles and no
strap that was in the corner of the cart.  It’s the kind of miniature
knockoff couture purse that has a hard frame and looks more like a
shrunken-down lunch box decorated with glitter, sequins and allure.
 They’re bought cheaply at swap meets and every stripper carries one.
 They place it gingerly at the foot of the stage as there set begins and
is used as a girly drop box after they mop up all the petty cash that customers
have thrown down onto the stage during their performance.

Hers was filled to capacity with singles, fives,
tens and twenties spilling out from all sides.  She pushed the unruly wad
that remained back down and inside the brim of the purse and clicked the
locking mechanism back into place, making a huge snapping sound in the process.
 She wrangled her spinning boy and they were off.  My beach recessed
with the tide, my bowels restored.  I would make it home, safe.  I
didn’t even have to go anymore.  I think she took my crap with her.
 I placed my cracked wheat, jar of Skippy peanut butter, Ralph’s
house-brand jelly, two liter bottle of Coke, and unsalted Kettle cooked potato
chips onto the conveyor and watched silently as it moved up toward Mike, who
grabbed up my food one piece at a time for scanning.  I was blank.

 
         
 
“Wouldn’t mind being on a beach with
that!” Mike offered.

 
         
 
“Have fun.” I offered back.

DONNIE

“I
want to help you, Daddy,” Donnie said to his father, silently as he sat alone
at a table near the counter.  Far enough away from Pudgie so Pudgie
wouldn’t bother him but close enough so that
if  Donnie
needed something he could holler and Pudgie would make it happen.  Pudgie
was always lurking.  

Donnie’s dad had been a huge producer for years.
 His career started on a fluke.  He had gone to high school with Lew
Wasserman back in Cleveland.  Lew was still at William Morris as an agent
but was a rising star.  He was very powerful and wanted to jump to the
next level.   People knew this but were unsure of Wasserman’s move.
 So was Wasserman.  To relax he wanted to meet up and talk.  
he
wanted to talk to Donnie’s daddy.  Not about
anything in particular.  He just knew if he relaxed a bit then maybe it
will come.  They met at Nate and Al’s.  It would be a crisp
fifty minute
power lunch.  Donnie’s dad had nothing
better to do.

For fifty minutes they talked about nothing
except high school.  They wondered where people were, exchanged thoughts
on different girls, speculated on the sexuality of certain teachers and made
inside references to people only they knew.  Both of them were very
straight faced the entire time.  Lew in his crisp black suit, never
smiling, always matter of fact, but secretly enjoying every second.  It
was antidote for him.  The business he was in was ruthless and Donnie’s
dad acted as a solid counter-measure.  There was no business discussed
during this lunch.  None whatsoever.  It was all just a personal
exchange between two old friends.  But that isn’t how the legend is told
now.  There were two people in Nate and Al’s both of whom were somewhat
above the radar players in Hollywood dining at a nearby table. They studied
Wasserman, wondered what he was discussing.  They had no idea who the
other person was but he must have been important.  One of the two players
approached Wasserman at the table.  Hands were shook, Donnie’s dad was
introduced, briefly, the two producers exited and that was that.  Four
days later they tracked Donnie’s dad down and hired him in as an associate
producer.  The
intel
they had received was that
Wasserman was scouting new producer talent.  They had assumed totally
incorrectly that Donnie’s dad was one of the new hires and poached him.
 Wasserman found out about it from Donnie’s dad who called him after he
got hired.  Both of them laughed their
asses
off,
quietly behind closed doors. Wasserman then fed the flames by getting it
printed in The Hollywood Reporter and Variety that he was furious that one of
his main picks had been poached.  He was quoted as saying things like, ”Those
two jerks poached one of my main guys!  How am I supposed to start a
studio without him? I was
gonna
build a whole studio
around him and they took him!  Heads are gonna roll!”  

Donnie’s dad was an out of work deli driver.
 He didn’t know what producing was but between him and his wife they
managed to help put together several B-movies over the course of the next
thirty five
years.  His wife was the true talent.
 A master of social graces, shrewdness and story-telling
..
 It all happened because of her.  Then Donnie’s daddy got real good
at it.  

The story of Donnie’s intro into the business
grew by leaps and bounds and became the stuff of legends.  Inspiring
countless millions of people to go for their dreams. At times the story itself
took various turns.  Famous people were introduced into the prose. Brando
had stopped by the booth, crying.  Lana Turner slapped Wasserman in the
face.  Jerry Lewis performed some sort of disturbing magic trick that he
had designed and held the patent over.  But really it was just two old
friends trying to shut out the madness of the day.  Carve out a corner of
normal for the two of them to enjoy. The lunch became the stuff of legends.
 
           

 
 
         
The
whole dirty 70’s movement of movies had been Daddy at his finest.  TV
movies in the 80’s and 90’s, an art film called
Ode to Uta
with Carin
had gotten a best picture nomination, but no cash.  But The Big Pizza had
become a regular hang ever since.  He and his wife were the faces that had
launched a thousand careers, but now things were done.  He had retired a
few years back after a
Police Woman
reboot starring Shannon Elizabeth
went belly-up.  That had hurt.  But what really hurt was Daddy’s wife
of thirty-eight years, Margaret, Donnie’s mother, had gone into full renal
failure after a bout of pneumonia.  No donors were available and dialysis did
nothing but postpone the inevitable.  It hit fast and hard, and within one
calendar year she had up and flew away.
 
Donnie stared out the window of her hospital bed moments after her
passing and he swore he could see her flapping towards the sunset.