The Avram Davidson Treasury (63 page)

Fred got down and peered into the past till his eyes and neck grew sore, but he could not see one more bird like it. He began to laugh and cry simultaneously. Then he stood up. “Inevitable,” he croaked, throwing out his arms. “Inevitable! Demand exceeded supply!”

The bird looked up at him with imbecile, incurious eyes, and opened its incredible beak. “
Doh-
do,” it said, halfway between a gobble and a coo.
“Doh-
do.
Doh-
do
.”

Afterword to “Full Chicken Richness”

BY
G
ARDNER
D
OZOIS

And, now that I can say this without ruining the ending, I should also point out that this is one of only two science fiction stories I can think of where the plot centers around dodoes. The identity of the other story—not by Avram—I leave as an exercise for the reader.

I
NTRODUCTION BY
G
RANIA
D
AVIS

Hollywood was my hometown, and Hollywood Boulevard was my Main Street. I graduated from Hollywood High. Hollywood was a company town, and the big film and TV studios were The Company.

Avram Davidson lived in Hollywood during the placid 1950s. He worked as a night clerk in a cheap hotel off Vine Street, to support his writing habit. Every night he saw the has-beens and the rejects, the character actors and the genuine characters. From our shared experiences, this story was born, about the sacrifices that go on behind the scenes.

I collaborated with Avram Davidson on four short stories, and on the last novel published during his lifetime, Marco Polo and the Sleeping Beauty. We were working on a dark fantasy novel, Boss in the Wall, just before he passed on.

I’ve been asked how I could possibly imitate Avram Davidson’s style. The answer is easy. Nobody can imitate Avram Davidson’s style. All I could do was create a framework for his glittering prose, like a jeweler setting gems. There are many Avram Davidson gems in this droll story.

THE HILLS BEHIND HOLLYWOOD HIGH

BY
A
VRAM
D
AVIDSON AND
G
RANIA
D
AVIS

T
HAT THERE
ARE
HILLS
behind Hollywood—that is, behind Hollywood Boulevard and Hollywood High School—is perhaps not universally known. Smog often hides them, and tourists have no reason to look for, let alone explore, them. They remain unnoticed by the valley commuters who flood past them twice daily. Fish, it is said, do not see the water in which they swim, nor birds observe the winds which bear them.

In the late thirties, according to Life magazine, that omniscient observer of the world scene, the students of Hollywood High School were the most beautiful in the world, being the issue of beautiful young men and women who had come to Hollywood in the twenties seeking movie stardom and, although they had failed—
because
they had failed—stayed on in Hollywood doing Something Else, anything else.

Success would have removed them to Beverly Hills or Brentwood—failure prevented their return to Cowpat, Kansas; Absalom, Alabama; or Pretty Bird, Idaho. (“Diddunt
make
it in thuh pitchers, huh, Jeff? Huh, Jean? Huh huh haw!”) So there they stayed, frying hamburgers on Hollywood Boulevard, pumping gas or sacking groceries on Vine. Marcelling waves or setting perms on Cahuenga, clipping hedges or mowing lawns on Selma. Or, if exceptionally lucky, working in studio jobs on the other side of the cameras.

Hollywood was their hometown now, just as Cowpat, Absalom, or Pretty Bird had been. No more profitable maybe, but lots more interesting. And the beautiful failures met and married other beautiful failures—and together begat beautiful babies, who their parents hoped would Make It In The Movies. Make It Big.

“
What
? Television, what is
that
?”

It was in the mid-fifties. The huge red juggernaut trolley cars still rolled down the alley right of way. Vibi’s restaurant still advertised
Breakfast Served
24 Hours a Day
, but did not advertise the answer to the old-timers’ eternal question: Was “Vibi” Vilma Bankey or was she not, and if not, who was she? Because the old-timers knew she was
some
movie star from the old days.

As to who was the little old lady in the short black velvet tunic and the sandals cross-strapped halfway up her shrunk shanks, nobody had an answer, or knew why she carried a cane-length silver wand: an ancient fairy in the ancient meaning of the word, she stepped her light-fantastic way and bothered no one.

Dorothy, Angela, and Luanne giggled when they saw her—but only after she had moved well on—as they giggled in confused respect when passing the old dark house smothered in foliage, which was the home of the ninety-odd-year-old widow of L. Frank Baum, the original
Wizard of Oz
. The original house where he had dreamed his strange—and strangely profitable—dreams.

Sometimes the three girls went to buy snacks at the all-night Ranch Market on Vine, and sometimes they went there just to stare at the odd types who went there to stare at the other odd types. Once they heard a squat woman who looked as though Central Casting had selected her as a Ma Kettle standin say to her equally typical Farmer-Husband: “Land sakes, Pa, what is
this?”—
holding up the scaly green fruit of the cherimoya-tree—and Pa had said: “Looks like a armadillo egg to me, Ma!”

Past the Hollywood Hotel, which presumably dated from the Spanish
Conquista,
and near Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, built like an oriental shrine with hand-and-foot-prints of the famous set into cement out front for the faithful pilgrims to worship, was the business place of Angelo, the dwarf newsvendor. Sometimes they would see Angelo darting across Hollywood Boulevard to pick up a bundle of papers while he meanwhile waved a large white sheet of cardboard as a signal to drivers that he was not merely a driven leaf. Angelo had been in the movies, too.

Side by side, waving and squealing, Dorothy, Angela, and Luanne had seen Robert
Cummings
ride past in an open car with his family, and Robert Cummings had waved back and smiled widely—but did not squeal.

More than once they had clutched each other to see, walking on the sidewalk, just like anybody else, the movie-villainous
Porter Hall
, not looking the least villainous, looking dapper and rosy-cheeked—and Porter
Hall
had tipped his dapper hat and said: “Hello, lovely ladies!”

Lovely ladies!

As for names even more (well…much more) glamorous than Robert Cummings, or Porter Hall—well, Dorothy, Angela, and Luanne seldom saw
them …
in the flesh. Very seldom, though, at great and rare intervals, some of the Very Biggest Stars could be seen cruising majestically along at less than top speed. Showing the flag, as it were. Tryone. Lana. Lauren and Bogie. Bette. Ava. Joan. Clark.

In a Company Town, people naturally hope to get jobs with The Company. In Hollywood there is no one company—there is The Industry. So, although none of their parents had ever become even minor stars, it remained the natural hope of Dorothy, Luanne, and Angela that she…and she…and she…would nevertheless become Major Ones.

Outsiders, had they ever penetrated the neighborhood of squat, scaly palm trees and pseudo-Spanish stucco houses in the Hollywood Foothills, where the smog meets the ocean breezes, might have seen merely three perfectly ordinary teen-age girls—wearing fluffy bouffant felt skirts and fluffy bouffant hairdos, or pedal pushers and pageboys. One with large dark eyes and a slight, skimpy figure (Dorothy), one a tall and narrow blonde with a face marked chiefly by freckles and zits (Angela), one with a lovely complexion and a lavish bosom, but stocky hips and legs (Luanne).

To themselves, however, they were far from ordinary. They were
Daughters of Hollywood
. Moviedom was their birthright; obstacles in the form of imperfectly good looks were merely temporary. Things to be overcome. They were still at Hollywood High School, yes, but they merely endured the boring academic routine (really! classes in English! Like they were some kind of
foreigners!
). They saved all enthusiasm for their drama courses.

If there were diets, Luanne dieted them. If there were complexion creams, Angela creamed her complexion with them. If there were exercises, all three exercised them—Luanne for hips and legs, Angela and Dorothy for bosoms.

And—did it
help
?

Well
.

Luanne at least obtained a one-shot modeling job, with her picture cut off above the hips.

Angela did get, once, an extra part in a scene at a youth rally. (Politics? Circa 1953? Bless your Adam’s apple,
no
! The youths rallied for—in the film—a newer and larger football stadium.)

These opportunities never knocked again; even
so—

But Dorothy got…nothing at all.

*
Sigh
*

The last straw was the sign in the storefront window:
Now Signing Up! For Open-Air Spectacular! WANTED. One Hundred Teen-Aged GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS!
In she went. Surely, if a hundred were wanted, she—

“No.”

“But why
not?
”

The woman at the table heaped with application forms said, “Because, honey,
who
goes to see these things? Men.” She pronounced this last word as though she were pronouncing “pubic lice.” And went on to explain, “My dear, the average American man has never been
weaned
. If a girl is not prominent in the mammary section, if she doesn’t have what is called ‘a full figure,’ though one might ask, ‘full of
what?
’—well, Mr. Average American John hasn’t gotten his money’s worth, the
fool
!”

Perhaps she should have stayed? Only perhaps not.

What she
did
do, after getting the hell out, was to walk fast. Next to walk rapidly, and next to run. Then to stumble, then to halt. And then to start weeping. She didn’t burst into tears, she just wept.

And cried.

At that moment, Dorothy caught sight of her slender, tiny self reflected in a store window. Even amidst her grief and woe she realized that, if her life had been a movie, someone would have come up behind her and asked, “Why are you crying?”

At that moment someone came up behind her and asked, “Why are you crying?”

The moment was one of genuine thrill. Mingled with its pleasure, however, was an element of alarm. The voice wasn’t that of a wholesome, handsome American Boy with a mouthful of large white teeth set in a cornflakes smile;
no
: it definitely had a Foreign Accent.

Dorothy looked up. Was the man who had spoken—
was
he tall, dark, and handsome? Truth to say—not altogether. He was rather short. He was kind of dark; sallow, one might say. He had large and shining eyes. Now there was nothing wrong with all of this, or with any of this. Dorothy had long ago learned that even the most wholesome-looking of American Boys was not above urging her into some rotten old Nash or Chevy or Studebaker, stinking of grease, and then trying to Get Fresh with her. She gave a cautious sniff: no auto grease. However: something else. What? Something odd. But something not unpleasant.

“Why are you crying?” the man repeated. Impossible to guess his age.

“It’s my figure,” she said mournfully. “It’s too thin and skimpy.”

This was the strange man’s signal to say, “Nonsense, there’s nothing wrong with your figure; it’s all in your mind, you have a lovely figure.” Which would be her signal to slip away and get going. Men and boys had lied to her before, and with what result? (Never mind.)

What the strange man did say was, “Hmm, yes, that is certainly true. It is too thin and skimpy. About that you should something do.”

So right. “I need to see a doctor,” she whimpered.

“
I
am a doctor,” said the stranger. In his hand he held a small, wet-glistening bottle of a brown liquid, which he shifted to draw a wallet out, and out of the wallet a card. He handed the card to her. It read:

Songhabhongbhong Van Leeuwenhoek
Dr. Philosof Batavia.

The word
Batavia
had been crossed out with a thin-point fountain pen and the word
Djakarta
written above. The word
Djakarta
had been scratched out with a thick-point fountain pen and the word
Hollywood
written beneath. In pencil.

“I have only come down to buy this bottle of celery tonic at the deli store. Of course you are familiar with it, an American drink. I wish to have it with my
Reistafel
. How. ‘Rice Table,’ you would say. It is a mixed dish, such as me, self. Part Nederlandse, part Indonesian. Are you fond of?”

Dorothy had no idea if she was fond, or not fond of. She had a certain feeling that this doctor with the funny name was weird.
Weird
. But still there was the chance that he might be able to help her. If anything, it increased the chance, for everything normal had certainly failed.

“Is your office near here?” she asked.

It wasn’t like other doctors’ offices, for sure. It had funny things in it: skulls, stuffed things, carved things, things in bottles.
Other
doctors didn’t give her a spicy meal. Was she fond of? Or not? Well, it was different.

So—“What kind of medicine do you think will help me?”

The doctor, who had been eyeing her intently, seemed surprised by the question. “What? Ah, the medicine. Oh, to sure be. Hmm!”

He got up and opened a few drawers, then took out a funny-looking bottle with a funny-looking powder in it. “In my native island Sumatra,” he explained, “I was very interested in natural history and botany, zoology and pharmacology, also hunting and fishing. And so therefore. But. Details.”

She eyed the powder. “Do I take it by the spoonful? Or in a capsule, Doctor?”

He was again staring at her with his odd and shining eyes. “Take—Oh, but first I must you examine,” said he.

Well, what he did with Dorothy before, during, and after the examination was certainly no worse than what had been done with her by others, not that most of them had been doctors, though
this
doctor used his
fingers
fairly freely. It was…well…interesting. And the couch was nicer than the back seat of a tatty old jalopy, and the spices and incense certainly smelled lots better than auto grease.